The Fair Folk - Television Tropes & Idioms

Modern society has lived with the Disneyfied vision of Fairies for so long — the Fairy Godmothers of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, Tinkerbell in Peter Pan — that it seems hard to imagine that some would consider Fairies evil.

And yet, some of them were. The Fairies of old weren't cute little bewinged Pixies who fluttered happily around humans. At best, they would interact with humans with either no thought to the consequences of their actions (the Little People who end up putting Rip van Winkle to sleep) or delighting in the mess they're making of mortal lives (Oberon, Puck, and the rest in A Midsummer's Night's Dream). At worst, they're otherworldly horrors who abduct humans and send them to a horrible fate (Tam Lin). The original terms for these (at least, in Scottish lore) were the Seelie (vaguely goodish) and the Unseelie (Always Chaotic Evil) in fact the difference could be said more to be one of Order vs Chaos than Good vs Evil.. In Ireland, they were called sídhe ("shee") and would sour milk, kill animals and swap people for changelings. Boys were dressed in girls' clothes until the age of 5, because otherwise the sídhe would steal them for their armies. Building near a fairy fort was very bad. Even if you were allowed to leave, you could find that centuries have passed, and you will crumple into dust. Their dances would catch any human passerby and make him dance to exhaustion at best. And — well, the original meaning of "eldritch" as in Eldritch Abomination was "elvish".

Then came Victorian Bowdlerisation, and suddenly, all Fairies got a lot more cute. (And acquired wings, which were unknown in older folklore.)

More traditional Fairies are a bit of an odd duck of a trope. Old as anything, long forgotten, they're starting to re-emerge in modern fiction with a vengeance. Fairies may present themselves as amazing, beautiful, graceful and magical— but underneath all the glamour, they're creepy little buggers for whom empathy is a concept as alien as the idea of blue as a number. They might take a shine to humans, but at best, it's the love a human feels for a pet... and you really don't want to see what it's like at its worst.

Their society and customs, if they even have the inclination to associate, are often extravagant and elegant but amoral and inscrutable, sometimes even for some unfortunate Fairies themselves. It's by far not certain what degree of loyalty or compassion they feel for their conspecifics.

The return of this trope to popular awareness can be traced back to at least 1988, when The Sandman, a Comic Book penned by Neil Gaiman, featured a number of Fairy characters who were often either outright malicious or self-centred to the point of sociopathy. Gaiman also used traditional Fairies in his novels and short stories as well as other comic books, and directly inspired authors such as Terry Pratchett (a friend of Gaiman's in long standing) and Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell. Ten years earlier, the artist Brian Froud did a series of illustrated books cataloging the Shee or bad fairies, and their close cousins, the goblins. His work was also the inspiration for the 1982 film The Dark Crystal.

These Fairies can sometimes share a world with Tolkienesque Elves, who, depending on the setting, may not themselves officially be part of Faerie. The principal distinction between the two, if there is one, is that Elves are a mildly superhuman longlived race living in the mortal world (or a distant corner of it), whereas Fairies are much more intensely magical, and live in a Fairyland outside the mortal world.

Ever wonder why Fairies are called "the Fair Folk" or "the Good Folk"? It's because calling them an unkind name is just cause for their wrath. Especially The Wild Hunt. On the subject of names, there's a 90% chance that a named fairy leader will be called Oberon, Titania or Mab. Other fairies are just as likely to have names drawn from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Yes, I'm looking at you, Puck.

In a manner of speaking, the old version of the Faerie has been replaced with Alien Abduction. In both cases, you have creatures who are ineffable and don't understand humanity, who randomly abduct humans, play with them, and return them with Time Loss and occasionally strange powers/afflictions. Periodically, there are tales of those who have dealt with them and benefited, but for the most part, mundanes are merely their playthings.

Almost always found in concert with Grimmification. Compare and contrast Fairy Companion, Our Elves Are Better, Witch Species, and Our Mermaids Are Different. See also Youkai for a Japanese equivalent.

Examples

Comic Books

As mentioned above, The Sandman by Neil Gaiman pretty much reinvigorated this trope for the modern era. The Sandman directly crosses over with a number of other comics, meaning that nasty elves also play a part in The Books of Magic, Hellblazer and several other DC Universe series.
The female fairies in Proof look like cute little green people, but act like ferocious predators with huge appetites (e.g. after mating, the butterfly-sized female eats the male, who's about as tall as a house). Fortunately, these fairies are non-magical and an endangered species.
- Of course, they're endangered. That's what happens when half the population decides to eat the other half.
  - You Fail Biology Forever. They said after mating, matey.
  - No, the other troper's logic is perfectly sound. Even assuming every mating is successful, and every offspring lives to adulthood, half of them would be female, cutting the male population in half with every generation. Arthropods get away with it because a single mating produces hundreds of eggs, and it's assumed that most of them will die.
  - If each generation lives long enough to reproduce only once, there will be no discrepancy in numbers. Similarly if there simply are more males born than females. Otherwise, in the "hundreds of eggs" scenario, there will still be about as many females randomly surviving to adulthood and the males will get outnumbered.
Hellboy. "The Corpse" has Hellboy exposing a changeling and performing a number of difficult tasks for it so that The Fair Folk will return the baby he replaced. The story ends with the fairies discussing how few children have been born to them lately and how they may eventually fade away, which likely inspired in part The Golden Army—see below under Film.
In Marvel Comics, the fairy residents of Otherworld are similar to the DC versions. In particular Wisdom and Captain Britain and MI-13 feature Oberon's daughter Tinkabelinos (yes...), who resembles a foul-mouthed cross between Boudicea and a punk rocker.
The Sheeda from the DC miniseries Seven Soldiers — fairies who live at the ass-end of time and who Time Travel back to raze human civilization and plunder its profits whenever humanity reaches a certain tech level.
Courtney Crumrin And The Night Things : the eponymous girl lives in a strange neibourghood, where abducted childs are sold by goblins to the rulers of the Twilight Kingdom.

