Elf, Dwarf, and Dragon Cliches

Coop720 said:

Tolkien actually hated that impression of an elf so much he changed them for Middle-Earth haha

I have an interesting book of Tolkien essays that reveal some of his dislikes of fantasy and wanting to reform it.

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The problem is that is how the original elves were. Weyland the Smith is the most famous elf (other than Santa Claus.) Weyland Smith was captured and forced to make things; he butchered the sons of his capturer and raped the daughter. The capturer let him free but the capturer was forced to give up his kingdom. The kingdom then became Neorxnawang.

senka said:

Well, you could include some new ideas here and there.
But if you'd have-say-blue skinned winged creatures living on top of giant water lilys, and call them dwarves... well, you see the problem?

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I'd call them Na'vi with wings.

Dragons get such a bad wrap. All they are trying to do is preserve virgins from oversexed knights.

Cliches aren't bad in themselves. They're just bad when they don't work. If used correctly, they're just a form of common ground that the reader can easily identify. If you realise you are skating on thin ice, you should just pay attention more eagerly and you will know what parts you should make interesting or unique.

You could say that putting elves or dwarves or dragons in stories is in itself a gigantic cliche. Yet, you see authors pull it off and give readers interesting tales and wonderful worlds.

I think the best thing you can do is to ask what the beings are doing in the stories. Personally, I arrived to the conclusion that in my stories, elves ended up being a reflection on humanity: humans in the stories represent what humanity is, while elves represent how humanity could very well be if things had turned out differently. Perhaps even how humanity ought to be. After that, it turned into an exercise of "let's not turn this into in-your-face symbolism and not potray them as some sort of übermenschen, because that's just rubbish".

In same vein, I had read a ton of Forgotten Realms novels and just thought I have no idea how to make 'dark elves' interesting - I just decided my world doesn't have dark elves as a separate elven subrace. There's good elves, there may even be bad elves every now and then. People have done the same sort of decisions earlier.

Feary Tale by Feist has a different uptake on elves. They're more wild in that book, passionate, sexual almost. The book harks back to folk stories about elves, back to a time when people were afraid of them and where newborns are at risk of being abducted or changed for one of their own. I loved that book.

Funny things about cliches is that they can be turned around. Much of what we encounter in our existence can be linked to one of these three races. If I say industry, I think of dwarves. If I say banking, I think of dragons. If I say sports, I think of elves. And so on.

I guess in the end, all we do when we think about these races, is project aspects of our own existence and psychology onto beings that will never be. Why? Perhaps to gain an better understanding of ourselves. But mostly just for the fun of it, I guess.

Hey now...Dragons sleep on piles of gold because it is a better conductor of the magic energy steeped within world. Nothing beats a good nights sleep and that refreshing taste of renewed magic on your tongue when you wake.

This doesn't make them bankers, its therapeutic.

This thread makes me think of Mary Gentle's Grunts.

If there is one maligned, misunderstood, and mischaracterised race in fantasy, it must be the orcs.

Maxinquaye said:

This thread makes me think of Mary Gentle's Grunts.

If there is one maligned, misunderstood, and mischaracterised race in fantasy, it must be the orcs.

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That sounds amazing!

Dragons seem to be portrayed as very intelligent, even godlike and near immortal beings with magic. Sometimes they hate humans, sometimes they help them and sometimes they are neutral, but they are ultra smart and powerful, if vain and greedy.

Or they are portrayed as cunning and powerful animals of some kind, but not fully intelligent.

For some reason, video games often portray dwarves as having Scottish accents. A bit odd, considering their importance in Norse mythology. Also, female dwarves were often nonexistent or invisible in classic fantasy, though this has changed somewhat in recent years.

Elves are sometimes, though not always, portrayed as being more matriarchal than humans, or at least as having a society where the women are "allowed" to do the same things as the males. Of course, fantasy has shifted a lot in recent years, and you see more flexibility in gender roles. Elves of both genders are generally portrayed as gracile, beautiful, slender and fair-skinned.

