Publishing Industry Strikes Again! Dark Elves are not a Racist Concept - And how & why one should write them as Villains in Fantasy stories

Olney nailed it

Publishing Industry Disappoints Again!

All writers have experienced rejection at some point. This is a fact of life. It cannot be denied. Most of us are a-ok with that, as we understand that only the finest of stories should be published.

The trouble with the past few years is that the industry has gone bonkers to put it lightly. As though to prove it,

M.S. Olney

a fantastic author who has contributed on some days to WW/S&S, apparently has had an author message him about something that is both disgusting and frustrating on the part of an Industry Editor.

M.S. Olney has written about how this is now the norm in the industry and how Dark Elves are now considered ‘racist’ by the people in the Industry. You can find the article here.

The trouble is that these people have become so completely and utterly divorced from tradition and their own culture that they’ve forgotten one important detail; Dark Elves as a concept come from Svartálfar or Dökkálfar from Norse Mythology.

The myths of the Nordic people, are among the finest that have ever been told in the whole of history. Transcendental, beautiful, moving, etc… there’s too few words to describe how beautiful and wonderful they are.

These are the tales that inspired Tolkien, and Howard. These are stories that speak to the most primal sentiments humanity could possibly ever feel. They also speak to concepts such as Honour, Justice, Defiance in the face of one’s Doom and so on. The Norse having in the Medieval period (and even to-day) being capable of telling truly captivating tales.

The beauty of their myths have inspired not only authors, poets, artists and creatives of the past millennia but also continue to enflame people’s souls. People across all nations and of all ages have been moved by the grandness of these legends.

But here’s the thing, moving and beautiful as they are, these stories have within them the terms ‘Elves’ and ‘Dark Elves’ which are as stated translated from a variety of terms. The Celtic variant was ‘Fairies’ with the myths of these different people identifying the fact that there are good and evil fairies/elves.

The only thing that Tolkien did was try to create a mythology which streamlined and properly captured the wonder and terror of these great mythic creatures/entities. The trouble with claiming that Dark Elves is that it proposes that the Vikings were specifically racists against Africans when the reality is that few of them were likely even aware that they existed and those that were aware were already familiar with Dark Elves. The concept of Dark Elves predates ‘African First Contact’ so how could it possibly be racist?!

What is more is that the more modern concept dates back to Gary Gygax who inserted them into his Dungeons & Dragons RPG games, and later authors were to adopt them into their various stories after the character of Drizzt popularized the concept of Fantasy Dark Elves.

White Supremacy or not? What is the Answer?

They are supposed to be Evil, as they represent the ‘Dark Side’ to the ‘Light Elves’ ‘Light Side’ so that we are following along similar thinking and thought processes that the Norse had with this ‘race’.

The trouble with seeking to claim that the concept of Evil Dark Elves being White Supremacy is that this is ridiculous as stated above and that it denies another ‘evil’ race to authors. It binds them and denies them the ability to write as they please using a race that was specifically designed by Mythology as by the Genre to be villains.

Calling all ‘Dark’ races or things racist is a sure fire way to make people resentful against those very people, and a sure-fire way to also further restrain and stupefy the culture and create further dissension and division within the culture as Olney’s pointed out.

It is this sort of nonsense and the obsession as Olney rightly puts it in his incredible rant-based essay that the desire to inject real life into fiction destroys all escapism. And thing is people really do need to escape from the real world as the Primary World in which we live isn’t the best place to be.

Secondary Worlds have always been there to allow us escape, to find hope and to also walk away with important real world lessons. To break escapism and deny it to people is cruel, and is indeed something that would if we’re completely honest utterly destroy and poison the Fantasy Genre.

The whole of the Genre from beginning to end, from root to stem has always been predicated upon escapism. It is the core along with the idea of heroism, the importance of history and the integral role that Honour, Chivalry and good values and virtues play in our lives.

Fantasy is essentially Fairy-Stories, which are as Tolkien pointed out heir to the great mythological epics of the past.

But just as there must be tales of heroes and interesting legends, what is also needed are truly dastardly villains. We need these people to represent everything wrong in society, every vice and sin imaginable. They are demons in essence, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Fantasy is about the eternal battles. It is not about modern politics or racial nonsense. To boil it down to that is a denial of what is most important to Mankind. So that these sort of deliberations and policies and what not are the enemy of thought and reason, as these are the things along with virtue and critical thinking that they seek to banish.

Because surely they will banish these things once they’ve banished all memory of past cultural ideas and notions that have survived for the past millennia!

How to Write Dark Elves

But there must be more to this essay than just repeating the sentiments of the brilliant M.S. Olney, so here’s the latter part of this essay so that those writers who read this might well walk away with something of use to them.

Dark Elves are a fascinating part of Fantasy Fiction that frankly are pretty under-utilized as villains in my experience so that I’d be curious to see what this writer that Olney’s speaking of has written.

They should have a savage culture that stands as an inversion of all the virtues of the Elves, and also of Men. If the heroes believe in honour, the Dark Elves should be familiar with their honour-code and keen to use it against them. In short one way of writing them is to have them operate like a subversive force keen to twist, abuse and otherwise mock the honour of the heroes or to corrupt it.

They could also be warriors, eager to violate the world, invading it with unending numbers that their lighter counterparts could not possibly imagine. They should be a kind of demonic horror based force of nature that non of the heroes could possibly imagine.

They should be intelligent, cruel and utterly remorseless. This will allow you, if you should wish to write a character like Drizzt to stand out all the more as the one heroic member of the race.

What they should also be useful for is showing the flaws in the Elvish people, as they stand as a dark shadow to them. As to their homeland, most authors have made them also a dark counterpart in this regard to the Dwarves by having them live deep underground.

This allows you to demonstrate a shadow to two great races, but what is more is that they can show the fear that comes with being underground.

Try to imagine it; the air is stifling, cold and the deeper you go the more overwhelming the shadows, the more consuming and heavier the air all around you. The crushing burden of having to tread deeper because your friends, kingdom or world depends upon you….

Awesome stuff right?

Well the burden lies on writers not to give into such woke sentiments, to delve deep within their spirits to write the best possible stories they can. What is more is that they must be allowed to write great tales without concern for constraining ideas like modern politics.

Dark Elves should be convenient villains, just as High Elves should be erstwhile allies or wise mentors to the heores.

Write Dark Elves as the vilest of sorts and be merry, just as Howard used his Snake-Men and Tolkien his Orcs use them in that manner, as that’s what they are there for. Complex stories can be woven around different ideas, and villains can be useful in helping refine a story.

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Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!