Why Fairytales Get Away With Being So Weird
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Yes, fairytales are weird and dark. Sometimes they make no sense. But, by the same token, those precise things are also what makes them feel so magical.
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Rad
Sounds like a magical deal!
i favor simplicity in a foundation. where the foundation is the only hard rule, with the system being developed to work around this hard rule, or take advantage of it
Dude I'm judging by the episode picture that you were going to talk about living food You Know like from cloudy with a chance to meetballs 2 and bugsnax.
Do tell me how the nature caused itself. It is only rational to assume that what caused nature would transcend it. That it would be supernatural.
I would like to highlight that "magic that makes no sense" can still be readily found in modern comedies and horror stories.
magic makes no sense is different to magic is not consistent. alot of magic in horror is just not consistent.
The easiest modern example to point at were two different episodes of Edd, Ed n Eddy. In one episode Rolf is quickly and fearfully burying a gaudy but cool looking golden phone. The way he buries it is clearly some ritual we don’t understand but Rolf does. Rolf tells the Ed’s to stay back because the phone is cursed. Not believing them Eddy takes it back and immediately it starts ringing despite the old phone not being plugged in, the moment Eddy answers it bad things happen to him practically out of no where. No matter who else answers only Eddy is punished. People have theorized how the curse works but no actual answer is given.
Another is a Magic Boomerang that flies in from no where. Whoever holds it is instantly transformed into the opposite of who they are. The wimpy Jimmy becomes strong and confident, Ed becomes smart, Eddy becomes Motherly, Edd becomes a nudist hippie. We don’t have an answer how or why this does what it’s doing and Edd just gives a tiny bit of trivia that some cultures believed boomerangs were magic.
@@Broomer52 Since when was Ed Edd and Eddy about magic?
@@maxzapsgamingzepzeap2337 it’s not about magic it just had two episodes with unexplained magic in it
Honestly I think this kind of wild magic or unexplained magic can be just as compelling as stories with hard magic systems. It makes perfect sense for supernatural occurrences to not always adhere to any sort of logical pattern.
Honestly “soft” magic is my favorite type of magic in stories. I love it when something weird happens and wverybody in the story is just mildly annoyed or unimpressed.
I love how everyone in “The Gingerbread Man” isn’t disturbed by this little living cookie, but just trying to catch him for their own purposes (which vary depending on the iteration).
I figure the caveat here is there must only be one instance of said magic per story. Even TF's examples follow that rule.
Because when it happens over and over again, the story becomes word salad.
Like Benjamin Button!
"Владимир Семёныч, ну что вы как паук?" ©
I think another example of "magic not making sense" would be the film "Groundhog Day". There's never an explanation as to why he relives the same day over and over. It's just something that happens.
there was an (intentionally) cut scene explaining it, basically a generic witch lady is like "i put a curse on you!" cus phil is a bit of a dick to her son, but they set it to be recorded right at the end of production, so that they could run out of time and have to release it without the explanation
this is cus originally the producers thought the audience would need an explanation for the time loop, but the directors didnt want to do that
It's not even self-consistent since he does make it past midnight one day.
And over the garden wall, shit make no sense but it can bait thousands upon thousands of theorist to find the answer. The closest one we got is they're in purgatory because they almost drawn while running away from cops during Halloween night.
Little nightmare franchise approach dark fairytale the same way so is bramble the mountain king.
There's always something charming about shit that don't make any sense tho, like watching dream ore stuff.
PTSD?
Time magic
I like to imagine Frankie encountered the Foundry over an invitation by the Telloids, stayed for gentle conversation for reasearch on this transmition but stayed long enough to see them perform the video live and sneak through the intro. Wonderful.
Does she have a channel? If so what is it?
youtube.com/@abitfrank
@@endymionselene165 it’s youtube.com/@abitfrank
@@endymionselene165 abitfrank
@@narnilphilomythus2821 thank you.
It's also a solid basis for horror fiction: Bad Things happening for no discernible reason in ways that make no sense is in itself horrifying. (It's quite common in horror manga: see, Junji Ito)
And as soon as it is explained somehow, the fear is less.
@@danielled8665well I don't entirely agree with that sometimes an explanation makes things scarier depending on the scenario
@@siramaytheshowgundragon yeah we know "the thing" is an alien but it doesn't make it less terrifying
@@siramaytheshowgundragon Do you have any examples of this in media? because most of the time i prefer the unexplained part, so i wanna know what are the exceptions
@@nandanthony well yah but I'm not much of a horror fan so it's limited andi feel like at the end of the day it can run down to subjective opinion but like the more you know about a thing the more you think about it where as if a movie has a thing like "hears a demon, it's evil the end" I will quickly disregard it but if it has complex lore and history and development it stays with me as I'm left to ponder all I know like forbidden knowledge
Mans shadow be like:"Yo your life sucks, imma head out"
Man:"Well thats annyoing...oh well, i'm shadowless now."
