Young Writers Society

I'm writing a fantasy novel and I want to include a fairy but the problem is I don't know much about fairy favours and I found sources that say they are heartless and love shiny things which doesn't match with my story. No I don't mean hobgoblins or anything, I meant human-like fairies. Does anyone know more about this, or should I just make up my own kind of fairy?

There's an oft-repeated sayings in places where fairies come from: don't mess with them.

I'm talking "road construction moved to avoid disturbing places where fairies are supposed to live" levels of avoiding messing with them, because fairies are meant to be not nice if you mess with them. They have an odd sense of things in general. Books such as October Daye by Seanan McGuire go into it— she's a folklorist by education, so you can rely on a certain amount of accuracy.

That being said, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making up your own type of fairy.

Fairies are one of those things that have captured the imagination for most of human history, and they started to change in personality in the Victorian era. The Victorians tossed out what some would say was a healthy respect for the fair folk and made fairies that were playful, charming, maybe a little mischievous, but most certainly not malicious.

(You could argue that traditional fairies aren't actively malicious either, and instead simply work on a morality system that is so drastically different from humans it leads to very terrible misunderstandings)

I wouldn't recommend this for all creatures, but fairies are one of them that you can switch around to suit your story's needs. So go ahead and make up your own!

Thank you so much! *Follows*