Fairy Tale Fix - 16: The OG Lumbersexual (ft. Dustin from Fantastic Worlds)

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

We are taking a sharp turn this week on Fairy Tale Fix with our first guest star, Dustin Alexander! Dustin tells us about the OG Lumbersexual and popular American folktale legend Paul Bunyan, while Abbie and Kelsey somehow pick the same fairy tale (out of hundreds), In The Jaws of the Merman.

Hi, this is Kelsey and Abby with Fairytale Fix. We're kicking off our April Fantastic Fun Drive in cahoots with our podcast network, Fantastic Worlds Productions. So making this podcast is a dream come true for us, obviously. It's incredibly fun to make and it's been so rewarding to start interacting with this wonderful group of people who love fairy tales as much as we do. It's been really gratifying and we feel like we've found our people. Yes, absolutely. But also, did you know making podcasts is really expensive? I did know that.

I know you did. I know you did. But them, I'm talking to them. I'm talking to the beautiful people listening to this episode. Yes. Our website, Upkeep, hosting fees, audio equipment, editing software, and just our time really add up when it comes to keeping this thing going. And we could really use your help with it. But it's not for nothing. If you join, you will get extra content like bonus episodes. our original pilot, behind-the-scenes stuff.

We do shout-outs on our Listener Tales episodes. Sometimes I write original fiction. Cool swag. You'll be entered to win giveaways, all starting at just $3 per month. And as an extra incentive for signing up for this month, every person who signs up for our Patreon from now until the end of April will get entered to win a gorgeous copy of The Book of Witches by Ruth Manning Sanders. It's one of the editions that is getting newly reprinted by Mav Media, but it's complete with all of the original illustrations by Robin Jacques, in addition to some really great podcast swag. Yeah, it's one of my favorite books from them. It's one of my favorite editions of Ruth Manning Sanders books. And I actually am going to release a bonus episode where I go over one of those

stories, the donkey lettuce. From the Book of Witches. Yeah. So we've got some great Patreon content for you this month so follow us on instagram twitter and facebook for updates and check out all of our patreon perks at fairytalefix.cash anything you can spare to help us out would be greatly greatly appreciated and i also just want to say we totally get it if you don't have any to, times is hard. We absolutely still love you and hope that you continue to listen and keep just making us feel like we've just really found our people on the internet. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Slime beneath me,ime up above. I'm really excited because we have a very special guest today on Fairytale Fix. I know.

Shut up. Wait until it's your turn. We're trying to introduce you here. Anyway, as I was saying saying yes a very special episode we have our very first guest dustin our producer slash editor yay dustin is also uh the dm for another podcast fantastic worlds pod yeah yes do you want to tell us about that podcast a little bit gm gm dm there's the dungeon master and then there's the game master we tend to favor the game master because dungeon master has some other thoughts towards it dnd also connotations in

addition to the dungeon i'm also just really bad at abbreviations. Every time I have to do an abbreviation for like a state, I have to look it up because I will get it wrong. I am very bad at those too. There are some in the TTRPG world that I just realized recently what they are and have not understood what they were for 20 plus years. And then I feel really dumb for not converting those for some reason. But yes, I run the Fantastic Worlds podcast. We run an adventure that's all about the fun adventures of Baba Yaga,

where the group is chasing her down wherever she might be. It's kind of like a Carmen Sandiego situation. You gotta wherever she might be. Maybe it's a more where's Waldo, I guess, kind of scenario. No, no. I feel like Carmen Sandiego is accurate because when we're chasing her down, we find out what she's been up to in whatever location we're currently hunting for more clues to get to the next spot.

Yeah. And hijinks ensue. Hijinks ensue. Yeah. I'm on that show, too. I play it. I play a character in Dustin's game, in Dustin's mad little world. It is so good. Definitely check it out if you guys are interested.

It's all part of the Fantastic Worlds pod family. Hell yeah. Dustin tries to kill me every week and it's very exciting listening. And Abby has a fantastic southern accent that i thank you adore thank you sir and does do not laugh at her for it whatsoever no one ever laughs at me for that or comes for me about it because it is very accurate to something i love that it's chasing down baba yaga yeah in her hut no less does she run around with the chicken leg hut like no we run around with the chicken legged hut oh okay okay we've got her hut and it magically teleports us uh all the place, like all over the world that the story takes place in. And then

recently to some other extraterrestrial locales. Oh, that's very different. Spoiler alert. Have you ran into any glass mountains? No, not yet. But I feel like there really should be. They did run into a living stove. Oh my gosh, that's amazing. Was there a rude prince in it? Well, there was a... There is an occasionally rude paladin that got stuck in it. Okay.

Jess's character. Amazing. stuck in it okay jess jess's character amazing i believe she had um these gloves of rusting or something like that on at the time and so she just the way she got out of it was by pressing her hands against the side and rusting it from the inside out so that she could bust her way out smart it was pretty smart very smart but they do face many fairy tale creatures there's been trolls there's been dragons there's been goblins uh i don't think zombies are too zombies are more of a modern we did we did the shambling undead you know yeah well yeah but not in fairy tales there's not a lot of zombies in fairy tales. Oh, sure. Zombies are more of a 1900s plus construct. Yeah, we haven't come across any zombies.