Peter Pan: You can't just do that, You have to sew it for your life!!!!
And that's the energy why his shadow left.
Shadow was so right!
Whoops I'm now an Ascian!
The Shadow of my favourite fairy tale, ever. I've analyzed it so much. There's actually TWO explanations on why the shadow ia ble to leave, actually. First time I've seen Tale Foundry miss the mark.
In the book "one hundred years of solitud", one of the prime examples of magical realism, one of the characters dies, and chapters later, he comes back because "he was bored in dead"
lol that just reminds me of this sci-fi story where a rogue AI spends the better part of a century orchestrating events ultimately to position itself to leap through a black hole and ascend beyond reality into the cosmic only to get bored 5 minutes later and promptly begin searching for ways it can return. Ultimate hype disappointment.
@ScionStorm what is the name of it?
@@alluminium9656 Neal Asher's Transformation trilogy. Mostly the last book.
Teaser for the last book The Infinity Engine:
In the outskirts of space, and the far corners of the Polity civilization, complex dealings are in play.
Several forces continue to pursue the deadly and enigmatic Black AI named Penny Royal, none more dangerous than the Brockle, a psychopathic forensics AI and criminal who has escaped the Polity’s confinements and is upgrading itself in anticipation of a deadly showdown, becoming ever more powerful and intelligent.
Aboard Factory Station Room 101, the long lost behemoth war factory that birthed Penny Royal, groups of humans, Prador aliens, and AI war drones grapple for control. The stability of the ship is complicated by the arrival of a Gabbleduck known as the Weaver, the last living member of the ancient and powerful Atheter alien race.
What would an Atheter want with the complicated dealings of Penny Royal? Are the Polity and prador forces playing right into the Black AI’s hand, or is it the other way around? Set pieces align in the final book of Neal Asher’s action-packed Transformation trilogy, pointing to a showdown on the cusp of the Layden’s Sink black hole, inside of which lies a powerful secret, one that could destroy the entire Polity civilization.
Mood
Solitude *
"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. And contrariwise, what it is, it wouldn't be, and what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?" -Alice to Dinah, prior to her Adventures in Wonderland (animated film, 1951)
I'm little bit having headache reading the lines even rereading it still confused by the last part lol, brilliant 😂😂😂😂
Alice, the Chaos Cultist
@@williansnobre Alice Wonderland is a chaos god, confirmed
I’m surprised I understood what that means, at least when I read it the second time-
@@belynda1224 Lewis Carroll was _The_ math and logic nerd
One of my favorite examples of thematic magic is a rather obscure old movie called 'Halloween Town.' There's a quote from the movie that perfectly explains it's thematic magic system, "Magic is really very simple, all you need to do is want something, and let yourself have it!"
I love Halloween Town! Peak childhood nostalgia
Go marnie its just an evil spell that freezes us 🥶🥶🥶
Trapa - Apart
bruh old? obscure??? it was a disney halloween classic series from the late 90s to early 00s you cant call those oooold or ill be old!
@@Beefaroni_Bert Well that was 30-20 years ago
This legitimizes my decision to mix in "irrational" magic with my "science" magic.
What you just described is mixing hard magic systems with soft ones
Ooh l like this concept. It's like, "This is what we know and understand, and this is what happens what we don't understand."
@@bigawesomewatermelon9511 Just like actual science.
@@deadheat1635 indeed
somehow this reminds me on one of my characters: Dr. Weird. an "evil" scientist from the future who travelled to the past because nobody in his time period would take him seriously.
he uses unconventional techniques, that occasionally break the system, by using anti-logic. similar to how anti-matter negates matter, anti-logic defies logic and can therefore bypass the limits of what should be possible.
naturally there's no logical explanation to how it works, it just does.
Sometimes you need to step back from the scientific method and embrace the engineering method: repeated tests find WHAT works, but not necessarily HOW it works.
The good ol historical method of trial and error.
Folks often forget that our ancestors figured shit out without really understanding shit.
Damascus steel? Greek fire? Roman concrete?
Ancient folks were damn impressive with only trial and error. Our scientific methods and ability to predict phenomena is magic in comparison lmao.
once you've done enough trial and error, you can see a pattern emerge and use the pattern that works instead of t&e
One of the funniest facts about the gingerbreadman is that wikipedia categorizes it as an "Edible Golum"
Some birds can speak, but like a great man once told a Gungan, "the ability to speak does not make one intelligent."
