This is the same response when I learned I became a father. That was 21 years ago, and she's a good kid trying to make something of herself. So it's not all doom and gloom.
Sad thing , that type of person makes the best rulers . What we usually get are elitist morrons who just want to have their power phantasy (and ignore all consequences that dont touch their "rich and powerfull" minority group)
@@ohw5306 Dom is a pretty decently common guest on osp live streams and podcasts. Look around an you'll find him all over this channel! Great chemistry with the gang.
@@moreplzOMG yes! I just envision one or two pigeons on him or nearby at all times, this like comedically horrifying constant reminder of his responsibilities. 🤣🤣
Honestly, that the only thing that this crazy little boy who thinks he's invincible actually fears is power and the responsibility that comes with it is a brilliant twist.
@@EdgarCastillo-c6jin a way he wasn’t just fearless he was irresponsible the entire time but it only threatens him he rightfully sees himself as utterly unprepared for kingship
Is he scared of responsibility in general though, or just of taking responsibility for a society that thinks royalty-seeking pigeons are the solution to good governance?
The idea that they weren't sure so they released more pigeons and they all kept going to him until everyone is like "fine he is the king" is just so good. I agree this should be more well known
@@Hecatonicosachoron Doves actually. Now I have nothing to prove this, but they may be a variation on the widely spread folk tale of the swans who shed their feathers at a lake to turn into women for one night, but then one of them is forced into marriage by a man who steals her feathers. That tale itself being a variation of the seal women who shed their seal skin and then get a forced marriage with the human who steals it. In both versions, the woman usually ends up finding her feathers/skin after many years and goes back to her people, living her husband/abductor lonely and miserable
I love the subversion of becoming king in a folk tale. So often it's part of the happy ending, like so often it ends with "He married the princess" or "The king named him as his heir" or "He achieved his destined birthright to the throne" and now we move straight to our "happily ever after", but no. In this story, being named king is still the climax, but actually having to rule is a massive responsibility that usually gets completely glossed over, but here it takes center stage. I love it
That... That's actually a good point. How come we don't get more of that? Only example I can think of in modern media where that happens is Fable 3, and that's just me going off of hearsay. What with me never getting around to playing it.
@@cooltrainervaultboy-39 I think probably because it’s a) very hard to make it work, and b) even harder in modern media. People like it when stories have a tidy conclusion, but this is essentially the lack of one: he’s basically fine the whole story, then we learn he’s going to have a lot of challenges to deal with going forward, the end. In a regular story, that would be an incredibly unsatisfying and open-ended ending, but it works in this very specific case because the story isn’t about the boy - it’s about his unnatural lack of fear, and this ending resolves the question of “well if none of that frightening stuff is scary, then what will find frightening?” in an unexpected yet satisfying way, so the story is resolved even though the boy’s personal story is only beginning. This would be even harder in a modern story because those tend to be more centered around their characters, and they ask us to believe in them as people rather than mere archetypes/the roles they play in the story - for instance you almost never see a modern story without a single named character, including the protagonist “boy”, but that works perfectly fine in the context of a folktale. In a modern story the audience would implicitly wonder, “Well what happens to Johnny Smith now that he’s king?”, but in the context of the folktale, that question doesn’t really make sense. “What happens to the boy after he becomes king?” Nothing happens; he doesn’t exist outside of the story about his fear. You could make up another story to follow it, but it would be just that - something new. You could argue that this is true of all characters - that they don’t exist beyond their story - but that doesn’t seem to be how most people think of stories. Modern authors generally ask you to believe in the world they are telling you about, but you don’t have to imagine for a second that this boy actually existed in order to enjoy the story and appreciate its meaning.
@@short-m7598 Unfortunately I can't suggest anything better than a screenshot, but I'm glad you found it interesting! I often end up writing short essays in youtube comments sections that are essentially shouting into the ether, but I'm glad occasionally people find them insightful. As a side note, the reason I qualified that "you **almost** never see a modern story without any named characters" is because of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. The first line is "The boy's name was Santiago", but other than that he is referred to simply as "the boy", and most other characters are referred to likewise: "the crystal merchant", "the Englishman", "the gypsy", "the alchemist". In many ways Coelho is constructing a modern story with the feeling of something much older and deeper, and in so doing he creates something that is at once incredibly simple and wondrously complex. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's a very good book that can be appreciated on many levels
It's a little similar to the Sword of Damocles in that sense, although in that story the guy wanted to be king and only understood after having gone through it
He was completely terrified by the idea of taking responsibility and actually caring about trying to make things work...probably a better leader than quite few IRL people would be!
