On dark elves in fantasy
Creative WritingI think part of the reason this joke misses the mark is people don't know the latter category (I definitely don't) and thus the context for the attempt at satire is lost, making them seem serious
I think a joke being targeted at a particular demographic (someone knowledgeable in both trends in fantasy/isekai anime and western nerd culture) being found by people outside of that demographic does not mean the joke has failed.
I'm sorry to report, but I have encountered people who genuinely do believe in the idea that certain races in fantasy anime -- it's not always dark elves, but they have been included -- are only ever used as kink bait. It's something they've noticed and dislike, because characters who exist solely as kink bait are common place at the bottom of the barrel of fantasy anime. So yes, I regret to inform you, some people do genuinely hold that opinion. And yes, I have some awful friend groups. Pray for my soul. I don't care to which god.
a dangerous game to play on the Pissing On The Poor website.
There are people on this website who think they're being serious.
...pissing on the poor?
That was super obvious, but him going "I stole it from K6BD" is what really tipped it for me because I know enough about K6BD to know they took a lot of stuff from the michael kirkbride lore of Morrowind
When I think of dark elves I immediately think of the Drow and boy do they put the dark in their name.
I can’t tell how many layers of irony this post is under
I think this post is under 4 layers of irony instead of 5 so unfortunately I'll give this post a downvote
The joke is that these are the Drow (Forgotten Realms) and the Dunmer (Elder Scrolls), two of the most popular takes on dark elves.
When you've only ever consumed japanese isekai media and suddenly the played straight version in western media becomes a brilliant trope subversion
Pretty sure this is just a joke they're making
Yeah, this post is a weird irony-wimy-ball
...what fantasy books are you reading where the main character has a "slave harem"
Yeah this feels a bit like a “my brother in Christ you are the one reading the shonen” moment.
Isekai manga.
Broke: Isekai manga protagonist in a fantasy setting where he's boring and has a harem that he's too stupid/impotent/incompetent to even fuck.
Woke: Self Insert fanfic protagonist in a fantasy setting, hellbent on introducing the three-field system, steam power, guns, printing press and other things leading to industrial revolution and breaking out of the Medieval Stasis, hoping that he might get to live to tech level reaching modern level so that he can experience the joy of shitposting on the Internet at least once again before dying.
You kinda just described Log Horizon with that second one.
Well, except for the fact that there's 30.000 players sucked into the game, and they can all do stuff that wasn't intended, like making steam engines, so the industrial revolution is underway within weeks.
They even manage to reactivate long-distance communication for a few minutes before the whole thing overloads.
Ascendance of a Bookworm
OP is mad he's seeing clowns and keeps going to the circus
Like more'n half of a specific type of fantasy story from Japan.
That second dark elf description is just drow from d&d
Charitably, I assume that was supposed to be the joke here, and it just really didn’t land
Given that the second descriptor is just TES Dunmer, and they say they stole "reach heaven through violence" from k6bd (a quote that k6bd stole from morrowind) that was definitely supposed to be the joke
It don't think it was supposed to land I think the real joke is the confused people going "but those are dark elves"
And the third is just Morrowind.
Holy shit kill six billion demons reference
K6BD MENTIONED!!!! WHAT THE FUCK IS A HAPPY PROTAGONIST!!! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🫡🫡🫡🫡
I don't think I've ever seen brown skinned dark elves. Someone help me out? Aren't they almost always blueish/purplish or literally night black/ash grey?
Also, more people should play Spire: the City must Fall, they have the coolest Drow.
The reference to brown skin is how Anime tends to depict Dark Elves.
In western media, yes, but brown skinned dark elves show up in eastern media
Really old d&d stuff and manga are where the brown skinned dark elves pop up most
This is obviously a reference to drow and dunmer, but I don't understand what the intended point is at all.
bro just gave a description of dnd drow and then said no one does that wtf
Followed by TES dunmer.
Yes. That's the joke.
This is definitely a case of "I only drink Pepsi and complain there's no other drink flavors."
Uh...no? The joke is that they complain about anime/manga/light novel portrayals of dark elves as if that's all anyone does with them and then gives the description of D&D's drow and Elder Scroll's dunmer
Tumblr user discovers Heroes of Might & Magic V
Man I gotta read the rest of the Drizz’t books
This post is incredibly confusing. Like, obviously it's a joke. The person who made this post does not actually believe everything in it (The "hypothetical" 2 dark elf societies they describe are just the dark elves from DnD and Elder Scrolls)
But like, what's the joke? Is it satirizing people who actually think this? Because I've never seen "People are boring about dark elves" as a complaint before.
To me ot reads like a parody of posts where poeple complain about certain tropes then media then ask why people don't just do it this other way, and their post shows their exposure to that trope is exclusively from a very narrow set of works cause what they want already exists in other works they clearly aren't aware of.
Is is satirising more generally people having arguments with themselves, and then proving themself wrong in their own argument? Am I reading to much into this? This post will haunt me for a while, I really wonder what the point was.
To be fair to whoever made this post, tumblr posts don't need a point. Is this post trying to be a post without a point? But that would be a point right? Idfk dude, this one confuses me.
I've always wanted to see a rendition of dark elves where the "dark" is figurative and they're just as pasty white or even whiter than regular elves and the dark actually refers to them being ultra deplorable evil fiends, like dark eldar but high fantasy
So you mean the Druchii?