But vampires kind of take place for zombies because they're not really like bloodsuckers. They tend to like eat the guts of corpses. Mm-hmm. So. Especially in Slavic fairy tales, which is mostly what we deal with in our Fantastic Worlds podcast. There's been clockwork creatures. I don't know if I said dragons. There's been dragons.

You said dragons. I mean, you can always say it again. It's worth repeating. Dragons are always the best. Dragons, I'm in. So, yeah, we share a lot of fairy tale similarities when it comes to that story and fairy tale fics, which has been fun. similarities when it comes to that story and fairy tale fix which has been fun it has really opened up my fairy tale love from like being a kid but do between this and fairy tale fix it's

been it's been wonderful to kind of react as something that i honestly completely forgot how much i loved from a kid because i mean i haven't really thought about fairy tales since probably seventh grade um so what what would you say your favorite fairy tale is? Or a couple of them? I loved American folklore tales. So Paul Bunyan, which we will be talking about today. Johnny Appleseed, John Henry Steel Driver. Oh, I have no idea who that is.

And that makes me very sad. They're all just as problematic as any fairy tale we deal with nowadays. You know, European fairy tales have the problem of how women are treated, basically, seems to be always a big common theme, for example. But American folklores, they're problematic because it's about being pioneers and moving out west. You know, that's not an area that has any problems whatsoever sarcasm uh it's about you know trying to trying to tame the wild west and a lot of stories around that um some of it's good some of it's bad some of it has had a modern take a lot of american folktales go into man versus machine so because they're more modern fairy tales because

they're only as late as the late 1800s really you start to deal with a little of that which is interesting because you don't see that in any other fairy tales really because our folklore because they're so much older than that well we definitely haven't covered anything like that yet and then this is like specifically sort of like a industrial revolution era folktales which is very interesting yeah yeah 18 8 15 18 50s plus pretty much and then because of that a lot of them have been over commercialized um there is an american folktales disney line of cartoons that were made in the 50s. Ball Bunion being the biggest one. I shared that one with you guys, but you did not watch it, thankfully.

Because you have to do my guesses. But you should watch it after because it's not very long. And it is very fun to watch. But it has definitely been Disney-fied. Which can be fun sometimes. Speaking of Disney, obviously, I feel like we have to ask all of our guests this what's your favorite disney princess and it doesn't have to be disney just a princess i think your favorite animated princess or princess from a fairy tale and then i also

need to know your favorite animated villain yes that is the other one realistically move on is my favorite disney appearances great choice she is badass uh and i have a soft spot for badass females abby can attest to this because some of my favorite characters one of your favorite things and something i like a lot about you uh it's something in fact in my one of our other podcasts the greatest show on earth i play a badass female character because that's just my favorite characterization she is an absolute queen i adore your character on that show like she's so cool the greatest show on earth it's it's our patreon exclusive show for the fantastic worlds podcast and it's like it follows a bunch of like circus jerks on a quest to essentially like i assume

we'll be saving the world at some point but right now we're saving a town and uh dustin's character is just this incredibly badass lady who has a lot of fire magic and a scimitar and javelins and is really like a take charge, like runs into the scene kind of lady. But also she's like really warm and empathetic and friendly. And I just, I like her a whole lot.

And she's also 5'1", but acts like she's seven feet tall. She's very tiny. I think that's most ladies that are 5'1". They all act like they're seven feet tall. All the ones that I've met. Well, that's the thing is, Mariposa doesn't necessarily act like she's seven feet tall.

She gives off the presence of seven feet tall. Nice. So Mulan, and I did just watch Raya and the Last Dragon. Oh my gosh, I haven't't and raya might be up there because she actually reminds me a lot of mariposa in just pure badassness um if i could watch an entire movie of just raya being badass the entire time like no no cut scenes no story just her just beating things up i would be very enjoy i would enjoy it uh and she also proclaimed herself a dragon nerd so that's always uh that's always a selling point that's always a selling point uh oh that's another thing about mariposa is she

does have some connections to dragons as well that has not been fleshed out but i'm very excited to find out what those are yeah i am a hero pose a super fan uh so yes those that is those are my two heroes villain wow i need to think about this yeah i don't even know if abby and i have actually even talked about our favorite villains i don't think so you know there there are the villains who are, because yeah, okay, some of their points make right. There are some villains who are just assholes, but still so good. I do kind of like Rattigan from The Great Mouse Detective. He doesn't like being called a rat and he doesn't really mean things. He's a very smart, he's basically a foil to the Sherlock Holmes analogy of the character in The Great Mouse Detective.

Gosh, I haven't seen that movie in years. So long. Oh, Madame Mim. Oh, hell yeah. Great choice. Madame Mim is a fine choice. Madame Mim is a great choice. In fact, my last job we worked at, we got the pleasure of whenever we got new computers, we got to name them a Disney villain.

