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Author
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Comment
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/4/05 9:59 pm)
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Bad Fairies
A trivial sort of question, but what type of bad fairy would you like to set loose in the world?
I've been thinking lately that the world might be better off if there were a few more bad fairies. For example, some wanna-be speedster whips around a corner in his or her SUV, splashing the little old lady who is standing on the corner. SUV owner wakes up the next morning to find that his or her SUV is now a mini that won't go over 45 mph and that won't turn corners unless the correct signal is on. Go, bad fairy!
Best,
Erica
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DerekJ
Unregistered User
(4/4/05 10:31 pm)
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Re: Bad Fairies
>> A trivial sort of question, but what type of bad fairy would you like to set loose in the world?
I've been thinking lately that the world might be better off if there were a few more bad fairies.<<
One would be of the opinion that there are no "good"
or "bad" fairies--They all do as they please.
It's when we humans forget that that they remind
us.
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redtriskell
Registered User
(4/4/05 11:09 pm)
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Re: Bad Fairies
Erica-
I would love to see the "bad" fairy who punished the rude
and impatient. Perhaps by giving them chronic halitosis so that
no one could tolerate their presence for more than 10 seconds. Followed
closely by the fairy empowered to move cars from the handicapped
spaces. Perhaps she could place them all in a large pile (magically
uncrushed!) at the furthest point from the entrance doors at the
mall. So all those people who tell themselves that they'll only
be a minute would have to wait...and wait...and wait... and still
have to pay the ticket! ahh...if only.
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(4/5/05 3:45 am)
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Re: Bad Fairies
Well, fairies that punish people for bad manners aren't really bad
fairies, are they? They're good fairies with an axe to grind, and
they've been around for a while--I'm thinking of "Diamonds
and Toads" in general. Now, Carabosse--there's a bad
fairy for you.
So if we're talking about fairies who would punish rude people in contemporary life, I want one that shorts out cell phones in public places. But if we're talking about evil fairies, then I'm quite taken with the idea of a fairy who...well...actually, I can't think of anything quite interesting enough. I'll keep thinking.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(4/5/05 6:52 am)
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Re: Bad Fairies
Perhaps it isn't a "bad" fairy we need, but a curmudgeon. She or he could live among us, and not put up with annoyances. The car stereo going by is too loud, knock down the volume. The car is hogging two parking spaces, turn it on its side so that it only uses one. The person who makes rude comments about people suddenly loses his/her voice. Of course, as all fairies, this one will have a mind of his/her own, so that if you happen to have lawn ornaments that s/he doesn't like, well...
Best,
Alice
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Black
Sheep
Registered User
(4/5/05 9:35 am)
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Re: Bad Fairies
There's already a bad fairy who takes care of drivers who're about to go out in a hurry and drive anti-socially because they think their hurry is more important than every one else's hurry... Erica allow me to introduce you to the Lost Car Keys Fairy... who also targets drunks and is much less inimical to humanity than his wicked cousin The Lost Door Keys Fairy.
Then there's the Bad Hair Day Fairy (according to Brian Froud) who (according to me) only targets vain people who believe the appearance of their hair is of vital importance! Traditionally this fairy's Department Head would be Queen Mab who is responsible for tangling hair while its owner slumbers. There's also an Elf-locks Fairy who was once considered to be bad but has now been promoted to be the good Fairy of Desired Dreadlocks.
My personal enemy is the Sock Pixie who survives entirely on a diet of socks. He'll steal whole socks from washing machines/driers/lines/ironing piles/drawers but only when they're clean and you've had the bother of washing them. But, even more wickedly, he chews out the toes of socks and ladders tights while their legitimate owners are actually wearing them! Bad... naughty... wicked Sock Pixie!
I could go on forever... but I won't.
Alice... we already have curmudgeons to deal with most of the public nuisances you mentioned... they're called middle-aged people!
And you can't call dwarfs "lawn ornaments" because Terry
Pratchett says that's racist...
Edited by: Black Sheep at: 4/5/05 9:37 am
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tlchang37
Registered User
(4/5/05 2:12 pm)
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Re: Sock Pixie
Having had much experience with that eater-of-socks myself (though I had envisioned him as a 'monster' of sorts rather than a faerie), I put his image to paper after a particularly nasty bout of missing items. If you are interested, you can see it at:
www.taralarsenchang.com/childrens/sockmonster.asp
I agree, that most of these fairies don't seem 'bad' as much as inconvenient. I love the 'just desserts' aspects that have been proposed. I'm not sure what point the sock monster is making, however...
