One peculiarity of mine is that, though I consider both elves and fairies fantastic creatures, I think of elves as if they could be real, whereas I think of fairies as completely imaginary! I know that doesn't make any sense whatever. But it makes a difference in how I imagined them.
Elves, for instance—and as I have blogged earlier, I've actually begun a story about elves—seem to me to have little flaws in them. I described my elf as having mostly a perfect complexion. But when I imagine Tinker Bell, for instance, I imagine her as a perfect, 3-d cartoon character, perfectly smooth.
Somehow my elf is more flawed. Her name is Fern; my human character, Lauren, is heavily questioned by Fern about how things are on Earth, and Fern describes what it's like in elf-land (I haven't yet thought of a name for the planet), and wonders why things aren't like that on Earth! And I have to describe all the ways in which Fern is flawed, actually very tiny flaws, but it is those flaws that make her a real character!
Angels, however, are complicated. Unlike believers, who have constructed in their minds a complete metaphysics of angels (c.f. His Dark Materials, by Philip Pullman), my vision of angels is that (1) they're messengers; (2) they're protectors, in a minor way; (3) they're observers. (4) They're incognito, and—at least in my mind—unobtrusive, so they must look fairly unremarkable, until they're revealed to be angels, at which point they'll just look very fuzzy about the edges, and even somewhat transparent. In short, I don't think they're going to look very much like anyone's fantasy of angels. Of course, reason never stopped DA artists from their fantastic creations.
KHB
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