But what are the Fairy moves based on? Cuteness and some kind of magic that doesn't fall into the Psychic or Ghost or Dragon categories?
I liked this response in part:
Maybe they draw from 'light' energy or in general just magic for their moves? I mean most of these moves just seem mystical in general. I mean, it's kind of the same concept as dark pokemon, where do they get their moves from... the darkness?
On dark types... well, maybe not the darkness as much as it being a style of fighting. Dark, dirty, not clean, etc. (Similarly, Fighting types don't have power from Fighting, they're just good at it.) Look at the movesets for Dark type Pokemon - Bite, Crunch, Sucker Punch, Faint Attack, Foul Play, Beat Up... there's nothing noble in those moves at all. It's a style relying on dirty tricks. You could then argue that's why they beat Psychic types - while they beat Fighting (brain over brawn), they can't outwit rough and tough tricks like that.
Back to fairy types... well, I suppose it's their own kind of magic. There's a bunch of folklore, especially in Japanese culture, that fits the general idea, and there's also the notion here and there that fairies/faeries are able to defeat dragons. My personal thinking is that they also have some tie to nature, rather than being ghostly or 'psychic' in nature.
Given that, I think a lot of their advantages make sense - they beat Dark and Fighting with their 'natural' magic powers, and Dragons is from the apparent basis in various folklore (that and let's not forget the gameplay reason Game Freak stated they were in as well. =p). But Fire is not an easy thing to tame and a danger to nature, as is poison, so they suffer to that. Steel can be thought of as manmade (Steelix, Magnemite and Scizor, among the first Steel types, certainly require Metal Coats for evolution ingame or are based of manmade objects, or the like), and hence foreign to the Fairy types. Bug being resisted by it is curious, but maybe one can think of fairies as a different sort of natural force than Grass types, more knowing about simple minded Bug creatures.
I feel it should've been Light type instead of Fairy. A Light type is easier to work with.
...How so? I don't quite follow, really (I think a Light type doesn't work as an obvious counter to Dark type given Fighting is already arguably that counter, but that's another discussion, and if you mean actual light, how would it differ from a few fire/electric types?)