Saturday 12 February 2022

A Philosophical Typology of Elves

Bland modern fantasy elves tend to be depicted merely as living for a bit longer than humans and being a bit sexier. The history of the genre gives us many other, more interesting, archetypes. Let's see if we can catalogue them. 

Tolkien imagined that, granted near-immortality, elves would spend most of their time writing poetry, singing, creating wondrous art, honing their talents, and so on. Let's call this the optimistic elf. It is based on the view that people will set their sights on lofty goals when freed from the burden of time and the pressure to earn a living.

Moorcock satirised the optimistic elf with his decadent variant. This figure appears again and again in his fiction (and his intellectual descendants); the paradigmatic iteration is the Vadhagh of the Corum stories, who are so interested in the contents of their own navels that they fail to notice the world has turned, the barbarians are quite literally at the gates, and their precious cultural achievements will do nothing to protect them from impending doom.

Zelazny's Amberites can be thought of as megalomaniac elves. Given demigod-like power, they deploy it not in the name of art or song, but toward the aim of amassing yet more, and at the expense of their rivals. Their might makes them intolerant of equals; each must strive to be the greatest. 

In M. John Harrison's A Storm of Wings, the Reborn Men of the ancient Earth go slowly mad, whether because of the passage of time itself, or because they have found themselves in a distant future they are not equipped to understand. They are senile elves.

HG Wells' Eloi are dissolute, passive, unintelligent and apathetic; leisure and ease have rendered them both bored and boring, like humanoid cattle. Predating Tolkien, his Eloi feel like their mirror-universe twins - let's call them this archetype the pessimistic elf.

Leonard Nimoy's depiction of Spock is one which I hardly need to describe to you in writing. He was a Vulcan elf.

I'm sure I'm overlooking or forgetting things, but I'm not sure if I have ever encountered what I will call the dark triad elf. (Except perhaps for the drow.) Given a near-infinite lifespan and/or near-infinite leisure, might one become so self-absorbed and so caught up in the pursuit of pleasure - not to mention so psychologically distanced from the generations of short-lived humans living, growing old and dying before one's eyes - as to become narcissistic, even psychopathic? 

25 comments:

  1. Amoral Trickster elves, as depicted in The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Lyonesse by Jack Vance. They're bored unless they're playing tricks on hapless humans.

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  2. Courtesy of GW's 40k universe:
    Eldar/Aeldari are similar to Tolkien's elves, if the Dark Lord had already won. They know their time has passed, and that they were the architects of their downfall. Artists and poets become soldiers, fighting a war they've already lost. Doomed elves?
    Dark Eldar/Drukhari are dark triad elves, and as doomed as their Aeldari kin. The key difference is that death means guaranteed eternal torment inflicted by the god they birthed.

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    1. I was forgetting the fifth rule of fantasy settings: if you've thought of it, it's probably like something in Warhammer or Warhammer 40K.

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  3. the Eldar of 40k maybe qualify as dark triad elves? idk much about 40k lore tbh.

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  4. the elves in the broken sword are pretty nasty

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  5. The Nonmen in Bakker's Second Apocalypse series are variously senile/psychopathic.

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  6. I would say LOTFP elves present as dark triad elves. Or perhaps Alien elves, with wants, needs and whims more meaningless or unfathomable to man than at odds with him.

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  7. As I remember them, Moorcock's Melniboneans are basically dark triad elves.

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  8. The Eldar in Warhammer 40K trend towards the Dark Triad - especially in their "Pre-Fall" form, and that culture's survival in the Drukari/Dark Eldar, who are very specifically 1) near immortal (they can, with the right insurance policies, survive anything short of total obliteration) 2) incredibly narcissistic and 3) utterly obsessed with the acquisition of power and pleasure in various forms, especially sadistic ones.

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  9. The elves of Terry Pratchett's "Lords and Ladies" are sociopathic manipulators and described with "they'd smash up the world if they thought it would make a pretty noise".

    The alfar host of Charles Stross's later Launrdy Files are basically the above, plus living in his take on the Cthulhu Mythos.

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    1. That's a good line, and how I would conceptualise a dark elf.

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  10. One thing I see a lot is Ecoterrorist elves. Basically "you humans are chopping all the trees down! That's terrible! I'm going to fuck you up!" I don't care for this kind of elf because it clashes with the kind of Points of Light settings that I like, in those settings that the scattered besieged holdouts of humanity are any kind of existential threat to the great howling wildernesses is just ridiculous.

    The kind of elf I prefer is the Folkloric Elf. You know the type: steals babies, hollow hills where time passes strangely, strange rewards and retribution for perceived aid and slights, inability to lie or break promises while trying to fuck people over horribly within the confines of that, etc. etc.

    I rather like more folkloric elves and try to make them hard to understand and inhuman to the extent that in my pet setting I don't allow elf PCs (half-elves are fine). The elves rule a large forest and enforce a bewildering array of laws that humans don't understand on anyone who travels in their forest. Had a lot of fun having an elf pincushion the PCs with unfailingly polite messages attached to arrows.

    I like folkloric elves since even though they're horrible jackasses there are ways that PCs can interact with them besides violence and even the most vile folkloric elf won't attack humans on sight.

    On the other side of the coin I like demonic orcs a lot less since there's no real range of options there since they're just there to fight. I prefer more Klingon orcs, so dangerous people but still PEOPLE not monsters.

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  11. Drow and variants on the "dark elf" idea feel like the best examples of the Dark Triad Elf. Outside of pop culture, maybe Patrick Stuart's Alef-Aedal? (Probably misspelling that)

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  12. Aye as numerous have said, Warhammers Drukhari are near perfect dark-triad elves. Immortal so long as they top up their souls with the pain of others, sadistic, near-atheistic but almost worshippers of functional psychopathy

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  13. Dark triad is basically what I always imagined happened to elves who lived too long. They don't go senile, they become sociopaths, sadists and narcissistic.

    Which is why they have choose to depart their bodies before they grow older than a thousand even if their physical lifespan is technically unlimited.

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  14. Don't forget the self-transforming machine elves

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  15. So many elf types. I'd also note Santa's Elves and the Keebler Elves, as well as the elves of The Shoemaker and the Elves. I think these depictions generally feature small magical humanoids with pointed ears who are willing to labor away, often on behalf of others. Well, they're the first sort of elves I became aware of, anyhow, their image at some point supplanted by Tolkieny elves.

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    1. Yeah, I guess you could call them "knocker types", or perhaps "brownie types".

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  16. Japanese Elves: Tuned with nature, natural mages but isolated folk and might not like humans. Japanese love for nature and cyclic world view makes Elves more likely to let bad things to happen as it just part of cycle of The World.

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