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OP by good-morning

Problem: There seems to be a belief that Fairy Godmother is much narrower than it is across its usage. Both the description and the laconic page of the trope imply it is about the archetype of magical characters who help the protagonist in fairy tales in general, which is indeed a common and well-researched motif in folk tales across the world, encompassing stories such as "Puss in Boots". However, the use in the wiki is overwhelmingly about the stock-character of the fairy godmother in specific.
Here is what the Fairy Godmother Wick Check says:

  • 90% of the wicks reference or are about fairy godmothers in specific
  • 6% of the wicks are about magical beings who help the characters without being fairy godmothers
  • 4% of the wicks lack enough context.
However, a look in the Edit History of the trope shows that it was indeed solely about fairy godmothers, and that in 2018, a user replaced the description's mention of "a fairy" with "a magical being," potentially broadening its scope beyond its original intent. Interestingly, the laconic page, which also treats the trope as if it were about magical allies in general, predates this change, dating back to 2017. This suggests that there may have already been confusion regarding whether the trope was intended to focus on a a Stock Character or an Archetype before the change in the description, which could indicate a Missing Supertrope problem.
Solution: A Trope Transplant should seem useful. Fairy Godmother could receive a small rewrite to narrow it down to fairy godmothers again, and a broader Super-Trope about the motif of magical helpers and guides in folktales in general, such as talking animals, could be sent to either YKTTW or the Trope Idea Salvage Yard.

Wick check:

A Wick Check for Fairy Godmother.

Both the description and the laconic page for the trope say that it is about a magical being who helps the protagonist, which is indeed a common and well-researched motif in fairy tales. However, there is a suspicion that it might have been overshadowed by the Fairy Godmother stock character due to its title, making the trope seem narrower than it really is.


