“Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder.
Elves are marvellous. They cause marvels.
Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies.
Elves are glamorous. They project glamour.
Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment.
Elves are terrific. They beget terror.
The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.
No one ever said elves are nice.
Elves are bad.”
I wouldn’t call Sir Terry Pratchett all that new, and his interpretation of elves and the fay in general comes from myths and legends that predate Tolkien as well as Tolkien himself.
Pratchett isn’t new, but the popularity of that quote is.
The new wave of fae is very much disconnected from old myths.
Ummm… We traded that quote on the internet back when I was in highschool. For reference that was 1993-1996. I finished the required credits in 3 years. I’m pretty sure that the fact that a few hundred of us pulled that off in Indiana caused the state to revamp their required courses after we all graduated a year early.
I’m pretty certain this is just a result of you personally not having run into it until recently. There’s nothing new about elven superiority. Hell, WH40K made the Space Elves so damn horny and technologically and psychically advanced that they literally broke the universe, and that shit is also from the 1970s.