I dunno if that means he'd be a better leader just because he's terrified of the position, but granted, I'll admit I'm biased and don't fully believe there's such a thing as a completely good leader (humans are flawed and power often corrupts people anyway). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
@Scarshadow666 Leadership doesn't universally corrupt people. That's ridiculous. A leader can be put into power for reasons that have nothing to do with a lust for power and openly reject even the idea of taking power themselves. The democratic system most countries use today however does often attract the worst kind of people into power.
@@yellowcoat4498 I never really got this way of thinking. Shouldn't people who want to change world for the better want to be in a position to do so? Like I get there are a lot of awful reasons for why someone would want to be a ruler, but influencing large scale systemic change seems like a pretty noble reason
after working with birds for many years, I don't think this would help me get over fear. on the other hand, my first instinct with birds is being simultaneously terrified that they will die and also try to kill me, so ... perhaps I am a terrible comparison.
At first I thought this would be a version of a Brothers Grimm fairytale, of the youth who journeyed to learn what fear was. It ends quite differently, but the outcome of that story was hilarious to. There, after a similarly fruitless journey to find fear, the man de-cursed and won a haunted castle and married a resident princess . However, having failed to find fear increasingly depressed him, which increasingly annoyed his wife. So one night she filled a bucket with cold water and fish, and dumped it on her sleeping husband. Who woke screaming, and finally knew how true fear felt.
That's the version I've been told, too. I always found it weird that he was afraid of little fish and water but I just figured it was the shock treatment that did it
Also the version I know. Red did say that this was a Turkish version of the German folktale, so a few hundred years of telephone and at least two languages are in play.
@@dracuella This is also the version im familiar with. I do think its better. The joke about the bucket ending is that it wasnt actually fear. Just what he had been told fear felt like. A chill cold sensation down the back. But it gave his wife peace. So all is good.
I also read this Version when I was kid, didn´t like it back then though because kinda killed a man in at one of his stops and didn´t seem to care much. It just seemed a bit cruel to me that he´d get to be married to a princess afterwards
The best part of Red's art for this video is the fact the boy keeps jumpscaring everyone else. Just casually pops in like 'hey, what's going on?' and everyone else freaks tf out. 🤣
I heard a version of this story, but the ending was 100% different. After going out and having all his adventures, the boy finds out his mother is getting older and experiences the fear of losing her before he gets to see her again. So he travels back, and helps take care of his mother, finally understanding what fear is, in his case the fear of losing a loved one.
The king version is much more fun and more in line with OSP sense of humor, a boy afraid of responsibility or some interpreted it as becoming an adult is relatable and funny
I wonder if the two different versions came from two different backgrounds of storyteller… Like, the version where he discovers he’s afraid of being king was told by the upper class, as a way to be all like “hey, the fact that we’re not at the VERY top of the food chain and still have to answer to a monarch isn’t all that bad, actually” whilst the version where he fears his mother’s mortality was more common amongst serfs and peasants, to reinforce the moral “you look after your parents when you’re grown”.
THE FREAKING MONTY PYTHON QUOTE 🤣🤣🤣 Also, the idea that these three sisters are just randomly surprised by the kid who pulled one over on all of them means that unintentionally he probably becomes a cryptid to the magical beings in his new kingdom.
“No, I’m telling you the truth! A sister of a cousin of a friend of mine was trying to trick some kid into hoisting her onto his shoulders so she could make him fall into the water and instead he threw her off! The No-Fear Boy is real!”
I read somewhere that when you're very young, your nightmares are very primal and basic (being chased by animals, falling from heights, etc.) But as you get older they get more modern and realistic (being fired, running late, eviction, breakups, etc.)
I love that the whole moral of the story is childlike whimsy will not sace you from the inevitable encroach of paying taxes and other adult responsibilities 😂
the poor mother, she was in the story for like the first paragraph and then vanished may we hope she had a fairy tale adventure of her own in the search for her son
...and having now understood fear, for the first time the boy knew how afraid his poor mother must have been at home, waiting for his return. So, as soon as the clamour had quietened, he rushed to see her the very next day.
This reminds me of the, “The Cry Fairy.” A story where, fairies don’t understand why humans cry and honestly don’t care. But one fairy does care, and they launch an expedition to discover why humans cry. He returns with the knowledge that, “Humans cry when they want something that they do not have, or they have some thing that they do not want.” Incredibly simple, but true if you dig deep enough. I don’t know why, but this stuck with me since 5th grade and is comforting when I want to cry.
