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Using elves as a substitute for humans (no humans fantasy)

Peregrine

Troubadour
I must say that I am determined not to include both humans and elves, its either humans or elves and I opted for elves instead.

The only difference between my elves and humans in real life is that elves can be magicians (can have magical powers), while humans in real life can not use magic.
It is important to have in mind that magic in my world is not restricted to elves and that all "races" have the ability to use magic.

Instead of pointy-eared and long-haired, I like the version they were described in Norse myths and saga, DESPITE POPULAR MENTAL IMAGE, In the Norse myths and sagas, elves were physically described to look just like humans, they did not have pointy ears and they could grow a beard just like humans (although elves were usually more beautiful than men).

My elves are not divine nor mystical and they are not immortal, as said the only difference between humans in real life and my elves is the ABILITY TO USE MAGIC.

I must say that I am determined not to include both humans and elves, its either humans or elves and I opted for elves instead. I do not want two races that look the same (please don't bore me with examples of how elves can be different, that's your type of elves you like, I only like elves described in Norse sagas.).

My elves are not divided into dark elves, high elves, wood elves..., nor do they have pointy ears.

They can have castles and cities too like humans did in real life, my elf can be a ugly peasant, a gray-haired blacksmith, a black-skinned warrior from the far south or a monk with a long beard.

Using elves as a substitute for humans I want to emphasize that this is a fictional world (not our Earth), its also easier for the reader to believe that elves can use magic rather than a human, SCENARIO 1: He is a human, I wonder where do his magical abilities come from? Is it inherent/studied or else? SCENARIO 2: He is an elf, therefore I do not need to infodump explanations where does his magic come from.

Questions:

What do you think about making elves immortal, do you think its necessary to make them immortal (living for thousands of years)?

Do you think its necessary that they have long lives, if they are not immortal?

What do you think about my elves?
 
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TheKillerBs

Maester
Honestly... I'd just go with magical humans. People are used to magical humans in fantasy. Noone will bat an eye at them. On the other hand, elves have baggage, and that baggage includes pointy ears and other stuff you aren't including in your elves. At best, this means your readers will ignore your elves in favour of their mental image, at worst it'll throw them off the story.
 

Peregrine

Troubadour
I think you're being a slave to the popular mental image.

The idea of pointy-eared shaven elves was because of Christmas elves and a connotation with faeries, Lord of the Rings movie also popularized that.

Tolkien never imagined elves as pointy eared.
They do although always have shaven faces and long hair, except Cirdan who is an anomaly because he has a beard.

Cirdan: Cirdan by kimberly80 on DeviantArt
Feanor: Star of Feanor by kimberly80 on DeviantArt

I decided to include elf not because Tolkien had it, but because I read a lot about Norse mythology and I was inspired.

My inspirations are Norse saga (ORIGINAL MYTHS, NOT TOLKIEN) where they are described as not having pointy ears and shaven faces, they just looked like humans (and yes, they could grow a beard), its only mentioned that an average elf is more beautiful than a average human.

Tolkien just played with it and created elves as we know today, except they have those pointy ears.

Read Silmarillion, read Norse sagas, you will see that in both there are no elves with pointy ears.
 
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TheKillerBs

Maester
The key word here is "popular". No one cares what the originals looked like, or what Tolkien imagined. The image in the Zeitgeist matters, what the population at large thinks when they see elf. The random person is who will be reading your work. Go against your readership's expectations at your own peril.

Unless you're writing for an audience of one, then ignore everything I've said.
 

Peregrine

Troubadour
I do not care about reader's expectation.

The most popular version of a mythical creature is most often that which is cliche and I have allergic reactions to cliches.

You are treating elves like everybody will picture them the same as you, YES the most popular currently is that of a human-sized pointy eared humanoid, but he might as well think he was reading about a house elf, christmas elf, hobgoblin or some kind of fairy it he was a total dummy to fantasy.
 
