How it comes that it takes an otaku woman from Japan to finally make a good portrayal of elves?
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How it comes that it takes an otaku woman from Japan to finally make a good portrayal of elves?
How it comes that it takes an otaku woman from Japan to finally make a good portrayal of elves?
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>how come every elf thread is dumb no-game garbage
Except they don't. Japanese elves are literally anime girls with pointy ears in most cases. They get constantly outclassed by bog-standard humans, they barely have any cool lore or history, and their characters are either fapbait, jokes or both.
Japan has very little respect for the idea of a highborn of an ancient race, the melancholy that comes with the ages and fading of old glory, or any interest in their mythological or folklore origins.
Also, Marcille is a half-elf, enjoy your spoiler
>the melancholy that comes with the ages and fading of old glory
Japan already has that, it's called "period drama" and is literally the most popular genre of television over there. They don't need fantasy to get that experience.
A bunch of those squares fit western elves too.
Pretty much only the "male human, female elf" pairing.
Western fantasy has lots of male elf, female human pairings as well.
>an ancient race, the melancholy that comes with the ages and fading of old glory
that only applies to lord of the rings and lazy clones
Surprise, most shitty fantasy with elves and dwarves are bootleg lotr, or copies of something that copied lotr
It's funny to see even some of the previous generation of D&D writers talk about how disgusted they are with all of these new people interested in fantasy, even worse new fantasy writers, who don't greatly familiarize themselves with the classics.
I seem to recall Greenwood in particular saying how it's incredibly silly to him to see people saying "I'm doing something new and different!" when they don't even know what they're comparing too because they're just going off of internet memes or their imagined version of what the old stuff was like.
Dungeon Meshi mogs Dragon Lance
Not the guy you're quoting, but Dragonlance ain't a fantasy classic. It's actual tripe as literature.
If Dragonlance is the stuff people are upset at younger folks for not reading, then I have absolutely no respect for that opinion.
It mogs the wheel of time too
Still haven't read disc world but I'm guessing it does too
Yeah it's better than Wheel of Time. I'd say it levels with Discworld. Earthsea leaves it in the dust though.
I genuinely can't tell you how validated I felt by that reveal. I spent years listening halfie deniers run their mouths about how it was impossible.
I don't even know why those guys were so adamant. There were guys in the old storytimes who found the idea of her being a half elf personally offensive.
>Still haven't read disc world but I'm guessing it does too
Dungeon Meshi is good, but let's not start throwing around blaspheme.
Dragonlance has Mormon Elric which makes me interested to give it a read.
No one is talking about reading dragonlance.
They're talking about reading the kinds of stuff the writers of dragonlance read
Kinda weird take given 99% of elf depictions out there are dainty androgynous twinks, and lotr had legolas described as having limbs like treetrunks.
How is that a spoiler? I haven't read the manga but as an Anime-only, I noticed that, on her flashback, hers and her mother's ears are different. Marcille's are round and her mother's pointy.
Most people who read the manga as it was coming out caught onto that years before it was revealed. Kudos for being an intelligent, self-aware being, anon. I'm sorry to say that the majority of people angry about the show are not even half as observant as you are.
not realy a good meme for this particular elf
Missed the elf queen, friend.
She's the butt of jokes and gets lectured by other races.
Stop lying about your shit waifu
>gets lectured by other races.
about food and only food
elves literaly RUN the entire world and everyone is afraid of them in this world
>Cheating, lying moron
>about food and only food
Mandrake. "Just use a longer rope."
and in the end it shows that her method was the tastier one, cause not letting the mandrake scream makes it bitter
>dark elf is just a skin color
In some way, yes.
>dying race for no particular reason
>bishie or androgynous boys
>exactly one culture and nation
Well, there are also these wild elves, apparently.
Marcille isn't hundreds of years old. She's like 60 or 70.
Which for an elf is barely a teenager, Pattadol who is clearly immature is 80. I'd say Marcille is actually around 50, and she was a literal toddler until her teens.
>an otaku woman from Japan
Point of order, Kui is a westaboo
Yeah, Marcille is extremely young by elven standards. The older elves and that old Gnome even laugh at her in one of the last chapters when she talks about how their adventure has made her grow to accept death etc. Essentially going "lmao this kid thinks she has figured shit out"
Otaku just means someone who is obsessed about a particular subculture.
Kui is an otaku and her interest is western fantasy. You could call her a westaboo, but she is still an otaku.
>envies human lifespans
Kind of the opposite, isn't it? She wants to even out lifespans so everyone lives for at least a few centuries
moron
It has occurred to me that a lot of modern depictions of Elves most closely resembles that of Pandas:
• Sit around for thousands of years generally doing sweet frick all.
• Extremely apathetic to changes in the world around them so long as their own patch of shrubbery is untouched.
• Everybody loves to behold them for their silly antics and general beauty
• Slowly dying out
• Utterly useless at having children on their own
• Generally only have children in modern times with the "assistance" of humans
I'm going to be stuck with the idea of Elves tumbling about the floor like pandas in my head for the rest of the day now anon.
like nothing of this is true and that which is true is setting specific
like, I can't recall elves ever being talked about like a dying species in Faerun
but I just like, read nine books of the Drizzt series and War of the Spiderqueen and that's more like drow-specific and I am 100% sure those motherfrickers living in the dark and knifing each other don't seem to have any of those problems listed here
I bet you wish they'd stay down there and not mess with your world
technically drow are elves
The meme overtook the actual lore and characters a long time ago.
Like everyone pretends all elves are lazy buttholes, as they either look for more reasons to shit on them, or they can't imagine doing things for hundreds of years.
Yet if you actually read about some elf characters, many can be relentless and hard-focused to the point of obsession, while others simply do their job and be good at it. There is a reason why elfen craftsmanship is more valuable compared to human-made stuff in whatever setting, and it's not because they are lazing off about it.
And Tolkien already solved the "what do they do all the time" issue by explaining why Elves don't get bored of something even though they've done it a lot already.
>Elves don't get bored of something even though they've done it a lot already.
I can imagine it.
a new meme is born!
Did he read Trismegistos? This sounds a lot like divinity.