And that was the name of my computer was Madam Mim. What a great workplace quirk. That's awesome. Yeah, that was that was one of the things where I was like, Okay, I like the people here. So yeah, I would say those are probably the two that come off the top of my head. There might be other ones that I just haven't thought of, but those two are, are fun. Excellent choices. I definitely need to rewatch the great mouse detective because I haven't, I haven't even thought about that movie in years. Yeah. That was a great deep cut of kids animation to pick that guy.

It's not the greatest Disney movie. I mean, let's be honest. It's not, but small note though, I do love the greatest Disney movie. I mean, let's be honest, it's not. But small note, though, I do love the American Tales series. Oh, yeah, so cute. Warren T. Cat.

It was basically an analogy to a corporate fat cat. Nice. Hilarious. Excellent. Oh, this is giving me so many non-Disney animated movie feels right now did either of you ever watch cats don't dance yes a long time ago yeah i do remember that one i forgot that i

and i this might actually change like my answer if kelsey and i have talked about our favorite villains before if we're gonna if we're going to in the first place i'll have to give i'll have to give some consideration to miss darla dimple she is so incredible and her song is excellent there yeah that it just actually opened up a whole door of non-disney movies the secret of nim land before time was also a big one that came out all dogs Dogs Go to Heaven. Ah, talk about movies that really fuck you up. Oh yeah, that movie. That was a movie that I love

but hated to watch because it would upset me so much every single time. But I love that movie so much. What about the villain from Fern Gully? Do you guys remember that one? Was it Hexus? Hexen? It is Hexis.

The absolute most terrifying looking villain. So gross. Pretty sure voiced by Tim Curry. Also an excellent villain song. Oh my gosh. I love Tim Curry. I haven't seen that one in a long time either. I need to rewatch. I gotta basically put all these on my list and just have a movie night. Yeah, you're right. It was Tim Curry. Oh my gosh. The song is called Toxic Love. I don't even remember it. I need to. Oh my gosh. When we're done with this, we're going to listen to Big and Loud by Miss Darla Dimple and then

Toxic Love. It's so fucking good excellent tell me a tale yeah dustin i'm gonna make you go first okay as our guest well we previously discussed this but i had the idea of usually you ask usually kelsey when you do a fairy tale or abby when you do a fairy tale you give three choice you give the other person three guesses to try to get their points so because i am going to be too telling two shorter tales i figured what i would do is the first one which is called babe the blue ox and it is came from american folklore.net and this was a story that was retold by S.C. Schlosser. Yes, sure. And so, Kelsey, you get to do two predictions.

And Abby, you get to do one. And then on another one, Abby will do two predictions. And Kelsey will do one. So, why don't you give me those predictions first there, Kelsey? Okay. And what was it called again babe the blue ox babe the blue ox i definitely have heard this story but i don't remember like anything about it so i want to guess that something about the tail falls off or comes off somehow. That's just in the very back of my memories. Interesting.

Although maybe it's totally wrong. So that would be hilarious. And I am also going to guess that the ox helps Paul Bunyan out somehow. That's great. Those are my two predictions. Okay. I will want something a little more specific about how Babe helps the Ox. I think the Ox helps Paul Bunyan

with its strength. Okay. I will take that one. That's a good one. What about you there, Abigail? with its strength. Okay. I will take that one. That's a good one. What about you there, Abigail? I also vaguely remember... I know that I've heard this story before.

I know that I have. Someone at some point told me this story, or I have a vague memory of a cartoon Blue Cow. Maybe I even watched the thing that you posted in Slack back when I was a child, but I don't remember literally anything about it outside of the fact that there was a, there was a blue cow. Yeah.

Same. I'm like, I'm pretty sure I've seen that cartoon. Paul Bunyan rescues the blue cow from being stuck. He rescues the blue cow. Okay. So I'm going to tell you some interesting facts about Paul Bunyan beforehand. After you guys, since you guys have finished your questions, which is for Kelsey, it is the tail falls off.

And the ox helps with a feat of strength. And for Abby, Paul Bunyan rescues the blue ox. Blue ox, whatever. It's a bovine, the blue bovine creature. So here's the interesting thing about the Paul Bunyan stories that I ran into is while in fairy tale European cultures there has been a lot of different stories that have some similarities American folk

tales they like to centralize around a figure and then there are generation after generation of folk tales made around that specific figure so it's kind of an interesting twist I guess it's kind of like a Cinderella situation Cinderella has a lot of different variations of that story being told um some of it and a lot of these tales started out for paul bunyan specifically in minnesota wisconsin canadian

wilderness logging camps where they would tell it was started as an oral tradition and eventually it became a written tradition. So that's where it's interesting. So there are a lot of versions of Paul Bunyan stories and it was hard to nail down which ones were like something somebody wrote in the last 20 years for fun versus something that's been along for around for a long time. So this is one that I found that seemed to somewhat match up with an older tale. And we'll see how it matches up. Okay. All right.

By the way, just a quick little interlude. The Fairy Tailors, it's another fairy tale style podcast. They have a really great meme that is like a bus driver. And it says, don't make me tap on the glass. And the sign says, there are no original fairy tales. And it's such a good meme. I have been meaning to find that and post it because it is so true and it cracks me up every time they post it. And after these stories, there are some interesting follow-up pieces that's kind of around that, that I will discuss around the academic world of fairy tales and Paul Bunyan as a story.