Tara
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/5/05 2:41 pm)
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Re: Sock Pixie
Thanks for the image, Tara! Maybe the sock monster is supposed to
heighten our appreciation for socks. Surely an important, but often
overlooked article of clothing. And it is nice to have
warm toes...
And, yes, the "bad" in bad fairies was somewhat tongue-in-cheek. But it sounds better than "fairies of minor vengeances," or "grumpy fairies." Come to think of it, it's awfully egotistical to think that fairies would worry overly much about the behavior of one person to another. Nonetheless, I would like to loose one who'd look out for the interests of sales clerks, waiters, cleaning staff--I've seen too many of them treated as sub-human creatures. Nice if "the customer is always right" could be balanced by, "But if the customer isn't polite, s/he could wind up beset with a 6-month case of laryngitis and an irresistible desire for pickled herring."
Or possible lutefisk. But I'm not sure anyone deserves lutefisk.
Best,
Erica
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Black
Sheep
Registered User
(4/5/05 5:22 pm)
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Re: Sock Pixie
I bow to your clearer vision Tara. I was only recording the habits of the Stealer of Socks and had no idea what it (they?) looked like until I saw your picture which is fantastic and fabulous and, more importantly, true.
I can hardly believe your portrait of the Sock Monster is as yet unpublished. I hope one of the writers on SLL sees the picture and writes a matching story about the Sock Monster.
It's late here so I'll have to look forward to seeing the rest of your website soon.
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(4/5/05 5:31 pm)
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Re: Sock Pixie
The Eater of Socks is a character in one of my favorite Pratchett
novels, Hogfather. The only other thing I have to add is
that...my hair IS important! To me, at least.
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AlienEeeter
Registered User
(4/5/05 8:34 pm)
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re:
I always turned to a more sci-fi approach to missing socks. Obviously this is due to the black holes inside dryers.
In an effort to stay on topic: THe worst fairy is the one that goops up the toothpaste cap so it wont go back on the tube.
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(4/6/05 7:28 am)
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Re: re:
I think that we may have invoked something beyond our ken, here ....
I've been thinking about quitting smoking, recently. And this morning,
I woke up to find a carton of cigarettes on my desk. I
think that a true bad fairy would be the kind who would
leave you things that you really, really want ... which are really,
really bad for you. Entire cheescakes when you are on a diet ...
bottles of wine on nights before you have to teach ... and cartons
of cigarettes when you are thinking of quitting.
Viva la Temptation Fairy!
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Elizabeth
Genco
Registered User
(4/6/05 8:19 am)
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Re: re:
Then there's the fairy that makes all the trains in New York City go screwy. [S]He was out in full force last night, lemme tell ya (says the woman who spent quality time on three subway platforms on the way home, only to put her foot down and hail a cab at Canal Street at 1 am upon hearing that she'd have to wait on two more).
A Mercury retrograde thing? Eh... not so sure.
---
What's that fiddle player in the subway thinking
about?
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(4/6/05 9:35 am)
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Re: re:
Oh, yes ... the Commuting Fairy. A capricious creature, to say the least. She demands frequent homage, and any attempts to sway her wrath - short of embracing agoraphobia entirely - tend to backfire (i.e., encountering a traffic jam after leaving the subway). I really can't help feeling that all of these fairies are on some sort of a council, with the Fairy Murphy as their symbolic head ...
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Black
Sheep
Registered User
(4/6/05 1:59 pm)
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Re: re:
I'd forgotten the Eater of Socks in Hogfather Veronica. Probably because it doesn't conform to my experience of the wickedness of the Sock Purloining One. The Sock Thief has existed in various forms in The Group Mind (British Department), particularly in the minds of comedians, for at least a couple of decades. Among many other possible examples: in the mid-1980s I jokingly signed myself "The lost sock in the laundromat of oblivion", and the wicked Edmund Blackadder the Third was selling off his master the Prince of Wales' socks to a travelling secondhand sock merchant if I remember correctly, and an acquaintance of mine used to sing a song about the Sock Pixie which mercifully I have forgotten...
