#otherfolk

When it comes to fae legends, are there any depictions with bugs to them? What are the most common ones? And can they be like any other bug?

The basic idea is that reality is made up out of concepts that wove together and define the shape and form of reality, and that the 'definition' or 'concept' that shapes the object somehow in of itself gains some level of awareness- or has a soul attach to it/form out of it- and that avatar is what the Fae is- and thus why Fae are hurt by damaging the definition of the object- and why they abhor the unnatural forged iron.

I was wanting to understand if there was any basis for that at all, and if that even could make sense even... And as a side note I have a belief that the 'true name' of someone isn't actually a name but is that very concept that defines a sentient person's influence, thus why 'stealing' a true name erases you from memory, your influence on the world was stolen. And could be a reason for the fair folk to not just steal eachother's names... because that's kidnapping rather than just stealing identity.

My mc himself is a satyr, partially anyway, and looks like a typical one without any horns. After he is elevated though I planned for him to be more goat-like, fur everywhere instead of just the lower half, his nose and eyes being changed.

There are other details I was considering adding to make him more strange/weird. Smelling of mulled wine, predatory teeth, maybe extra eyes or strange natural symbol looking patterns.

In my personal opinion, while giving the character a strange and alien appearance is fun, it doesn't do a whole lot to make your character feel very alien beyond a certain point. I've noticed that a lot of fantasy and scifi stories deal with characters who are supposed to be strange and frightening and different, and while their appearance certainly is startling… their behavior and ways of thinking are very human.

A far more effective and reaching strategy is to build non-human ways of thinking into their very cognition and perception. Some of this could be based on their sensory perception. How might a being interact with the world if they can see radio waves, or work with an extra fourth spatial dimension orthagonal to the other three we usually know, or can literally taste music the way we taste chemical substances? Or some differences could be cultural, such as associating circles of mushrooms with the risk of human incursion on one's domain, or a long tradition of treating an entire race of beings as somehow less than insects over the course of several thousands of years and then finding it difficult to see them as anything else.

Other ways to make characters seem more alien could involve their biology beyond perception. For example, one thing this blog has explored before is the concept of food. If you didn't need to eat food in order to survive, and wouldn't really feel hunger from not eating unless you'd somehow gotten used to the activity and miss it, how would that affect your entire society and culture over time? For humans, so much of our cultures and philosophies and traditions originate from the things that keep us alive, such as eating food and not starving to death in a ditch somewhere without shelter or community. If you dig deep enough, almost everything is related to it in some distant way. So how might a culture that does not require sustenance for survival evolve over time?

Another rather important one is morality. The trope "Blue and Orange Morality" describes moral frameworks that are so utterly alien to the human experience that they simply cannot be layered onto our frameworks of good or evil, lawful or chaotic, and the like. These frameworks usually have plenty of logical coherence to them, it's just that its stemming from entirely different values and premises that are inherently not human. Typically such characters would find human morality as baffling, weird, or appalling as we find theirs. This is one of the trickier techniques to use as unfortunately most writers (that we know of) tend to be human, which rather limits our experience in alien moral frameworks. It takes practice.

Defamiliarization is also a delightfully fun and helpful tool to use in situations like these. The best example is when you have a non-human character coming into contact with the human world filled with many human things. This trick involves describing ordinary human objects or behaviors or places through the eyes of someone who has absolutely no idea what they are or how to deal with it. Of course, inversely the same thing applies when we have humans stepping into non-human places or interacting with non-human beings and objects… but we typically call that cosmic or eldritch horror (or a merging of the two, which I refuse to give Lovecraft the satisfaction of associating him with the concept) because it's very useful for causing both character and reader great unease (though it does appear rather freely in fantasy and science fiction in a wide range of forms). But the important thing that this trick can teach you, aside from improving your descriptive writing and providing an immediate alien viewpoint, is to imagine a character's life without the thing they are currently unfamiliar with and attempting to describe. How would not having even the barest concept of whatever mundane thing it is change every single aspect of their lives? What do they have instead? How does that change their whole worldview in subtle and obvious ways?

