PC044: Immersed in Matter

[Unblinking]

I liked everything but the ending.

I like the more Tolkien-like elves, "cliched" or no, so I was rather disappointed that the rest of elf month didn't really have anything to do with them except this story.  I liked the development of his abilities and the horse details seemed very authentic, enough to make me wonder if there are any stables around here that I could hang out at for a while.  The character's drive to see the horse, the details about his father's shifting copulations were all quite interesting.

And then at the end the horse leaves and the words end.  Not really a resolution, just a stoppage.

[Fenrix]

Poking around in this thread, I found this fae vs. elf an odd variant of the usual genre argument (you got science fiction in my fantasy!)

I think this is a symptom more of the Monster Manual and not of Tolkien. In his earliest drafts, the elves were called faeries. Some of these artifacts are still visible in the text of The Hobbit. Also consider the behavior of the two groups of elves and you can see a lot of behaviors more traditionally associated with faery stories. The merriment and feasting at Rivendell and the disappearance of the feasting elves in Mirkwood (and eventual disappearance of Thorin into the faery ring) are far more traditional faery than the rigidly defined Gygax elf.

Anyone interested in the critical analysis of fantasy and speculative fiction in general would be well served to pick up Tolkien's scholarly article "On Fairy Stories". It is to fantasy what Lovecraft's "Supernatural Horror in Literature" is to horror. The establishment of the concept of a secondary world and sub-creation is articulately defined within.

I wonder at this equation "Faery = Elves".  Are they really one and the same?  I never think of elves in connection with Faery, except maybe in the aforementioned The Infinity Concerto by Greg Bear, wherein Elves are among the highest class of Sidhe.  Typically when I think of "elves" I think "Tolkien" and "EFP".

I wondered about this, too. I always thought of faeries and elves co-existing. I've never considered them being the same thing. But I'm under-read in fantasy and could be missing some genre conventions.

Me too.

Finally a story that actually has elves!  In a non-ironic manner, even!  And a good, oldschool Titania and Oberon type fae elf rather than the modern overused Tolkien sort.  And yes, in legends elves were just fairies, or perhaps a particular type of fairy.  Tolkien drew his from the Norse Vanir type elf rather than the more celtic sidhe.