#elf posting

[bardandbear]

study

[anim-ttrpgs]

The maid and princess side of tumblr has got to check out Silk & Dagger: A Sensible Drow RPG.

[feykrorovaan]

Reblog if an elf lives in your head rent free.

Like if they have roommates that are also elves.

[whereserpentswalk]

Tolkien personally states that his elves were supposed to be what humanity would be like without original sin. However, in basically every version of the Abrahamic creation myth, wanting to wear clothing is a direct result of eating the fruit of knowledge. Meaning that for the worldbuilding, philosophy, and theology of Tolkien to make sense the elves would have to be naked unless they specifically had a reason not to be. However none of the works in the lotr cannon have properly portrayed elves this way. However, with the power of cgi, deaging technology, and labor rights violations, in an all new extended edition coming to Amazon Prime in 2025...

[arugullla]

Colored some sketches of Dralas, my OC, and his Ordinator mask

[faeriedaez]

After the recent funny post about 4 inch tall fairies in @anim-ttrpgs's Eureka, I ended up sharing some of my "head canons" about fairyland within the Eureka universe, specifically as they related to little tiny fairies, (which henceforth I shall refer to as Garden Fairies.) The lead writer of Eureka, enjoyed my head canons well enough that he encouraged me to share them on tumblr! I'd like to emphasize, although these ARE "head canons" they are all informed by mechanics and flavor texts from the actual book, so if you like these vibes PLEASE check out Eureka, and I'll leave another link at the bottom of this post.

So in Eureka, it is emphasized that the only monsters which are available as player character options, are those which can passably disguise themselves as regular humans, so the Fairy Investigators have to be (relatively) regularly sized, right? But that however does NOT exclude the possibility for the more modern idea of a Garden Fairy as the sort of monster which CAN'T be ran as a player character.

My head canon is thus, an inconceivably long time ago, a Curse of Reduction was placed upon the Family Names of all the Families who were of sufficiently low strata within the incomprehensible hierarchy of fairy society. So even "to this day*," all fairies of low enough standing are tiny little Garden Fairies! I think many of them will often Remove the Curse from themselves in private, but they are expected to reapply it before appearing in "polite" society.

I think, due in part of their status and thusly being the constant butt of the jokes of regular fairies of standing above them, that (many, but not ALL) Garden Fairies would be kinder to Humans and Changelings. This fits rather well with the pop culture understanding of Tiny Fairies.

I think it is also important to note that I conceptualize ALL the stratification of Fairy society as a sort of compulsory play... It's all rules for the sake of rules. Norms for the sake of norms. Social Class for the sake of Social Class! The "lower class" fairies aren't actually expected to be performing any kind of LABOR. That's why the society can afford to have it's lowest class be tiny in the first place! It's stratification simply for it's own sake. It's a game, it's rules and roles and playing it right! It's who can play what way, whose jokes can be played on who. But if you don't play right, the consequences can be life or death regardless.

This is part of what makes changelings stand out so thoroughly; an inability to intuit the rules. This also thoroughly emphasizes changelings as specifically children from families of middling to higher standing. Which I think fits very neatly within the implications of Eureka's Fairies and Changelings to begin with.

This is all why I love Eureka's approach to Fairies and Fairyland. The implications of the flavor and mechanics are JUST enough to paint this picture to me, and its the same sort of picture that growing up reading so many fairy tales from disparate times and places painted to me. Which makes sense! Given how Eureka fairies were constructed.

I think this head canon also makes room for a lot more types of fairytale fairies! These little "Garden Fairies," families of lower standing... THESE are the sorts of fairies who would live in the walls of a cobblers house and come out at night to help repair the shoes.

Anyways, if you're reading this post and you aren't ALREADY a Eurekahead, check out the game, I promise you won't regret it!

*my head canons on the subjects of the incongruity of chronology between fairyland and the Human World are vague and obfuscative as everything we've discussed here, and probably best left for another post. But they can be summarized as one can summarize all of Eureka's Fairyland: It never QUITE makes sense and sounds closer to a bedtime story than "lore." Anyways, Check out my Eureka OC post about Briar, a lot of what I've talked about here is touched upon!

[mitigatedchaos]

Congratulations! You are now an elf, along with your friends, associates, cherished family members, and however many other humans you think should be elves. You will live healthily for up to 400 years, after which you will age until the end of your natural lifespan at age 500.

