Are you still Ok with the traditional races? Ever since I was small i've been reading fantasy and absorbing it like a sponge. Recently I realize I feel more and more annoyance and antipathy against all the traditional fantasy races, I feel some of them make no sense and others are so overglorified that if they had an ego, Kanye West would seem a schoolboy trying to show-off.. Ow.. wait..
Anyway.. I wonder what your opinions are on:
Orcs and goblins
Dwarfs
Elfs
halflings
I often feel we could use an overhaul of the current races and perhaps expand it to races that might actually make sense as well. Just wondering whether I am the only one who will skip fantasy nowadays when it's about these races. Well, it's just that I have the idea that it limits the viewer to a specific point of view. I've been working on my own races, which will differ from most things I've read so far. if you read my chapter 1, you'll find my idea of an elemental. not necessarily lord, but I am developing an elemental race that I am really enthusiastic about. It's still in progress and the stuff on the website is more for myself.. Still, it will give an idea of what I am working on. My world is a world in which A god created his own "aspects" out of boredom. In time he told them to make their own life-form and to have a game of supremacy, again out of boredom. My races are a result of the aspects and their creativity. I just hope people will, accept them.. if not, it's fine.. I write for my own joy :D I am just kind of done with the established races that the reader already has set in his/her mind.
My Answer:
I think one of the things I question here, especially after reading every other commenters’ comments to your OP, is that the issue seems to be largely with what commenters are calling “Tolkien races” or “Tolkien’s version of races”.
Now, me, never having read Lord of the Rings, I don’t personally have a clear concept of what constitutes a “Tolkien race”. My notion and knowledge of “Tolkien races” comes largely from forum threads like this, where I see people complaining about all the reasons why they don’t like things like “Tolkien Elves” or “Tolkien Dwarfs”
But, also, Tolkien’s books are only around 50 years old, so can we REALLY call Tolkien races “traditional” races at all?
I think, if I’m older than the date the book was published, I am going to call it modern and not traditional. I don’t know, I just have a hard time looking at a book whose publication date is younger than me, and calling it “traditional”.
When you say “traditional races” I’m inclined to think ACTUALLY TRADITIONAL races: Phookas, Unicorns, Leprechauns, Brownies, and Elves. Races that are in ACTUALLY TRADITIONAL Fantasy aka stuff written 1400s to 1800s.
I will say that regarding Elves in novels written in the past 40 or so years... since the 1980s... I’m not a fan.
I LOVE Elves. But damn! What the fuck is with the way people write Elves the past 40 years or so? Everyone writes Elves as though they were writing the fucking Ku Klux Klan... tall, arrogant, white dudes who stomp around hating on all things 2 shades darker than they are.
Uhm... I’m sorry, but do any of the authors writing those types of Elves know ANYTHING about Elf history?
Here are some questions:
* Why are all Elves the past 40 years written as TALL, when for 5,000+ years Elves have always been SHORT?
Traditional Elves are only waist height to most Humans. Traditional Dwarfs are TALLER than Traditional Elves. In fact, in actual mythology, Dwarfs are rarely less than 5 feet tall, while Elves are rarely over 4 feet tall. Traditionally Dwarfs are TALLER than Elves. And yet, most Fantasy of the past 40 years shows the roles reversed: Elves the tall ones and Drawvs the short ones. Why? That goes so far against the ACTUAL TRADITION of Elves and Dwarfs.
This is WHY you see in my books, Elves are always shorter than Humans, and are often shorter than Human children, as is the case with Quaraun who is only 5’6" tall, making him shoulder height to the average woman, and below chest height to the average man
Quaraun is a TRADITIONAL Elf, and as such, he is also shorter than Dwarfs.
Drawfs are rarely seen in the Quaraun series, but when they are, they are always TALLER than Elves, in exactly the same way they have been in German and Scandanavian and Hebrew folklore for well over 5,000 years.
* Why are all Elves the past 40 years written as graceful, elegant, wear long flowing clothes, when for 5,000+ years Elves have always worn rags?
Traditional Elves were not only short, they were also described as “brown skinned” or “swarthy skinned” and dressed in “bright coloured silk rags that had long ago lost their colours and were threadbare.”
Elves were not tall, nor were they graceful. In traditional German and Scandanavian and Hebrew folklore for well over 5,000 years, Elves, also known as Alfar, were little people, no bigger than children, who rode on little Shetland Ponies that were only the size of goats. They wove fine silks in bright colours, but wore a single outfit for their entire lives and after several hundred years, their once brightly coloured silks were now muted browns caked with mud.
It was said that Humans, thinking they were helping, would offer new clothes to the Elves and the Elves would become offended and pack up their painted covered wagons and leave the Human farms they worked on, refusing to return to that farmer ever again.
There is never a point in the actual traditional folklore of Elves, where they are described as graceful, elegant, wear long flowing clothes.
* Why are all Elves the past 40 years written as abnormally strong, having bizarre steel-jaw-trap-like strength that can snap Human bones with ease, when for 5,000+ years Elves have always been frail, weak, sickly, and had hollow fragile bones like birds?
