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Worlds of Design: Escaping Tolkien
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<blockquote data-quote="MostlyHarmless42" data-source="post: 8090742" data-attributes="member: 6845520"><p>Except even in the case of Harry Potter elves still have elements of the same mythologies that Tolkien used to create his elves. House elves are <em>still</em> arguably connected to fey and other sorts of magical creatures and have their own forms of magic that within setting is highly unknown to humans. If anything they are <em>closer</em> to traditional Norse elves (which were both what we view as dwarves and elves and gnomes now) than Tolkien's versions. They also draw heavily from slavic house spirits (hint, it's where the "house" of house elves comes from) which were creatures that were often small or had the ability to hide supernaturally from human eye that would help care for peoples homes and hearth as long as they left outflow food or trinkets for them.</p><p></p><p>Her house elves are no more original than any other fictional fantasy race. Calling one author's creations as "boring and lazy" when another's draw from the same set of sources is without actually looking at the nuances they imbue within them is not a good president to set.</p><p></p><p>An example of those "tolkien" dwarves from said era of crazed fantasy: The Death Gate Cycle by Margeret Weis (yes one of the Dragonlance people) depicts dwarves as largely Tolkienian, but has several scenes where a dwarven character precedes to describe how odd they find it that humans are so eager to backstab, betray, or care only about themselves because from his perspective a large defining point of dwarven society is they care more about their clans and families than themselves and while feuding between families isn't uncommon, one person caring only about themselves or knowingly unharming a family member is unheard of.</p><p></p><p>Another example: in the Obsidian trilogy by Mercedes Lackey, she depicts elves in an almost entirely alien fashion at least initially, describing them more like fey forest ghosts until her human characters learn more about their ways, in which they are perhaps 80% tolkienian, or at least certain fit <em>your</em> definition of "tall slender beautiful people who live centuries". Despite that, the book takes literal chapters to describe the elven mindset in her world, where several different elves teach the humans about their cultures, the largee bulk of which include how they have a strong inclination towards perfecting everything they do, so an elven blacksmith might spend literal decades deeming each of them "worthless trash" while a human blacksmith would just deem them "good enough" simply because they <em>can</em> afford to have such a long lived mindset. It also talks about how they devote literally centuries towards figuring out the proper way to make tea or use a sword, and that this long lived mindset is largely <em>why</em> they have such friction with humans, and it isn't just a riff on Tolkien's elves (or Ents), because said mindset directly causes them to have issues training the main character to fight or rally together to help the humans and other races to fight a mutual enemy. Additionally over the course the the book the humans who are learning about them ultimately conclude that while they will never see 100% eye to eye on certain things it is the act of learning about each other's cultures that ultimately brings them together, in that a large part of how he gets them to help out the humans is by learning to participate in their elaborate tea rituals.</p><p></p><p>Both of these are exactly the same dwarves and elves that are supposedly "boring and derivative". The true problem isn't with elves or dwarves, it's with lazy writers who are off Tolkien or other works without putting in any actual effort to make them feel different than just humans with pointy ears that live in forests or short humans with beards that live underground.</p><p></p><p>And I assure you such laziness affects more than just stuff with Tolkien. Do centaur and satyr and nymphs get a pass just because Lord of the Rings didn't draw much from Greek mythology, or must we now make all centaurs have lion bodies instead of horses or have horse heads instead of human! Hate to break it to you but those also already exist and are called Lamia and Ipotane. Both are ALSO from Greek myths. They aren't more "original" just because someone might not have heard of them. Nothing is truly original and that is a problem that predates Tolkien. What matters is people actually put in the work to use things in their own way.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="MostlyHarmless42, post: 8090742, member: 6845520"] Except even in the case of Harry Potter elves still have elements of the same mythologies that Tolkien used to create his elves. House elves are [I]still[/I] arguably connected to fey and other sorts of magical creatures and have their own forms of magic that within setting is highly unknown to humans. If anything they are [I]closer[/I] to traditional Norse elves (which were both what we view as dwarves and elves and gnomes now) than Tolkien's versions. They also draw heavily from slavic house spirits (hint, it's where the "house" of house elves comes from) which were creatures that were often small or had the ability to hide supernaturally from human eye that would help care for peoples homes and hearth as long as they left outflow food or trinkets for them. Her house elves are no more original than any other fictional fantasy race. Calling one author's creations as "boring and lazy" when another's draw from the same set of sources is without actually looking at the nuances they imbue within them is not a good president to set. An example of those "tolkien" dwarves from said era of crazed fantasy: The Death Gate Cycle by Margeret Weis (yes one of the Dragonlance people) depicts dwarves as largely Tolkienian, but has several scenes where a dwarven character precedes to describe how odd they find it that humans are so eager to backstab, betray, or care only about themselves because from his perspective a large defining point of dwarven society is they care more about their clans and families than themselves and while feuding between families isn't uncommon, one person caring only about themselves or knowingly unharming a family member is unheard of. Another example: in the Obsidian trilogy by Mercedes Lackey, she depicts elves in an almost entirely alien fashion at least initially, describing them more like fey forest ghosts until her human characters learn more about their ways, in which they are perhaps 80% tolkienian, or at least certain fit [I]your[/I] definition of "tall slender beautiful people who live centuries". Despite that, the book takes literal chapters to describe the elven mindset in her world, where several different elves teach the humans about their cultures, the largee bulk of which include how they have a strong inclination towards perfecting everything they do, so an elven blacksmith might spend literal decades deeming each of them "worthless trash" while a human blacksmith would just deem them "good enough" simply because they [I]can[/I] afford to have such a long lived mindset. It also talks about how they devote literally centuries towards figuring out the proper way to make tea or use a sword, and that this long lived mindset is largely [I]why[/I] they have such friction with humans, and it isn't just a riff on Tolkien's elves (or Ents), because said mindset directly causes them to have issues training the main character to fight or rally together to help the humans and other races to fight a mutual enemy. Additionally over the course the the book the humans who are learning about them ultimately conclude that while they will never see 100% eye to eye on certain things it is the act of learning about each other's cultures that ultimately brings them together, in that a large part of how he gets them to help out the humans is by learning to participate in their elaborate tea rituals. Both of these are exactly the same dwarves and elves that are supposedly "boring and derivative". The true problem isn't with elves or dwarves, it's with lazy writers who are off Tolkien or other works without putting in any actual effort to make them feel different than just humans with pointy ears that live in forests or short humans with beards that live underground. And I assure you such laziness affects more than just stuff with Tolkien. Do centaur and satyr and nymphs get a pass just because Lord of the Rings didn't draw much from Greek mythology, or must we now make all centaurs have lion bodies instead of horses or have horse heads instead of human! Hate to break it to you but those also already exist and are called Lamia and Ipotane. Both are ALSO from Greek myths. They aren't more "original" just because someone might not have heard of them. Nothing is truly original and that is a problem that predates Tolkien. What matters is people actually put in the work to use things in their own way. [/QUOTE]
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