Fairy Tales

Rarer than you would think from the name, but in Katie Crackernuts, the prince is forced to leave his bed every night to dance at the fairy hall, and is deathly ill because of it.
A lot of classic Scottish fairy tales have these, but just as easily have helpful fairies. They're probably most frequently seen in stories involving Changelings, but are seen as being somewhat interchangeable with trolls.

Film

Labyrinth, the David Bowie movie, not to be confused with the recent Pan's Labyrinth—see below. When Sarah reaches the outer wall of the Labyrinth, she finds a gardener killing Fairies with a bug sprayer. She calls him a brute, and picks up one of the not-quite-dead Fairies, who rewards her actions by attempting to bite off her finger. When she expresses her amazement and that she thought Fairies did "nice things, like granting wishes", the gardener simply scoffs and says "Shows what you know."
- Not to mention Jareth himself and his Goblins; the film is essentially a changeling tale.
- And the Fieries. They're playful rather than evil, but they have unfortunate gaps in their understanding of human physiology...
Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth wasn't short of creepy magical beings either. Even the nice ones were patently eerie.
Hellboy II: The Golden Army, also directed by del Toro, features an Evil Albino elven prince and a whole host of creepy fey creatures, including Tooth Fairies, carnivorous, insect-like things whose swarms can devour a person whole...starting with their teeth, of course. Supposedly, but in the actual movie they eat everything but the teeth, and save those for later.
- It should be noted though that only the prince elf and his troll partner were outright evil. Other trolls were benevolent enough, albeit beligerent, and the goblin was the nicest of them all. The tooth fairies, well those weren't really sapient, and thus neither good, nor bad.
- The goblin also fits this trope, since he's nice enough that you forget he's the one who came up with the idea of building the army. He demands a classic fairy-tale price from the heroes, at the potential cost of Hellboy's life.
- It's established that the Elves in Hellboy II are the direct descendants of the Sidhe and/or Tuatha de Danaan, who were forced to abandon their magical underground realm of Bethmora after a failed attempt to exterminate the human race backfired. Prince Nuada is portrayed as a Necessarily Evil Anti Villain, and the rest seem nice enough, given that they're living in an enchanted factory slated for re-development.
Even though she's usually called a witch these days, Maleficent, of Disney's Sleeping Beauty, is actually a "wicked fairy". Disney's Sadly Mythtaken portrayal of all other fairies as kindness incarnate just makes the king look stupid for slighting Maleficent instead of one of them.
- Maleficent wasn't invited because they were hoping she wouldn't show up at all — they knew darn well she was evil.
- Contrasting the "only have 12 golden plates" reason she was snubbed originally. I'm not sure which is worse...
- To quote Nanny Ogg's Cookbook: "How hard is it to invite her along, give her plenty of drink and a plate of ham rolls all to herself, and keep her out of the way of your posh auntie? Play your cards right and you could be ahead by an extra good wish."
Let's not forget the grouchy, scheming Fairy Godmother from Shrek 2, who is willing to go to any lengths to make the Happily Ever After ending she wants (her son Prince Charming married to the princess of Far Far Away) happen.
In Ridley Scott's Legend, the Gump and Oona are essentially friendly to Jack, but are still quite pre-Victorian in behavior. Mercurial, occasionally vindictive, and more than willing to bring punishment down on a foolish mortal like Jack (who's only spared because his misdeed was done out of love, possibly also because he's a "Faerie Friend").
In Disney's Sleeping Beauty, while it's true that Aurora's godmother is a good fairy, it's an evil fairy who curses her.
While we're on the topic of Disney, in Beauty and the Beast the prince is turned into the Beast and his household servants into animated objects because he wouldn't let a disguised fairy stay the night and laughed at her payment of a rose.

