{"id":291,"date":"2012-04-13T19:07:45","date_gmt":"2012-04-13T23:07:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kristinjanz.com\/?p=291"},"modified":"2012-04-13T19:07:45","modified_gmt":"2012-04-13T23:07:45","slug":"go-elves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/?p=291","title":{"rendered":"Go, elves!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Those of you who know all about my love for elves will appreciate why I’m linking to this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Need I say more?<\/p>\n

Actually, I probably do.\u00c2\u00a0 Those of you who are not uber-geeks may not realize that it’s trendy within fantasy writer circles (and uber-geek circles) to look down your noses at any fiction containing the “e-word” as a blatant Tolkien rip-off.\u00c2\u00a0 Because Tolkien invented the word elf, right?\u00c2\u00a0 (Well, no, he didn’t, but never mind that.)\u00c2\u00a0 This whole anti-elf-snobbery irritates me to no end, especially since I’m trying to write an epic fantasy series with elves in it, which I don’t think is a Tolkien rip-off, and it would be nice if someone paid me money for it one of these days.<\/p>\n

What makes it even more irritating is that it’s apparently perfectly acceptable to have\u00c2\u00a0a physically\u00c2\u00a0attractive species of mystical long-lived hominids in your short story or novel, as long as you don’t call them elves.\u00c2\u00a0 They can even have pointy ears.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s just the word that pushes people’s buttons.\u00c2\u00a0 Seriously.\u00c2\u00a0 I have a short story that I’ve been trying to sell, in which one of the characters is an elf, and although it hasn’t been accepted, I have yet to receive any negative feedback from editors on that character’s obvious elfness.\u00c2\u00a0 Because in that story,\u00c2\u00a0I changed the name of his species.\u00c2\u00a0 I won’t tell you what I changed it to, but it still sounds a lot like elf.\u00c2\u00a0 Whereas when I do use the word elf\u00c2\u00a0in other short stories set in the same world (featuring the same elves), any feedback from editors tends to include disparaging comments about the elfness of those characters.<\/p>\n

I insist on using the word elf in some of my stories (and in my novel), despite obvious reasons not to do so, because I’m writing about cultures where humans have interacted with this other species for thousands of years.\u00c2\u00a0 If there were a real world where that were the case, I think the\u00c2\u00a0humans who had the most interaction would use a word that felt familiar to them.\u00c2\u00a0 “Elf” is the closest familiar English word to the type of alien people I’m trying to describe.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s why I use it.\u00c2\u00a0 (The story in which I used a different word has a human protagonist from a culture that hasn’t interacted with these folk nearly as much, so they seem more alien and weird to her; hence I decided it made sense to use an invented word instead of a familiar English word.)<\/p>\n

Anyway, go read the article I linked to on the Black Gate<\/em> blog (and thanks to Donald for bringing it to my attention).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Those of you who know all about my love for elves will appreciate why I’m linking to this. Need I say more? Actually, I probably do.\u00c2\u00a0 Those of you who are not uber-geeks may not realize that it’s trendy within … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[73],"class_list":["post-291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-elves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=291"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kristinjanz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}