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the-fae-folk · 2 months
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How do marriages between faeries and humans come to be? What could fae possibly gain from marrying a human in the first place?
Well they could gain quite a lot of different things from it.
If they're cruel and view humans as things rather than people, they could gain a toy, or a slave, or a trophy.
But if they truly love the human, it's very rare but it does happen sometimes, then they can gain a partner, a friend, a companion.
It all really depends on the faerie in question. And the circumstances in which they are marrying a human. Remember that the Folk must generally obey any contractual agreement that they enter, they are bound to it. While there are a very few instances in traditional folklore where the faerie-like being cheats or disregards an agreement or promise they made, an overbearing percentage of the time multiple cultures depict these faerie-beings as being forced to abide by the terms of the contract.
No matter how many semantic ideals humans layer on top of the concept of marriage, it is still an institutional practice which has a contractual agreement at its core. While the definitions and practices surrounding marriage vary from culture to culture, its general point is to lay the rights, obligations, boundaries, and protections between the two parties as well as their families, and their children if they happen to have any. It is a way of protecting oneself from harm. It could be future harm such as someone leaving you to fend for yourself if you have an accident that cripples you, financial harm if you lose all your money to a thief and without your partner you would be on the streets, or emotional harm if you need someone you can trust and your partner decides to betray that trust. The method of protecting against this, at least a little, is the marriage and its outline of what you agreed to do.
While the exact forms might vary between cultures, what you will need to look for is the places where you will be making some kind of contractual agreement. Often this takes the form of a Marriage License, Prenuptial Agreement, Wedding Vows, or some combination or variation of these.
For the more legal side of things you could have an agreement over such details as: Who may have control of or a say in the other's wealth, property, or business dealings. Joint responsibility for debts. Visitation rights if one member is incarcerated or hospitalized. Control over each other's affairs if they are incapacitated somehow. Establishing the right of legal guardianship over any children conceived in or brought into the marriage. Establishing a joint fund of property for the benefit of any children.
There may even be additions to this depending on cultural nuances, such as establishing certain relationships between the families of the spouses, or obligations required of them as a family unit. And this is all if the actual marrying couple is entirely in control of their own situation. In some cultures a family or a family member could choose your partner for you, and you could be forced into a marriage you didn't want as long as someone who had control of your rights agreed to the terms of the contract for you.
When it comes to vows made during a ceremony usually different kinds of promises are made, though they often still have some roots in practicality. Wedding vows are not universal and are mainly rooted in the traditions of Western Christianity, though they've had larger influence on Western Culture as a whole than some would think. Most western traditions derive from the Sarum rite of Medieval England.
Man's Vow: I [Name] take the [Name] to my weddyd wyf, to have and to hold fro thys day forwarde, for better for wors, for richer for porer, in sikenesse and in helthe, tyl deth us departe, yf holy Chyrche wyl it ordeyne; and thereto I plyght the my trouthe.
(I [Name] take [Name] to be my wedded wife, to have and to hold for the days forward, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part, if the holy Church will it ordain; and thereto I pledge thee my troth.)
Woman's Vow: I [Name] take the [Name] to my weddyd husbonde, to have and to hold fro thys day forwarde, for better for wurs, for richere, for porer, in sikenesse and in helthe, to be bonoure and buxum in bed and at bord, tyll deth us departe, yf holy Chyrche wyl it ordeyne; and therto I plyght the my trouth.
(I [Name] take the [Name] to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold for the days forward, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, to be bonere and buxum in bed and at board, till death do us part, if the holy Church will it ordain; and thereto I pledge thee my troth.)
((side note: The phrase "To be bonere and buxum in bed and at board" is a matter of some contention. Bonere means to be gracious or gentle, and buxum means to be obedient. While some have interpreted this as a reference on how the wife will conduct sexual practices within the marriage, it is important to remember that bed and board is an idiomatic phrase that refers both to the place where one sleeps and gets a daily meal, as well as to the house as a symbol of the duties and sanctity of marriage. This suggests that one could interpret the phrase as meaning they are making a vow to be gracious and obedient in the marriage as a whole, as well as to remain faithful to their husband.))
