Literature / Disney Fairies

Part of the books' main cast^{Clockwise starting from the top} Rani, Bess, Fira, Tinker Bell, Beck, Lily.

Disney Fairies is a book series written by Gail Carson Levine (of Ella Enchanted fame) and published by Disney. They're based on Peter Pan.

books

• Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg (2005)
• Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand (2007)
• Fairies and the Quest for Never Land (2010)

Additionally there are more than 40 smaller chapter books, whose canon generally discard Quest for the Wand and Quest for Never Land

The series launched in 2005 and has since become a multimedia franchise, It has a series of animated films loosely based on them; the film Adapted Out most of the cast and replaced them with new fairies.

The series also has Comic Book Adaptations.

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Tropes in this series include:

• A Day in the Limelight: Most of the chapter books are based around one fairy or another. Many are focused on in the first novel (Vidia, Rani, Prilla and Tink all get some), but others were invented later, such as Rosetta and Iridessa.
• Aesop Amnesia: Everyone suffers from this to some extent. Silvermist, who learned not to be superstitious in a chapter book, learned the whole lesson again in a Never Girls book. And Vidia learns a lesson about selfishness so often that it's practically a Once an Episode plot point, but she always seems to forget it by the next installment, sometimes becoming even meaner along the way.
• The Ageless: Fairies don't age, and Prilla is born looking like an adult. They can, however, die, and do so with surprising frequency.
• An Aesop : Most of the books have morals at the end, some more Anvilicious than others.
• And Your Little Dog, Too!: Kyto gloats about how he's going to eat Mother Dove alive as he fights the fairies.
• An Arm and a Leg: Rani really is put through the wringer in the novels. She has Prilla cut off her wings to be able to swim and ask the mermaids for assistance. As the only wingless fairy, she needs to ride a bird to fly, but not even the other water fairies can explore underwater like Rani can.
• The Artifact: Tinker Bell's outfit. Its simplicity looks really out-of-place compared to the far more elaborate and detailed wardrobes of the other fairies.
• Artifact of Doom: The wand in Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand. If you thought the One Ring was bad...
• Apocalypse How: A Regional-level one happened on Never Land in the form of a volcanic eruption some time before the books began. Some materials set the Tinker Bell movies before the eruption and the books afterwards, but this explanation stopped appearing as more movie-exclusive characters showed up in the movies.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: One of the Aesops in Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand. The characters long for the opportunity to use the wand for themselves, but nearly all of their wishes turn out horribly; Vidia finds out that effortless speed makes flying boring, Ree's wish to shrink the hawks is horribly unethical to everyone but her, Terrence's desire to make Tink love him robs her of her autonomy, and Rani's wish to make a mermaid be her friend winds up being virtually meaningless. Even the mermaids, the people the wand was supposed to be for, would up making each other deaf, mute, and illiterate with their wishes.
• Bizarre Seasons: Never Land has these, being a Genius Loci that can effectively control itself. That's why the storm in the first book is such a problem; a hurricane of that size hasn't happened for as long as any of the characters can remember, so none of them have any idea what to do.
• Big Storm Episode: The first book centers on a hurricane.
• Broken Aesop:
  • Vidia and the Fairy Crown is full of this, mostly because Vidia's personality changes a lot Depending on the Writer. In the book, Vidia is accused of stealing the crown just because she made some off-color comments about Clarion earlier, when in reality she had no involvement in the crown's disappearance and it was simply misplaced by an attendant. By the end, Vidia is proven innocent, and everyone apologizes to her for being poor judges of character and making assumptions. But a later book written by a different author had Vidia actually steal a wand, which was much more powerful and dangerous than the (entirely symbolic) crown had ever been, making it retroactively look like the others were right to hate her all along—she may not have stolen the crown, but she was a thief who had no qualms about endangering everyone else just to make a selfish wish.
• Clap Your Hands If You Believe: Prilla is in charge of this (somehow.) She's kind of an advocate, playing with kids to boost their belief and specifically asking them to clap for the fairies during emergencies.
• Clear My Name: Vidia in Vidia and the Fairy Crown after she's accused of stealing the titular crown (although she bounces between this and Then Let Me Be Evil, only accepting help begrudgingly and insisting all the while that she doesn't care about the consequences.)

