>>41382957You call it nuanced, I call it samey. Every modern pile of trash that includes a fairy that isn't some kind of cute little sprite has them reduced to raw evil by all definitions but their own with absolutely no real nuance or depth whatsoever. The True Fae in Changeling that everyone raves about and bases their own material on is just as shallow as the fairy in any cautionary tale or poem of the previous centuries, they're all basically more sexualized takes on the Erlkonig if anything. And hell, variety gets shot in the knee too. These types rail against the sprite and how the 'real' fairies were human sized, and while 'basically humans but' is the oldest type, by laser-focusing on that you completely ignore the huge wealth of fae creatures that came into being afterwards like they're somehow illegitimate.
Also I feel like pointing out that fairies as we know them only came about post-Christianity, so it's strange to hear you talk about how Christianity 'invigorated' something that didn't exist as a category beforehand. They're a collection of gods, heroes, mythical races, and monsters lumped into this category through the influence of Christianity. For example, you mentioned Huldra as a fairy? That's a type of Troll and Trolls only became associated with fairies later on (though still long ago from our perspective) and Trolls themselves only came about because of Christianity and are mostly descended from the Jotun of paganism, a class of gods and monsters. Then how about the elves, everyone knows they're a type of fairy creature. Elves are also Germanic, and the tall humanoid ones in particular are strongly Scandinavian in character. Well, in paganism they absolutely were not associated with Jotun, they were a completely separate sort of being. In fact, Elves were allies to the Aesir and Vanir and thus sworn enemies of the Jotun. Fairies as a class of beings is a Christian invention, as is lumping all these beings into that class.
