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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yaarel" data-source="post: 8680266" data-attributes="member: 58172">The issues you raise are worth looking into more deeply. In this post, is my first thoughts about them. But I will continue to explore them.Personally, it is impossible for me to look at D&D elves except thru the lens of my own ethnic perspectives. Generally "Old West Norse" perspectives inform my perception of what an "elf" is.Generally, the Norse nature beings emulate typical Norse culture, assumptions and customs. And the Norse elves do gender divide. Indeed the ones that become nornir (fates) are exclusively feminine.Norse culture exhibits two genders, and the culture is highly gender-divided. The gender roles seem mainly reinforced by the anatomical males being expected to fight as warriors as part of the family militia to defend the extended family. Meanwhile, the sacred traditions are feminine, and the only traditional spiritual leader is a vǫlva who is a shaman who is required to be a female.That said, it is also the case that individual Norse can choose which gender they want to be part of. The are examples of females who serve as warriors (and skalds), and the culture respects them for their masculine skills. Likewise there are examples of males who serve as shamans. (But the "office" of the vǫlva itself appears to be always female.) Moreover, there is some blending of gender roles. For example, the berserkar reuse feminine shamanic traditions in ways that fulfill masculine warrior obligations and values.So, while the culture has strong gender division, there is still freedom for individuals to pick which side they want to be on. This individual choice also extends to the cultural borders between masculine and feminine enjoying some fluidity.(My impression is, various Indigenous American tribal communities enjoy a similar gender-division that includes individual freedom of choice.)So for me an "elf" gender-divides − yet there is real genderfluidity too.Regarding the D&D 5e elf, I will reread some of the source materials. My current impression is.Players have official freedom to choose whatever bodytype they want for their own character. Defacto, this means, elven anatomy varies considerably from ultra female women to ultra male men. In other words, a full spectrum from "elf babes" to "bodybuilders" and everyone in between. Likewise, there are elves who are short and tall, thin and broad, and so on. Of course, pretty much any skin color exists.The focus in the original post, is the elves in the feywild. The elves in the material plane have their own cultures in play. Moreover, at least the uda drow culture strongly gender-divides. The focus is mainly on the eladrin cultures that are in the feywild, but the setting has noneladrin elven cultures present as well. In the feywild, each "court" is an autonomous government for a unique culture. But the fey eladrin share much in common.My understanding of the blessing of Corellon is, the capability to shapeshift between male anatomy, intersex anatomy, and female anatomy, implies both that the fey elves are high anatomically dimorphic − or rather trimorphic − and implies that the intersex enjoys special sacred status. So similar to the way Roman Catholics have males representing the sacred, and Norse have females representing the sacred, the eladrin have intersex representing the sacred.So, it seems to me, the fey elves and any elves who maintain connections with their ancestor Corellon, value the cultural recognition of the thirdgender that is neither male nor female, which is more specifically genderfluid.There are some reallife cultures that have the thirdgender in addition to the masculine and feminine, and I keep these in mind when looking at the fey elves.It occurs to me. All elves in this setting reproduce by means of exchanging a drop of blood from each parent. This is a nod to the lore that the original descendants of Corellon likewise developed from drops of their blood. So, this is generally how elves still do reproduction.In other words, elves do indeed have a "native way" to decide if they want to have kids or not.I view the elves as echoing humanity with the normal spectrum from human anatomy from female to male and everyone in between. But the culture views those individuals near the center of the spectrum as enjoying special sacred status. In the sense of cultural recognition, the eladrin are "trimorphic". Just like human cultures divide up the colors in the spectrum of the rainbow differently, the eladrin divide up the gender spectrum into three main colors, with some fluid borders between each color.The full spectrum of anatomical appearance is also official rules.Yeah. Shapechange is part of elven culture. This does have real impact on how the culture works. This anatomical freedom of choice is also why the intersex enjoy sacred status, because in some ways they physically represent the fluidity of all elves.</blockquote>

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