So there's a lot to the story. Awesome. So here we go. Well, now one winter, it was so cold that all the geese flew backward and all the fish moved south and even the snow turned blue. Late at night, it got so frigid that all spoken words froze solid afore they could be heard. People had to wait until sunup to find out what folks were talking about the night before.

Paul Bunyan went out walking in the woods one day during the winter of the blue snow. He was knee-deep in blue snow when he heard a funny sound between a bleat and a snort. Looking down, he saw a teeny tiny baby blue ox. Just about in the snow and snorting with rage on account of it. He was too short to see over the drifts. There you go, Abby.

Point for you. Also, how cute does that sound? Very adorable. That sounds super cute. I want a tiny blue ox friend. I know. I want a tiny blue ox friend. I know, we just showed it to you. Paul Bunyan laughed when he saw the spunky little critter and he took the little blue mite home with him. Aw, little blue mite.

Yes. This is so folksy. I like it. It is. It's very folksy. It's very Minnesotan. It definitely has that feel to it. He warmed the little ox up by the fire and the little fellow fluffed up and dried out. But he remained as blue as the snow that had stained him in the first place. So Paul named him Babe the Blue Ox. Well, any creature raised in Paul Bunyan's camp tended to grow to massive proportion. And Babe was no exception.

massive proportion and babe was no exception folks that stared at him for five minutes could see him growing right before their eyes he grew so big that 42 axe handles plus a plug of tobacco could fit between his eyes it looked like a murder of crows a whole day to fly from one horn to the other i'm sorry is this a mountain sized? Yes. Yes. Ox. This is a Clifford, the red dog situation.

Almost. I actually, Clifford's probably a little small compared to this. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Also, what was a, a what of tobacco?

A plug of tobacco, a plug of tobacco. I did not look up what a plug of tobacco is. I'm Googling it right now. I'm sorry. I need to know. I looked up a lot of these things, but for some reason, plug of tobacco was like, oh, that makes sense. I know what that is.

A plug of chewing tobacco is tobacco leaves pressed into a square brick-like mass. And from this, pieces are bitten off or cut from the plug and then chewed. All right. Okay. All right. I knew. I couldn't. I needed to know. I gots to couldn't i i needed to know i got to know i got to know and apparently with a very long rope the laundry man used his horns to hang up all the camp laundry

which were dry lickety split because of all the wind blowing around at that height oh uh whenever he got the itch babe the blue ox had to find a cliff to rub against because whenever he tried to rub against a tree, it fell over and begged for mercy. To whet his appetite, Babe would chew up 30 bales of hay, wire, and all. It took six men with pickaroons and basically a pickaroon. I did look this one up. Imagine an axe, but instead of an axe handle, it looks kind of like a long nail. And it's sharpened one end, and you use it to pick into the side of wood to help lift it up. So it kind of looks like an ice pick, kind of like only a little straighter than an ice pick.

Okay. To get all the wire out of Babe's teeth after his morning snack. Right after that, he'd eat a ton of grain for lunch and then come pestering around the cook, Sough sam begging for another snack god i love it babe the blue ox was a great help around paul bunion's logging camp he could pull anything that had two ends so paul often used him to straighten out those pesky twisted logging roads by the time babe had pulled the twists and the kinks out of all the roads leading to the lumber camp, there was 20 miles of extra road left flopping about with nowhere to go. So Paul rolled them up and used them to lay a new road into new timberland. Paul also used Babe, the blue ox, to pull a heavy tank wagon, which was used to coat the newly straightened lumber roads with ice in the winter, until one day the tank sprang a leak that trickled south and became the Mississippi River.

Oh, what? Okay, that's just... Sorry, just casually, casually describing the creation of one of the largest rivers in the continental United States. But yes, fine. Yes, yes. And I would count that as your fetus strength right there, Kelsey. Yep. I like how it's just like a one sentence off.

Oh, yeah. And that's how that happened. Who cares about that? That's how the Mississippi River happened. It's all thanks to Paul Bunyan and Babe. Sure. After that, Babe stuck to hauling logs, only he hated working in the summertime. So Paul had to paint the logging roads white after the spring saw so that Babe would keep working through the summer. would keep working through the summer.

One summer, as Babe the Blue Ox was hauling a load of logs down the whitewashed roads and dreaming of days when the winter would feel cold once again and the logs would slide easier on the ice, he glanced over the top of the mountain and caught a glimpse of a pretty yellow calf grazing in the field. Well, he twisted out of his harness, liquidy split,

and stepped over the mountain to introduce himself. It was love at first sight over the mountain. Casual. How small was this yellow calf? They addressed that. It's coming up. It was love at first sight. And Paul had to abandon his load and buy Bessie,

the yeller cow from the farmer. So before babe would do any more hauling. Aww. That's so cute. Does it say Yeller? It does say Yeller. Bessie the Yeller Cow? Okay, thank you.

