“Fairy tales do not tell children the dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children the dragons can be killed.”
—G.K. Chesterton paraphrased by Neil Gaiman, “The Red Angel”, Tremendous Trifles (1909)
Love this
This reminds me of my grandpa, who gave me my first pocket knife when I must have been 6 or 7. I was really into making bows and arrows out of twigs and branches I’d found in the yard, and he gave it to me simply as a tool for a hobby I’d formed. Everyone freaked out at first, but he taught me how to use a knife safely and I don’t think I ever cut myself (as a child anyways. I’m a reckless adult).
If we stop teaching kids to be afraid of stuff because of what might happen, and instead teach them about how things work and the consequences of misusing them, I think we’d have less people afraid to use the stove in their 20s.
Your comment reminded me of this concept: Adventure playgrounds
Hell yeah! I would’ve loved one of these as a kid. I was always the one climbing on the outside of the jungle gym getting yelled at by school supervisors.
If I fall, I’ll know I can’t pull off that maneuver (yet), and I won’t do it again (yet), and you won’t have to yell at me! So just let me fall!
Yeah they started in the UK after WW2. They’re a really interesting concept, taking loose parts play to the extreme.
Also look up forest schools, kids going into the snowy forests and shit in Scandinavia and using knives etc.
Man I learned how to shoot a rifle at 6 or 7, my niblings got matching pink rifles at the same age. I was probably like 4 when I was taught how to sharpen sticks and hit each other with them. Idaho is a wild place only the most feral children make it to adulthood
Currently sitting in Idaho where grandma keeps a Ruger in her nightstand, can confirm.
where’s the American version where instead of a sword it’s an AR-15 and instead of father christmas it’s the actual father
Where’s father christmas? All I see is death.
oh yeah i forgot the jolly red and white attire is famously linked to death
I mean, since this is Death cosplaying as the Hogfather to keep the Hogswatchnight magic alive, technically you’re both correct.
Sorry, I was just making a pun, I should have written Death. It’s the character Death from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books, he’s helping out as the Hogfather.
yeah you were right. i was trying to be funny.
This post has the best comments, thank you all for sharing!
Where is this art from? It looks really fucking cool.
This particular style has been heavily trained by ai so if it were it 100% not surprise me. Both google and Yandex show no direct results for the work, so I’m leaning that it is prompt gen.
Looks too cohesive to be AI
You’d be surprised, what I can tell from the work is… there are some incoherent boot tops from the kid on the left, that weird attempt at making a hand guard on the sword with some ms paint edit, that particular kids other arm abruptly stopping and the lower step fading into the wall. There’s other minor things with the knights armor being inconsistent but it does look very clean at first glance. Also when I attempted to try to find a source for the work I found the particular pic with the caption being posted by bots, so that’s another tell.
But the hand guard was the only thing that stood out to me, the rest could be just how the drawing is. But like, the knights armor looks right, the window/wall is there and look good with the vines growing on it, the boots, outfits and shadows of the kids is realistic enough, AI struggles to make realistic looking anything so I struggle to believe this was AI generated
I’ve come to the same conclusion.
I didn’t pull off the caption – someone could try that – but Tineye didn’t find anything with the caption on.
How is this wholesome?
Sad - a bit.
Encouraging - probably.
Tragic - definitely.
But wholesome…?
I think the sentiment about being brave in the face of danger is a cool message, but
Knight stories are the Medieval Europe equivalent to Copaganda and idolizing political leaders.
