I read a thread on another board earlier today analyzing an art shift in how Drow were portrayed in Tashas. Specifically, they are *significantly* lighter-skinned than even prior 5e material. Across the board-In some cases basically Asterion-levels of pale, and he's a vampire-spawn moon elf! It seems like part of WoTC's strategy towards combating allegations of bigotry over the evil elves being black-skinned....is to remove the black skin of said elves. Yikes.
I don't know what it is with this obsession with changing drow's physical appearance, because it inevitably ends up making things incredibly uncomfortable because nobody seemingly thought about it for more than 5 minutes. Drow redemption being signified by changes in physical appearance is something I hope doesn't make the final cut. Like if we reach Baldur's Gate and run into some Eilistraeens and they're all violet-eyed I'll be cross.
Tasha's was great for its illustrations of wood elves, but not so much for its illustrations of drow, i'm not sure how WoTC managed to drop the ball so badly for one, but not the other.
But on that note, drow themselves have had their skin change colour from edition to edition, they have been black, grey, charcoal, eggplant purple (the less said about that the better imo), and were even depicted as brown at one point around the 2e years, but everyone likes to forget that happened because it was widely considered to have been an error of judgement on the part of the illustrators. Look up the original cover for the crystal shard novel and see Drizzt in all his bad-idea-brown glory.
I'm also not a fan of separating drow into racial factions like this, I wasn't a fan when they did it in neverwinter online, and that was an obvious and unashamed cash grab, and I'm not a fan of it now.
