Tell me about elves

Elves are now commonly depicted with fairly sizable busts, user, especially on Veeky Forums.

I wasn't talking about the women

...

And you're acting like flipping genders will somehow change the response.

>big-breasted blonde
>not the small-breasted raven-long-haired lithe small girl that you want to protect
Holy shit, look at all that plebeian taste.

>Tell me what you understand elves to be, going purely by Veeky Forums memes and every single elf thread that preceded this one.
That request is bad and you should feel bad about having made it.

They are shaped, sir, like themselves, and they are as broad as they hath breadth. They are just so high as they are, and move with their own organs. They live by that which nourisheth them, and, the elements once out of them, they transmigrate.

No, I'm saying that when I look at an elf """male""" I'm much more likely to feel lust than envy ;^)

I'm angry
Angry about them

...

>Tell me about elves.
ABSOLUTELY INHUMAN

Are their tears wet?

You know, for a while now I've been wondering to myself what makes elves a more acceptable fantasy race than, say, catfolk. Even just outright cosplay-tier catgirls.

What's really the difference between a human with long ears and a human with some cat-like features? Or features of really anything else? Why is one considered the norm when the other gets trashed as anime or magical realm? You might say culture and background, but that can easily be copy-pasted to almost anything. Why do elves just get a free pass?

So having high standards that no one can meet leads to no one meeting your standards?

Holy shit, all these truth bombs. It's like Hiroshima and Nagasaki all over again.

Their tears are as wet as those of an elf.

I ran a setting where the elves where barbaric Proto-Gauls who used magic.

Other than that, elves are okay. I prefer how they're portrayed in Tolkien, but I don't feel strongly about them in any particular way. I also play Harlequin, which amuses me greatly.

Catgirls weren't in Tolkien and default D&D settings.

>Why do elves just get a free pass?
More prominent in modern Western culture. On the shoulders of the giants and all that.

>Tell me what you understand elves to be, going purely by Veeky Forums memes and every single elf thread that preceded this one.
The worst kind of elves.

>he's assdamaged because he isn't descended from a senator appointed by Romulus

>ever describing anyone as "lithe"

Lithe has implications that willowy doesn't, and supple is just a creepy word to use.

Actually, yeah, I am assdamaged, and I definitely would've preferred to be a direct descendant, but that is not really a problem.

Nobility is capable of devolving into low standards just as much as peasantry is.
It's just that the blue blood that flows through their veins gives them a casus not to.
Upholding high standards is your duty as a human being, user.

Because catgirls are stupid fetish bait you weeb. If you're asking this seriously, though, you're too far gone to recognize that.

How are muh super special, ultra attractive unbelievably intelligent and morally superior Elves any better?

You still buttered?

What setting are you talking about?

>descendant of the legendary Consul Marcus Valerius Corvus
>the trusted French Lord that rode with Richard The Lionhearted
>the last catholic Cardinal of Scotland prior to the reformation
>and some German pig farmer

Truly I am heir to all around me.

Elves as defined by Veeky Forums memes have become something I hate. I preferred the older depictions of elves before weebs ruined them.

>>and some German pig farmer
Okay, that got me good, you cheeky bastard.
Good job.

That's awesome, Chen!

Elves are sentient butts. Sometimes they are nice butts, but the fact that they are pleasing butts might make them arrogant.

Arrogant butts cause other species to have a stigma associated with said butts, which results in high impact sexual violence.

Also the C key on my keyboard is feeling a bit faulty, there must be some dust under it.

Because they're not kawaii uguu kitty cats.
Elves can be done like how you describe, but it's at least possible to do them seriously. Doing catgirls seriously is just jarring and makes their retarded nature stand out. A person with animal bits glued to them in such a nonsensical way is not going to be able to be as iconic as a person with merely different features.

I think lithe is more creepy than supple broham.

Pretty much your run of the mill fantasy setting. It's what we were discussing here. Why are elves as I described there allowed without a second thought but cat-eared humans not?

The only difference between humans and elves is the ears bullshit. In many settings there's too much HFY for Elves to possess the magical upper-hand for long. Not to mention the only way for humans and elves to co-exist is for elves them to be nerfed (dying race, lost knowledge, shit breeding, can't breed without humans etc) so hard that the only 'magical prowess', intelligence etc that they might have is pretty much only fluff. If that.

>Because they're not kawaii uguu kitty cats.
>but it's at least possible to do them seriously.
>Doing catgirls seriously is just jarring and makes their retarded nature stand out.

Can't tame the "cat" in the "catgirl".

