Space Elves

If you're in a setting where there are other races nearly identical to humans than it's better than simply giving them green skin. If you want it to be a fantasy space setting then the justification is in the mixing of themes.

If you want a reason that isn't as dumb as that, humans are one of a number of races descended from an ancient spacefaring race, or have been in space long enough that there are sub-races formed from long lost colonies. The elves would just be one of those.

So either it's not a science fiction setting or you just want an easy marker (ears) for distinguishing another race similar to humans but you want them to still look mostly the same and differ mostly in culture and psychology and the person making the setting lacks as much imagination as you OP.

You mean Vulcans are stupid?

Does anyone have that screencap about a planet of space elves that were made by humans as happy servants? I've managed to lose it somehow.

>why is there a race of humans in a science fiction setting? If the humans were created, then what good justification would there be for such an action? And if the hamans are natural, then how did a race that evolved on an entirely different planet come to look so similar to elves?

I know which one you're talking about but I don't have it because it's fucking retarded.

Why won't you distinguish you state of art gene engineered, Ubermensch, space faring "race" with "mythological" features from popular culture?

It would make sense actually to give some distinguishing feature to a genetically engineered race that is obvious and easy to see without interfering with their facial features. So pointed ears.

If all the other physical differences are subtle then that could cause problems if there is ever any tension between them and normal humans or any time there is a question of if a person is or is not altered in any way that might give them an advantage if they tried to pass as a normal unaltered human. And if any enhancements are done as a fashionable thing, you would want people to know that you did it and you would want it to be obvious so you stand out. Any company providing such a service would want to advertise their product.

So, pointed ears.

I miss this series so much. I wish they'd continued the animu or rebooted it.

It would have solved a lot of the issues they had in bladrunner if they had just gave all the replicants pointy ears.

For my setting at least, near-Human template species (and their attendent biospheres) were all force-evolved as, going theory, a sort of colonization effort by some ur-humanoids from the distant past, using self-destructing seeded nanotech.
Humans are actually somewhat the oddballs for *not* having pointy ears. That's just a common humanoid trait.

I'd also add that the various alien species in the setting who aren't near-humans find this all extremely weird. Like, are they the oddballs here, or is it the weird bipedal mammals who are the anomaly?

Pretty much everyone in-setting knows that something is up. You've got half a dozen species who all evolved into a relatively similar near-human form (and have 100% complete evolutionary records of doing so). Clearly some shenanigans are afoot.

What justification is there for elves that isn't stupid? I love the trope but other than a cosmetic aesthetic applied to humans I can't find a good reason to have them.

Early Star Trek wanted less human aliens, but didn't have the budget for it.

I wish the novels would get translated.

I'd definitely read them if they did. The anime stopped at basically the worst place.

There's always gods and shit, but most sci-fi settings tend to be less heavy on the religion.

Space aliens are for rape too.

stop saying trope its not a real world.

evolutionary convergence is all the justification you need if you're going to be autistic and need justiifcation for your fictional story.

This. Elves in fiction are already just treated as prettier, loftier, more delicate humans, perfect for the result of gene engineering in a hyper advanced, peaceful society. They automatically justify themselves as just being the caste of human society that they tend to be racial substitutes for I'm fantasy.

Pointy ears for differentiation is logical. Though that being said, I think 90% of readers would get there and roll their eyes thinking "yeah ok you just wanted elves". . .and then continue having fun with the story/setting so long as it's good.

My scifi setting has a race of designer humans that basically fill the role of elves, though I haven't given them elf-ears because I'm a self-concious coward. Still trying to figure out some other effective but subtle method of differentiation

Traveller has darrians, which are not!-space elves.
Basically some aliens snatched humans off earth some X-thausand years ago and placed them there, now they are human like, are taller and mor slender due to the lower gravity of their new homeworld, pointy ears and have a rock hard erection FOR SCIENCE!

Genetic engineering, either by themselve or through others is probably your least bullshit-ty explanation for that.

>Still trying to figure out some other effective but subtle method of differentiation
All joints are smooth, no visible bone protrusions?