Intelligence is a prerequisite for the ability to speak.
@@elio7610 but not for mimicry.
Thematic magic sounds really cool. More modern fantasy should impalent this more.
*implement
Is that what you meant? 🙂
I always thought they made that cookie just to, you know, eat it and that’s it.
I once read a short book that pretty much cut off those parts as just "a woman baking cookie then it fled & got chased by anyone until fox ated it."
I'm afraid you may have forgotten one of the most interesting story, that might be defined as fantasy and/or fairytale. The story of Baron Munchausen.
Riding on cannonballs, pulling himself and his horse out of the water by his own hair and travelling to the moon (in the 1800's) are among his more believable feats.
Yes, I said more believable and I mean it.
And how can he do all this? Because he is Baron Munchausen. That's all.
Sounds like the 1800s version of those Chuck Norris memes that were popular in the 2000s
@@Gloomdrake Yes, yes it does
To me, this is what magic *actually* is. The moment you have a magic "system", you're closer to a game system or to sci fi than to magic.
I like how you worded this.
A magic system refers to the systemic relationship between the author, characters, and readers. It's about how the author solves or causes problems with magic as a plot device and how readers engage with it, such as being surprised or being able to predict outcomes because if established rules.
That said, no, magic having rules doesn't make it sci-fi. If baking a cookie brings it to life, and then the character bakes a batch and they come to life, that's the story making magic follow a rule. We know what they can do with magic and we know exactly what'll happen when they do it. Even if they explain that there are runes in the oven or fairy dust in the cookie dough, it's still magic.
If you have a story weres theres a kind of magic it needs to be bound by rules otherwise is just a convenient plot decide for the writer to do whatever he wants and that my friend is a shit, why that happend? How knows, why it dint happend aggain ? I dont know maybe the writer flip coin, magic needs to be consistent that means rules otherwise is not a story just a childs rambling
@@muntu1221
Which is why you have magic either be something commonplace but relatively limited in power, or powerful but limited to a handful of individuals who have to adhere to their own set of rules.
And just because those rules and limits aren’t thoroughly explained like Brian Sanderson does, doesn’t mean the author can’t have a few post it notes of rough rules and limits for their own reference.
i prefer when magic is just science we dont full grasp from beings we fail to comprehend. the fairy godmother saying bibbity bobbity boo and turning a pumpkin into a carriage or a living cookie boy being akin to eldritch horror is funnier that way.
spontaneous little guy generation was actually a very common phenomenon in ye olde times. Sometimes people would think, "hm what if there was a little guy," and then there would be. True story.
Just leaving a general praise comment for the channel. You guys make think about writing again.
That getting a book off the shelf intro was so immersive and definitely got me wanting to watch more :)
New relaxing outro too! 😊
According to earlier versions of LRRH, the Big Bad Wolf IS himself magical, because he somehow manages to keep Little Red and Grandma inside him, alive, until Grandpa rescues them. That makes even less sense than him talking.
Still, no-one seems to be melting down over the fact that Porco Rosso never bothered to explain why Porco was a pig-man...
@thoughtengine
he just swallowed them whole i guess
@@chongwillson972 Which isn't remotely possible.
@@thoughtengine it might be possible if his he can eat things like a frog ,which he might be able to do somehow , he is already weird as it is , with him being to walk and talk and that not be odd.
@@chongwillson972 A frog is about the size of my hand. Or less. A wolf's jaws do open that wide. They don't open six feet wide, though. Which is only the first hurdle. If he eats little Red and Grandma he's going to have to do so in literal bite-size pieces. They ain't coming back.
As I recall, the original story has Red and Grandma eaten and done with, it is a cautionary tale after all. The part where the woodsman with his ax cuts the wolf apart and they are alive was tacked on later to put the story in an anthology for children. The original is interesting to research, it is French, and there was an actual court case where a hunter with a trained wolf was suspected of a series of murders of young women. We might make a true crime novel of that, sixteenth century peasants made a cautionary tale, with lots of sexual symbolism (most of that removed as well !)
