despite the amount of ookie spooky horror related stuff we've discussed on this show
it will probably come as no surprise to anyone when I say that I also have a bit of a sweet
tooth I mean in so much I have any teeth at all I love Pleasant cute magicy stuff I can't
help it show our Poe and Lovecraft and Ito are great but give me magic carpets fairy
Hollows friendly dragons Coraline Discworld anything at all by Hayao Miyazaki and I'll
be just as happy if not even more so I don't think I'm alone in that every time we do a
video on the lighter side of fantasy you all seem to enjoy it just as much but the trouble
is convincing you to click on it because these Pleasant subjects sort of seem to solve themselves
don't they the Mysteries they present don't seem as urgent is a video about a Colossus
made of human bodies or a call to make children's fiction darker and that makes me sad because
although they aren't as inherently challenging these pleasanter stories do have more to offer
than they first seem to it's easy to write them off as children's fiction or easy escapism
but I don't see it that way I never have and I think if you look you can see it too give
me a chance I want to show you the surprising power of Whimsy
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on the subject of Whimsy I want to share one really positive thing we were able to do this
holiday season thanks to our sponsor givewell we were not only able to donate 100 to protect
the lives of children in the nebius communities we were able to double that amount and you
can do it too givewell is offering fans of tail Foundry a chance to make the world a
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make sure your money is making the biggest possible impact but they'll also match what
you give be sure to check the description for more details because this is one of the
coolest things we have ever been able to sponsor on the show more on this later I think we
all have a sense of what Whimsy is but it's honestly a bit harder to pin down than you
might expect the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as a fanciful or fantastic device
object or creation especially in writing or art a fanciful or fantastic device okay so
a talking animal companion is Whimsical and I guess a strange soapstone statuette depicting
an Eldritch Abomination from before the time of man is to that doesn't really sit well
with me in his strange real-time-ish Memoir a million miles in a thousand years author
Donald Miller offers an explanation that I find far more useful he relates a conversation
in which someone tells him that people shouldn't be afraid to embrace Whimsy when he asked
what the man meant by Whimsy the man told him it's that nagging idea that life could
be magical it could be special if we were only willing to take a few risks I really
like this application of the term it may not be the defining interpretation but this gives
Whimsy a role apart from Magic and fantasy with this understanding Whimsy becomes that
which makes life feel magical it becomes a suggestion and that's a pretty broad role
to play it can just be literal magic as in most fantasy but it can also be simpler things
little Oddities that ignite a sense of wonder and joy in the imagination so perhaps not
quite the creepy statuette that quietly suggests to Cosmos that is best case entirely indifferent
to your pitiful existence it's a sort of similar feeling it does make a suggestion but it doesn't
suggest that the world is magical so much as the world is false and dangerous Whimsy
can be dark but I think it's also important that it has an element of aspiration to it
that we are drawn toward this suggestion of magic rather than revolted by it or afraid
of it or morbidly curious mostly you're going to find this in media considered to be four
children classic fairy tales Beast Tales Travelers Tales modern young adult novels and films
kids books and shows for kids it makes a lot of sense a Whimsical spectacle can make a
great tool for engagement a shiny thing to chase into the experience it can help facilitate
participation and immersion and even better it can help cultivate Divergent thinking which
is what some consider to be the basis of creativity itself in his essay on fairy stories Tolkien
offered some categories for children's stories each of them full of Whimsy fairy tales are
the most obvious of them the Grimm Brothers collected Regional stories of Cinderella's
magical glass slipper and Rumpelstiltskin the Imp who can spin straw into gold Andrew
Lang went further afield and found things like Aladdin's magical lamp Aura wind strong
enough to Bear a person across the sky in east of the sun west of the moon Hans Christian
Andersen came up with his own whimsies little mermaids and Tiny children sprouting from
Barleycorn in Beast Tales the source of Whimsy is also quite clear animals don't usually
act very much like humans how often in your childhood did you try to talk to the creatures
around you wishing they would talk back Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Graham is full of
such whimsies mole and rat spending their days lounging along the river or meeting with
their friend toad who likes to drive motor cars to me this is a really familiar comfortable
sort of Whimsy it's probably pretty embedded into your Consciousness by now I mean I'm
sure most of you can tell the story of the hair in the tortoise by heart even though
it's been how long since you Revisited Aesop's Fables travel Tales offer a different form
of Whimsy Fantastical places with different rules customs and inhabitants what may seem
quite normal to one group can be quite alien and quite magical to another Gulliver's Travels
is the quintessential traveler's tale taking the narrator on voyages to places like Lilliput
an island nation of people six inches tall Rob dignag an island nation of Giants and
a land of wise horses who tame the wild and we all know Alice in Wonderland with its hookah
smoking caterpillars Flamingo Mallet croquet and outlandishly silly wordplay it's bursting
at the seams with Whimsy these stories beg to be explored for the magic that they promise
but Whimsy is more than just a shiny object it's not just for tricking kids into engaging
it's everywhere take these very grown-up films for instance Pan's Labyrinth a very adult
fairy tale is spilling over with dark Whimsy the killing of a sacred deer one of the most
grueling painful meditations on human impotence you are likely to come across has a twinkling
of Whimsy that makes it shine like a needle in the dark and that's not even getting into
adult animation just watch the movie Angel's egg I really need not say any more than that
in the same essay without ever using the term Whimsy Tolkien also manages to describe one
of its key abiding elements he says that there is a primal desire at the heart of theory
the realization independent of the conceiving mind of imagined Wonder not just the suggestion
