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*** The best way to sum it up might be that style is more important than substance in this case; for example, two fairies come across a hobo, and in a fit of benevolence, decide to help him. One gives him a banquet, a bath, some nice warm clothes, the works. The other harangues him, makes his life hell, and forces him to clean himself up, get a job and stand on his own two feet. In this case, both have made an effort to help him, but the first one would be called to Summer in a time of war, while the other would be headed Winterwards.
* In Cassandra Clare's ''[[Mortal Instruments|City of Ashes]]'',
{{quote| '''Simon''': They can't be worse than vampires, and you did all right with them.<br />
'''Jace''': ''All right?'' By which I take it you mean we survived?<br />
'''Simon''': Well...<br />
'''Jace''': Faeries are the offspring of [[Villain Sue|angels and demons]], with the beauty of angels and the viciousness of demons. A [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampire]] might attack you, if you entered its domain, but a faerie could make you dance until you died with your legs ground down into stumps, trick you into going for a midnight swim and drag you screaming underwater until your lungs burst, fill your eyes with faerie dust until you gouged them out at the roots--<br />
'''Clary''': Jace! Shut up. Jesus. That's enough.<br />
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* Katharine Kerr's ''[[Deverry]]'' series has both the [[J. R. R. Tolkien|Tolkienesque]] style [[Our Elves Are Better|Westfolk]], and the Guardians, who are typical Fair Folk.
* [[Rudyard Kipling]]'s ''Puck of Pook's Hill'' is more pleasant than most. Still, [[Laser-Guided Amnesia]] features.
{{quote| ''Can you wonder that the People of the Hills don't care to be confused with that painty-winged, wand-waving, sugar-and-shake-your-head set of impostors? Butterfly wings, indeed! I've seen Sir Huon and a troop of his people setting off from Tintagel Castle for Hy-Brasil in the teeth of a sou'-westerly gale, with the spray flying all over the Castle, and the Horses of the Hills wild with fright. Out they'd go in a lull, screaming like gulls, and back they'd be driven five good miles inland before they could come head to wind again. Butterfly-wings! It was Magic - Magic as black as Merlin could make it, and the whole sea was green fire and white foam with singing [[Our Mermaids Are Different|mermaids]] in it. And the Horses of the Hills picked their way from one wave to another by the lightning flashes! That was how it was in the old days!''}}
* R.A. Lafferty's ''The Reefs of Earth'' gives us the Puca, a composite Fair Folk depicted as part alien colonists, part goblins, and part [[Irish Travellers]], with hints of Nephilim and Neanderthal about them as well. The mature Puca in the novel are quite mellow, but their charming and precocious children sincerely want to kill every human on the planet.
* ''The Chronicles of Fairie'', a series by O.R. Melling, fits this trope nicely. The trope is subverted, though, in that fairies you meet are sympathetic...to a degree. They're willing to go to almost any length to get what they want.
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* The Elves of [[Terry Pratchett]]'s ''[[Discworld]]'' series, as seen in ''[[Discworld/Lords and Ladies|Lords and Ladies]]'' and ''[[Discworld/The Wee Free Men|The Wee Free Men]]'', are callous, even sadistic, sociopaths of the worst kind. There's a very good reason why they are the page quote up at the top.
** However, while they are powerful and cruel, they tend to be thick and unable to learn, and aside from the Queen and select Lords (and even they tend to be highly unimaginative), seem to be almost incapable of forming much original thought.
{{quote| '''Granny Weatherwax''': You call yourself some kind of goddess and you know nothing, madam, nothing. What don't die can't live. What don't live can't change. What don't change can't learn. The smallest creature that dies in the grass knows more than you. You're right. I'm older. You've lived longer than me but I'm older than you. And better'n you. And, madam, that ain't hard.}}
** In addition, Gnomes are not evil but can channel six feet worth of cynicism and violence into six inches of height, while their cousins the Pictsies -- well, shrink [[Violent Glaswegian|a battlefield full of extras from]] ''[[Braveheart]]'', [[Violent Glaswegian|strip off most of the civility, replace it with larcenous intent and moonshine whiskey]], and you'll have the Nac Mac Feegle, at which point you should run away very fast. They love stealing cows and are extremely good at running off with one -- one Pictsie per hoof.