You want catgirls done seriously?
Think Hotline Miami and its violent animalistic nature, only as if the masks were actual heads. Think that Caravan Palace music video.
Think basically any straight-up cat-furry race, and apply it to catgirls to a lesser extent.

Maybe they weren't, but they were still existant even in western culture. Take even Thunder Cats for example, they're there. It's dumb that just because something is more popular makes it better, and it's entirely reasonable, but it still just always feels like a let down when you can't make anything that isn't dwarves/elves without someone trying to call you out.

user, if you're going to point out certain instances, you can at least even look at the op image.

> It's dumb that just because something is more popular makes it better
It's not because it's more popular, it's because it's more "authentic", for the lack of the better word to describe it.
Tolkien defined the staple races in western pseudo-medieval fantasy. So now every step sideways from the norm (especially where humanoids are involved) is considered to be "weeb shit".

Veeky Forums elves are basically the worst traits of all elvs across the settings condensed into one contradictory creature. They exist to prove that Veeky Forums's favorite race of the week is the best and will surely wipe out/rape/prove to be superior to what essentially is a strawman thrown to the floor and dragged through mud. Veeky Forums elf's purpose in life is a singular thing - to keep average fa/tg/uy's fragile ego afloat, to make him look at them and think "at least i'm not as bad as these imaginary stereotypes."

So, in short, they're to Veeky Forums as what non-white people are to /pol/ - someone to smugly shitpost about.

The elves you described are pretty much only from Tolkien, maybe Eldar. Warhammer fantasy elves are pretty strong, but no so all-powerful as you seem to think. In so many other settings in which elves are playable they are not really better than humans, excel at some things and are worse at other.

Don't be suprised if you see your own post brought up in similar threads like this in the future. Because you said it well.

>Doing catgirls seriously is just jarring and makes their retarded nature stand out

You could just told from the beginning you're an unimaginative faggot, fampai. Seriously, i can name several works where they were done fine from get-go and several more if i think of it a bit.

This is kind of oversimplification. You can't make an entire race's shtick to be "ultraviolence". Or, rather, it only fits early stages of society. Mine ended up as a mixture of imperial china and generic balkan country - a bunch of crafty, violent people held in place by an extremely rigid government (as sort of overcompensation for their traits).
They sure as hell weren't stereotypical "kawaii uguu".

Dumb counter meme that only makes sense in a Hollywood High School movie.

>ultraviolence
It's not "ultraviolence", dummy, it's "hair-trigger temper". And, yes, I can.

Elves are the pretentious and arrogant popular kids in High School, PETA-loving hippies who swear they're "connected with nature" more than anyone, the local incredibly cock hungry and willing sex slave, or all of these at once.
Also, they're always either perfect specimens of the aryan race barring their knife-ears or chocolate-skinned BDSM lovers.

This.

>How are muh super special, ultra attractive unbelievably intelligent and morally superior Elves any better?
Because the whole point of Teh Original elves was that despite being super special, ultra attractive unbelievably intelligent and morally superior, they were ultimately GINORMOUS DOUCHES who are usually doomed to gloriously fuck up despite their awesomeness until they literally die of cringe, butthurt and sadness. That's something at least.

Meanwhile catgirls fail to provide anything outside of dem lewds. "Ok, so I just fapped. So what's the point of these shits being here again?"

Anything done with anime-style girls with cat ears and a tail glued to them is done better with khajiit-style furries.
The only exception I can think of is if they're genetically modified humans but that's still pretty out there and dumb.

>Seriously, i can name several works where they were done fine from get-go and several more if i think of it a bit.
Please provide.

The elves of Veeky Forums are an unholy mixture of japanese pornography and headcannon. The headcannon can make the difference between them being stuck-up assholes that never do anything right and are sub-humans for the self-insert character to hate/kill/rape. Or boring, one-dimensional waifus that only lust for human dicks.

So they are everything that elves outside of Veeky Forums aren't.

canon *CANON

Yes, sorry. Will not happen again.

Elves are fucking faggots, quasi-immortal classicist shitbags who constantly fuck anything up that promises any sort of substantial improvement over the status quo, under the guise of "maintaining the natural order", but actually because they're deathly afraid of actually having to work to maintain equity with other civilizations. Elves are the force that resists fantasy settings becoming scifi.

Thank you! I've been struggling to figure out exactly what my problem was with catgirls and now I know. There's nothing inherently wrong with them; there's just no good reason to have them outside an ERP campaign. The only advantage to weeb-style catfolk is that they're more fappable (to normal people, anyway). If you wanted a serious catfolk race, you'd do them khajit-style, like you said. If you didn't want to make them cat-like, you wouldn't give them recognizably feline features. Catgirls only exist to be kawaii waifus

>Tell me what you understand elves to be, going purely by Veeky Forums memes and every single elf thread that preceded this one.