• Contrived Coincidence: The entirety of Vidia and the Fairy Crown. First, Vidia makes a joke about "snatching the crown off [[Ree's]] high and mighty head" right when said crown goes missing, making everyone suspect her immediately. Then it turns out that the crown is missing because of a whole series of contrived coincidences happening at just the right times—nobody intentionally stole it, but it was repeatedly misplaced and mistakenly discarded, only to end up in a giant pile of almost identical crowns.
• Creepy Child: Sarah Quirtle, the girl whose laugh Prilla was born from. Something went wrong when Prilla was created, leaving Prilla with an extra piece of humanity that fairies don't normally have, and Sarah without that piece of herself. She winds up growing into a dead-eyed, creepy little girl who doesn't play like a child her age unless Prilla is around. A wish on the wand later fixes this, though.

• Demoted to Extra: Pretty much the entire book cast was demoted once the movie was released, replaced with characters who were, up until then, Recurring Extras. The most obvious examples were Prilla (the focus character of the first novel, and a major character thereafter) and Rani (a water-talent who lost her wings). Fira was also the primary light-talent fairy in the books. All three were absent from the movies.
• Depending on the Artist: Almost all of the books have elaborate full-color illustrations, but they're rarely very similar to one another (and sometimes contradict the source material.) Tinker Bell is really the only character whose design remains consistent.
• Depending on the Writer: Nearly everything about the characters' personalities changes depending on who's writing them. Tinker Bell bounces between a Clingy Jealous Girl who Would Hurt a Child and a Genki Girl Wrench Wench, Vidia is either an outright Jerkass who never pays for her mistakes or a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who just needs a friend, Clarion/Ree is either a down-to-earth Action Girl who happens to be the current ruler or an untouchable fantasy High Queen, Silvermist is either cool and collected or a complete and utter space-case who can barely understand metaphors, the list goes on. This only got worse as the movie canon characters drifted further in personality from their literary counterparts.
• Disability Superpower: Rani cannot fly due to having no wings, but this grants her the ability to actually swim — other fairies sink like stones thanks to their wings.
• Disney Death: Averted. Several fairies die throughout Gail Carson Levine's books (of disbelief), and they stay dead.
• Dragon Hoard: Kyto is obsessed with his. Over the course of the series, he adds Rani's wings, Ree's shield, and the fairy crown to his ever-growing pile of valuables. Never Girls also features a new dragon called Tryas, who made Queen Clarion herself a part of her own hoard.
• The Dragon Slayer: A slightly more benign version. Gwendolyn is called a "dragon scaring talent" after the fairies fight Kyto. Seeing as Gwendolyn is a human child, she couldn't exactly slay a dragon, but she was able to scare him in a way the tiny fairies couldn't.
• Dream Sue: All of the characters do this to an extent when they have wand madness, but Clarion gets it especially bad. By the end of her fantasy, she's imaging herself as a great and all-powerful, yet universally adored, empress/dictator.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: In Gail Carson Levine's books, Clarion was drawn to look like a short-haired brunette, and most of her outfits were blue. Almost all later books give her a blonde updo and a pink dress, possibly to invoke the image of a Princess Classic.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • Queen Clarion goes by "Queen Ree" at first, and this is eventually dropped.
  • Moth is suddenly changed to "Fira" in later books, with the explanation that "Moth" was her nickname.
  • The first book features none of Tinker Bell's friends from the first Tinker Bell movie, all of whom become recurring characters in later books.
  • The first book is also full of extremely dramatic life-or-death struggles, with a few fairies dying, while the chapter books are much less dramatic and more "Young Girls Light Reading", with themes about friendship, working too hard, and belonging.
• Evil Gloating: Kyto does this at the end of Fairies and the Quest for Never Land. Ree offers him her crown and her shield as a peace offering, and he takes them both in a false show of gratitude, then brags about the fact that he has them as he continues to burn fairies to death.
• Forced Transformation: Rani is transformed into a bat by mermaid song in the second book, with her consciousness trapped inside. By the end, the bat agrees to trade places with her, becoming a kind of Greek Chorus in her mind.
• Garden Garment: All of the characters dress like this. When their clothes aren't made of flowers, they're made of other natural materials, like wood, fur, and wasp skin.
• Gaslighting: Vidia does a pretty nasty version of this to Silvermist in Silvermist and the Ladybug Curse. While she doesn't spread the rumors about the "curse", she's there to insincerely offer Silvermist her "support", speak about the severity of the curse, smirk when things go wrong, never help when they do, and just kind of hovers around to make sure Sil knows what's going on.
• Genius Loci: Never Land can sense what's going on, and often intervenes in the plot to work for or against the protagonists. It's generally helpful, but if the characters are trying to do something it doesn't like, it will pull back and make it more difficult for them to travel.

