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Why do YOU hate elves?

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rusty_shackleford
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Vergil wrote: March 21st, 2025, 17:55
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 17:54
but many malevolent things are blamed upon them, people want to keep them away, etc
Just like how Whites are treated now...
How could you come to that conclusion when non-whites demand access to white people?
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Post by Vergil »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 17:55
Vergil wrote: March 21st, 2025, 17:55
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 17:54
but many malevolent things are blamed upon them, people want to keep them away, etc
Just like how Whites are treated now...
How could you come to that conclusion when non-whites demand access to white people?
Much like how Whites are blamed for everything and told to leave blacks alone but are chased after for their gibs so too do humans say they want elves to go away but desire their magic.
I'm just stating the facts.
Question is are you going to gargle the truth or swallow?
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Post by UltraFan123 »

Vergil does have a point.

I remember that recent case of the neggress mayor of a city in the US who continuously blames non-stop the Whites who live there for every imaginable evil, so when the Whites began to pack up their things and move somewhere else the aforementioned mayor began to chimp out because the city will lose the gibs of the wealthy Whites she blames for everything. :lol:
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Post by Brugmans »

Acrux wrote: March 21st, 2025, 17:41
Is this where I'm supposed to post that the old stories about elves match current stories about alien abductions and they're both demons?
How ælfs see þe Earþe:
united_kingdom_earth_map-4161185379.jpg
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Brugmans wrote: March 21st, 2025, 18:23
Acrux wrote: March 21st, 2025, 17:41
Is this where I'm supposed to post that the old stories about elves match current stories about alien abductions and they're both demons?
How ælfs see þe Earþe:

Image
Makes sense that this would continue, following the only people with souls after they all left the isles for america.
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Post by Vergil »

UltraFan123 wrote: March 21st, 2025, 18:03
Vergil does have a point.

I remember that recent case of the neggress mayor of a city in the US who continuously blames non-stop the Whites who live there for every imaginable evil, so when the Whites began to pack up their things and move somewhere else the aforementioned mayor began to chimp out because the city will lose the gibs of the wealthy Whites she blames for everything. :lol:
You're either a culture vulture gentrifying a black neighborhood (racist) or you're unreasonably scared of innocent minorities and ruining the economy with White flight (racist). There's no winning.
I'm just stating the facts.
Question is are you going to gargle the truth or swallow?
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Post by Jordy »

How could anyone hate Santa's little helpers?
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Post by Vergil »

Jordy wrote: March 21st, 2025, 20:32
How could anyone hate Santa's little helpers?
I can relate to Santa in some ways. I too would like to live in a winter wonderland with a bunch of elf fellas to keep me warm.
I'm just stating the facts.
Question is are you going to gargle the truth or swallow?
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Post by Jordy »

Vergil wrote: March 21st, 2025, 20:35
Jordy wrote: March 21st, 2025, 20:32
How could anyone hate Santa's little helpers?
I can relate to Santa in some ways. I too would like to live in a winter wonderland with a bunch of elf fellas to keep me warm.
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Post by TKVNC »

I don't hate elves. They're great actually.

I think it's easier to make sense of them by thinking about the Tuath De. They are beings from mythology, who only infrequently interact with men.

Stories of people following them to their kingdoms under the ground and behind the waves.

They are fundamentally European, and cannot be removed from a White, and Western lens.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

TKVNC wrote: March 21st, 2025, 20:43
I don't hate elves. They're great actually.

I think it's easier to make sense of them by thinking about the Tuath De. They are beings from mythology, who only infrequently interact with men.

Stories of people following them to their kingdoms under the ground and behind the waves.

They are fundamentally European, and cannot be removed from a White, and Western lens.
Court of fey has always been a more interesting, alien interpretation imo. Tolkien's stranglehold on the genre has its drawbacks in that he was explicitly making an English folk tale. Gygax pulling from many different sources has done many more favors for fantasy since then.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

"Dark elves" do not appear in any Old English text I've checked. I'm not quite sure when they became part of Germanic mythology, I'd probably either need to go digging thru a bunch of books or find someone who is an expert in continental Germanic mythology to see if Continental germoids had them prior to Prose Edda.
Most of you already know they appear in Prose Edda, which was written later than perhaps some realize(13th century). Don't know if it was an original invention by Snorri or not.

…But it's probable that the English did have something similar, perhaps lost or I'm just not aware of it. Anglo-Saxons were significantly closer with North Germanics than continental Germanics. Regular cultural exchanges between Anglos and North Germanics is one of the reasons why English is, despite being nominally a West Germanic language, much closer to Swedish than German.
If we assume that the Anglo-Saxons did differ between Leohtælf and Deorcælf (or Beorhtælf and Sƿeartælf, we have no idea what it would be called, again as far as I know) it would explain why both malevolent and benevolent things were attributed to ælfar.

