Nothing to apologize for, brother. I wasn't trying to goad you into writing: when I have something to say, I say it, that's all. (For which you have ass oil to thank; the rest of my comment grew after that.)

No need to rush the thesis; it's ~200 pages after all. Take it piece by piece; if you have questions, email me -- or better yet, write 'em up here and we can do the whole public convo thing.

I am fond of Elves and Dwarves and Halflings, but I don’t often find they really “fit” into the worlds I make.

On the one hand, it's good to give players something they can understand out of the gate, lest they feel unmoored in an overly surreal landscape. On the other hand, those bits of familiarity certainly don't have to be the races; one could certainly run a game with human-only PCs and everything else being weird and foreign. Might even be smarter than the traditional racial smorgasbord.

What I'm saying is, I'm curious to see what you come up with.

The name of this DMing game has always been "pick and choose your influences." My elves, dwarves, and halflings have some of the traditional flavor to them, but also unique stuff that's only for my world, inspired by riffing on my choices for their racial ability modifiers and the places of the real Earth that I've chosen to have them inhabit. (Sometime next month I'll get the damn game app public on the web, then I'll be able to link to the rules, wiki, etc.)

I am still finding my voice here ... Mythic Canada will be a big part of that.

Looking forward to it. Maybe your vast forested tracts have room for freaky wendigo motherfuckers -- call 'em "elves."