Fairies and the Fairy Type: Why Fairies aren't a bad idea for a type

[SnorlaxMonster]

And I'm sure I don't need to point out that magic being strong against dragons is not really a new idea.

I've seen it before, but I'm so used to seeing dragons immune or highly resistant to magic that the idea of it being extra effective against them as feels wrong to me.

If the name is bad, they could have called it Elven Type. That would have sounded better, but I'm not really against the current name. If they wanted the old-fashioned definition of a fairy, if that's what it is, then they could have named it Faerie Type.

Elven doesn't really describe what they are though. I don't think any of these Pokemon are at all elf-like.

Also, I don't think they were necessarily going for the classical type of fairy such that Faerie would have been a better name. They're certainly not just "tiny creatures with bug wings", they're really more "nature spirits", which is still a common modern usage.

 

[Zeb]

They're certainly not just "tiny creatures with bug wings", they're really more "nature spirits", which is still a common modern usage.

Yeah, I can agree with this. Sylveon's name relates to this aswell, as it probably comes from sylvan, which can mean "(Myth & Legend / Classical Myth & Legend) an inhabitant of the woods, esp a spirit".

 

[sloth]

Where the hell does Nintendo and/or Game Freak get the idea of using "fairy" as a type?

Why are dragons a type? Do dragon attacks have some unique property that makes them draconic? Why is Dragon Breath not a fire type attack? Why is Dragon Pulse not a flying attack? Draco Meteor? It looks like a rock to me.

If dragons are allowed their own unique brand of magic, then why aren't fairies?

 

[Te-em]

And I'm sure I don't need to point out that magic being strong against dragons is not really a new idea.

I've seen it before, but I'm so used to seeing dragons immune or highly resistant to magic that the idea of it being extra effective against them as feels wrong to me.

If the name is bad, they could have called it Elven Type. That would have sounded better, but I'm not really against the current name. If they wanted the old-fashioned definition of a fairy, if that's what it is, then they could have named it Faerie Type.

Elven doesn't really describe what they are though. I don't think any of these Pokemon are at all elf-like.

Also, I don't think they were necessarily going for the classical type of fairy such that Faerie would have been a better name. They're certainly not just "tiny creatures with bug wings", they're really more "nature spirits", which is still a common modern usage.

I did a quick look-up and it seems that fairy is a more general term for magical beings than elf. Elf is from German folklore while fairy is Celtic, so the terms appears to have different origins. Since fairy is so general, meaning goblins, gnomes, etc., then it suits a Pokemon type better than elf. I guess that elf is a fairy too then.

I've been looking forward to a "fairy" type in Pocket Monsters. I always wanted a Pokemon game of the fantasy genre.

 

[The Outrage]

F
Also, these kinds of "fairies" are actually very similar to the Japanese Youkai, which a ton of Pokémon are already based on (Ninetales, Espeon, Shiftry and others).

That's my only concern. Clearly, new Pokemon based on Youkai or Fairy legends could fall under the fairy category....but should they? What will be the determining factor of whether these Pokemon become Fairy or not? We already have quite a few Youkai, as you pointed out.

Dragon type pokemon may be overpowered in the stats parameter in general, but it has its disadvantages also. It is super-effective only to one type: Dragon. It defensive advantages is also only four, incomparable to Steel type which it has attack advantages of 2 and defensive advantages of 11! From the viewpoint of being a type, Dragon type is absolutely not overpowering at all. Say that rather to Steel type Pokemon.

At the same time, four types resist Steel, and only Steel resisted Dragon up to this point. Given the prominence of Earthquake despite the many Flying and Levitate Pokemon, I doubt Dragons would suffer too much from Fairy being immune to it (if the rumors are true). Let's face it, its the immunity that would harm Dragons, not the super-effective hit against it. Dragons have always been prominent in the metagame, meaning there was no shortage of "super effective" moves that hit it. If a x4 weakness to Ice, a common offensive typing didn't hinder it, I doubt Fairy would do much better.

Now onto Fairy's potential immunity to Dragon. The only major thing I see happening is that Outrage will drop in usage....or at the very least, people will be more cautious when using it. Dragons have a wide array of moves to choose from--that's what makes them powerful.

 

[BlackHeartHDD]

I think that, regardless of the position of their argument, people are still getting too hung up on the word "fairy" and the idea of magic.