Literature

Certainly, Brian Froud belongs at the top here. Modern audiences must have had a shock when his collaboration with Alan Lee, Faeries, hit the shelves. It was one of the first books to include as many scary Fairy stories as nice stories. Froud has vocally emphasized that, while there are indeed evil Fairies and good Fairies in mythology, the vast majority of them are neutral. He actually apologizes, in the introduction, for the self-contradictory title of his follow-up book, Bad Faeries/Good Faeries.
The Fair Folk in The Bitterbynde trilogy by Cecilia Dart-Thornton for the most part are masters of gramarye (magic), beautiful, arrogant, and cruel. Several Faeran characters appeal to the idea that their moral code is merely different to that of mortals, and that they cannot be considered evil. It's not entirely convincing when you hear tales of their awful retribution for meaningless and unmeant "crimes" perpetrated by mortals.
- In a twist to this portrayal of the Fair Folk, (the following is a freakin' HUGE spoiler, so don't read this if you wish to enjoy the books) the main character falls in love with the Faeran High King, who is anything but cruel, yet still adheres to the "Our morals are different" mantra when the mortal maiden questions the actions of his kindred
- There are other magical beings in the books, collectively called Wights. These fall into the Seelie (benevolent to mankind) and Unseelie (malevolent to mankind) categories, but the Faeran have no such distinction.
Raymond E. Feist's 1988 book, Fairie Tale, where the good elves are dangerous and the evil ones are planning a genocidal war.
The Elves of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, as seen in Lords And Ladies and The Wee Free Men, are callous, even sadistic, sociopaths of the worst kind.
- In addition, Gnomes are not evil but can channel six feet worth of cynicism and violence into six inches of height, while their cousins the Pictsies — well, shrink a battlefield full of extras from Braveheart, strip off most of the civility, replace it with larcenous intent and moonshine whiskey, and you'll have the Nac Mac Feegle, at which point you should run away very fast. They steal sheep — one Pictsie per hoof.
- Winged fairies seem to be fairly mindless and vicious creatures, somewhere between insects and the more aggressive kinds of songbird.
- Let's not forget the dryads, who employ dangerous Wild Magic, would've executed Rincewind for slightly injuring a tree (which he was falling out of at the time), and whose males — yes, they exist — are built like Vin Diesel built of solid oak.
The Fairy Servants in Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell, particularly "The Gentleman With Thistledown Hair." A footnote in the book explains that there are two faculties in both men and fairies: a faculty of reason and a faculty of magic. Men possess a greater share of reason than magic, and the fairies are the exact opposite. The book also describes the three classes of supernatural beings — angels, demons and fairies — as being "eternally good", "infernally wicked" and "morally suspect" in that order.
The Merry Gentry books by Laurell K. Hamilton, in between the sex scenes, makes clear how cruel and capricious fairies are. The scenes involve mostly the Unseelie Court, but the Seelie court adds to those "virtues" conceit and hyprocrisy.
The way the Winter Fairies and Elves act in The Dresden Files; the Summer Fairies generally adhere to a morality that generally includes being nice to humans, but it's by no means defined by that. Dresden even has a godmother who happens to be a Fairy, and that is not a good thing. There's also the Erlking, a Fae who claims allegiance to no court and heads up The Wild Hunt, which either kills or assumes anything it runs into. Winter and Summer are established as being Unseelie and Seelie, respectively.
The Harry Potter universe cuts this concept right to the bone. Its various Fairy Creatures (Gnomes, Doxies, Pixies, and so forth) are more like household and garden pests than anything else. The Erlking, who likes to kidnap children, and Veelas, who appear beautiful and bewitching unless they are angry — at which point, they pull a One Winged Angel act — are closer to the letter of this trope. A footnote of the supplementary book "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" lampshades this by describing how weird it is for wizards and witches to hear the Muggles' version of Fairy Tales.
- The witches and wizards themselves also fall under this trope. They're generally apathetic to the mayhem they cause on the muggles, and when they do care, it's only about maintaining the Masquerade. Then of course there's Voldemort, who knocked down an entire bridge in London.
The Fairies in Elizabeth Bear's Promethean Age books are, to a one, murderous, untrustworthy, and prone to double-crossing if not properly bound — and those are the sympathetic ones. (Makes sense, as the first book in the series is, among other things, a riff on the Tam Lin ballad, and Bear enjoys playing with legends and genre tropes.)
Unsurprisingly, Fairies tend to be pretty unsympathetic in modern day versions of "Tam Lin," such as Pamela Dean's Tam Lin and Diana Wynne Jones' Fire and Hemlock. In Dean's version, the Fairies are described as absolutely alien: "like linear A. They look as if they ought to mean something, but you can't tell what it is."
Holly Black's Tithe trilogy is somewhat of an inversion of this trope. The fairies are as nasty as any monster, but the higher-ups have slightly reversed roles. The Seelie Queen is a master of political games, while the Unseelie Queen is basically straight with her court. That said, the Seelie fairies won't kill you on sight. These books also use the Tam Lin plotline of a sacrifice every seven years. The Seelie fairies will just spirit away a talented human, while the Unseelie fairires will murder the first person they can find.
The Chronicles of Fairie, a book series by O.R. Melling fits this trope nicely. The trope is subverted, though, in that fairies you meet are sympathetic...to a degree. They're willing to go to almost any length to get what they want.
Although Tinkerbell is often included as one example — if not the exemplar — of modernized, sanitized, Bowdlerized, Disneyfied fairies, she was mischievous and rather possessive of Peter, to the point that she was perfectly willing to casually engineer the death of a perceived rival, even in Uncle Walt's rendition.
- The book explains that the fairies are too small too contain more than one emotion at a time, so when Tinkerbell gets jealous of Wendy, it utterly consumes her being. This troper would also point out that Peter himself in the novel is great example of this trope — re-reading it as an adult, the Pan comes off as a sociopath, due to his being raised by Fairies. He can't remember who Wendy and the boys are from day to day, in battles between the Lost Boys and and the Pirates he'll switch sides and kill (yes, kill) Lost Boys to make things more entertaining, and is pretty unsympathetic and selfish. His character has suffered far more bowdlerization in adaptation than Tink's.
Emma Bull's War For The Oaks has the Seelie Court and the Unseelie Court. The Seelies are at the least, tolerant of humans, and usually kind and friendly — as the Fae would define it. They're even capable of falling in love with humans as humans would recognize love. The Unseelies are malicious and nasty, and think nothing of twisting a mere mortal to their ends.
Terri Windling's Borderland anthologies have a mashup of various fae types. There are elven street gangs, half-elves, fae wannabes, fae-touched, and so on. And their behaviour toward humans varies accordingly. The Bordertown actually exists on the border of genuine, under-the-hill Faerie, and the river running through it is called the Mad River, because to humans one sip is instantaneously addictive and insanity-generating though it is possible to recover from Mad River addiction — Tick-Tick helped Orient get off the water.