>like, I can't recall elves ever being talked about like a dying species in Faerun
Since the early days of the setting most of the continental surface elven empires are dead, providing ruins to explore for DM's. Many elves are also slowly heading West to Evermeet (that shameless lotr ref).
it's almost like elves ain't monolithic
Marcille doesn't even win bingo on this you dumb shithead. Was it supposed to be clever to use an example that was explicitly wrong?
Why are all anti-elf homosexuals so stupid?
This post isn't even about Marcille but about Japanese elves in general
Also nothing in that post implies elf hate, quite the opposite
If anything it criticizes how Japanese media as a whole treats elves
DM is one of the few instances when an anime/manga doesn't fall into those stereotypes
The thread is about dungeon meshi, that whole moronic bingo card post is essentially a shitposts made by some moronic newhomosexual that hates anime
you have no idea what you are talking about
Like WHAT? Record of Lodoss War? Crest of the Stars? It's kind of true if you're talking about comedy or porn, but that's it.
>Why are all anti-elf homosexuals so stupid?
I would like so see a pro-elf japanese work for once.
>this one is pro elf because the elf is female and fricks a human...
No.
It's pro-elf because the actual elves are all cool as frick and likable. The half-elf (Marcille) is also cool and likable. They're not hypocrites, they're not a fading race, they're fey and mysterious, they're interesting. What's the problem?
>What's the problem?
Noldorgay has never read or watched Dungeon Meshi and just assumes that it treats elves as fapbait.
Ph frick you, I even own physical copies. My meshi-folder is bigger than yours.
Someone that likes elves past pure fapmaterial.
The problem is that the homosexual conflated being against the common depiction of elves in anime and manga means that you are against elves in general, which is doubly amusing considering how some of these depictions are outright insulting and vile.
Dungeon Meshi elves are better than many, but there are still questionable parts and its overall strange how Kui chose so many criminal elf characters to represent the race (and they do by simply being the ones being around). And it's simply not pro-elf because the elves aren't the main characters doing stuff for themselves.
Because the Elven Dungeon Crawler platoons are a penal legion?
It's not hard to understand.
>And it's simply not pro-elf because the elves aren't the main characters doing stuff for themselves.
Amazingly almost all human-made stories focus on human protagonists; elves are a supernatural other and probably shouldn't be the focus characters of most fantasy stories. Guess I'm not pro-elf.
The western fantasy literature has many book series with elf main characters. It's not something new.
Your point exactly?
Yes, everyone gets the reason why the canaries are what they are.
Yet these present their race by being most of the elves around.
Imagine if every dwarf in this story was like Namaris dad: a scumbag. People would point it out.
>The western fantasy literature has many book series with elf main characters
name ten, there's thousands of shitty fantasy paperbacks so that shouldn't be hard
Homeland (or anything Drizzt)
Malus Darkblade series (gonna stick to one per franchise, could name even more warhammer books with elves)
Iron Elves Trilogy
Elric
The Elven
Firstborn series
Dragaera series
Sword of Shannara series
Mithgar series
The Symphony of Ages
Yes, some half-elves in here. Doesn't matter, it's absolutely nothing outlandish to have elf main characters. I don't know why this riles some people here up so much, but I guess this is /tg/, not even supposed elf-gays want to see elves being their own protagonists.
Nobody does.
Evermeet, Isle of the Elves. Is literally an entire anthology of short stories about all elves in a place where only elves are allowed (based).
Elric is questionable but I'll give it to you. Even with this many they are still in the minority, and that's fine. It's not "anti-elf," that was my point.
I'm not even going to say that you NEED elves as main characters to have something pro-elf.
But the fact that there are so few japanese works with an elf as the main-character is noteworthy.
And when you get some, it tends to be questionable if they even count as elves
Do you know for a fact that there aren't a ton of Japanese novels with elves that have never been translated into English? Because even with serious academic literature there's a lot of stuff that is published in Japanese nobody has bothered to translate so imagine how it would be for niche genre fiction
The problem with all this is that, with the exception of the Elric books, they're garbage.
>Japan has very little respect for the melancholy that comes with the ages and fading of old glory
Probably bait, but Japan has been obsessed with that concept for centuries. It's the whole reason their national symbol is a flower that blooms dramatically then falls quickly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mono_no_aware
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
everything you said is false, except the spoiler.
>Japan has very little respect for the idea of a highborn of an ancient race
That's because they had one and ended up surpassing them, they're called the Chinese.
Compare the average xianxia protagonist to the average better-than-you elf
just piling on to point out only spoiler is correct, other replies have the facts
Japan can't go 6 months without some sort of dying humans/earth shit popping up, ancient race shit has popped up even in their video games since the 90s, and there are two fantasy series that blow most western elf portrayals out of the water
The Canaries from the series OP's pic is from are excellent examples of elves-as-criminals for instance, even if Marcille technically isn't
Manga spoilers
Because she's not really an elf. Notice her ears and compare it to other elves.
>Implying the full-blooded elves are any better
Elves in Dungeon Meshi are the most milquetoast bland "humans but arrogant" portrayal of elves you can get. Their magical abilities are treated as mystical or spiritual, they're an excuse to be arrogant. Their long lifespans aren't treated as lifestyle altering circumstances, it's treated as the butt of jokes. Their culture isn't mysterious or exotic, it's "We're a bunch of rich buttholes".
People only like Marcille because she's waifubait and the manga teases that she's lesbian. That's it. Not an iota of her fanbase are there because she's a "good portrayal of elves".
Meh, I also like Marcille because she's funny, has depth as a character, a motivation and backstory that explains her motives well. She's a well-written character.
But you can't really say that she's a great elf.
My favorite would be Mithrun, but he isn't normal for a meshi elf as well.
DM elves are pretty exotic and seem to have radically different culture and outlook from the other races, so most of your post is wrong. Difference in mindset due to longevity is literally a major plot point, though it's also a major plot point that they're as much the same as they're different: they diverge in this way from the human experience, but intersect in others. The one thing that is right here, is that they're not particularly mystical or spiritual, but that's probably because the world of DM is more systematized. Elves have better magic because they have an older civilization and have a better understanding of magic as a system.
