Elven Arrogance (quoted)

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I refuse to believe this was written by an Orc. The very notion is preposterous.

In fact, its...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D58LpHBnvsI

 

That seems like something out of somebody's Tolkien fan fiction, since it basically presents a counterargument to ideas that are used to explain why all orcs are evil and elves are morally superior to practically everybody.

At least at the time of Lord of the Rings. The Silmarilion paints a more complicated story.

One of the signs that the orcs are bad is that they're heavily into mining and industrialization. It's also portrayed as a bad thing that they're developing explosives and new siege weapons.

Meanwhile, the fact that elven culture hasn't changed much in thousands of years is supposed to be a sign of their noble characters. And hiding out in secure places like Rivendell is just good sense. You don't want to attract Sauron's attention any more than necessary.

 

You speak much truth. Tolkien elves sometimes created cool magic swords and things (like cloaks that change color and what amounts to enchanted nylon rope). But Tolkien's opposition to anything more high tech than a longbow really put them at a disadvantage.

Especially given how vague he was about the elves' magic powers. Some of them at least had telepathic and/or clairvoyant abilities or what amounts to the first two Necromantic White spells... But there's a distinct lack of stuff that would be useful in combat except with a few characters like Luthien and Glorfindel.

Some elves in the First Age were tough enough to kill balrogs, but Tolkien doesn't really explain how they did it other than talking about their hand-to-hand combat skills and writing a lot of stuff about glowing eyes.

Your average wood elf is physically superior to an average human in various ways, but otherwise not much of a threat once he runs out of arrows.

Which is fine... Until somebody invents better weapons.

I read a great Tolkien fan-fic called "The Last Ringbearer" where the elves are actually evil and the Orcs are just misunderstood humans. In that story, elves could be stopped pretty easily by winch crossbows.

 

This is representative of Tolkien's dislike for industrialization in general, which winds it's way through the whole series. When one actually examines the series however, even in his pointed dislike of industrialization and the moment where he has nature fight back against it (the Ents march to war), it's clear to see that the Elves aren't capable of surviving in such a world. It's why, at the very end of the series, they gtfo.

 

Fairly certain he just wrote an entertaining story for his son at war.

 

They have to be utterly devoid of industrial progression otherwise they would be too broken. Just think about a Tolkien elf with an automatic sniper rifle. Fuck, they wouldn't even need a scope, they can naturally see in the dark, and some of them are telepathic. That leaves them with the only weakness of a low birthrate.

... Now I kinda want to play a game with Tolkien elves with automatic sniper rifles.

 

Tolkein's high elves are the most broken race ever. Their power is 'best at everything ever' including technology; in the Silmarilion they learned smithing from the valar who created the dwarves, and quickly surpassed him. The rings and silmarils and palantir are all a kind of high-technology.

I think what Tolkein really hated was crowded, polluted cities, as well as Asians, Africans and Germans.

 

I agree about Tolkien hating cities. I'm not completely sure I agree about the racism. Although it is a problem that orcs are actually supposed to look Asian (he described them once as looking like really ugly Mongoloids).

As far as the German thing goes, it's interesting that Tolkien's version of an ubermensch is more like "Black Irish". Practically every Tolkien character who is supposed to be really awesome has brown or black hair and gray eyes. To the point where it got kind of annoying after a while during my last reading of The Silmarilion. Galadriel stands out because she's one of the few characters with blonde hair.

The High Elves are definitely "broken." If Tolkien hadn't deliberately kept their weapons technology at a pre-gunpowder level, they could have easily defeated the forces of Morgoth and Sauron by inventing things like tanks and fighter planes several thousand years early. A guy who was only half-high elf somehow defeated a dragon in single combat while flying around in his magic ship that could travel on both sea and air. Imagine if they had a whole fleet of those things equipped with some kind of cannons...

I don't get Tolkien's obsession with height. It's a constant thing in his Middle Earth stories that your magic potential, your goodness and all sorts of other things are directly related to how tall you are.

There's an idea floating around in some of his stuff that the elves who decided not to go live with the Valar eventually became Victorian-style gnomes and fairies and elves (where they might have some cool magic powers, but they're about four to six inches tall). So, all the stuff about about First Age elves being really tall makes sense with that in mind.

But it got totally out of control at some point. Gandalf gets taller when he shows off some of his true power. There's all this weird Hobbit bashing stuff just because they're short. When Merry and Pippin become true heroes, they get taller. Naturally, Gollum is about the size of a Hobbit (short = weak and evil, except in a few rare exceptions). Some orcs are about the same height as dwarves and they're definitely inferior to the taller ones. On and on it goes.

Why did Tolkien hate short people so much?

 

You do know Tolkien was high when he had the idea for the Lord of the Rings series, including The Silmarillion and especially The Hobbit.

And I'm not making this up, lot's of people that lived around him said that...

Getting high made him famous, lol.

 

That explains why the heroes are always chasing the pipeweed, not to mention his frequent segues into folk-music and gay fantasies.

 

Clearly elves are the final product of Darwinism. The implications are staggering!

 

Elves are arrogant and rightful to be so. Why you ask?

Lets create a scenario like that. You are a 30 years old man with some some serious concerns about politics, environment human rights and whatnot. One day you see a 11 years old kids' gang bullying someone with glasses and taking off his lunch. When you approach you learn that they are doing this everyday and to almost everyone who cant protect themselves. But for some reason (which is probably hormonal food) they are extremely overgrown and muscled!

When you ask then to stop, they threaten to beat you too and police is not acting at all because these kids are children of the police! You are now totally powerless against them.

Elves are like the man in 30s here. They are few in numbers, they have high ethic values concerning the world about all being having a place and harmony must be kept. Humans are the small bullies. They are too much in number and increasing even more. Due to their short lifespan they do not care about world but themselves. They beat other races (orcs/halforcs/elves) with their new toy : legal powers. They are taking off magic from land and turning forests into wastelands because it is profitable to do so for them, and they can.
Police is the industrial council and their gnomish/human merchant politicians who put their interests before world's.

I totally agree upon the Dark-elf philosophy now and my first act will be going back to Thanatos and killing off Nasrudin for his crimes against this world! (hmm I guess got carried away a little)

 

This is a very weak example. I can see your point, but it's muddled by your attempts to make your example painfully blatant (but don't worry, I say blatant like it's blat-ant).

Elves, at one point in time, were a superior race. I think that their magical prowess is an example of that, but they are in the twilight of their empire, and are dying out due to an inability to compete. Most games/fantasy realms/etc. portray elves in that manner, or in a similar one.

 

Elves are like bitter old people claiming their generation was superior and have a disdain of the youth. Everyone ignores them, their significance withered a long ago.

 

Frigo said it best

 

Me too. I understand the racial penalty in Arcanum, but the idea of being a Legolas-type character with a .50 caliber rifle instead of a bow is just too awesome.

John M. Ford wrote a cool book called "The Last Hot Time" that had elves going around using sawed off shotguns and other firearms in modern-day Chicago. His elves were fairly Tolkien-esque, but it made sense that they drove cars and liked going to movies and doing other urban things. Ever since I read that book, the idea of an elf with a gun has been rattling around in the back of my head and it's a little disappointing that I shouldn't do that in Arcanum.

 

I played the D20 World of Warcraft game with my friends, and one of them played a hunter who was a night elf. Not quite a .50 cal sniper rifle, but a powerful boomstick in any case. I played a monk, of course.