The Fair Folk: Difference between revisions
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** Played totally straight with both Peter and the inhabitants of Avalon in Brom's adaptation of the Peter Pan story, ''The Child Thief''. Only [[All Trolls Are Different|Tanngnost the troll]] comes off at all sympathetically.
* The Fairies in [[Elizabeth Bear]]'s ''[[Promethean Age]]'' books are, to a one, murderous, untrustworthy, and prone to double-crossing if not properly bound—and those are the ''sympathetic'' ones. (Makes sense, as the first book in the series is, among other things, a riff on the "[[Tam Lin]]" [[Child Ballad|ballad]], and Bear enjoys playing with legends and genre tropes.)
* ''[[The Spiderwick Chronicles]]'' (by Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi) feature a number of fae creatures, along with the ways to deal with them and/or protect oneself from them. Spiderwick's daughter, in her unknowing youth, accepted food from the fae {{spoiler|and [[Food Chains|as a result has no desire to eat human food...she would starve to death if the tiny faeries didn't bring her food regularly]]}}.
* Holly Black's ''[[Tithe]]'' trilogy fits this trope, but sort of inverts the Seelie/Unseelie dynamic. The fairies are as nasty as any monster, but the higher-ups have slightly reversed roles: The Seelie Queen is a [[Manipulative Bastard|master of political games,]] while the Unseelie Queen is basically straight with her court. That said, the Seelie fairies won't kill you on sight. These books also use the [[Tam Lin]] plotline of a sacrifice every seven years—the Seelie fairies will just spirit away a talented human, while the Unseelie fairies will murder the first person they can find.
** Interestingly the Unseelie court is shown to work to the benefit of humanity: as the sacrifice every seven years binds all unaffiliated fairies in Unseelie territory to the Unseelie Queen's rule, it means she can control the Free fae and stop Kelpies and Redcaps and the like murdering people on a daily basis just because they feel like it. One Kelpie specifically says "We, who are not the rulers, we must obey those that are. Mortals are a treat for the Gentry, and not for the likes of you and me. Unless, of course, they are willing."
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