About your fantasy evolution

Ookay.

So.

First of all. Where's the second post?

Second, I'd like to think through your evolution of fantasy creatures.

Ok, so, first. I'm not entirely sure about the whole idea of all other creatures having evolved from humans. It doesn't seem to make sense. Obviously the trolls are one group, and the fae are probably one group that can easily be divided into smaller groups, but I'm not buying them being evolved from humans. Trolls I can see having evolved from the same ancestor as humans, though, but the fae?

Actually, the fae in your picture may have evolved from humans from when humans learned to use magic, and then the different groups of people doing their own kind of magic evolved different ways. (Since there was a time when humans learned to use magic.)

But. The rest of the fae.

Ok, before I get any deeper into fae, I need to say this one more time: 
Read The Name of the Wind.

You know why? Because I can't have a proper conversation with you about the fae if you haven't read it. Well, actually the one more to do with the fae is The Wise Man's Fear, but it's not like you can start mid-series, so. The Name of the Wind.

The point in those books is this: Once the fae and humans lived in the same world, but they're worlds were separated by some creatures that are now locked down. The fae still remember this, because they're pretty much immortal. The humans don't, because, you know, thousands of years (or way more more) will do the trick and make the human race forget times when the fae walked among them. Or the other way round, which ever you want.

From this point of view, I can't see a way how humans and the fae are evolutionary related. They're simply too different. Of course evolution is a weird thing and can come up with very, very different things, and then they all exist at the same time. But that's not what I mean.

What I mean is that the essence of the fae is completely different than the essence of human beings. They are so different, that they have not come into existence the same way. I don't think the fae have evolved from anything. They just ... are. Some have been for longer than others...
Ok, so this is where we get into an interesting conversation about the origins of the fae.
The point is, that what ever the origin, it's not the same as human's. The fae operate in a different world. They operate with different laws of physics. Or, rather, they aren't bound by the laws of physics. Not that in any book with fae in it the world worked within the same laws of physics than ours, because it's pretty much granted to have magic, but the fae work on a whole different level compared to other creatures.

At least in my head they do. So no, I don't think the fae can share an evolutionary link with humans, even if they basically looked like them (us?).

Ok, moving on.

The centaurs and fauns and merfolk. To me they seem a little problematic too. Again, the merfolk are ok, as long as you don't think of merfolk as the kind that you see in Disney's Little Mermaid and stuff. I can imagine how people could somehow become adapted to living in water, and then under water, but they would look nothing like the half-fish-half-human we tend to think of as mermaids. Nothing quite that simple. If you want that kind of thing, then they'll go into the same category with the fauns and centaurs.

By which I mean that yeah, I can see hoe they could've once been human. What I can't see is how they evolved into having goat-legs or horses for a body. Or, rather, why that would have happened. On it's own. I can see that there once was a human being that did something stupid, and then an evil faerie or something turned his legs into goat's for punishment. But then again, I don't see how that would be a punishment. The only way being a centaur is worse from being a human is probably that you're bigger, and so clumsier, and doing stuff that involves small spaces or basically anything that would require only two feet is pretty much impossible. But as long as you don't mind that, the whole being-able-to-run-as-fast-as-a-horse thing is probably more an advantage than a curse.

Ok, anyway, my point was, I don't see how they could've evolved on their own. There must have been some magic involved, getting them those new bodies waste-down. Or course all the time that has gone since that happened to first people has been time for them to adapt into their new bodies and develop into something a little different than they had been when they first got the new legs, so that just a human with a horse's body wouldn't be a centaur, but the changes after that has made them what they truly are.

And then I was about to start talking about dragon evolution, which is actually perfectly not all that impossible, but I realised that you were talking about just the humanoid fantasy creatures here. So I won't get into dragons. Or anything the like.

So yeah, In case you were wondering (you probably weren't, because I suppose you were in Canada) why I didn't leave a comment on your last post, this was the reason. I have too much love for the fae to fit all this in a comment.

So that's all for this week. I'll see if your responses trigger another post like this next week.

~matu

PS. You never reacted to my "I'd like to keep writing also after you come back" that I said in a side note some weeks ago. Since it's just, what, a week? before you're back, I think we need to discuss this.