Quote Originally Posted by Alice_89th View Post
The "learned to control and bind" part makes me thing that the fairies were already excisting beings, and that the SCHs learned to control them. Somehow bind them to themselves and co-operate with them. (I'm using co-operate here because they indeed seem to have a will of their own).



The only thing that I would add to this is that the only difference between 妖精 "yousei", and フェアリー "fairy" would be an eastern or western perspective. Yousei could be any kind of friendly magical... thing. While "fairy" specifically concerns the western image of (butterfly)winged tiny human like beings. In practice though.... they are likely to be the same.

For FFXIV specifically, this possibly means that "fairy" is a type of "yousei" (or in english, that "fairy" is a type of "sprite", which means there may be other types of sprites).
I would like to add what Fairy means from a western perspective.

A fairy (also fay, fae; from faery, faerie, "realm of the fays") is a type of mythical being or legendary creature in folklore, a form of spirit, often described as metaphysical, supernatural or preternatural. Fairies resemble various beings of other mythologies, though even folklore that uses the term fairy offers many definitions. Sometimes the term describes any magical creature, including goblins or gnomes: at other times, the term only describes a specific type of more ethereal creature or sprite.Various folkloristic traditions refer to them euphemistically, by names such as wee folk, good folk, people of peace, fair folk, etc.