Line #39 Literature/TheFairyRebel


1	[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/81nlak5rnrl.png]]
2	''The Fairy Rebel'' is a children's novel by Creator/LynneReidBanks, author of ''Literature/TheIndianInTheCupboard''. It's a classic fairy story, filled with magic and wonder... except that the person who meets the fairy is a married adult.
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4	Jan and Charlie are a HappilyMarried couple, except that [[LawOfInverseFertility they can't have children]]. When Jan is relaxing in her garden one day, a fairy, Tiki, lands on her. Tiki's different from other fairies -- she wears jeans instead of a frilly dress, expresses wonderment about tears and sadness, and vows to help Jan and Charlie have a baby -- all things, especially the latter, that are against the rules of the Fairy Queen.
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6	Tiki and her friend Wijic succeed in producing the child, who is given a 'fairy name', Bindi. Bindi, too, is different--she has [[LockedIntoStrangeness a tuft of blue hair amidst the brown]], and she receives magical presents every birthday. For seven years, the family lives peacefully.
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8	But the Fairy Queen won't let this defiance go unpunished...
9	----
10	!!This book contains examples of:
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12	* BeethovenWasAnAlienSpy: Apparently, Mozart was a fairy baby like Bindi.
13	* BelligerentSexualTension: Tiki and Wijic. They bicker and make fun of one another, but Wijic hurries to the rescue when Tiki's in danger and [[spoiler:what truly causes each of them to turn on the queen is realizing just how much she abused the other.]]
14	* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Fairies seem to pick a color and stick with it. Tiki has pink and green and Wijic has red, both for clothing and for the type of flowers they're associated with.
15	* ChekhovsGun: Bindi's blue hair. It seems to be the only sign that she's a magical child [[spoiler:and then it turns out that it has many very powerful properties, being used to heal Tiki and Wijic, halt the fairy queen's power, and -- implied at the end -- heal Jan's injured leg.]]
16	* CulturalTranslation: The book's American edition changes some of the candy bars that Bindi steals under the Fairy Queen's influence from exclusive UK candies to brands familiar to children on both sides of the Atlantic: for example, replacing a Cadbury Crunchie with a Snickers.
17	* EvilMatriarch: The Queen sends fairies babies to raise. God help you if you try to manage it yourself.
18	--> '''Queen:''' Of course they love me! It is my first command that they love me!
19	* FairyCompanion: Tiki and Wijic act as companions for the humans Jan, Charlie, and later, Bindi.
20	* FairyGodmother: Tiki describes herself as Bindi's "fairy-mother". She also sneaks a special magical gift to Bindi each year, each one with a rose theme. [[spoiler:Her lack of any gift on Bindi's eighth birthday is the first sign that there's trouble on the way.]]
21	* GodSaveUsFromTheQueen: The fairy queen, who demands absolutely obedience from her subjects, from them not thinking or acting in ways she doesn't approve to ordering them to react to thinks in certain ways to please her. Jan even says, at one point, that the queen sounds like a tyrant.
22	* HappilyMarried: Jan and Charlie. The narrative even says that them meeting and getting married was the one good thing that came out of Jan's leg injury.
23	* HarmfulToMinors: The entirety of Bindi finding the magic wand. Jan's feelings about leaving it lying around are explicitly compared to leaving a gun or bottle of poison out in the open, but she's so frightened by it that she can't bring herself to move it. Under the influence of the wand, Bindi lies to her mother and her friends, starts associating with a boy at school who is clearly not nice, and shoplifts candy bars. Her mother only learns about the dark power influencing her daughter when Bindi is trapped in her room, [[spoiler:being buried under a mountain of toys she summoned, screaming for her mother]]. Jan can't get the door to open and can't do anything besides call for Bindi and ask what's wrong. Making it even worse is the fact that Jan has an injured leg and can't run quickly when she hears Bindi screaming. The narration compares it to how it always seems to be impossible to run in a nightmare.
24	* IJustWantToBeNormal:
25	** Wijic, to a degree. He hates all the sweet food fairies eat and thinks of normal schoolboy life as a fascinating, novel experience.
26	** A variation holds for Bindi, whom her parents very much want to be a normal child and worry that her fairy origins will cause her to have something unusual with her hair, skin, or demeanor.
27	* InconsistentSpelling: Wijic, weirdly enough, writes his own name differently from ''the narration''. When he signs his name on the rose petal, it's spelled with a K.
