[Icelander]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

I don't know that it's a "better" way to say it, so much as it's a different way to create an in-game justification for making the Fae vary so widely from one set of stories to the next, while retaining them as, recognizably, fairies.

In point of fact, faires are just a way to anthropomorphize -- and thus give the illusion of influence over -- nature and natural forces. Since what we used to call the "human experience" consists largely of thoughts and emotions that human have in common, albeit filtered through widely variant environmental, social and cultural conditions, the stories of nature spirits appear in all human cultures, but the behavior of those spirits differs a lot.

The humans who created the fairy stories we've inherited based them on their own experiences. Humans don't just create gods in our images, we also create fairies in the same way.

So, for our purposes, one way to explain fairy behaviour is to say the human minds around them mold their personalities. That works, but it makes fairies less "nature spirits" than they are "thought form spirits" such as Prince Charon chose to use for his "Five Earths" setting.

Alternatively, we can make fairies manifestations of natural forces that are fundamentally other than human, and therefore display behavior that humans find decidedly odd, and perhaps dangerous for incomprehensible reasons.

That's what I went with.

The Dresden Files fae superficially appear in line with human expectations, but fundamentally are something else.

But one thing I liked about Butcher's portrayal was that a mask doesn't just present a new face to the world. Masks change how we see ourselves. So how they appear to humanity also changes how the fae see themselves. The fae were completely inhuman forces, alien to humans to every way. Spend a few thousand years appearing to humans masked with glamour that matches human expectations, however, and that's no longer all they are.

Alien motivations are fine, but if something is too far removed from anything we recognize as a person, it's no longer a villain, foe, rival or any other kind of NPC. It's just a storm, flood, wildfire or some other kind of natural disaster. And what I can't stand about disaster movies is the lack of personality or motivation by the 'antagonist'.

The true challenge of portraying alien mindsets is making sure they walk that fine line between inhuman, but understandable. Otherwise you've just got a random mess wearing a glamour suit, pretending to be a character.