As time has passed the actual form of the vows has changed, but should one wish to use the formal vows, their original form is still recognizable if altered. These vows, while not universal and not necessarily legally binding, are still a kind of agreement being made for the marriage. To be there for one another and to honor the other, to stay whether the partner gets sick or not, to stay if they're rich or poor, and to remain with the other faithfully until mortal death. As in the case of the original set of vows, many make this set of agreements directly under the authority and witnessing of their religious organization, effectively making their deity the highest authority and the one who is allowed to revoke any blessings, privileges, or rights to the marriage should either one break the agreement without getting an annulment from the church itself.
Before this kind of wedding vow, one might have found traditions like handfasting, where a couple would take hands and declare themselves then and there as husband and wife (sponsalia de praesenti form), or alternatively they could declare their intention to marry one another at a future date (sponsalia de futuro form) and then seal the marriage through sexual intercourse. Often what little ceremony found could be done, or was done, with an authority or witnesses to the marriage. However it was not always considered legally necessary. From the 12th century to the 17th it was considered a form of engagement to be married, which would then be followed by an official ceremony in Church. However the practice is much older than that and is thought to be derived from the Old Norse handfesta which is literally "to strike a bargain by joining hands".
This idea of bargaining, of contractual agreements, vows, pledges, and promises is so integral to our ideas of marriage that it's difficult to separate them, and maybe not entirely possible. It is there that you can try to understand what it is the Faerie Folk want from the union. What is it that is being agreed to? And by whom? What do they get out of the things promised, what is the exact wording given and what does all of it mean within the specific context and cultures you and your faerie spouse find yourselves in? It is no small task, of course, considering how tangled the history of faeries is with that of contracts and bargains, but anything even remotely resembling a marriage will definitely come with strings attached when they are involved with it.
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the-fae-folk · 2 months
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I struggle with depression and anxiety a lot. I take antidepressants and all that. These are just some random thoughts I had. If I went to the Fae and they offered me happiness in exchange for my free will I’d take it. They could do whatever they wanted I’ll be a slave fine as long as I’m happy. Cuz I experience freedom and being miserable so I’d swap it for happiness and no free will
My child, I am most heartily sorry to hear that you struggle so, and I wish that I could fly across the world or through the realm of words and symbols we call the internet to come and bring you comfort. And yet I am even now restrained by the cruel chains of reality and physics. To be in such a mind that you would willingly go with the Folk should they offer you such a thing as happiness, even knowing that they would be cruel and are likely to take advantage of you, is not the healthiest of minds to be in. Truthfully, no faerie could give you happiness as you imagine. It is not something that can be given or taken like we give and take coins. Happiness is not something that can be found in places when you go to search them. But one might be fooled if in the act of searching one suddenly is possessed of happiness. For you see, happiness is created within, in the act of doing things we love, being with those we care for and who care about us, we can create happiness for ourselves. All the faeries could ever do is enchant you to believe that you are happy. But it would not be real, it would not be true. It would only be illusion, and in your heart of hearts you would bear the knowledge that underneath it all you would still be suffering. It is easy to be tempted by cruel promises, even when we know their falsehoods, when we are afflicted by such horrors as depression and anxiety. Especially when it seems that happiness is always just out of reach, beyond our grasp no matter how we try to lay claim to it. Yet I can assure you that while the struggle is one that takes enormous strength, it is possible to grow past the weight of depression, possible to burst through the clouds and climb up into the clear light of day. It will take time, and stumbles along the way are certain, yet it is possible to make yourself once again into a person who can create the joy and laughter and happiness within themselves. I wish you all the hopes and wonders of the world. Good luck, my child.
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the-fae-folk · 2 months
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hi there! i don’t know a lot about faerie folklore, but i stumbled across your blog and i was hoping you could shed some light. i had a super vivid dream that i was walking thru a cave because a spirit told me that if i got thru to the end, i’d find the loml. i got there, but then i fell through a hole that took me to what i assume now i faerie land (?). it was very warm & happy & i felt weirdly electric and energetic. i met a man ( faerie ?) and we had a baby, but then he and the baby disappeared. it felt like i was looking for my baby for years but then i got yanked back into the cave and i wasn’t allowed to come. no time at all had passed in the “real” world.
any thoughts on what the baby means? i can’t find anything online about people who have had similar dreams, but i couldn’t stop thinking about my baby. he looked nothing like me and his eyes were so bright green like diamonds (mine are brown). i know it’s such a long Ask but it has been driving me INSANE what folklore could say about this. THANK YOU !!
