Elves are jerks in almost all universes, especially high elves
Meh, I can’t help but notice that often enough “elves are jerk” often translate to “elves dare have a good opinion of themselves”, which is often the case for every fantasy race - everyone tend to think they’re the best by default, but somehow it’s unforgivable if you happen to have pointed ears.
(now, of course, the Thalmor in the Elder’s Scrolls are a nasty piece of work)
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I’ve seen it translated as “We’re immortal/long lived so we’re automatically smarter.” Most of the average life elves I’ve seen aren’t so snotty.
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Wood elves aren’t so bad. Some of the elves in Dragon Age are nice too
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That’s why I said most universes
Seems to me they are fine in most universes, and them being unlikeable asholes is the exception, not the rule.
I mean, they can be flawed, but so is everyone else.
Elves
Bored as all heck as time goes by so they make fun often becoming either Sarcastic, Arsehats, Lusty, Bookworms, loco, or some mix of several.
if we go with more D&D like its usually im better than you and i either pity your peoples “youth” or maybe one day your people will be better maybe you might be the exception.
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Why are we still talking about those snotty, racist, yellow bellied, knife eared, tree huggers?
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Dark elves and wood elves have very understandable and deep grudges against the high elves. But who doesn’t? They probably screwed every species on the continent at least once. Dark elves and wood elves mostly stay out of each other’s way.
High elves are not really jerks. But they did try on several occasion to take control over ‘inferior species’, thrust their hard, advanced technology and magic in everyone’s faces. Their society used to revolve entirely around that superiority, to them other species were nothing more than born slaves to live under their rule. With time, things start to change, but the other species still remember. But, they learnt their lesson long ago, they got their ass kicked so hard they would never try to achieve military victory again, and also abandoned most of that old supremacist ideology. Instead, they know focus on diplomacy and economy as well as scientific advances.
They do try to atone for their ancestor’s mistakes even though their pride wouldn’t allow them to admit it.
Some classic races like orcs and things like that, and some original.
It’s just a stereotype people have about elves, like stereotypes people have about dwarves, orcs, humans etc. Some are just like that, but many others do not fit those stereotypes at all. Elves already had a lesson in humility more than once, and this haughty attitude no longer have a place when their future looks so grim, pride is considered a good trait in fellow high elves, arrogance is not.
Yes, I don’t want to have some kind of perfect species with completely blank individuals that are copies of each other. And it would be strange to have an entire people of which the only common trait is being a douche. XD
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Oh what about revenants (I think that’s the word for what I’m thinking of) those undead that come back just to get revenge on there killers and the only way to tell is some part of them is skeletal and there eyes glow when they see someone they want revenge on
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The revenants in my universe are some of the most powerful undead. They are very rare.
A revenant is created when a wraith somehow gets fused back with their own body, or absorbed into the body of another undead. Most of the time it result in the destruction of both undead, but sometimes a revenant arise. The revenant is unique among undead in the fact that it is both physical and metaphysical, similarly to banshees, but to a wholly different level.
Revenants are physically stronger than any other undead of the same class, and of some of a class superior to theirs, they are not as fast as many others though. But because of their wraith power they are abel to phaseshift and to use several other abilities usually reserved to metaphysical undead.
Wraiths are some of the most chaotic creatures in the world by nature which also affects revenants. The revenants’ chaos makes them very prone to giving in to the madness, as well as being changed by chaos, physically and mentally.
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How powerful are revenants? On the level of wight knights? On a similar topic, how powerful ARE wight knights? I understand that the power would vary between knights but where would they be on a scale from normal person to wight king
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Are undead like the revenants weak to things like healing spells, fire or holy magic? Also do dragons and demons exist in your world?
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So the High Elves in this world were essentially
“Look at that Poor idiot, I think we should help him” And tried to help the younger races while unfortunately being arrogant know it all ? and then got spanked for it and are wiser and realize their mistakes, they just wont openly admit them because they still have their damned pride ?
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Ouch. What’s ironic though is that I’m from Lincolnshire, England and people born there are called yellow bellies
Now that’s just hurtful
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Wight knights are generally the strongest undead beside the Wight King. Revenants can be nearly that strong but they rarely reach such a level.
If a normal person is 1 and a Wight King is 100, a wight knight would be between 85 and 75. While a revenant could go from 60 to 80.
Yes to holy and fire, no to healing, it heals them except if it’s holy healing. Yes, there’s dragons and demons.
In a way… yes.
But it’s more complicated than that. Beside their arrogance, the high elves did quite a lot of awful things. Experimentations, slavery, genocide, aggressive expensionism, without counting the individual abuse some of them subjected inferior species to.
Of course, most of the elves did not partake in those atrocities, even though many still considered the other species as inferior and had the matching attitude. It doesn’t make the crimes of their old empire go away. And though it was long ago, they still have a poor reputation.
Some of them DID help other species though, mostly in terms of technological advancements.
Medias rarely show them in another way than immortal jerks. XD
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It all depends of your definition of “jerk”. Let’s see the most known examples:
- In the Lord of the Rings, they’re the closest thing from an “always good” race. Some may be more snide than others, but as a rule of thumb, they tend to be the best allies you could hope for.
- Elves in D&D’s Forgotten Realms tend to also be rather good-ish (when not dark). Their kingdoms are usually pretty nice places to live, and their only real black spot is the Eldreth Veluuthra organization (basically terrorist elf supremacists). Those are a nasty piece of work, but when you compare that with the dozens of cartoonishly evil human kingdoms and groups, it’s hard to say that those extremists represent most elves, while giving mankind a pass for Thay, the Zentharim, Luskan, Netheril, ect.
- High Elves in Warhammer are, despite the ability to be highly arrogant, the most heroic faction of an admittedly rather grey roster (with maybe the lizardmen fighting them for that title, but the later are hampered by following a Plan they don’t even understand and thus they keep making wild guesses with occasional catastrophic consequences).
The “elves are more often than not jerks” doesn’t seem to have that much grounding in most medias (though of course, some works do like to subvert the archetype - see the Thalmors, or the elves of Terry Pratchett), and somehow, I can’t help but think the accusation often says more about the one who’s making it. 
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I huger for blood of tempters so going eat one to day an they taste like calypso if you like to now 
Clearly we can only rely on dark elves 
:
Ok just putting this out there, this is probably the worst example on the list. Elven history in general is just bad there.
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I agree, but the sides of them most often displayed, shown on screen, written are very selfish, self-righteous, egotistical or prideful actions beside the heroic ones, it doesn’t make it easier to love them. At least that’s what I remember, I admit I tend to remember bad things more clearly than good things, those actions stuck. That and their acts of badasserie.
I like elves, I really like them. If I had a choice between the core races, I’d take elves everyday. And, yes, they are typically good in fiction except for dark elves. When I say elves are often “jerks” I mostly mean “arrogant selfish dudes that spend more time on their asses being sarcastic than actually doing something useful.” I’m exaggerating of course, that’s a caricature of the elves, but sometimes they don’t do much more than that.
Of course, rule out of that people like Legolas and other similar elven companions. I’m talking more about their image as a whole. So yeah, they aren’t only jerks.
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