She is, however, a fully fleshed out character, which makes her infinitely superior to every Warhammer elf and most elves in the Silmarillion. She's also a halfie.
Based nuanced poster. I don't know how someone can dislike Marcille.
>I don't know how someone can dislike Marcille.
Combination of being a dumb homosexual who thinks everything popular must actually be bad, knowing nothing about the series, and making more wild assumptions about the series based on some shitposts they've seen about it in passing.
You'd think people on /tg/ won't mind reading a few chapters before shitposting.
Or maybe just watching the shit anime
> Nuuuh read the manga!
Why would I bother when the shitty elf (and the "halfling") were unbearable?
>Elves have better magic because they have an older civilization and have a better understanding of magic as a system.
They also, literally, can do magic better because their bodies can naturally store a lot of mana. Part of what's based about Dungeon Meshi is how it emphasises how every different race's psychology and outlook arises from the material realities they have to deal with.
Their magical abilities are nor treated as mystical ? Elf magic is literally the science based one, the mystical school of magic is the Gnome 's
And lifespan is literally quite literally the whole theme of the manga what are you saying? You didn't read the manga you imagined the story and didn't like it
> and the manga teases that she's lesbian
Maybe it's because I have only seen the anime, but the vibe I'm getting is that her OTP is supposed to be Laios. There's some pandering with her and Falin, but so far it seems entirely like she's meant for the protagonist.
>Marcille and Laios
LOL
You could mistake them for a married couple in this panel.
You could not be more wrong. Laois is barely tolerated for 99% of the manga, and only becomes one of her more distant friends after he gets demonically possessed.
Not ever the orc will date Laius!
Well not date no, but she might let him count her nipples.
The manga doesn't tease that. The manga makes it clear they're friends.
Ignore the other posters, the manga leaves things pretty ambiguous.
She has some ship tease moments with Laios and is fairly close to him by the end, but she also cares deeply for Falin and has some moments with her, too. Kui didn't confirm either way, so you can view it however you want.
>teases she's a lesbian
Her ideal man was revealed to be an eyepatch wearing chuuni dark knight.
That's not what a succubus is. Stop doing this every single thread.
>Their long lifespans aren't treated as lifestyle altering circumstances
you didnt read the manga
>manga teases that she's lesbian
Lol. Lmao even.
Marcille literally ended up living together with Laios. Yurigays lost.
That's a doujin.
Lying homosexual.
Post is true. But image ain't.
You can't even keep your moronic ship at Ganker.
And lie and deceive as the little vile homosexual goblin you are.
Go back. Fricking self-inserters.
Seething yurigay detected
>immediately resorts to ad-homs
Self-inserts are low-iq brown monkeys.
>immediately resorts to ad-homs
Ironic, coming from the guy who opened up by screeching about "little vile homosexual goblin" and "self-inserters" just because he's mad that Marcille isn't gay.
I'm not even that anon and I don't even ship Laios and Marcille, I just think you're a hilariously buttflustered hypocrite
That's an insult, not an ad-hom.
Nobody said Marcille is gay.
We know that you are already thinking of some lazy one-note world-building question (never about any actual game) to dump your shit into the catalog for the next pseudo-general.
>not an ad-hom.
It is when you have no argument
>Nobody said Marcille is gay.
I see you can't read the thread either
>It is when you have no argument
Yeah, the thing you did. Dismissing my entire position because you perceived me for being this or that anon, or for having this or that opinion.
Nowhere was it stated that Marcille is a lesbian. So, where did that
>Seething yurigay detected
coming from?
>Yeah, the thing you did.
More NO U's from the hypocrite, lul.
>Nowhere was it stated that Marcille is a lesbian.
Once again admitting to not reading the thread, I see.
>So, where did that >Seething yurigay detected coming from?
Call it an educated guess, which seems to have hit the mark expertly based on how frothing mad you are.
>Their long lifespans aren't treated as lifestyle altering circumstances, it's treated as the butt of jokes.
Holy shit you didn't fricking read the manga
>Marcelle literally acts like a fricking human
Because she's a half-elf raised by humans. The full blooded elves act sufficiently arrogant and aloof
>fapbait
>Marcille
Have you been mindbroken by shitposters?
All Japanese elves source back to Deedlit. Tradition dictates that's how Elves are supposed to be.
Don't be silly, there's no system dedicated to just Elves. Elves are ubiquitous to fantasy systems, and usually it just amounts to a slightly better DEX/INT and worse STR/CON
What fricking argument is that supposed to be?
None of these threads are about games.
They are all the fricking same, just an excuse for dumb memes and image dumps and speculative shitposting not based on anything.
There are only 3 good types of elves
>Better and morally superior to all other beings
>Evil high magic creatures who use said magic to make themselves appear beautiful
>High morales woodland creatures with more magic but generally not stronger than humans
Deedlit has existed for 40 odds years now.
What was it you said? Oh right
>Your eternal seethe is like ambrosia. The sweetest nectar, and so easy to make
Story times are fine, stupid threads like this aren't.
I'll admit that OP could also have posted this in Ganker
But at the same time it IS still fantasy adjacent, and therefore not all that far from the usual random worldbuilding banter that goes on here.
Not like the several Generals don't effectively kill discussion, or that half the content here is by nogames anyway.
>nogames posts bad!
>except for when -I- do it
Hypocritical homosexuals
Crying "nogames" when it's not even applicable only makes you look desperate. You do read books, don't you? Your fantasy games are inspired by classic literature, aren't they? You're not one of those gays who skimmed the flavor text in the player's handbook and assumed you had a flawless understanding of the fantasy genre, right?
Elves should be equipped with firearms.
'kay.
Half-elf, raised in a lonely mansion by her Elf mother, after her father passed away, making her fixated on death, leading her to obsessively study magic and learn of ancient, forbidden magics, leading to her becoming an adventurer in order to seek out some way to close the gap between long-lived and short-lived races, a topic which is explored repeatedly in the way various species interact and treat each other. Marcille would literally not be the person she is without her half-elf heritage or the distinct way that elves typically treat humans, and how humans regard elves, which can also be seen in Marcille's anxieties and attachments towards Laios and Falin.
