History Main / OurFairiesAreDifferent

-->'''Kyu:''' ''[after eating pizza]'' Mmmmmm, ''fuck'', that's good! Yo, I'm about to bust a nut over here!"

* Creator/JamesHerbert's ''Literature/{{Once}}'' depicts folkloric conception of the ''faerefolkis'' to have been inspired by race memory. Elemental beings who live on a dimension usually beyond human senses, their nurture of nature enables the planet to support life. While widely varied in form, they come in three ranges of size: tiny, dwarfish, and tall enough to be mistaken for short humans.

* ''LightNovel/HumanityHasDeclined'': They're about 10 centimeters tall, don't have wings, grin stupidly constantly, have undefined supernatural powers, and really like sweets. Oh, and they're apparently evolved from normal humans (who are still around, but dying out).

* ''VideoGame/{{Folklore}}'': Fairies are wingless creatures who are roughly three feet tall, and only appear in the LostWoods-like "Faery Realm". Some are helpful to you, while others (later in the game) are not.

* ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer}}'': Spites (often corrupted into "Sprites" in peasant folklore) are a kind of diminutive forest spirit found in woodlands throughout the Old World, and especially in the vast enchanted forest of [[TheLostWoods Athel Loren]]. They're cruel tricksters with extremely nasty tempers, and not to be trifled with lightly. They're adept shapeshifters, and can appear as glowing orbs of light, tiny elves riding beetles or black birds or skeletal horses, diminutive winged humanoids, odd-looking forest animals or anything else they've a mind to. They also tend to gather around the mightier denizens of the forest, and can often be seen nesting among the branches of treemen or clinging to the bodies of forest dragons.

** ''WesternAnimation/BarbiePresentsThumbelina'': Barbie and her friends are part of a species known as the Twillerbees. Twillerbees are no larger than a grown human's hand, have wings, and have a magical connection with nature. On one hand, they can make plants grow faster, on the other Twillerbabies are born from flowers.

* ''Franchise/WonderWoman'' [[ComicBook/WonderWoman1942 Vol 1]]: The faeries of the Shamrock Lands are mostly magical winged humanoids, but their queen rules over some small wingless magical humanoids as well including leprechauns.

[[folder:Mythology and Religion]]

Although these vary depending on the story (hence the trope title). Much like [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Demons]], what classifies as "Fairy" is often as varied as "Mammal". Four standard forms stand out, however:

* ''Animation/PleasantGoatAndBigBigWolf'': The Little Fairy resembles a mix between a goat and a platypus, which is a far cry from most depictions of fairies.

* A tiny humanoid, usually with [[WingedHumanoid insect wings]], between one and twelve inches tall. Variations other than size include [[AmazingTechnicolorPopulation skin]] or [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair hair]] colors, the type of wings they have, what they wear (if anything), and often whether or not they generate their own light. These are usually called some variation of "fairy", "sprite", or "pixie".

* ''Literature/ToughMagic'': The races on Emis are fairies, leprechauns, pixies and sprites. However, as they are about human size and without wings, the only distinction between them and regular humans is the [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair unusual colors of their skin, hair and eyes]].

** ''VideoGame/PrincessMaker3'': Ruled by a queen, as seen in the opening, and can have [[YouGottaHaveBlueHair unnatural hair colors]].

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' have always had a few creatures that are based on fairies and fairy-like creatures. Many of them are [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter small adorable creatures]] like Clefairy, Roselia and Snorunt. All of them belong to an egg group (a classification of Pokemon that can [[HotSkittyOnWailordAction breed with each other]]) called the Fairy egg group (including SeriesMascot Pikachu). It wasn't until ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' that Fairy was introduced as an actual type in order to [[{{Nerf}} combat the overpowered]] [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Dragon-types]], and many older Pokemon [[{{Retcon}} were given the new type]]. These range from the previously mentioned Clefairy to more mystic ones like Gardevoir and devious ones like Mawile. The Fairy-types introduced in later generations include the elegant and stately Florges, the mischievous key-stealing Klefki, Ribombee, which approaches the traditional winged humanoid image by way of being a humanoid bee, and the [[OlympusMons legendary]] Xerneas, [[TheMarvelousDeer a massive deer]] and effectively a god of rebirth. Outwardly malevolent ones were also introduced, namely the soul-eating Shiinotic, the murderously territorial Hatterene, and the violent and aggressive Grimmsnarl. Fairy-types are vulnerable to Steel-type attacks, as a nod to fairies' weakness to ColdIron, and to Poison-type ones, representing nature's weakness to pollution. And then there's Galarian Weezing. A pair of floating sea mines stuck together (as with normal Weezing), now sporting top hat shaped chimmneys and moustaches of pea souper smog. And it's a Poison/Fairy type.

* The [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies Cottingley Fairies]] were supposedly photos of actual fairies (small and winged, not the [[TheFairFolk other]] [[TheWildHunt kind]]) in 1917. A numbers of celebrities were caught up in the hype, including Creator/ArthurConanDoyle, before the cousins who took the photos confessed they were fake. They still claimed to have seen actual fairies, and one cousin would later insist that [[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/cc/Cottingley-sunbath.jpg one]] of the pictures (the lowest-quality one, incidentally) was real. Also served as the inspiration for [[DuelingMovies two]] films in [[ExtyYearsFromNow 1997]]: ''Photographing Fairies'' and ''Film/FairytaleATrueStory''.