There are several different aspects that go into this dream that we might need to pick apart before we can really try to answer your question. Firstly, the fact that your dream baby did not look anything like you is a common theme in stories that surround humans that have children with faeries, or humans whose children have been replaced by faeries.
And there are many stories where humans have fallen in love with and/or copulated with a faerie to produce a child. Generally they don't end terribly well with the child having all sorts of odd behaviors and abilities. Changeling stories are even worse and usually contain rather gruesome depictions of how the child, perceived as a fairy trick, was brutally murdered. Now the dream aspect is a little more difficult to pin down. There are several possibilities about what could be happening. One, it could just be a dream. Dreams themselves take a variety of forms and are theorized to be your mind's way of not only processing all of the things you've seen and done during the day, but trying to contextualize all of the knowledge into the stuff you already possessed, and a variety of other functions that only take place during the deepest part of your sleep. While true scientists don't have a clear consensus on what exactly the point of dreams are, they do suggest that dreaming appears to be a vital part of normal human functioning, and that the mind does seem to take a lot of things you're processing and spin them into a narrative because narratives are what it's good at. We do this while awake as well, but with more restrictions about the narrative we allow ourselves to spin. Most of the time. However while i'm personally more inclined to believe the above, there are other possibilities. One might be that you actually went through the events that took place in your dream. Either in the past and you are now remembering the events through sleep, or possibly you are metaphysically journeying to other realms while your body slumbers. This definitely has a precedent. Take the story of Peter Pan, for instance. The Neverlands (yes, plural, it wasn't a single island) were an archipelago of islands that existed in the minds of children. Everything was all compact and close together so that adventures had almost no time between one and another, and that a map of a child's mind would resemble a map of the Neverlands, without any boundaries at all. And each Neverland would be different from another. For instance, John Darling's Neverland had "a lagoon with flamingos flying over it," while his little brother Michael's had "a flamingo with lagoons flying over it." In the story of Peter and Wendy, we learn that it is difficult to mark the passage of time as there are a great many more suns and moons in the Neverlands than at home.
While Disney's depiction places Neverland out past the stars of the sky, Barrie's description of its location is somewhat different. He only says that it is "second to the right, and straight on till morning." The children are only said to reach it because it was "out looking for them." This blurring of the imagination, of the fantasy, with the reality is what's vitally important here. Barrie didn't come up with this association of Faeries and dreams in a vacuum, no there were numerous novels, stories, and even plays that made the connection between the Fairyland of folklore, which had always been described as having a dream-like quality, and the actual realm of dreams and imagination.
Consider Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The story's primary tension is caused by a fairy dispute (over a changeling of all things), and this disturbance of nature, for the fairies are depicted as being closely related to nature, blurs the boundaries between fantasy and reality. The whole play takes upon itself a dreamy quality because at a certain point it becomes difficult to separate the dreaming from the waking. This effect is compounded upon by the use of the magic flower by Robin Goodfellow to cause mischief and confusion among the human lovers and the fairy royals. The mechanicals, who are preparing to put on a play for the wedding of the Duke and the Queen, are performing a play within a play. And when Robin turns Nick Bottom's head into that of a donkey, the other players run screaming at the sight of him when he comes to speak his next lines.
When Oberon orders Robin to fix his misdeeds and restore the lovers to their proper love, he says that their memories of the events will be as if it were a dream. When Nick Bottom wakes and finds his head returned to normal and no enchanted fairy queen making love to him, he assumes that it must have been some kind of dream. The play they are putting on is the tragic tale of "Pyramus and Thisbe", yet the mechanicals are so truly terrible at acting their parts that the lords and ladies laugh as if it were a comedy. It is important to note that the characters are actors who are brilliantly playing characters who happen to be bad at acting, and that the audience for the play has another audience, you, watching them even as they watch the play. As the play comes to an end, Robin speaks directly to the main audience, saying that if any of the shadows (referencing the allegory of the cave) have somehow offended them, they can simply imagine that everything, the whole of the play, was just a dream and they've been slumbering in their seats since the curtains opened. But if they did enjoy the story he's brought to them, and are therefore his friends, he invites them to applaud. There is so much literature that ties faeries and fairyland to dreams. But what exactly those ties are is purposefully unclear and impossible to pin down. One final possibility is that the dream is prophetic in some way. But I've always found myself to be somewhat skeptical of Oneiromancy as a practice. Not because I believe that such a thing can't be real, I have no particular belief about it either way, but rather because I tend to take a rather skeptical view of most people today who claim to interpret them. But who can say? Perhaps I am wrong. I hope that, if nothing else, this has given you a possible direction to follow in understanding your particular situation. Good luck, you'll need it.