Some writers give themselves rules or limitations. What is this character allowed to do, not allowed to do, how are they to react to this specific thing or circumstance or concept, etc etc. And then without ever telling the reader that such rules exist they follow them to the letter whenever the character is being written in a scene.

The most consistent metal they cannot interact with is cold iron. Which could ward off evil spirits. You have to understand that iron was different from other metals in that medieval and alchemical philosophy would depict it as having the ability to repel chthonic power and spiritual entities. In a strict academic sense, chthonic referred to deities, spirits, rituals, or power that originated either from the earth or from beneath it (underworld). It related to death and the wealth beneath the earth, sacrifice and blood... but also to the soil of the earth itself, life that bloomed in abundance on the surface, agriculture, birth and rebirth, fertility, and the harvest. It has to do with the world itself, rather than heavenly and cosmic powers originating somewhere unreachable above. In classical works, religious studies, and anthropology it's a highly precise term that refers to powers that exist beneath the earth or in it, distinct from the living surface. Both seed and corpse are buried beneath the soil in the womb of the earth, just as a seed can be planted in the depth of a womb. When it comes to iron, there were two varieties. There was meteoric iron which fell from the sky. Ancient cultures such as the babylonians and egyptians believed this iron from the sky had an inherent celestial power to ward off evil or malevolent chthonic spirits. Many of those beliefs and associations persisted despite the overall rarity of such iron. Meanwhile, terrestrial iron mined from the earth was considered to belong to the world of the chthonic. In the view of medieval alchemy and folklore this meant that iron that was ripped from the earth, aggressively smelted, and forced into unnatural shapes was a major symbol of humanity's domination over the purest form of primeval nature. It was said to have the ability to ward off chthonic spirits because it was their own power being stolen, transmuted, and used against them. Since fae are traditionally counted as chthonic spirits of one kind or another, they too are repelled or burned by this cold iron. Steel, on the other hand, loses that connection with the chthonic earth. it's too unnatural, too artificial, too human. It's also, by the strictest definition, an alloy of iron and carbon, not pure iron alone. So while it has its power in the symbolic representation of human artifice and mastery over metallurgy, it loses its ability to repel chthonic forces. Another metal some might suggest is silver. But this is wrong. Silver was a metal considered by alchemists and folklore to be associated with purity, clarity, and to the moon. It supposedly could burn away spiritual impurities, which meant it was effective against demons (of which vampires are traditionally a type of) and witches (who were considered impure). It was effective as a tool against werewolves because of their connection with the moon and was thought to have some control over them.

To be entirely honest... the field of medieval alchemy and philosophy is a pretty large area of study, and not one I've delved in to much beyond occasional forays. And the nuances of which metals could repel chthonic power whether they came from it or not was deeply intertwined with actual experimental results concerning the process of alchemical purification (they were trying to remove or burn away earthly influences and corruption from base metals in order to make them transmute into the supposedly purest form of metal, which was gold). If I were you, it would be a lot easier and faster to simply stick with cold iron as the one metal that repels the fae. While I would be delighted for everyone to have great interest in such complex and rich topics as medieval alchemical philosophy, unless your actual story has the metals and the reasoning behind their properties as a primary focus or major supporting narrative feature, you would really be better off sticking with just the one metal so as not to lose the actual focus of your story in the addictive pleasure of excessive worldbuilding.

‘Notice for employees on the fifth floor, count your shadows. If you see one shadow, you are okay to continue on your shift as intended. If you see two shadows, please leave the floor immediately; you can return to your duties later. If you see three shadows, your contract has been terminated. Thank you -Management.’

'I had a near miss with an animal while driving on the [REDACTED] route on my way back home. I hadn’t thought much of it and simply wrote it off as a deer or something. It would be two weeks later when I had an accident in the parking lot and had to review my dash cam footage for the insurance claim. Skimming through the files on a friend’s laptop, they brought my attention to this from weeks earlier. It doesn’t look like a deer to me….’