You can pretend like you know what you're talking about, but it's clear you don't, which is why you keep coming back to this "REEEE YOU DON'T BELONG HERE" homosexualy routine.
Eh, kinda hated that reveal. She could still be a long-lived regular elf that hated the difference in lifespans, because she would see her short-lived friends die before her.
All that did was make her backstory more complicated for the sake of being more delicious for the lion.
Having goals informed by childhood trauma is hardly complicated. Laios's backstory mirrors and compliments Marcille's in many ways, too. As a whole, the themes and major plot beats are very complimentary.
>Mayfly–December angst
Cringe and boring
Trope has been done a million times before.
I wonder, if human wizards like Elminster can live up to 1200 years and Volo a wizard is 150 years old and looks not a day over 40 in Baldurs gate III
why do those elves even angst about their ageing lovers? clearly they were to lazy to truly work to survive past 80 and do not deserve the love of an elf if they can't be arsed to put in the work to actually spend time with them
>if you are an elf and you truly love your human you would help them to turn into an immortal lich to keep them around
>it is a fricking magical wonderland out there and you're too moronic to keep your human pet alive, you deserve to suffer
Elminster and Volo are both actively protected by gods though
gods are fickle; Lolth has like 20 chosen ones or so, Mystra has like ten, there are so many gods just suck up to one really hard and beg for a couple more years
Elminster is FR's ultimate self insert Gary Stu.
Volvo isn't even aware he's important and protected by gods.
you think gods actively pick out the most moronic person they see and actively go out of their way to make sure they survive because they're just that entertaining?
>well, tbh Lolth kind of did the same to the entire drow-race as a whole
One of the Drizzt novels has a drow muse over the fact that Drozzt may well be a Chosen of Lolth specifically because he's caused so much chaos in drow society and nothing would cause Drizzt himself more angst and suffering than knowing he has Lolth's favor
What chaos did Drizzt even cause? Men's rights?
is FR's ultimate self insert Gary Stu.
No, the closest thing to that would be Mirt the moneylender.
Elminster was literally a meme created to frick with Powergamers and spergs at the table.
Which you would know if you actually played Tabletop instead of reading about it on reddit.
Now stop talking out of your ass embarrassing yourself further.
Why the frick did you @ me with this homosexualry when I was talking about Drizzt?
To encourage you to do a backflip off the nearest highway overpass.
Are you sure you didn't mean to reply to someone else, illiterate spastic that you are?
Mystra is one hell of sugar mommy.
because we aren't dealing with forgotten realms shit here
May as well discuss it here, I found the Elf Politics in Tales of Symphonia pretty interesting.
The half-elves in that game are the smug, "we're superior" types - they're close enough to humans to actually be hateful and racist, whereas full elves are far removed enough from humanity as to be, y'know, Anime Elves about the whole thing.
The half-elves have become a self-sustaining race as far as I can tell, with new elf/human couples being rare since elves themselves are rare. The elves are important to the past, but are basically your Advanced Absent Precursors, while half-elves fill the role of smug overlords with naturally superor assets (long life, better magic use, and they're the ones who kept the ancient tech)
It's rare to see that angle on the half-human hybrids in fiction.
Elves have always needed a woman's touch because they're gaaaaaaaaay.
>the ear is in the middle of the braid.
stupid elf...
Less annoying in the manga because you don't have to listen to every tantrum she throws at length.
reddit is that way, nogames-kun.
>g*rmoid thinks it's people
>g*rmoid thinks it's autism books count as a "game"
Lmfao
Ah frick am I gonna have to re-enter the animu and mango phase I had a decade ago?
Not for very long. Dungeon Meshi actually had a story to tell and ended when it was done. The whole thing can be read in 2-3 sittings, or as single one if you really want to grind it. The anime is ongoing though.
She's the butt of the joke for almost the entire manga, what the frick are you talking about?
That's why the thread and the lotr talk made me think of it.
Very few people are judging off of an understanding of the work and of the works they're comparing to, and I'm curious if this has always been common, or if the internet has made it more common.
It makes sense when you see them recoil in fear and rage when you suggest they simply read a book or watch a movie. No fricking wonder they have such a hard time forming non-moronic opinions when they idea of developing taste and understanding is so unthinkable to them.
Because she wasn't an otaku when she started this series, and approached all these old fantasy tropes from the perspective of an adult who already knows how to write.
Why are you bringing up Frieren in this when there's almost nothing to Frieren's elves? Nothing of their culture or characteristics has been explored besides the long lifespan; they are almost an indistinguishable and indistinct placeholder, ciphers of the concept of an elf. Frieren the mage could be anything else with an impossibly long lifespan and the role this plays in the story would be equivalent. And I like Frieren, I love it as an exploration of what such a long-lived character would experience in a world of humans, but it's not about elves at all. DM for whatever flaws you may find of it conceives its races as related species with particular biological differences and fraught interracial history, and with it attempts to imagine the development and worldviews of what are essentially long-lived offshoots to homosexual sapiens -- this is an approach very opposed to Tolkien and other classic fantasy, but it not being to your taste doesn't invalidate it.
Her humans, elves and dwarves look decent.
The other two look like shit.
Thats because halflings and DnD style Gnomes are just dogshit.
Halfling Marcille is criminally cute
Human Senshi is a FRICKING STUD!!!!!!!!!!!
Senshi is peak performance personified for any race.
What happened to elf general? There's 3-5 elf threads extant right now.
The elf general never truly died, someone will always make a new one once the previous lame world-building game-less question with a waifugay pic is dying.
elf board.
> the only reason why you don't like it is because you haven't read it!
> It's better than the things -I- haven't read!
If it's not Tolkienian, it's not a real elf.
That's bullshit anon. Elves predate Tolkien, the Prof. would tell you the same. They're part of folklore and the sagas before that.
Before Tolkien they were wills o wisp, gnomes, and kobols. In other Germanic languages, his elves are renamed to not give the impression they're tiny miscreants who replace your children and trap you in their world with food.
t. learns languages with fanworks
You buffoon. What of the faerie/elfe maidens of the chivalric romances? The alfar of the old sagas (not mere Icelandic superstition); the human-like ones responsible for fighting the armies of Hrolfr Kraki and making half-elves with humans? The man-sized elves that dance in meadows or appear at black sabbaths in Anglo-Scottish witch trials?