The Spiderwick Chronicles book series features a number of fae creatures, along with the ways to deal with them and/or protect oneself from them. Spiderwick's daughter, in her unknowing youth, accepted food from the fae and as a result has no desire to eat human food...she would starve to death if the tiny faeries didn't bring her food regularly.
Mercedes Lackey's SERRAted Edge series, and a whole host of other related works, are set in a world where the Seleighe and Unseleighe Sidhe are very real, both dwelling "Underhill", a sort of parallel dimension that is imbued with magic and touches on our world at "Nodes." They were driven there by the increasing preponderance of iron (which is hazardous to them) in the world, but some have adjusted and made a comeback.
- Iron also causes their magic to go awry, sometimes shooting off in oh-dear-I-MEANT-straight-not-LEFT directions, although both they and their human allies have analyzed the whys of this effect and come up with clever ways to exploit it.
- To give some idea of just how thoroughly some have adjusted, the SERR Ated Edge series itself is about a bunch of elves who drive race cars made of non-ferrous materials like aluminum and fiberglass.
- These books very strongly feature the Seleighe/Unseleighe ("good"/"evil") divide among the Fairie.
  - The Unseleighe literally make a living off evil, feeding off the psychic energy of pain and suffering. They also hold grudges millennia past their expiration dates and believe in returning all ills sevenfold.
  - The Seleighe have a huge soft-spot for children (explained by their own very small birth rate), and many books feature their efforts to protect abused kids, often by kidnapping them from desperate situations to raise as their own Underhill. For all their good qualities, though, even the Seleighe are often portrayed as supercilious, arrogant, and given to pettiness.
- Lackey also touched on this trope in an episode from the first Bardic Voices book, where Rune has to rescue her Bardic Master/love interest from an Elven king. She succeeds (luckily Elves are vulnerable to music) and forces the king to promise not to come after them or use magic or weapons against them. Sadly Rune isn't quite Genre Savvy enough; the enraged king ends up sending a huge-ass thunderstorm (weather being neither magical nor strictly a weapon) after them.
Speaking of the Erl-King, mentioned in the Dresden Files and Harry Potter entries above, he is the subject of a Goethe poem, Der Erlkönig. In this poem he is a Faerie entity which wants a boy he finds pretty to come with him, but when the boy refuses, kills him.
- "Erlkönig" is often anglicized as Erl-King, but is an even better example of this trope when you realized that "Erl" translates to "Elf".
What about Michael Moorcock's Melniboneans in the Elric books which are surely nasty Elves with power (well, until they were all but wiped out by Elric and the people of the Young Kingdoms i.e. us).
- The Melnibonéans were less intentionally nasty and more somewhat apathetic, smugly superior, and without much of what we'd consider a conscience. It didn't help that they had mastered magic to a point where no one could honestly hope to beat them, and they spent their lives wallowing in shallow sensualism. The people of the Young Kingdoms were certainly closer to "us", though they were just as different in some ways - they were still the "humans" of a world dominated by Chaos, while humanity as we know it is a product of Law.
Even Tolkien's elves, except for a few of the wisest, show glimmers of this trope — they think of themselves as a superior species (especially above dwarves) and are sometimes openly xenophobic. They have also done things like defy common sense and the orders of the Valar to retrieve stolen items, and can carry vendettas through their full, immortal lives. The wandering mischievous Wood Elves of The Hobbit also qualify, but diverge sharply from his other portrayals.
- Originally Tolkien's works (The Book of Lost Tales, which eventually became The Silmarillion) were a deliberate subversion of this trope, or a way of explaining the difference between the Irish and Scottish malevolent version versus the English pleasant one: in 'Lost Tales', both visions represent knowledge of the elves in their fading last years, but they were at war with the Celts (and Romans) and were friendly with the Anglo-Saxons.
In Julian May's Saga of the Exiles novels, mavericks who don't fit into the galactic utopia of the future are quietly allowed to use a one-way time gate to the Pliocene if they want to opt out. Unfortunately Pliocene Earth is already occupied by the psychic Duat aliens, whose Tanu and Firvulag subraces bear a startling resemblance to the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, and who fled from a utopia of their own so that they could continue their traditions of chivalry and romantic honour by waging an insanely bloodthirsty religious war against each other. The Tanu (seelie) accept psychic humans with the right attitude as their social equals and use mind control to enslave the rest as labourers, breeding stock, or expendable soldiers, while the Firvulag (unseelie) see the Tanu-human partnership as an almost blasphemous break with tradition and want to slaughter all the exiled humans so that their endless war with the Tanu can be fought "cleanly" and with honour. Not exactly nice fairies.
- What makes it even worse is that they're at least partially the direct ancestors of humanity. And the ostensibly "human" Mercy Rosmar, due to the high quota of Tanu genes, is a thorough ball-busting bitch.
- Is this troper the only one who saw the names Tanu and Firvulag and immediately thought of Danu and Fir Bolg? (The Tuatha de Danaan, or "children of the goddess Danu" and the Fir Bolg were warring races in Irish mythology, and among the progenitors of the Fae myths).
  - That was intentional on May's part.
The fair folk from Jack Vance's Lyonesse isn't downright malicious, but tends towards the whimsical in negligent or destructive fashion. Fear to tread...
The fairies in the novel The Blue Girl have no sense of empathy and are very mischievous. The ghost in the book was a lonely nerdy boy who they befriend because he could see them. The told him they would make him able to fly and when he jumps off the school roof they let him fall to his death for their amusement. They don't really understand why he's so mad when he comes back as a ghost. Let it also be noted that they didn't lie to him, they can actually make him fly and they were doing so but they just decided it would be funny to let him fall.
The Mercy Thompson novels make this very clear in the third book, which features a kelpie that tries to eat Mercy. Not to mention the Grey Lords who consider killing Mercy for poking into their affairs, and only back off when they learn that killing Mercy would anger the Marrok and start a war with the werewolves.
Katherine Kerr's Deverry series has both the Tolkienesque style Westfolk, and the Guardians, who are typical Fair Folk.
In Aaron Allston's Doc Savage pastiche Doc Sidhe the Fair Folk are just as morally varied as humans are. Furthermore, the Fairy World has advanced at the nearly same rate as the human world, so fairies in the 1990s have 1930s level technology, mixed with magic (which is no longer called magic because it can be studied scientifically). And they've interbred with humans so many times as a result of changelings and other visitations that most are nearly human height. And one of the fairies is a Captain Ersatz of Doc Savage. It's a lot Better Than It Sounds.
R.A. Lafferty's The Reefs of Earth gives us the Puca, a composite Fair Folk depicted as part alien colonists, part goblins, and part Irish Travellers, with hints of Nephilim and Neanderthal about them as well. The mature Puca in the novel are quite mellow, but their charming and precocious children sincerely want to kill every human on the planet