And of course, elves are generally portrayed as being closer to nature than humans and as being immortal or at least very long lived, and therefore very slow to breed (so their numbers recover slowly from wars). They tend to be portrayed as a rather sympathetic race in modern fantasy, even sometimes as a race that is being encroached on by the faster-breeding and short-sighted humans.

There are some interesting stories out there where elves are portrayed differently than this, though. The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson comes to mind. I think he drew more from the old-style notion of elves being soulless Fae creatures who were largely hostile towards humans.

Also, Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton co-write an interesting series of books (and darn, the name is eluding me now, because it's late and I'm too lazy to go look for them in my stuffed-to-the-gills library), where Elves were mostly evil beings who enslaved humans, while dragons were the wise, civilized race who helped right the wrongs.

Regrettably, elves, dwarves and dragons themselves have pretty much become clichés. Along with mages, magic swords, vampires and zombies.

Mine soul crieth out for something fresh and different in the fantasy genre.

caw

Roxxsmom said:

Dragons seem to be portrayed as very intelligent, even godlike and near immortal beings with magic. Sometimes they hate humans, sometimes they help them and sometimes they are neutral, but they are ultra smart and powerful, if vain and greedy.

Or they are portrayed as cunning and powerful animals of some kind, but not fully intelligent.

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Or as small, explosive creatures who live in swamps and fly around using their flame as a rocket.

There's always something that will get me about dragons. I just can't help it. It's a horrible addiction. Find something fresh to do with dragons. GRRM, for example, used some familiar tropes, but his dragons didn't really pan out (for the character who owned them or the community). How in the world do you keep something wild in check? How do you stop your dragons from eating children? He did a great "take" on dragons, imho.

Elves and dwarves I'm a bit reluctant to mess with simply because I come from old Gygax D&D stock and I'm always going to "go there" in my mind. But, D&D material comes from lore and Tolkien and other sources that have been heavily mined. That's not to say I don't like reading about elves and dwarves, but I've pretty much done so with Tolkien and Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms where it's super expected.

I do think elves and dwarves can be approached in a fresh way, but sometimes I feel it goes too over the top (Elfquest for example. Sorry, was just not a fan of this).

Roxxsmom said:

Also, Mercedes Lackey and Andre Norton co-write an interesting series of books (and darn, the name is eluding me now, because it's late and I'm too lazy to go look for them in my stuffed-to-the-gills library), where Elves were mostly evil beings who enslaved humans, while dragons were the wise, civilized race who helped right the wrongs.

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The Halfblood Chronicles.

It's one of my favorite series.

Thanks you. I enjoyed them too.

One little bit I liked was the touch with people getting airsick from dragonback. That's something that never seems to happen in stories where people ride dragons, but you know it would if large, flying creatures existed.

I think Pratchett did a great job about subverting the tropes, in that he made the elves unmitigatingly evil through the nature they have in the tropes. Their nature made them nightmare creatures that more sensible people, like Granny Weatherwax, warded against. The vain, the shallow, the short-thinkers fell under the sway of the glamour of the elves, and became slaves.

Chasing the Horizon said:

There are two different sets of dragon expectations. One is the pre-Pern dragons-as-enemies type. The other is the post-Pern dragons-as-our-friends type.

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I feel we should remember that dragons are not actually western creatures. They have a far older origin with eastern/Asian cultures, where they represent ancestry and wisdom.

I don't want to get into the sociological significance, but they became "evil" creatures only after western societies "borrowed" them.

I think of texts that include dragons, Beowulf, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Volsungs, the Rig Veda. And I think about cultures and sharing of stories and knowledge. I think the Westerners had more beef against snake-worshipping cults (read: Paganism), especially when Christianity picks up steam. It's easy to demonize a "demon," isn't it?