You know nothing of what you speak Noldorhomosexual.
I agree with your general opinion and your previous comment, but if you have any example of an elf maiden from an actual medieval chivalric romance, I'd like to see it.
Not that anon, but have this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Elfin_Knight
The "elf maiden" appears to be a he
Perhaps anon had meant the story where a knight meets a group of dancing elf maidens before his wedding
I know, I just didn't care.
easy mistake to make: beardless, long-haired, cares about hygiene, smells good
hard to find men like that
There are several Arthurian tales where fairy maidens grant knights magic rings. Whether these are ever called elves in Middle English I do not know. Most such stories were written in French sadly. But I can say that in an English version of the Alexander Romances a beautiful queen is compared to an "elven maiden".
Also there is a ritual in a Renaissance Grimoire to conjure the King of Elfhame (Oberon)'s daughters to grant magic rings to the wizard.
Another anon recommended "Elves in Anglo-Saxon England" to those with an interest in the topic and I second that.
Ah let us not forget the elf queen of Chaucer in Sir Thopas's tale
That seems to fit, thanks.
They kept the words. Earliest depictions of the song Herr Mannelig, Mister Manly Human, show a troll, while later ones show a human woman covered in knicknacks. The meanings change but they kept the words.
Alexander the Great made the point that barbarians can be conquered because they weren't beardless, longhaired, hygienic, and didn't smell good. His entire campaign was literally:
>They have beards and short hair, they don't care about hygiene and they stink.
This is also why later Romans dropped the beards in depictions of statemen. Find one bust of Caesar with so much as facial hair.
Have you never heard of Lord Dunsany? The "creator of the fantasy genre" whose books Tolkien loved and specifically said he was trying to emulate?
The most absurd part of all this is that one of the inspirations Dunsany cited for his depiction of elven kingdoms was "The Darling of the Gods", a play about Japan. No, really.
You'd be surprised how much cross-pollination there was between Anglo-Irish and Japanese writers during the Celtic Revival. Lafcadio Hearn is the most famous, but W.B. Yeats has written noh even.
Deedlit has already been mentioned, so I'll point out the creator and artist for Elfquest was also an otaku woman.
Anon, you can use words also when you bring "balance" to this farce.
>in Norse mythology, dwarves were cannibals who dipped their hair in human blood.
Whoa there. Attestation? Sauce?
Genuinely interested.
Moving this here because the other thread is getting autosaged and I want to know.
Frick off, homosexual
No (You).
Waifugays don't count.
This thread just lost 63 posts. Damn.
Many were low quality though, but now it lacks readability.
Marcille feels a bit more like a Wizardry character than a tg PC, but then again in Japan Wizardry is tg material.
The manga is literally about a Dungeon of a Mad Mage
Also this
Ryoko Kui is also an avid CRPG fan, so the Wizardry influence isn't that surprising.
What is that image even from? I've never seen it off 4ch
Lurk more.
Oh, go be productive and leave me be anon.
twitter. A hioyami piece. Image searches have a hard time picking up twitter for some reason.
>for some reason
Elon doesn't want us to scrape data from his precious Xwitter
Pre-Lens Google images works; it's just a b***h to access. Unless you're incognito on mobile.
Image: Sea Elves but it's 1888 AD
janny is not here to make board better place, he's here to settle his petty grievances
Will he do it again?
>good portrayal of elves
>Japan
Pick one
Anon, you are obsessed (insufferable) and wrong (moronic).
He's correct though.
Well smartass, what is a good depiction of elves.
You'll never frick your bootleg deedlit
>Anon, you are obsessed
With what?
>and wrong
Where exactrly?
All Japan elves fundamentally lacks of aesthetic. It's just average japanesse fap/waifubaits, because most of Japan fantasy is just endless reusing of 80-90s DnD with anime visual design
>most of Japan fantasy is just endless reusing of 80-90s DnD with anime visual design
Wish this was actually still true. It's more like the visuals of MMO's and Vidya now
>All Japan elves fundamentally lacks of aesthetic
They lack lore, characters, history, heroes, greatness, melancholy, doing something else that doesn't exist purely to make humans look better.
What Japan is missing out on is elf stories that are about elves first and foremost, with elves as main characters doing something for themselves.
Yeah, it's just waifuhomosexualry, which ruins anything else, including the waifus as well.
99 percent of western elves lack those same qualities as well you insufferable autistic homosexual
There is a lot more effort and care put into many western elves compared to whatever Japan produces.
For some reason, it's mostly japanese video games that seem to put some more effort into their elves.
Many elves from anime and manga are indistinguishable from their pornographic counterparts.
>but there are bad western elves as well!
is really no argument when most Japanese elves are bad by default.
Good thing that oo isn't talking about most Japanese elves but of elves of a specific setting, one which you clearly have no familiarity with, you autistic moron. Don't bother replying to me again with your seething, noldorgay
No one ever gives examples of these elusive decent western elves.
And nobody gives examples of why Japanese elves are supposed to be better.
Except posting a picture of the latest big-titted animu girl with pointy ears that they jerked off to.
Which just proves my point.
We are 150 posts into this thread, discussions can evolve into all manners of directions. Scream at
and everyone else that replied to that.
Yeah, well he was saying most western elves are also bad by default.
All the good Japanese elf writing is probably in untranslated TTRPG books, obscure novels or Videogame setting guides, because that's where good elf lore tends to be.
>Yeah, well he was saying most western elves are also bad by default
Well, I disagree.
Although, there are a ton of elves, from different settings, games, books, comics, vidya etc. I doubt we all here have checked everyone one and all of them.
Still think the general western elf is better written than the average japanese elf. That includes western elves I personally don't like for subjective reasons, but I can at least see what the writers were doing with them.
Most anime and manga elves don't even try.
>For some reason, it's mostly japanese video games that seem to put some more effort into their elves.
Ironic that you'd say this while posting an Elezen, which are basically the most low effort Elves in existence.