In the talmud there's a story about some Rabbis who were hungry but had nothing to eat and they made a goat out of clay. Then the prayed and the goat became -somewhat like Pinocchio- a real goat. Then they slaughtered it, and ate it. Happy ending
I'm more attached to the last point, magic doesn't always need an origin or a scientific text book to explain it, but some concrete rules are helpful. Fables have talking animals, I can't say why but it helps give them human-like personality and sets the plot in motion, it also makes the world feel more charming especially when they tend to act more like friendly animals than people, or even deeper you can make it a thought experiment into how their instincts explain their actions. This is separate from the world where people spontaneously combust if they eat buckwheat pancakes, no real sense and it doesn't seem to work on some days and everyone feels less happy about the world when it's unreliable. The pythagorean theorem is useless so science never advanced very far (not even in a non-euclidian way but an observer effect way, acting or measuring the environment immediately changes the rules).
Over explaining your magic system can be harmful to having it feel interesting or some elements are added for the sake of the story and an allegory. Tolkien made a full pantheon of spirits but what's mainly important is Gandalf has magic to do what he needs yet is limited, he's powerful and knowledgeable but primarily there to inspire men to be better and fight their battle. He's even just as vulnerable to corruption as men, Saruman or anyone else, therefore the Hobbits as a simple small folk are helpful but if mislead can end up as Gollum. It's only scratching the surface of the grander world and it doesn't all get explained why it is, but it can be understood and all works towards the story and themes.
How about one more, Full Metal Alchemist is a world where science and magic are the same, alchemy uses equivalent exchange and knowledge to do just about anything. With the right creativity and some circles for more advanced formulas the alchemists can do just about anything. The main conflict now is bringing the dead back to life, for what can equal the value of a human soul, and philosopher stones which have immense power but are created with the sacrifice of cities worth of people. To gain anything you need to apply yourself and put forward something of value, but also consider if what you're working for is worth it in the end or is at the cost of others, and even how that applies to governments that have their entire country at their disposal.
Might I suggest the works of Patricia A. McKillip? Her stories almost always focus on mages of some sort or another, their learning and using magic, but the magic itself is neither rationalized or systemized, despite there often being magic schools. The magic comes across more like art, and is often tied to music or poetry, or, as one of her characters puts it, a way of seeing the world.
Terry Pratchett fixed this problem by making his magic system based on the power of story itself. It allowed his Discworld series to be both deeply magical but also evolve into to explain the difference between science, technology and fantasy. In later books Discworld is said to be rich in Narrativism - the fundemental element of story which is why belief is enough to make something happen. This provides the 'hard magic' system used by Wizards and Witches being entirely based on making something happen because 'the story' needed it to. This is contrasted in the Science of Discworld with their wizards exploring our universe which is devoid of Narrativsm and thus follows it's own rules that often sounds like fantasy to laypeople when you get into things like evolution or quantum physics.
Loving that A WIZARD DID IT is becoming a thing across my fave TH-cam channels after so long 🤣
Both systems have their place IMO. I think magic that has some rules behind it and is grounded is great in longer stories. Like multi-book novel series. They need grounded magic, otherwise it can just become an actual or an expected plot-device. When the heroes are facing an impossible situaton the audience will asks: Why didn't they solve it with magic? If magic is grounded then they'll know exactly why they didn't solve it with magic. And the writer won't be able to use it as a copout solution to all problems. Which will eventually lower the stakes of every situation.
I think this is why the SCP Foundation is so appealing. It’s full of magical objects and beings that scientists try to understand, but simply cannot, as every layer reveal another layer of impossibilities
my favorite story is probably "Ronald Regan being cut while talking". yeah they experiment on it but they dont even try to bring rationality on why Tape is different on every watch or why there is an entity lurking in the background. It just happens. Premise is oddly specific but it works on SCP worldbuilding
Before you even finished your intro, I was wanting to say: This is why I have such a massive beef with that certain kind of person who hyper focuses on EXACTLY _how_ things happen, and insist stories are bad if they lack these explanations.
I'd agree that few fairy tales live up to modern story standards, but the arbitrary "how" of something is so unnecessary in so many kinds of stories now, just like it has been for MILLENNIA. That obsession is practically as nonsensical as the fairytale logic they decry.
Following their criteria of criticism with full consistency would lead them to discard every true, real life story -- as in everything that has ever happened to anyone who's real -- because we don't know how or why gravity exists. Many ideas exist, but all we _know_ is just some of what it does.
And the same part of me that loves mind bending fairytale logic, absolutely _loves_ that absurd stance. It's _so_ delightful! I just wish it wasn't used to deride the stories which understand that some perceived rules are just that.
One of my new favorites, I’ll be coming back to this for sure!!
This is an approach I’ve had to use in order to refocus my own longstanding worldbuilding project (which is based off of fairytales). It got to a point where I was trying to analyze and categorize everything from mythical creatures to what exactly magic can do, which burnt me out and made things feel super…off.
