Talk:Elf AU

I don't see this as an AU though, so much as surprise backstory. It's not like a story in which a character who reveals he was raped is called a Rape AU. (Although, oh dear god, doesn't Rape AU sound like a particular sort of badfic?) --Betty 19:48, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, I would just call it elf fic or something, whereas an elf AU would be um, John and Rodney in Middle Earth or something. --Kyuuketsukirui 19:50, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it's the fact that elves don't actually exist that makes it an AU. And then the fact that it's so popular makes it an AU genre of its own, as opposed to, say, Centaur!fic, which I've seen before, but isn't really common.--Nestra 19:51, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

This is how I see it. (Also, a lot of elf AUs do take place in a fantasy setting.) --Arduinna 19:55, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

Thirding; the "universe" part is because its about setting the show in an alternate universe where elves exist; it's not the universe of the show (where they presumptively don't.)--Speranza 20:14, 19 October 2008 (UTC)

After hunting around a bit trying to find it, I'd vote for changing the name of this page. We've got other similar articles that don't have "AU" after them, like Unicorn and Cat and Wookiee... "Elf AU" could be a section of the article if need be. --Mrs. Potato Head 18:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Why not have a general Elf page AND an Elf AU page? The Elf page could enumerate all the ways elves are enjoyed in fandom--canon elves, elves in fanfiction, elves in fanart, human characters transformed into elves, OC elves showing up in fanworks (I have no idea if there are any of these). Then the Elf AU page could talk about just AU fanfiction with Elves.--æthel 18:18, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

This page is too big to be a "section" on another page and the trope deserves to have its own page. I like Elf AU because it perfectly describes the trope but I could also live with "Elf trope". However, that's not the same as a page about elves in LotR or other universes where elves are canon. Those elves should have their own page, like Vulcans, Klingons, etc. --Doro 18:20, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Except that Vulcans and Klingons are fandom specific species, whereas "elves" can be all kinds of things, from tiny fairies with wings to immortal warriors. IMO it's a bit weird to bundle canon-elves together.--RatCreature 19:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

That's why I said they should have their own pages and an one elf page fits all elves approach with a section for the elf AU trope doesn't work for me.--Doro 22:00, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

ah okay, I understood you as wanting one canon elf page and one elf AU page. I think we should have a central elf page as overview that then links to to the canon specific versions like Elves (LOTR), Elves (Elfquest) and so on, depending on which canons have enough-elf-related fanac, and maybe accomodates non-fandom specific elf activities (like maybe elves in cosplay, or as cutesy fanterm for infrastucture providing fans, such as the TS Guidepost archive did, or some xmas exchanges, or whatever else) and that would also have a link to this Elf AU page.--RatCreature 22:28, 14 August 2010 (UTC)

Re the two Quantum Leap illos...

These are crossing Sam Beckett into a very particular fantasy world and style of drawing: "Elf Quest" by the Pinis. These were a comic book/ graphic novel series from the Eighties that described a race of elves on an alien world. Kate's artwork has placed Sam in the costume of a male elf of a particular tribe. One drawing features a particular "Elf Quest" elf next to Sam. Credit should be mentioned of "Elf Quest" somewhere in the caption, I think.-- Pcdfanwriter.

Pcdfanwriter (talk) 15:04, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you. I hadn't caught the reference. Would you be willing to add that note to the caption? --MPH (talk) 15:54, 14 September 2020 (UTC)

Alt Text

Can someone assist? I'm attempting to put alt text on the first illo (with Martin Castillo), but clearly not doing it correctly. --MPH (talk) 17:05, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I think I got it, I used the template version for alt text from the Cheatsheet so it should work. But I don't have a screen reader so there's no way I could test it, though it looks okay from the page! Patchlamb (talk) 18:22, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

Thank you. I wasn't too off-base! I don't have a screen reader either, so I don't know how the finished product looks. --MPH (talk) 19:05, 7 June 2022 (UTC)

I looked it up today to figure out how to test alt text for screen readers. If you have a Windows computer it comes with a built-in reader app! You can search for "Narrator" and go to the article, then can have the narrator navigate to the image. If it reads the code's alt-text it's working. Patchlamb (talk) 16:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

Elf AU?

I added a link to a story tagged Elf AU on AO3. It features canon elves from Tolkien, but they are in a completely different setting. Does this fit the definiation of Elf AU for this page, and should this be mentioned on it? Or is this something different? Family is the story. --MPH (talk) 13:16, 8 June 2022 (UTC)

I poked around the Elf AU tag - I actually changed it to Alternate Universe Elf which had about 4x as many uses, and as of yesterday that tag only had 9 uses for Tolkien fandoms, so I looked through them - seemed like a few were canonical elven characters but only 1-2 authors so I’m inclined to think “that tag doesn’t mean what you think it means”, and a couple were basically OCs, so… my vote is just to ignore the few Tolkien works. The one you linked, from reading the summary it sounds like it’s an elf in a modern AU, i.e. not really fitting this page? Joanna R (talk) 16:22, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Reply to MPH: Oops, I removed the story from the page a few days ago, should have checked this talk page before I did that! If you read the story, it's not 100% clear but I think there's a strong implication that everyone is human, and "vegan hipster elf" is being used figuratively in the tags. -- Quaelegit (talk) 01:33, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

image location and category choice

Couple unrelated questions here:
1) The two images in the left column at the top of the article - Miami Vice: Martin Castillo and (The Sentinel:)Blair Sandburg - I like the visual but by now it’s not common formatting to have them on the left towards the top of a Fanlore page. (I’m new here, ignore me! ;) My thoughts are either move them to the main Gallery, or perhaps add them as a little gallery before the Fan Comment section - any preferences? (The other images I’ve left because they are right after the sections where the relevant characters/fanworks are discussed)
2) This has the categories of both Trope and Glossary, but it seems pretty clearly focused on Trope. Anyone mind if I remove Glossary?
Joanna R (talk) 04:56, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