The less anthropomorphic and more science fictional black hole hypothesis of sock has frequently been explored by authors such as M. Thomas here AlienEeeter:
www.strangehorizons.com/2...roes.shtml
And it's well known that the missing mass in our universe isn't dark matter... it's socks!
I also once hypothesised that socks are in fact a migratory species and the reason why only single newish socks go missing is that only young male socks migrate in order to seek mates outside their genepool. Female socks stay put. Elderly socks of both genders are too tired to migrate and develop hibernatory tendencies which is why you usually find them at the back of the drawer or even occasionally down behind the drawers.
The Commuting Fairy is also a shapeshifting trickster who will pretend to be an animal on the railway line or a deluge of autumn leaves but even worse it's this fairy who persuades people to throw themselves under trains... during the rush hour!
Beware Elisabeth and Helen because I suspect this dreadful fairy may be trying to trick despairing commuters into sacrificing themselves so it can feed on their lost and wandering souls to achieve its sinister ambition to become a minor deity/demon... eek!
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tlchang37
Registered User
(4/6/05 4:47 pm)
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Re: re:
Black Sheep, you make me laugh. I can feel a whole other series of illustrations coming on - on the migratory tendencies of anthropomorphisized socks...
Tara
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Erica
Carlson
Registered User
(4/6/05 5:27 pm)
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Re: Commuting Fairy
On cold and rainy days I used to contemplate sacrificing a chicken to the commuting fairy, but after reading Black Sheep's post, I've come to the conclusion that it would be a bad idea to feed her already considerable powers. I have a friend who vanquished the commuting fairy (only once, though) by running along-side a bus and banging her thermos against the door until a kindly soul riding the bus told the driver (obviously under the influence of the commuting fairy when he didn't see A. at the bus stop) to stop the bus.
For those of us without thermoses, maybe there's some sort of charm to chant under our breath as we wait at bus stops and subway stations...or maybe coffee is part of the charm somehow.
Erica
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Black
Sheep
Registered User
(4/6/05 6:39 pm)
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Re: re:
Herds of migrating socks hopping majestically across the open plains...
Well done your friend Erica! We, the village dwelling "local people"*, used to regularly stop the driver of our "local bus for local people" so stragglers could board but the traffic is so bad around our nearest town now that the drivers often can't risk it. They're great on the rest of the route though. They stop at the end of my drive and, when I used to commute, I was a couple of minutes late one day so John the driver waited for me! And nobody complained! The drivers also let us in out of the weather before the bus is due to leave its terminus. On one occasion our village bus filled up with commuters who were only going a few stops and when there wasn't room for one of the villagers the driver requested that someone get off to walk their short journey and allow the villager to ride home without waiting an hour and someone volunteered to get off (after a day at work). Almost a miracle!
*LoG in joke for Brits
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redtriskell
Registered User
(4/6/05 10:36 pm)
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the commuting fairy's cousin...
... the dreaded Parking Space Fairy. Who taunts the unwary driver
with a glimpse of an available space, only to laugh wickedly as
said driver starts to pull in and sees... a Yugo. Or sometimes a
motorcycle. Occasionally even a Honda. This fairy can be placated
only one way (so I've heard), but I don't think I can print that
on this board.
PS- to those of you in areas that actually have mass transit- I have it on good authority from a fellow I know from New Jersey that coffee is, in fact, an essential part of the charm to stop the transport. Of course, he also says Susan B. Anthony dollars play an enigmatic role in the lives of toll booth operators...
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Veronica
Schanoes
Registered User
(4/9/05 10:35 am)
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Re: the commuting fairy's cousin...
I want the commuting fairy to take on the role of smacking people
who get to the turnstile and only then start to fumble
through their pockets looking for their Metrocard or their Oystercard
while standing stock-still blocking the rest of us from said turnstile,
as though they hadn't realized they were going to need the card
before they got there!
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Helen
J Pilinovsky
Registered User
(4/9/05 10:48 am)
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Re: the commuting fairy's cousin...
Ah ... but as the Commuting Fairy is a malevolent entity of unspeakable power, I believe that it's actually *her* influence which drives otherwise reasonable people to those extremes of incompetence ... as well as the inability to get the card to swipe, and the need to walk UP the LEFTHAND side of the stair, and all of those other inanities of public interaction. What we really need is a way to counter her ... perhaps through the benign influence of the Public Space Fairy, who gives audiences listening to good buskers that happy glow?
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