Let me tell you about... Norm the Genie

@sicknastyspades fairy world, not fairyland. but yes, that describes them pretty well.

jorgen von strangle, sub. haha wow... that'd be interesting. he'd probs have to do bottoming from the top or use magic to change his size, since practically everyone is smaller than him and i imagine that makes it hard to sub, mechanics-wise.

which reminds me of the theory that jorgen von strangle (and the tooth fairy and the few other large-sized fairies) are ancient fairy warriors or descendants of them. and that connects nicely with enforcing da rules as a hereditary thing. it also makes me wonder if jorgen and the tooth fairy have a fair bit of their family tree in common, haha.

 

@unknownanonymous Ah, sorry. I have a habit of referring to things very irreverently, but I know how annoying it can be when people consistently use the wrong words for things, so if it bothers you I'll make an effort to use the right terms.

Size is only an issue if you lack imagination! I mean, okay, usually there isn't quite as large a size difference as there is between Jorgen and basically everyone else, but still.
(Possibly tmi, but I really like pairings where there's a tiny partner topping the hell out of a tall muscular partner.)

Oh, that's a cool theory! What's the reasoning behind it?
I always just assumed that fairies could be whatever size they felt like being on the basis of magical shapeshifters, but if there's something else restricting it that could be interesting.

 

@sicknastyspades i don't know whether it bothered me or if i was worried that you forgot what it was called, haha. like, it wasn't serious Sperg Rage, just...

tmi is okay!

well, the ancient fairy warriors were introduced in wishology. they fought against the darkness and the anti-fairies, and then became the stars in the sky in order to watch out for and guard fairy world against the darkness. their wands are big like jorgen's and they are very muscled - again, like jorgen. that and also, all the large fairies seen so far on the show are Very Important Fairies so... considering that cosmo rules showed jorgen's position being hereditary, this explains why his family has the thing.

and yeah, it's hard to fit that in with magical shapeshifting but... i don't think any fairies have became jorgen's size (in fairy form) before, or that jorgen has became their size (in fairy form) before. (though he was their size when he was a kid, that is different 'cause, well, growth.) so maybe that is a limit - maybe biological, maybe socially enforced.

 

@unknownanonymous

That's neat! I don't think I ever knew much about the anti-fairies beyond "look at these characters who are like the characters you know acting in the opposite way!!" but I suppose it makes sense they would play a more involved role in the series mythology.
And yeah, if Jorgen is linked to that then it would make slightly more sense that the position is hereditary. Still pretty stupid, but in fairness they might not have expected that they'd end up putting the power in the hands of someone as colossally ill-suited to it as Jorgen seems to be.

Given that magic tends mix things up in interesting ways, social enforcement and biological enforcement might not be all that different for fairies. I remember a fantasy series I read as a kid, where height and status were so closely linked that being demoted would automatically drop you in height. I think the main character ended up being something like eight or nine feet tall after he climbed the ranks.
Huh, if being HUEG is indeed a sign of status then that might explain why Jorgen's so fixated on his muscles. He likes control and they're the physical evidence of how much control he has.

 

@sicknastyspades well, the anti-fairies cause bad luck - it's like a compulsion for them, which timmy used to his advantage against them in a few of their appearances - and used to be trapped in anti-fairy world (except on friday the 13th), before timmy accidentally set them free. and yeah, they are basically the opposites of fairies.

yeah, they probably wouldn't expect it. and jorgen would try really hard to hold onto it, even though or 'cause he's so ill-suited to it. those who want power shouldn't have it, that sorta thing.

and that would sure explain it. like, they aren't just muscles. they are literally his authority.

haha, it's amazing how much the worldbuilding in fop makes sense, considering that one of the common criticisms of the show is its lack of continuity. (which is a pretty valid criticism, haha. like, just check the retcon page on the fopwiki, it has quite the list...) fop is weird like that, haha.

