Weird question; but why do a lot of Fantasy stories have Elves on paper be far better than humans, but are almost extinct, or slaves? Lord of the Rings, The Witcher, The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, Runescape.

Do Humans just breed faster? Is it commentary on the cruelty of men and their lust for war? Does it just make the world more interesting?

What do you guys think?

It's comeuppance for the over abundance of Night Elf Hunters.

Depends on the particular lore. Sometimes elves are just too isolationist/elitist in nature compared to humans. That typically doesn't bode well for a people's longevity. Sometimes humans just happen to win the battle of who controls the land through sheer numbers and the elves just never really recover. There's more to it than that usually, but those are the simplest explanations off the top of my head.

And in general I think people possibly react more positively to seeing our own species be the heroes and superiors.

I dunno, in my neighbourhood the local elves are the pride of the community, they're upstanding hard-working citizens!

...at least that's what I'd say if I lived in the North Pole :D

Games writers need a filter for racism and class warfare and elves are their go-to thing.

I saw the title and thought that there was some kind of high fantasy basketball game out that I didn't know about. Now I'm disappointed.

Elves are short and skinny. They make everybody else into Andre Drummond.

It's kind of an extreme extension of the Lord of the Rings formula. In Tolkein, the elves voluntarily leave as the Age of Men begins, because the world is becoming something that they aren't really a part of. Writers now bend that into the human's forcing them out because of their nature. It's a pretty fine distinction, really.

It's different from lore to lore but there is a certain through line wherein Elves represent a sort of pretty, smart, magical past and Humans the cold, hard, shitty future of no hope and money grubbing land lubbers.

Obviously, like a plague, Humanity overtakes everything.

From the game sense, most writing/marketing/dev teams seem to take a pretty sad view of consumers, just based on trends. Humans have always gotta be SOOOOO great, as if our tiny minds could only rebel at being the street trash of a universe. Would love to know about game universes where humans are the bottom of the totem pole.

I thought everybody would stop using this phrase once Austin left. Damn.

Nope, all those Austin Walkerism's are here to stay. He's somehow a complex academic with mature perspectives and behavior yet also has catchphrases.

What's good, Giant Bomb?

But to the the relevant discussion: Elves are overpowered with their immortality, fine features, some measure of super senses, general higher standard of living, and pointy ears. Fantasy worldbuilders feel the need to balance the elves for some reason and aren't very good at it.

Maybe it's something to do with romanticizing the past, coupled with a dash of cynicism? That typical sort of Tolkien-esque elf representing some imagined state of grace for existence before humanity comes along to muck it up with the less favourable of their attributes, while the good humans stand with the elves and what have you.

Yeah, it's kind of awful the more that I hear it... Austin was smart but some of his mannerisms were uhh...

Anyway, regarding the elves I thought it was basically a unique Tolkien thing that everybody else just ran with since.

As for why J.R.R. did it? Beats me. Maybe to show the cyclical nature of the world, and how decline is inevitable no matter how great/powerful your race or civilization is/was. It's called "middle earth" because, presumably, the story is told retrospectively and the world kept changing. Maybe a Tolkien expert can help me out with this

@blackout62: Except they aren't really Walkerisms, which is why it is wishful thinking that because one person left that people wouldn't use current turns of phrase. Dunking on is a bigger concept than the good (one-day) Dr Walker. Of course it would out last him.

More on topic, I always assumed that Elves getting dunked on was a reaction to Tolkien-style fantasy since they were these high and mighty, holier-than-thou douchenozzles. So, people decided to use it as a point of difference and a chance to take them down a peg.

I think it's wild that people in this thread think that Austin is the reason people use the phrase "dunk[ed] on." Do you guys also think that Jeff coined the term "hella," or that Brad invented pronouncing silent Ls and Hs?

I think it's just that obsession with the Greek tragedy.

A race of people who are more than people would still be vulnerable to hubris. And that ends up biting them in the ass everytime.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Aldmeri_Dominion

Elves are pretty powerful and important in Elder Scrolls.

Stay down, elves! You've been too good for too long!

Such a great thread title.