Isn't it obvious?

Veeky Forums is the elves.

I wonder what this setting is.

All of them

So it's headcanon as always. Fantastic.

The exact same thing could be said of elves and making them fappable by having them be svelte humans with pointy ears.

Read the OP you retard

You made it impossible to answer you you abominable catamite.

>The only advantage to weeb-style catfolk is that they're more fappable (to normal people, anyway). If you wanted a serious catfolk race, you'd do them khajit-style, like you said. If you didn't want to make them cat-like, you wouldn't give them recognizably feline features. Catgirls only exist to be kawaii waifus
Truer words were never said.

No, because svelte humans with pointy ears can exist seriously too. There are plenty of real svelte humans and pointy ears isn't a huge difference. Elves are not designed with the purpose of being fap bait. It's really not the same.

That's something I barely read on this board. Maybe that they are supposed to be primitive, but not actively halting technological progress for other races.

Eh, i disagree. There's no real advantage of one over the other other than aesthetic you like. Mine are the race closest to humans, so it makes sense for them to be human-like.

The examples are mostly japanese, but in a large portion of RPGs there's at least one or two well-done beastman character. Mel and Jessica from Lunar, Nikki from mana khemia, don't get me even started on various Breath of Fire games (although those are a bit furrier, but still distinctly human-like).
Final Fantasy 11 and 14 did pretty well, they treat all races equally seriously.
Western example is a bit of cop-out, but humanlike Khajit.
Ctarl-Ctarl. They, after all, were successfully fighting with humans in galactic war, and were competent (if hammy and short-tempered).
Terra Battle's beastfolk were pretty great, more of big cat/monkey hybrid, but they had a variety of characters, including pic related, who doesn't look like "traditional animu catgirls".
Obvious mention of FARA AMBLAM.

I own them as slaves, that's really all. I don't give a fuck about where they came from, who they were. They work for me now and if you don't work you die slowly infront of the others.

Kind of. Elves were often sexual in nature in mythology. Either as a dangerous seductress or more of the classic kidnap and rape combo.

>take elf
>instead of arbitrarily saying they have pointy ears, say they arbitrarily have cat/dog/fox/squirrel/pine marten/rabbit ears and tail instead

Is this so bad?

The same could be said of just about anything Japan gets ahold of.

Hahaha this shortear. That's cute. You just carry on thinking that for your pathetic few remaining decades.

You're asking what the prototypical elf based on Veeky Forums memes is? The Veeky Forums meme Elf?

That is a very silly question. Let's have a go.

Physically, I guess that would make them basically extremely fit human-like appearance, with the only real differences being slightly idealized lithe body figure and aberrantly long tips on their otherwise human ears. Then of course is their longevity, which ranges from Long to Holy Shit That's Long depending on who you ask.

Culturally and psychologically, that would make them supremely arrogant, but not actually more talented than other races. Generally their culture is summed up as elitist-hippie bullshit. They are usually more magical than whatever the human baseline is. And of course, the Veeky Forums staple: slutty. They're often also characterized as letting their vanity or whimsy overcome their logic.

In the end, despite having 8-20x the lifespan of anything else, it is a running joke that elves accomplish almost nothing with their long lives, and thus in almost every RPG system I can think of only barely reach normal human competence with years of effort.

Still always gonna be a slave to a short-ear mate, the others will laugh. I've won.

Are these beatfolk still nimble and agile? Good at archery or magic? In tune witth nature or anything like this? Ancient culture? How is their lifespan?

Elves are not only pointy ears like you seem to think.

The real problem is all those literally terabytes of khajit/kilrathi/generic furry catpeople porn that kinda undermine your argument.

Seriously, people will fap to anything remotely attractive. Catpeople, no matter what kind of, have attractive features (in fact, they're essentially the same as elves'). It's not what race is, it's what you do with it. And people generally are willing to take race seriously if it's presented seriously. Elves just had one hell of a head start (arguably with one hell of a setback that was all the trashy fantasy novels).

________________ Depends on the setting. _________________

M8, you're making me agree with touhoufag/colette/weebposter. Please stop, i don't want this future.
>Are these beatfolk still nimble and agile?
Yup.
>Good at archery or magic?
Yes, although many of them prefer hand-to-hand combat.
>In tune witth nature or anything like this?
Yep.
>Ancient culture?
Depends. Most are tribal or nomadic, but with lodsa shamans.
>How is their lifespan?
All right, i'll give it to you, this is one difference.
Still, 4 out of 5 isn't bad. And in general they fulfill the same niche - people halfway between primal and civilized.

