depigmenting replied to your post: Fun question time: do Fae go to the toilet?
your answer is something i always think about when trying to world build. i love it. “it’s an efficient magical digestive system, don’t worry about it!”
Lol, right?
It’s also just one of those things that’s really irrelevant to the story.
I really respect hard science fiction, which is about the only place in fiction that would genuinely try and solve the science of something like this, and it be relevant to the story, because you do - partly - read for all the tiny details being solved.
But elsewhere, not having all your worldbuilding solved and sorted out is normal. Which is proved by some of the most creative worldbuilding geniuses like Philip Pullman writing things like this in response to worldbuilding questions. (And what happens when we get people like J.K. Rowling who seems unable to say ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I didn’t plan for that.’ Like we all know she had the seven folders of worldbuilding, we know she didn’t half-ass it. It’s just, when you create a world you literally don’t have all the answers).
The fae toilet question kind of amused me to answer, so I answered it. But like, I don’t think a fantasy story is missing something when they don’t pay attention to this. In the same way that I don’t really care of my explicit m/m sex doesn’t have the reality of faeces on a cock if they don’t douche first (the faeces detail doesn’t always happen, but enough of these bottoms go out for rich meals a little before fucking and like...it would happen more than it’s written lmao).
I mean we read fiction for that suspension of disbelief, to not have to care about all the little details. So while certain people and certain personality types care about all those details, most of us are just out here like ‘well that detail wasn’t relevant to the story so.’ Some stuff we’ll know (as writers) and some stuff we won’t. :D
If you spend all your life trying to nail down an entire world you’ll realise how much about your current world you don’t know (nearly everything), realise it’s impossible to create a fully realised world on the level you thought you probably would (sometimes crushing), and then realise you don’t need it because everyone is in the same boat as you just some with different specialised knowledges (what a relief!) and you can get on to writing instead. :D (Or rpging or doing whatever your world is doing). <3