The second Kushiel's Legacy trilogy introduces a human tribe of the Fantasy Counterpart Cultures Alba and Eire, who are described very like the Fair Folk: an old people who live in the wild, untamed areas, powerfully magical, and not malicious but adhering to a different moral standard. Some characters fear them and refuse to speak of them, while others welcome bargaining with them. Their Voluntary Shapeshifting and sympathetic magic play a vital role in the plot.
The fair folks in Tom Dietz's Tales of David Sullivan are completely unable to comprehend human morality. They have a very strict code of honor, and show signs of honest affection for others, but they are truly immortal — if they are killed, they simply come back. They fight wars out of sheer boredom. This leaves them without any understanding of human death, and thus extremely careless of consequences. They also have very little sense of human social mores: to start with, one of the secondary characters has sex with a selkie, both in humanoid forms and in seal forms. They are very clearly the old gods of Ireland, with all the capricousness one would expect from having read any Irish mythology at all.
Andre Norton's Dread Companion. It's an SF novel with interstellar travel and settlements. Nevertheless, the beings who try to lure away the children are clearly the Good Folk.
In John Connolly's short story The New Daughter, a family settle in a house built next to a "fairy fort." The hive of fairies imprisoned within are eyeless monsters that attack anyone who sits too close to the roof of their fort; the eldest daughter falls victim to this — they bury her alive and replace her with a changeling, who converts the rest of the family and releases them from the fort.
The Sithi and Norns in Tad Williams' Memory, Sorrow and Thorn series definitely qualify as this. They even partake of the two aspects: the Sithi (Chaotic Good), who by turns dislike, ignore, and occasionally ally with humans; and the Norns (Always Chaotic Evil), who hate everything having to do with humans and seek to destroy them by any means possible. Naturally, the rift between these two houses of the Fair Folk (they are even called this in the story) was caused by a human accidentally killing a Sithi, and the resulting feud sets up the conflict which later evolves into the world-destroying plot of the main story.
The third book in Kate Thompson's Switchers series, Wild Blood, features fairies like these. As the series was intended for children, the fairies aren't too malicious, but this troper seems to remember some threats of violence towards the main characters (also children).
In Tales Of MU, elves historically fell into this trope and some wild adolescent elves still live there. Faeries exist, too, and are the only thing that Badass elven hunter is afraid of (apart from bears).
Rudyard Kipling's Puck of Pook's Hill is more pleasant than most. Still, Laser Guided Amnesia features.
Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed! I've seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic - Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing mermaids in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!
While the William Allinghan's famous poem, The Fairy Folk gives them a rather cutesy description, they're still creatures to be feared:
Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of little men
- Not to mention a part of stealing a child for seven years, who then dies of sorrow, and the little people ignorantly wait for her to wake up again.
Gene Wolfe's No Planets Strike has the Beautiful Ones of the planet Sidhe, who allow unlimited immigration in (supplemented by luring sailors off trading spaceships) but won't allow anyone to leave once there, kill those who try, and horrifically torture those who otherwise run afoul of them.
They featured heavily in Chivalric Romance. Such as Sir Orfeo, which starts with the king of Fairy kidnapping Orfeo's wife — although when Orfeo gets a promise out of him, he does keep it. They are particularly likely in the earlier ones. Such as Morgan Le Fey, who really was one of the Fair Folk in the oldest romances. The Lady Of the Lake was also a fairy who mutated into an enchantress. Still, they never quite left; the late romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight features the Green Knight who is overtly one of the Fair Folk.
John Keats' La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
In Cassandra Clare's City Of Ashes,
Simon:' They can't be worse than vampires, and you did all right with them.
Jace: All right? By which I take it you mean we survived?
Simon: Well...
Jace: Faeries are the offspring of angels and demons, with the beauty of angels and the viciousness of demons. A vampire might attack you, if you entered its domain, but a faerie could make you dance until you died with your legs ground down into stumps, trick you into going for a midnight swim and drag you screaming underwater until your lungs burst, fill your eyes with faerie dust until you gouged them out at the roots—
Clary: Jace! Shut up. Jesus. That's enough.
Jace: Look, it's easy to outsmart a werewolf or vampire. They're no smarter than anyone else. But faeries live for hundreds of years and they're as cunning as snakes. They can't lie, but they love to engage in creative truth-telling. They'll find out whatever it is you want most in the world and give it to you — with a sting in the tail of the gift that will make you regret you ever wanted it in the first place. They're not about helping people. More harm disguised as help.
A child's book called Wild Robin plays straight and then subverts this trope. The titular Robin runs away from home, falls asleep in a Fairy Ring, and is taken to the Realm of Faerie. He enjoys it for a while, then becomes homesick, and one particular fairy teases him. Then the fairy sees Robin's older sister crying, missing him, feels remorse and tells her the secret way to break the spell and free Robin. She does.. Also, that irregular passage of time thing doesn't happen in this book.
Poul Anderson's "The Queen of Air and Darkness" riffs on this trope by having telepathic aliens on a frontier world use the legends of Faerie against the human settlers, right down to kidnapping children to use as changeling warriors.
Arthur Machen's short story The White People is the transcription of a young girl's diary mentioning the strange advices of her nurse, encounters with "nymphs", mysterious ceremonies and ancient roman ruins.
The Warlock series by Christopher Stasheff has Fairies who are shaped from Gramarye's native fungus by the unconscious telepathy of the human inhabitants, more-or-less based directly on Medieval English fairly tales and Shakespeare, and even Puck and the Half Human Hybrid Brom, allies of the protagonist, can show a very dark side at times. The first meetings each had with Rod nearly cost him his life. The other Wee Folk only help out on occasion because Gwen and her kids have Fairy blood. They also have an inconsistent relationship with iron.
- The Wee Folk of Gramarye also have to be placated; everyone who leaves out milk at night and avoids putting Cold Iron outside their house will be left alone. Those who don't... well, they go through a lot of milk on Gramarye.
Some short stories and The King of Elfland's Daughter by Lord Dunsany (Anglo-Irish, with a heavy emphasis on the Anglo portion) have elves and similar creatures to whom human life is an incomprehensible mystery. Even after living among humans for many years, they never quite get the hang of it.
In John Ringo's Council Wars series Elves, who are actually a product of genetic engineering are portrayed as holding themselves apart from humanity, including the titular wars except for one who is shown as good if mischievious and she's a different subspecies from the others. It's often hinted that the origin of Elves might be even older than thught and outright saiod that it's a good thing they hold themselves aloff because if they ever chose to interfere in human affairs we wouldn't have a chance.

