Today, I am the blogger at the Bad Ass Faeries blog.
Excerpt:
Bad Ass Faeries? Sounds like a contradiction in terms, right? Aren’t faeries little, sweet, flitty things that paint flowers? What are these people thinking?
In truth, the concept of bold, outrageous faeries is not as far from the original concept as we might first think. The modern idea of faeries, popularized by picture books and Disney, comes from the Victorian Age, when faeries stories were relegated to the nursery. In earlier ages, fairytales were often cautionary tales that urged the listener to beware of foolishness and vice. The faeries portrayed were often frightening creatures who could be dark and cruel, arrogant and dangerous.
Isn’t that a lot like our modern idea of a “bad-ass dude”?
I am reminded of the movie A Knight’s Tale (which tried to do for Chaucer what Shakespeare In Love did for Shakespeare). It opens with a joust set in olden times. Suddenly, as the opening credits rolled, the crowd starting singing “We Will Rock You.” My first reaction was “What are they thinking? This is so inappropriate for this time period.” Then, suddenly, like a switch being thrown, I got it. The movie was attempting to show us jousts as they must have seemed to the people at the time—not fancy and highfalutin, as portrayed by later writers. To the people of the time, they were like our sporting events, so the film had the audience act like modern folks watching a ball game.
Bad Ass Faeries are a lot like that, taking the enchantment out of the children’s books and putting it back into real life. Bikers, soldiers, pirates: what would they be like if they had magic? What would they be like if they had wings?
