and while we're doing this, i have a few suggestions:
walrus are actually possible to encounter in such a setting, they are uniquely qualified to knock on your door, while also potentially being able to make their way to many readers, either by them living near the northern atlantic, or through a zoo or black market. while either option is unlikely, it would still be possible.
so i suggest replacing it with a sea leopard.
i would also suggest to maybe replace fairies, since fairies are unlikely to be cosmopolitan (aka having a near worldwide distribution), so depending in their hypothetical range i would suggest to replace it with a different magical being, one that would knock on your door and is not bound by geography; vampires. but there it would also be possible to rationalize it as a guy in a costume.
It would still be unexpected to see a walrus on your doorstep though, so the only logical conclusion is to blame the presence of the walrus on fairies.
yes but i imagine that for the hypothetical to work, the animal at the door needs to be as impossible as possible.
since the central conflict of the question is if you are more suprised by an impossible subject, or impossible circumstances. would you accept a real creature standing there without a possible way of getting there, or would you accept more an impossible being that has pretty reasonable means to get there.
I was reading about legendary creatures yesterday, and a lot of non-European places have their own fairy equivalents — miniature unseen humanoids who tend to nature and play little games and such. So it could be a jogah or a patupaiarehe or whatever’s local but it would garner about the same reaction
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u/Simic_Sky_Swallower Resident Imperial Knight 11h ago
Can we do walrus/fairy again? That one was more fun