• Hair Color Dissonance: Vidia's hair is black, but it's often drawn to look purple or blue. Clarion's hair also shifts from blonde to brunette on occasion.
• Hazardous Water: Water is always dangerous to fairies—their wings work like sponges, and will invariably pull them under and drown them once they absorb enough water. It's mentioned that fairies have drowned in puddles like this. The only one who can swim is Rani, who had her wings cut off.
• Hostile Weather: In the first book, a hurricane breaks Mother Dove's egg, which is responsible for Never Land's magic. The same storm puts multiple fairies in danger and is implied to have killed some wildlife and at least one mermaid.
• Hufflepuff House: Most talents. Only a few are ever put in the spotlight, and they tend to err on the cooler side. Background talent groups, like the fairies who maintain the home tree and clean up after the others, are rarely main characters, and aren't often involved in the plot.
• Ignored Epiphany: In "Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg", Vidia has to pluck a feather from a golden hawk, who sends the pain it feels to her:
  "She could have acknowledged then and there how much plucking hurt. She could have admitted she'd been cruel to pluck Mother Dove. She could have recognized that pain is pain, whether it's pain to others or pain to oneself. She could have sworn not to inflict pain on purpose ever again. But instead, she convinced herself that the hawk was the one who'd been cruel. She decided he'd made the pain worse than it really was.
• Informed Attribute: The fairy crown is said to be priceless, ancient, and extremely important to the Never fairies, to the point where Vidia was threatened with banishment for supposedly stealing it (although she was innocent in the end.) In practice, though, Clarion loses it twice, once permanently, and nobody seems too concerned about the fact that it's gone.
• In-Series Nickname: Tink for Tinker Bell and Ree for Clarion. The latter was later dropped after Gail Carson Levine's trilogy ended and became a case of Early-Installment Weirdness.
• Interspecies Romance: Vidia nearly sells out her whole race because she falls in love with a genocidal dragon. He seems to like her back, too!
• Invisible to Normals: Fairies are invisible to adult humans, in one of the books' many moves that defy both the movies and the original Peter Pan film to stay closer to Barrie's book.
• Karma Houdini: Kyto. He kills seven people, and in return gets an enclosure with more space, a larger hoard with Ree's crown and shield in it, and a new friend in the form of Vidia. Even the POV character Gwendolyn points out that it doesn't seem fair.
• Kill It with Water: The mermaids do this to the fairies when they aren't provided with their promised wand in time. The fairies are especially vulnerable to floods because they're so small, and because their water-absorbing wings make it easy for them to drown.

