#I want there to be more substance in the elfness than just pointy lobes

[papermonkeyism]

Been thinking of fantasy lately, as relating to the Arcanth setting, and I figured out what's been bugging me about elves.

I've been doing a bit of a dive into fantasy genre, with rereading some of the old Drizzt books, watching some Tolkien essays and watching Frieren with a friend of mine lately, I discovered I don't actually mind elves having long arse lifespans, contrary of what I've said before.

However I DO mind elves having long arse lifespans when it shows absolutely nowhere in said elves, and that what I ACTUALLY dislike is treating elves as something extra special while stripping them of the inherent Otherness of being elves and just make them look and act like just some normal guy who just happens to have pointy ears.

You get to either have awesome special magic elves who live long and act distinctly very Other, OR you get elves who are basically just some guy who lives next door, but looks weird and other, but like, if you're gonna give them endless lifespans they better act in a way that marks them that way, and in any case I will be very disappointed if your elves look like normal-humans-with-pointy-esrs especially if they act just like everyday people. Why would you even bother making them elves in the first place if they weren't in any way Other??

I am still in the process of figuring out what this means for Arcanth-setting elves specifically. I think I want to do my elves more down to earth, vibe-wise, and don't really want to go the route of making them feel ancient and ageless (I am more okay with them having long-ish lifespans than I did before, though still not to a degree of practically immortal, as that's not the feeling I want for these specific story characters I have in mind), so to get the amount of Otherness I crave to see in elves I'm probably going to be leaning more on the visuals and making them LOOK different. I did consider making basically all elves to be part human to get the effect (ageless ancestors, maybe some still roaming around, but most "modern" elves actually being mixed heritage), though I haven't yet made any specific decisions on what degree exactly.

No idea how I'm gonna get the effect in practice, but I think it's still something to know what I want! (This would be so much easier if hominids weren't my artistic weak point, but hey, you learn by doing! Never gonna get better at drawing unless I do the actual drawing part.)

Thank you for indulging my half asleep rambles here. Going to bed now.