I love how at the end the boy’s eyes are little 😧 faces. Also him crying covered in pigeons going “thanks guys I’m good now” would be a perfect T-shirt
Adult responsibility being portrayed as the most terrifying thing in the world is such a mood. Also, I never knew I needed to hear Red sing “Scared of the Dark” from Spider-verse, but I REALLY did!
I like this almost more than the ending of “the boy who went in search of fear” in the book “the juniper tree” a smaller collection of grimm fairytales. In that one the boy doesn’t find fear until he’s married to the princess, who eventually gets tired of his moaning and dumps a bucket of cold water and minnows on him in the middle of the night! Thanks for showing this version!
This Story: This guy ditches his mom and is completely obsessed with a keeping a trinket, causally defeats monsters/villains but ultimately dislikes when responsibility is given to him. Tetsuya Nomura (in 2002): Hey guys, I know how to design Sora’s backstory and personality in Kingdom Hearts now.
So, for those interested, there's a slightly different version of this tale, called something like "The kid with no fear" or sometimes "Generic_kid_name without fear", diffused in Italy and Germany with two scenes that deserve their share of love: -the kid (Giovannino o Gioacchino in Italy) is dared to spend the night in a haunted castle in order to win it, and during the night limbs and pieces of someone's body drop from the chimney but he's so unbothered that the ghosts end up partying with him (for some reason our kindergarten teacher re-enacted this scene, dropping limbs made from paper from up above to make us learn names of the human body, we actually loved it) -in the end he gets happily married to this beautiful girl; however, he discovers true fear for the first time when she glares at him while angry
I love all the different renditions of this tale! In the version my grandfather told me, he gets married to a beautiful princess after freeing the haunted castle but still isn't content without knowing fear. So she jumpscares him by emptying a bucket full of living fish on top of him while he's sleeping :D In German it's "Von einem, der auszog, das Fürchten zu Lernen" (About someone who left home to learn how to fear)
It's about a boy growing up. A naive child that fears nothing and faces the world with those eyes only a child can have, slowly he experiences the world and grows up until he is saddled with responsibility, which then forces him to face adulthood and take the bully (responsibility) by the horns and live the rest of his life with it.
Hey, red! Trope talk suggestion for you; "The incident" or "Noodle incidents" are a literary tool of a trope that gives more literary weight (funniness, scaryness, impact on the audience) to an event or noun than a description would, mostly by context and the reader's imagination. Named Noodle Incidents because of a short series of Calvin and Hobbes comics wherein everyone at school gives the eternally frustrated 6-year-old grief about something he did in the past that is now known only as "The noodle incident." It is hinted at vaguely many times, but the writer ultimately leaves it up to your imagination; which is a strength because whatever the audience dreams up will be way more literarily impactful (in this case funny) than anything he could write down. And that's not even the only time that comic uses a noodle incident, see, there's this kids book calvin always wants read called "Hampster Hewwy and the Gooey Kablooey" and Now I'm ranting. Point is; by leaving the event, place, person or item, open to interpretation, it has more literary weight than the creator could have possibly written. The Legendary Super Saiyan may have looked a lot cooler in your head than just goku+blonde+power. Another instance this trope is used is in an S.C.P. story wherein a certain slime MUST NEVER come into contact with a human corpse. Why? That's classified. A foundation researcher files the suggestion to test the slime on a human corpse because it's never listed what happens, only that it is a V E R Y bad idea, and the researcher is curious. He gets demoted and heavily scolded by an O-5, who states "Just don't." That one of the 0-5's, who have seen untold horrible horrible things, REALLY doesn't want this to happen, forces the reader to come up with something even the 0-5's fear, and is therefore even more terrifying than anything the writer could have written down. A "Noodle Incident" or "The Incident" is a rare trope that involves telling the audience that something exists or happened, but not telling them what it was, in order to give the plot point more narrative weight than a description would give it, partly because of the imaginations of the audience. It is a great trope that I think you should cover. I'm going to keep suggesting it on every trope talk and mythology video untill you do.
I've done this. When I worked inventory, sometimes our machines would glitch and need a reboot. When they came back on, they would ask "do you want to warm boot the device." I was told to NEVER warm boot the device, but I was never told why. Of course, that meant there was only one option open to me. Whenever a new person asked if they should warm boot the device, I would spin tales of all the horrible and catastrophic things that could occur if a device was ever warm booted. From resetting the entire store to natural disasters and pandemonium. It's important to make your own fun at work sometimes.
I never heard this fairytale before, it's awesome, but I LOVE how the sudden dumping of power and responsibiity on him gives the kid his first taste of fear. What a mood.