 

@unknownanonymous Hmm, depending on how the bad-luck compulsion works then sealing them away might be a fair enough solution. If they're like I remember the pixies being, where they're more-or-less a functional society when left on their own and things only get fucked up when you try pushing them together with other people, then just keeping them seperate looks like the simplest way of keeping things happy. I mean, sucks that they're limited in what they can do, but it seems reasonable enough when the alternative means letting them break the universe.
If, on the other hand, the compulsion to cause bad luck extends to self-sabotage or otherwise forces them into situations where they're a danger to themselves, then what the fuck fairies why aren't you trying to help them? It's not right to force people into a box and say "well, that solves it" just because they're not a danger to you personally.

Something I notice is that a lot of non-continuity-heavy shows do this thing where it's very easy to fanwank a glorious elaborate edifice of a backstory. I think it's specifically because the writers aren't overly-concerned about making everything tie up, they leave a lot of loose ends and empty spaces and then people end up coming in and filling those up.
I've read some very lengthy metas building conspiracy theories out of one or two throwaway lines from a series, and they never fail to be beautiful to me.

 

@sicknastyspades it works the former way, basically. though the fairies do seem to be cruel to the anti-fairies, beyond what is simply required when it comes to keeping them in. and the bad luck compulsion tends to come in when they encounter traditional bad luck things like spilled salt and broken mirrors. like, that's when it's most clearly a compulsion. though they frequently do plans to cause bad luck, escape from prison or anti-fairy world, destroy the world... stuff like that.

they and the pixies could manage the magical creature version of the olympics just fine, though if you don't count the cheating they both did. (which happened once timmy made a bet with them, that the fairies could beat them without jorgen von strangle, who was essentially stealing all the fairies' opportunities to participate. before, when jorgen was being a jerk and acting like the only player on the fairies' team, they didn't bother cheating.)

and the anti-fairies (or at least anti-cosmo) seem to want godkids, despite probs being rather unsuited for it.

yep. and it is amazing. like, stuff fits together really well despite... not being built with that intention at all.

 

@unknownanonymous So yeah, that seems like a reasonable enough response then. If someone's stated goal is "fuck everything up for everyone else" then they don't get to play in the ball pit.

 

@sicknastyspades i guess. something about "the anti-fairies must be imprisoned for the sake of the universe" still rubs me the wrong way, though. that's the type of thing it's hard for me to really see people doing with the pure enough intentions - especially considering how jorgen is and how the fairies are towards the various other magical species. and it seems like it might cause resentment in them, which just goes and gives them more motivation to fuck shit up. yeah...
imprisoning people for the sake of the universe just seems really easy to fuck up, haha.

 

@unknownanonymous It's certainly not a nice solution, but it's a functional one and a better deal than the average inherently-always-evil species gets. Ideally the fairies would be trying to negotiate a situation where the anti-faires interact with the universe without immediately trying to break it, but as it is I'm just pleased the anti-fairies are being left relatively unharmed as opposed to straight-up murdered. I have very low standards for morality when it comes to media aimed at kids.
I mean, possibly it will cause resentment, but when "gonna break the universe" is your starting point a little more resentment one way or the other doesn't seem like it would do much.

Norm, in comparison, doesn't seem like he's being malevolent for shits 'n' giggles; as far as I can tell from my memories of the show and the things you've said, he just wants freedom and revenge and is otherwise not particularly invested in ruining everything. That's the sort of motivation where fostering resentment makes sense as an issue. (He's also in a worse situation compared to the anti-fairies, because they at least have a degree of freedom and company within their prison whereas Norm's completely isolated most of the time and forced into magic slavery for the rest of it.)

Imprisoning people certainly isn't ideal, but neither is letting people run around hurting other people without consequences.