You have futuristic sci-fi health coverage which can collect you by rocket pod from most parts of the Earth's surface. (It does not cover, for example, the Mariana Trench.) Most injuries can be healed completely, although particularly severe injuries might require years in a regenerative coma.

In which technological environment do you spend most of your time?

1 - Stone Age - Living in a hut or perhaps a cave, hunting animals or working the land with stone tools, with perhaps some domestic animals. There's no other way to get quite so close to the land.

2 - Fake Medieval Europe - Nominally this style of living is like medieval or renaissance Europe. Travel is by horse or by sail. There are no electrical devices, but there are printing presses. You will probably spend a lot of time farming. Guns are sufficiently crude affairs that it's 50-50 on whether you'd be better off trying to kill someone with a sword or spear instead.

3 - Steam Power & Telegraphs - Locomotives are steam-powered. Factories are steam-powered. Cars are steam-powered. Electrically-driven refrigerators are available. Long-distance communication is by telegraph, or by landline telephone - if you can pay for it. Record players are a thing.

4 - Fake 1960s - Gasoline-powered cars, diesel locomotives, and long-distance jet aircraft are available. Computers generally consist of one or more large units the size of a refrigerator, possibly with a cathode ray-tube terminal. Color television is available if you have the money.

5 - Fake 1990s - There are personal computers with CPU speeds measured in Mhz and 800x600 screen resolutions - these can be connected to a dial-up Internet. DVDs are available. Cell phones exist, but are limited to flip-phones at most, and don't include cameras.

6 - Fake 2010s - High-speed Internet, streaming services, 4K flat-screen televisions - no ChatGPT.

[fishing-lesbian-catgirl]

When the three celestial lights shine their moonbeams down upon the slumberwood forest, the elven women who tend to its mystic grove press together in intimate ritual to produce the moondew that will nourish the sacred frotlily for many years to come

[biancasbow]

Me realising that I let Karen have grave elf as the archivist which means that the golem is actually haunting the library of the lighthouse and fixing the bullshit filing

[slyakoch-undead-tavern]

freaky ass void elves

[bardandbear]

This is a PSA, I guess.

You can’t play a Dalish elf in Dragon Age The Veilguard. Somehow. Inexplicably.

Regardless of your chosen background, selecting the ‘Tattoos are important to elves’ option from Varric’s mirror at the start of the game, your character says the following:

"I didn’t grow up Dalish, but they’re not the only ones who have claim on being elven."

Regardless of whether you pick this option or not, your elven character will speak elvhen without prompting. Your character will say they were once jealous of the Dalish knowledge / getting to grow up with their stories without prompting. Other Dalish elves in the game will literally in the same breath condemn their gods, while using their names as exclamations and wearing vallaslin that are never addressed.

You are schrodinger’s elf: possessing Dalish knowledge but not being associated with them. And the vallaslin you may wear? Never mentioned. 

Why do this? (End game spoilers)

The devs in my opinion are getting rid of the Dalish as a group with this game. They are quietly minimising them throughout in favour of the Veil Jumpers, wiping out the entire southern half of Thedas, the Dalish already basically don’t exist in this game, they are nameless NPC civilians. At the end of the game, Arlathan is reclaimed by the Veil Jumpers, not the Dalish.

I don’t know why I’m surprised, they finally managed to one up killing a Dalish clan by erasing the entire group in one fell swoop. The things that made them Dalish - their kingdom in the Dales that was erased by the Chantry, their march from Tevinter after their crusade for freedom with Andraste? Irrelevant, annoying footnotes that will be condemned to history. 

In case it wasn’t clear, I don’t think I’ve been angrier about a choice in modern media. The way the Dalish have been handled is frankly appalling. They could have gracefully given the option to explore that grief/path forward in this game, but they didn’t. Because the Dalish are an annoyance to them they would rather forget. Tevinter and the Chantry won.

[femme-feytale]

Financiers and tech bros shouldn't have Adderall, neurotic elf girls with poor executive function should.

[arach-tinilith]

I talk a big game about fucking elves until they're dust but in all honesty if i saw an elf. I i would uh m

[stress-toy-bunny]

you see a cute elf on the train, and you start 'accidently' brushing against her ears, so she flinches and looks up at you, but you hold her gaze and start deliberately stroking her ear slowly. She seems a little more pliable somehow...

[mitigatedchaos]

Elves would have a different relation to place because they have a different relation to time.

They would probably colonize Mars just to have a different place to go, even if it was all underground.

They might use slow transit methods just to make the Earth feel bigger.

[breakintomyhead]

thing I made