Editing Elf (section)

===Post-Tolkien===
Like most ideas which Tolkien invented, or at least popularised, many authors tried putting their own spin on Elves in their own settings. Usually badly or at best, skubby.

When copying Elves from Tolkien, many writers kept the differences between Elves and the other races of the world but without explanation as to why those differences exist, making Elves seem irrational and alien in their settings at best and as complete Mary Sue assholes at worst.  Where Tolkien’s elves started from scratch and worked their way up (making many terrible mistakes along the way) and worked hard to teach younger species to avoid their own mistakes (which largely worked and earned much respect for the elves) and were just plain genuinely likable  people, Post-Tolkien elves are often successful just because they’re elves, frequently knowingly keep advice and wisdom away from other species specifically because they seem to enjoy seeing younger species fail, and are often deeply unlikable as people.  The closest that gets to Tolkien is actually Warcraft.  Sure, their elves are still prone to being selfish and don’t really advise anyone, but they have the rest of Tolkien good stuff and their reason for not sharing wisdom is that they’re terrified of other species fucking up as badly as they themselves did.  And not participating in world-ending wars is excusable for them because they lived on the other side of the world and so didn’t know those species even existed.

* In a setting without a Fëanor expy fucking everything up in their pre-human history, Elves often come off as douchebags for not wanting to join great wars against evil and leave all the heavy lifting to mankind while a few of their adventurers go against this to do the magic or shooting arrows. Likewise, any Elf attempts at isolationism and neutrality often comes from an unearned wisdom that is rarely ever explained. 
* Without literally being taught by Mother Nature itself how to create a civilization, the tree-hugging stuff is just a dull trope without justification. A race that has the lifespan to watch mountains crumble should be more inclined to build out of stone and steel far more than wood and leather, and without the handwaving of "Elves lack man's ambition" the logic fails. 
** Some settings have tried to give other explanations for the tree-hugging (their magic is tied to nature, they began as a simple hunter-gatherer culture, etc.), but whether or not these explanations are actually satisfying is a different story.
* Elves exceed the human lifespan in virtually every setting they are in, if not being outright immortal. There is often no obvious downside to this presented for the individual Elf, which is strange because even vampires are like "everyone I know and love is dead" (an argument can be made this would be due to the mind of the formerly human vampire working still the same emotionally as a human, but the problem with that logic is it means that Elves wouldn't mourn things that live less long than them like dogs or their own children/kinsmen). By contrast Tolkien's Elves paid for it by having difficulty in politics with humans and Dwarves, and were unfortunately bound to Eru's plan taking away a large part of their free will as a race (not as individuals however). While in some settings they have to pay a personal price for it, such as Warhammer Elves and their shit afterlives where their gods are dead and/or assholes and their souls are tasty to Eldritch horrors, in most fiction they get off scot-free. 
* Tolkien Elves emotionally suffer from the mayfly problem of their companions dying, making all Elf/human romance invariably a tragedy (unless the Valar get involved, which only happened once) and having Elf kings still mourning the fall of ancient human civilizations to descendants who barely even know the legends of that era (like an Elf mentioning to the UK Prime Minister that he never got over the end of the Mesopotamians and speaking at length about how wonderful they were). In most settings any sadness felt from the death of human companions is in the future tense (which the story rarely gets to outside of an epilogue if at all).   This is also a critical difference in how the Tolkien elves view friends and humanity.  Tolkien elves view humanity (the species) as a dear friend and a sort of hybrid of younger sibling and child.  Heck, they don’t even blame humanity for the whole Sauron fiasco as that was causes by humans being too compassionate to execute Sauron after defeating him.  They see it more like “It sucks how that turned out, but we’re honored to know such a noble-hearted people.” 
