🩸🌙: What made or inspired you in the folklore?
Mostly just asking bc I'm currently having fun with my own <3 (Adding all the big cats and one not big cat is so FUN)
My inspirations came from all over the place. Popular themes in real-world mythology, my own pets, vague character ideas I had that I wanted to implement in a project, I could go on. I never stuck to one source of inspiration - if I wanted to do something, in it went, and I'd find a way to blend it in with the rest of the story somehow. I don't remember every single root of the myths, but I'll try to give a quick rundown of those I do recall:
The Mother is a general creation myth god, with Eldritch concepts thrown in.
The Three were just me simplifying canon lore, combined with general tropes I liked in fiction for gods. The halls were Lynx's idea, with Horoa's hunters specifically referencing the idea of the Wild Hunt.
Yrrun was inspired by Puppycat, my enormously overweight and gluttonous pet cat. I didn't have to exaggerate the hunger too significantly. She was very into food.
Terror, I believe, came from the idea of the boggart that HP introduced: that of a monster that changes into what scares you most. (This was prior to Rowling's downfall and reveal as a horrible person, and I don't even really like HP to begin with, I'm just being transparent.)
The Empty is a reference to overly-edgy creepypastas and online horror stories. I liked the idea of a monster apprentices would find really fun to scare kits and younger apprentices with, that is so absurdly violent and graphic that to this very day, you can feel the essence of the edgelord that made it up.
Wraiths are just ghosts. No special inspiration there beyond the general idea of 'em.
Mernatha/Petalfall is based on the trope of the classic trickster hero that one can find all over the world, but especially in North America folklore and general fiction. Cats being cats, I felt it fitting they'd honor someone so cunning and beautiful and hard to defeat.
Likewise, Thorn is an Aesop character - the kind whose stories are designed to teach morals and critical thinking to young kids.
Brighteyes and Thlainra, if I remember right, are purely from my own head. I had an idea of a character who spoke through animals at the time, and I decided to use the concept here. I'm a little bummed I did, because I don't want to repeat it elsewhere, but I'll live with it being in my most popular project, even if it is just a fanfic. Brighteyes' story was an idea that struck me, as well.
The ishmet and mist-myths originate from fae folklore: difficult to find beings whose morality does not align with ours even a little, whose locations you do NOT want to enter, whose witnesses can only describe the story in vague references and a bit of fear for the unknown.
That isn't everybody, but it's all the ones I remember. Apologies for the length of this post!