Traditional Elves are described as frail and sickly, often looking half starved or skeletal. Most folktales tell of how easy it is for a Human to accidentally kill an Elf, by crushing its bones to a fine powder when picking them up.
There is never a point in the actual traditional folklore of Elves, where they are described as strong, having god strength, or being healthy.
This is WHY you see in my books, the Elves are always thin, frail, sickly, looking half starved, and constantly terrified of breaking their hips or ankles if they fall. This is why Quaraun is shown walking with a cane and limping on a lame leg that he drags. Why Quaraun has crippled hands that leave him unable to do many things on his own.
* Why are all Elves the past 40 years written as royalty living in palaces, when for 5,000+ years Elves have always been homeless vagabonds, who hid out in Human barns, and did corns for farmers in exchange for food?
Traditional Elves are always homeless, always described outright as Gypsies, and in fact WERE actually real Human Gypsies a fact that has been proven by the many bog mummies found of them in Wales and Ireland.
Elves were described as little people who wore rags and had no homes, travelling in caravans of covered wagons, and sleeping on bales of hay in horse stables of farms.
Elves paid for their lodgings by milking the cows and gathering the eggs and baking the bread and plowing the fields and harvesting the wheat of the farms they begged for food and a place to sleep from.
There is never a point in the actual traditional folklore of Elves, where they are described as living in palaces or being anything often than homeless farm hands.
This is WHY you see in my books, Elves are always homeless, wandering, vagabonds, living a hippie lifestyle, and outright called racially “Gypsies”.
It is why Quaraun lives in a tent on the side of the road when he can not find a farm willing to give him a bed for the night. Why you see him cursing people who snub him and won’t give him shelter from the rain, why you see him weaving silk scarves and tablecloths and shawls and given them in exchange for a place to spend the night.
* Why are all Dwarfs the past 40 years written as SHORT, when for 5,000+ years Dwarfs have always been ONE OF THE TALLEST races of the Realm of Fae?
Traditionally, Dwarfs were miners who were simply short Knockers. A Knocker being a short Giant.
Giants are traditionally 12 feet (365cm) tall, while Knockers are traditionally 8 feet (243cm) tall, and Drawvs are traditionally 6 feet (182cm) tall - taller than many average adult Humans men!
In ACTUALLY TRADITIONAL Fantasy aka stuff written 1400s to 1800s, Dwarfs were always TALLER than Humans, because Dwarfs were NOT just “short Humans”, they were “short Giants”.
And yet, most every Dwarf you see in every book and movie written since the 1980s, shows Dwarfs are being only 3 feet (91cm) to 4 feet (121cm) tall, but traditional Dwarfs from actual folklore were 6 feet (182cm) to 8 feet (243cm) tall - way taller than the average Human man.
There is a VAST amount of difference between the medical condition in Humans called Dwarfism, and the ACTUALLY TRADITIONAL folklore of the Faerie race called a Dwarf, which is simply put a GIANT who has Dwarfism, not a Human who has Dwarfism.
In the ACTUALLY TRADITIONAL folklore of the Faerie race called a Dwarf, is a short Giant, and is often a foot or more taller them the average Human, and they have been that way in German and Scandanavian and Hebrew folklore for well over 5,000 years. So why is it they are little more than knee height to most Humans in most stuff written the past 40 years?
And I’ve asked these questions before, and you know what people told me?
People told me that they had never heard of short Elves before, that they couldn’t even possibly imagine an Elf being shorter than a Human let along, shorter than a Dwarf.
So, you really are going to tell me you never heard of blue skinned Smurfy Elves that were short enough to live in houses made of mushrooms?
* Or short Keebler Elves that lived in hollow trees and baked cookies?
* Or short Christmas Elves that make toys for Santa to deliver while dreaming of being a dentist?
* Or short House Elves who can’t be given clothing to wear (no Harry Potter didn’t invent that)?
* Or short Cobbler Elves who make shoes?
* Or green-haired, orange skinned tiny chocolate making Elves from the Amazon Rain Forest who hand out wonky golden tickets?
Look at the Elves in the Quaraun series, and pay attention to their heights:
* Etiole: 4’8" (142cm)
* Sir Roderic: 5’1" (155cm)
* Quaraun: 5’6" (170cm)
* EVERY Elf has his height listed, and they are all in the range of 4’3" (131cm) to 5’3" (161cm)
The tallest character in the series is a Demon who stands at 6’2" (188cm) tall and ALL the Elves see him as being practically a giant because he’s so much bigger than the rest of them. And GhoulSpawn at Demon, who stands at 6’2" (188cm) tall, is the AVERAGE HEIGHT of the REAL WORLD AVERAGE AMERICAN MAN, so most American men are taller even than him.
But, it has been brought to my attention, that if I was to read Lord of the Rings, I would discover that it was the first book ever written to contain:
* Tall, slender, graceful, abnormally strong, pale face, blond Elves, and that these are referred to as “Tolkien Elves” because he created/invented this version of Elf that did not exist in actual real world traditional folklore.
and
* Short, stock, bearded Dwarfs, and that these are referred to as “Tolkien Dwarfs” because he created/invented this version of Dwarfs that did not exist in actual real world traditional folklore.
I like traditional Elves. I dislike Tolkien Elves.
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