• Law of Disproportionate Response: In the chapter books, Queen Clarion's treatment of suspected lawbreaks by Vidia, indicate that Pixie Hollow's laws could get disproportionate at times, in both directions. Beck Beyond the Sea had Vidia convicted of mixing gravel into a bag of stolen high-potent pixie dust, for the purpose of reducing Beck's flight distance to the point she'd drown in the sea, so Vidia could get easier access to steal more high-potent dust, for which the penalty was to be banned from flying for 1 week. In sharp contrast, Vidia and the Fairy Crown establish the penalty for stealing Queen Clarion's crown as permanent banishment from Pixie Hollow, despite the existence of several hundred crowns that are identical, except they lack the ability to change size to fit the wearer's head.
• Lighter and Softer:
  • The chapter books compared to Gail Carson Levine's novels. They are largely themed around "Fira works too hard" or "Rani runs away to hang out with mermaids because she's sad", not "all of Pixie Hollow is doomed, and a few fairies literally die."
  • Never Girls is lighter still, with major plot points from the original trilogy being Retconned so they're more age-appropriate for the target audience. Instead of dying from disbelief, fairies simply lose their magic, the new dragon Tyras made Clarion a part of her hoard instead of trying to kill her like Kyto did, and mermaids are just rude and ornery instead of outright deadly.
• Loose Canon: Pretty much all of the books are "semi-canon." There's no official continuity, elements of different series tend to contradict each other, and characterization and lore differs significantly Depending on the Writer.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Clarion gets a shield made from an earring when she fights Kyto.
• Magic Wand: The fairies get a sleeping one in the second book in the trilogy. It winds up slowly driving the main characters mad and ruining everyone's lives, and nearly kills half the cast at the end of the book.
• Making a Splash: The water-talent fairies do this, with the caveat that they can't control very large amounts of water due to the fact that they're so small.

• Missing Child: Gwendolyn is a young girl who winds up traveling to Never Land because she's descended from Wendy Darling. Throughout the course of her time on the island, she gets involved in a battle with the evil dragon Kyto, and winds up suffering burns on her legs and watching multiple fairies die. Meanwhile, her family is stuck at home, wondering where their daughter went and what she's up to. Gwendolyn herself wonders at one point what her parents and grandmother would think if she never made it home.
• Mundane Wish: One of Rani's wishes on the wand is to become friends with a mermaid. Considering how everyone else's wishes turned out, making a Mundane Wish may not have been the worst idea.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles: In "Vidia and the Fairy Crown", the queen's missing crown was accidentally placed in a room full of duplicate crowns. in this case, there was no secret test— the fairies had to figure out which was which through trial and error.
• Never Say "Die": Notable for how often it's averted. Characters are not shy about the word "death," and several (minor) characters catch fire, drown, or fade away of disbelief over the course of the series. There's a scene at the end of Fairies and the Quest for Never Land where Rani tearfully informs Gwendolyn that Kyto killed seven people.
• Not Me This Time: Vidia is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold who insults people for fun, gaslit Silvermist for weeks, tried to murder Beck, stole the wand, and taught Kyto how to fly... but she really didn't steal Ree's crown.
• Odd Friendship: Prilla and Vidia. Vidia actually slaps her in the original book, but their quest to save Mother Dove's egg actually makes Vidia somewhat try to help Prilla later (usually via a sarcastic lecture). Prilla is also the only person to see any good qualities in the much-hated Vidia, helping her out when nobody else would. Vidia actually smiles at her, which basically never happens anywhere.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The first dragon mentioned is Kyto, the Big Bad of the third book. He's a violent hoarder who's nothing but antagonistic to the fairies, and he's so evil that his flame can corrupt Mother Dove's eggs. The second (and only other) dragon is Tyras, who's basically a Lighter and Softer version of Kyto; she's just as obsessed with her hoard, but she wants to kidnap Clarion and keep her in said hoard, while Kyto just wanted to kill her.
• Our Fairies Are Different: There are a few different kinds of fairies in Gail Carson Levine's trilogy, although only two ever get page time and only the Never Land fairies are fully explored. The other species, the Great Wanded fairies, are as tall as people and entirely reliant on their wands, which has made them somewhat dim, lazy, and irresponsible. They're not malicious, but they can't understand why anyone would put effort into anything instead of simply wishing for it, and their lives are empty and meaningless in the eyes of the Pixie Hollow fairies.
• Our Mermaids Are Different: While the mermaids in the Mermaid Lagoon look as you'd expect them, they're selfish, vain, catty, and have the attention span of a gnat. When Rani briefly considers living with them, they're quick to disregard her, and find the concept of working to set up a party bizarre.