The place of origin of the species is unknown.

>stop saying trope its not a real world
Well I know it's not a world, but it is a real word.

You could make them taller and give them oddly colored glowing eyes or something like that, something that would convey genetic engineering and "otherness" while not being too obvious.

why is the space elf so huge?

>What justification is there for space elves
My fetish
>that isn't stupid?
There's your problem.

Crest of the Stars did it bes.t

I can't believe we're getting semi regular updates now.

She's a Zentraedi from the Macross series. They were originally just green giant humans, but were later given elf ears to further distinguish.

Essentially autonomous, self replicating biological war machines made by a precursor race. They had no culture of their own until they fought humans and learned about singing.

>justification
>"good reason to have them"

I'm sure I sound dense but I hear this a lot and I truly don't know what the fuck people are talking about. Fantasy is when you take the coolest shit you can come up with and tell stories about it. If you think space elves are cool then do it up. It's not something you justify, like how would you even justify it, what does that even mean here.

huh, might have to check it out then thanks mate.

Fuck space elves, give me more space giants.

Will do soon I get the chance.
Don't have any Giants.
Give space booty.

Why not both?

What about giant space elves?

Space giants are cool, but unless they incorporate heavy amounts of mechanical augmentations then they couldn't realistically exist. That's not really a problem unless you want them to exist as a result of evolution, you could always go the Macross route and have them be biologically engineered to be that way.

Oh hey, that's a character of mine. Neat

That's the route I take with them in my main setting. They're essentially giant designer morphs that were in vogue in one of the ancient civilizations, and someone decided to see if they could be made a viable species. Y'know, for art.

Hopefully it will pick up the pace.

Are we talking hard scifi or what?

We're favoring a more hard sci-fi justification for space elves.

Genesplicing fashion. Possibly in the past.

This. Whether it's for practical or cosmetic reasons, anything that's humanoid but with some different colour or physical attribute will only have genetic manipulation of baseline humans be the justification if it's a hard setting.

Crest of the Stars did it.

Why do people need to ruin the fun with fake. realism?

It's science fiction, not science fantasy, people expect there to be some justification (even a bullshit one) for why something that's not possible irl is possible in the setting.

.... I don't see the problem?

Only nerds who suck the fun out everything make Sci-fi "realistic". That's why it so hard to get people into it People want stories, not science class. Sci-FI use to make its own rule before it got so boring.

>real science can' foster stories

This is what SWsfags actually believe. I feel sorry for them.

They Don't.

Part of the problem is the Jules Verne effect. Most scifi from before the Apollo missions is terminally dated because they get basic things wrong. Hell, most scifi from before the 80s thoroughly whiffed on the impact of computing, thus derailing their assumptions about the future. Then you had a generation of pedantic Marxists show up and declare things like space babes and artificial gravity to be badwrongfun, giving us "hard scifi."

Real science kills scifi when you get people screeching about things like FTL.

As they should. I mean, you either have "real science" with some defined exceptions or not.
For the rest, you have space opera, soft scifi, what you call it.

And AG is severely stupid, as you don't need it.

>using marxist unironically

Well then.

>Created
People are obsessed in RL with Elves and what they represent. If we got a hold of (soft scifi) genetic alteration tech we could either become Elves ourselves or create a subservient subspecies based on our tales of them (or at least our fetishes of them).

>Natural
See:

Because there is none

>They're essentially giant designer morphs that were in vogue in one of the ancient civilizations, and someone decided to see if they could be made a viable species. Y'know, for art.
Are those the giant catlike people with the predatory instincts you're talking about?

Nope, giant blue space elves.

The even more giant, not blue predatory space elves as in your picture are from a different setting entirely. Namely the one I use mostly as containment for outrageous macroshit.

Wait, so you made both settings? Each with their giant space elves? Nice.

Yeah. They're not a whole lot alike beyond the aesthetic. But I do like the aesthetic, and it reinforces different things about each.