Live Action TV

The Fairies from the Torchwood episode "Small Worlds," who would think nothing of drowning the world beneath a flood to get their hands on one little girl.
The Sidhe in Merlin transformed two of their own into mortals as a punishment. They require the death of a mortal prince before they'll change one of them back.

Tabletop Games

The Fair Folk (appropriately enough) of the tabletop RPG Exalted, who are shapeless chaotic beings who feed off of the emotions of mortals, often leaving them zombified husks.
The World Of Darkness RPG Changeling: the Lost paints Fairies as powerful incomprehensible alien entities that regularly abduct humans and take them off to their homeland, where they are warped to fit their masters' perceptions of them. The Changelings of the title are humans who've managed to escape back to Earth, but who've been changed by their time in the world of the Faerie and are trying to avoid their former captors at all costs. Notably, Changeling also directly correlates the modern concept of Alien Abduction with the Fae, explicitly invoking such standbys as lights in the sky, strange experiments, and Keepers taking the form Little Green Men or The Greys in a number of places.
- It is explained later that the True Fae need conflict to prevent themselves fading away into the random background chaos of Arcadia. As a result, the closest thing they have to friends among other Fae are their sworn enemies, as by fighting they're keeping each other alive. They can also be inanimate objects (Props), legions of lesser beings (Wisp), and entire self-enclosed universes (Realms) in addition to their normal forms (Actors). With enough Titles, they can do the aforementioned simultaneously!
- This is in marked contrast to the earlier Changeling: The Dreaming, where the Player Character Changelings were actual (half-)Faeries using human disguises to protect themselves from Disbelief, in the Old World Of Darkness. Though the Kithain were basically fae souls shaped by human experiences, some — especially the Redcaps and Sluagh, and the Sidhe of both Courts just after their return to the Tellurian — were often chillingly inhuman and capricious, at least when played right. Some sub-groups — the Leanhaun Sidhe for example — were specifically meant to reflect the more traditional view of The Good People as rapacious and unsympathetic to their mortal victims.
The Elves in Magic: The Gathering's Lorwyn set are horned and hooved, supposedly to remind you of deers and satyrs, but... They are also aristocratic, ruthless, and predatory, and have built a society with castes based on cunning and physical attractiveness. The Castes range from Faultless, Immaculate, Exquisite, to Perfect, the top of the pack. Eyeblights, which includes non-Elves as well as ugly or disfigured Elves, are scum and can (or must) be killed.
- There are also Faeries in the Lorwyn setting; they're mostly mischievous and disrupting, if not outright evil.
  - And exceptionally overpowered.
- This isn't altogether limited to Lorwyn, although the 'fairytale' nature of the setting certainly emphasized the various creatures' relevant traits. It's pretty much canon that the elves of Llanowar on the 'default' plane of Dominaria consider the life of a tree more important than that of a human, and while Magic's faeries may be the small winged pixie type in general, well, see the flavor text on Scryb Sprites if you think they're in any way, shape, or form harmless.
In Dungeons And Dragons cosmology, the Seelie Court, ruled by Queen Titania, are arrogant elitists who refuse to consider non-Fey people. The Unseelie Court, ruled by the Queen of Air And Darkness, are simply monstrous. Of course, since the Dungeon Master has final say what goes on in his/her world, fey in individual campaigns can vary from one end of the spectrum to the other.
- While elves are often described as been close to nature and the fey, they are still typed as humanoids; fey has its own type, and includes a very wide array of very strange creatures. In 4E, you may notice that there's not a single good-aligned fey among them...
  - The Eladrin (4e's High/Sun/Moon/Star elves), Elves (4e's vanilla/Wood/Wild elves), and Drow (the same ol' dark elves) the fey-subtype and elevated the Eladrin to be the masters of the Feywild (4e's Faerie). The Seelie and Unseelie courts can be found in The Manual of the Planes supplement as the Summer and Winter courts respectively, as well as several other courts.
- In 4E, you can play a warlock who's sworn fealty to The Fair Folk (or at least got them bent over a log). Needless to say, a lot of your powers rely on deception and flat-out Mind Rape.
  - To give some idea of the kind of company the Fae are keeping here, the other three things a Warlock can pact with are The Legions Of Hell (Infernal Pact), the things that hide behind the stars (Star Pact), the unknown aspects of capricious darkness (Dark Pact), & the remnants of dead heroes, dead gods and Sealed Evil In A Can (Vestige Pact).
- 4E has the Primodials, who combine this trope with Cosmic Horror, especially Eldritch Abomination. Besides being responsible for the creation of the world, they would like nothing more than to return it to chaotic mush. Why? No reason, other than being the various embodiments of Elemental Powers who can't fathom why the Physical Gods wish a constant in the universe.
The Elves of Birthright are as beautiful, shiny and powerful as Dungeons And Dragons Elves usually are. However, even the "good" ones strongly believe all other races to be inferior, though a few tolerate the better humans (but never dwarves or monstrous humanoids). A neutral Elf will kill anything he perceives as a potential threat to the Elves or their forests without a moment's hesitation. The less said about the Elves who are actually evil the better.
In Ravenloft, the Arak or "shadow fey" range from meddlesome to Always Chaotic Evil in temprement, and don't limit themselves to stealing infants: if you have a talent or skill that appeals to them, they can sever your shadow, reducing you to a soulless automaton going through the motions. Your shadow becomes a construct that'll compliantly work for them forever. Even Good-aligned Arak insist they're doing them a favor when they practice this technique on mortals.
- Even the conventional "sylvan fey" of the Land of Mists can be nastier than elsewhere, due to the ambient influence of the Dark Powers throughout the setting.
The Elves of Ios in the Iron Kingdoms are xenophobic isolationists who have closed off their nation's borders to outsiders. Of the few Elves that do leave their homeland, a fair proportion are assassins who have dedicated their lives to hunting down and killing human wizards and mechanika-users. They do this because they believe that human arcane magic and mechanika are draining the life from their last remaining Physical God, thereby dooming the Elven race to extinction; whether or not this is actually the case has never been conclusively addressed.
- To say nothing of the Nyssian Elves, who are enslaved body and mind to a Cosmic Horror.
The Eldar of Warhammer 40000 have absolutely no compunction against contriving to see millions or billions of humans, orks, or tau dying to save a couple hundred Eldar. Their cousins, the Dark Eldar, take the concept of Squick to a whole new meaning; their entire existence is predicated on the horrific, drawn-out to-death rape and torture of countless slaves taken from other species (and even their own) to stave off the soul-sucking Chaos God Slaanesh. So, typical for any 40K race, really.
- Their Wood Elf cousins in Warhammer Fantasy also qualify: they are extremely xenophobic and generally act more like a force of nature than a civilized people. This is especially true with their king, Orion the Hunter, who every spring goes on a rampage around the woods and nearby area with a host of spirits and wild hunters.
In 7th Sea, the Sidhe have an uneasy alliance with the humans of Avalon, based on mutual dependence. The Unseelie are treated as horrifying monsters but even the Seelie, (sometimes called "The Goodly Folk") are regarded with fear and suspicion. The Seelie do not have normal emotions, and because of this, some of them take pleasure in emotionally manipulating humans. They will often torment humans for their own purposes or entertainment, and the Queen of the Sky is known to participate in The Wild Hunt. The GM's Section in the Avalon book encourages GMs to use the Sidhe as antagonists or foils.

