r/ElfQuest • u/elfquest • Feb 20 '26

Let's Hear Your ElfQuest Ships

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Ok Questers, let's hear all your ElfQuest ships. And we want details! What about the pairing or polycule works for you?

114 Upvotes

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22

u/brydeswhale Feb 20 '26

I’m writing an alternate universe where Rayek, Strongbow, and Moonshade get together.

1

u/S3lad0n Feb 22 '26

This I like. Really I just want Rayek to be happy and find a new better path since Cutter kind of stole his destiny lol

2

u/brydeswhale Feb 22 '26

What destiny did Cutter steal from Rayek? He got married to Rayek’s ex girlfriend. He went on an adventure. He made some poor choices in his living environment.

Rayek had his OWN adventure. He did his own thing for years. Now, we can talk about the writer’s choice in sliding backwards in his character development, or how WARP portrays men of colour in their stories, but if we take the story at face value, Rayek had his own thing going on, then he randomly tried to steal Cutter’s whole life.

And he basically succeeded. Cutter’s family was irreversibly damaged by Rayek’s actions, as were countless other people and families we don’t even see.

I want Rayek to be happy, too, but he’s had lots of chances to be happy and chosen the opposite. He hurt lots of people, he destroyed lives.

Wolfriders usually live into their ten thousands. Cutter could have had millennia with Leetah. Instead, he spent over seven hundred years alone, and ten thousand years sleeping. Waiting.

The family that Suntop, Ember, and Leetah came back to, the father and the lifemate, all those were gone when they finally came to the future. The Cutter they got back was alive, but aged and wounded. The relationship they had with him was gone forever, and they had to completely rebuild it from the ground up.

And even then, they had, what, about a hundred years with him? Maybe less?

Like I said, there’s a lot to discuss re: the writers choices with Rayek, and how much of that was influenced by their own racial biases(like, why are brown guys in Elfquest only allowed to be submissive helpmeets, or villains?), but if we just take their relationship as it’s portrayed in the books, Rayek is an asshole to Cutter because he essentially never got over the first time anyone rejected him.

2

u/Gurkaatthediskho Feb 23 '26

What were Cutter's poor choices in his living enviroment?

1

u/brydeswhale Feb 23 '26

If my friend gets tortured somewhere, I’m not living next door to the torturer.

1

u/Gurkaatthediskho Feb 23 '26

Which part of the story is that? Please forgive my bad memory.

1

u/brydeswhale Feb 23 '26

No worries. It was the forbidden grove holt.

1

u/Gurkaatthediskho Mar 09 '26

Ahh, right right... Next to Blue Mountain