"Like Dark Eldar but high fantasy"
so...Warhammer Fantasy Dark Elves? The guys Dark Eldar were a space adaptation of?
yeah underground cave dwelling creatures who never see sunlight should be white as fuck. exhibit a scandianavians and russians exhibit b actual cave animals
Like the Falmer?
Weren't they poisoned, blinded, borderline-gene-spliced, and made into the ones we now know by the dwemer?
Like, in the Dawnguard DLC, we see a falmer vampire, who turned before his race was driven underground, and has survived all this time, and he's just some dude. Granted, he's a vampire, and therefore has some vaguely-defined evil goal that means you have to kill him, but he feels like you could talk him out of his plans.
Isn't the Falmer vampire's non-vampire brother also in that quest
Yeah.
Tolkien's dark elves look identical to high elves and also aren't any more evil, the name refers to the fact that they never travelled to Valinor and thus never saw the light of the Two Trees.
I had a variation on dark elves once where it was a matter of religious differences rather than ethnic or "racial" ones. Basically one of the early elvish religions had elvish supremacism as its primary tenet due to the typical longer lifespan/"ethereal beauty"/greater magical affinity traits, but a religious schism occurred between those who interpreted it as meaning "we should enslave/exterminate/segregate non-elves" and those who interpreted it as "we should force the assimilation of non-elves as a means of raising them to elvish status", with the latter being branded as "dark elves" by the former due to living and proselytizing primarily among underground-dwelling dwarvish communities
idk if you intended this or not, but if you didn't this kind of works as a reference to the IRL origin of the term "dark elves"; In Norse mythology, the svartalfar ("black elves") were probably just dwarfs under another name.
Yeah that was intentional
So like in Warhammer and Dragonbane?
That's what they are in my Dungeon Fantasy world. They live in caves, of course they're not going to have any colour in their skin!
Arcanum too. Dark elves are just elves that are jerks.
no clue how OOP missed 40k dark eldar while writing this post
How dare OOP piss on the poor
I'm confident this is satire but am not nearly deep enough in the Dark Elf Fandom to interact with it beyond that.
I think they are knyx.
Regardless I would like to join the cult of the spider goddess
Shits on fetish
Describes their own fetish to replace
Alternate universe where OPs suggestion isn't already the standard portrayal of dark elves in media
Piss on poor people, NOW!
Forgotten Realms drow suck. Keith Baker my goat, fuck up the giant slavers in the name of all elfkind
I love having unambiguously evil factions in my settings, for all the guilt-free murderhobo opportunities they provide!
I rather prefer my players to think about who and why they're killing and then come to the conclusion "it is morally correct to end the lives of this throng of puritans trying to murder innocent shifters."
The elder scrolls
I wonder if people would classify Kaldorei as Dark elves. Even though they are depicted as Wood elves. Their complexion is more Dark elf.
But warcraft elves are weird to compare to the Mer of elderscrolls or the elves of the forgotten realms. Or even Warhammer.
They were made to be their own thing. The closest Warcraft equivalent to dark elves are the Nightborne.
The popularization of isekai anime and its consequences etc etc
Speak, outlander!
'i admit i stole this from kill sex billion demons.'
no you fucking didn't that's from morrowind.
I hope the person who wrote this finds dragon prince
They are constantly wreathed in shadows, looking more like a cloud of black smoke than a human form. Their voice is a death rattle. Plants wither and die underfoot. A smell of brimstone and rotting meat surrounds them.
And they think humans are cute and fluffy. We are their cat-girls. They keep wanting to brush our hair and pet us.
If anyone is genuinely looking for a free fantasy story with dark elves depicted as op describes, I recommend A Practical Guide to Evil.
https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/table-of-contents/
The first dark elves description is definitely a experimental log of the lich reference, spider goddess, loich or something, matriarch femdoms with a tendency to backstab
What people read where elves can have brown skin? Average dudebro will die of hate if the elves are not porcelain white or at least some magical colour.
Japanese takes on western fantasy typically have "dark elves" as brown-skinned. The Mad Mage in Dungeon Meshi is a good current example.
Hilariously, you have accidentally picked the one example where this isnt true. Dungeon Meshi has no dark elf race as far as I know. "Dark elves" in the setting are just elves that use forbidden magic or are criminals, iirc, as opposed to a separate/subrace.
I am aware, but OP was asking about brown-skinned elves in general, which the Mad Mage is.
My Drow DnD character is lesbi9an version of Shaggy from Scooby Doo.
idk man try consuming fantasy media outside of ecchi and shitty light novels
They clearly do since they're referencing the drow and dunmer in the second half of the post. They're joking.
my apologies I'm very autistic and it wasn't a very funny joke
who cares. pick up a foot ball.
op ive seen hummingbirds flap their wings slower than you reported me to reddit care resources go outside seriously
Warhammer's dark elves in fantasy/ dark eldar in 40k
This just reads like a guy who only consumes isekais complaining about garbage isekai tropes
the wraith from stargate atlantis
I'm pretty sure OOP is being self-aware here, which is a dangerous game to play on the Pissing On The Poor website. But I think the perfect descriptions of Elder Scrolls Dunmer and Forgotten Realms Drow are the keys to realizing OP's intent to make satire. I think the people they're actually criticizing are the people who genuinely believe that there are no interesting dark elves out there, the kind of guys who watch a few shitty Isekai Shonen and think it represents all of fantasy media.