It seems, however, that while I wasn't looking, the world decided otherwise. I was watching a stream archive of a popular recent horror release. Eventually, it got to a plot point involving subject matter that was a bit too close to real-life horror for me (a parent having a very potent and realistic reaction to watching their small child die horribly), so I turned it off. The game had seemed close to the end, though, so I Googled to spoil myself on what was happening, and it turned out, "oh, it was all fairies." Which is just about the most unscary thing I can imagine, collective gamer flashbacks to hearing "hey, listen" 20,000 times notwithstanding.

I would think this revelation would be widely panned, particularly among an audience where those raised on SCP creepypastas enjoy disproportionate representation, but no. People seem to be taking it in stride.

It reminds me - to switch gears here - of a modern fantasy title written for a middle-aged female audience I ended up reading a few years back. The plot: Woman moves back to small Vermont town; discovers that she's a descendant of witches and that her neighbors are all supernatural creatures; is challenged by the local grown-up mean girl, who's secretly some sort of faerie queen. It seems - I did some research after being perplexed here - that the whole Big Bad Tinkerbell thing is not just a idiosyncracy of this particular author: fairies are the go-to villains in that subgenre. Their Sugar Plum appearance is not a secret front for more eldritch entities or more sinister powers. They're just...fairies, but bad. Like, individual fairies will announce their presence through signature hues of glowy multicolor glitter - which the author means to be sinister, and man, is that a miscalculation.

Now, I did some thinking, as one does in wake of disconcerting revelations, and I ultimately concluded that, while nothing outside of glitter bombs is going to make glowy glitter scary, the whole fairy villain thing could be kind of understandable, in a skancewise way. The conflicts in these books frequently seem to be metaphors for clashes with the mean girls in town, and fairies, all fluttery and pretty and surface glamour, are the least-disruptive analogue for that cohort among the better-known fantastic creatures. (These books are not written for the curious, so only the most mainstream monster types need apply. You're not gonna get stuff like, say, the Huldra in here.) The thing is that we're supposed to be terrified of these fairies, of their powers and capabilities, viewing them not as twee, cutesy sprites, as these flitty little wee things, but as mighty, awesome creatures, and I'm sorry, I just can't make that transition. Yes, so far as they're beings with supernatural powers, they command vast destructive forces, but so does, say, erosion, and I don't see any horror movies on the premise of limestone weathering. Maybe they work with the modern fantasy target audience because of the mean girls thing, but I would think the gaming horror community would be made of slightly sterner stuff.

Then I thought of another possibly relevant media experience of mine, with the game Firewatch, about a man taking a job as a fire lookout after a long bout of caring for his dementia-stricken wife. Despite dealing with a couple plot points that resonated with me personally - taking care of a family member during a long illness and sorting oneself out afterward; working as a fire lookout, a job that's always intrigued me - I didn't finish it or get along with it. The breaking point came with was initially a special moment after the long hike through the beautifully-rendered interior on the way to your post: my first moment in the lookout tower, the wild expanse of nature that my character would inhabit for the next few months spread out for the first time in its full, panoramic glory before me. Aglow in the twilight, it was a glorious sight, the perfect capper to a beautiful hike. After taking in the scenery, I spotted a poster on the wall illustrating the local flora. What wildflowers could I discover in this region? Enchanted, I drew close to look - and, immediately, the moment was shattered by a screech from the radio: a fellow fire lookout who called to mock my character for his presumed mental problems (claiming that anyone who took a job in nature was obviously unstable and running away from something, signposting the game's attitude toward the great outdoors and those who love it). I was extremely irritated - and then I learned that I was expected to form a positive and loving relationship with this individual over the next few hours that would serve as the focus of the entire game. I dumped Firewatch soon afterward.

It wasn't news to me that my opinion of the title was at odds with conventional wisdom, as the game was highly-praised before I tried it out. But months later, happening across player discussions of the game on Giant Bomb, I discovered that most gamers had had an acutely opposite reaction to the particular moment that turned me off. Everyone else found the nasty radio call, name-calling and all, deeply comforting. They had all been frightened by the walk to the lookout tower - at being alone in the wilderness, a sensation the panorama atop the lookout tower only punctuated. The other lookout, no matter how abrasive or antisocial, was a comfort, a handhold, solely due to being another human presence.

So, given all the above, here's my question: are fairies viable figures of horror in gaming because they represent gamers' fear of nature?

I don't want to fall back on the stereotype of the gamer cocooned in gadgets, as averse to analog pursuits as Dracula is to sunlight. But the evidence ain't exactly pointing elsewhere.

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