28	* JerkWithAHeartOfGold: Wijic initially comes across as a bit of a callous, self-absorbed tease, but he soon proves to be a true, invaluable friend both to Tiki (as well as her ImpliedLoveInterest) and to Jan, Charlie and Bindi.
29	* LanguageEqualsThought: Implied for the fairy society. Their language is missing many words for concepts the Queen doesn't want them to latch onto, including boredom, loneliness, and all familial terms except "baby". Not always effective, as Tiki certainly feels lonely when [[spoiler: she's jailed in the wasp's nest]]; she just didn't know the proper word for it.
30	* LawOfInverseFertility: At least at first. Jan and Charlie want very much to have a baby, but for some reason are unable to. It possibly has something to do with the accident that lead to Jan's leg injury, but Tiki is able to use fairy magic to work around that.
31	* LimitedWardrobe: Fairies can make their own clothes just by thinking, so in theory they should have an UnlimitedWardrobe, but Tiki only knows how to make blue jeans or frilly dresses; nothing in between. Her problem is she doesn't have a mental image of other styles. Jan later gives her some pictures from fashion magazines and Tiki's wardrobe expands significantly.
32	* LockedIntoStrangeness: Bindi has one tuft of blue hair with her regular brown hair. It's positioned that if her hair is grown out, it can easily be hidden in a ponytail. [[spoiler:The end of the book reveals that this blue hair is incredibly magical, but won't regrow once it's pulled out.]]
33	* TheMagicGoesAway: Every year, Tiki sends a magical rose-themed gift for Bindi's birthday. At the end of each year, it ceases working, gets lost, wilts or falls apart, just in time for the next gift to arrive.
34	* MoreThanMindControl: The Fairy Queen's necklace brings out the worst in Bindi, twisting her normal childish desires into horrible behavior (for example, her love of sweets is changed to her shoplifting candy and her desire for more toys makes her fill the room with them until she's nearly crushed).
35	%%* NiceGuy: Charlie.
36	* NotHerself: Bindi, under the influence of the Queen's necklace. Among other things, it causes her to ignore her friend in favor of the class bully (who she suddenly sees as being nice to her) and shoplifts candy.
37	* ParentsAsPeople: Most of the story centers around Jan and Charlie and their handling the strange things they've found themselves caught up in.
38	* PerfectlyCromulentWord: "Innesterated". It means exactly the same as incarcerated, only "in a nest".
39	* RedeemingReplacement: [[spoiler:After the Fairy Queen's defeat, the grand master-elf -- who is a far kinder and more reasonable being, having illicitly helped Tiki with making sure Bindi came out as her parents wanted -- becomes Fairy King in her place.]]
40	* ReducedToDust: According to Tiki, when fairies and elves die, they become the dust that covers people's furniture.
41	* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Wijic, when he hears [[spoiler: Tiki has been innesterated,]] decides that he wants nothing to do with the matter and tries to fly away. Charlie catches him and makes him promise to help, and it later turns out Wijic [[spoiler:found Tiki after all]].
42	* SicklyGreenGlow: Object touched by the Queen's wicked magic emit this, including [[spoiler: the magic wand she gives Bindi.]]
43	* SweetTooth: Jan, Tiki and Bindi all like their sweets. All three are rather chubby. Fairies as a rule seem to eat and drink sweet things like nectar. Wijic is notable for being completely sick of it.
44	* ThrowingOffTheDisability: [[spoiler: In the end it's implied that Bindi heals her mother's crippled leg with one of her magic blue hairs.]]
45	* TheTragicRose: A wilted rose is the first sign that the Fairy Queen has noticed Bindi's existence and taken offense to the situation.
46	* VileVillainSaccharineShow: Downplayed. The story is generally light-hearted and uplifting, but the evil Fairy Queen and her wasp minions are ''very'' dark.
47	* WhatIsThisThingYouCallLove: Under the Fairy Queen's FalseUtopia rule, fairies don't even have words for negative emotions, don't know what tears are, don't marry or reproduce (the Queen sends them their babies), and love no one except the Queen. Over the course of the story, Tiki learns what "lonely" means, discovers that she can cry, and shares a MaybeEverAfter with Wijic in the end.
48	* WickedWasps: The Fairy Queen can control wasps, who act as her enforcers. According to Tiki, they're particularly nasty because they can sting as many times as they want without dying, in contrast to bees.

Context Literature / TheFairyRebel