Years later, after he’s well into being Ruler of the lands His Mom: looks at the Sun Dial on her wrist “Well, I’ll give him 5 more minutes. But after that, I’ll have to go start looking for him.”
I read a very similar yet very different story from Grimm's fairy tales, "the boy who couldn't shake". Long story short, this boy had no fear, and couldn't understand why others trembled. The boy ends up freeing a kingdom from a curse and getting the princess by spending three days in a haunted house. He still never felt fear, but he wanted to understand. His new wife was smart--she filled a tub with ice and kept him in it until he started shivering, which made him happy. The end.
I was looking to see if anyone else mentioned this! But in the version I read, I think it was a handmaid who went down to a river in the middle of the night, got a bucket of cold water and fish, and dumped it on him while he was sleeping 💀
I definitely feel like this metaphor for growing up and becoming an adult. But I also love how the message is basically ‘responsibility is scary’ lol 💀💀💀
As much as I relate to the fear of responsibilities, I can't help but think this is just another case of "telling the poors how good they have it". Oh no, don't try to achieve actual power! It's terrifying! You wouldn't want it! Just accept your responsibility-free (and powerless) existence and let the ruling classes deal with the "burden" of actual power!
@@ByzantiumNeonIn case this is a legitimate question: antisemitism is a prejudice against Jewish people. One prominent historical example of antisemitism is the holocaust, but the prejudice is very real and has been pervasive throughout much of history. I believe Blue has a great video on the history of Judaism that talks a little about antisemitism.
I think this might be the first version of this tale type I've ever seen where the boy actually figures out what fear is (a lot of the versions I've seen the closest he ever gets is marrying a princess who helps him learn to shudder specifically by dumping ice water on him to wake him up, which he confuses for fear)
The story of the boy who sought fear was one of my favourites. There are lots of versions of the story, but my favourite was one where the boy ends up throwing a priest (who came in an absolutly comedicly simple ghost costume) down the stairs, enters a haunted castle and absolutly confuses the shit out of the ghosts. He finds fear by getting happily married to a princess. When he lies awake one evening, mumbling about fear, his wife sneaks out, takes a bucket of ice cold water and dumps it on him while hes asleep. I first found the version in an old comic book with cartoonish style. I swear, it was hilarous😂
That's the Grimm's Tales version i think. Atleast that's also the version that got turned into a "Sonntagsmärchen" which are fairy tales that the German npr-equivalent show on TV every sunday.
I saw “boy who learned fear” and got so freaking excited so fast, you have no idea 🤩 Tbh, don’t know this exact version, but know several others, all of them are perfect comedic fantasies. LOVE this story. That and “witty Jack” of the Jack o lantern are so fun to tell to kids.
Sheltered? Little dude intimidated bandits and fought ghosts and monsters. You could argue for overconfident, but no way was he sheltered by the end of the story.
@@littlekuribohimposte He was sheltered initially, yes. By the time he was chosen to be king, he had encountered those things and was thus no longer sheltered.
I remember hearing this story as a child in school and it was one of my favorites so I’m stocked to see you cover it! I haven’t heard anyone else talk about it.
“Boy learns what fear is” is my FAVORITE motif/story in western culture. There’s a story very similar to this in the book of Grimm’s fairy tales my family had when I was little, and the child was playing pool with skeletons and accidentally knocked some schmuck down the entire staircase for a tall tower. It was structured as a “stay three nights in this haunted house to inherit it” if I remember correctly, and it’s stuck with me for almost two decades since I read it lol
My Dad would tell me a story like this one! Same premise, a young boy wandering the world trying to shiver and shake, he ends up marying a princess, but he never learned to shiver, and complains about it so much that she throws cold water on him one night, and then he's super happy about finally learning to shiver and shake. It was also one of my favorites, good choice Red, thank you!!
I love that it wasn't his life-threatening adventures that caused him to fear, but the crushing weight of responsibility. XD Also, i love the way you drew his panic attack. Those big eyes really sell it lol.
I remember reading a similar story years ago, only instead of “fear” the book used the term “the creeps” and it ends with him getting married and his wife getting so annoyed with him whining about not knowing what “the creeps” feels like she tosses some eels into the bed he’s laying is and says “you feel that crawling uncomfortable squirming feeling? That’s the creeps.”
