cleromancy:

i think another thing people miss about the walrus vs fairy question is that it doesn’t ask which you think is more *likely,* but rather which you would be more *surprised* by. being as we have incontrovertible evidence that walruses exist, i do believe that a walrus has a higher probability of being on my doorstep than a fairy (who we do not). but i would still be more surprised to see one there after hearing a knock at my door, because either scenario is both unlikely and fantastical, but of the two the one that upends more expectations of how the world works is the walrus

I agree. Because a walrus is a very large and dangerous animal, not easily mistaken for anything else… the sight of it would set off the “alarm/surprise” feeling, very automatically. The initial emotion would be intense shock mingled with fear… followed only gradually by wonderings about how in the world this thing could have gotten there.

A fairy, on the other hand (in any of the traditional depictions) is… less obtrusive.

If it is a small winged humanoid creature like Tinkerbell, my initial response would be “oh yikes what a big bug!” This would indeed be surprising and frightening,but not outside the realm of what I’ve encountered before.

Assuming I didn’t slam the door immediately to keep it outside (as I probably would in reality)… Assuming I kept looking at it for a while, trying to figure out what kind of a bug it was… I would then be hit with extreme confusion, as I tried to understand why an insect would look so much like a human (is there a species I haven’t heard about? Is it a manmade hoax of some kind? Am I dreaming? Or is there some other aspect of my understanding of the world that needs to change?) But this response, having followed the initial surprise, would be a different feeling.

If it was a full-sized human with wings, or something else recognizable from folktales as a “fairy,” my initial surprise would still be equivalent to whatever was the closest real-life thing I might encounter (e.g. surprised to see a Renaissance Faire cosplayer on my doorstep).

In this case the confusion would probably still follow, as I looked closer.

But the initial shock would not equal that of seeing a walrus.