Been concepting a giant mecha setting for a while now, was going to be fuck huge but I decided to scale it down to just solar system scale. Still going to have space elves though, they are genetically modified humans using alien tech they found on massive McKendree Cylinders that arrived in the solar system in 2028 and moved into "position" at various lagrange points based on Jupiter and Earth by 2036.

They aren't giants though.

Posting best space elf

What a cute family!

Coworkers, at best.

After several setting rewrites, they had to get re-imagined. Last it stood, bottom is indentured to right, for indeterminate reasons. Right is indentured to ship captain left for infringing salvage rights reasons.

Don't ruin this for me, user.

I want to stare at her face.

She's adorable, isn't she? Not as adorable as Azalyn () imo

The girls are pure and good for breeding.

Ravioli ravioli, don't lewd the space elf lolis

Was hoping someone would post the quote

You hoped too much

>bottom is indentured to right, for indeterminate reasons
Because he's smol and she's beeg obviously, that's all the justification you need.

It pretty much is. Exaggerating damages and daring anyone to come start shit to repatriate the offenders is one way smaller clans get ahold of extra labor. Pick their battles with illegal salvagers and claimjumpers mostly. Easier to convince their home polity it's not worth the effort to go pick a fight over.

At some point in the future people start upgrading themselves with AI, but quickly find that the human body doesn't have space for the necessary hardware. Most of them are still somewhat attached to the human form and don't to go full spacewhale, so they decide to just upscale the whole thing. Sure it's inefficient, but the real work is all done by drones anyway.

...

Thanks.

Are both the space elves the same race? I'm just curious why one is purple and the other blue, and the purple one is shorter but they're both giant space elves.

>hen you had a generation of pedantic Marxists show up and declare things like space babes and artificial gravity to be badwrongfun, giving us "hard scifi."
It was the marxists that invented the spacebabes and other soft-scifi tropes
the science nerds that came up with sci-fi never went anywhere, the world changed around them, making them call it "hard scifi" to differentiate it from their space opera stories

Was this too obvious or why haven't Eldar been posted?

>Most of them are still somewhat attached to the human form and don't to go full spacewhale, so they decide to just upscale the whole thing.
That's a pretty strange decision. With the square-cube law and so on, and massive humanoid body would look and act alien in anything but a still image. Choosing that over something more pragmatic implies a pretty heavy cultural focus on cosmetics.

Because Warhammer 40k is strange and very much a "soft" sci-fi setting that has it's own unique spin on things.

So, what does OP or anyone want then? They are still pretty elf-like and you could just transport them into a different setting while dropping some 40k related things. If you guys just want humans with pointy ears you can just be lazy and slap some pointy ears on anything if you think that this is all what elves entail.

Wait wait when did this start being about giants?
Is this another stupid fetish thing being pushed into the discussion for no reason?

Any thread with a female elf in the OP is not serious.

because it's a thinly-veiled giantess thread, idiot

obviously giantesses, idiot

idiot

It's super soft sci do with alot of elements stripped right out of the most common fantasy tropes
Commonly known as science fantasy.

Depends on how giant your giant is, 12feet is fine and good.

So what you are saying is that you can only have space elves in soft-scifi, because I would agree with that. Everywhere else they ould just be humans with pointy ears.

Well get fuck off back to /d/ where you belong with this shit.

Poor choice of OP image. Zentradi aren't space elves in any way except the ears.

In one setting I've seen (heavily influenced by 40K, basically space holy crusaders believing in Jarl Jesus the Bloodletter vs space saracens, also infodemons) elves were biorobots created to serve humans.
In another !setting I've once made in Spore elves evolved naturally and were travelling the space on a "Stellar tree" - a spaceship made from an asteroid with a huge tree on top and its own ecosystem. Because why the fuck not?!
Elves don't need any more justification than any other fictional race to be in space. You don't like them being called elves? Then don't call them elves or even anything similar.
In yet another setting I've pleyed in an FRPG there were two species of space elves. I don't remember how the white elves were called but the soace !drow were called Lae. I played a battle robot built by them

>you can only have space elves in soft-scifi
Not necessarily, you can have many of the traits of Elves they just have to be genetically engineered.

You are only creating genetically engineered humans then.