 

@sicknastyspades "straight-up murdered"? what kids shows do you watch?!
also, magical creatures are immortal and anti-fairies are the counterparts of fairies (thus if they die, the fairies probably die), so "straight-up murdered" probs isn't even on the table, for reasons that have nothing to do with how moral the fairies are.

one of the things that gets me is it being the entire species imprisoned, not on a case-by-case basis. like... yeah...

and yeah, that's a good point.

norm's isolation and how that combines with his slavery is very fascinating to me. like, i literally can't think of any other character in the whole of fiction with that particular combination of circumstances, and it provides interesting challenges when writing and headcanoning and stuff. and lots of angst. just yeah... he really has a lack of actual positive relationships in his life, which i bet really fucks him up. and might tie into stuff like him getting stockholm syndrome really quickly in three wishes. 'cause jorgen really was paying more attention to him and being kinder to him than most people were, even though he didn't get what norm said about consent.

sometimes i wonder if i identify with his isolation, even though it seems kinda ridiculous, considering that i do get positive attention from people much more than he does - even if my anxiety gets in the way of talking to people (fuck tumblr and brain chemicals) and i rarely get chances to sperg with people about norm the genie. like, i should not feel isolated, dammit.

related to something we were saying a while back on the thread: now i'm like, "what if fic in which an anti-fairy does end up doing self-sabotage or species-sabotage with their bad luck compulsion?"
'cause i assume it's not downright impossible and may just be Not Shown as a result of it not being important to the canon narrative and not being something that

 

@unknownanonymous Ah, the "straight-up murdered" thing would be another case of me wording things in a flippant manner without actually meaning that specific thing which I just said. I really need to find a way of distinguishing that flavour of me-saying-something-weird from the flavour where I'm talking seriously but my brain is making weird connections, because even people who know me well get tripped up on that.

The idea of them being linked is interesting and I did not know/consider that, but if it's the case then it would definitely be a factor in how the fairies respond to the issue.
Are there any examples in canon of anti-fairies being willing to not fuck things up? "People with bad instincts who are willing to work to better themselves" is a very different situation from "people with bad instincts who ain't even give a fuck about it" and need to be dealt with differently. I was assuming the anti-fairies were exclusively the latter, but if there are examples of the former in there then the fairies need to reconsider how they're dealing with the anti-fairies. Locking people in a box might be a reasonable solution when they have no interest in not ruining the universe, but it's definitely not something to be defaulted to when people are willing to try interacting on a non-destructive level.

Somehow I managed to forget the complete dearth of positive relationships Norm has. In his first two episodes he talked to... what, four people? And his relationships with all of them were pretty negative. I'm not an expert, but I'm pretty sure that's on the list of things which can fuck people up really badly even before you start factoring in the slavery and the however many years spent completely alone in a lamp.

I don't know how normal it is for people to feel isolated when they're not, but I've seen people discussing it so I know it's definitely a thing which happens sometimes even if I can't comment on how common it is. I think "inability to discuss something you're passionate about" is probably decent grounds for feeling isolated? I would not know.
I am probably one of the worst people to discuss the topic of isolation with, because as far as I can tell I don't experience it. But I know other people do, and it doesn't seem like a nice thing at all.

Man, sure would be depressing if the anti-fairies were as bad for themselves as they were for everyone else and the fairies just didn't care.

 

@sicknastyspades haha, it's alright. it lead to more good thoughts, after all.

fop is not exactly a show with lots of nuance, so i'd go for "no." but when you consider that obviously not all fairies are Good and Pure, surely there are anti-fairies that aren't malicious and are willing to try to deal with their problems. which the fairies ignore the existence of.

also, before the bet put stuff the anti-fairies wanted on the line in the fairly oddlympics, they were willing to play fair. after all, they did wanna know which species was better. once anti-cosmo could get timmy as a godchild and make him wear evil shorts, they started cheating. having ALL the trophies and stuff didn't really matter to them. the bet, however, introduced things that did. and that applies to both the pixies and the anti-fairies, though, those two species obviously wanted different things.