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skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
TheKillerBs already said
"Unless you're writing for an audience of one, then ignore everything I've said. "

No need to argue when the other fellow has already conceded the issue is moot.
 

Peregrine

Troubadour
I started to get interest in fantasy because of Norse mythology, the only reason why I want to have such elves is because I base my world heavily on Norse mythology. I am inspired by reading and learning about Norse mythology and not Tolkien. I did not include orcs, halflings and talking trees because I recognize them as Tolkien's inventions. I took all "races" from Norse mythology and planted it into my setting except gods (Aesir and Vanir).

It is normal for someone to say that my setting is Tolkienesque (although it was not my intent for it to look Tolkienesque, my intention was to make a world that feels "Norse").

It is tolkienesque and it is not tolkienesque at the same time.
It is tolkienesque because there are dwarfs and elves, and it is not because Tolkien was not my source of inspiration, it was the Norse stories and sagas, Wayland the Smith, Beowulf, Surtr who wants to burn the world at Ragnarok).

I call my dwarves, dwarfs, because Tolkien invented the term dwarf, and before Tolkien the plural of dwarf was dwarfs.

I am a fan of viking-themed things, Norse mythology, I read every article there could be found. About Draugar, about Surtr, about Seidhr, or the ergi (unmanly) magic of Odin, about Thor's voyage to Jotunheim, about Ragnarok.
 
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Annoyingkid

Banned
Without any need to foil humans, your elves can be as human as you like. Personally I would be uncomfortable using human ears, but I suppose you want it to be as anti fae as possible. You could come up with some other distinguishing physical feature perhaps.

But this is what I mean when I say the line between magical humans and elves is basically non existent. A true human has no magic and reflects the human condition in all it's vulnerability.

Tolkien never imagined elves as pointy eared.

"I am afraid, if you will need drawings of hobbits in various attitudes, I must leave it in the hands of someone who can draw. ... I picture a fairly human figure ... fattish in the stomach, shortish in the leg. A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'; hair short and curling (brown)."
JRRT - Letters #27, writing to Houghton Mifflin circa March-April 1938
 
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pischtoph

Acolyte
Do what you Will, but trying to get acceptance is pointless, if it works for you it will, if not, well some may just point the finger and laugh. Also if you ask a question, respect the answer, or there was no reason to ask the question but arguing the same point over and over is just a waste of time.

Elves are what we have now pointy earred and immortal, would i read your book where you call men elves, maybe, if it was free but alas I wouldn't pay for it you because it sounds as if you gave humans a pretty to try to suck people into liking as you put it "My elves". Since they are a major selling point in fantasy novels.

P.s. I love how you call them "My elves" not the Norse elves, so it really subtracts from the rest of your statements.

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk
 

Annoyingkid

Banned
).

I call my dwarves, dwarfs, because Tolkien invented the term dwarf, and before Tolkien the plural of dwarf was dwarfs.

.

Why the inconsistent pluralization? It makes more sense if you're using dwarfs, to go with elfs. Fits thematically as well as elfs are a more real world sounding term then "elves", distinguishes yours better from what's commonly understood by fantasy elves.

Tolkien invented the term dwarf? I thought it was used in the real world to describe people with dwarfism long beforehand.
 
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Peregrine

Troubadour
"I am afraid, if you will need drawings of hobbits in various attitudes, I must leave it in the hands of someone who can draw. ... I picture a fairly human figure ... fattish in the stomach, shortish in the leg. A round, jovial face; ears only slightly pointed and 'elvish'; hair short and curling (brown)."
JRRT - Letters #27, writing to Houghton Mifflin circa March-April 1938

The quote was about hobbits, not elves.

I love how you call them "My elves" not the Norse elves

I don't know why do you think it's funny to call them "my elves", when my elves are certainly going to have differences from the elves in Norse mythology, so its fine to call them "my elves", because everybody's elves are going to be different, even if the differences are small.

Tolkien invented the term dwarf? I thought it was used in the real world to describe people with dwarfism long beforehand.

