Youre favorite style of Elf

[Gez]

And you also have Julian May's “many-coloured land” (or a title like that) books. Where elves are aliens. Psionic aliens, even.

I found them very cheesy (time travel plus psionic ETs that are faced with extinction because they are no longer fertile, except with castrated/ovarectomed humans?) and stopped reading after the second book in the series, but you can still give it a look.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I like elves best as stylish swashbucklers but get along fine with the silent elves of the forest. I'm not too keen on cynical elven aristocrats. I loathe wolf riding wrestling elves.

I don't mind elven supremacy as long as it's tempered with open minds and polite manners.

 

[Roudi]

Keebler.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm not that fond of any kind of elf. But if I need to have elves, I want an elf with a twist. Iron Kingdoms elf-despair, for example, works for me.

So do Aerenal jungle elves with weirdo death cults.

 

[Andor]

That is SO yoinked for a d20 Modern game...

There's a David Brin short story about that bit of overlap. I think it's in Otherness.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

If were talking visual style,

I always thought country singer Faith Hill looked like a D&D elf (or at least half-elf), especially in her earlier videos (like Wild One, Piece of My Heart), before she cut her hair short.

Of course, Keebler is always acceptable, as our those salve-labor toymakers at the north pole.

 

[Afrodyte]

As far as a vision of elves as beings (without the cultural elements), Tolkien's elves are hard to beat, especially the elves of The Silmarillion and The Hobbit. The elves of Dianne Duane's Stealing the Elf-king's Roses were also very good as well, especially since they seemed a lot like what Tolkien's elves would be like after their long years set in. Tad Williams' Sithi are very cool too. I also enjoy Pratchett's orcs elves.

The elven cultures I enjoy most are the extremes, especially the ones that have few saving graces. While I certainly wouldn't want to live in them, reading about them is fascinating. Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton's Halfblood chronicles has a culture that combines the decadence of imperial Rome, the oppressive sexism of the Taliban, and the dehumanizing institution of slavery in the antebellum South. However, I also like reading about cultures that present a pretty front while hiding something rotten underneath, something akin to the great houses of Tad Williams' War of the Flowers

In general, I enjoy all elves that are humans infused with magic. I hesitate to say ideal humans because I tend to find their less than ideal aspects as intriguing as the things that make them "better" than humans.

 

[Rackhir]

And you also have Julian May's “many-coloured land” (or a title like that) books. Where elves are aliens. Psionic aliens, even.

I found them very cheesy (time travel plus psionic ETs that are faced with extinction because they are no longer fertile, except with castrated/ovarectomed humans?) and stopped reading after the second book in the series, but you can still give it a look.

A few points, the Tanu weren't "Elves" in the D&D/Tokien sense, they were the Irish/Faere type. They weren't infertile, it's just that they were able to breed more quickly and easily with the human women since human women were resistant to the earth levels of radiation, which were significantly higher than on their homeworld. It had nothing to do with castrating/ovaries. Overall I thought the books were very interesting and well written with a very interesting take on Psionics.

 

[Arnwyn]

For my elf preference, it's a tie between Record of Lodoss war/anime elves and Larry Elmore's elves.

 

[Felix]

Besides dead, I like my elves to be the wood elf kind... non civilized, barbaric, almost feral... makes them fey-ish, which is what I think they should be. They're sort of one step closer to humans than the other fey are, and wood elves do that for me just fine.