An Elezen is a taller, ganglier human that lives slightly longer (we're talking a 20 years)
Also some of them are Catholic and the Catholic part is way fleshed out than the Elf part since the Ishgardian Orthodoxy is both an Elezen and Hyur religion.
>is really no argument when most Japanese elves are bad by default.
90% of everything is crap, according to Sturgeon's Law. We're comparing the remaining 10%
>good portrayal of elves
>literally just a human but kinda pointy
Cutesy pointy girl obsessed with "short lived races" is the ideal portrayal of elves when you're a no gf
She elfs on a regular basis it seems.
>Sera (Dragon Age)
>Her clothes are cute.
Heh.
I love how she uses polite speech on the shittier characters.
"Oh uh... Sera uh.. she had cute clothes".
"Uhm.. Astarion is very popular"
BREED THISTLE
...Is male, you actual gay
You're on the wrong website, prude. And especially on the wrong board.
>it doesn't count if it's an elf
I also hate futa, and there's nothing you can do about it gay. Normal sexuality gang supremacy
You sound like a quitter. Pathetic.
OP here, posted the wrong pic sorry
This story has one of the biggest 'women moments' ever. One of the heroine's friends is captured by the evil kingdom, and a Prince rapes her to produce offspring (so they'll inherit her lifespan). The daughter is taken away at birth.
Meanwhile, her former lover becomes a resistance fighter, trying to rescue her. Eventually, there's a big revolt and he makes it into the castle, telling her to flee with him. She goes "I can't, I must see my daughter" and he gets killed in the fighting.
Later, she DOES find her daughter. Her daughter is 100% human, with no properties of the mother. She goes "Whoops, you and I have nothing in common after all! Farewell!" and abandons her.
So her boyfriend died for, like, basically nothing.
The whole story is about why miscegenation is a bad idea. Not just sexually, even mingling with other races is bad.
Yep, that was easily the worst part of an otherwise good movie.
Not an elf and not a good portrayal of elves since they were spirits.
They come off as a race in the sagas and eddas, Akshually-man
In 1e Sword World elves were derived from spirits created to fight for the gods. After the war between the two sides of the pantheons ended, some decided to stay in the physical realm becoming elves.
Those who served the good/light/law gods became typical elves, while those in the service of evil/dark/chaos became dark elves.
Is sword world the same lore as Lodoss? Because the elf origin is the same
Lodoss is a location in the Sword World 1e default setting
Why do spergs who hate anime even come to this website?
Anon, here comes the absolute great part, you'll love it.
I still watch anime and manga on a regular basis, and play japanese video games have yet to pick up a japanese ttrpg, though
That is why I'm so pissed off about Japanese elves. They have such a potential. Elves are already anime as frick, yet they do the absolute bare minimum with them in most cases. It's sad. They are sad creatures.
I love anime, japanese vidya, and almost exclusively play JTTRPGs. It's not anime I can't stand, it's /tg/'s utter basic b***hmade as frick, normie-ass tastes that they tout around as "enlightened" or "superior" just because they're too afraid of Gankernons to post on Ganker. I'd trust MAL or fricking Crunchyroll for an anime rec before I'd trust /tg/, not that there'd be much of a difference.
Noldorgay has the biggest victims complex on the board
This, they should rename every board to /a[board]/ - Anime & [Board] as a reminder
I like anime, but I hated this piece of shit. And mostly due to how unfunny the stupid elf is.
Actual Dungeon Meshi elf lore
Example elves. These could be good BG1&2 + Icewind Dale portraits perhaps.
>4th row, 2nd from the right
That must be some half-elf half-gnome abomination to achieve ears fatter than Marcille's.
Marcille my beloved, a cute button in a sea of smug sharp eyes
>M: 155cm
>F: 150cm
Cringe. Elves should be a stately, noble
>M: 185cm
>F: 179cm
Clearly based on ye olde D&D derived sources which itself tried to take a middle path between late Renaissance/Modern folkloric shorter elves and taller LotR ones
Caveat: even in the olde D&D lore it varied by setting: Mystara elves were of the "standard" fun size type, since the grey box the Forgotten Realms elves have been as tall as human, and Dark Sun had skinny, gangly 7ft elves.
Is that dwarf-sized dragon?
It's shit, elves should be tall
sloppity bilepiper
If elves are taller than humans, then there's little to distinguish them from being just humans but better. The tallman-elf distinction in DM is one of my favourite innovations in a recent fantasy work for this reason -- both are species of genus homo, but they have discrete biological and cultural identities which make it possible to discern between them beyond pointiness of the ears. It's the concept of the importance of unique silhouettes in visual character design transposed into species physiology and worldbuilding. We can observe this as a failing in modern pop-fantasy settings like DnD Faerun or WoW Azeroth, where there are often so many similar races and subspecies that they lose all unique identity and become just nonsensical variations upon one another.
Yeah yeah mercile is your waifu and you'll worship anything about her anime even if it means exaggerating and twisting the truth to make your arguments not sound like bullshit.
I like short elves. Makes them seem lamer, which they are, and I don't mean in the memey elves-bad way but in the sense that elves are loser nerds and socially inept when interacting outside their own race
7' or go home.
>Thing:
😐
>Thing (Japanese):
:O
I've lost count of the number of times I've seen noldorgay have this exact melty
>then there's little to distinguish them
How about different facial features and other physiological differences, like something that happened after Tolkien in fantasy many times.
>just humans but better
Black folk always out themselves as no-games with these statements. Very few systems have just better elves.
I'm going to ignore your shitflinging and try to engage with you seriously on this. The more you diverge from elves as they could exist relative to humans, the less plausible they become in authorial perspectives centred around them and in their presentation to a discerning human audience. This doesn't always end up in failure, but there are only so many directions to take it before you leave behind the essential substance of an elf. We can make elves more exotic, more alien; but this comes with trade-offs. We can make elves very different and provide a radically different physiology and culture and so forth, but soon we've left behind elves. On the other side of it, Tolkien and Dunsany refined and made touchstones of the early concept of elves while still managing to create stories in which the interaction of human and elves was significant, and their elves would become a mode which influenced virtually every concept of elf thereafter. But following creators and authors only manage pale imitations of these elves as something mystical and alien; the evolution of the idea diverges from the mystical and alien towards something that can be apprehended within frameworks of biology, physiology, evolution, culture, geopolitics, racial strife, anthropology, etc., as these are other areas besides the original philology and mythology of Tolkien and Dunsany in which human authors can have expertise to interpret and re-express a concept. The question on whether every kind of elf should really follow this convention comes down to nothing more than preference. You're not wrong to like a particular set of cliches and stylings, but things that depart from this are not wrong either.