That was a typo, what I meant to say is, Tolkien invented the term dwarves.
 

Annoyingkid

Banned
The quote was about hobbits, but he said ears "slightly pointed and elvish". Meaning slightly pointed = elvish.

This was confirmed when The Lost Road and Other Writings was published in 1987. In the Etymologies under the first definition of ‘LAS’, which is the element in lasse meaning ‘leaf’, there is this note: “The Quendian ears were more pointed and leaf-shaped than [?human]” (p.368).
 
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Demesnedenoir

Myth Weaver
Like anything, it can work. What do I think of them? Not much from this. What makes an elf interesting is not the shape of their ears, skin color, or mythology they're based on. It's how all things that make them an "elf" in your world influences their culture and how it all plays into the story being told.
 

Malik

Auror
What makes an elf interesting is not the shape of their ears, skin color, or mythology they're based on. It's how all things that make them an "elf" in your world influences their culture and how it all plays into the story being told.

This. If they're just humans who look different, then how will it make your story different by calling them elves? What are their values and beliefs, and how will that affect the angle through which the reader experiences the story?

What would be fun would be a race of pointy-eared, slender humans that everybody calls elves, but who are really just humans. They'd get exasperated every time a human asked them to talk to trees or shoot a bow or do magic.

"I told you! We don't do any of that crap! We just have weird ears."
 

Peregrine

Troubadour
Because of their association of being divine and being creatures that are demigods in Norse mythology, I am thinking of not including elves and returning humans.

To me elves sound like mystical and god-like beings, calling my humans elves is not going to work, because they are not better than elves, so I am abandoning elves.

I don't know if they are immortal in Norse saga, but they were often compared to gods, especially the vanir.

When I am making characters such as peasants, miners, beggars, scumbags, non-magicians, I find it hard to name my humans elves and it would be weird to call them elves even if the Norse mythology tells that they look identical to humans.

He made himself clear in the OP why elves are being used. He finds magical humans logically unjustifiable.

I am wrong about that. There is plenty of literature where humans can control magic such as Harry Pottter and A Song of Ice and Fire. In Norse mythology, even humans believed they could perform magic. People in the past (specifically Middle Ages and Antiquity) believed that they could control magic, people believed that god's miracles were possible such as faith healing, exorcism, but they also believed that witchcraft is real, if they did not believe witchcraft was real people would not burn witches.

I am narrow-minded to think that its strange for humans to be wielders of magic.
 
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Mythopoet

Auror
Read Silmarillion, read Norse sagas, you will see that in both there are no elves with pointy ears.

There is no definitive proof that Tolkien's elves either had pointed ears or didn't. No one knows. We know Hobbit ears were slightly pointed and compared to "elvish" ears. Many have taken this as inspiration to portray Tolkien's Elves with pointed ears and as far as we know Tolkien had no problem with art that gave Elves pointed ears.

Do the original Norse works actually say that the alfar could grow bears and did not have pointed ears? Because my impression was that they were not described in detail, though I have not read them myself so obviously I could be wrong. But my limited research led me to believe that the liosalfar were merely described as being "fairer than the sun to look at" and the dokkalfar as being "blacker than pitch". I've never seen anyone else mention any other descriptive details of them.
 

Mythopoet

Auror
I am wrong about that. There is plenty of literature where humans can control magic such as Harry Pottter and A Song of Ice and Fire. In Norse mythology, even humans believed they could perform magic. People in the past (specifically Middle Ages and Antiquity) believed that they could control magic, people believed that god's miracles were possible such as faith healing, exorcism, but they also believed that witchcraft is real, if they did not believe witchcraft was real people would not burn witches.

I admit I was quite baffled by that assertion since belief in human beings performing acts of magic is ancient.
 

Annoyingkid

Banned
I admit I was quite baffled by that assertion since belief in human beings performing acts of magic is ancient.

The magic humans believed they could do were things like making the crops come the next season, aka things that could have happened anyway.
 
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