History Main / HarpingOnAboutHarpies

* The ''Literature/TortallUniverse'' has Stormwings: female and male harpy-like creatures with sharp steel feathers and talons, who desecrate bodies of those slain on the battlefield and are so odoriferous that they repel most humans. They were dreamt up by a mage who wanted to make people realize that WarIsHell by taking any glamour out of the fate of the war dead.

Harpies should also not be confused with furies. Those are a different kind of evil flying women.

* Dante's ''Literature/TheDivineComedy'' puts them in hell, specifically the area inhabited by people who have committed suicide.

* In the ''Literature/HarryPotter'' universe, there is a Quidditch team called the Holyhead Harpies, which is made up entirely of women. As to whether actual harpies exist in the setting, no confirmation has been received so far (Though other teams are known to be named after magical creatures that do exist). The veela are vaguely similar, although they're more reminiscent of sirens or banshees.
* In ''Literature/HisDarkMaterials'', harpies guard the underworld. They were told by the Authority to feed off the misery of the dead by taunting them with whatever they did wrong in life. One harpy betrayed evil by helping Lyra and Will cut open a portal for the dead to escape through. As thanks, Lyra gave her a name -- Gracious Wings.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Munchkin}}'': JustForPun, harpies are depicted as harp-playing {{Dreadful Musician}}s.

* PlayedForLaughs in ''Series/LostGirl''.

** ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': Bat-winged harpies appear as a flying unit for the Dark Elves and Beasts of Chaos. They're a OneGenderRace of winged female humanoids, a bunch of scavengers and snatcher. In terms of beauty, they're depicted as attractive but only from the belly up to the neck as a "parody of a woman's body". They often lair in desolate islets and sea stacks and use their entrancing songs to lure sailors to their doom, but others follow Dark Elf armies or Beastman warherds around to feed on the carnage that follows them.

* ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'': Harpies are a kind of flying Tyranid organism with broad leathery wings, a hollow body for lightness in the air, either organic guns or scythelike talons growing from their forearms, and the ability to drop payloads of explosive spores. The swarms use them mainly as a combination of bombers, strafers and mid-sized air support.

Related to the ''other'' mythological half-woman half-bird creatures, OurSirensAreDifferent. Sirens and harpies are confused almost as much as [[SirensAreMermaids sirens and mermaids]], usually by giving harpies beautiful or hypnotic voices, a characteristic that only sirens possessed in Greek myth. This is probably due to the harpies often being portrayed as bird-like, and of course birds are well known for singing.

* ''LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': "Sky Queen" Frey is a [[MaouTheDemonKing Demon Lord]] who rules the Harpy Kingdom of Fulbrosia. Harpies are a race of winged majin who almost all[[note]]There ''are'' males, averting OneGenderRace, but they're very rare[[/note]] resemble beautiful women (Frey in particular is considered InUniverse to be MsFanservice), with their legs ending in talons but their arms being both human and separated from their large wings attached to their back. Harpies also possess the Intrinsic Skill "Magic Jamming", which allows them to [[AntiMagic disrupt the flow of Magicules around them]] to both cancel out/weaken magic and (in the case of Frey) outright disable nearly all forms of magical flight. Their natural speed and flight capabilities make them highly feared as masters of aerial combat. Since their race is almost exclusively female, they rely on either the few males or another powerful majin of a different race for genetic diversity. A queen-type harpy like Frey is also capable of [[TrulySingleParent parthenogenesis (virginal birth) with no partner required]]. [[spoiler:Frey's twin sister Nazim is a queen-type harpy whose possesses multiple pairs of wings and great inherent power due to a genetic mutation, but consequently is sterile, which disqualified her from inheriting the royal title.]]

** Harpies aren't necessarily ugly -- in fact, their artwork tends to make them look [[CuteMonsterGirl fairly attractive, if inhuman]] -- but they [[ThePigPen have absolutely no sense of hygiene (and powerful musk)]]. They may not be bad to look at, but you can usually smell them coming a mile away. They are explicitly a OneGenderRace that must mate with humanoids to procreate... unfortunately, not only do they tend to be sadists, they usually [[DeathBySex eat their partners when they're done]]. In fact, it's mentioned in one sourcebook on Classical Monsters that in Harpy society, ''not'' eating the father of one's daughter is a shameful event, unless said male is strong enough that he's more worthwhile if kept alive. They also possess captivating songs that they use to lure victims into their clutches. Second Edition does away with their OneGenderRace status -- in fact, the illustration in the ''Bestiary'' is of a male harpy.

** In ''[[Literature/TheHeroesOfOlympus The Son of Neptune]]'', the main characters meet Ella, a harpy who remembers everything she reads and has no interest in eating the kids, as well as a large flock of more traditional harpies tormenting the blind seer Phineas.

* The [[{{Hentai}} h-manga]] ''Otherworldly Maidens: Monster Girls from Another World'' has a chapter focusing on a harpy who works in the air delivery branch of a parcel service. Her story begins with her confesing her feelings for her crush, the local doctor that she frequently delivers medical supplies to, by happily giving him an egg she laid that morning. Not knowing what to with it, the doctor awkwardly accepts her gift, leaving her devastated, and the narrating text mentions that female harpies will give a freshly laid egg to the person, often a male harpy they love, but that custom is barely known outside the harpy community, and the uninitiated may find it unsettling. Some time later, the harpy hesitantly goes to make a delivery to the doctor and she's relieved there's no real awkwardness between them. However, he determines that she's suffering from "egg binding," a stress induced malady wich causes an egg to become stuck in the sufferer's reproductive duct, and after a non-surgical, though very invasive procedure, the egg is extracted and she laments that she "got off" during the procedure and [[DefiledForever is not worth being a bride anyomore]], and the doctor proposes to her saying he read up on harpy customs and happily accepts her gift and everything it symbolizes. Since he didn't have any other patients that day, they spend the afternoon having sex, however, when the sun goes down, he asks to stop, because he has patient that insits on being tended to only at night.

