The Fae and Lies, my personal bugbear
I'm making this its own blog post because I both read and write a lot of fairy stories, and this way I can just link it to reviews or when discussing it with people, haha.
So I have this one pet peeve about fae stories, and in general I try not to let it impact my rating, because, like, pet peeves are just pet peeves, not writing flaws. I cannot emphasize enough that this is just a pet peeve, not an actual problem.
But: I personally get super distracted by the trope that crops up in a lot of fairy fiction that 'fairies can't lie'. From what I've seen, pretty much every time, the authors treat it as a part of historical folklore, like iron or st. john's wort or elfshot stones. But it's not. It was made up in modern fairy fiction as recently as the 1990s, and because it was super popular in these books, it spread.
As far as I can tell, the reason it's treated as a common fairy belief is that plenty of other authors were like well, this person must have done their research, and there are just SO many small and random fairy traits (which plants they're drawn to, which they're repulsed by, what invites them in, what wards them out) that they might as well rely on other people's research. So without getting a source, they'd put it in their own books as well.
So with a whole bunch of authors suddenly putting this in their fiction, it's now become super popular as a known 'fairy fact' despite not showing up in fairy folklore at all, and not really in fiction from before the '90s. If it came into the fictional sphere when I was in high school, it's just a hard sell for me to treat it as a given, you know?
And it kind of IS treated as a given, as an actual fact. I've seen authors who choose not to include it being told they got some fairy folklore wrong by letting their fairies lie to the protagonist. And like, it's fine if you want to include it in your own work, of course, that's always a personal call. It can even make sense if you have fairies who are bound by social expectations and rules. If people in the current day believe it, maybe the fairies are bound to it! But I personally am not a fan of that choice because it continues to spread it not as a literary choice but as part of traditional folklore. It's fine to have anachronisms and new takes on media, but people don't realize it's anachronistic, and then as every person includes it another person goes, well, I've seen it 100 times, so it MUST be traditional. And then it's 101. Etc.
On the other hand -- it's sort of fascinating too, how ideas spread and become part of common belief, especially when dealing with the field of folklore, which has always been a matter of folk belief. It might not be traditional but it's certainly part of modern fairy folklore, at this point!
Anyway, this article is a fantastic folkloric analysis of this trope! Please do read that for more details, Sarah digs deep into all kinds of sources to try to figure out when and how "fairies can't lie" came into popular belief.
So I have this one pet peeve about fae stories, and in general I try not to let it impact my rating, because, like, pet peeves are just pet peeves, not writing flaws. I cannot emphasize enough that this is just a pet peeve, not an actual problem.
But: I personally get super distracted by the trope that crops up in a lot of fairy fiction that 'fairies can't lie'. From what I've seen, pretty much every time, the authors treat it as a part of historical folklore, like iron or st. john's wort or elfshot stones. But it's not. It was made up in modern fairy fiction as recently as the 1990s, and because it was super popular in these books, it spread.
As far as I can tell, the reason it's treated as a common fairy belief is that plenty of other authors were like well, this person must have done their research, and there are just SO many small and random fairy traits (which plants they're drawn to, which they're repulsed by, what invites them in, what wards them out) that they might as well rely on other people's research. So without getting a source, they'd put it in their own books as well.
So with a whole bunch of authors suddenly putting this in their fiction, it's now become super popular as a known 'fairy fact' despite not showing up in fairy folklore at all, and not really in fiction from before the '90s. If it came into the fictional sphere when I was in high school, it's just a hard sell for me to treat it as a given, you know?
And it kind of IS treated as a given, as an actual fact. I've seen authors who choose not to include it being told they got some fairy folklore wrong by letting their fairies lie to the protagonist. And like, it's fine if you want to include it in your own work, of course, that's always a personal call. It can even make sense if you have fairies who are bound by social expectations and rules. If people in the current day believe it, maybe the fairies are bound to it! But I personally am not a fan of that choice because it continues to spread it not as a literary choice but as part of traditional folklore. It's fine to have anachronisms and new takes on media, but people don't realize it's anachronistic, and then as every person includes it another person goes, well, I've seen it 100 times, so it MUST be traditional. And then it's 101. Etc.
On the other hand -- it's sort of fascinating too, how ideas spread and become part of common belief, especially when dealing with the field of folklore, which has always been a matter of folk belief. It might not be traditional but it's certainly part of modern fairy folklore, at this point!
Anyway, this article is a fantastic folkloric analysis of this trope! Please do read that for more details, Sarah digs deep into all kinds of sources to try to figure out when and how "fairies can't lie" came into popular belief.
No comments have been added yet.
