white_rabbit wrote:Fairer is subjective, the eldar actually to me seem to look and be described as kinda weird.
Faster, *shrug* not particularly damning in my eyes, as a race they are less heavily built, kinda logical ?
Stronger. By fluff the average eldar would tend to be WEAKER.
And I'm afraid the Eldar are more advanced, knowledgeable, and spiritual. The facts do kinda back em up, they may not have been prior, but its hardly applicable to the eldar mindset at the moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the Eldar AREN'T space elves, but I think this cliche game thats going on, the compartmentalising of races, is a little misleadeding, by my reckoning, only one of your criteria can be judged to be applicable
and Zentai is right, the Eldar are not peaceful, they are just as warlike and xenophobic as humanity.
Indeed: these alleged races of "space elves" differ in physical characteristics: Eldar have agility and fatigue resistance but are less strong and resilient. Minbari are not more agile than humans, but are stronger and more resilient. Vulcans are much stronger, but not more agile or resilient. Asgard... eight year old humans could mop the floor with them.
And in psychology: Dark Eldar are violent, warlike, sadistic and hedonists. Eldar are not hedonists and abhor violence except in a highly ritualized manner, with their Mexican wrestler style persona adoption in becoming Aspect Warriors and all that. The Vulcans are remote and logical, but this emphasis on logic sets them apart from the Eldar, who are supersticious and mystical. The Minbari are not supersticious, for all their emphasis on ritual and religion.
In fact the only unifying factors of these "space elves" are:
1) They are - in some way or another - in decline with respect to humanity.
2) Their civilization is older than that of the humans.
They tend to be more advanced in some way either culturally and/or technologically, but this generally follows quite logically from item #2, so this hardly qualifies as a distinct unifying trait among "space elves". Also, they are possibly condensending towards humanity, but this follows logically from their greater antiquity and advancement. Also, the level to which they are condensending ranges from the Asgard mild patronization-with-respect to the Dark Eldar passionate tendencies to xenocide, so this hardly qualifies as a unifying trait either.
Seeing as sophistication-through-antiquity and being-in-decline are highly generic traits, it occours to me that eliminating those races that posess them as "cliché" will eliminate a rather large subset of all possible permutations of alien species, you know what I'm sayng?
white_rabbit wrote:Hmm, I dunno about the Eldar, they aren't particularly like the others, all of whom have some redeeming
attribute.
The Eldar really, really don't. They are responsible definately for at least 2 of the Chaos gods, they
fucking hate humanity and want us dead, simply because we've replaced them. All their bluster and bullshit
is invalidated by the simple fact of the Emperor.
Humans own Eldar in 40k, and we always will.
Don't forget the Harlequins, who have managed to sever their connection to Slaanesh: in their case they don't even qualify as a "dying race" eliminating criteria #1 above - it is humanity that is in decline (you filthy mon-keigh. Bwa ha ha...
)
PS: they are only responsible for the creation of Slaanesh, not the other three.