DUFFER'S GUIDE TO THE WORLD OF FAIRIES

If you thought fairies were harmless cousins of angels you are in for some shock.

Fairy beliefs are riddling folklore material. Begining with appearance, they mostly look like humans, subject to minor variations (e.g insect-style frail wings, ability to transform into animals or plants). Stories about their origins range from fallen spirits to dead beings, ancient Gods or "elementals" the mythological beings. The last comes closest to the Indian parallel of Yaksha who are also believed to nature-spirits, not always human friendly.

Traditionally, fairies were known to be mischievous and malicious. Mysterious illnesses and kitchen fiascos were written off as fairy work. The Scottish folklore classifies fairy-world into two courts. The Seelie Court being more benevolent (still dangerous) while the Unseelie Court comprising the wicked lot. Melissa Marr expanded on this division in her Wicked Lovely series (2007). She creates three fairy courts that live in the mortal world: The Summer Court, the Winter Court, and the Dark Court. The fourth court, the High Court, is in Faerie. The High Court is the top court with rulers who keep themselves away from emotions and appear steely. The Dark Court is ofcourse, the evil one, opposite to the High Court. It is the court of darker emotions and temptation. Dark Court fairies feed off emotions in other fairies. As such, the Dark Court thrives during periods of turmoil.

On the other hand, Aprilynne Pike in her Spells series makes fairies more elemental. They are given half-human half-plant form and are classified by the type of flower they bloom into. The division gets more hierarchical as the series unfold.

Fairies had an early appearance in literature, though not a consistent one. The fact that they were not bound by religion yet possess magical powers, gave writers greater leverage.

Since the early tales of legendary monarchs (Arthurian legends or a much later Spencer’s Faerie Queen) to Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock, C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books or J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, the fairy feature has prevailed.

In last decade however, the occasional appearance of fairies in literature was transformed into a robust genre with a range of fairy characters: From simple ones like the evil Fairy Godmother in Shrek to more complex ones in Artemis Fowl by Eoin Colfer (2001). 12-year-old Artemis Fowl II, the title character in the novel, is the son of an Irish crime lord. He believes fairies exist and decides to kidnap one with the help of his butler for a huge gold ransom. Captain Holly Short, the other main character, is the first female member of Lower Elements Police squad. A compassionate elf, she even helps Artemis and butler, despite their plans to hold her hostage.

The same year also saw The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. Popularly known as the The Sookie Stackhouse Novels or The True Blood Series, it sees supernatural beings as real. Vampires, werewolves, shapeshifters exist and go public in the course of the novel. The central character Sookie herself is a part-fairy. The fairy-world trend thus set early in the decade hit a home run with the readers. As series after series of the novels were churned out they were parallely turned into televised versions.

 There are seven novels so far in the Artemis series with a film on way, while Sookie ran into its 10th novel and third TV season in 2010. Melissa Marr and Aprilynne Pike brought out later versions of the trend in their novels which are now running into second and third sequels.