Just wanted to know. So cute. It's a love story. Bessie the Yeller Cow grew to the massive yet dainty proportions that were suitable for the mate of Babe the Blue Ox. She had long yellow eyelashes that tickled the lumberjack standing on the other end of the camp each time she blinked. She produced all the dairy products for the lumber camp. Each day, sourdough Sam made enough butter from her cream to grease the giant pancake griddle,

and sometimes there was enough left over to butter the toast. The only bone of contention between bessie and babe was the weather babe loved the ice and the snow and bessie loved the warm summer days one winter bessie grew so thin and pale that paul bunyan asked the clerk johnny ink slinger to make her a pair of green goggles so she would think it was summer after that bessie grew happy and fat again and produced so much butter that Paul Bunyan used the leftovers to grease the whitewashed lumber roads in summer.

With the roads so slick all year round, hauling logs became much easier for Babe the Blue Ox. So Babe eventually came to like the summer almost as much as Bessie. The end. Oh, that's so cute! And there's the cartoon of this correct

oh damn that's too bad i was so excited i was like i can't wait to watch this no the the the cartoon more and this is what a lot of the modern books do is they take bits and pieces from all of these stories to make a bigger story and bessie does not make an appearance sadly although bessie and babes and bessie does not make an appearance sadly although bessie and babes does sourdough sam make an appearance no that's such a great name i really want to be friends with sourdough sam does he make sourdough bread a lot because that's the best bread yes that is the best bread or johnny ink slinger sounded like a great name as well. Also fantastic. All right. So each of you both got a point. Wait,

what point did I get? Babe performed feats of strength. That's right. That's right. Yep. So good for us. That was so adorable. I also like that.

It was just kind of like a timeline of like, here's this cow. here's all this cool stuff the cow does it's an ox i understand i can see i can see you're about to say it's an ox god abby i'm sorry do you know how insulting that is i'm sorry i'm pedantic horse girl, not pedantic ox girl. I actually just looked up the difference between cows and ox. Oxen. And it says, even the short answer is a bit complicated.

That's the first thing that popped up. So I love that. Okay. Read it. Oxen and cows are both cattle, so I love that. Okay. Read it. Oxen and cows are both cattle, but not all cattle are cows and oxen. Wow. Okay. That's a fun diagram that doesn't really help.

That totally makes me think. That's actually the same with turtles and tortoises. What is it? All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Yeah. How confusing is that? All tortoises are turtles, but not all turtles are tortoises. Yeah. How confusing is that? Okay. I'm just going to sit here and think about that. I think you all will first notice is that American folktales tend to be a lot happier. Yeah, that was very happy and cute.

There is no darkness. There's also no witches. There are no dragons. There's no. Nobody's getting like body parts chopped off for some reason or. I feel like there's magic, though. The fact that they're all so big. And the original oral tradition of Paul Bunyan, he was just like a seven foot man. And his friend was a normal sized ox.

And they just were very strong uh his powers grew with time as more and more folktales came out paul bunyan is very much one of the original like comic characters superhero kind of tropes oh yeah that's totally true huh i didn't even make that connection so the next one is hold up hold up mister you forgot a very important part very important component this is fairy tale fix oh how would you fix that story um i think the thing is an adult that always drives me crazy is just how much this does these stories do not take into the fact that they're destroying the environment like it's all about clear-cutting forests there i mean back in the 1890s and 1850s

and stuff when this started there was this belief that american wilderness was unending like you could farm it forever and never obliterate it and it wasn't just forest it was forest it was buffalo it was overfishing the rivers overfishing the rivers fur trading all that stuff and i remember in an environmental class i took they took pictures of when people were really going after buffalo for instance and there were mountains of bison like skeletons just because they just went out and just murdered so many of them because they just got in the way of progress and i say that with parentheses fingers um so i think i would love to idea of you know seeing maybe an address or think of thinking of even about that

you know as a modern retelling the fact that you know maybe there's there's some questioning of doing this kind of thing when you create the mississippi river doesn't that harm some things you know because you flood out some towns do you i maybe maybe add a little bit of darkness into these folklore i guess is probably the the my fix for this making some addressing some issues bessie dot no i'm just kidding no not bessie that's a great fix that yeah that's excellent make it like more ecologically conscious yeah these are all a lot of these older folk tales are based on the idea of american exceptionalism and there's a lot of flaws with that ideology. And I would like to see some addressing of that because I think as much as I love these folk tales,

it was, there was a lot of unlearning that had to come from me growing up with stories of having a lot of stories like this and not a lot of stories of why these existed. Why the downsides of these the idea of cutting down an entire forest what that would do right and and some explanation of the context of what of why these stories came about why they're written this way why they are so uniformly cheery yeah um and uh and yeah because because you know you can it's it's important to remember like you can, you can love something, but you can also critique the things that you love for what their original purpose was.