It is not unusual to have an image near the top of an article as an example, if you think the two images are crowding the intro too much we could pick one to keep and move the other down to the example art gallery -- Kingstoken (talk) 16:12, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Nah, no worries! Probably I just haven’t seen it as often but I’m still relatively new, so just ignore that then. I was just thinking about ways to improve the intro per the Featured Noms page, but Auntags said she’d worked on it, so maybe it’s not an issue anymore. If anything, two is a nice invite into the page, since there are so many images later in the gallery! Joanna R (talk) 16:18, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Moving discussion over from Featured Article Nomination

From a quick look at Ao3, I also wonder if the Elf AU tag is been used to tag AU stories about canon elves? This might be a recent development or a not very common interpretation of this trope, but it might be worth a mention --auntags 18:34, 10 June 2022 (UTC)

auntags, I changed the AO3 link to the AU - Elf tag which has 212 uses, up considerably from works tagged specifically “Elf AU” which is only 54 (as of today’s date), so that’s one thing. It seems like it’s pretty scattered across a lot of fandoms, because even the most (the K-pop group BTS) only lists 15 works. Meanwhile, the LOTR fandom which has canonical elves only has 9, so it doesn’t seem like it’s a common interpretation of the trope - i.e. it may even be people mis-tagging the works (if you’re writing about canonical elves, an Elf AU isn’t an AU the way it would be for humans, but I can imagine that logical distinction may be tricky for some). I can keep looking through the tag, but canonical elves using that tag doesn’t seem too significant… I’ll keep reviewing the article, but wanted to comment on my findings so far. Joanna R (talk) 05:07, 12 August 2022 (UTC)

Joanna R, that's really interesting, thanks for doing the research! (I do want to point out, that even in canons with elves, you could still have an "Elf AU" story in which a character who canonically isn't an elf, is in your AU. I don't know if stories like this exist though -- wait, maybe i"ve seen some in Tolkien fandom?? Will look into it myself). Anyways, it's going to be hard to get a diachronic picture of the usage over time from AO3, because it sounds like the heyday of these elf AUs (or at least complaining about them) was 80s through early 00s media fandom. Still, I think it *would* be worth discussing findings like this in the article, in some capacity. -- Quaelegit (talk) 11:26, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

Quae I do think that’s how a couple of the folks tagging Elf AU in the LOTR fandom meant it, i.e. there were characters who are not canonically elves that are elves in their story. It’s an example of me either mis-reading/remembering or the term being a little fuzzy anyway, because what I thought it meant was an AU in which elves exist at all, from a canon where they don’t. (I.e. that exactly who is an elf or not wasn’t the same thing.) But :snaps up fan: I really don’t know. ;) Joanna R (talk) 11:32, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

These are definitely good points, and I'd to see more exploration of both of these in the article. I think we should move discussion over to the article's talk section, if it's okay i'm gonna quote our conversation over there as well.

Fanlore:Featured Article Nominations#Elf AU

Just putting this disucssion over here as topics that would be worth exploring in the Elf AU article. I feel like I have more research to do following up on some of these questions before I feel ready to add to the article itself, but also putting this on the talk page in case anyone who knows more feels like they can add to the article before I get there :P -- Quaelegit (talk) 01:37, 7 October 2022 (UTC)

Some more possible examples

to check later [EDIT: preceding unsign comment by User:Quaelegit ]

• Somehow, This is Harry's Fault by LeilaSecretSmith (orphan_account)
  • Tags:Harry Potter & Hermione Granger & Ron WeasleyHermione Granger Harry Potter Ron Weasley Glorfindel (Tolkien) Elrond Peredhel Ginny Weasley Neville Longbottom Luna Lovegood Haldir of Lothlórien Rúmilelfling!Harry elfling!Hermione elfling!Ron Crack Crack Treated Seriously ish Humor The Author Apologizes DO. NOT. TAKE. THIS. SERIOUSLY fangirls are bad news no matter what dimension you're in Erestor is Scary dubious assumptions about heritage Harry Ron and Hermione are all unofficial Feanorians lmao they'd fit right in let's be honest Now with a bonus chapter!
  • Summary: Hermione, Ron, and Harry all wake up tiny, naked, and alone in a forest. Things only get more ridiculous from there, and if there's one thing they know, it's this: somehow, some way, this is Harry's fault.

Elvish Presley

Not sure if this should go on this page but I just got linked to this TVTRopes article and I think it's really funny :P -- Quaelegit (talk) 02:30, 21 January 2023 (UTC)