50/50

    A fairy godmother (45) 90% 
  • Characters.Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable: Fairy Devilmother: She sees herself as a Fairy Godmother to her customers, but doesn't care or properly warn them that they'll end up horribly deformed if they deviate from her instructions on how to take care of their new face.
  • Arrowverse: Type 4: Zoom, Kara Zor-El, J'onn J'onzz, M'gann M'orzz, Firestorm, Barry as of "The Race Of His Life" (now knows how to do everything Zoom can do),(semi-debatably) Fully-Powered Reverse-Flash (Equal to the Future Flash, who has "centuries" of experience and is undeniably a Super Genius), The Thinker, Mallus, Reign, the Fairy Godmother.
  • Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister: The movie adds a non-magical version of the Trope Namer back into the story.
  • The Blue Bird: Soussio is a rare villainous example. Additionally, Charming’s enchanter friend, and to a great extent, Florine’s fairy benefactor, also fit this role.
  • Duck Tales S 1 E 11 Scroogerello: Mrs. Beakley and Webby appear as Scrooge's fairy godmother and fairy-godmother-in-training.
  • YMMV.Ella Enchanted: They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: In the original book, Mandy is Ella's Fairy Godmother who fights tooth and nail to help Ella survive both her stepmother's abuse and Lucinda's curse. In the movie, she is an incompetent house fairy who won't lift a finger to help Ella because she will lose her eternal youth and beauty (which she does not have in the original book, being a Cool Old Lady).
  • AdaptationalVillainy.Animated Films: The Fairy Godmother, who was Charming's mother and helped arrange for him to save Fiona, is a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing with Fantastic Racism for Shrek and ogres in general, claiming they don't live happily ever after, and actively bullies Fiona's father Harold to try to get her with Charming like originally arranged, even brewing a love potion that would force Fiona to love Charming.
  • Gorgeous Garment Generation: As in the original animated version, a ballgown comes courtesy of the Fairy Godmother. It involves butterflies and a lot of sparkles.
  • Osananajimi wa Onnanoko ni Naare: Fairy Devilmother: Sylphie acts like a Fairy Godmother-wannabe to Shuichi, trying to grant his wish to make him happy, but not caring how miserable she makes Iori. She's also driven by obsession with granting the wish in of itself and offense that her spells are being undone. Despite all this, so long as Shiori can change herself back into Iori, Selphie's just treated as a nuisance.
  • DisproportionateRetribution.Literature: Sunday's brother Jack was turned into a dog for killing the prince's dog. Later, the prince remembers what had happened. Jack had pushed the dog away with his foot, which should not have killed, and would not have killed any other dog in the court. So the prince's Fairy Godmother turned him into a dog. Whereupon Jack's fairy godmother appeared, limited it to a year, and then decreed that the prince — who had done nothing — would be turned into a frog for a year to teach him humility, or something.
  • NeverLiveItDown.Animated Films: Cinderella still carries the stigma of needing a Fairy Godmother and Prince Charming to whisk her away to her Happily Ever After. While that is how she got her Happy Ending, critics often accused her of waiting and counting on someone to lift her out of her dire straits from the get-go. The truth is that the idea never crossed her mind, and she didn't even know the man she met at the ball was a prince until long afterwards. This accusation was so pervasive that several Disney movies, such as Frozen, The Princess and the Frog, Enchanted, the original film's sequel, and even as far back as The Little Mermaid, all put some thought towards averting or deconstructing the notion of a passive princess who needs another to grant her heart's desire to her with no actual effort on her part.
  • Trickster Mentor: Harry Dresden has the misfortune to have several supernatural entities of great power and mysterious natures interested in teaching him something, but he's never entirely sure what he's meant to learn. Examples include Leanansidhe, Queen Mab and the Mothers, the Archangel Uriel, He Who Walks Behind, and Rashid the Gatekeeper, and since many of them appear to be on different sides and are quite willing for him to die if he's not strong enough to survive the lesson, he's often lost for reliable, non-lethal guidance. As of Cold Days, he's finally had it spelled out to him that he should just keep blundering through life, trying to sort out the problems he comes across / creates along the way, as it seems destiny has every intention of continuing to aim him in the general direction of whatever needs to get broken.
  • Cinderella (2015): The Fairy Godmother. First she appears as an emaciated, hunchbacked old woman, contrasting with the healthier sweet-granny character of the animated film, but then she transforms into Helena Bonham Carter with a beautiful Pimped-Out Dress.
  • Princess Jellyfish: Kuranosuke muses that he's like Tsukimi's Fairy Godmother. And he proceeds to angst how the Fairy Godmother is never in a position to get together with the princess.
  • SuperheroEpisode.Western Animation: Hanna-Barbera's animated series Abbott and Costello had a short titled "Super Lou", in which Lou's Fairy Godmother gives him a pass to the Masquerade Ball, which Bud is attending. She also gives Lou a superhero costume and Flying Brick powers, which he loses at midnight, just after thwarting a pair of thieves.
  • MamaBear.Western Animation: Another episode had a very grouchy Fairy Godmother who was more than willing to use violence and turn people into mice when her godson was kidnapped, in order to find him.
  • Maleficent: Fairy Godmother: Send a bunch of low-ranking pixies to take care of a little child, when they have no prior experience with humans whatsoever? Then prepare to have said child almost die in their care. They wouldn't know the first thing about taking care of the baby, or what to feed it. In fact, were it not for Maleficent and Diaval, Aurora would've been dead long before her 16th birthday. Ironically, Aurora spends her entire childhood perfectly well convinced that Maleficent is her Fairy Godmother, and addresses her as such. Though in a practical sense, she (unintentionally) is.
  • Wishing for More Wishes: The concept for a cancelled The Fairly OddParents! movie would have Timmy feeling sorry for the other kids that Vicky babysat and wishing that every child had a Fairy Godparent. Sadly Vicky would get one of her own, being under 18 years old.
  • Characters.Dungeons: She rules over this land, and is so overwhelmingly sweet and nice the Absolute Evil cannot stand her.
  • Serbian Epic Poetry: Marko Kraljević might be the most badass character in these poems, but in Marko Kraljević and Musa Kesedžija he isn't above using help of his Fairy Godmother and a hidden knife to get himself out of a pinch.
  • Riches to Rags.Film: Maid to Order (1987) explores this with spoiled, Beverly Hills-raised Jessie Montgomery, stripped of her wealth and identity by Stella, her Fairy Godmother, and forced to work as a maid in a rich household to learn the value of hard work.