By throwing a lot of explanations/material out (for instance, dragons being extinct instead of a daily, looming threat), everything feels loose and free again.
I’m reminded of the Hidetaka Miyazaki video and how one of his principles is letting the world *be*, without a Dune-length compendium of lore and logic behind things.
This makes me think of something. In your case, it seems the question you should've asked yourself, is "Am I writing a story, or a wiki?" And it sounded like you were writing the latter. Even if you weren't making an actual webpage for your story, you were mentally writing a wiki without intending it.
Honestly I like soft magic systems because many stories don’t need complex rules. A modern example that first comes to mind would be the show the Owl House. The magic doesn’t have explicit rules. Many are merely implied. It’s a given over time that there are unspecified limitations to what it can do. We know there’s different types, and we know it all came from one magical being dying and life evolving on the corpse of that dead god.
If your story doesn’t necessitate a focus on the magic, you don’t have to have intricate rules. Explain a few things but much like Owl House, you don’t have to fully outline a system of glyph magic to have magic done with glyphs. If the audience doesn’t need to know the minute details of the magic for them to see the magic, then you don’t need to include it.
That said you of course can if you want. It’s your story. But sometimes, brevity is the friend of wit
Soft and hard magic aren't polar opposites. The Owl House is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. The fact that we know what a lot of the magic does, especially when it's being used to solve problems, puts it on the harder end of the spectrum. Heck, we even more what using too much of it does to certain people.
Glyph magic is just straight up hard magic, the way it's presented. We know its source (the Titan). We know its limits and how it needs to be activated (it needs to be drawn and touched and can only do something directly associated with the glyph drawn). And we know what each combination used does when it's used. We can even guess exactly what magic is about to be used just by seeing that a glyph was placed. Even Titan Luz mostly uses magic that we have seen already if you pay attention. Flying is from her staff, she makes ice, fire, plants, and light, and she draws a circle with her magic to create it. The fact that she only uses glyph magic goes back to how Willow only uses plant magic because it's the only thing she fully understood even though she can do every other form as well.
Yeah, there's still nebulous things in there, but the dichotomy isn't either a full periodic table or nonsense. It's only about how the audience can see a connection between the rules they've learned, their expectations, and the solutions created through the magic.
I would like to see your take on the magic in Larry Niven's "The Magic Goes Away".
I would really love to see a video on latinamerican magical realism, like the one from Gabriel García Márquez, Juan Rulfo, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Miguel Ángel Asturias and the such
Yes! I was hoping someone would mention magical realism in Latino America, some of my favorite stories.
It's odd how "nonsense magic with arbitary rules" is so... Horrifying and unsettling.
I think there's something Lovecraftian about it, like that there rules imposed are there for reasons you will never be able to comprehend.
i have my character be able to summon a ladder (with adjustable height, material etc.) and mess with the "hitboxes" of the world (basically being able to noclip, blj, warp etc.)
it is said, "any sufficiently advance technology is indistinguishable from magic" but the opposite is also true, any sufficiently explained magic, sounds like technology itself.
Terry Pratchett used this to the extreme in his books. Discworld had magic-revolutions that mimic real world technological advancements. The Science of Discworld series had his wizards go wandering about OUR world to show how Discworld runs on belief of how things to work, while our world doesn't because our universe lacks narrativism - the element of magic!
To hell with sense. Common sense is a trap. When making a complex world to use as a setting, we want internal coherence and all that. But being able to sit down and just CREATE is a wonderful thing.
Though it can certainly be thought of as a simple magic, I tend to take in these elements on a logical basis, my mind unconsciously filling gaps that were otherwise left blank as I take in the information. In the example of the animals who communicate effectively, though not advancing as humans would, my mind rationalized that they must simply be in a reality where their placement is similar, but lacking the drive and/or thoughts of humans as placed in the same situation. I know it breaks the story, at least the parts that were left to the audience to interpret, but it’s that same allowance for interpretation that I can find so simultaneously wonderful. If I’m creating questions and scenarios in my mind, the author has succeeded in making me enjoy the piece itself, so no harm, no foul.
11:25 The guy also cut his shadow because he wanted to sleep with a mermaid.
... but, where’s the...?
Oh yeah, Talebot, been meaning to tell you, your (relatively) new intro.. 🥰, best I've seen on TH-cam.
Uttering a wish out loud was considered magic, that is why folk tales and fairy tales use them and that is how we got magical incantations in the first place. That is why we call things said in a moment of heightened emotion swearing and curses. In the past you would swear to do something or curse someone for doing you wrong. Europe did not have a concept of Karma, but it had the idea of curses accumulating, causing misfortune to the ones who were hated.
