You beat me to it. Tolkien nerds high-five!Elves didn't have curved swords in Tolkien. That's a Weta-developed concept, likely originating mostly from Alan Lee and/or John Howe as they were trying to portray gracefulness in Elven cultures. Tolkien mostly depicted his elven swords as similar to how swords are written in the Norse Sagas, the Finnish Kalevala, and the Irish Cycles.
But FWIW, I also agree that
They're not real world, and they're also not a novel or movie. I think it's fine to just sketch the monoculture as the baseline and then let each table and player decide whether they're going to lean into it, play with it, play against it, replace it, add to it, or none of the above. Stress the options instead of trying to pre-make them.Humanoids don't need to have real-world-esque layers and complexity, because they're not real world.
But that's just me.