yep. though i personally headcanon that crocker actually liked norm, and was just really bad at expressing it and truly understanding what norm wanted and why he wanted it. like, the scene when norm leaves... how crocker says, "norm? norm?"
(though this might just be me shipping norm/crocker.)
and yeah, even though some people are actually nice to him in fairy idol, they aren't exactly long-term friendships and he has reasons (or what he thinks are reasons) to be suspicious of their motives. well, not the genie women who were fawning over him or whoever he was dating as much (one brief scene, we don't actually see whoever he's dating and he just says "my dear," no explicitly gendered language), but... there's chester, who is just nice and kind to everyone (but never thinks, "hey! i should set the genie free!" and there's timmy and his fairies, who likely were nice to him only 'cause he gave them gifts in an attempt to get what he wanted, which ended up hurting them.

thanks! feeling isolated is a sorta hard thing to discuss, since i don't wanna guilt-trip the people i do interact with. they are not obliged to interact with me or fulfill me or anything like that, after all.

yeah, it would.

 

@unknownanonymous Well, nuance aside, a lot of kid's shows still have that One Good Example of an always-evil species.
(Which usually fucks me up even worse than having the species be uniformly awful, because at least in that situation you can pretend it's the shitty environment (or the Dark Lord's evil magic, or their evil computer programming, or whatever) screwing them up. But when there's One Good Example I'm reminded that kid's shows give no fucks about anything and if you're Good you're expected to Just Know what goodness is and want to achieve it. And then you usually end up sacrificing yourself for the heroes because we can't have a member of an evil race running around being less-than-evil all the time or kids might start to think things like "what if it's wrong for the heroes to indiscriminately murder people?".)

Crocker might well have liked Norm, but I think the issue there was more that Norm very obviously did not like Crocker. Which, obviously, brings us to the situation where Norm is never going to have any good relationships because he is never going to react well to slavery - I mean literally that was the whole reason he disliked Crocker, he and Crocker both wanted to do Thing but Crocker kept trying to do Thing in ways Norm didn't want to do it, and Norm couldn't avoid that because he has zero ability to do Thing without Crocker because genie slavery - when then brings us back to just free the fucking genie already you assholes.

If isolation is an issue you could try making a thread here about it? You could probably get some good advice on things like "how to express that you feel isolated without getting guilt-trippy about it".

 

@sicknastyspades haha, wow, fop doesn't even have that. like, it never occurred to them to put that in ever, for any species. yet, it seems pretty obvious that such examples must exist.

maybe it's 'cause no one can really die in fop. they can vanish for no real reason and never be spoken of again, but they never die.

and yeah, that's basically the issue. crocker just... doesn't really get it - in a non-malicious, brainweirdy sorta way. he's just so focused on what he wants that, well, everything else just fades out or something.

also, that reminds me of this norm/crocker fic, which is, imo, the best norm/crocker fic ever to norm/crocker. like, the author, he really gets it. better than i do, really.

(as for why crocker doesn't wish norm free in that fic, the author headcanons that genies can't be set free by wishing. doesn't really answer the question of why he didn't try, but... eh, crocker doesn't always make the Best Decisions.)

well, i've talked about it in the needing validation thread. which was what lead to the creation of this norm the genie thread, haha. so yeah... i'm not sure if creating that thread would do much.

 

@unknownanonymous As far as I can remember, FOP was a prett ysimple show and the focus was more on "how is Timmy's wish going to get fucked up this time?" than the worldbuilding. So I guess it makes sense they might not want to bother with showing other species as anything other than antagonists.
(The dying part isn't strictly necessary, but the one-good-example-of-an-evil-race sacrificing themselves or otherwise being removed at the end of the episode happens a lot. There was an example of the nonfatal kind in the 2k3 TMNT cartoon which was really notable to me. ...not gonna discuss it unless you're actually interested in that because I can drone on about that sort of stuff for ages.)