Video Games

The Mer from The Elder Scrolls are essentially elves, except each race has it's own disturbing trends. The Dunmer, or "Dark Elves", are generally xenophobic, treacherous pricks at the best of times - And incestuous, power-hungry, demon-worshipping, rotting-diseased-flesh-eating madmen at their worst. The Bosmer, or "Wood Elves" are a bunch of plant-worshipping cannibals who have the power to morph together into a nigh-unstoppable Eldritch Abomination whenever their homeland is threatened. The Dwemer, or "Deep Elves", wiped themselves out by trying to make themselves into gods. And the Altmer, or "High Elves", are arrogant bastards who've began worshipping The Daedra like their ancestors did, despite that not being a very good idea then, either...
- Extinct are the Ayleids, also called the Wild Elves or the Heartland High Elves who used humanity as slaves, practiced Necromancy and are remembered for their sadism. Eventually the humans rose against them and wiped them out.
The Red Caps of City Of Heroes recalls one of the truly nasty varieties of the original Faeries. Their entire reason for being is pretty much to torture and torment others in creative ways — their caps were red because they had been dipped in human blood. True to form, they're also extremely dangerous for their level (despite being really, really short).
- The zone of Croatoa, where the Red Caps run fierce, also has the Fir Bolg, weird pumpkin-headed scarecrows, and the Tuatha de Danaan, who aren't so much the Celtic gods as, well, "wookie moose." And then there are the black sprites that hover around Eochai (the Giant Monster of the Fir Bolg) during the Halloween event, which are called, of course, The Unseelie.
  - It is revealed that the Fir Bolg and Tuatha de Danaan are ancient enemies of the Red Caps, who transformed them into those odd forms to torment them even more.
- This trope is referenced by Justin Augustine at the beginning of his Task Force in the quote at the top of this page. (Though Faathim the Kind does actually live up to his name, and has a Task Force of his own.)
Star Control II: The Ur-Quan Masters portrays the Arilou Lalee'lay as patronizing Little Green Men who were behind the myths of The Fair Folk, and fit the trope as enigmatic allies with "plans" for humanity.
Every encounter with fairy folk in Drakengard is laden with contempt for humans. This trope is most exemplified in the case of Leonard though, as his pact-partner is a malicious fairy who bonded with him seemingly only for the purpose of torturing him over his inability to kill himself. Which should, in hindsight, have driven him to suicide, so annoying was that fairy.
- Is it just me, or does that sound like a Deconstruction of The Legend Of Zelda?
  - only if it kept saying HEY! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN! HEY! LISTEN!
In the Shin Megami Tensei games, where All Myths Are True, there are Fairies and Elves around too, of course. And while they're certainly both cute and pretty, that doesn't mean they won't kill you just for being there.
The pixies in Fable are malicious childlike buggers with raspy voices and a penchant for human sacrifice.
As of a recent update, the Elves of Dwarf Fortress eat people.
The fair folk from A Tale Of Two Kingdoms are not downright malicious, but tend towards nasty pranks against humans (particularly but not limited to the player character). The powerful and beautiful fairy queen turns out to be not so benevolent as she tries to permanently entrap you in the fairy world.
The Folks in Folklore pretty much want you dead with a few small exceptions. The "Faeries" are simply the denizens of a realm of the Netherworld created when people dreamed of an afterlife of paradise...but that still doesn't stop the "paradise" from being filled with dozens and dozens of deceased souls that turned into angry Folks that want to kill you.
One of the gods in the roguelike Incursion is Maeve, Queen of the Faeries. All elves are required to worship her; this is not particularly a good thing, because she is utterly amoral and very capricious: sometimes she gives you good equipment, sometimes she surrounds you with out-of-depth monsters.
Subverted in the Legend Of Zelda: Majora's Mask: Tatl and her brother help Skull Kid steal Link's horse, and then she attacks and taunts Link after Skull Kid turns him into a Deku Scrub. She then takes the role of Exposition Fairy after Skull Kid leaves her behind and stays with Link when she sees Skull Kid try to destroy the world.
Whilst Erana from Quest For Glory fame is the embodiment of all that's pure and good in the world, and like, totally fabulous as a person to boot, her fair folk friends and family are power-hungry rogues who are not above stepping on a mere mortal to get their hands on Erana's magical staff to gain more power. Doesn't help they're all high-powered mages like their cousin twice removed.
- Also played with in the first game, where the hero can be forced to dance with fairies to the point of death.
Mostly subverted in Tears To Tiara, where The Fair Folk turn out to be pretty nice people indeed. The closest one to this trope is the item shop owner Epona, who at worst is an Honest John. Her shop is even called 'The Good Folk', though this is more of an allusion to mythology (it's set in Britain during the Roman invasion) than a lampshading.