  • TearJerker.Witches Abroad: Magrat inherits a magic wand as part of a Fairy Godmother duty, but as the story deconstructs that character trope as seen with Lilith Weatherwax, she has to give up the wand to avoid Slowly Slipping Into Evil. She could have done great good with it, but the risk is too great.
  • European Folk and Fairy Tales: In Cinder-Maid, Jacobs removed the Fairy Godmother (which appears in Perrault's tale), but replaced her for a tree on Cinder-Maid's mother's grave.
  • Sleeping Beauty and the Good Fairies: Much like Fairy Companion above the three good fairies were formally this to the Princess since the fairies have already helped her achieve her Happily Ever After.
  • Terms of Endangerment: Queen Mab occasionally uses terms like "darling child" (in between using other terms of the "puny mortal" type,) and Harry's Fairy Godmother does, too, though far more frequently. The Godmother's case is a strange example of this trope because everything suggests that she is genuinely fond of Harry in a vaguely maternal way but still manages to be creepy as hell.
  • Changes: Lea is back and free. She also gets a chance to act like a typical Fairy Godmother by dressing Harry up in appropriate clothing for his type of party. But as she is of Winter, they will vanish at Noon.
  • Analysis.Cinderella Plot: A Fairy Godmother, who is responsible for helping Cinderella get to the ball. In some versions, it's Cinderella's own deceased mother who helps her out, but the basic role remains the same regardless.
  • Rags: Shawn, the Fairy Godmother in this version, is portrayed as one of these. He's one of the first people to encourage Charlie in his musical career and constantly works to help him achieve that dream, even hooking him up with his own album, all while also acting in a brotherly position.
  • Now You Feel Like Number None: Hollows have their own version of the story wherein three Adjuchas give a newly born Adjuchas a gift and then another Adjuchas comes in and gives the newborn a curse. The Tres Bestias decide to play the parts of the fairy godmothers for Nemo, each offering to do her a favour. Sung-Sun pairs hers with a curse, allegedly so that a curse doesn't unwittingly strike Nemo after giving her a gift, but more likely because she's a bit of a bitch and wanted to tease her.
  • The School for Good and Evil: Lady Lesso is the School of Evil’s dean and a wicked sorceress through and through, but not only does she acknowledge that Evil cannot truly exist without Good to oppose it, (unlike the Evil Schoolmaster,) her best friend and confidante is Clarissa Dovey, the Fairy Godmother. After becoming the new Evil Dean in The Last Ever After's epilogue, Sophie appears to have adopted this way of thinking in honour of Lesso.
  • Yeh-Shen: The fairy who reveals the bone's magic to Yeh Shen seems to be the precursor to Cinderella's fairy godmother.
  • whose woods these are (I think I know.): Plagg acts as one to Adrien, giving him the power to go to the ball while also granting him a boon.
  • Xena S 04 E 12 If The Shoe Fits: Harmonia in the fairy tale. Due to the Ancient Greece setting, she's referred to as either a godsmother or a godssister.
  • AgeLift.Live Action TV: Cinderella's Fairy Godmother is portrayed as an elderly woman in the Disney film. Her brief appearance has her significantly younger.
  • Characters.Awful Hospital Unaffiliated Entities: She is this to anyone in need of extra maggots.
  • Another Cinderella Story: Mary is in a Cinderella Plot with her as Cinderella, Dominique as the Wicked Stepmother, Britt and Bree as the stepsisters, and Joey as Prince Charming. Tami is the Fairy Godmother. She has her family help clean up Mary's house and provides her with a dress for the ball. Tami's vehicle that she drives Mary to the ball in is orange and resembles a pumpkin, aka the pumpkin carriage. Tami even calls it The Great Pumpkin.
  • The Chronicles of Narnia: He inherited a box of magic dust from his godmother Mrs. Lefay, who claimed to be one of the last people in England with fairy ancestry. It's hinted that she either is or is related to Morgan Le Fay.
  • The Slipper and the Rose: Standard issue for a Cinderella story, though she's snarkier and more world-weary than most. She also had to fix things for Snow White, is currently helping Shahrazad, is planning to do so for the Little Mermaid and the Ugly Duckling, and it's implied she also helped William Tell and Robin Hood and Maid Marian. In fact, her magic is spread so thin at the moment because of how overworked she is that it's the reason Cinderella has a midnight deadline; the Fairy Godmother has so little magic to spare that she is forced to borrow some, and that has to be returned at midnight.
  • Characters.The Wizard Of Oz: Although technically not one, she looks the part, with her pink ballgown, sparkly crown and magic wand. Because of this, Dorothy doesn't immediately recognize the fairy-queen-like Glinda as a witch.
  • Heartwarming.The School For Good And Evil: After having a nasty fight with Sophie because of the Trial by Tale debacle, Agatha is left feeling completely alone. Professor Dovey asks Agatha what would make her happy, and she answers, "To be beautiful." So, the Fairy Godmother drags the girl to the Groom Room for an extreme makeover, and Agatha, convinced that her wish has been fulfilled, feels like a new person. The girl gleefully skips around the School for Good, leaving a trail of turned heads and dropped jaws behind her. Then eventually, Agatha catches her reflection in a mirror, and sees that she looks exactly the same. She was always beautiful. All she needed was some confidence and a smile.
  • Oddly Enough: In "Am I Blue?", Melvin is a Camp Gay Fairy Godfather in every sense of the term. As an angelic being who, as a human, was killed in a gay-bashing, he insisted on reclaiming the term when choosing his Heavenly career.
  • Sudden Humility: Maid to Order (1987): Spoiled, Beverly Hills-raised Jessie Montgomery gets a Fairy Godmother who yanks her wealth and identity away, leaving her to get a job as a maid, so she can see what kind of abuse "the help" goes through.
  • Cinderella (Jetlag Productions): One with an interest in playing jokes as a form of revenge.
  • WouldHurtAChild.Western Animation: This is basically the entire point of Vicky’s character. The only thing that she cares about in life is trying to hurt children in every way that she can. It’s part of the reason why Timmy got Fairy Godparents, so he can defend himself against her.
  • Jo Jos Bizarre Adventure Diamond Is Unbreakable: Winds of Destiny, Change!: Cinderella was awakened due to Aya's desire to be like the Fairy Godmother from the story. When Cinderella alters a woman's features, it also amplifies her luck while the features are in effect. This includes gaining Mr. Right.
    A magical ally who helps the protagonist, but not necessarily fairy godmother (3) 6% 
  • SaturdayNightLive.Tropes D To H: The Wishin' Boot, subject of a country song, brings things to a person in their time of need.
  • Characters.Pokemon Movies: Aside from being a male guardian lion, he fulfills this role towards Molly.
  • Bawang Merah Bawang Putih: Only in the 2nd version, being the fish that was Bawang Putih's mother reincarnated, and later on becoming the tree with beautiful swing. The trope was absent in the 1st version.
    ZCE/Partial Context (2) 4% 

