So, what I love about my ability with speculative fiction is to ask what if questions. I have an idea in my head roughly. I love presenting a stereotypical mold, and then completely destroying that comfortable mold. Thus I have an idea in my head about a story of aging, how we view aging and how to find ones inner beauty. In this the very rough concept I have is; Elves who live upwards to 6,000 years, who are considered middle age roughly around 3,000 of those years. Who do age only slightly. I have this idea of an only mildly aged elf, it be a cool idea to describe an elf once in a while with some aged lines, not quite as noticeable as a humans aged lines. In this world though, instead of Elves worshiping the age and experience of their elders. They favor beauty and youth over the old and wise. Thus those that look "old" to an elf standards are kicked out of their clans. Who partners, roughly 50 years ago after his exile, with a beastial blooded being, who has been ugly all his life. They are described as being very board headed beings, with protruding thick bony forehead plates and thick ram like horns, with coarse tough hair atop their head. And a middle aged shrew of a woman, whose aged and gone beyond her years to be fertile or beautiful in the eyes of society. And the idea was to take these characters and make them Swindlers. Con Artist. Though I am unsure of where to directly go with the idea. If its enough to just make them thieves. I am not necessarily the biggest fan of grand scale epic novels with a big bad. My idea was that they were Swindlers to in some right take back social dignity by making others feel humiliated. [The idea sort of inspired by working at my haunted house. People in real life make me nervous and uncomfortable. But something in the haunted house means I get to change the social rules and become more powerful in that circumstance making people who ordinarily make me anxious, uncomfortable and anxious like me.] So its more like personal embolden. Rather than evil greed. And to be fair they still have to make a living doing something.
It sounds a little like this entry from last month's short story contest: Heist at the Transdimensional Museum I'm not really into fantasy stories, so/but one concern I have with your idea (and elves in general) is the whole idea that creatures who are roughly equivalent to humans in intelligence and society would have the same proportion of their lives taken up by each mental/emotional stage of life. I can see creatures living 300 or 5000 years and not getting much smarter or mature than humans do by age fifty or sixty or so, but spoiled teenagers who are over a hundred years old tend to throw me. Just my 2 yen though. Story link didn't work: May 2017 Short Story Contest [Open Contest]
I had no idea about the short story contest, it was a middle of the night shaking. Elves have been naturally explained in many stories to be more intelligent or at least wiser with their lives and experiences. I think its less intelligence and more experience than humans. They see it all. Are more close to not making the same historical mistakes.
Sorry, I wasn't saying you were copying or anything from that contest, just that your merry band reminded me a little of one of the mixed-Race groups in that story. About the elves, I'll take your word for it, they're really not my thing.
Eitherway my story completely strips that away and makes Elves favorable to beauty and youth. That's what I mean by shaking the mold. Classically Elves are presented as wisen, intelligent, beautiful people who live for thousand of years. Where as mine are presented as vain, beautiful species, who do not respect the age of older elves, but respect beauty and youth.