So things do not just happen in fairytales, they happened because the characters dared to utter their wishes aloud.
I love how Abitfrank pops up to take offense when they were possibly referring to a certain other youtuber who covers "messed up origins" lol
Jon Solo is great. Frankie is okay, but her opinions sometimes get under my skin a bit (such as her stubborn refusal to accept that Mother Gothel in the Disney movie is a manipulative gaslighting hag).
Rumplestilkin and the White Rabbit are two of my favourite instigators of magical happenings
The thing we often forget about science: I don't have to know how a washing machine operates to load it. And sometimes, without my understanding why, the damn thing breaks.
Magic can have this too.
Thank you for mentioning thematic magic. Magical realism is one of my favourite subgenres of literary fiction but discussions of world building so often focus on the fantasy genre alone.
I haven't watched the entire video yet, but my two cents is that magic that feels *magical* rather that working on rules that feel scientifical, they work on rules that make narrative, thematic, religious and cultural sense.
Think about things you used to believe as a kid before you went to school and were explained the scientific reason for it. Or stuff told by superstitious relatives when you were a child.
Really you could boil it down to "would it be interesting if this happened because of Y?"
Great video, first off, I love how your avatar has no name, it adds a certain air of mystery, also your cadence and delivery is top notch. I really love your intro, it must have taken a lot of time and effort to produce.❤
Your intro makes me feel like a kid again about to watch a story the teacher is putting on before dimming the lights while we all sit on the carpet or at our desks. Amazing.
Something that I like about the King Killer Chronicle is that yes, the magic makes absolute sense... Until it doesn't. Sometimes the story just goes straight up into fairytale territory, but since the world feels so grounded, you have to take it as face value. Things that sound like metaphors are meant to be taken literally. I really like that.
Love the intro animation. Looking forward to an actual short film starring the Telloids.
One thought I have is that magic should be consistent, and the writer should know what its rules are...but the reader doesn't need to know all of them.
Another thought is that, yes, sometimes things just happen. Things have happened in my own life, and in the lives of people whose clear-mindedness I rely upon, which don't seem to make sense, rationally, so I know for a fact that sometimes things DO happen that you can't explain. That being the case, it seems entirely fair to put things into stories that can't be explained.
I think the thing about Brandon Sanderson's "Magic System(s)" that enchants me is that it is (almost) the inverse of the "Technology as Mysticism" that is central in Asimov's Foundation. Rather than a Universe of people trusting in the incomprehensible powers of the ancients while a select few know the secret truth that it was all created by them in the first place--all of The Cosmere has a (theoretically) cohesive and consistent additional set of physical rules that are just as baffling (but crucially, just as tantalizingly almost-understandable) as quantum physics is to a modern high school student.
Abitfrank + Tale foundry = fairy-tale duo
The created child isn't just limited to the gingerbread man. I can't remember which tribe or the name of the folktale, but I know there's one about a childless couple carving a wooden baby and the baby eventually coming to life due to the lie.
This video really resonated with me! I feel like I'm definitely the kind of person who tends to overanalyze things like this. It's honestly pretty sad that this kind of thing is becoming less common; what sorts of stories are there today that have that sort of fun, just-becauseness of fairy tales?
Just found you. What a beautiful channel! Thank you!
I think the concept behind magic is the simple, but wonderous, question "what if... ?".
I think that magic needs to make sense in longer stories. It doesn't need to be explained to the reader, but the author must know what it can and can't do... After all, the more we immerse ourselves in a world the more we seek to understand it and it's fun if we can predict something, or almost get it right and it's deeply frustrating when magic becomes on one side a deus ex machina and on the other a gaping plot hole... (why not just teleport, etc?)
One of my favorite ideas of magic is that belief and rituals are a powerful thing. It may be arbitrary, and the logic may boarder on dream like, but certain actions have power. You can not analyze it like a science, but instead must go on vague feelings and ideals.
What I like about this it's that it is real magic, unnatural and random things happening from some unknown unexplained occurrence. It's not like tha harnessed intricate systems people have from it, magic should be a force of the unknown, something occult and mysterious with no real explaination.
I love this CHANNEL!
The stories in the intro contain one subject, one shared trope, _desire,_ they wanted something and got it in some way.
The parents desired a kid, the queen desired a daughter, the shadow is a bit odd one in this, but you can reason that the shadow desired something, maybe to be a bigger shadow.
And those stories aren't about magic, but about how people act around a specific, unique situation. And really that's it. So there's no need to explain it since it brings nothing to the table.