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 9th 2024 at 12:30:34 PM

LordGro from Germany Since: May, 2010
#26: Feb 11th 2024 at 12:31:07 PM

Thanks for the reconsideration. But if "The Tale of Norna-Gest" counts, then this example should be restored too:

  • Norse Mythology: Prose Edda relates that besides the three chief norns Urd, Skuld and Verdandi, "there are yet more norns, namely those who come to every man when he is born, to shape his life". Obviously these norns who visit newborn children to "shape their lives" are functionally the same beings as the fairies dispensing blessings (or curses) on newborn children in many fairy tales.

Is it okay if I reinstate this?

Let's just say and leave it at that.
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#27: Feb 11th 2024 at 6:19:05 PM

[up]Go ahead and restore that and any other mistaken removals (if there were any others).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 11th 2024 at 8:19:23 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#28: Feb 15th 2024 at 7:37:21 PM

I think I'm going to have this as my next wick-cleaning project since it doesn't look like anyone else has worked on it (though how much I can do will be limited until I'm done being sick). I went through the Main/ wicks for A through D (Main/ being a large namespace for this trope due to it having at least 151 out of 553 wicks) and ended up not touching anything, which isn't surprising since the wick check showed that the majority of the wicks (90%) already fit the pre-Trope Decay definition, so I'm guessing most other wicks will be able to stay as well (since only a few of the non-ZCE wicks in the wick check fit the post-Trope Decay definition, and modifying the description was more of a concern than wick cleanup).

Edited by GastonRabbit on Feb 15th 2024 at 9:38:25 AM

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
GastonRabbit Sounds good on paper (he/him) from Robinson, Illinois, USA (General of TV Troops) Relationship Status: I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me
Sounds good on paper (he/him)
#29: Mar 23rd 2024 at 5:42:20 PM

Done here, so locking up.

Patiently awaiting the release of Paper Luigi and the Marvelous Compass.
Add Post

Trope Repair Shop: Fairy Godmother
5th Jan '24 4:51:14 PM

Crown Description:

  • There seems to be a belief that Fairy Godmother is much narrower than it is across its usage. Both the description and the laconic page of the trope imply it is about the archetype of magical characters who help the protagonist in fairy tales in general, which is indeed a common and well-researched motif in folk tales across the world, encompassing stories such as "Puss In Boots". However, the use in the wiki is overwhelmingly about the stock-character of the fairy godmother in specific.
  • However, a look in the Edit History of the trope shows that it was indeed solely about fairy godmothers, and that in 2018, a user replaced the description's mention of "a fairy" with "a magical being," potentially broadening its scope beyond its original intent. Interestingly, the laconic page, which also treats the trope as if it were about magical allies in general, predates this change, dating back to 2017. This suggests that there may have already been confusion regarding whether the trope was intended to focus on a a Stock Character or an Archetype before the change in the description, which could indicate a Missing Supertrope problem.
  • It was suggested to do a Trope Transplant, with Fairy Godmother receiving a small rewrite to narrow it down to fairy godmothers again, and a broader Super Trope about the motif of magical helpers and guides in folktales in general, such as talking animals, being sent to either YKTTW or the Trope Idea Salvage Yard.
  • Should Fairy Godmother be restricted to actual fairy godmothers, with or without a Trope Transplant being done?

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