Ok so my story takes place in the near future, in a world mostly like ours, but Elves and Humans are at odds, there are very few elves, but most humans don't like them. My Elves are human size, have tall pointed ears (not leaf shaped like Tolkien).
Other than that, they tend to have longish hair, or hastily cropped hair, no facial/body hair. They tend to be decades behind on trends and such, because when you live for a few thousand years, there isn't much difference between 1960 and 2100, so they seem old fashioned a lot of the time in speech, dress. and mannerism.
So far people just tend to call them "Pointy" or "Who let the Ears in here"
The characters most likely to need to use slurs are:
a cold hardened sniper, who refuses to kill Elves, but still hates them... He gets really pissed when he learns that an assigned target is an Elf.
Drug-fueled body-guard/fighter types who are hired for hand-to-hand combat
Police who are trying to keep the peace.
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50,052 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2009 - 06 27
Can't help TOO much, because honestly your description is a little sparse on things that slurs are formed from.
Try any insults that might normally be directed toward the elderly, since they live a long time. Maybe try some of the ones directed towards effeminate men, since they don't appear to have the stereotypical 'masculine' characteristics of facial hair or big, bulky muscles.
Racial epithets are frequently an ignorant mispronunciation of a demographic term, for example (excuse these, for example purposes only) "Nigger" is derived from "Negro" or "Negroid", which long ago and far away was a demographic designation for someone with dark skin and a certain shaped face / head, and "Spic" appears to be derived from "Hispanic", a designation for someone descended from any of the far flung colonies of the Spanish empire. So to get THAT type of slur, take your scientific designation for Elves (Homo Longevitus? Homo Sapiens Longevitus?) and mispronounce it. How about 'Gevit'?
Another type of slur is based on a mispronunciation of a commonly said phrase in the object culture's language. For example, the Vietnamese word for 'American' sounds, to American ears, like the words "Me Gook". Hence, when Vietnamese crowded around American soldiers shouting "American, American" to get attention (as street vendors are wont to do) it sounded to the soldiers like they were self identifying as "Gooks". Hence the term. Perhaps your Elves have some greeting, word for human, or common philosophical / religious comment (Allah Akbar / God Bless You / Go with God / Peace be with you) that could be misinterpreted that way?
The final and least impactful type of slur is actually based on physical characteristics. "Skinnies", "Pointies" or "Beardless" might work there, but those are actually usually pretty weak slurs. If someone calls me heavy, I say 'uh, yeah?', not "No I'm not!".
50,876 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2009 - 08 22
I was going to throw out a few quick thoughts, but I'm hugely impressed by the existing reply and really don't see what else could be added, big ears.
84,477 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2009 - 14 44
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3440188
50,008 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2009 - 18 16
Gook is not Vietnamese, it's Korean. From the word, 국 which means country. (Korean here) Just clarifying. J-A-P is also derogatory. "Chink" is derogatory for "Chinese" but people mix it up. I would know since I get heckled on the street with the wrong derogatory word. Dude, if you are going to do it, do it right so I can call back to you things like, "Thanks for calling me a country."
The N word even with the a ending comes from most likely the dutch and just because it has the a doesn't make it better. (though ignorant people will argue with you otherwise.)
Whatever the words are in Elvish, people are likely to call them by that. Eskimo is the same branch. they went to a warring tribe and asked, "Who are those people over there?" The people said, "Eskimo" which is really derogitory for "seal eater." So this is a misnomer.
Korea, Japan, China are all like this too... same idiocy naming scheme based on mishearing words. But words take on meaning when they are used in a certain fashion for a long time. So I think your reader will swallow any word you give them as long as you add the negative connotation.
*spit* Me American. *points* You?
Huh? meeamereecan? WTH is that?
And thus from that time on, we were known a the meeamereecans, Which the derogatory word was meeamer because it was too long to say. And some people thought meeamereecans was a land full of sheep. <-- no one gets this pun?
Crap like that also works.
----------Novelists are a conscienceless lot.--Diana Gabaldon (An Echo in the Bone)
50,844 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2009 - 21 07
On the whole, I am against any racial slurs against Elves (but don't get me started on Dwarves...), anyway....
The RPG "Dragon Age: Origins" just game out for the Xbox 360 (a few days in NaNoWriMo, which is just cruel); anyway I've managed to steal a few hours and play. They appear to have a pretty interesting take on Elven/Human relations, where a portion of the Elves were urbanized and used as slaves. They've since freed themselves, but my Elven character walked up to a soldier who greeted him as another "knife ear" here...
I guess my advice is, to think about distinguishing physical characteristics combined with something in the culture (or in the other culture, it might be interesting if the 'insulted' elf doesn't get the reference).
50,669 / 50,000
Nov 18, 2009 - 21 22
Check out the early elfQuest comics too, I know both the humans and the trolls had some elf race slurs.. but mostly I think it went down pretty much the same as pointy or knife ears.
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