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the-fae-folk · 2 months
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I found your post about librarian fae (from 2019), and I just so happen to be making a faerie librarian character. Do you have any helpful tips or information that I could use for him? Thank you for your time!
Hmm. Consider how such a being might view literature. Is history something they were around to see? And might they interpret it different than you or I? How about poetry? Faeries are well known for rhyming and singing, so they might have a special love for poetry of all kinds. Fantasy is just as enticing, for even if its truly fictitious, they might find joy and delight in the dancing of words used to weave such glorious and moving stories. Personally, I have always thought that a Librarian who is of the Folk might go out of their way to tell stories aloud. As their voice rises and falls in pitch and volume it entrances the listeners, causing them to dream while still awake. Seeing, living the world of the story as if they were there. Be careful about where you put books back. They might not be very pleased if you misshelve them, and a displeased faerie is a very dangerous thing. How long have you lingered in the books? Five minutes? Better check. Time does not exist here in the library.
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the-fae-folk · 2 months
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Can faeries possess people like demons / ghosts? If not, why can’t they? Thank you! 🦋
Well depending on where you draw your folklore from, Faeries were sometimes depicted as demons, ghosts, spirits, fallen angels, and so much more. If in one of these forms, I see no reason to think that they could not potentially possess someone. And even should they not be able to take direct control over your body in such a way, they could still potentially control you like a puppet on strings with just a little bit of enchantment. Of course, some fae in stories seem to have some kind of moral code that allows them to view this sort of thing as abhorrent. Others, many others, have no such thing.
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the-fae-folk · 5 months
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Truck or treat? Yeah, no trick option, i do NOT trust any kinda fae related person with a trick option. My apologies, have a good day-
(Jokes aside, I love your writing and your lore stuff :))
Honey drizzled from the comb onto sun dried apricots and tangerine slices. Such a sweet treat, the taste of a lingering summer that has begun to fade at last, sweet and yet melancholy in its joy. When you come in from the cold, your face raw and red from the chill bite of the wind, and your bag weighed down with candied delights, you might pour yourself a cup of hot chocolate. Rich and creamy, it warms you from within. Such wonderful treats to taste, such lavish candies to try. Won't you come in from the winter air? Won't you join us by the merrily burning fire? Won't you come into our parlour, little fly, and join us with a hot drink and a few tasty treats?
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the-fae-folk · 5 months
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You’ve said much of the world of faerie, fascinating things few people have seen. But what of humans? Humanity is fascinating. How do they survive in a world like this? How do they not know?