Which you guys. Yeah, and I can tell you that didn't even to look at some things about these stories as well. There's also some sadness because I think they're just dying out. The fact that you two, for example, they don't really remember details about them. These stories were very prevalent to me when I was a kid in the 80s. So the fact that they're kind of just dying out because they're just not as well known. Just like all fairy tales, that makes me really sad. What I don't think the audience knows

is the Ruth Manning Sanders books that you read. I became very obsessed with those because I got very sad to find out that those books were not being reproduced. And if you wanted to be in those, some of them were upwards of $1,000 to buy off of eBay and stuff. And the idea that these fairy tales on all these stories could just go away because of time and people not being interested in them um that made me very sad so the idea that

these stories that i grew up with are starting to feel like they're going that way um kind of added to some some sadness but you know that's why we have shows like this. And that's why I'm reading about Paul Bunyan. Yeah, yeah. We're keeping the oral tradition of telling folktales alive. Yes. You're welcome, Earth. Yes, you're welcome. Our contribution.

I do believe that in Minnesota, Paul Bunyan is still, however, a big thing. They have statues of Paul Bunyan. I believe there's a Paul Bunyan is still, however, a big thing. They have statues of Paul Bunyan. I believe there's a Paul Bunyan expressway. So he is not dead to certain regions of the United States. Just out here in California or on the coastlines. Probably just not as much as he once was. Yeah, definitely. I could see that.

Do you have any thoughts or fixes? I do. I don't. I thought it was just a really cute any thoughts or fixes? I do. I don't. I thought it was just a really cute story. I liked it a lot. But I really love your fix. That's something I never would have thought of. Yeah.

Same. I really. It's kind of like an industrialist propaganda story. There are some important notes about that that I will be bringing up later as well. Yeah, no, no fixes for that story in particular either. Because it was, it was, it was very cute. And it's, and it's also not really written narratively. It's just sort of, it's like, Paul Bunyan found this ox. It's a very large ox.

It didn't seem to really have like a, like a moral of the story like it's not really teaching you a lesson like a lot of the fairy tales we read there's there's really nothing to fix outside of its premise which you had a you had a great fix for that so yeah it was one of the other funny things i read about the paul bunyan stories is why it was a bunch of logging men in a logging camp in the middle of nowhere. That the fact that these stories were relatively non like over sexualized or like there wasn't like a lot of crudeness in them. Like you would expect a bunch of men in a logging camp to add to a story. logging camp to add to a story i mean i know you have said with fairy tales that it was a lot of women who were working in environments where it wasn't necessarily the most enjoyable work environment so they created these stories to help them help the past the time this is kind of the

same scenario but so much less cruder for some reason i i thought that was an interesting difference as well that yeah that isn't it that's an interesting interesting point to bring up there's a things things are a lot spicier in uh european fairy tales it's a german fairy tale so the german ones in particular pretty dark if y'all are ready i'll read the next one yeah this one is called paul bunyan tames the Whistling River. So, Abby, you get two guesses and Kelsey, you get one. Okay. How does he tame the Whistling River?

Okay. I'm going to say he diverts it or a portion, diverts a portion of it. In order to, they need water to power their lumber mill? I don't know. Yeah, I'm sticking with it okay all right i come from a lumberjack family like a family of foresters so the fact you don't know these just makes insults me so much abby i have no idea i have no idea what what lumberjacks do there's something about trees and they cut those down. And what else do you need to know? They all wear a plaid and have big beards.

They have axes. They have axes. Paul Bunyan was one. That's the, that is the extent of my knowledge. Okay. So your two are that he diverts the stream or river somehow and that they need the water to power their lumber mills yes okay i'm sticking with it i don't have any other ideas

okay what about you there kelsey okay um this is also from you you know, foggy, foggy memories of cartoons and what I think I remember. I think at some point he actually picks up the river like it's like it's tangible. Oh, shit. You're right. I don't know if that's true. That's just what I'm remembering is he actually picks up the river like with his hands. Like, that's something that is possibility in this funky folktale american world so that was my prediction uh paul bunyan tames the whistling river i'm so mad already

i know all my predictions are wrong the whistling river so named because twice a day it reared up to the height of 200 feet and let loose a whistle that could be heard from for over 600 miles was the most ornery river in the u.s of a it took and by the way it did say it out that way u.s is the most ornery river and i feel like you should be telling us this with an accent like some sort of should i bring out my fight first i bring out my friday accent it took fiendish delight in plaguing the life out of the loggers who worked it it would tie their logs into knots flip men into water then toss them back out onto the banks and break apart whole rafts of logs as soon as the loggers put them together. Like that? Perfect. Perfect.

Great. Nailed it. The fact by itself might not have been enough by itself to get Paul Bunyan involved, but one day Paul was sitting on a hill by the river combing his beard with a large pine tree when, without warning, the river reared up and spat 419 gallons of muddy water onto his beard. This started Paul somewhat. Yeah, so rude.

I bet Paul is really attached to his beard. Oh, I'm sure. He's one of those beard guys. He's got a beard oil. He's got a comb. He's constantly tending to it. Oh, I'm sure he's a major investor in one of those those uh those hipster beard companies at this point i mean he he was the og guy he probably had his own beard oil that he made himself the og

lumber sexual yes that's the title of this episode? The OG Lumber This started Paul somewhat, but he figured if he ignored the river, it would go away and leave him alone. But that on river just reared up again and spat 5,019 gallons of muddy water onto his beard, adding a bunch of mud turtles, not tortoises, turtles,

several large fish, and muskrats into the mix. Paul Bunyan was so mad, he jumped up and let a yell that caused a landslide all the way out in Pike's Peak. By Jingo, I'm gonna tame

that river or bust a gut shrine, he cried. By Jingo? Jingo is basically a term of going to war or starting a fight. Or it's an old, old slang term. Okay. I kind of want it to come back. By Jingo.