of magic but also of the deep gravitational pull toward it even in perhaps especially
in Dark Places and I think we can see that in all of these stories but it's not enough
to tell you where to find Whimsy I want to show you Whimsy in action and for this I Look
to one of my favorite books Howl's Moving Castle by the late Diana Wynn Jones I love
this book for a lot of reasons but largely because its brand of Whimsy is so very enchanting
so undeniably alluring I know I know it's also been adapted into a Studio Ghibli film
that everyone probably knows way better than the book at this point but please even if
you've seen the movie already go read the book not just because we're about to share
a bunch of mild spoilers but also because it's a very different experience in text and
I really want everyone to have it from the very first chapters of the story you know
the land of angry and the path of the story are going to be full of magic that suggestion
is there and it's very hard to reject once you get going the protagonist is a young girl
cursed with old age who sets off to find her own fortune the antagonist is the Witch of
the wastes jealous and mighty bestowing curses liberally on any who cross her we quickly
find the eponymous Castle itself striking in its side eyes and strangeness the ways
in which it breaks the laws of geometry and physics there is of course the wizard howl
owner of the castle every bit the heartbreaker in picaro but with wisdom and Magic to boot
there is the fire demon calcifer with all his vast Powers Bound in the form of a small
flame within the Hearth and made to power the castle and its strange magics this is
all very fabulous and it all certainly works on the reader in the ways we've discussed
so far but more striking than any of those there is a door inside the castle which leads
to many places the fishing town of Port Haven by the Sea The Royal capital city of Kingsbury
the rolling Countryside over which the castle roams it even leads to Earth our world that's
right I wanted to bring this particular piece of the magic up because I think it's some
of the most instructive usage of wimsy I may have ever seen big spoiler here so if you
haven't read the book pause now or skip this part the wizard howl isn't really from the
magical world of inquiry he's from here this world the one outside the book whales specifically
the door isn't just a portal from place to place within the story it's a portal from
a land with magic to a land without and to me whether the author realized it or not this
can act as a pretty impressive metaphor for the value of Whimsy near the beginning of
the book The Jealous Witch of the wastes curses Sophie with old age we also learned that before
the story ever started she cursed the wizard howl too the curse itself is essentially a
list of impossible tasks which if fulfilled will allow her to take possession of Hal's
heart it reads thus go and catch a falling star get with the child a mandrake root tell
me where all past years are or who cleft the devil's foot teach me to hear the mermaid
singing or to keep off and be stinging and find want wind serves to advance an honest
mind if thou beest born to strange sites things invisible to see ride ten thousand days and
nights till age snow white hairs on thee thou and thou returns will tell me all strange
Wonders that befell thee and swear nowhere lives a woman true and fair the more well-read
among you may recognize this already in the story it is a curse in reality it is an excerpt
from the poem go and catch a falling star by John Dunn it's a real piece you can go
and read it for yourself it's written as a list of tasks which cannot be accomplished
culminating in the Revelation that finding a woman true and fair is the least likely
thing of all I'm not going to comment on that perspective but it plays into the story very
well as this is ultimately the tale of a man who's only ever spurned love howl finding
companionship in the most unlikely of places and it feels as though it makes sense because
again the story doesn't take place in our world it takes place in angry a Land of Magic
where all things seem possible a place where girls can be cursed with old age where there
are jealous witches to be afraid of where castles roam the hills where roguish Wizards
gallivant about breaking hearts and spinning Legends a place where one might in fact catch
a falling star and keep it in their heart as a tiny grumpy fire demon forevermore just
as the door presents the possibility of Wonder and fuels house conflict the suggestion of
magic within the story pulls us like a gravitational force out of the land of reason and into the
land of wonder once you start it how's Moving Castle is a story which begs to be read and
that I think is the great power of Whimsy it is a suggestion that a creative mind cannot
help but accept a question we cannot help but see cancers too no not every story not
even every piece of fantasy needs to feel Whimsical but I think it's a shame for us
to see Whimsy as a childish thing a thing to shy away from in the pursuit to write more
mature fiction inspires you to wonder pulls you toward it is nothing to turn from especially
not in Dark Places in his essay on three ways of writing for children C.S Lewis wrote when
I was 10 I read fairy tales in secret would have been ashamed if I had been found doing
so now that I am 50 I read them openly when I became a man I put away childish things
including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up let us not snuff
out the light for darkness's sake Darkness will abide these glimmers are precious thankfully
fiction is not the only place where you can stand to Kindle some precious light in this
often very difficult existence can be hard you look at the scale of the problems facing
the world and you think what can I even do you get nihilistic and just accept how difficult
things are but one of Humanity's great strengths lies in its sheer numbers there are so many
of you that any tiny ineffectual effort when magnified by thousands hundreds of thousands
millions of people repeating it it can truly change the world and hey if there were ever
a time of year to try I think this would be it the season of giving probably the single
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out so given givewell's track record in all their available research we were able to Simply
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click donate and when asked how did you first hear about givewell choose YouTube and write
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for this opportunity to share something really positive with all of you this is by far the
easiest way to remove the research burden of helping to change the world you can finally
give a little bit in an easy informed way I hope you'll join in anyway that's all for
this one keep your eyes open watch for the glimmers wherever they occur and most of all
keep making stuff up I'll see you next time bye [Music]
[Music] foreign