Females in Miniature Wargaming Fantasy

elves are romantic? nasty evil things often with very xenophobic views... hardly would think of them as romantic..
 
ManicMan said:
elves are romantic? nasty evil things often with very xenophobic views... hardly would think of them as romantic..
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Romantic period had a huge influence on nationalism. Theosophy was also a natural product of it. All together it led to Nazism. Like both the death cult mentality of WWI and its continuation in Nazism was heavily rooted in Romanticism.
 
Nationalism dates back FAR FAR before that. and I could highly debate it's lead to Nazism. The national socialist party of Germany just used the same crap every else has used since the beginning of time. "All our problems are the fault of someone else, so lets call them evil and blame them". That point has never changed at all and the romantic period had little impact to anything. People always want escape goats so they take the fault away from themselves. Happens on all sides in all wars with one side claiming the 'higher then thou' excuse.

anyway, this is completely besides the point and going very off-topic and.. I don't want to go into one way this might be heading because of... reasons..
 
ManicMan said:
Nationalism dates back FAR FAR before that. and I could highly debate it's lead to Nazism.
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Richard Wagner was a prominent example of a romantic composer. Lots Nazism was also rooted in weird stuff like occultism. But anyway, I think it's all sufficient to demonstrate that elves being xenophobic or evil doesn't mean they aren't romantic, quite opposite.

ManicMan said:
Nationalism dates back FAR FAR before that. and I could highly debate it's lead to Nazism. The national socialist party of Germany just used the same crap every else has used since the beginning of time. "All our problems are the fault of someone else, so lets call them evil and blame them".
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Most of people who say things like that don't start a death cult and don't start world wars and commit genocides, though, so it's hard to boil down Nazis to it.
 
AranaszarSzuur said:
I don't know, Vulcans don't remind me of elves except perhaps in looks. I feel like elves are more associated with being passionate/romantic.
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Stories about "elves" are kind of an odd mix. The modern take on "elves" traces back to several different folk traditions. You've got your Scandinavian traditions like the Elveskud from whernce Goethe's Erlkönig derives, where the proto-elves are pretty dark, often almost demonic. (It's at least partially out of this tradition where you get your "elves don't like cold iron" tradition, since putting a pin in the cradle is a way to keep the baby from getting kidnapped.) You've got your Irish and Welsh folklore, the Sidhe stuff and the Tuatha de Danann, where the proto-elves are either mysterious, beautiful, and virtually impossible for humans to quite understand, or horrifying disfigured monsters, who are also impossible to grok. The modern conception of elves obviously owes a great deal to Tolkien, where they're (mostly) portrayed as a bit aloof from human affairs, largely as a consequence of living more or less forever and having already experienced more or less everything, and there's not a lot more reason for them to get attached to us than there is for us to get attached to the flower we picked from the garden. And even there, it's not as though Tolkien is completely consistent. His conception of what elves were clearly changed as he wrote. And there's certainly plenty of exceptions to the rule and plenty of instances of his elves being vengeful, spiteful, or even petty. But the general tone seems to make these instances remarkable, as though they're a bit unusual. It's a big deal when Feanor blows his top, swears ten flavors of dread oaths, kills the everyone who stands in his way, friend and foe alike, and more or less literally burns his bridges. (And this loss of control is sort of the original sin for which he and all his offspring must pay the ultimate price.) They get angry. They fall in love. But only in the greatest epics that bards are still telling thousands of years later. Feanor gets angry and legendarily terrible things happen. Luthien falls in love and epically wonderful things happen. But as the story continues the elves seem to become more and more aloof, especially the oldest and most powerful characters.

Maybe I'm making too much of it. And again, it's more that elves are portrayed as "strange and otherworldly" rather than emotionless. And dwarves, elves, goblins, trolls, bugbears, and so forth are all sort of mixed up in folk tales anyway, not quite lining up with modern conceptions. And even if you take Spock to be a demon and paint him red and give him a tail, well, demons are derived from some of the same sorts of folk tales as elves and goblins anyway. The church rather deliberately took many old gods and folk tales and cast them as the baddies in new stories to encourage people to come to their shiny new churches instead of the old temples or hilltops. And however else you want to carve it up, it does seem pretty clear that "aliens" serve pretty much the same roles in modern stories, and indeed folk tales, as "elves" and "fairies" served in older ones. (Heck, they even kidnap you, just like the elves did.) They serve as ways for us to talk about how we see "others." They can be a frightful menace or an enlightened deus-ex-machina. (Elf-ex-machina?)

But I'm way off topic. Sorry. It's late and I can't keep my mouth shut.
 
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