* ''La Sylphide'' (or ''The Sylph''): The protagonist falls in love with a beautiful fairy with rainbow wings. He abandons his mortal fiancee to chase after her. WickedWitch Old Madge tells him she is unable to be with him as she will always fly away. She then presents him with a magic scarf that will prevent her from flying away. [[spoiler:It makes her wings fall off and she dies]].

* ''Literature/TheFeyAndTheFallen'': Most of the fairies we see are the Irish Tuatha Dé Danann, and they are in a war with FallenAngels. Irish fey are vulnerable to iron, have clans and political infighting among themselves, and are capable of making HalfHumanHybrids. While other kinds of fey exist, they are from countries outside of Ireland and seldom seen in-story.

* ''Franchise/{{Pokemon}}'' have always had a few creatures that are based on fairies and fairy-like creatures. Many of them are [[RidiculouslyCuteCritter small adorable creatures]] like Clefairy, Roselia and Snorunt. All of them belong to an egg group (a classification of Pokemon that can [[HotSkittyOnWailordAction breed with each other]]) called the Fairy egg group (including SeriesMascot Pikachu). It wasn't until ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' that Fairy was introduced as an actual type in order to [[{{Nerf}} combat the overpowered]] [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Dragon-types]], and many older Pokemon [[{{Retcon}} were given the new type]]. These range from the previously mentioned Clefairy to more mystic ones like Gardevoir and devious ones like Mawile. The Fairy-types introduced in later generations include the elegant and stately Florges, the mischievous key-stealing Klefki, Ribombee, which approaches the traditional winged humanoid image by way of being a humanoid bee, and the [[OlympusMons legendary]] Xerneas, [[TheMarvelousDeer a massive deer]] and effectively a god of rebirth. Outwardly malevolent ones were also introduced, namely the soul-eating Shiinotic, murderously territorial Hatterene, and the violent and aggressive Grimmsnarl. Fairy-types are vulnerable to Steel-type attacks, as a nod to fairies' weakness to ColdIron, and to Poison-type ones, representing nature's weakness to pollution.
** And then there's Galarian Weezing. A pair of floating sea mines stuck together (as with normal Weezing), now sporting top hat shaped chimmneys and moustaches of pea souper smog. And it's a Poison/Fairy type.

* ''WesternAnimation/{{Barbie}}'':

*** It's possible Tolkien intended for Hobbits themselves to have some traits of faeries - a race of little people living where humans cannot see, with an uncanny knack for going unseen and a close kinship with the earth - are all traits common in older (read "pre-Disney") faeries. Meanwhile the Elves got the depiction of a forest-dwelling, InhumanlyBeautifulRace, which were the other most common traits. He seems to have dropped the [[TheFairFolk child-stealing]] and ColdIron bits altogether.

* ''Plantasia'': Holly, the player character, looks almost exactly like a normal human, albeit with pointed ears and pink hair. She can apparently pull clothes out of nowhere to disguise herself as a human, as seen in the intro of the game, and can make multiple shovels, watering cans, weeding tools, and extermination tools work simultaneously on the field, depending on how many of the tool she has and how many are available for her to use at the time. She can also fly or at least hover, despite having no visible wings.

* In ''LightNovel/AmagiBrilliantPark'', The vast majority of the workers at the titular theme park are fairies. Some of them look like cute, bipedal talking animals (which they cover up by pretending to be people in mascot costumes), while others appear mostly human, and all of them have magical abilities of some kind. Their existence depends on keeping the park open so that the energy from people's happiness can keep them alive.

* Animal-like beings that often verge on {{Animalistic Abominations}}, typically with a taste for human flesh or souls, or, barring that, are harbingers of doom or bringers of disease and hardship. More benign ones may be benevolent (or, at the very least, not actively malevolent), but, like most fae, should be approached with great caution and a good deal of knowledge of what you're getting yourself into. They are often also shapeshifters, though this is not a hard-and-fast rule, while others may be MixAndMatchCritters or have some anthropomorphic traits. Common examples include pucas, water horses, and barghests/black dogs.

Although these vary depending on the story (hence the trope title). Much like [[OurDemonsAreDifferent Demons]], what classifies as "Fairy" is often as varied as "Mammal". Three standard forms stand out, however:

But these are hardly the full extent of what Fairies can be. Just as [[OurDragonsAreDifferent Dragons]] can encompass many related creatures, fairies can include other mythological/fantasy creatures such as [[FaunsAndSatyrs satyrs]], [[OurNymphsAreDifferent nymphs]], [[OurMermaidsAreDifferent merfolk]], and even [[AllTrollsAreDifferent trolls]]. They often hang around with animals (especially Unicorns), which might possibly be Fay (or the equivalent) themselves. Fay animals, on their part, may resemble a normal animal, or could have wings, unnatural skin/fur tones, or even anthropomorphic features, such as a Humanlike face or even body. These can also encompass other creatures, such as kelpies, cait sith or {{Unicorn}}s.