In the reference to the elf & faeries post (referred to as elves and fay, cause typing is hard)
For me the first thing that comes to mind with fay are pixies from disney movies and leprechauns, and maybe fauns, they are for me beings of fairy tales not fantasy, if that at all makes sense? I know of course that there are fay creatures, and they exist in worlds like d&d and so on, but I have never ended up interacting with those media as much. With that in note,
I mostly write short stories and got one larger project in mind. I do various worldbuilding, but usually not too extensive, and my count on elves and fay is quite low. Which is to say, I have written elves before, and planning on using them a lot actually, but for now it's mostly in my head. I do differentiate between High, Wood, Low and basic elves in my worldbuilding, they are more varied than just one race. The fay I have actually not written at all, maybe one short story or two could be considered to have them. This post actually remained me that I like the concept of dryads a lot! I should write those things. (Are those fay?) Perhaps in my world there will be fay, it might be simply something that I haven't got around to that aspect yet
I think I use elves more often because I feel like they fit the stories I write more, and because I'm not as familiar with the fay.
Here are some notes on how elves I write work:
High - They are region specific, dystopian! Utopian society which is pretty, isolated and rotten to it's core
Wood - just generic elves that live in the woods for now
Low - The elves who were forced to live in desert regions of the world, hard work is their life, rare to see outside those regions
basic - the elvish travellers, ones you most often see on the roads and towns
My dear @hachi-qo (go poke him, cool but shy fella) on the other hand in his worldbuilding project(intended for an rpg) has both fay and elves in his world. In short both small 'pixies' and elves exist and are intended as +- common thing, I don't know much more on his world but wanted to include another perspective while writing this,
This was a mouthful, I'm sorry if it's a bit long, Hope this helps with your thoughts, and have a nice day! (｡◕‿‿◕｡)つ🫖🍵
(also hi, this is an ad, I'm not yet properly a writeblr, but I'm planning on being one)
I like your races ideas for elves, there's honestly soooo many ways you could write them and have them play a part in your world. I especially love when different writers use the same naming tropes for elves, like you said High elves, Wood elves, Low elves, and basic elves (which you could also call them Common elves if you wanted to) but I love how everyone's version of a 'High elf' can differ. Seeing the same tropes implemented in different ways is such a cool thing to see when reading fantasy books.
Don't ever worry about apologizing to me for writing so much bc I LOOOOVEEEE when people share their worldbuilding ideas with me. Thank you so much for the detailed response and apologies for the late reply. :)