Blackmoor Vituperative

I am going back and forth on terminology in Spider Season. On the one hand, I am already using “goblin” and “ogre”, and I will probably use “troll” as well. On the other hand, I am averse to using “elf”. It just seems so hackneyed. I have been reading up on mythical creatures from India, Persia, Scandinavia, and elsewhere: “asura”, “jinn”, “dev”, “huldra”, “kropel”, “haldjas”, and so forth. But some of these terms are popularly associated with images that may or may not have anything to do with their traditional mythical meanings (“jinn”, for example). Also, if I mix and match terms from wildly different cultures (Estonian “haldjas” and Hindu “asura”, for example), I think it’ll just annoy people who actually know something about mythology, and they’ll think I am an ignorant twit who is just using terms he found in a thesaurus without understanding them. Not an unfair accusation, really. So I feel like I have three options: 1) stick to English terms even though it strikes me as hackneyed, 2) stick with the terms from one culture (probably Persian, because I think fewer English-speaking people are familiar with those myths), or make up words from whole cloth. I really don’t want to make people learn a whole batch of vocabulary words just to read a silly fantasy novel. But is making up new words any worse than using existing words that people may not know — deliberately mis-using them, in many cases (much like Tolkien misused “wight”)? I guess I do have a fourth option: use common words and apply them to these creatures: “hidden folk”, “moon people”, “forest folk”, and so on. Bleh. I don’t really like that.

Maybe the simplest method is the best: use English words (“elf”, etc.), and be clear to describe their referents so that people won’t think an “elf” is a little man in a green coat riding an earwig. Sigh. It still strikes me as hackneyed. Maybe my problem is that it really is hackneyed — not just the terminology, but the entire concept of having human beings that aren’t quite human beings. People in latex appliances, to use a Star Trek metaphor. Maybe non-human creatures should be really, really non-human. The only problem with that is that the less human a character is (not just in appearance, but in behavior and speech as well), the harder it is for people to sympathize with it. Can we really empathize with an eyeless, six-armed creature that eats rocks and communicates through rhythmic stomping?

What makes this such a nuisance for me is that I have a character — a minor character — who is for most intents and purposes a conventional elf. He is definitely not human, but for the character to work he has to look almost human. He will probably be the only creature of his kind in the entire book (although there might be another).

When in doubt, go with the simplest answer. Use English.

Or maybe Estonian.