That fic was cute. It made me believe in the pairing, which is all I really ask for out of shipping fic. I actually felt kinda disappointed when I hit the end and it hadn't been resolved.
(I'm actually less bothered than I could be by Crocker not trying to set Norm free, because it makes sense for what I know of him as a character. Like, iirc, his backstory was that he used to have Cosmo and Wanda as godparents and it was losing them that was the trigger for the *!!FAIRY GODPARENTS!!* stuff. So it makes sense that, say, "if I free Norm he will be GONE FOREVER" might be a conclusion he would come to even if the reasoning for it is mostly subconscious at that point. And of course, it helps that Norm wasn't emphatically objecting to the entire situation the way he was in the other fic with Jorgen.)

 

@sicknastyspades yep.

also, i don't think the fop 'verse gives that many opportunities for people to make sacrifices like that, really, fatal or not. problems are usually taken care of with wishes or cleverness or loopholes, not that kinda stuff.

yeah, it sure is cute. i'm hoping it will get updated one day, but that's kinda unlikely.

exactly!

and on a less magical front, crocker had lost (or never been able to have, depending on one's headcanons) a romantic relationship with principal waxelplax as a result of his obsession with fairies, so... there'd be yet another example of people leaving him, that would make him afraid to set norm free. and i think there are a few other romantic partners he had that also left, for the same reason. he also lost the entire city of dimmsdale's love for him when jorgen wiped their memories. so yeah... quite a few reasons for him to be worried about people leaving him...

it also helps that norm wasn't really pushing the idea, perhaps 'cause he knew it wouldn't work and/or 'cause, as he thought at one point, with crocker, he was pretty much free.

 

@unknownanonymous I love magical loopholes a whole bunch. I wrote a lengthy ramble about them here, and then I deleted it all because it was completely off-topic and no1curr.

There are few things sadder than a wip doomed to be forever ip.

I can't remember a ton about Crocker, but I do remember that the impression I got was mostly generic evil crazy teacher. Which, now that I think about it, was kind of disappointing, because they could have done so much more with him as a character if they'd gone for "this poor sad fairy-obsessed man is the potential future for any kid with fairy godparents", because the more I think about it the more the whole fairy godparent situation looks deliberately set up to mess with kids' heads.
Like, you take a miserable kid. And you give them magic fairies. And you teach them to solve all their problems by wishing them away. Then when they grow up, you take the fairies away. Now you've got a miserable adult who has been taught to look for fast superficial materialistic solutions to problems, rather than relying on life skills like hard work and conscientiousness. Oh, and also if you screw up the mindwiping in any way the miserable adult also has magic ptsd!
...and then those miserable adults will produce more miserable kids who will be given fairies and huh this all makes sense if you assume the fairies are some kind of parasitic lifeform and get some sort of benefit from being attached to wish-making children, huh. Was there ever an in-canon reason given for why magical creatures spend all their time granting wishes for children?

I think Norm's reactions were the main thing making that fic okay. Like, when Crocker installed that portal - that would have been a huge violation of boundaries if Norm didn't want him around, but Norm's reaction was to think "oh, neat" and feel touched by the gesture. I've been reading a lot of really creepy fanfic recently (my otp does not have much in the way of non-creepy options) and this thread reminded me how nice it is when gestures are appreciated rather than being thrust at someone who doesn't want them.
Still kind of depressing if Norm considers "attached to someone I don't actively despise" to be the closest he gets to freedom, though. There's a big difference between being able to do something but not wanting to vs not being able to do something at all.