* Elvish civilization is far older and more advanced than human civilization but is almost always on the decline, usually due to the slow death of magic in the world or just their low birthrate/slow maturation and some general cultural stagnation. Some settings attribute limitations in magic to the decay of Elves while humans emphasize on the seemingly limitless technology, which is why in most settings the industrial nature of the Orcs and Goblins is removed so as to not leave the question why humans aren't just as in decay from an even faster breeding science race. Of course the scientific innovations of humans is also in the future tense, not explaining at all why having the same technology Elves have had for thousands of years has put them so far ahead, barring perhaps gunpowder although oftentimes if the humans have it then the Elves have it as well (Warhammer Fantasy being the exception that proves the rule). 
* Elf science and industry hit a roadblock early on. In Tolkien's work the advancements of science are independent of the advancements of progress, the latter of which is just the pursuit of power (which is always evil) and the former being a beautiful and almost religious desire. Most settings simply decide that Elves stop at aqueducts and the winepress in the technological equivalent of the Iron Age and Rome expies, and even when technology is readily available from other races they ignore it since they've somehow attained the knowledge from magic millennia ago and didn't really do anything with it beyond make some trinkets. Most settings just get lazy with explanations, mixing in some of the other explanations on this list; "lack of ambition/more into magic". 
* Elves have the best magic and would never use the crass artifices used by humans and Dwarves, even if they are advanced in their own right. Their own shit is so ancient and powerful it is literally never used, or no longer belongs to them and instead is passed from dark lord to adventurer to dark lord to adventurer and so on. In Tolkien's work its because of one of his universal rules that everything old is as good as its going to get, and the longer time goes on and the older things get then the worse everything gets. The Elves at the height of their power could give demigods a difficult fight, and likewise the things they made was just as grand in scale. But the humans at the height of their own power were as strong and full of epic talent as the Elves of the present and the great artifacts ancient humans created are just as legendary as the Elvish goods and even more rare due to the tragedies that befell men in the later centuries. In most settings, Elves seem to have been born as a race straight into their current level of technology and magic while humans had to spend 5000 years figuring out fire and the wheel. Most settings just handwave it as "Elves can see magic, of course they're more advanced" which then leads back into the above problem of why they are stagnating while other races are catching up to and possibly even surpassing them.
* Elves are almost always haughty elitists who look down on other races, whether they're snobby High Elves, murderous hippy Wood Elves, or sociopathic Dark Elves (though in fairness, you're ''supposed'' to hate that last one). Any explanation of why they act like this usually relies on some of the aforementioned orphaned advantages, which makes it even worse since the Elves basically act better because they are better because reasons, but are getting their ass kicked by time anyway. Few of Tolkien's Elves are actually racist, and all of the ones that are were members of the royal families that were known for hot-headed temperaments, while Galadriel's court seemed to hold some stereotypes of Dwarves when Gimli surprises them by being the exact opposite of what they expected. If anything, the animosity is implied to be one-sided AGAINST the Elves in The Hobbit as the commonfolk Elves irritate the Dwarves simply with their springtime celebrations and being overly chatty. 

When poorly handled, these post-modern traits are often significant parts of the reasons that many people straight-up '''hate''' Elves. And while many people blame the worst elvish traits on Tolkien, many of them simply aren't present in the books (outside of the aforementioned asshole who got his ass handed to him). Or they blame him for fantasy writers adhering to this self-imposed mold without looking into the source material or original mythology like the narrative version of a coloring book page of Legolas glued in the middle of a painting.. Many creators have tried to break free of this mold by going back to the trickster fey roots, with mixed results. Others just treat Elves as humans with a trade-off, in which case their advantages are greatly toned-down. This can make them more palatable to people put off by Elven Mary Sueness, but of course, for the Elf die-hards, this approach is likely less satisfying.

Small wonder that a resistance-movement arose to Bring Back The Real Elf. Poul Anderson went back to Scandinavian folklore for elves (and [[trolls]]) for ''The Broken Sword''. This was published in 1954, the very year ''The Fellowship of the Ring'' (finally) came out. Gygax owed at least as much to ''The Broken Sword'' as he owed to Tolkien. And, of course, [[Michael Moorcock]] proclaimed loud and long his preference for Poul's work.