Honestly ya'll I really dislike the Encyclopedia of Fairies by Bane Theresa, she essentially just went through world mythology and just slapped the fae label onto anything that has any sort of connection with nature and it's so INFRIATING how it directly calls something as being apart of the fae but then within the fucking books own energy itself it directly contradicts itself by mentioning they're a completely different nonhuman species entirely, IT REALLY JUST ANNOYS THE FUCK OUT OF ME😭 I've been thinking about kind of creating my own like speculative classification system for mythological beings purely out of spite for this one book tbh
I personally think she's one of the writers that have influenced this idea that some people have about the "fae existing on every single continent" belief that I've seen some Celtic pagans regurgitate and it honestly doesn't really sit right with me since yeah if you're just casting the net as wide as fucking possible and including every single nonhuman being that's even remotely connected with nature then of course you're gonna come to that conclusion 💀
I've been getting into like speculative biology so this has been on my mind for the last couple of days and just how absolutely disorganized all of the actual classifications for mythological & fictional monsters/beings actually is so I might end up just cobbling together my own methods cuz my autism hates how vague it all ends up being and also how it can sometimes be used negatively against other cultures and is kind of a colonization tactic that's been used for a really long time most notably by the Romans and later on by the colonial powers so even though there's no actual intention to do harm it's somewhat rooted in not great methods if that makes sense?
Kind of just wanted to spew my thoughts on this topic a little bit since it's made me realize how unhelpful the overall classification system for what is/isn't fae is just nonexistent so I wanted to prompt everyone with the following question: what traits do ya'll think something has to have either in their behaviors, traits, use of magic, and appearances for it to actually be classified as being apart of the fae?