You would be absolutely astounded by the sheer number of things that humans do not know. In fact, I believe that I could safely say that the number of things we don't know outnumber the things we do in the same way that the grand totality of the universe is much more vast than a single walnut. And humans have an utterly fascinating set of capabilities whose primary purpose appears to be to preserve their life and sanity so that they can continue doing necessary and useful things such as gathering food, having families, and generally trying to make life better for all those who come after them. However, those capabilities also sometimes prevent them from seeing things as they are. Cognitive Dissonance is what happens when humans have ideas, beliefs, or actions that are inconsistent with other ideas, beliefs, and actions. It is an uncomfortable feeling, but more than that... it is a state that is actually quite a lot of hard work for the human brain to handle. So the brain will try to find the most efficient way in which to resolve the dissonance. Now an ideal way to deal with the problem would be to do some careful research on the matter, process and logically parse through all of the information, and finally adapt the new information into your existing worldview in order to form a more comprehensive cognitive state that is free of the bothersome dissonance. Unfortunately, this scenario is a lot more rare and more difficult to achieve than anyone would really like. You see, a great number of our decisions on a daily basis are made entirely within the subconscious. We make those trillions upon trillions of tiny decisions without even thinking about them in our conscious brain. When decisions that are significantly more important are made without the input of the conscious brain they can go unnoticed for a very long time until dissonance forces them forward into the focus of your attention. Everything you do is fueled by your motivations and instincts, and even your conscious logical reasoning can be affected by it too. So even when you're finally made aware of some sort of dissonance in your own mind, it's not actually an easy task to stop and truly think through the full scope of the problem. For example: without even realizing it, a person whose unknowing motivation is to maintain their positive self-regard can discount information that is unflattering or troubling if it contradicts their self-image. This is the brain's attempt to shortcut its way past the dissonance; it takes less energy for it to dismiss the contradictory information than to carefully reexamine and adapt the existing framework. This sort of problem effects everyone, and interestingly the effect becomes magnified when concerning any subject to which the person's self-identity is directly connected to. One might be tempted to believe that only the highly educated can elude the grasp of this unintentional survival skill gone wrong, however that would not be the case. In fact, there is a good deal of evidence that suggests that the highly educated might be MORE susceptible to this phenomenon in general due to their more comprehensive and structured worldviews. It is, of course, a useful survival tool, and it is possible to work around the inclination, but it always requires a significant amount of effort against the tendencies of one's own brain. Why do I mention all this? Well think, if someone going about their everyday life happened to see or hear something that went against all of their fundamental conclusions about how reality worked, it would be very easy indeed for their brain to simply... dismiss it or find some logical way to explain it out of existence, or simply to forget it because it doesn't fit. Who knows what wonders we might have missed because our minds couldn't make sense of them?
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the-fae-folk · 6 months
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The Final Wall (Part 3)
The easiest way to manage such a thing would be to combine them with something metaphysical, while it's arguable whether or not metaphysical things are real, there is enough doubt about it either way to satisfy my personal conviction that they are real, and thereby satisfy the conditions for my own challenge. For example... I could write a character who is the very personification of Mercy, who in the story they exist in they are there within every person who chooses to be merciful, existing as that act itself, called into being by the choice to act upon feelings of compassion, empathy, and pity. And thus, if they are the very act of Mercy itself, that could extend beyond the boundaries of the story. Regardless of whether they are physically real or not, Mercy is something that exists in our reality, outside the realms of Fiction and Meta-Fiction. Even if the character cannot take the same form beyond the story I've written, I have chosen to make them not just representative of Mercy within the narrative, but the act of Mercy itself. So in some form or another they have agency outside of the story, outside the control of creator and audience. I told you it was a trick. A clever workaround. You could still argue that it's not really the character themselves, that Mercy was already outside the boundaries of the story and therefore using it to give the character agency is cheating and doesn't count. You could argue that the agency still lies in the hands of the people who are making the choice to be merciful, and not in the hands of some abstract metaphysical concept of Mercy. You could argue all of that. If I were to choose a different, perhaps better, metaphysical concept... I'm sure there would be a way to argue against that as well. The fact of the matter is, I don't know how to really give a character real and true agency, to give them and only them the absolute and unquestionable ability to give them their own freedom of choice. Because to do such a thing would require me to be able to grant life to a character, to pull them from the page, and to truly understand myself what it means to be real and to have genuine agency. I cannot do any of those things, not really. But this trick, this writing workaround? It's a spark of what I'm trying to achieve, a glimmer of something I hoped for. And that is already a step closer than I ever thought I would be able to go. What is the point of all of this? I'm not really sure of that either. It's just my own pondering as I make my own writer's journey. But maybe it can offer some insight to you on the nature of fiction and characters and reality, maybe it can give you something you didn't have before. Influence you in a way that neither you nor I can control or even understand. And that, perhaps, is another step closer.
