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During a recent meandering chat, me and my sister ended up debating the various merits of our respective favourite supernatural creatures. While she hotly argued that vampires (of the non-sparkly kind, please note) were far superior to any other non-human entities because of their lethal grace, deadly charm and apocalyptic beauty, I found myself saying I preferred Faeries.
Our mother, noticing the rising temperatures in the confined environs of the car, put an end to our discussion before I could defend my stance. So here I am, putting into words my thoughts on the smartest, snarkiest and definitely the sexiest of all fantastic beings, the Fey.
"Wait up, wait up!" You're probably thinking. "Smart, Snarky, Sexy? Fairies? No way!" I'll admit, Cindrella or Aurora's Fairy Godmothers from our childhood stories are an absurd contrast to the picture I've painted. But that's because the Faeries I speak of are not from traditional bedtime fairytales, but rather characters from contemporary works of young adult fantasy fiction by authors like Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Maggie Stiefvater, Sarah J. Mass and Julie Kagawa.
Take, for example, this illustration of the Unseelie Queen by Theo Black:
And this one of a Seelie knight by Cassandra Jean :
Smart, Snarky, Sexy? The Faeries that inhabit the kind of fantasy worlds I like to frequent are dangerous, stunningly eloquent and breathtakingly gorgeous. In keeping with tradition, most narratives depict them as pale-skinned creatures who can live for centuries and thus have no concept of human time, are poisoned by the touch of iron and can only ever speak the truth. They are divided into two courts, the Seelie or Bright Court consisting of the more sophisticated, aesthetic fey, and the Unseelie or Night Court, wilder and more chaotic. But what delights and intrigues me is how equally bloodthirsty all Faeries are depicted to be, whether Bright or Night, Court gentry or commoners. How, despite being physically incapable of telling lies, they are deceptive because they know to wield words so well. And how, even though they are so immensely powerful, their lives constantly tangle with those of mortals like you and I, leading to some incredible stories.
One can understand their motives. When you're as timeless and unchanging as a Faerie, you might, like the Belle Dame in Keats' poem, want to stir things up a bit by ruining a life or two or ten. And Faeries are really good at that, what with all their prowess at riddles and half-truths and making deals that sound too good to be true and actually are, because of the heavy price one must pay for them.
Which is why it's all the more interesting to see them trumped by those very mere mortals they prey on. The very best stories I've heartily enjoyed, be it 'Tithe' and 'The Darkest Part of the Forest' by Holly Black or Julie Kagawa's 'Iron Fey' series, the Faeries are blindsided by their own arrogance and pride and humanity's capacity to get out of sticky situations through sheer ingenuity and a bit of dumb luck.
The most important thing, however, which makes the realm of the Fair Folk so relevant and inescapable for me, is the idea that gender norms are not rigid and sexualities are so fluid. Most Fey are depicted as being bisexual, after all. That is the biggest draw for me, and what initially led me to investigate the role of Faeries in fantasy worlds. Here, I'd like you, the reader, to take a moment to consider the short story I've linked, 'Three True Things' by Tessa Gratton, which illustrates all my points about the bloodlust, beauty and bargaining capabilities of Faeries, with one important difference... being (unusually) heteronormative doesn't work out well for them, and the mortals triumph again!
https://merryfates.com/2011/04/11/three-true-things/
-Akankshya Subudhi
1633121
Our mother, noticing the rising temperatures in the confined environs of the car, put an end to our discussion before I could defend my stance. So here I am, putting into words my thoughts on the smartest, snarkiest and definitely the sexiest of all fantastic beings, the Fey.
"Wait up, wait up!" You're probably thinking. "Smart, Snarky, Sexy? Fairies? No way!" I'll admit, Cindrella or Aurora's Fairy Godmothers from our childhood stories are an absurd contrast to the picture I've painted. But that's because the Faeries I speak of are not from traditional bedtime fairytales, but rather characters from contemporary works of young adult fantasy fiction by authors like Holly Black, Cassandra Clare, Maggie Stiefvater, Sarah J. Mass and Julie Kagawa.
Take, for example, this illustration of the Unseelie Queen by Theo Black:
And this one of a Seelie knight by Cassandra Jean :
Smart, Snarky, Sexy? The Faeries that inhabit the kind of fantasy worlds I like to frequent are dangerous, stunningly eloquent and breathtakingly gorgeous. In keeping with tradition, most narratives depict them as pale-skinned creatures who can live for centuries and thus have no concept of human time, are poisoned by the touch of iron and can only ever speak the truth. They are divided into two courts, the Seelie or Bright Court consisting of the more sophisticated, aesthetic fey, and the Unseelie or Night Court, wilder and more chaotic. But what delights and intrigues me is how equally bloodthirsty all Faeries are depicted to be, whether Bright or Night, Court gentry or commoners. How, despite being physically incapable of telling lies, they are deceptive because they know to wield words so well. And how, even though they are so immensely powerful, their lives constantly tangle with those of mortals like you and I, leading to some incredible stories.
One can understand their motives. When you're as timeless and unchanging as a Faerie, you might, like the Belle Dame in Keats' poem, want to stir things up a bit by ruining a life or two or ten. And Faeries are really good at that, what with all their prowess at riddles and half-truths and making deals that sound too good to be true and actually are, because of the heavy price one must pay for them.
Which is why it's all the more interesting to see them trumped by those very mere mortals they prey on. The very best stories I've heartily enjoyed, be it 'Tithe' and 'The Darkest Part of the Forest' by Holly Black or Julie Kagawa's 'Iron Fey' series, the Faeries are blindsided by their own arrogance and pride and humanity's capacity to get out of sticky situations through sheer ingenuity and a bit of dumb luck.
The most important thing, however, which makes the realm of the Fair Folk so relevant and inescapable for me, is the idea that gender norms are not rigid and sexualities are so fluid. Most Fey are depicted as being bisexual, after all. That is the biggest draw for me, and what initially led me to investigate the role of Faeries in fantasy worlds. Here, I'd like you, the reader, to take a moment to consider the short story I've linked, 'Three True Things' by Tessa Gratton, which illustrates all my points about the bloodlust, beauty and bargaining capabilities of Faeries, with one important difference... being (unusually) heteronormative doesn't work out well for them, and the mortals triumph again!
https://merryfates.com/2011/04/11/three-true-things/
-Akankshya Subudhi
1633121