* Creator/FranciscoDeGoya: ''All will fall'', in his ''Los Caprichos'' series, shows a group of winged males circle around a half-woman, half harpy. Down below the fallen males are plucked by a group of women, thus providing BookEnds in how both sexes prey upon each other.

* ''LightNovel/MonsterGirlDoctor'', taking cues from ''Monster Musume'', has Illy, who has birdlike legs with talons at the feet, wings in place of arms, and lays eggs periodically. Unlike most examples of this trope, the series explicitly shows male harpies.

* ''LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': "Sky Queen" Frey is a [[MaouTheDemonKing Demon Lord]] who rules the Harpy Kingdom of Fulbrosia. Harpies are a race of winged majin who almost all[[note]]There ''are'' males, averting OneGenderRace, but they're very rare[[/note]] resemble beautiful women (Frey in particular is considered InUniverse to be MsFanservice), with their legs ending in talons but their arms being both human and separated from their large wings attached to their back. Harpies also possess the Intrinsic Skill "Magic Jamming", which allows them to [[AntiMagic disrupt the flow of Magicules around them]] to both cancel out/weaken magic and (in the case of Frey) outright disable nearly all forms of magical flight. Their natural speed and flight capabilities make them highly feared as masters of aerial combat. Since their race is almost exclusively female, they rely on either the few males or another powerful majin of a different race for genetic diversity. A queen-type harpy like Frey is also capable of [[TrulySingleParent parthenogenesis (virginal birth) with no partner required]].

** The [[HornyDevil Succubus]], surprisingly, does not have horns. Instead, it's a harpy with bat wings they can curse its prey with its seductive song and bite them.

* In ''Comicbook/GoldDigger,'' Charlotte, aka "Charlie", is a genetically engineered harpy. She was created by a villain as a [[WhatMeasureIsANonHuman disposable]] [[{{Mooks}} mook]], but after he was defeated, Penny adopted her. Despite being the size of an adult, she is only a few years old and has the emotional maturity of a child. She's both attractive (in a fuzzy-yellow-feathers-all-over-her-body kind of way) and very sweet-natured, but she also has big scary bionic claws on her arms.

* ''ComicBook/TheIncredibleHulk'': The Leader turned ComicBook/BettyRoss into a Gamma-powered Harpy once, and, in ''ComicBook/WorldWarHulk'''s "Gamma Corps", the Hulk's old enemy the Clown was turned into the Griffin with Gamma technology, specifically based on Betty as the Harpy.

* ''LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': "Sky Queen" Frey is a [[MaouTheDemonKing Demon Lord]] who rules the Harpy Kingdom of Fulbrosia. Harpies are a race of winged majin who resemble beautiful women (Frey in particular is considered InUniverse to be MsFanservice), with their legs ending in talons but their arms being both human and separated from their large wings attached to their back. Harpies also possess the Intrinsic Skill "Magic Jamming", which allows them to [[AntiMagic disrupt the flow of Magicules around them]] to both cancel out/weaken magic and (in the case of Frey) outright disable nearly all forms of magical flight. Their natural speed and flight capabilities make them highly feared as masters of aerial combat.

* ''VideoGame/DragonsDogma'': Generally speaking, the game has harpies almost everywhere and they behave like [[OurSirensAreDifferent sirens]], known for being both beautiful and hideous. Their depictions are actually accurate to the source materials due to their bird-like proportions. Harpies and their variants sing to hypnotise their prey to sleep and snatch them away. However, what makes them truly annoying is how the Pawns [[LampshadeHanging overreact]] to almost '''[[UpToEleven every]] [[OverlyLongGag single]]''' harpy.

%%* ''Tabletopgame/YuGiOh'': The Harpie Lady monsters.

* ''ComicBook/DisneyDucksComicUniverse'': In the ''Uncle Scrooge'' comic ''The Golden Fleecing'' by Creator/CarlBarks, Harpies ([[ExecutiveMeddling renamed "Larkies" for the story, as the editor objected to the word "Harpy"]]) are the guardians of the Golden Fleece, and are also portrayed as horrible cooks. They kidnap Scrooge and Donald in order to get them to judge their revolting recipes. (The story was loosely adapted into a ''WesternAnimation/DuckTales1987'' episode.)

This is a sub-trope of MonstrousHumanoid & WingedHumanoid.

* ''LightNovel/ThatTimeIGotReincarnatedAsASlime'': "Sky Queen" Frey is a [[MaouTheDemonKing Demon Lord]] who rules the Harpy Kingdom of Fulbrosia. Harpies are a race of winged majin who resemble beautiful women, with their legs ending in talons but their arms being both human and separated from their large wings attached to their back. Harpies also possess the Intrinsic Skill "Magic Jamming", which allows them to [[AntiMagic disrupt the flow of Magicules around them]] to both cancel out/weaken magic and (in the case of Frey) outright disable nearly all forms of magical flight. Their natural speed and flight capabilities make them highly feared as masters of aerial combat.