 

@sicknastyspades magical loopholes are awesome, and i'm totally up for your lengthy ramble.

sometimes i wonder what fop would be like if it had actual story arcs, like steven universe. 'cause, like, it certainly has the potential for it, all the elements are there. they just aren't really used to their full potential.

i personally disagree about crocker being portrayed as a generic evil, crazy teacher but that probably is the result of me spending lots of time thinking this show and reading stuff into it. that and me mostly remembering and focusing on the episodes and moments that actually have more in depth and unique characterization. and developing headcanons and feels based on stuff that might've just been little jokes (like in one ep, crocker says, "i'm not a people person! i'm barely even a person!" and just, yeah... it becomes really easy to connect that to ableism and how crocker is likely affected by it.)

but yeah, the show never really goes deep into him as a potential future for other fairy godkids.

though channel chasers definitely demonstrates how the cycle of miserable adults having miserable kids getting perpetuated. in that special, timmy has two kids when he is an adult, who also have cosmo and wanda as their fairies. and they are babysat by a robot version of vicky, which was made by vicky.

and in a fairly oddmovie: grow up timmy turner timmy deliberately keeps on doing everything he did when he was ten, like going to elementary school, and avoiding adult things, up till he's twenty-three, in order to keep his fairy godparents. which gets him lots of hate from fandomy peeps that just don't get it. hate which often strikes me as at least a bit ableist.

like, come on, guys, he did this in order to keep his fairies (which considering that he has deliberately kept vicky as his babysitter the few times he had the chance to shake her off, 'cause he believed vicky making him miserable was essential to him having fairy godparents, makes complete sense with his characterization. he just really cares about his fairies, as his family, not just as wish-granters), not for whatever weirdaass reason you guys came up with. (he's not a perv, he's not dumb, he's not a total manchild, it isn't about that at all. he just wants to keep his fairy family.)

when you put it that way, fairy godparents seem rather like kyuubey from madoka. which reminds me of how i've been thinking about a fop/madoka crossover, though i'm still not entirely sure how i might go about it.

and hmmm... it doesn't really say, actually. i mean, in fairly oddbaby, there was a line about fairies having godkids 'cause they were banned from having biological children after cosmo's birth, but it wasn't exactly definitive. so yeah...

and when you put it like that, it really demonstrates how personal boundaries are. which isn't something everyone - including me, though i try - really thinks about properly. people mostly assume that other people's boundaries are around the place where theirs are and it ends up causing problems when they guess wrong. problems which can be fixed, if the people involved aren't assholes, haha. then again, this is something i've been thinking about lately, for reasons of my own, so... yeah...

 

@unknownanonymous Mostly it just involved me going off on moebius tangent reacharounds and babbling a lot about how I really enjoy the idea of fairy/demon creatures which are fundamentally incapable of lying and yet totally rock at deception.
There's a book series I like where there's a minor/reoccurring antagonist who got sentenced to death but managed to get the king to agree she'd be allowed to see one more sunrise before she was executed, and then spent the next however long living underground where the sunrise-light couldn't touch her. Stuff like that is all flavours of hellacious.

Yeah, FOP seems like the sort of show which could have done arc plots really well. It's a shame they didn't bother.

Eh, your judgement on the matter of characterisation is probably a lot better than someone who is mostly going off old memories of the show. And paying attention to the moments which look like they can offer some solid characterisation over the stuff which was obviously just done for a joke is definitely an approach which has merit. (I mean, there's an issue there where people can end up ignoring anything which conflicts with there vision of hoq the character ~should be~, but I don't think that's an issue here. I'm just very bitter about Eridan stans and their refusal to admit my fave is problematic.)

...oh. That's really depressing. I wonder how many kids with fairies end up like that? Speaking of, how many examples of adults-who-had-fairies-as-children are there in the show? Or is Crocker the only one shown?

The more I hear about fairy world, the more I think it sounds pretty dystopic (in the original sense of dystopia, where everything looks utopian on the surface but is fucked-up underneath). Encouraging people to cling to their childhood for as long as possible, no support whatsoever for those who lose their fairies, a completely nonsensical system of laws laid out by a guy with control issues who was elected due to birthright rather than any actual merit... man, if the writers ever wanted to do a serious story in the 'verse, there's more than enough material there.