Well, if you wanna get into, it all is thanks to Tolkien. During the Lord of the Rings, the elves are already in low numbers and leaving Middle Earth. So they're depicted as a waning race, despite being immortal. You also have the story line of Arwen, who gives her life to be with Aragorn. Combine all that with the rising power of Mordor and of men, and the elves seem to be dying out and others are swiftly moving in to take place.

Tolkien had an immense influence on future fantasy writing. His races, motifs, themes, and so much more were borrowed and expanded on. Dragon's Age, Dungeons and Dragons, and Game of Thrones wouldn't exist without Tolkien. So his picture of elves fading out of the world echoed on into other literature and culture.

/nerd

@ajamafalous said:

It's history man, stop fighting the truth in your heart.

People have already touched on it but it's usually because elves are a way to put racism into the world. I think writers are uncomfortable with writing about normal human ass racism, so they just simplify it to "humans are assholes" and have an abstract species that they can be assholes to.

The stuff in Lord of the Rings is different, as they are voluntarily leaving Middle Earth. The way this is described in the Lord of the Rings is generally pretty vague and contributes to the race appearing to die out.

Also, elves are often portrayed as haughty, arrogant, and generally less emotional than humans, which many writers use as some sort of justification for humanity's insistent on being assholes.

The view that elves represent the good past while humans represent the shitty future being rooted in Tolkien Lore is incorrect.

If anything, elves represents an old stagnant power that self-destructed due to their own arrogance and were saved but by the grace of the gods while humans represent fragility while also being the source of hope for the coming age. The Silmarillion, a story that depicts the entire history of Middle-Earth leading up to the Hobbit, is about how a group of elves act real shitty in the Garden of Eden and leave it for Middle-Earth, get ultimately dunked on hard by the world's satan figure, have Jesus figures (who just happen to be a human-elf couple) intercede on their behalf with the gods who then come and win a war against satan, and give them permission to go back. That's where all the elves are going at the end of the Lord of the Rings. They aren't dying out in any physical sense, they just don't want to live outside of the Garden of Eden anymore.

As for why fantasy writers like to dunk on elves and portray them as well past their prime constantly, that has more to do with how we view progress more than anything else. We always like to think of the direction the world is going as better than where it is coming from, and that the old needs to make way to allow the new to blossom. In fantasy, that means the old power structure, the elves, needs to make way for the new hope of the world, humans.

Austin using the phrase "get dunked on" is absolutely the reason why it enters my thoughts at all. It's not about who invents it, it's about who popularizes its usage for a certain community.

To show the rise and fall of civilization. The elves concept could be extended to advance ancient aliens in sci-fi or tales of lost advance civilization.

Let's face it we, as humans, are more likely to relate to humans as the center stage of a story. We know that we are imperfect and flawed, but we like to think that hard work, tenacity, and endurance is worth something instead of being simply just born into superiority, and stories of hubris, arrogance, contentment/laziness are low hanging fruits as cautionary tales or tool to create conflicts and drama.

Elves are often effeminate and feminine. Western culture loves a hyper masculine hero. Therefore we dunk on elves.

What's good middle earth?

But........... It's just.......... Black people, as a whole........ we've been saying this shit for D E C A D E S.

Although your point about originators not mattering makes that way more funny considering that is how black art gets treated in general

Anyway the stuff with elves is very much the "devs want to do class warfare but terrified of class warfare" type stuff, plus at this point its an accepted trope so doing it is easy

Now I just wish this thread were titled "Why do video games keep putting Elves on a poster?" So there could be some real misunderstanding and outrage.

I went to high school in the Bronx. It was not a phrase I heard much of, if at all. That said, my high school years were a good decade ago so who knows, maybe I just missed it becoming a thing?

I don't even live in the US and have heard that phrase at least since the mid 90's.

I think "once great dying race" is pretty integral to the most cliche, and copied, high fantasy Elf formula. I agree they could switch it up a lot more than they do. Generic high fantasy bores me most times.

Yeah, the elves of Elder Scrolls are literally the opposite of this trope. The Altmer and Thalmor are taking over the world.

Don't tell them that Dave Lang didn't invent the term fuck boy