10: Their Natural Aversion To Sunlight
9: Their Creator, Lolth, Is Still Alive & Present
8: They're A Matriarchal Society
7: Their Society Runs On Slavery
6: The Drow Culture Is Counterproductive
5: They're More Attractive Than Other Elves
4: Some Become Disillusioned, Leading To Kindness
3: They're A Bit Short
2: Mind Flayers Fear Them
1: Attempts To Change The Racist Stereotype
If you remove what it is well known and what is wrong you have nothing left and this are the people who claim to be fans.
6: The Drow Culture Is Counterproductive - the drow are extremely powerful and efficient. In fact it is one of the major points of the drow, if you create a very competitive environment that is unforgiving to failure you will have a superior but very cruel society. This is why most people fear them.
2: Mind Flayers Fear Them - not true. In the books Drizzt is enthralled by mind flayers. They seem to fear the Gith but that is about it.
1: Attempts To Change The Racist Stereotype - this makes no sense, since it is not the actual Drow trying to change racist stereotypes of one of the coolest race created but wotc doing it.
I'm conflicted on 4, Drizzt was different do to his father, although I do not remember why his father was different to begin with, except their eyes.
I disagree. I can't remember any names but there have been a few companies that shot themselves in the foot by promoting cutthroat competitiveness between their constituent parts, resulting in their employees refusing to to help their co-workers if not actively sabotaging them. Every minute a Drow spends avoiding a knife in the back is a minute not spent doing something productive.
I would say "counterproductive" depends on what your goal is.
Remember, Lolth is not a goddess of the nine Hells, she is not an Archdevil. She is not Lawful. Lolth is a goddess of the Abyss, the demons, she is Chaotic. Those who worship her revere ALL aspects of her, including the fact she's chaotic. Drow create large societies with counter-intuitive laws that are meant to be broken and fucktarded matriarchal murder-cracy ruling structures in order to better worship her.
If you look at it from the goal of creating a chaotic and evil place, to better worship their patron deity, their society is VERY productive!
I don't like that argument - you make a character less interesting when you treat alignment as prescriptive rather than descriptive. I view Lolth as the Drow's abusive mother: she is Chaotic Evil because she hurts her children to keep them isolated and vying for her attention, not because she's a Goddess of Chaotic Evilness.
Cause and effect reversal: She is not bound by Chaotic Evil. Chaotic Evil is bound by her. She's a god. She defines terms, she is not defined by them. If she were to go around hugging puppies, then hugging puppies would, in some form, be a chaotic evil act, for the chaotic evil god has acted so.
Maybe, I do not know but that was the point in the books. The drow were superior in terms of skills to any other elves, they had incredibly strong fighters and very strong magic both divine and arcane, they had high resistances, innate powers and tactics that made them extremely deadly. I do not know how the same thing would work in an environment that is not combat focused but that is how they were portraited in the books.
Except that the avoiding a knife in the back is the productive part. They are superior do to their combat prowess as well as manipulation and deception.
In real life scenarios it would probably fail do to the inability to expand, you can only expand if you have trust others with power. Second you need large number of trained people to create innovation and the heartless society would have to few trained people to generate innovation and in some cases it would purposely keep people down.
However it works perfectly in a medieval fantasy setting designed around combat prowess, where innovation means a new spell or a weapon enchant and education is not wide spread enough that population numbers would affect innovation.
So it would work in a drow society but not in a modern day society.
On top of that, it is not unique as a concept. The dark side in star wars is made the same way.
I think R.A. Salvatore changed Drizzt's backstory a little bit between Crystal Shard and the actual Drow books. In the Crystal Shard his father straight up worshiped the Forest God (read: Druid God) Mielikki, and he was forced to kill him? I think?
In the Drow trilogy, his father had an attack of conscience after being forced to kill a baby. And he was possessed by an evil spirit so Drizzt was forced to kill him.