Oh sweet mother of Mercy, what joyous day, to have one of our own myths interpreted by our most blessed Lady of Red! Long time fan here, I thought that this might have been a Turkish myth the moment I heard about the third sons having a magical adventure, since it seems to be a particularily Anatolian trope. By the powers invested in me by Dede Korkut (look him up, trust me, wonderful menagerie of tales, especially Deli Dumrul) and Ataturk (at this point, this has become kind of a necessary shield from my other...countrymen), I henceforth declare you as one of the "Aşık", one of the anatolian warrior poets and bards of old, which coincidentally also literally means "One who is in love". All jokes aside, this was both incredibly satisfying and marvellous. Don't ever change, and may the blessings of folk both fair and human be with you.
As a third born child I just get existential dread and the pressure of being too youg to be taken serious but too old to get any kind of space to still grow It's like "You're 19 you need to grow up" and "You are 19 that means everyone is an adult now act like one" at the same time.
As a third-born child, I wish I had a magical adventure in store me for me. It'd either remove the basic existential depression and replace it with sparkling adventure depression or it'd end my existence in a terrifyingly gruesome way, both of which are preferable.
2:13 I love the idea that he wanders into a completely different fairy tale for a moment and just pops it like a balloon. Like the concept of a mystery woman asking you to help her get her little brother and their presence being somehow related to a bracelet could be a whole different story, but to him its just an insignificant event
I've heard a few different additions involving resurrecting warriors, haunted manors, and the thing that finally shows him fear being the prospect of marriage, I love modular folktales
I love this "why did I look for this?" sort of ending. Because of course he wouldn't understand how foolish it is to search for fear since he didn't have it.
Wow this feels weirdly modern. I’ve never heard of this story but it’s fun and supernatural with the unexpected twist being the dread of responsibility of ruling a people and kingdom. This is my new favorite myth.
@@theanimeunderworld8338so the Devil devil would be basically causing a gigantic natural disaster every time it blinks, right? A lot of Christians fear him, and there are a LOT of Christians.
A fairytale with an Aesop I can totally get behind. Responsibility IS freaking terrifying. Give me zombies instead! Gorgeous cover at the end, as always. I love that song :)
The Brothers Grimm have a version of this called "the king’s son who feared nothing" but that one actually never learned fear even after becoming king of the neighboring kingdom. He was really bummed out that he never felt the need to "shiver and shake" like his brothers did when they were scared, so his wife poured a bucket of freezing water over his head. Mood instantly repaired.
@@theanimeunderworld8338I guess pretty decently? At least. I haven't wat hed the show or read the manga, but I'm just looking at the evidence in this fairytale for my conclusion. Feel free to correct me :)
I love this so much. There's a Brother's Grim version of this Fairytale: Of the one, who went out to learn fear. Its also about a youngest son that knows nothing and is just a waste of everybody's time and money. He spends three nights in a spooky haunted castle and deals with plenty of spooky shenanigans and eventually lifts the curse of the castle and marries the princess. At this point he hasnt learned what fear is though and complains about it to his now wife. She simply fetches a bucket of ice water, pours it over him in his slee and says "There ya go, fam". I love this story so much, because as the youngest brother of two very gifted sisters, I could always relate to this boy, who just goes out to do his own thing and gets rewarded for it. Even though the story makes it clear, that he is simply too stupid to feel fear, he is a real hero in my eyes!
Yeah, the whole way through I was going, "Waaait, this is basically The Story of the Youth Who Went Forth To Learn What Fear Was" (which is the title in my edition of Grimm, we must have different translations). Can I add one thing: the ice-water is because his actual aim is to learn how to shiver (which he associates with fear), and when he wakes up after having it dumped on him, he's shouting, "Now I know what it is to shiver!" Plus the water is full of fish. Just wanted to add that in there.
@@claireb153 I was checking the comments because I thought this was the one that ended with the guy getting dunked in a barrel of fish after shenanigans to learn about fear! It's been a while since I read it so I didn't know about the bucket of iced down fish.
The version of the story I know is called the story of fearnot I think and it's in the show jim Henson's the storyteller and it's my third favourite episode of the show
as a kid i remember a different version where instead of him becoming king, the pigeon is meant to choose a suitor for the princess. so when he gets chosen as her husband, the prospect of having to kiss a girl strikes fear into his heart for the first time. i always thought it was hilarious, but now i'm wondering if maybe someone changed it to make it a little more relatable for kids haha
there’s actually a musical based on this story! it’s called “Chasing Fear”, the story started to sound quite familiar until it realized that i recognized it. a high school in my hometown did the show last year. as with any musical adaptation, there are many changes to the story and setting, but it’s definitely based on this folktale. i believe it’s a pretty new musical so i’m not sure if there’s any recordings online that you could find, but yeah, fun show and great folktale!