But, I'm not the expert! I'm just going off what I've read in mythology and religious texts (which is a little here and there). I always found the eastern dragons so fascinating, representing luck, rain, water, etc.. It makes me wonder what happened (or didn't happen) to keep dragons more benevolent in the east instead of the gold-hording rascals we see in western works.

Not that I mind the gold-hording type. Oh, Smaug (and Fafnir). How awesome they are.

DragonWing said:

I feel we should remember that dragons are not actually western creatures. They have a far older origin with eastern/Asian cultures, where they represent ancestry and wisdom.

I don't want to get into the sociological significance, but they became "evil" creatures only after western societies "borrowed" them.

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CrastersBabies said:

I think of texts that include dragons, Beowulf, the Epic of Gilgamesh, The Volsungs, the Rig Veda. And I think about cultures and sharing of stories and knowledge. I think the Westerners had more beef against snake-worshipping cults (read: Paganism), especially when Christianity picks up steam. It's easy to demonize a "demon," isn't it?

But, I'm not the expert! I'm just going off what I've read in mythology and religious texts (which is a little here and there). I always found the eastern dragons so fascinating, representing luck, rain, water, etc.. It makes me wonder what happened (or didn't happen) to keep dragons more benevolent in the east instead of the gold-hording rascals we see in western works.

Not that I mind the gold-hording type. Oh, Smaug (and Fafnir). How awesome they are.

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I can't get myself to read stories with evil dragons. I just love them too much.

LadyV said:

I can't get myself to read stories with evil dragons. I just love them too much.

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But the "evil" ones are great fun to read. Fafnir for the win!

Anduin is fun.

Dragons are often disappointing to me. Many times I come across them in fantasy works where not enough thought has been put into them.

Often they are given enough power to be the apex predator of the entire world, yet the author does not reflect this in the characterizations of anything beyond the bound of the dragon's lair.

There are so many dynamics to take into account that seldom are. How much food do they require? How did they evolve or why were they created?

Did you just take one and plop it down in your world as a plot device? (cough cough cough sorry...its smoggy here)

Are you using them as glorified horsies? Have you answered why they need or want a human or elf on their back when they have such big shiny teefs and armored hide, can outmatch any other beastie pound for pound AND have magic and human intelligence? Why the hell do they need a guy on their back with a stick? Answer the questions first.

Lots of disappointments for me as a reader. A dragon miss-handled can turn me off faster than a sparkly vampire.

Tezzirax said:

Often they are given enough power to be the apex predator of the entire world

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Exactly. I wound up reading a lot about mega-fauna to understand how I wanted to handle them, and I concluded that there simply couldn't be many. And they'd be an endangered species, with government protection, reserves, and so on. Then again, mine are largely lizards.

The only 'dragons' in my world are twenty-foot-long, barely sentient lizards which spit an acidic poison. They're extremely dangerous, fairly rare, and the human population tries to avoid open conflict with them. There's a (true) prophecy that if the damned things are ever wiped out, the world itself will rise up and destroy the human colonists.

DragonWing said:

I feel we should remember that dragons are not actually western creatures. They have a far older origin with eastern/Asian cultures, where they represent ancestry and wisdom.

I don't want to get into the sociological significance, but they became "evil" creatures only after western societies "borrowed" them.

Click to expand...

I remember reading somewhere that dragons in western mythology were supposed to symbolize the serpent before "the fall from Eden" when it was cursed to go upon its belly and all that. I know that eastern dragons are very different conceptually, more like elemental spirits. I didn't realize that western mythology borrowed dragons from the east, though. I'd assumed each set of cultures came up with their own version independently and the two very different types of creatures were assigned a common name due to their superficially similar nature as large, lizard-like creatures.

Well there are dragon-like creatures in South and Central America as well. I'm sure some of that might have come from older stories before people migrated all the way over there, but I think it's safe to say that cultures borrowed from each other and what they didn't borrow, they created based on the needs of the contextual culture.