Webcomics

The Elves in 8-Bit Theater. Especially Thief.
In the webcomic Chasing The Sunset, Pixies are not evil per se but are chaos incarnated. The kind of things you do not want in a fireworks shop.
Gunnerkrigg Court's Fairies are about halfway between the cute Pixie and the chaotic trickster types. They're capricious and largely lacking in tact and empathy, but the only harm they've done is emotional rather than physical, and directed at other Fairies rather than humans. Still, this behavior provoked stunned silence (and breaking the Gosh Dangit To Heck rule) from the protagonists.
A major arc of Tales Of The Questor pits the Kid Hero against some of the nastiest members of The Fair Folk. In this case, fae are split up into Seleighe and Unseleighe, both of which were originally a home-built immortal servant species, supernaturally compelled to follow obscure and poorly known rules in addition to any promises they make. The former are suggested to be a healthy lawful neutral with a minor fondness for some mortal species, but the Unseleighe are lawful only to the letter of the law, and willing to rip a pet bird apart or steal human children for their own entertainment. The Wild Hunt ensues, showing how dangerous they are.
- The setting also contains fairies closer to the cute and friendly version, who only interact with the material plane to drop glowing rocks in small circles, inside which living creatures occasionally hear the sounds from another dimension trickle over.
Dan And Mabs Furry Adventures may or may not invoke this trope; while the fae seem mostly good on the surface, at worst being strange and random, it has been shown that Mab, one of the title characters, has secretly been manipulating her friends for her own (unknown) ends for an indefinite length of time. What she has been doing so far seems to be to their benefit, but only as far as we know...
- Hell, they are creepy enough already.
In Arthur King Of Time And Space, the Fey have agreed to help Morgan become queen, for impenetrable reasons of their own (hence "Morgan le Fey"). However, they don't actually seem to be all that bright...
Used as a subversion (of the popular version) in The Parking Lot is Full◊

Western Animation

Although he got downright cuddly in later adaptations, the forerunner of the character who would become LazyTown's Sportacus is damn scary, though technically good, in the first play. There are times this editor finds herself wondering if Áfram Latibær's moral isn't actually supposed to be "behave, or the big bad scary Sports Elf will get you".
The "Third Race" from Gargoyles. Especially the episode when Oberon and Titania were out to capture Xanatos's son Alexander for the Gathering. Goliath thought it was so vile that he actually sides with Xanatos to prevent Alexander's capture.
- Oberon is consistently depicted in the series as capricious, vain and arrogant, making and breaking edicts on a whim. Sure, he'll say his magic will never harm you and yours, and it won't... until he wants it to.
- Aside from their jerkass leaders, the other fairies in the series vary greatly in personality, disposition, and form. Though they all tend to be pretty mischievous, even the ones that like humans and Gargoyles.
  - Interestingly, word of god has said they used to be a whole lot worse. After being banished from Avalon most changed considerably; besides Oberon who, at the time, was mature and compassionate in comparison. And don't even get started on his mother.
Fairly Odd Parents — the magical creatures, even those not from Western mythology, all seem to have a bit of this. Like Jorgen Von Strangle is an absolute sadist and Da Rules seem to mostly be made to frustrate everyone and do not help much. Norm the Genie has no clue that inflating a balloon that looks like a child's head and causing it to explode when you say that you want to "give each and every child a great big smile" is not a good idea if you want votes (and the fairies don't have too much of a clue about that either). Cosmo has no clue that falling for various beautiful woman would upset anyone (including his wife). Anti-Fairies have fun giving humanity Bad Luck, cheat at the Fairy Olympics and have gotten to the point of destroying the world. Pixies don't know fun is fun and boring is not (or they don't care) and desire the entire world to be boring. Santa Claus is a two-timer that flirts with female genies after Norm explodes from magic back-up. Santa also acts quite selfish and gluttonous in "Have A Merry Wishmas". Cupid is greedy and can be bribed to do stuff for money, as well as being Prideful. And it does this even though they are Fairy Companions.
- Also, the April Fool in "Fools Day Out" called causing the Earth to go into an Ice Age by hitting several planets and stuff is a "prank" or "joke".

Poems

The Stolen Child, by Yates, is about a child lead away by the fairies. While they might be doing him a favor, as it's implied that he's unhappy (although he might just be overwhelmed by the misery around him), they show no sign of telling his parents or family that he's alright.

Theater

The fae of Midsummer Nights Dream are actually an early aversion, much as one might expect from Shakespeare. They are portrayed as close to human and Oberon's interference with the lovers is actually benevolent although, of course, things go awry

Thank The Maker

« Index Overdosed »

This Is A Drill

Expecting Someone Taller

« Older Than Print »

Fanfare

Faceless Eye

« Otherness Tropes »

Fantastic Racism

Good Fairies and Elves

« Our Monsters Are Different »

Leprechauns