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the-fae-folk · 6 months
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The Final Wall (Part 2)
My challenge was clear. How to set up a story in a way that despite every single card being in the creator's hands, the character could actually have even the tiniest instant of genuine real-life agency beyond the control of the creator and audience? So many stories that depict such a thing, but only as a gimmick, only crafting more and more meta-fiction layers, never actually offering that elusive quality I sought. It is difficult, especially since I'm working with the assumption that these characters are not truly alive, merely extensions of my own consciousness and thoughts, and those of my audience. Even if allowing them to realize that fact, that they are, in a way, a part of me and the audience experiencing their story, might be a clever way to break past the barrier between the fictitious and the real, it still cannot grant them agency. They are still bound to me, to my will and control, or that of the audience. For a long time I was caught in this conundrum, trying to find a way to achieve what I wanted short of somehow miraculously gaining the power to cause characters to spring to life from the very pages of the book (as its depicted in the novel "Inkheart" by Cornelia Funke). But after considering the matter for a long time, I did discover at least one way to achieve my goal. It is a trick, of course, a clever workaround. Yet it may give me at least a spark of what I'm hoping for. I was inspired by, of all things, Greek Mythology. Where the gods depicted are more than just characters of the stories, more than just the deities that overlook the world. They were, to the people who worshiped them, the personifications of aspects of the world. Zeus wasn't just the lord of the sky, he was the sky. The Morai were not only the spinners, weavers, and cutters of fate for mortal and immortal alike, but they actually were fate and destiny, the personifications of a part of reality. Of course, I personally don't believe in a predetermined fate or destiny. And I don't personally believe in or worship Zeus, so I cannot speak to his existence at this time. The Greek Myths were coming at this problem from the opposite direction, beings that were worshiped as being real already having stories told about them, moving into the world of fiction from the outside, instead of trying to reach the outside from within. Although, there may yet be a way I can use their technique for what I want. If I were to take the character and bind them inextricably with something that is real, I might be able to give them a way to at least give them the power of agency, even if they will never be able to truly act upon it with intention (you know, being fictional and all). Making a character the personification of a natural part of the world has its problems though. If I made a character the personification of the sky or sea or forests, that doesn't necessarily mean that they are those things outside of my story. I would have to write a story and set up their character so that not only were they the personification of a thing, but they were able to know and understand things beyond the story and beyond me, able by their nature to act without my knowledge of it, even if they cannot visibly do so within the story itself.
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the-fae-folk · 6 months
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The Final Wall (Part 1)
Greetings, my child. I wish to talk about something I've been pondering for some time now. The Fourth Wall. In truth, there is a great deal of literature and media that concerns this. The very origin of this line of thinking was born from the older 90s animated cartoons that featured characters being aware of the fourth wall and making quips and jokes that reference the fact that they're characters in a show and what that means. In those cartoons, it was mainly used for purposes of comedy. But it has been taken more seriously in other works. "Stranger than Fiction" (2006) Involved a character who became aware of his nature as a character in a novel and tried to seek out the author and change his fate. "The Lego Movie" (2014) Despite being a comedy, this film had a very brief exploration of characters in a world becoming aware of their nature as toys and their role within the story's narrative. "The Truman Show" (1998) A live-action film that featured a character who became aware that his entire life was a constructed television show for the entertainment of others. Though he did actually break past a kind of fourth wall, the true audience of the film, us, are pushed back once more behind a fifth wall. And there are other works of various mediums that do explore the themes and ideas inherent in meta-fiction to various degrees. But in a way, no matter what walls the character breaks, no matter the things they become aware of, they are still behind a nearly impenetrable barrier. A wall that neither they nor we can seem to break. That is the barrier between what is fiction and what is real. Despite what I've just said, there are some ways that characters in stories already break this boundary. To do this, they must be able to not only become aware of, but move completely beyond the control of, the writer. They must be able to influence the real world, and not just another layer of the world of fiction. And many characters, aware or not, already do this. Perhaps they cannot physically manifest into our world, but knowing and experiencing their stories through our various mediums can have profound influences on us and our lives, can guide us, heal us, give us new insight, can teach us, can confuse us, can frighten us, can anger us, can make us think. Their stories are real, in the sense that they become more than simply words upon a page or pixels on a screen, they are real in a metaphysical sense... a growing entity that is shared and fed by everyone who is in some way influenced by their story. And it will grow and change and continue to exert its influence as we interact with it. It is an idea, real but not corporeal. But it is not alive, or at least I do not think that such a thing would be alive in the way we understand living things. Perhaps there is a line of thought to be explored concerning the nature of ideas as living metaphysical entities, an amalgamate being born and sustained by the collective thoughts and emotions of many people, just as we are made of trillions of small single celled organisms. A symbiotic community that forms one greater form of life. Yet that is not what I wished to discuss here... My train of thoughts was more concerned with the nature of agency in a story. We can write all kinds of things about characters who fight for agency, and in much meta-fiction we find them gaining some semblance of it. Often a character will break free from their own reality and move outward into a greater meta-fictional world. However this is not true agency. They are still a product of their creator. Every thought they have, every action they take, every aspect of their entire world is crafted by their creator, or sometimes by their audience. No matter how many walls they break, they can never have a moment of true agency because they are fictional, they are not real in a way that would allow them to truly act independently from any outside force. Of course, there are some that would argue that we don't know if we have such agency either. But that's an existential discussion for another day.
