Fairies on the Brain

Not sure what it is, but I've had fairies on the brain for months.  Yeah, the comic has a lot to do with it, but now that I'm taking a break from the comic to write myself a little entertaining story, I go right back to writing about fairies.  Maybe it's a phase, like when I was in high school and I couldn't stop writing about vampires.  Of course, didn't we all have that phase in high school?  Heh.  In any case, it's a subject that always fascinated me because it's so delightfully deceptive.  Most Americans have this view of cute little Tinkerbell pixies like in Disney (never mind the fact that in the book, even Tinkerbell was kind of a bitch), but I've always loved the old school idea of fairies.  You know.  The fair folk that you really shouldn't fuck around with.  The "others" that don't abide by our rules, but have their own standards of how to live.  I love to dive into the psychology behind them.  Any yahoo who's read an Anne Rice novel can talk about vampires and sex, but fairies are a little more elusive.  They're wild, alien, almost sociopathic in a way. 

In any case, fairies and fairy tales are tons of fun to write.  I've always joked about how if you scratch the surface of some of our favorite children's stories, fairies or no fairies, you get seriously macabre tales.  (Okay, hello?  Willy Wonka?  There's just something not right about that man, I don't care what book or movie you're reading/watching.)  Some of the Grimm stories are just plain wrong.  You know what's even more twisted?  Some of the stories that the Grimm brothers based their stories on.  I'm serious.  Read this article on Snow White from the Endicott website and tell me some of that stuff isn't well and truly fucked up, I dare you.  Dead body in a glass coffin, and the prince falls in love with it?  Ewwwwww.  Bedtime stories as told by Anaïs Nin, maybe.  Put that in your psychology textbook and smoke it. 

Oh, and to bring the discussion around full circle, if you ever want to read an amazing story based on the Snow White tale, I highly recommend Tanith Lee's Red as Blood. You can find it in her anthology Red as Blood, or Tales from he Sisters Grimmer, or like I did, in a cheesy paperback collection of stories that's probably out of print by now called Vamps.  It's been my favorite version of the story since I read it in junior high school (you know, the start of my vampire phase), and it actually does have a vampire in it. Bonus.