Like, I'm going to go to war with you. By Jingo, I'm going to punch you in the face. Exactly. We're bringing it back. We're bringing it back. Another good title. Yeah, I had to look that one up because I was like, that sounds like an offensive slang term. I was going to ask.

I was like, is that like an old-timey racist thing? Or what did you just say? Just means going to war. Unless there's another slang term I didn't find somewhere. But I did look this up just to make sure. Okay, cool. So Paul sat for four days eating popcorn and trying to figure out how to tame that river. He ate so much popcorn that the air was soon filled with white bits and the ground for three miles around was covered with 18 inches of popcorn scraps.

Popcorn scraps? Mm-hmm. Yummy popcorn scraps. Popcorn scraps? Mm-hmm. Yummy popcorn scraps. Popcorn scraps? Yeah. You know, when you eat your popcorn at the bottom, there's all those little scraps at the end? Like unpopped kernels, sure. Well, yeah, but there's the broken up pieces of popcorn at the bottom.

Yeah, fine. All right. Depends on how much you love popcorn. I mean, he's probably not a dainty eater. He's probably taking big old handfuls and just shoving them in his mouth. No, he's a man. He's a man. He's making a mask.

But in like a hot way. He's eating popcorn down by the river. He ate so much popcorn that the air was soon filled with white bits and ground and was covered with 18 inches of popcorn scraps. This caused several hundred small animals and a few dozen birds to conclude that they weren't a blizzard, and so they froze to death. This furnished... There's a little bit of darkness in this one, apparently. It's awful.

This furnished the loggers at the camp with pot pies for several days. Oh, my God. Okay. Okay. the cap with pot pies for several days oh my god okay just as he ran out of popcorn paul decided that the way to tame the river was to pull out the kinks he would hitch the river to babe with the blue ox and let him yank its strength point for abby hooray of course paul knew that no that an ordinary log chain and the skid hook wouldn't work with water. So he and Babe took a short walk up to the North Pole.

There, Paul made a box trap baited. A short walk to the North Pole. I mean, you know, if you've got an ox that can step over mountains, it probably is a short walk to the North Pole. That's like a four-hour trip. Yeah, imagine what his cabin looks like. I mean, geez. He probably sleeps under the stars, though, because he is a real man. He doesn't need a roof like some prissy city boy.

So he and Babe took a short walk up to the North Pole. There, Paul made a box trap baited with icicles that he set near a blizzard trail. Then he and Babe wandered away. Paul started to throw icebergs out into the ocean so Babe could play and play fetch. Cute.

Just decimating our frozen North. It wasn't as much of a problem at the time he had to stop the game since each time babe jumped into the water a tidal wave threatened to swamp a coast of Florida well they're used to it after lunch Paul went back to check on the trap he caught six

young blizzards and an old norwester he put two of the young blizzards in his sack and released the rest then he and babe went back to their camp catching blizzards it's just like no big deal just throwing them in a sack yeah okay as he walked into the camp, Paul yelled to Ole, the big Swede, to build him the largest log chain that has ever been built. Then he staked out the two blizzards, one on each side of the river. Right away, the river began to freeze. By morning, the river had a tough time rearing up to a whistle because it was frozen solid for more than 17 miles. When Paul Bunyan finished his breakfast, he harnessed,

babed and wrapped the chain. It was the most important meal of the day. So you can't, uh, yeah, they're lumber, but they're lumberjack breakfast for a reason. And when you go to a greasy diner,

that's, that's true. That's fair. That sounds okay. Good right now. Oh my God. Right. Yeah.

When Paul Bunyan finished his breakfast, That sounds so good right now. Oh my God. Right. Right. Breakfast for dinner. We need some toughest brinner. When Paul Bunyan finished his breakfast, he harnessed the babe and wrapped the chain 72 times around the foot of the frozen whistle river, yelling to the men to stand clear. He shouted to that babe to pull. Babe pulled the chain into a solid bar and yank knee deep in solid rock. But the honorary river refused to budge.

So Paul grabbed the chain and he and babe gave such a yanked knee-deep into solid rock. But the Honoree River refused to budge. So Paul grabbed the chain, and he and Babe gave such a yank that the river jerked loose from its banks and dragged it across the prairie so fast it smoked. After a while, Paul looked back. Yes. The water. That's one fast river. Smoked.

Smoked it. Okay. After a while, Paul looked back and saw the river was straight as a gun barrel, but the river was much shorter with the kinks out, and all the extra length that used to be in the kinks were running wild out on the prairie. So Paul got his big crosscut saw and a lot of bailing wire and sawed the extra lengths of the river into nine-mile pieces, rolled them up, and tied them off with the bailing wire. He later used them to float the logs when he logged out the desert. I don't know how you log out a desert, but he logged out the desert.