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the-fae-folk · 7 months
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When you're world building for a story and you find that you've recreated one of the major recently discovered principles of Quantum Physics by complete accident while making up some of the underlying concepts that make parts of your world function, then you've probably gone much much much too far and might need to reconsider your approach to world building.
While this sort of thing can be great fun, it's entirely possible be be lost in an endless maze of world building efforts and never actually complete the project you started out trying to do. So balance and some reasonable limitations are in order, I think.
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the-fae-folk · 8 months
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I've been invested in fae-related content lately and your blog is really interesting to read! Do you have any information regarding fae that is associated with the stars (or any other solar system objects)?
Despite searching for some time, I have not yet been able to find anything specific regarding Faerie Folklore that has to do with the stars or celestial bodies. There are plenty of mentions of stars and starlight, usually using them to describe someone's beauty or as symbolism for arcane and magical settings. But very little about the stars themselves. That's not to say there isn't any; there probably is somewhere. I just haven't been able to find any verifiable texts that discuss it.
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the-fae-folk · 8 months
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In 1st place we have: A very old and tarnished Silver Key. Nice nice.
In 2nd place: A Ferret. Reasonable response.
And in 3rd place: An entire full-sized Lighthouse. I'm so proud of you all. There is a minor concern as to how all of you are planning to CARRY the Lighthouse around with you, but that's your problem, not mine.
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the-fae-folk · 8 months
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the-fae-folk · 8 months
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So I've heard that the way the fae steal names is by phrasing it "May I have your name please" or something to that effect and I wondered if that's true or something the internet just made up and spread. Then I got to wondering how that would translate up to the modern day as a sort of pun. Then I wondered where the fae stealing names thing even comes from, I've seen people say they do but no concrete sources yet. Can you answer these questions, and if you can, please tell us your sources. Im genuinely curious, and thank you
An interesting question. The idea that a faerie can steal away your name should you accidentally give it to them is a much more modern addition to the vast compilation of lore that has been gathering around the Folk. However it is one that is based in some older ideas about them. Faeries are thieves. There are vast numbers of stories and tales that describe a variety of faerie beings who are actively stealing the possessions of humans, or sometimes even the humans themselves either as babies, children, or adults. These sorts of stories often involve the humans trying to get the faerie interloper to stop and go away, though other variations include humans attempting to outwit the faeries, while still others describe the faeries as assuming a benevolent (or malevolent) judge of the human character for the sheer sake of looking for someone to punish (even if the humans do deserve it sometimes, it is to be noted that the faeries are often actively trying to get them to slip up so that they can be angry at the offense). Many of these stories do highlight specific but arbitrary (to us) rules that the faeries must obey. Such as the idea that they would always uphold a bargain, but you had to be very careful of the wording because they would only interpret the absolute letter of the agreement and not the spirit in order to cause you harm or inconvenience. Additionally, the idea that a person's "true" name has power is a very old idea. The actual rules of what constitutes a person's true name is very vague, but what usually was meant in these older stories was the name that was used to identify you, your given name. Sometimes, if you had more than one jack in the town you might have to add in modifiers such as Jack the son of Smith. At some point middle names came into fashion for lower classes and they were another way to differentiate one person from another with the same given name. The point is, the primary purpose of the names was to identify you, and often to give someone an idea of where they're likely to find you and others you're connected to. When it came to the faerie folk... that is exactly what people didn't want to happen. Because if you met a faerie as a guest in their house and, by following all the rules, managed to get out alive and with all your freedoms intact, you really did not want them to be able to find you again. And if they had your name, they were a lot more likely to be able to find you and everyone you know, especially if you consider them as having magic that most humans do not. At some point in contemporary fantasy, and I have not yet been able to pinpoint the beginning of it, despite my efforts, these ideas became conflated. The characterization of the Fae as trickster thieves who would fool and befuddle you with illusions and magic, who would make bargains with language so precise and finicky that even the brightest and best of human lawyers would be caught off guard, and who would use their knowledge of your real name to their advantage and your detriment. All of this was the groundwork for the idea that the Faeries could use the vagueness of human niceties to trick you into giving up your own name to them.
