from tinkerbell to fae smut: the evolution of fae 🧚

a little deep dive in the how the appearance of fae has changed over time in the english world. let me know if there are other topics you would like me to explore!

00:00 intro
3:41 fae worldbuilding is chaos
11:06 history of the fae appearance
18:17 fae sensuality
25:40 ACOTAR fae vs Cruel Prince fae

sources used:
(fan)artists are mentioned on screen
art used in thumbnail is from Cecily Mary Barker (left) and Charlie Bowater (right)

🌼 s o c i a l m e d i a
• twitter: @thebookleo
• instagram: @thebookleo

🌺 a b o u t m e
Hi! My name is Leonie and I am a 25 year old girl from the Netherlands who loves talking about books! From YA to non-fiction to classics, I read it all (although fantasy will always be my fave).

🌹 m u s i c
Music, art, and video by Jokabi

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#G2A

[cubitum-eamus]

imagine people in a couple hundred years studying our faerie smut books the same way we read mythology and folklore today

[nitzeart]

These new sexy fae a la Sarah J Maas are just paranormal romance creatures of the 2000s but with different socks. Like they're basically the same as vampires and werewolves. Change my mind.

[adinamusrepova]

The amount of work you did is absolutely incredible. The level of research is honestly higher than in my university thesis 😂

[wizkidgamer]

I think I definitely prefer the Holly Black interpretation of the Fair Folk. My first exposure to her work was wayyy back in the day when I read The Spiderwick Chronicles, and I loved the nitty-grittyness of them in that series because it made them feel more believable. It puts whole new spin on the phrase "don't fuck with the fae folk". Literally and figuratively, they're dangerous and otherworldly and I think that makes them much more interesting then just another outlet for fantastical escapism. It makes me wonder if we're gonna see the same slow degradation of YA fae stories (like what happened with werewolves and vampires in the Twilight era) once more and more derivatives of ACOTAR come out. At the same time though fairy tales seem to lend themselves to be amorphous and ever changing, so perhaps not. Time will tell lol. Thanks for the video!

[katelynmarie]

Queen mab/maeve/maebh is actually a figure from Irish mythology! Shakespeare was referencing this in Romeo and Juliet. Sincerely, someone who has written an Irish myth based horror movie 😂

[brentblake]

All my friends who read fiction are young women, so 80% of what we read as a group ends up being fantasy smut. Which, upon beginning ACOTAR and Cruel Prince bothered me in no small regard. I grew up in a house with apotropaic marks under the window, using "wee folk" instead of the F-word to not get their attention; it was culture shock to learn that one of my friends had slept in a Fairy Circle in an attempt to get abducted by a hot elf

[nelvalostinpages]

One thing I love about the cruel prince in comparison to acotar is how they interpret gender, especially gender expression. Cardan is often bejeweled and wears makeup, and in general the series doesn't bother with gender roles where as SJM leans into gender essentialism

[maevem]

As an irish person with a special interest in faeries and celtic folklore the current popular SJM-y way to write them does kill me a little. My childhood self would be so excited to have so many options to read, but a whole lot of them don't feel particularly otherworldly, which is most of the fun! I think fae are often just a great default supernatural creature to project any tropes you like on to at this point. Like, I see people who associate them with "mates" by default now, and that is so much more a werewolf thing to me, lol (I also will never forgive SJM for using celtic mythology and then making ireland the bad guys...)

[alicedeligny]

I feel like it's sadly telling that Sara J Maas ditches most of the folklore around fae and also ranks them according to how human-like they are. She kind of keeps the shell and fills it with whatever she decides.
Her fae essentially don't have "fatal" flaws like not being able to lie (which would give humans an edge) and that weird way of functioning, instead she kind of just gives them elemental magic and clearly romantic/erotic oddities like the mate thing. Even the nice elements of her fae world (the courts) have to be toned down by rules that limit the otherwordness. In a way, she's undermining the magic, I feel.

[ababyrainbow_]

I think the Winx Club series really changed my vision of fairies, while the traditional nature mini fairy was still popular and after tinklebell movie and lately all this fairy aesthetic is getting many recognition with the public again, many people now view fairies in a more modern way, with human looks and sparkly dresses, it really changed the game in my opinion and is really interesting to see every person different view of what a fairy looks like...

[justme]

Personally I care very less for the smutty Sarah J Maas fae stories. I’d rather have a story about little fairies living in a whimsical forests😅 So, in the future I’m planning to write a fairy story with Tinkerbell type fairies myself✨

[Siocpa]

Yeah, I'm calling it now, but it was Jareth the Goblin king from Labyrinth. Like, he's the archetype of fae in everything but in name, and the film is considered the quintessential feminine fantasy film. It would make sense that these authors grew up reading Labyrinth fics and then translated the tropes into original fiction.

[vladivi]

The fairies in Cassandra Clare's Shadowhunter Chronicles are particularly interesting to me - the fairies there cannot lie but in a way they always do which is why every time we come in contact with them (which is more and more with every book) they seem even more dangerous - they're beautiful but so unsettling; like I like them but at the same time am like ughhhh stayyyy awayyy you lying creatureeee BOOO

[plasticstag]

sarah j maas can pretend she invented sexy fae all she wants, but the real ones have been fighting in the trenches of the true blood fandom since 2008 😂 good god that show had supernatural creatures hooking up in every configuration imaginable

[aveskiss]

i was *obsessed* with the rainbow magic book series and the tinkerbell movies as a child and went into acotar after hearing it had fairies. needless to say, i was very surprised at how different the fae were compared to my original introduction to fairies.

[shadestorm]

Its definitely interesting how in ACOTAR the fae look down on humans and yet the most human looking fae are considered above the rest. It would have been interesting to see if they had switched it around and the fewer human characteristics a fairy had the more respected they were.

[TheLucy]

Acotar fan here, completely agree with the take that acotar is more about the romance than A Cruel Prince. Read both book series and loved them both. I would personally classify Acotar as a "Romance in a fantasy setting" and a Cruel Prince as "a fantasy tale with a romantic plot", if that makes sense?
If I went into acotar expecting a fantasy tale I would have most likely been quite dissapointed but I went in expecting a romance, so I liked it 😄

[roboninja]

Always loved the portrayal of the Fey in the Dresden Files; the Seelie and Unseelie fey, Winter and Summer courts, the way their strange laws and customs works and the utterly alien nature of a lot of their thought processes.

[pixeledgame]

One book that really shows fairies as otherworldly is *An Enchantment of Ravens by Margaret Rogerson*, they're even more wild than in Black's books, they feel like they're part of nature, and though there is a romantic relationship between a human girl and a fae, it doesn't include any smut. It's really beautifully written too, a lot of quotable paragraphs! the cover is also gorgeous!

[dieorwrite]

I think my favorite fae/fairfolk type is the kind depicted by Margaret Rogerson in An Enchantment of Ravens. The alienated and amoral thought process, the need for glamour and unpredictability of the fairfolk and bargaining with them is so interesting. Although the book is a standalone but I still feel like it's probably the best fae portrayal I've read in recent years