I was trying think of an origin for 5 god-like characters of mine. I know where 4/5 came from, but couldn't think of a fitting origin for the 5th... but I think that's okay. After watching this, I think it's almost better if I just simply let them be. Not only is there very little reason to focus on them consdering their positions in the story, but they make more sense as beings that simply just are part of the world.
Ofc they still have roles to play and rules to follow, but I think it's best that I leave it at that... which is something I had never considered... so thank you:)
I love the whimsical nature of fairytale magic. In the confines of the stories themselves, their magic is just accepted as normal.
I DM a game setting where my version of the Feywild is essentially fairytale land. It's fun to construct the magic system or have it as a parameter that the players operate within only to then have that all turned on its head when they enter the Feywild. Drawing from folklore and mythology allows me to create potential consequences(both good and bad) from using their magical abilities in the Feywild that normally operate within specific parameters to get a specific effect. None of this is to necessarily punish the players but rather have quirky effects they didn't realize would happen. A Druid that used a spell that tangled up an opponent in roots that they were trying to keep from escaping ended up with the tree those roots are connected to asking the party to politely untangle the roots as it was deeply uncomfortable.
Basically while the fantastical is possible in the Prime Material plane, it is meant to be rare or at least predictable. My goal is to give the fantastical elements that whimsical quality that evokes a sense of both childlike wonder and nostalgia. Which takes a lot of learning about the players themselves and then incorporating those things they love in creative ways that immerse them more in that fairytale setting.
In Madoka Magica, magic comes from the soul after an alien incubator takes the soul out of your body and put it into a soul gem. This method is done after a girl makes a wish, which is used to inspire the source of their magic, and the exposure to negative emotions can drain your soul gem of magic until you become the very bad guy you strive to defeat and defend the world from. In that, emotions are basically what determines a magical girl's magical limit, while Desire defines their capabilities
Thanks for the video!
Some themes in fairytales probably come from folk magic or superstitions. I didn't know before this video about Snow White's provenance. It does, however, sound like something a friend of mine made a TikTok video about recently. They are from eastern Europe, I can't remember exactly where, but evidently there is a belief relating to writing something in a foggy window and that thing coming true.
"It's magic. I don't have to explain it." - Linkara
I love how you sounded exhausted when mentioned sanderson and his fans love it. 😂
this is the first time I've seen the new intro, absolutely beautiful !
The animation is so good
Usually, when the magic is in the story trigger, it needs not to be explained. It is before the suspention of disbelief come into play...
In some of my own worldbuilding, magic jumps between a force of nature no different than the weather, a universal constant that effects some places and people more than others depending on how connected to the magic they are, or the product of eldritch or godlike beings simply existing. I also have a constant rule in terms of magic works: it often taps into the ethereal power that binds body to soul, material to immaterial: allowing connection and influence over both states of being. The soul is something beyond even magic's reach, but it allows life to exist and attain miraculous abilities thanks to magic binding the mystical to the physical.
It works in some ways like the Force: magic is in everything, holds everything together. Some have more attunement to it than others, but anyone can tap into it with enough effort. Though specializations do exist, magic can be used quite freely and specific spells are simply techniques that are widely used. I like keeping a sort of system in place while also having it still be very mystical: most can only scratch the surface of what magic can do, only just knowing how it ties to everything. Again, another universal process that simply is: one that offers boundless potential to those who explore it.
I feel like there's some relevance to mentioning Seanan McGuire's Wayward Children series. In it, some children get magical doors that lead them to various worlds. There is some discussion of the "rules" of said worlds, and specifically that some worlds are rational/logical and some aren't.
That makes up for what I have to say. Some things are just made up just for fun or to make fun of something.
When you brought up the two stories I was thinking about when I made up a monster being in my toilet as a kid. I just made up the monster to make fun of it.
I knew better about reality and it would always not be real. my dad warned me to not take bugs bunny as an example for life even though I already understood, I had a fear heights for a reason. No coyote on air would say otherwise.
I heard about stuff like crocodiles through toilets, generally from Penguins of Madagascar. without being a direct influence I made up my monster. Even though I knew it wasn't real, pretending to flee from the bathroom made me start to feel actual fear that I thought I wouldn't get. It wasn't deeply set, it was more like a fever rush. I considered the monster would come out after me after the flushing sound stopped. I still had my rationality on for not being real, but made me jump after a while of pretending a few times. I knew if I just stopped pretending it would just go away.
Can you remember that I've said I didn't have an imaginary friend. After thinking about the monster thing it's like had an imaginary monster. I never met it though, I was to just avoid staying so I always left. I never considered what it would look like, since I didn't thought to keep him.
