09-01-2019, 07:52 AM | #51 | |
Join Date: May 2009
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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Trying to apply real-world biology to any mythical setting, such a Tolkein's MIddle-Earth, leads to nonsensical results. Especially because magic is the rules-breaker - even when magic follows its own rules, it breaks the physical rules we all know from the world outside our front door. |
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09-01-2019, 07:58 AM | #52 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
In general, for most full fantasy settings, I'd agree whole heartedly. But LotR, at least to me, seems like the last hurrah of a heroic age as reality starts falling to more historic if exaggerated realism.
I think Tolkien would have, if not appreciated, at least not despised us considering a bit of the real world sciences creeping into some aspects of the setting. Also as with all things gaming and internet, it's fun to consider and BS ourselves about fiction. :)
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09-01-2019, 09:51 AM | #53 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
As an island dwelling people who would rarely find pure humans to be attractive that would probably not true even if Tolkien thought in terms of genes.
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09-01-2019, 10:32 AM | #54 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
It’s fairly standard to depict elves as having very low fertility, which often coincides with a weak sex drive; these two together can readily explain why elven populations grow slowly (or not at all, provided enough elves die to negate the births). As elves are often depicted as androgynous, a humorous twist would be to have them be more attracted to species with more pronounced sexual dimorphism than to other elves (hence there being so many half-elves running around). I recall a manga that had this as something of a minor plot point. There existed a quasi-religious schism amongst elven men after they had encountered humans - the traditionalists extolled the virtues of small breasts, the reformers the appeal of large breasts (and IIRC called for interracial couplings to introduce “large breasts” genes into the elven gene pool).
The female elves were not amused.
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09-01-2019, 11:36 AM | #55 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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On the other hand, there's no reason to think Tolkien's elves even had genes, let alone human-like genetics. |
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09-01-2019, 02:13 PM | #56 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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Tolkien wrote essays on elf maturation, marriage, and child-bearing, which some of this discussion has drawn upon. Far from simply not despising this, he actively wrote about it. But he also knew when to stop scientificating it. |
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09-01-2019, 06:31 PM | #57 | ||
Join Date: May 2005
Location: Oz
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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09-01-2019, 11:41 PM | #58 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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His 'legendarium' started out as a 'fictional myth', specifically myth, to sort of fill the void created by the loss of the Anglo-Saxon mythologies in the Conquest. As such, flat earths and ages lit only by starlight made sense because it was 'fictional fiction'. Later, the stories became 'fictional fact', set in a fictionally real past in the same way that most SF is set in a 'fictionally real future'. That required that practical reality had to be more carefully considered, and impossibilities had to be addressed. He was still gradually addressing them when he died. As far as Elven biology goes, they aren't that different from us. The primary differences are a result of the differences in the nature of our souls, Elves are immortal because of that, not because they have a biological tendency toward immortality as such. Their souls maintain their bodies in a way that ours do not.
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09-02-2019, 10:02 AM | #59 | |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Earth, mostly
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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It's entirely self-consistent, IMO, and more than adequately explains the questions left - "a God did it" works with fiction in a way it doesn't in our world.
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09-02-2019, 11:48 AM | #60 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: Elven maturation and population growth
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JRRT, after he changed the nature of his story, didn't want it set in a 'never never land', to paraphrase something he wrote in correspondence. He wanted it set in an imaginary past of the real world, which left all sorts of issues that had to be addressed. For ex: If there was no sunlight for multiple ages of the world , how did the Elves eat? Esp. since during that period, most other life forms were said to be in the 'Sleep of Yavanna' anyway? The Elves have physical bodies and can certainly die of hunger or thirst. If the Earth was flat, how was there a horizon? There were all sorts of such issues, arising from the change in the nature of the story. Tolkien was gradually revising the Silmarillion, which started out as 'fictional fiction', into something compatible with 'fictional fact', but age kept him from ever finishing the project.
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