If you make a face at a fairy, it probably makes one back

There are a few tropes out there that give me pause for no rational reason.  By this I mean that when they crop up I roll my eyes, go "not this again," and then keep reading with this look on my face.

One of them: Fairies.

This came up today, and when I started talking about it, the general consensus of the group was that there is something wrong with me.

I should point out that this is not a deal breaker, I won't throw the book, and I'm not going to badmouth anyone's work where they do crop up.  It's just that they give me pause and it is entirely my own issue.  If there are other things going on, if the plot is interesting, or the writing's nice, I can even enjoy it. (Plug for The Replacement by Brenna Yovanoff, which is about a changeling boy.)

But here's why I get annoyed.

Growing up, the only exposure I had to fairies was the Mary Martin version of Peter Pan and the Legend of Zelda games.  Fairies were scatterbrained and excitable and indignant and rude, but ultimately, they were cute and funny and great characters.  And what were they going to do?  Make farting noises at you?  Hurt your feelings?  Pull your hair?  They were awesome.  Navi was the best.  Tinkerbell was amazing.  When I write fairies (which I've definitely done) they're like this.

So I think this love for ball-of-light fairies is where my dislike for hard-core- hierarchical -steal-your-baby-too-beautiful-for-words fairies comes from.  They're not what I picture when I think of fairies.  I get excited to see Tatl and then get disappointed when it's an elf who's cold and alien.

The phrase "Seelie Court" pops up and I make the face.

A lot of the stories that use fairies tap into a literary tradition that I am completely unfamiliar with, and then present it like I should be familiar with it.  I'm supposed to know the difference between the different courts and the different kinds of fairies, but I'm still stuck on "Wait, they're not a flashlight?"  

You're not supposed to thank them?  Was I supposed to know that?  Was this character supposed to know that?  Man, I'm out of the loop. I get more and more anxious and embarrassed as I read, and I keep wondering if I need to go read some epic poems before continuing, and then I just get frustrated and give up.

The versions I like have the mythology encapsulated within the story I'm reading.  In Peter Pan, when the first baby laughed for the first time, that laugh broke into a thousand pieces and they all went skipping about, and that was the beginning of fairies.  There.  No need for me to go read an epic poem.  We're all on the same page.

I worry that because I love this simpler version, I must be doing it wrong.  I'm ofending this rich lore by clinging to a bastardized version.  How could I?!  I'm awful!  Just writing this blog post is going to make people hate me for being an ignorant, uncultured waste of space, who spits on the traditions of a whole continent!

Boo hoo!