For gingerbread it's likely to make fun of something. The other one possibly venting with birth was so risky for that time. It's possibly very compelling to write those that run wild from their dreams. They possibly felt mad depending how dreams would've been.
I’m currently working on creating a magic system for a story. The story itself is scented around a boy who makes deliveries for a factory that takes raw magical energy and crushes and molds it into different colored glowing orbs that once consumed alloys you to perform various spells. The colors dictate what kind of spells you can perform and the strongest ones are only available for royalty and nobles. That’s all I have so far though.
Love the Brandon Sanderson Taleoid! Awesome video!
Thsnks for this. We sometimes need to embrace the magic in our story. The world is complex and phenomena is often unexplained so why cant we have that in our stories too.
My current worldbuilding/story project is sort of rule-heavy (not as much as some others probably) but I have had an idea floating around in my head for a while and it would be fun to do a more illogical kind of story.
Even a rational explanation for something magical still falls upon something vague and nebulous. Perhaps the gingerbread man was a golem made from molasses, or a vessel for the Mi-Go? Either way, there’s still something intangible at work - kinda like physics itself.
I love soft magic systems. The magic does whatever it wants to do, whenever it wants to, and the only thing you can do is try to figure out how to make it work in your favor
The bot at the end drawing in the book was so sweet q^q
Hrs definitely got the best voice for fairytales, I love it hehe😊❤
I spend far too much time in life trying to make sense
Who the hell needs it?
"Stop making sense!" -David Byrne
"If you're wondering how he eats, or breathes, or other science facts, repeat to yourself 'It's just a show. I should really just relax'."
fairly specific point there, i always found myself appreciating the systematic magic systems as i see that line between explained magic rules and magic with no rules to be less of a line and more of a grey scale. you can systematise any magic system even those of ancient fairy tales thanks to their other folklore but how much the author tells the reader is entirely their own choice. i suppose i have a Douglas Adams view on magic, all of the most unlikely things in the worlds are just a fixed point of improbability relative to the inevitable mundane. thus arguably all magic is the same chance magic we find holding up the very mechanics of the quantum scale. in this way the more systematic varients are in universe missing alot of data and are more limited in their use of magic because they have a more limiting understanding oh what magic even is. scifi tech has the same thing where authors themselves might describe themselves as the gods of their worlds but i would argue that each fictional world is a possible parallel to the mundane one and the author could be considered an unreliable narrator of a view into another world that may itself genuinely exist at least as a possibility. doing so leave you with observations of what the tech can do and unreliable information to try and explain how it works, often falling short but telling enough for engineering to work backwards from. my case example would be george lucas calling lightsabres "lazer swords" when its pretty obvious they are a constricted path plasma blade upon inspection.
i do often hit a snag in the appreciation of very loose and hand wave ridden magic in that sometimes the answer you reverse engineer back to is just the hand of the author which boots you straight out of your immersion in the story.
i would consider the hybrid as a suggestion, you the author work things out until they genuinely make sense, then work out how much the readers really must know for the story to work and endeavour to not allow any more clues than that. save the full explanation that gives you the credit for thinking it all through in the sequel eh? lets you still get to red riding hood as just the writer would know who cursed/buffed the wolf to be an exception rather than the norm.
Clarkes Law is a good explaination of magic
Sick animation, bro
That animation in the intro was amazing
I would love to hear a tale foundry original story, like something they wrote themselves.
0:14 Cookie run lol.
(observation: the video was great! I love your story and RPG mechanics channel!)
Ahh, that intro! Every time.
Can you please cover the magic systems of Brent Week's books, especially the Lightbringer and Night Angel series? I personally find them to be immensely fascinating.
2:13 I love this do more!!!
2 things:
1- About the fable about the hare and the tortoise, I think their dialogue is just translated to ease the comprehension of the audience. This explanation is exactly how the film Isle of dogs begins, after all.
2- Another example is Snegurochka. There is this animated short film based on a Russian fairy tale, telling the story of an elderly couple, who, craving to have a child, one day build a snow maiden, who comes to life. Just like that. Naming her Snegurochka, they adopt her as their granddaughter and she starts living with them. In Russian folklore, Snegurochka is also depicted as Morozko's daughter or granddaughter.
Have you done a video about Terry Pratchett yet? His magic is so unique and interesting.
Can't catch me!
You should do a video on Michael Ende's "The Neverending Story" book.
Do you guys have a podcast? I’d love to listen to stuff like this while studying without having to keep TH-cam open…
I love that frankie popped in.