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umbbe — Elf design
Published: 2012-08-28 21:47:24 +0000 UTC; Views: 931; Favourites: 15; Downloads: 11
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After an article on Cracked about monkeys, I tried to design the elves a bit more.Wanted the female to be a bit cuddlier while not making them too submissive. Of course the differences are very small - small enough for me to fail at portraying them later.
Anyway, I think I said this before in some artwork, but the males are flamboyant and submissive to the females, which makes it very easy for humans to control their elven thralls.
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Comments: 3
They look ridiculously cuddly and harmless! If these are the same elves as in the other pic, then boy do they pull off a disguise well! Makes me think they feel they're just toying with humans and could at any moment give up the game and crush them with thier epic powers, regardless of whether that is actually true.
Original fairy stories tended to play up that sort of relationship, where the fey were superpowerful, egotistical and often only complied with humans for the sake of thier entertainment, yet thier weakness was this very same twisted mind that could be easily manipulated by a human who knew what they were doing. For example if you pretended to boil water in an eggshell and other unusual things then a changeling would be flabbergasted by a human not behaving how they'd expected, and give up thier disguise because they couldn't help exclaiming "I'm ten hundred years old and I've never seen that!" (and thus dispel themselves back to the land of the faeries, since that was just how thier magic worked)
That seems very similar to the idea of humans controlling elves by playing on thier natural mating behaviors, and it could totally work even if elves were way more fearsome than they look.. it gives a funny mental image of an elf being all "I'm the one in control!" while a human leads them on a merry chase and takes advantage of thier magic while giving nothing in return.
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Actually these elves are a different dimension's elves, where they are more innocent and tribaly. The brightly colored ones are tamed elves gone feral, the black ones are derived from the original wild elf that has since become extinct. They are also related to the trolls and manticores I have in my gallery if you are interested. 
Those feelings are actually very cool for the supernatural-world elves, since they are really terrifyingly strong. One of the elf characters I had was able to illusion-magic his containment cell into a livingroom/office and managed to convince several experienced supernatural policemen (yes) into believing he is a therapist and they were coming to a therapy session. And this he did without a speck of dust (basically elf dandruff that they use for their good spells. Gross but efficient.) Supernaturalworld elves are ultra-scientific, they try to do experiments with everything. Changelings for them are a social experiment in the mechanics of nature vs nurture, among other things. Aloof bastards. They hate feeling powerless and out of control, so threatening to isolate an elf is an effective way to get information out of them.
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I see! Haha I just dived into your gallery without trying to read up and figure out which deviations were connected via stories XD I'd better take a closer look in the morning when I'm more awake, this is fascinating and I'm so jealous of your ability to invent amazing fictional animals. I'm still at the 'can only draw existing things with stuff stuck on' stage of worldbuilding XD
I definately like the idea of domesticated and non-domesticated versions of your creatures, which provide a whole new viewpoint on them! I sorta wanna break out into maniacal laughter and yell "OH HOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN" 
That is AMAZING! I would love to see stories about these guys! You really captured the essence of that otherworldly, clinical self-centered nature. How they're sociopathic and can't understand humans, but don't even apply the most basic empathy to them, instead seeing them as merely some sort of mystery phenomena or game that they have to solve. They seem like they can understand things humans do and how society is set up, etc (to the degree they can mimic a therapist office) but they simply can't understand humans themselves, or find themselves able to care about them. It must be like if you sincerely believed that nothing in the world was caused by a sentient being unless you did it- like everything in existance was just some giant game that can be broken down and figured out and predicted. Humans don't do things because they choose to do them, they do things because that is how the game works. "A man shaves his face because.. a man shaves his face. It is what men must do. If the man shaves his face, somehow it has a knock-on effect and the female in the house will kiss his chin and then later mate with him. I wonder what would happen if you put two shaven men together with the female? Love? Sexual attraction? No, humans don't feel that, that's nonsense. Humans do not FEEL. It is just in the rules that certain things cause other things!"
Phew, I'm rambling a little XD Lol but in summary you have a much better grasp on elves than I could ever hope for. I've always felt that because I'm celtic I have to provide some great story that can show people how creepy the fey were in our local myths. Except I'm a really empathic person so i can't understand them. Well.. I can understand them, but I can't imagine what it must be like to think that way so i could never write dialogue for them or predict what they'd do, even though I get the gist and totally understand how it's an amazing plot concept.
Alas I am doomed to just gravitate towards totally foreign myths as my faves instead and think up plots for those XD So I'm glad I found someone with such an amazingly similar concept of elves, pulled off in such an epic way!!
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