Grumpy Gamer's Egregious Archetypes: Hippie Dandy Racist Elves

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Egregious Archetypes: Elf (Neverwinter)

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Race: Elf

Identifying Characteristics:

  • Pointed ears
  • Slim build
  • Overwhelming sense of self-importance

Strengths:

  • Generally gifted with bows, magic, the arts
  • Highly attuned with nature
  • Extreme longevity
  • Super-model looks

Weaknesses:

  • Physically frail
  • Are often either mopey and emo or aggressively upbeat - annoying
    either way
  • A tendency towards extreme racism

Description:

Elves occur in one form or another in nearly every fantasy game ever
made. Indeed, along with magic, swords and goblins, elves more or less
define the high-fantasy genre. You can thank Tolkien for that. He was not
the very first to write about them, but his ancient warrior-poet elves,
abstracted from Norse and Western European folklore, were so thoroughly
detailed and richly portrayed that they continue to be "borrowed" by
fantasy writers to this day. But each writer seems to take them further
and further away from their roots, narrowing in on some aspect or other of
Tolkien's originals and then being "that guy."

Egregious Archetypes: Elves (DDO)

One aspect is their close ties to nature. Tolkien's elves weren't the
tree-hugging, whale-saving hippies that some might make them out to be.
They hunted game and rode horses just like the grubby men from the less
awesome places of Middle-Earth. They made stuff out of metal and stone.
They were fierce warriors. Incidentally, they grew magical trees in
Lothlorien and lived in them, but they also built the Last Homely House in
Rivendell and a bunch of old buildings in Hollin that fell to ruin. They
weren't just tree-huggers - they were badasses with vaguely supernatural
powers.

Egregious Archetypes: Elrond

That doesn't stop some writers from depicting them as perpetual
tree-huggers, though. Some even take it to extremes. We all recognize that
the Sylvari in Guild Wars 2 are not Elves. But let's be honest with each
other here: they totally are and we all know it. They're the epitome of
the tree-hugger aspect, taken to the extreme and then made creepy. The
Sylvari are not entirely opposed to violence - that simply wouldn't work
in a video game; peacenik pacifism is usually limited to literature - but
there's no denying that they do indeed love their flora. Perhaps they are
more closely-related to Dryads or Wood Nymphs, but those various fey all
fall under the umbrella category of tree-hugging elves.

At the other end of this spectrum, but equally extreme, are the Bosmer of
the Elder Scrolls games. They are so tree-hug-alicious that their official
state religion requires them to harm no plants or even to eat them.
Instead, they are pure carnivores and use only animal products to make
stuff. They make booze out of milk, wear only leather clothing and
cannibalize their own dead. That's not something Elves did in
Middle-Earth.

Egregious Archetypes: Elf (Elder Scrolls Bosmer)

Of course, Tolkien's elves also exemplify two very negative
characteristics of elves: self-obsessed moodiness and terrible racism.

The navel-gazing male model is another fantasy staple that has a very
strong appeal to the young female audience who haven't yet outgrown the
"bad boy" phase - damaged and "fixable," but also safe. He will talk about
his feelings - sorrow, mostly, because that's how elves roll - and he's
amazing and graceful and dangerous with his weapons, but he won't steal
your stereo or get drunk and punch holes in your walls. He'll write poems
about loss and sorrow and the moon, and then kill some Orcs,
Legolas-style.

Elves wear their sorrow like a fashion statement, the same as the emo
kids from a few years ago. And just like the emo scene, that moodiness
gets real old real fast, and then it's no longer interesting. It's just
aggravating. Go to the Grey Havens and shut up already.

Archtype Elf - LotRO

On the other end of that scale are the overly-capricious manic fey -
Elves so aggressively cheerful, all the time, that it's unlikely such a
species would survive for very long in a world with Dwarves and Orcs. Or
laws of physics. Tolkien's Elves walked a very fine line in this respect -
on the one hand, you had characters like Galadriel and Elrond, who were
4srs 24-7. On the other hand, you had the merry jerks who pranced around
in the woods near Greenhall in the Shire, singing their tinkly songs at
Frodo and his Hobbit homies who were attempting to keep away from the
black riders and rolling silently.

Archtype Elf - LotRO

Elves are also probably the biggest racists in the entire fantasy
bestiary. It's not the kind of low-brow hate-group racism that involves
staging loud and disgusting protests, but the very polite kind that is
even more disturbing because the tone makes you think it might not be such
a terrible thing. Elves quite plainly believe themselves to be
axiomatically superior to the other races. Perhaps it's because they live
longer, or they are more in-tune with nature, or they are prettier and
taller and slimmer, or they're better at magic, or their culture is way
older than anything else ever. But whatever it is, it surely makes them
think they are way better than everyone else. In fantasy literature, the
often-used term is "haughty," but what it boils down to is something a lot
uglier than high-bred haughtiness.

Egregious Archtype Elf - Skyrim Altmer

The Altmer of the Elder Scrolls are a prime example of this. Queen
Ayrenn, leader of the Aldmeri Dominion in Elder Scrolls Online, claims to
have "no hatred for the races of Man," but goes on to describe them as
impatient children that are dumber than High Elf babies. In other words,
"It's not that we hate you; we just believe you under-beings are too
stupid and backwards to do anything correctly." They're not really much
better in any other setting, either.

Elves are usually more fun to play than Humans. In essence, they
encapsulate the entire experience of the fantasy RPG, in that they are
everything we wish we could be. They look like us, only hotter. They live
forever. They're smarter than us, and better at the things that make
high-fantasy-genre games awesome. They are the bread and butter of the
escapist. And they're slightly more accessible to the average player than
the other staple fantasy races, because they're not short or beastly. At
least, not physically. But if you want to play one, be prepared to recite
a lot of poetry about the sun and moon and trees and sorrow.

Got a pet peeve about Elves? Let us know in our comments!


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Last Updated: Mar 29, 2016

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