I always thought it was weird how every fantasy story always has to have elves, dwarves,* and humans in it, as three separate races. I mean obviously they're doing it because Tolkein did it, and every single fantasy story in the world has to rip off Lord of the Rings now or else it doesn't get published and the government breaks into your house and confiscates all your pens. But that's fine. What I don't get is why it makes any sense whatsoever for three separate, humanoid, intelligent races to all have evolved, but be part of different species. Despite being practically the same. Because obviously, the first thing you need to do when looking at a fantasy story is analyze the underlying biology.
For example, from what I've been able to gather, elves are basically just humans but with longer ears and also better in every conceivable way, which is interesting I guess. Seriously, that's pretty much the moral of Lord of the Rings. "Elves are better than you will ever hope to be you stupid plebeian". And for some reason, they have giant ears. I'm not entirely sure why. I guess it helps them hear better, further making them better than you, but they look pretty stupid. I dunno. I prefer the ones that are employed by a pole-dwelling fat man and craft toys out of raw materials.
And dwarves are basically just humans, but inexplicably shorter. No actual biological difference, they're just short. Why? What benefit does that have? And apparently they're all contractually obligated to live underground and drink beer. Actually, that seems perfectly alright. Carry on dwarves.
*According to spell-check, "elves" is a word, but "dwarves" isn't. Huh.
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