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Elves, sir!
Mar. 29th, 2011 10:36 pmObligatory bit: wordcount still satisfactory, and my first draft of Chapter Eleven is done. It's short, but Twelve will make up for that. One editing pass before I post it, as always, so expect it Friday. New due-date for Twelve (and the interlude between parts one and two, which is only a snippet of a scene that I couldn't bear to cut and couldn't fit elsewhere) is April 15th.
INTERESTING PART OF THE POST BEGINS HERE
I have my own answers, of course, and my own thoughts, but I'm much more interested (as usual) in hearing what other people think about it. Are elves in fantasy overdone? What depictions have influenced you most, whether because they got it right or got it horribly wrong (the second is often more influential)? How are your elves different?
*"Longer lifespans lead to a more entrenched conservative tradition, and an easier way to explain a slower pace of change in a culture, as the old and powerful who value the status quo have more time to express their views and build a system to support them. But it could also lead to a greater polarization within a culture, where the disconnect between the young and the old makes for almost two separate cultures, viewpoints separated by more time and experience -- which could also, in turn, make change more volatile when it does happen. What younger elves think of older elves is rarely dealt with."**
**How is this lazy footnoting thing working for people, by the way?
INTERESTING PART OF THE POST BEGINS HERE
A tangent* in last week's post about fantastical history got me talking about and thinking about longer-lived races in fantasy, specifically elves, and how they're portrayed. Their long (sometimes, as in Tolkien, immortal) lifespans mean they are depicted as wise, stable, technical masters of their crafts (sometimes lacking in innovation and creativity compared to humans, sometimes far surpassing it), aesthetic perfectionists who can always afford to take the long view, sometimes to their detriment.
They are also often shown as passionate, merry, even flighty -- mercurial and fey, the elves of fairy-stories rather than the elves of epics. These two depictions of elves are contradictory, but there's a lot of interesting space in the interplay between them. And most fantasy treatments of them today descend from or are a reaction to Tolkien's elves, from depicting them as high-handed and arrogant, to playing up their beauty to ridiculous extremes, to showing them as live-in-the-moment primitivists devoted to the id. There's a tension in 'elves' that any author interested in them has to find a way to address. "How are your elves different?" is a question I have heard repeated many times, not just directed at me, but anyone who writes fantasy or runs roleplaying games.
They are also often shown as passionate, merry, even flighty -- mercurial and fey, the elves of fairy-stories rather than the elves of epics. These two depictions of elves are contradictory, but there's a lot of interesting space in the interplay between them. And most fantasy treatments of them today descend from or are a reaction to Tolkien's elves, from depicting them as high-handed and arrogant, to playing up their beauty to ridiculous extremes, to showing them as live-in-the-moment primitivists devoted to the id. There's a tension in 'elves' that any author interested in them has to find a way to address. "How are your elves different?" is a question I have heard repeated many times, not just directed at me, but anyone who writes fantasy or runs roleplaying games.
I have my own answers, of course, and my own thoughts, but I'm much more interested (as usual) in hearing what other people think about it. Are elves in fantasy overdone? What depictions have influenced you most, whether because they got it right or got it horribly wrong (the second is often more influential)? How are your elves different?
*"Longer lifespans lead to a more entrenched conservative tradition, and an easier way to explain a slower pace of change in a culture, as the old and powerful who value the status quo have more time to express their views and build a system to support them. But it could also lead to a greater polarization within a culture, where the disconnect between the young and the old makes for almost two separate cultures, viewpoints separated by more time and experience -- which could also, in turn, make change more volatile when it does happen. What younger elves think of older elves is rarely dealt with."**
**How is this lazy footnoting thing working for people, by the way?
