Elven ears

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>>55183837
The 'big ears are compassionate' has it's grounding in the sadhu holy men, who were often very rich young men and princes who (like most men of power) had their ears weeighted. when they gave up their wealth, their earlobes were still stretched, but they were no longer concerned with material wealth and property, and taught and practiced compassion for one's fellow man.

Pointed ears is a call back to a particular mutation called William's Syndrome, where it causes a deformation of vatious body parts, particularly elongation and sharpness of ears and smaller noses as well as a widening of the mouth, in addition to various internal disorders. Like heterochomia it was commonly believed that such children were changelings, faerie replacements for the original human child (and often an excuse for divorce, an explanation for infidelity, or other escape clauses in a marriage).

Afaik after Germanics become Christians, elves became equal to demons (that are sometimes depicted in iconography with pointy ears that like of a goat or swine) and this is after which pointy years became associated with elves.
can be wrong though

>>55183837
>I asked this because in East Asia, we says that the ears are also an indication the character (e.g someone with big ears like Buddha is said to be a compassionate man.)
That's actually literally just because of the Buddha, who apocryphally had previously worn a ton of ear jewellery but then removed it as he willingly forsook material wealth.

If you see someone with long earlobes but no jewellery in them, that means the guy had jewellery but then removed it, therefore is like Buddha and kind [citation needed]

Pointy ears became a staple of elves and fairies in Victorian literature (elves at the time being more like Christmas elves and gnomes). This later got translated to Tolkien's super awesome elves by association, giving us the sterotype we know today.

>>55183904
To my knowledge changelings were mainly an explanation for downs/autism as the criteria, again to my knowledge, were mainly behavioral.

Basically, "elves" had pointy/big (the specifics and translations are debatable, but modern interpretation of the myths is usually that they're pointy) ears in mythology, and when Tolkien used myths and the fey as inspiration for his stories, this carried over to the ancient-first-race of would-be aryans, with all the superiority that entails.

And as much as these elves were every bit as warranted in their superiority complex as they were superior as per Tolkien, this has then been reinterpreted with elements of arrogance and exoticism, often in a reductionist fashion reminiscent of slave morality as per Nietzsche.

Mythological "elves" (in the linguistic sense) have extremely little to do with Tolkien-esque Fantasy elves, and certain elves are described a lot more like what you'd expect to be dwarves, and the sources often aren't even consistent, due to being written in different dialects and sometimes hundreds of years apart. Tolkien cherry-picked his influences and reinterpreted them in a way that would make them consistent with his world-view and in the context of his stories overall, which is frankly a necessity as a writer and storyteller in order for the story to make sense in itself, even if your inspirations differ.

It is, of course, entirely possible that he also took elements of eastern mysticism and culture into account - after all, he grew up and operated in an era where mysticism and the eastern origin of the European people, and the Indo-Aryan heritage was all the vogue and discussed both as part of popular culture and on an academic level.

But yeah, it's basically just an element of modern fantasy. Outside that, pointed ears are rarely considered a sign of superiority in any European culture I know of. Exotic or interesting, for sure, but that's about it. Most would consider you an idiot if you do the surgery, or an odd deformity if you were born with it.

>>55183837
Hurr...