Personally, I would have spelt it "faerie", to start with. But secondly, they're mystical creatures, regardless of their abilities. The idea of the Fairy-type is that of a pure, mystical force. Not only would this attest to its strength against Dragons, put its (I believe it was hinted at before) weakness to Poison, which represents corruption of that purity.

In the end, fairies are creatures with extraordinary powers, coming in various forms with differing abilities between them. Just like Pokémon... right?

 

[SilverGlitch]

I understand what the word "fairy" means but, for people who don't understand what it means, then think of something like Tinker Bell when they hear the word "fairy", and are being introuduced to pokemon for the first time, may turn down the game because they get the wrong idea.

Result: bad first impressions may occur. Well, if they dislike Tinker Bell and such.

Why I dislike the idea, I feel like the fairy type sounds too much like the psychic type.

Also, now that this news has been revealed, I'm almost certain Sylveon is going to be a fairy type.

 

[Gabo2oo]

I personally believe the Fairy-type is one of the worst decisions they have ever done. Sure, I don't have any with it and I guess a lot of us don't either, but just for curiosity I started talking to people outside there, and I'm yet to find ANYONE, outside people from the Pokémon fanbase, that doesn't hate the idea! In fact, many people that aren't actually Pokémon fans but play and follow the games, even the newer ones, seem to be considering stop playing them or try to ignore the fact that Fairy-type Pokémon will exist, even people who understand what a fairy actually is.

If they wanted to balance the Dragon-type effectiveness, they could have just made Psychic-type moves (you know, psychic, magic, they aren't very far from each other) super effective against Dragons instead of retconning an amount of older, cute-looking Pokémon to be strong against Pokémon who usually are considered more strong or at least rougher-looking.

 

[Familiar]

People are going to have a fit about it, and then come back once they're done with their tantrums. If anything the controversy would probably drum up more publicity for the games.

(I also don't understand why people think it should have been Fey or Faerie type. It's not like the other types have fancy names either, like Dragon being Draconian type.)

 

[The Outrage]

I understand what the word "fairy" means but, for people who don't understand what it means, then think of something like Tinker Bell when they hear the word "fairy", and are being introuduced to pokemon for the first time, may turn down the game because they get the wrong idea.

There are 17 other types, if a single type can turn them away from everything else the series has to offer, then the problem is not with that type but with the person.

 

[Envoy]

Something tells me XY sales won't be affected too badly by the revelation of this new type.

 

[SilverGlitch]

I understand what the word "fairy" means but, for people who don't understand what it means, then think of something like Tinker Bell when they hear the word "fairy", and are being introuduced to pokemon for the first time, may turn down the game because they get the wrong idea.

There are 17 other types, if a single type can turn them away from everything else the series has to offer, then the problem is not with that type but with the person.

That's pretty much what I meant. After a bit of thinking, this type actually does seem like a pretty good idea. However, I still think they should call the type something else, like fae or light. (probably light)

For some reason I am not thrilled by the Fairy type. Call it Light type, with same stats, maybe I'll be more interested.

I don't know, the type being called 'Fairy' is strange. Really strange. And weird.

I personally think it should be called Fey type.

Also, there are 16 types other then fairy Sorry, I couldn't help it.

 

[Stratelier]

Dragon-type Pokemon generally requires much more experience to level up, and generally evolve in rather very high level....
Dragon-type Pokemon are all very rare.

But those two are single-player balancers; they have less effect in multiplayer battles than trying to Poison Sting an Aron. Because multiplayer battles typically involve people who've already beaten single player, you can safely assume every player will have acquired one of these rare Pokemon (but whether they take it into battle or not is up to them). And since multiplayer tends to scale all Pokemon to Lv.50 regardless of their original levels, you can safely assume that the player will have spent the time necessary to acquire the highest evolutionary form of these rare Pokemon, in similar vein as every competitive player in G1 having a Mewtwo on their team -- the amount of work spent acquiring and preparing it means absolutely squat once the actual battling begins.

Battles are won by types, stats, and movesets, not rarity-in-the-wild or evolutionary levels . . . which, IIRC, is the formula for success in Johto's Bug-Catching Contest.

 

[Te-em]

If they wanted to balance the Dragon-type effectiveness, they could have just made Psychic-type moves (you know, psychic, magic, they aren't very far from each other) super effective against Dragons instead of retconning an amount of older, cute-looking Pokémon to be strong against Pokémon who usually are considered more strong or at least rougher-looking.