• Retcon: Initially, the fact that fairies die when children stop believing was a major plot point, and random background characters dropped dead of disbelief multiple times. Later books changed this so disbelief just diminishes fairies' magic instead of outright killing them.
• Rising Water, Rising Tension: In Fairy Haven and the Quest for the Wand, the narrative occasionally cuts back to Pixie Hollow, which is being flooded by angry mermaids. A few paragraphs are written from the perspective of a shoemaker trying to stay alive in the rising water. She doesn't make it, and dies regretting the fact that she never got to make her own wish on the wand.
• Shown Their Work: According to the inside flap of Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan was one of Gail Carson Levine's favorite books as a child. In selfsame book, we find out that Captain Hook's blood is purple and it's one of only two things he's afraid of - something directly from Barrie's book that you don't find in most adaptations.
• Stinky Flower: In one of the chapter books, "Lily's Pesky Plant", the eponymous plant surprises everyone by smelling awful and makes Lily's case for continuing to care for it much harder.
• Stop Drowning and Stand Up: Vidia gets this in "Silvermist and the Ladybug Curse".

• Tempting Fate: Rosetta and her new shoes in "Rosetta's Daring Day".
• Tender Tears: Water fairies are very prone to tears.
• Terms of Endangerment: Vidia does this a lot, nicknaming everyone with obnoxiously patronizing pet names even when she's verbally sparring with them. A notable example is when she calls Clarion "love" as she's threatening to kill her by throwing her into the Sun.
• Then Let Me Be Evil: In Vidia and the Fairy Crown, Vidia goes back and forth between this and Clear My Name. She insists that she didn't steal the crown, but that even if she did, it wouldn't matter, because she doesn't care about the punishment anyway. In the end, Prilla helps her prove her innocence, but Vidia only accepts her help begrudgingly... and insults the queen again the second their wild goose chase for the crown is over.

• Unreliable Illustrator: Even though Gail Carson Levine describes Prilla as looking like an adult in most respects in Fairies and the Quest for the Egg, illustrator David Christiana draws her as looking like an eight-year-old child. Many other characters get the same treatment, whether it's Hair Color Dissonance, Inconsistent Coloring, or something else, their illustrations, although beautiful, often don't match up with their descriptions. Tinker Bell is the only character that stays consistent.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show: Kyto is this. The series' previous villains, the mermaids who sent a flood because they wanted a wand, were malicious, but mostly petty and unconcerned about the effects of their actions. Kyto enjoyed making people suffer, and made a game out of killing as many fairies as he could while bragging about it to their desolate and captive leaders.
• Wasteful Wishing: Almost nobody makes a truly meaningful or important wish. Most turned out pointless (e.g. Rani's wish to become friends with a mermaid), cruel (e.g. Ree's wish to shrink the hawks) or harmful in other ways (e.g. Vidia's wish to fly faster, which killed any drive she had to keep practicing.) The wish to restore Sara Quirtle to normalcy was the only one that wound up sticking.
• Water Is Womanly: The water-talent fairies can modify and shape water to their will. They consist of females at an even higher rate than that of the other talents, and the most commonly shown water-talent fairies Rani and Silvermist both wear long slender all-blue dresses with water-themed decorations.
• Weird Weather: The hurricane in the first book. Never Land is normally a Genius Loci that doesn't have inclement weather as a general rule, so when a massive storm appears out of nowhere and tears through the island, it's a big deal.
• Wicked Cultured: Captain Hook, so much that he snores in iambic pentameter.
• Will They or Won't They?: It's very clear from the books (especially the first, and Tink, North of Never Land) that Terence is in love with Tink (when trying not to think about her after a fight, he finds himself "failing to not-think-about Tink for an hour now"), but that she refuses to "have her heart broken again" after Peter brought "The Wendy" to his hideout. She seems to notice him and his looks in Tink, North of Never Land, but she seems to just consider him a friend.
• What's Up, King Dude?: Clarion's relationship with her subjects was initially this. Her title was rarely used, and she went by the much more casual nickname "Ree." This was eventually dropped, and by the time Never Girls came around she was exclusively called Queen Clarion.
• When It Rains, It Pours: The hurricane in Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg. By the time anyone notices how bad the weather is getting, it's already too late to do much.