The Unfair Folk @theunfairfolk - Tumblr Blog

Her dress was plain and short, her hair fell loosely down her shoulders, her feet were bare, and she carried a basket piled high with fruits. As she entered the Prince’s hall, she brought with her the smell of soil and rain.

Commission by @puzzler00m of the Princess of the West. I am so so so thrilled how this turned out. Support artists! Detail shots below the cut.

#the prince and the stranger #art #the princess of the west #artists on tumblr

thefugitivesaint

Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871), 'Die Mondfee' (The Moon Fairy), ''Jugend'', #6, 1922

kettle-bird

Sometimes things just aren't in the cards for us

heavensickness

obsessed. also makes sense when you remember than butterflies drink blood

dearorpheus

nyxfaei

Imagine a fluffy unicorn that’s bred for its wool like a sheep- once or twice a year it has to get shorn and the shearer just has to awkwardly flop and position the unicorn around without getting stabbed. Perhaps they cover the horn with a protective pool noodle

nyxfaei

Do you see my vision???

danataxit

@wizardpotions

elodieunderglass

I see the vision

beautifulbacteria

oilnymph by fritz kok

theunfairfolk

ID below

theunfairfolk

my little cousin confidently declared that mother nature had a counterpart named daddy electric and i feel like this concept needs to be explored

chassdraws

Daddy Electric and Mother Nature sounds like a cute 70s act

creekfiend

there are a NUMBER of folktale Woman-Creatures like selkies who exist to make the inherently coercive nature of heterosexual marriage explicit and to externalize male anxiety about how if your wife had actual autonomy she very well might disappear and you might never fucking hear from her again

which is a FASCINATING category of Woman-Creature imo

creekfiend

someone said it's also a cautionary tale about mistreating your wife and I think that's spot on especially for other related types of stories e.g. the crane wife. like I think these stories are very much Husband Anxiety Stories. the Woman-Creatures are black boxes whose interior experience it is impossible to know and who have strange and often seemingly arbitrary rules that you must follow or else they will disappear. idk. like. that's why I think that any empowering-to-women-ness qualities of these stories is incidental. I think they're externalized anxiety about coercive societal heterosexuality and the inability to truly Know one's wife in such circumstances.

whetstonefires

you also see a variant of this formula a lot (generally at the more literary end of the fairy tale space) where it's not a creature you capture, but a magical lady who picks you for seemingly arbitrary reasons, bettering your fortune enormously with her magic and wealth and second-hand status.

and then, for reasons usually at least slightly less arbitrary, fucks off again.

the husbandly anxiety here is more about not having access to coercion as an option.

creekfiend

oooo yes absolutely!

creekfiend

was just talking to Story about this and he told me about one folktale where a guy meets a beautiful woman at a lake and she brings a bountiful dowry of like one million fat cows and such and she is of course a fairy so she's like "my one requirement in our bargain is that if you strike me three times I will leave" and in many versions of the story the husband doesn't ""actually"" strike her -- each time it's something like, one 'strike' involves her forgetting her gloves inside and he walks out and taps her on the shoulder with her gloves, but she tells him that counts as striking her. this sort of thing. which is TRANSPARENTLY like "whoa wouldn't it be fucked up if your wife could enforce consequences for behavior she said was harmful, even if according to your cultural norms it was fine, and you didn't see it as a big deal?" like... lol. what if women could actually be the ones who decided whether or not any given action their husbands took against them was harmful? IMAGINE... PREDEY SCARY....

themisally

This is very interesting as a parallel to the genre of stories that are about Wife Anxiety, which are very often “what if your husband was a monster/beast” and very often end in “if you act in the correct way you can transform him so he isn’t a monster.”

Lots of this style ASSUMES that there is no way to enforce consequences (because of magic) but if you follow the rules and are a good wife he will not be a monster anymore. This also somewhat often has a man who is a monster because of another woman/witch. So it’s an interesting way to try to soothe both Wife Anxiety (marriage is going to be okay, trust us) and Husband Anxiety (it’s not really your fault you’re a monster - even if you did make that witch mad, she overreacted and a good woman could fix it).

ladyothelakes

The Night Shepard

A little comic from last spring I made that hasn’t really had a home anywhere.

I liked the idea of immortality leading to a reverence for life and the world around it, rather than nihilism and wanton destruction. It was also a comforting thought that if immortal beings walked among us, they could see the future of our hope become a reality someday… so it felt relevant again.

littlestpersimmon

we tore the moon asunder

japanpix

People in namahage costumes, Akita Prefecture

songsomi

South of Midnight (2025) dev. Compulsion Games

taylor-titmouse

what is the largest size a water slime, wild or "domesticated"/cultivated, can grow? would they be considered for like garden decoration? (i can see a water slime being a centerpiece filled with like fancy aquatic flowers/plants and shit)

that image was cute enough i wanted to draw it

i don't think there's a Known upper limit, but i think what the average person would think of as a 'big' blue slime would be the buffalo sized ones that migrate across the plains (often accompanied by families of trolls who rely on them for water and protect them like herd animals). but i imagine there's probably deep caves and wells and the bottoms of lakes and oceans where even bigger ones reside.