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Realism in Fantasy: Why All the Science?
When I published my last article on unicorn creature design, someone asked a question that I knew was inevitable. While reading the suggestion about using the proto-horse eohippus as inspiration, she wondered why your average fantasy story would need to provide the exact biological lineage for a unicorn. It’s a fair question, and the kind…
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Shapeshifting and Transformations in the Natural World
When it comes to your classic fairytale curses, a few really seem to stand out. You have your protagonists cursed to die, or perhaps to fall into a deep and deathlike sleep, like Snow White. You have your lovers parted, typically after one of them failed to maintain some strange promise to the other. And…
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Medieval Bestiaries and Mythical Creatures: Unnatural History
Of all the literary forms in human history, the illuminated manuscripts of medieval Western Europe are among the most memorable. With their thick parchment, elaborate opening letters, and colorful and often strange illustrations, what’s not to love? Perhaps the most famous illuminated manuscripts were the great medieval bestiaries, curious tomes describing both natural history and…
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Griffon Gryphon: Fantasy Creature Naming Conventions
Before starting this blog, I spent several years working as either an educator or animal keeper at a few different zoos and aquariums. Shocker, I know. In that career, I learned all kinds of animal names: from the eighteen different species of penguin, to the impressive variety of names for a single skink species, to…
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Monstrous Monsters: Conflict and Natural Aggression
Open up any Dungeons and Dragons book about game monsters, and chances are good that you’ll end up on a page detailing either an evil entity out to ruin your day or a powerful and dangerous creature that may very well want to eat you. Even the less enemy-focused creatures have “stat blocks” detailing how…
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Massive Monsters and How to Sustain Them
Fantasy creatures come in all shapes. Some are basically existing animals but with special traits or abilities. Others are chimeric, with two or more species smashed together wholesale. And still others are completely bizarre monstrosities. They can be fishlike, insectoid, reptilian, mammalian, you name it. Many are very much like humans. But some fantastical traits…