I was researching fae for my book and I came across something along the lines of ‘all fairies are pale, sparkly, and have wings.’ I was like: DAMN YOU DISNEYYYYYY! >:U ….AND TWILIIIIIIGHT!
“Oh, your fantasy takes place in the real world, but with magic creatures? You must have to do no world building at all!”
Oh, no world building, but you do have to entirely reevaluate the world’s entire history and think of how modern laws and social conventions would treat the magical creatures in question. Really, it’s worse than world building because you can’t just make shit up most of the time.
Both conditions (in my book’s continuity) are caused by the blood contamination of the uninfected party by the infected party, just like many STDs. It’s a pressing concern in my book, and is the target of medical research and public awareness campaigns like HIV/AIDS in the real world.
I risked failing my (incredibly dull) economics class for that damn language. Losing it for good could have unhinged me.
Wrote a short story about a dragon and his hoard. Liked how it turned out.
Realized I’d just rewritten Smaug’s entire story with one or two minor changes.
So, I wrote about a country where the people had dark skin (like, think Middle Eastern to African American kind of dark) but natural blonde hair.
A geneticist friend of mine informed me there were people in Melanesia (in Oceania) where that actually occurred because the recessive blonde gene became dominant (I don’t recall half the stuff she explained to me; but WHOA this is a real thing o.o)