You also forgot that they are depicted as magical, yet their magic never actually matters. Once near the human they lose magic and all redeemable traits, becoming an easy target for all sorts of abuse.
Scientists studying this phenomena has dubbed it "the HFY radius", and there are theories that it applies to other races too.

>The real problem is all those literally terabytes of khajit/kilrathi/generic furry catpeople porn that kinda undermine your argument.
>more fappable (to normal people, anyway)
Did you even read my post? I know full well people jerk it to catpeople. My point was that they have a reason to exist in a setting other than to be fapped to, which you can't say about catgirls/boys. Again, if you were serious about having a race of sentient cats, you'd make them look like bipedal, humanoid cats. If you didn't want them to be cats, you wouldn't give them cat-like features.

Your usuall fantasy elves:
Long lifespan (like, "really" long...)
high dexterity, agility and strenght
usually the best magic users
each member are fucking beautiful (even the males...)
snopish and highheaded
archrival of dwarves
usually splitted into high-, dark- and woodelves
have a low fertility rate

That's the most generic things I came up with...

>The examples are mostly japanese
Ew.

>Final Fantasy 11 and 14
Are shit.

>Western example is a bit of cop-out, but humanlike Khajit.
I'll give you that.

>Ctarl-Ctarl
Ew.

>Terra Battle's beastfolk
Ew.

>Obvious mention of FARA AMBLAM
Ew^2

Trouble is - Khajit are the only example where the beastlike qualities of the race add something beside arbitrary difference from baseline humans and fetish factor.

They're entities used to bait this board.

They make good fapbait

>My point was that they have a reason to exist in a setting other than to be fapped to, which you can't say about catgirls/boys.
As someone who ran several campaigns, two of them with people who do not like weebstuff, without any complaints, i absolutely fucking can and you cannot do anything about it.
There's no absolute arbiters of setting seriousness, It all comes down to author/GM.
I agree, though, that in 80-90% of cases catpeople are done terribly, but you can say the same about everything.

>beside arbitrary difference
In the examples you so conveniently dismissed there are two societies with wildly different social dynamic from humans, two races of natural shapeshifters, one of which is on wholly different physical level from humans even in baseline form and a race of nature-attuned people who successfully adapted to post-apocalyptic cyberpunk clusterfuck.

But then again, you said "ew", so i am utterly and completely defeated, and, by old Veeky Forums custom should commit a ritual suicide by playing a session of FATAL. Goodbye, cruel world.

>As someone who ran several campaigns, two of them with people who do not like weebstuff, without any complaints
A N E C D O T I C E V I D E N C E

> i absolutely fucking can and you cannot do anything about it
Just because people didn't complain doesn't mean that cat-ness of people served any purpose in the setting.

>In the examples you so conveniently dismissed there are two societies with wildly different social dynamic from humans, two races of natural shapeshifters, one of which is on wholly different physical level from humans even in baseline form and a race of nature-attuned people who successfully adapted to post-apocalyptic cyberpunk clusterfuck.
They are all still quirky humans, whose cultural differences could be perfectly implemented without the animalistic differences in physiology.

>But then again, you said "ew", so i am utterly and completely defeated
You were defeated when you started listing unimaginative weeb shite as legit examples.

Is you last name sweinsteiger?

Anecdotic evidence is still evidence. They CAN be done good.

>Just because people didn't complain doesn't mean that cat-ness of people served any purpose in the setting.
It did, but i'm not gonna write two whole posts of setting explanation to just have it dismissed.

And i'm gonna be a cunt here and mention that in most RPG settings, elf-ness or dorf-ness of people does not actually serve any purpose too, besides a few stat points and a stereotype or two.

>japan sexualizes everything
>elves can also be depthless fapbait
>theyre the same!

This keeps popping up but it's obfuscating the main point. Sure, at their lowest the races can be the same, but it's when done in a serious context that catpeople fall. There is no good reason for humans with furry cat ears and cat tails to be a thing. Elves can be a thing. Humanoid cat races can be a thing. Anime style "staple cat parts to it" being done seriously just highlights how trashy the idea is.
You may have had them be serious, but they're just a worse option than khajiit type people because they're so nonsensical and inherently fap bait by being kept so humanoid with just the fuzzy ears and shit.

>not roundear

Shortear only applies to anime elves

>A N E C D O T I C E V I D E N C E
Oh, come on. I'm the guy that user was replying to and even I think that's unfair. His point that it's not impossible to use them seriously was legitimate, even if I still contend that doing so is pointless