Elins
are the adorable race of strange proportions in TERA.
Taken
from the TERA website:
The
elins have one driving goal: if it’s not good for nature, stop it.
Older and wiser than they appear, they join with forces of nature and
mortal races to sweep their enemies from the battlefield. Their
speech is often dark, forthright, and otherworldly, and their sense
of humor can border on vicious. Other races find the elins' manner
and behavior off-putting.
Their
appearance is both adorable and slightly creepy. They look like
giant adorable children with optional animal ears and tails, and can
be designed to have everything from purple skin to green hair, and so
much in-between.
One
aspect of their appearance that has been the source of some
contention are their thighs. Yes, sadly, an important part of
their costume design is that their thighs are almost always visible,
and they're disproportionately large.
(However,
for an individual to point to someone's thigh size as indicative of
their age and sexual disposition is the same thing as someone
pointing to the chest size of a girl and saying “twelve-year-olds
don't have breasts that size, she must be legal and willing!”. This
is “rape-speech”, and is deplorable.)
Regardless
of thigh size, the impression of an Elin a viewer is left with is
certainly a childlike one. Even the lore points to them being modeled
after children.
Building
corporeal forms around tiny fragments of her own divine being, the
goddess Elinu created the elins. Their physical appearance reflected
the youngest daughter of Arun's naïve desire for beauty and peace.
So
that wording is a bit off, but what I had read previously, both
in-game and online, was that they were modeled after Arun's young
daughter. I believe the paragraph taken from their website contains
some language errors.
Elins
were the last race to be announced and released to the public.
TERA
originated in South Korea, and there have been a ton of modifications
to make them more palatable to our society.
Taken
from an interview in 2012, regarding the modifications. This quote is
specifically regarding the costume and outfit differences, and how
Elins don't run around in panties with their midriffs exposed in our
NA version of the game:
There
seems to be a big cultural difference between how we view this and
how Koreans view this.
Lucile
Le Merle: In
Asia their mindset is completely different. To them it is not a
problem. It is not related to paedophilia. It's just part of the
culture to have small, little girls that run around smiling. People
just find it normal. If you read manga or watch anime, this is the
exact same thing. People consider this normal. But we do not have the
same mindset in Europe, which is why this change had to be made.
I
believe that explanation is very short-winded for the topic. Having
“small, little girls that run around smiling” is way different
from having small, little girls run around practically nude.
One
common argument among hardcore Elin “lovers” (ie. pervs), is that
Elins are thousands of years old, and so it's perfectly harmless to
find them sexually attractive. Whoa, back up, you find them sexually
attractive?... !?!?!
This
person (people, really – there are a lot of them!) is admitting to
finding child-like females attractive. They were modeled after
children, both in the lore and in real life.
This
is definitely not okay. If you find the faces and bodies of children
to be sexually attractive, you might be a budding pedophile. If you
masturbate to images of Elins, who are modeled after young girls, you
might be a pedophile. And, if you fantasize about Elins in a sexual
manner, you might be a pedophile.
There
are many people who have pedophilic tendencies but have never acted
on them. Last year Upworthy published a story about a young man who
wanted to have himself locked up for his pedophilic thoughts, despite
never acting on them. It has been theorized that, like mental
illness, pedophilic thoughts are not something that can be
controlled, only one's actions while under the effects of this
disorder can be.
If
you have these thoughts, please seek therapy. This isn't something
you should be ashamed of, you just need help. As long as you don't
physically act on those tendencies, you don't need to beat yourself
up about it – but you do need to seek help.
Let
me reiterate here: I'm not poking fingers, calling names, or being a
bully, I'm simply trying to get people to realize that these people
need help.
You
are always in control of your own actions. Remember that.
(This
has been a public service announcement brought to you by V the GRRL Gamer.)
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