mumbles something about Santa's elves despite it being late spring

Huh what I said nothing nosireebob no Christmas blasphemy over here not at all

…I’m in the corner thinking about, of all things, house elves. SIRPHE, anyone? Society for the Inclusivity and Recognition of Potterverse House Elves? I mean, if SPEW could exist to promote elfish welfare, then SIRPHE could exist to recognize house elves as elves...? I don't even know what I'm talking about rn

[Yes this is very NFSW] Remember the dubious lube page? Well, it mentions that badfic authors write Elves having self lubricating asses. I don’t know the logic behind it but I am confused. Squick involving body fluids I also tried to search for reasons on Google, but all I get is umm, some rather NSFW results.

~SomeRandomPersonAccount

[[Nameless Admin: Subject line edited after 24 hours of no response from SRPA]]

World of Warcraft, I'm looking at you. There's no way those actually make them hear better, so what gives? Do elves find tall, pointy ears so attractive that they've self-selected for even taller and even pointier ears over the generations? (I know that's true of long, fabulous hair in the Tolkienverse! {= D )

What about glowing eyes? (Or molten orbs, or bright lamps, or whatever the urple synonym du jour is.) Do they somehow help with the telescoping thing?

Turning in another direction, something I noticed when learning about old-school fae elves (the kind that will either fix your shoes or steal your babies depending on whether you remembered to leave them a dish of milk or not) is that you always find them on the other side of the water. It doesn't matter where here is; they're always over there, and you have to cross the water to get to fairyland. It goes right up to Tolkien elves, too. Every Elvish settlement I can think of is bounded by water, and I guarantee that's no accident on Tolkien's part. I'm sure it's symbolic, and also it's a good plan for a settlement to have a source of fresh water plus more easily defended borders, but if you want to over-analyze elf traits, that seems like a fun one. ^_^

And, of course, the classic erotic fanfiction example is that elven posteriors are self-lubricating. Of course. Because reasons. Make of THAT what you will.

~Neshomeh

'Riders!' cried Aragorn, springing to his feet. 'Many riders on swift steeds are coming towards us!'

'Yes,' said Legolas, 'there are one hundred and five. Yellow is their hair, and bright are their spears. Their leader is very tall.'

Aragorn smiled. 'Keen are the eyes of the Elves,' he said.

'Nay! The riders are little more than five leagues distant,' said Legolas.

-- The Two Towers Chapter 2: The Riders of Rohan

As discussed at blissful length here, if Legolas can count a hundred riders at five leagues (15 miles), he can also literally see the motion of the planets across the sky - where it would take a mortal most of the night to be able to detect the motion of Mars against the starfield, Legolas could discern it in under ten minutes.

Quite clearly, the combination of this with the circles thing (different universes? what different universes? ^_~) indicates that elves were created to be natural astronomers, just like dwarves are natural miners and humans are natural mayhem-generators.

As further evidence: Terry Pratchett's elves (Discworld) can make themselves appear however they want. Obviously, this is because an astronomer up all night winds up looking rather haggard, so they don't want to waste time making themselves look respectable.

Come to think of it, Pratchett elves are also natural universe-hoppers, explaining a) why they show up in so many canons, and b) which stars they're meant to observe - all of them.

hS