Christmas Elves vs. Fantasy Elves

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 25, 2018

Filed under: Random 41 comments

It’s Christmas! What are you doing on my blog? Why don’t you go watch that one Christmas movie you love? Or eat some food? No? Socialize a bit maybe? You’ve done all that? That’s not your thing?

Okay then. I guess I can share this YouTube video with you. After all, the nature of snooty fantasy elves is a topic near and dear to my heart.


Link (YouTube)

Anyway. No matter what you do with the day, have a good one. Later in the week we’ll have another Andromeda post, and then next week we’ll be doing my end-of-year retrospective.

Merry Christmas, you big crazy internet.

 


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41 thoughts on “Christmas Elves vs. Fantasy Elves

  1. Jabberwok says:

    Christmas elves seem a lot like hobbits…

    1. Groboclown says:

      North pole elves are burrow elves I guess?

  2. Thomas says:

    Nadolig llawen!

    1. Paul Spooner says:

      A blwyddyn newydd hapus i chi a’ch un chi.

  3. Wiseman says:

    I was worried you wouldn’t get a comment for 12 hours, Shamus. That would be a travesty!

  4. Yerushalmi says:

    It’s Christmas! What are you doing on my blog?

    Still Jewish.

    1. Dreadjaws says:

      Me: still antisocial.

    2. Scampi says:

      Still curmudgeonly.

      1. eaglewingz says:

        Yeah, but curmudge is wasted without an audience.

        Merry Christmas all!

    3. psychicprogrammer says:

      It is currently tomorrow where I am.

      1. Droid says:

        You need a very … unconventional (time) frame of reference to make it even possible for this statement to become true.

        Unless you were sending this message from before the Big Bang, in which case I have a very important question for you: is there ice cream with dark matter flavour?

    4. Philadelphus says:

      Still in Australia, where it’s the day after Christmas today due to time zone shenanigans.

      1. Zaxares says:

        Same here. XD Happy Boxing Day!

    5. Ivellius says:

      Still a night owl and everyone else is worn out for the day.

      (Okay, this is much later than others.)

    6. DerJungerLudendorff says:

      Still having all the family stuff on the 25th.

  5. krellen says:

    Aww! You didn’t even wrap it!

  6. Tonich says:

    We ?ussians don’t have Christmas today, so we can do whatever we want! :)
    Ahem. What was I about to say? Oh right, Merry Christmas!

    1. Misamoto says:

      You mean we can go to work like every other day of the week :)?

      1. Tonich says:

        Umm… yes, yes, I guess that’s about right. :)

  7. Henson says:

    On another note…how come the plural of ‘dwarf’ has traditionally been ‘dwarfs’, but the plural of ‘elf’ has always been ‘elves’? We even have ‘elfin’ as an adjective, but somehow ‘elfs’ almost never shows up.

    1. Lino says:

      I’ve actually seen “dwarves” more often than “dwarfs”. But it is weird how I’ve also never seen “elfs”…

      1. Kathryn says:

        We have Tolkien to thank for “dwarves”. It was pretty universally “dwarfs” before that. I am not sure why…

        We had lunch and are relaxing for a bit before we start figuring out where all these new toys are going to go. I think some existing toys will be going bye-bye. Merry Christmas, happy holidays, and/or bah humbug to all :-)

        1. Erik says:

          Tolkein actually used “dwarves” as much easier than the *proper* Anglo-Saxon pluralization of the German root, which would have been “dwarrows”, which you can still see in the Dwarven name of Moria, the Dwarrowdelf. Dwarfs he regarded as an infantilization of the language. (He also drove “elves” instead of “elfs”.)

          That’s a linguist for you. Dwarves just sounds so much better, so it should be right. :)

          1. DerJungerLudendorff says:

            I for one propose we start calling them Dwarrows, because that sounds like a small bird and is hilarious.

        2. Soylent Dave says:

          ‘dwarfs’ is ‘multiple people with dwarfism’, which Tolkien explicitly wanted separate from his race of Dwarves.

          (and it’s probably good practice for anyone writing fantasy to do this, really – plus we get the happy convenience of elves and dwarves matching, which does sound much better than ‘elfs’ and ‘dwarfs’)

    2. Decius says:

      ‘Dorfs’ is becoming more common these days.

      1. BlueHorus says:

        Don’t forget that Aelfs are a thing now, as well…

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          I think you mean ALFs and it’s Melmacians, thank you very much.

      2. Droid says:

        I only ever saw ‘dorf’ on the Bay 12 Forums, where Urists of all nations unite.

  8. Paul Spooner says:

    Merry Christmas day! I’m with the inlaws, so have to keep this brief.

  9. ShivanHunter says:

    plot twist: Christmas elves were engineered by the same species that created the Remnant!

    1. BlueHorus says:

      You mean Cerberus, don’t you?

      1. ShivanHunter says:

        *smokes cigarette, ominously*

  10. Bubble181 says:

    Merry Christmas once more to all of good will.

  11. Mr. Wolf says:

    Christmas was hours ago. It’s now the awkward time where the whole world, having hyped up Christmas for weeks if not months, is working as quickly as possible to remove all evidence of it’s passing.

    1. Dave B. says:

      Most of the world, anyway. I’ve still got 10 days of feasting to do.

  12. Joe says:

    Y’know, there is a bridge between the two varities of elves. In the Hobbit, they sing the song O what are you doing . Strangely, that was cut out of the movie. It’s hard to imagine Elrond singing that, let alone Fëanor. But maybe Legolas, if he gets really drunk one night…

    1. AndrewCC says:

      I think I know why that was cut out of the movie.
      The differences between UK and US english are a source of endless merryment.

  13. Merry Christmas, you big crazy blogger/author/composer!

  14. Gargamel Le Noir says:

    Oh cool, we’re talking about College Humor! See the guy playing the high elf? His name is Brennan, and he’s the best comedian these days on College Humor (and they have a really good team right now). What you all need to do is check out Fantasy High, it’s a D&D game set in a kind of 1960 american town, but also in a D&D world, more specifically its high school. So you get the snooty neurotic preppy high elf wizard, the goblin Veronica Mars, or the super awkward barbarian orc who has been raised by gnomes who can’t exactly relate to his blood rage.
    The players are almost all College Humor comedians, and they’re very very good. Murph and Emily are actually D&D veteran and have their own, hilarious Dnd podcast that I also can’t recommend enough!

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