I don't particularly care about Marcille and waifus are idiotic. Go read the manga if you want to talk about this with any authority instead of saying something moronic like "exaggerating and twisting the truth" like a chatbot that hasn't figured out the meanings of words.
> He writes this post
> He accuses anyone of writing like a chat bot
Lol!
Also, to other anons: don't waste your time with this pile of shit unless you like cringe "humor" and shitty worldbuilding.
He does sound like one, but you're still a piece of shit anon.
Ah the delightfully Celtic WFB wood Elves. It's funny they're almost exactly the aesthetic Gygax wanted for wild Elves with Pictish woad and old Celtic cloaks and motifs but no artist seems to have ever grapsed it. Instead you get [see pic].
>you're still a piece of shit anon
I merely hate this franchise with all my heart. I don't care if that makes me a piece of shit.
Dungeon Meshi? You probably really are trash irl then. Being apathetic because it's not your thing is reasonable, but having a raging hateboner for what is a fairly typical vintage-styled fantasy setting with some mild twists means you're no doubt awful to be around.
>the less plausible they becom
Anon, it's just a different face and maybe a different rib cage here and there.
>before you leave behind the essential substance of an elf
Oh boy, everyone in this thread sure will agree what that is.
>We can make elves more exotic, more alien; but this comes with trade-offs
Sure, don't see the problem here. Some things work better for different settings and systems.
>But following creators and authors only manage pale imitations of these elves
Then I don't understand your argument for following them in the first place.
We are just doing dumb hobby things here.
>You're not wrong to like a particular set of cliches and stylings
I didn't even say that this is better or worse than something else. I just said that elves in various settings had different features that differentiate them from humans, past just having longer ears.
And all that statement is about looks. You can have the craziest or most thoughtful lore either with alien-looking or with conventionally human elves.
>Anon, it's just a different face and maybe a different rib cage here and there.
And there's nothing inherently wrong with that. But it should also be considered in relation to every non-elven race. DM was brought up earlier for its refinement of the Tolkien-DND core of races into a human species continuum that makes sense analytically while retaining essential distinctions and a clear "racial character." The shorter elves of DM work well within it to make them visually distinct and not wholly physically superior to tallmen, and their aptitudes follow logically; and with this they exist as one component in a system in which every humanoid race has a place and feels essential. The greater point being that the author approached this methodically like Tolkien and Dunsany, but with different frameworks. The ideal is for authors to take a methodical approach and consider every element with both rigour and aesthetic sense.
>Oh boy, everyone in this thread sure will agree what that is.
We can probably get to somewhere vaguely around the same ballpark.
>Then I don't understand your argument for following them in the first place.
>We are just doing dumb hobby things here.
The meaning there is that those of us who want again for those ideal first concepts of an elf, as audience or as author, will in the end be forced to contend with something that's at best just a replica. And we get tired of replicas. What falls short of replica becomes divergences from the original becomes a lineage of ideas. Attachment to original ideals shouldn't stop us from accepting something very divergent on that lineage as good when it is good. But then, this is also going beyond a specific response to your position and view.
You don't know anything about it beyond your superficial exposure to it. You're the equivalent of someone that had a distasteful experience with a vegetable as a child and swore to shittalk it every time it comes up in conversation or the menu.
Slop post, slop mind, slop opinion.
The irony of a guy posting designs that are made ugly on purpose
Frick beauty and aesthetics am right my fellow westoid?
Nobody asked your opinion, sloppedo
blame the moronic westerners that misinterpreted/flanderized tolkien's elves, for their interpretations(which had their moronation reflected in it) was what the nipponese got a hold of(though stuff like dnd and wizardry), and so built their elves from that
You are aware that the people who designed D&D actually weren't fans of Tolkien or particularly inspired by his works, yes? Maybe that's why D&D and D&D derived Elves are nothing like Tolkien at all?
Of Dave Arneson I'm not sure that's true. For Gary, you're correct for the game itself. But he did take some LotR influence into account for the bestiary and was a known fan of the Hobbit.
> who could possibly hate MY waifu!!! REEEEE
>waifu
I don't think these anons are defending the SETTING because they want to frick it.
I would frick middle-earth.
Gently.
Because you gays things anything wapanese is inherently superior.
It helps that Dungeon Meshi has great character writing, lore, and world building too.
they're only great to you because wapanese
Samegay, nearly same-posting. What a loser.
>How it comes
Opinion disregarded
Pic not related?It‘s just a generic anime slop elf.
i know kobolds as dogs is a japanese thing but i really cant get over it. and i dont think that the minimalistic depiction in dungeon meshi makes it better.
To be fair, kobolds have been described as dog-like (despite their scaly skin) since BECMI at least. IIRC it was 3.0 that started talking about them looking like tiny bipedal dragons.
Is there any Japanese work with actual Tolkien-esque or otherwise respectable elves rather than 'humans but live longer', 'arrogant edgelord losers', and 'prostitutes'?
not even the west has other tolkien-esque elves besides tolkien's.
Friendly reminder that if the elf isn't Tolkienian, it's not a real elf.
newbies from Reddit don't lurk and don't know what the words mean.
See
and, basically, you are moronic. I am surprised you know how to breathe anon.
Tolkien's elves seem to be much closer to morally upright fae rather than your average fictional elf.
They play only a minor role and their king could be quite arrogant, but I thought the elves of Stravaganza at least looked the type.
The Faraway Paladin has weird mystical elves in the background, and a grouchy half-elf ranger who's tired to death of people gushing about how pretty and elfy he is.
