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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[TheTaleFoundry]

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[RJ_Ehlert]

I would like to highlight that "magic that makes no sense" can still be readily found in modern comedies and horror stories.

[gregjayonnaise]

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).

[jonleonard]

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.

[marlutteyestrelt]

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.

[skugbob]

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)

[matedino]

Mans shadow be like:"Yo your life sucks, imma head out"
Man:"Well thats annyoing...oh well, i'm shadowless now."

[SuperMasterX]

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"

[nyrdybyrd]

"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)

[Le_Medieval_Man]

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!"

[danatrick]

Thematic magic sounds really cool. More modern fantasy should impalent this more.

[mrgreatbigmoose]

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.

[Magnymbus]

This legitimizes my decision to mix in "irrational" magic with my "science" magic.

[jacobshore]

I always thought they made that cookie just to, you know, eat it and that’s it.

[aceundead]

Some birds can speak, but like a great man once told a Gungan, "the ability to speak does not make one intelligent."

[moonstonepearl]

That getting a book off the shelf intro was so immersive and definitely got me wanting to watch more :)

[necrodeus]

One of the funniest facts about the gingerbreadman is that wikipedia categorizes it as an "Edible Golum"

[ether]

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.

[TheBoyLife]

Just leaving a general praise comment for the channel. You guys make think about writing again.

[Dreamfox-dfbg]

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.