you keep saying the fae aren't human and aren't even close. So how come a ton of them have humanoids shapes? And a lot of them wear old fashioned human clothes from like the medieval ages and they even have castles and stuff. They're supposed to be immortal too, so why do they have feasts and stuff? do they still need to eat foodor whatever???
(I'm going to have to assume you mean the Fae from my own stories rather than the much varied conceptions of Fae from actual Folklore that more often than not contradict one another. Are the fae mortal or immortal? Depends on where and when your story came from. But as to your question...) Because they can. That's quite literally the answer.
If you have beings whose forms are mutable according to such things as their self identity, world view, environment, and emotional state then you're not going to get something with only one form. As time goes on you'll get them taking on all kinds of interesting forms, either intentionally, or as they slowly fall into that form over ridiculously long periods of time without even noticing it.
You could have Fae that swim through the air and appear something like glowing alien jellyfish. Or you can have one that was watching that weird little world where everything lives only for a short period of time before just... not living anymore, and they suddenly had this new creature called a wolf popping up everywhere and they liked it so much they took on that form permanently, and one or two might have changed it a little over time but stayed generally wolf-like.
Imagine you have to live...well... forever. And unlike humans, dying at any given point is just not an option, because even if you wanted to die, you can't. It's not possible. You'll always be around, in one form or another. So you have to find ways to pass the time, to give meaning to your existence, to create purpose.
So the Fae take on projects, take on forms, take on identities and cultural ideas. They build castles that could have come straight from some fairy tale illustration, they hold fancy balls, they get in the habit of eating and drinking.
Sure, like you said. Technically they don't need to eat or drink. After all, they'll live forever even if they don't. But isn't eating nice? Think back to a time when you enjoyed a really tasty meal while in the company of friends or family or others who you enjoy spending time with. The drinks were good, the food was absolutely delicious, and there was probably a lot of laughing or stories or jokes as the meal went on.
Of course, the Faeries we always hear about are having extravagant feasts with all manner of exotic or otherworldly fruits and unique but tasty treats. Why wouldn't they? They're so closely in step with their natural world (and ours) that they can easily produce incredible bounty. They have the time to cultivate fun skills like cooking or wine making or baking. We sometimes consider such skills art forms, but we also have to eat to survive, the Folk can spend all their time and effort on perfecting the skills because they don't need to worry about things like survival.
Then again, not every fairy meal is a feast. Some prefer to share the pleasure of eating in a small way, with friends, or family. Often enough, some Folk just get used to eating. It's just something you do every day, because its good. Or they put all sorts of cultural meanings into the exchanges of food and drink and ritual meals and who knows what else.
The same thing happens all over again with clothing. When you take a humanoid form, you might also decide to jump on the bandwagon of clothing. You don't need it, having gone for tens of thousands of years in a variety of forms and never having needed it before. But hey, it's kind of cool. And you get Faeries who play with it, trying new ways of making them, or new materials and styles. Well the humans are doing grand balls and such these days, right? Let's do that so we can show it all off! Hey, we can even take on the human roles and character types for it, like an elaborate game.
And they do, and it's fun. You wanted to know why they're still often wearing things from the medieval era? Well they can wear modern clothing too, or even clothing entirely of Fae design. Some might have even adapted the concept of clothing for forms that aren't even humanoid. There's still lots more there to play with, lots of new designs and interpretations, new
ways to impress your neighbors and friends, new ways to play character types or act new kinds of narratives.
The idea of Courts themselves isn't taken from humans, of course. Rulers and governing bodies are something that emerge sometimes in societies if the conditions are right. But the way it was all set up was inspired by human ingenuity.
If and when they tire of it all? Perhaps they'll find something new from humanity to focus on, or maybe they'll all scatter back into the wild, taking on new forms. Either ones we might find familiar such as birds or deer, or something far more alien. Some Folk have simply never left this state of being, preferring to live day by day, respecting but remaining apart from the game that is "Civilization".
See, that's an important thing. The birds and beasts and fish of the sea. Many of them are simply folk, thinking and living like those creatures and not paying much attention to others where it doesn't directly concern them. Other beasts and creatures were brought from our world long ago and have thrived there, remaining mortal in an immortal world. Faerie hunts will go out and hunt the deer for meat on their feasting table, or hunt for ordinary fish for a simple meal. They can always tell the difference between what is mortal and what is not, while human senses are easily deceived.
It's a weird thing to think about. Because almost all of what we know of the Folk from our stories would be of human looking or almost human looking beings who have great and strange power as well as acting in unknowable or wicked ways. So our entire conception of the Folk is something that at the very least... vaguely resembles us humans.
And that's entirely wrong. They're alien. Strange. Sure they've gotten to know us really well since they've been here since before we began and got to watch humanity grow. So they're familiar with a number of our cultures, can speak lots of our languages if they took the time to learn, they wear our clothes and our faces and play pretend at being something almost like us but better.
But they're not. The things which we truly have in common with them, and yes those do exist, are not obvious or easy to see at all. Often they hide in ideas and philosophy, some inspired by us, some discovered by both of us separately and in different ways while still coming to the same conclusions. Sometimes they have emotions that match or are similar enough to ones we have that its easier just to call them the same thing for the sake of time.
There are Fae who, like us, currently exist in a physical form. Sure it's not necessarily a humanoid form they have, but it's composed of matter. Sometimes its even biological matter. A living thing, a plant or a creature. It's a far jump, but technically that is something we have in common. Something we can relate to. Being a physical thing. Not normally something you think about when talking about relating to characters in stories, right? But still technically true.
They also exist, and we exist. So that's another thing we share. The knowledge of experience and that we both exist in the world somehow. Perhaps some Fae are so far removed from anything human that they perceive the world completely differently, in a way that we cannot, that would seem entirely and utterly different from all that we know if we could even perceive or understand it. There are Faeries who have never had much to do with humanity or mortals, or nothing at all, and despite the extreme nature of their differences, they share with us the the very idea of existing itself.
Different, yet in some ways the same. And while I could tell stories surrounding something deeply inhuman and strange, I find that its easier for others if the stories I tell fall much closer to those that they understand and are familiar with. Faeries that have human forms, either because they are young and this is all they know of themselves, or because they like it and are on board with keeping it for thousands of years or longer. A much easier place to start with for a story than a being who
dwells within and can perceive at least 6 different dimensions of space and exists as a 3-sphere (a sphere in 4 dimensions of space). That alone would be difficult to write, but consider how such a being might think or feel or perceive the world. In theory I might be able to achieve it with practice, but in the process my readers would be left far behind.
So I imagine Fae in many stories are bound by the same problem, no matter how alien or strange the idea was initially, the storytellers were bound by how to communicate such things to their listeners and readers. For much of human history, the Human form would have been the easiest choice. And its only as our literature and our worldview grows and changes that stranger things become easier to work with.
That probably answered quite a bit more than your original question, but I hope it was an interesting read at the very least.