Who, exactly, are these older Pokemon? I only see

who look like fairies and are single typed and may have a second type. But since fairy is such a broad term, there might be others of course, but I don't see any that are this obviously fairies. There could be some bug Pokemon that may be typed fairies. Manafi and Phione may also be typed, since they look like some sort of spirits. Marill (as someone suggested) does not look like a fairy, but a mouse like Pikachuu.

 

[Latias418]

I am greatly displeased with the Fairy type, and not because it's feminine, or because of the name. It's because what Nintendo's doing with it means absolutely nothing. Gardevoir, Marill, and Jigglypuff - none of these Pokemon have anything to do with any kind of fairy ever. This isn't a case of the type being vague, it's a case of there being nothing at all. These Pokemon seem to have been selected completely at random - they have nothing in common with each other or with any kind of fairy that's ever been depicted in a story. Which seems like a pretty hard task to accomplish, given that there are so many different depictions of fairies throughout history - yet none of these Pokemon are at all similar to any depiction.

Personally, I will not be purchasing XY, not entirely because of but in part because of this change. A new type is a big deal - it should be handled carefully and be well thought out, not a rash decision with little logic behind it to tame a supposedly overpowered Dragon type. As a competitive battler who has reached the #1 spot on Shoddy Battle and Pokemon Online leaderboards in the past, I don't even think the Dragon type is overpowered at all. There are a few powerful Dragon Pokemon, but they are not powerful just because they're Dragons. They've powerful because they were built to be, with 600 BST pseudo-legendary status and great movepools and abilities. The majority of the Dragons who aren't legendary or pseudo-legendary are garbage, never to see the light of day in OU battles.

 

[SilverGlitch]

I am greatly displeased with the Fairy type, and not because it's feminine, or because of the name. It's because what Nintendo's doing with it means absolutely nothing. Gardevoir, Marill, and Jigglypuff - none of these Pokemon have anything to do with any kind of fairy ever. This isn't a case of the type being vague, it's a case of there being nothing at all. These Pokemon seem to have been selected completely at random - they have nothing in common with each other or with any kind of fairy that's ever been depicted in a story. Which seems like a pretty hard task to accomplish, given that there are so many different depictions of fairies throughout history - yet none of these Pokemon are at all similar to any depiction.

Personally, I will not be purchasing XY, not entirely because of but in part because of this change. A new type is a big deal - it should be handled carefully and be well thought out, not a rash decision with little logic behind it to tame a supposedly overpowered Dragon type. As a competitive battler who has reached the #1 spot on Shoddy Battle and Pokemon Online leaderboards in the past, I don't even think the Dragon type is overpowered at all. There are a few powerful Dragon Pokemon, but they are not powerful just because they're Dragons. They've powerful because they were built to be, with 600 BST pseudo-legendary status and great movepools and abilities. The majority of the Dragons who aren't legendary or pseudo-legendary are garbage, never to see the light of day in OU battles.

I agree with your point in your 2nd paragraph. As for your first paragraph, sure they don't have backstories that are fairy related, but go under the definition of fairy. Well, except Marril. That was plain stupid.

 

[Te-em]

I wondered what people were talking about when they said Marill was a fairy. Now I've checked Bulbapedia, and Marill IS typed a fairy. Why? What were they thinking?!

 

[Hidden Power]

GF wanted to include a new type to balance the overpowered dragon type. It's not by chance that the new type is in advantage to dragon. As we can see, most of the dragons are in the OU tier, and many of them are hard to take down even with 4x weakness to ice. For japaneses, the new type is associated to magic, it is not described as fairy type, it is name "yosei" type. It makes sense to them and they're used to the creatures our fairy type will be associated with it. Here in western, isn't that hard to accept the fairy type as the type of creatures that use magic or non-scientific explained powers? Did you people really believe that GF was never going to introduce another type again? Fairy type is so a good idea. Now the game will be balanced a little and some Pokemons will be retyped to make for sense with the creature they were based of.

Now tell me. What exactly is Fairy type? How can we define what Pokemon is Fairy type?

It will take some time to get used to fairy type as it was to get used to poison, fighting and dark type.

A Pokémon is defined as fairy type when it looks like a fairy and/or use magical powers (not from mind).

Yeah, most Psychic Pokemon are based off "pseudo-scientific" principles such as telepathy, mind-reading, hypnotism, aliens, spiritual yoga energy, and astrology as opposed to the type of magic Fairy Pokemon would be associated with is is unexplainable and "non-scientific".