Despite its association with Celtic "fairytales", Seelie(i.e., Seelie Court, Court of the Fey) is actually an OE word: sælig. If I was forced to answer, I'd have guessed it came from sídhe.
Last edited by rusty_shackleford on March 21st, 2025, 23:05, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 21:53
Court of fey has always been a more interesting, alien interpretation imo. Tolkien's stranglehold on the genre has its drawbacks in that he was explicitly making an English folk tale. Gygax pulling from many different sources has done many more favors for fantasy since then.
@Val the Moofia Boss @Godjjjita explain yourselves :mad:
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Post by Val the Moofia Boss »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 23:08
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 21:53
Court of fey has always been a more interesting, alien interpretation imo. Tolkien's stranglehold on the genre has its drawbacks in that he was explicitly making an English folk tale. Gygax pulling from many different sources has done many more favors for fantasy since then.
@Val the Moofia Boss @Godjjjita explain yourselves :mad:
Already did.
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Post by Godjjjita »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 23:08
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 21:53
Court of fey has always been a more interesting, alien interpretation imo. Tolkien's stranglehold on the genre has its drawbacks in that he was explicitly making an English folk tale. Gygax pulling from many different sources has done many more favors for fantasy since then.
@Val the Moofia Boss @Godjjjita explain yourselves :mad:
Before Tolkien, elves were viewed as tiny demons or faeries, Tolkien was Christian and turn those little wendy wannabe's into the very aspect of the ideal European (Before Europe became a liberal shithole).
Watch this video for the history of elves and tolkien's hand in remaking them:
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Post by Vergil »

Godjjjita wrote: March 21st, 2025, 23:20
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 23:08
rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 21:53
Court of fey has always been a more interesting, alien interpretation imo. Tolkien's stranglehold on the genre has its drawbacks in that he was explicitly making an English folk tale. Gygax pulling from many different sources has done many more favors for fantasy since then.
@Val the Moofia Boss @Godjjjita explain yourselves :mad:
Before Tolkien, elves were viewed as tiny demons or faeries, Tolkien was Christian and turn those little wendy wannabe's into the very aspect of the ideal European (Before Europe became a liberal shithole).
Watch this video for the history of elves and tolkien's hand in remaking them:
Dont watch female youtubers
I'm just stating the facts.
Question is are you going to gargle the truth or swallow?
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

Godjjjita wrote: March 21st, 2025, 23:20
Before Tolkien, elves were viewed as tiny demons or faeries, Tolkien was Christian and turn those little wendy wannabe's into the very aspect of the ideal European (Before Europe became a liberal shithole).
Strong disagree.
D&D elves as originally created aren't even based on Tolkien elves, Gygax is well known for not being a fan of LotR(and "high" fantasy in general, much of his influence was Sword & Sorcery or — perhaps for lack of a better term for it — baroque fantasy e.g., Vance) but was forced to include elements of it to increase marketability.
Last edited by rusty_shackleford on March 21st, 2025, 23:28, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by rusty_shackleford »

rusty_shackleford wrote: March 21st, 2025, 23:25
D&D elves as originally created aren't even based on Tolkien elves, Gygax is well known for not being a fan of LotR(and "high" fantasy in general, much of his influence was Sword & Sorcery or — perhaps for lack of a better term for it — baroque fantasy e.g., Vance) but was forced to include elements of it to increase marketability.
https://rpghq.org/gygax-dragonsfoot-qa. ... tent436925
You are right on both accounts. REH was my first real S&S author and remains a favorite to this day.

Oerth is indeed more influenced by his writing than ever that of JRRT. tolkien did not write S&S, he wrote fantasy, what I would call high fantasy in the LotR trilogy.

https://rpghq.org/gygax-enworld-qa.html
Indeed, the number of JRRT fans who were potential D&D gamers encouraged me to include races like those in his works in the game. Dwarves, of course, are common in a lot of myth, German and Schadanavian. The elves in D&D were not those of the Rings Trilogy, but hobbits/halflings were that. As a reader of fables, fairy tales, fantasy, and myth for a long time before the work of JRRT was in print, adding another choice, the gnome, seemed a good thing, as in fantasy the former elemental had become more an archetypical "fairy" race. Inspiration came from extensive reading, and of course designing the race to fin the D&D model was not a great challenge ;-)

You can find similar quotes like that from him, and he discussed it prior at various speaking occasions when asked. Unlike Tolkien, who was open in his distaste for Celtic fairlytale(albeit he definitely was inspired by it), Gygax took from all European tales.
:Inspector:
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Post by Vergil »

I really ate with this thread
I'm just stating the facts.
Question is are you going to gargle the truth or swallow?
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Post by maidenhaver »

Elves were spirits, anything beyond that is speculation. Same with trolls, because dragons were also called trolls. There's no pinning down what they would have meant by either, because the north didn't have a neo-platonist reaction to christianity.
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