** Winged fairies seem to be fairly mindless and vicious creatures, somewhere between insects and the more aggressive kinds of songbird.
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* They featured heavily in [[Chivalric Romance]]. Such as ''Sir Orfeo'', which starts with the king of Fairy kidnapping Orfeo's wife -- although when Orfeo gets a promise out of him, he does [[I Gave My Word|keep it]]. They are particularly likely in the earlier ones. Such as Morgan Le Fay (Le Fay = the Fairy, don't forget), who really was one of the Fair Folk in the oldest romances. The Lady Of the Lake was also a fairy who mutated into an enchantress. Still, they never quite left; the late romance ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight'' features the Green Knight who is overtly one of the Fair Folk.
** In ''Sir Orfeo'', the fairy king takes people at the moment of their death and keeps them in his kingdom as they were then:
{{quote| ''Then he began to gaze about''<br />
''and saw within the walls a rout''<br />
''of folk that were thither drawn below''<br />
''and mourned as dead, but were not so.''<br />
''For some there stood who had no head,''<br />
''and some no arms, nor feet; some bled''<br />
''and through their bodies wounds were set''<br />
''and some were strangled as they ate,''<br />
''and some lay raving, chained and bound,''<br />
''and some in water had been drowned;''<br />
''and some were withered in the fire,''<br />
''and some on horse, in war's attire,''<br />
''and wives there lay in their childbed...'' }}
* A child's book called ''Wild Robin'' plays straight and then subverts this trope. The eponymous Robin runs away from home, falls asleep in a Fairy Ring, and is taken to the Realm of [[Faerie]]. He enjoys it for a while, then becomes homesick, and one particular fairy teases him. Then {{spoiler|the fairy sees Robin's older sister crying, missing him, feels remorse and tells her the secret way to break the spell and free Robin. She does}}. Also, that irregular passage of time thing doesn't happen in this book.
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* [[The Decemberists]]' The Hazards of Love, loosely inspired by the [[Tam Lin]] legend.
* [[The Pogues]] ''Sit Down by The Fire''
{{quote| And if you ever see them<br />
pretend that you're dead<br />
Or they'll bite off your head<br />
They'll rip out your liver<br />
And dance on your neck<br />
They dance on your head<br />
They dance on your chest<br />
And they give you the cramp<br />
And the cholic for jest }}
 
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* A topical complement (and historically the inspiration) to ''Erlkönig'' is ''Herr Oluf'' (alternately titled ''Erlkönig's Daughter''), another German ballad inspired by Danish folklore, by Goethe's contemporary Johann Herder. A young bridegroom is riding around to invite the guests for his wedding the other day, when he meets the elves. The Elf-Queen asks him to dance with her. When he adamantly refuses, she curses him with a sickness. Next morning, [[Disproportionate Retribution|he's dead.]]
* While the William Allinghan's famous poem, ''The Fairy Folk'' gives them a rather cutesy description, they're still creatures to be feared:
{{quote| Up the airy mountain,<br />
Down the rushy glen,<br />
We daren't go a-hunting<br />
For fear of little men }}
** Not to mention a part of stealing a child for seven years, who then dies of sorrow, and the little people ignorantly wait for her to wake up again.
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== [[Web Comics]] ==
* The Elves in ''[[8-Bit Theater (Webcomic)|8-Bit Theater]]''. Especially Thief.
{{quote| '''Thief''': Like it says in our national anthem ''Elfland, and fuck you too'', [http://www.nuklearpower.com/2008/11/29/episode-1065-team-up-spectacular/ "We are a race of total bastards"]}}
* In the webcomic ''[[Chasing the Sunset]]'', Pixies are not evil per se but are chaos incarnated. The kind of things you do ''not'' want in a fireworks shop.
* ''[[Gunnerkrigg Court]]'' Fairies are about halfway between the cute Pixie and the chaotic trickster types. They're capricious and largely lacking in tact and empathy, but the only harm they've done is emotional rather than physical, and mostly directed at other Fairies rather than humans. Still, this behavior provoked stunned silence (and breaking the [[Gosh Dang It to Heck]] rule) from the protagonists.
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