Interesting explanation. This is true. I agree with you that fairies use powers from non-explainable fonts. It is magic!

Wait... hold on. I have a question to ask...

If the Fairy type was instead called the "Magic" type, would some people be okay with it? Is it the name that ruins the entire thing for those people?

Some people are close-minded, then for some of them magic is easier to understand because they just know Navi and Tinker Bell as fairies.

I have no beef with the addition of a new type. This is GameFreak trying to balance out the metagame a little bit, similar to the removal of the Stealth Rocks TM in Gen 5.

What I do have a problem with is the name. Fairy. In modern society, it conjures up images of Tinker Bell or Navi. They're different than regular Pokemon, yes. Fine. But if we're going about naming a new type, and broadening it out from "sparkly, pixie-like creatures" to "magical properties", then we've got a bit of a problem. The modern connotation of the word "Fairy" doesn't make you think of Morgan la Fey, Gandalf, or Harry Potter.

As cliché as it is, I would've almost preferred the type to be called "Magic" or "Magicka" or even just "Mana". "Supernatural" would've worked better than the Fairy-type.

Like I said. I don't have a problem with the type itself, just the representation and connotation of the name.

It seems the thread is dicussing the name "fairy" type instead of the fairy type. This is kind of ridiculous, the name isn't the most important part on including a type. Dark and Evil type seem to be even more complicated names to use and nobody has ever discussed pages about it.

Why do people think Marill is a fairy? It looks more like a mouse, like Pikachuu. And Jigglypuff doen't look like a fairy. The family looks like a balloon with cat's ears and a rabbit. Pippi and Pixie looks like fairies though.

I don't understand either why Marill was considered a fairy. As you said, it is just a mouse that doesn't use and doesn't have magical power. I think that it was paired with fairy type because of the egg group it belongs to and because of its cute apperance. Anyways, the fact it is in that egg group don't turns it into a fairy type, we have to admit that including a Pokemon in an egg group helps the breeding process of passing down moves. It is like the Pokemons in dragon group that aren't dragon type and were not turned into dragon type because of that.

I can believe the rumor about Fairy type come true .
However , I think ''Celestial type'' sound much better then ''Fairy type'' .
It would be cool to see an Angelic Pokemon .

Celestial type is one of the worst name suggestions for the fairy type that I have ever seen

If the name is bad, they could have called it Elven Type. That would have sounded better, but I'm not really against the current name. If they wanted the old-fashioned definition of a fairy, if that's what it is, then they could have named it Faerie Type.

At first I thought Fairy was the opposite to the Evil/Dark Type Pokemon, and the Light Type. But as people says, fairies do not have to be good or gentle beings. Still, Nymphia was called a fairy somewhere on the forums and my thoughts went to that Pokemon when hearing about Fairy Type. Nymphia looks like a Light Type Pokemon, so I thought this was what Fairy was.

Elven type? What crap suggestion.

Light type isn't the same thing as Fairy type. Fairies can be either good or bad.

In Japan, the word Fairy has different connotations than it does in English, which is why it isn't such a big deal to them. Here, it carries connotations that really don't describe what we're seeing that is currently in the new Fairy-type. That's the one problem I have with the name for this type.

The same occur for dark type in spite of dark type seem to have been more easily accepted.

 

[Zeta]

Most of the complaints about Fairy type that are valid are also valid about Ghost-types. The one thing mythology agrees about Ghosts (they're dead people) doesn't apply to any ghost-type Pokemon besides Yamask. The only thing really linking the type together is that MOST of them are dark purple and black.

 

[El_]

A lot of arguments against the type I actually find to be very immature or hilarious. In any case, I don't get why people wanted it to be called "Fae" type, what exactly is the difference considering thats just a shortened way of saying Fairy in the first place? Its ironic to me considering Fairy (or similar ideas like it) is exactly what the fandom asked for in the first place, maybe its a different crowd thats back lashing though than the places that speculated on the type.

As for how they are perceived in our (western) culture, perhaps its time to broaden our views a bit don't you think? Anyone who has access to information can research that theres a lot more to Fairy lore than Tinker Bell... seriously have an open mind. Introducing this typing in the exact same region of its actual lore origin (France) was a great move by Game Freak, and I appreciate the fact that they are actually trying to balance out the game a bit more as well.