There's one scene where someone asks him if it's true all elves are vegetarians. He takes a bite of meat, stares at them loudly chewing in their face, and asks if they think his bow is for hunting lettuce.
I've seen a Twitter comic about an elf-obsessed explorer who eventually discovers that elves are a myth based on distorted accounts of ancient terraforming robots.
Refusing to give up, he dedicates his life to investigating the ancients' technology, discovering how to repair the elves and eventually even create more of them. He ends up becoming their king, beloved by all, and uses this to convince them to wear synthetic skin and gradually shape their society into a replica of the elven villages of myth.
He then fakes his death, transfers himself into an elf body, and joins an adventuring party to LARP as a 5,000 year-old e-girl and boast to everyone about the deep elven culture that he entirely made up. Then his wife the elf queen finds out, gets pissed and has him locked in the dungeon.
An author note comments that dwarves aren't real either, and the "dwarf" in his adventuring party is just a guy LARPing to cope with being a manlet.
I remember reading a story about a guy being reborn as an elf but he got bored after 100 years and decided to go on a sightseeing tour around the globe becoming a magical blacksmith along the way
The reborn aspect isn't even that important, it is mostly about elf stuff
Like they turn into elemental spirits when they die and how the MC becomes friends with a dwarf
>His blacksmithing teacher
and how they start to trade with them
I thought it was alright but a little boring, very SOL
Just gets into some sort of conspiracy in the middle and then freeing all the elf slaves and also fricking Up the environment
>Raising a giant mountain cutting them off from the elves
until the evil empire says they're sorry for enslaving them
Gets a bit political
Slow Elf Life I believe it's called.
And it kicks the shit out of Frieren when it comes to the whole "story focused on a long-lived individual who gets deeply involved with shorter-lived ones and inevitably outlives them", Frieren only had that at the start and then devolved into a fairly milquetoast adventure party of the same people, then a time travel arc that reunited her with the first group we saw her leave behind as she continued to live while they aged and passed away.[spoiler]
Meanwhile, the only still living acquaintances of the MC of that manga are his dwarf friend, who might be dead by now but otherwise is engaged being king to his people, an on-and-off again lesser elf adventuring partner, and his adopted half-elf son. And none of those are currently living with him because he fricked off to see new things, as mentioned the dwarf is probably dead by now. The isekai aspect basically doesn't exist and probably was an editorial decision forced on the author to act as a hook for casual readers slurping up everything isekai, the dude doesn't give a shit about "enriching" his new world with crop rotation (lol) or other knowledge from his past life and just wants to keep his absurdly long lifetime interesting by always traveling (he stops in some places for years at a time, but to the reader and to him it is presented as passing like a matter of months even as people are suddenly a decade older than when they were introduced) meeting people, and learning new things.[/spoiler]
Maybe one of the most delusional contrarian takes I've ever seen. SEL is good by isekai standards, but to be frank, there's legitimately no characters or parts in it as interesting or well-written as most of the main elements in Frieren.
It's true that Frieren isn't really about immortality though. The elven immortality thing is a vehicle to comment on how people in general perceive, stretch, and waste time. Frieren the character is more like an interesting way of framing how a young person becomes aware of time through not the amount of it experienced, but through the things that limited by it and the things that transcend it.
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm not praising SEL so much as I am dumping on Frieren given the overlap of subject material.
I'd agree with your interpretation of her character, for the first 30 chapters or so. Pretty much ever since she settled into her current adventuring group, she's been utterly stagnant. Basically every story arc has boiled down to "Frieren wants to do time-wasting thing because it's an excuse to do something new with her companions and that's what she has come to value after losing the original hero's party, the other two oblige, Frieren gets some useless magic or book as a reward (haha isn't it cute she doesn't need any of it she just wants to have a good time with her peeps), wash, rinse, repeat.
Charming initially but it's worn utterly thin and the fact that we got a time travel arc to so the same thing a few times, but with her original party, is a pretty solid example of a shark jump.
I hate food themed annie may so much.
Dungeon Meshi isn't *really* food-themed, which is what makes it good.
Sad nogames thread.
Seethe about it noldorgay.
Who the frick even is this noldorgay you're so obsessed about?
I just don't like stupid "comfy" anime in /tg/
Then frick off from /tg/ moron. Dungeon Meshi has been talked about her ever since the manga first came out like a fricking decade ago.
Because this is an anime website, moron, and has been since it's inception, you fricking newhomosexual.
Dungeon Meshi is a manga based heavily on wrpgs, and like I said, it was talked about here basically the moment it started coming out.
https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/36220650/#36220650
If you weren't a fricking newhomosexual you'd know who noldorgay is.
Why do people come to an anime website to take a cry?
Why posting this shit here when there's a board dedicated to anime?
Dude is so mad that we aren't worshipping his shitty anime lmao
How can people hate this qtpie?
>uhh actually sweaty this isn't pro-elf enough for me. Do better.
jesus christ
Did you expect anything else from noldorgay?
>Good portrayal of elves
shittiest active thread on /tg/ right now
Ganker already has a thread for this pile of shit anyway
It's just elf general masquerading as a Marcille thread, honestly.
for sure, that's what happens when it just becomes a scene for a mega-autists victim complex
thought about writing a one-page meshi rpg
At what point did the elves become the new goblins and the goblins became the new elves?
There's a Terry Pratchett quote comparing Tolkien to Mount Fuji, in the sense that all Japanese artwork of a certain era was Fuji-brained: sometimes Fuji was the focal point, sometimes merely in the background, but even pieces that excluded Fuji were making a statement by doing so. So the same with fantasy authors and Tolkien. Well, we're now 70 years deep of authors imitating or subverting imitations or subversions that are themselves imitations or subversions of *other* imitations or subversions, and so on, of Tolkien.
Anyways, Tolkienian elves are noble and elegant. So goofy cretinous elves are subversive and funny.
Elves should be non-binary
Elves wouldn't think in 21st century terms, gay; they're more likely to just be hedonists
they/them elfussy would be too potent
Corellon's blessing is a thing
very rare: androgynous elves changing sex at will
GAY. WOTC is so shit.
Elves have two innate sexes, not that they are altogether above sodomy. Elves are spawned of chaos after all.