So, to my knowledge it is a relatively new idea, unless I or another can put forth evidence to the contrary. It is not a random creation, but instead the natural extrapolation of ideas that had been floating in Faerie Folklore for centuries. And really, regardless of whether it's a new idea or an old one, doesn't it seem like just the sort of nonsense and trickery that they'd get up to?
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the-fae-folk · 10 months
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I feel as if my heart is tearing apart when I look at the forest. It's as if I long for home and solace in the forest. There is a 3 acre forest near my house, and I've seen glowing lights there. I have weird, vivid dreams about fae creatures and "messages" telling me to visit the forest. I see weird things and idk what to do! Help?
The forest is a source of great comfort to many people. When they look at the trees they feel a connection to the world and a sense of balance, as if all that is wrong in the world has been temporarily righted because yes, there are still trees and they are still green. It's a very common sort of feeling, and it often tends to be more noticeable in people who are already close to nature in their daily life, though it is present in most humans to some small degree. It can, in fact, be very healthy to indulge this need for trees and nature. Taking walks through a park or a small wood, planting a garden near your home, and otherwise indulging in the outdoors. Caring for potted plants indoors can be beneficial as well, and there's even some small good to be taken simply from looking at pictures of nature. Having said that, however... If you're seeing strange glowing lights in places they shouldn't be (such as a 3 acre forest near your house), and having strange and unusual dreams about fae creatures and their messages to come and visit them... then the most important thing you can possibly do is to ignore them entirely. That is the biggest red flag there is when dealing with the folk. Anyone willing to put that much effort into trying to entice you into some secluded place alone with them and away from those you can rely on is almost certainly up to no good. They are not to be trusted, not to be trifled with. Human or Faerie, they certainly don't have your best interests at heart.
If you truly feel like your heart is tearing itself apart with longing for the woods deep and dark, then go out and find another forest somewhere away, and take a walk in it. Bring a friend, or a family member, or two, or three! And stay away from anything that tries to lure you away on your own. In the case that such dreams and suspect invitations continue or grow stronger and you find yourself wavering... Consider consulting with a Witch. Or possibly a priest. Either will do, providing they are adequately learned, wise, and truly good at heart.
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the-fae-folk · 10 months
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Is it possible for a fae to steal the name of someone who has no name? The nameless has no real name, just things they refer to themselves as. They never had a name to begin with. Can they still lose their names or being?
If they truly and honestly did not have a name at all, then there's simply nothing to steal. If they have a name that they no longer use for whatever reasons of their own, that's different and it still would belong to them and could be used against them. If they have nicknames and terms they use to refer to themselves, those are names of a kind. They belong to you, even if you don't feel particularly strong about them. They might not have as much power over you as a name that is well and truly your name, but they are still yours and are a potential source of danger when it comes to the Folk. But no name at all? You can't steal something that doesn't exist. Not having a name doesn't make a person in the least bit safe from the Folk. There are plenty of other things they could do to a person without their name. For example they could turn you into a rock, or a sword, or a tree. Or perhaps some kind of woodland creature such as a deer (and then proceed to throw you ahead of a hunt and delight in the chase as you are hunted down and killed for sport and feast). Even more alarming they could give you a name they choose, craft for you an identity of their own design. You could be formed into a plaything of theirs, and you might never even know. Such a fate might be worse than not having a name to begin with.
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