He did. He did it. I don't know how you capture a blizzard either and put it in a sack. That's true. But now that it was straight, the Whistling River lost its gimp and refused to whistle, which made everyone mad at Paul Bunyan, because now they didn't know when to wake up in the morning. Paul might have been in real trouble if Squeaky Swanson hadn't showed up right about then. Squeaky Swanson.

Swanson. Yes. A long-time ancestor of Ron Swanson. Nice. Beautiful. I believe it. Yes, me too. Squeaky's speaking voice was no louder than a whisper,

but when he yelled, you could hear him clean out in Kansas. So each morning, Squeaky got up at the crack of dawn and yelled the blankets off of everyone, every bed in the camp. Naturally, the men found it hard to sleep in the cold without their blankets. So they got up. Squeaky was a great success.

And for the rest of his life, he did nothing but get up at dawn and let out one really loud yell. That's his whole job? That's his whole job. And he's good at it, damn it. The end. Oh, my God. Amazing. Oh, my gosh.

Yeah, that was really fun. All of that. Yeah. Because it got splashed with water. Yes. Revenge. Revenge. Revenge. Don't fuck with Paul Bunyan's beard.

That's the moral of this story. Absolutely. Oh, I moral of this story. Absolutely. I love that so much. I never ever would have thought to read like a Paul Bunyan folktale. So that was amazing. Thank you. Yeah. A fresh twist.

Absolutely. You definitely have to ignore the major environmental disasters that Paul Bunyan had to create in order to do this. Yeah. Yep. But I mean, but that's like so many. I mean, honestly, like Paul Bunyan kind of reminds me of a much more mythological figure than a lot of fairy tales that we read because he if these remind me a lot more of like stories about the greek gods than than it does a fairy tale and that's where the big diversion happened when we went from oral tradition to written tradition for paul bunyan stories back in the 1920s is they started writing him up more of more of that compared to Heracles or Zeus than a fairy tale.

Because, I mean, that's what he is. He's larger than life. Literally larger than life. And he's shaping the U.S. to be the U.S. of A, as they so distinctly pointed out, to shape it in the way they saw fit. Because that's what you do with the environment you come into. You shape it to be your own. You don't live within the constraints they give you. And you pretend that you're the ones who have been, you know, that this is clean, unbreached, pure wilderness.

No one here. There's nobody here no one else who might have opinions about anything that we're doing yeah so so yeah there is uh there is some definitely uh especially as i think these these stories go farther into the 1900s the american exceptionalism factor gets ramped up extremely. Because one of the pieces I read is they believe Paul Bunyan was originally from Canada, and he participated in many French-British wars in Canada. So he was this British-hating logger, basically, is where it kind of started out as one of the tell tales. Some other believe it also began in Maine as well.

And then a lot of people in the Midwest, Northern Midwest believe it started in those areas. Yeah. So my fix for this is pretty much the same as the last one. Just acknowledging this, maybe, you know, throwing a,

maybe a paragraph of making Paul Bunyan, making friends with some native Americans and respecting their traditions, you know, would have been nice. That would be really nice. Yeah. Maybe, you know, asking some questions of like, do you need the river and its current form for some reason before I just, you know, change the entire landscape yeah exactly uh some some interesting things i've already said a lot of these but i'll kind of just go over some i read this wonderful book i well skimmed it because i just got it today did not have enough time to read it i bought what i thought was going to be a 288 page book of american folktales and what it was about as a

288 page book on the mythology known as Paul Bunyan. And it was pretty interesting when I read it. I think I will definitely finish the book, but some highlights that I took is basically between 1880 and 1910, the Paul Bunyan stories were mostly told aloud in logging camps in Michigan to the Pacific. Eventually, it made its way to the oil fields in Texas and even the trenches during World War I. So you can imagine that the story manipulated and changed a lot during these different times. Bunyan was mostly a larger than life man during this time, over seven feet tall, very strong, and usually like a foreman at nearby logging camps. It was always like this, oh yeah, I usually like a foreman at nearby logging camps. It was

always like this, oh yeah, I've met Paul Bunyan kind of story scenario. 1904 to 1920s, a handful of oral Bunyan tales started showing up in magazines and newspapers, but they didn't really take hold. So they started to disappear. Then in 1920ss professional writers who worked in the woods uh at some point started writing them into conventional short fiction and they gained in popularity as americans were eager to create folktale heroes much like as you mentioned hercules or even thor um what was interesting about this is a lot of these professional writers were hired by lumber companies interesting stories so this is where you start to see that manipulation of the timber industry trying to gain favoritism and like positive stories about some corporate propaganda exactly and from their stories started to grow on their own apart from the original oral traditions

this is where you start to get the larger than life herculean style babe or not babe uh babe the blue ox and babe's a bigger star in the story to me than pop onion at some points that tracks you get some interesting stories like he's done some fantastic feats like he created the grand canyon uh him and Babe were wrestling, and that's what created the Rocky Mountains. Stories like that. Oh, I think I've actually heard that one. Yes. Yeah, that one is definitely in the cartoon. They don't call it.

I think they do the Grand Tetons in the cartoons. But they're also Babe and Paul are responsible for the Great Lakes or something because they walked through them and created the spots or something like that. Lots of stories like that. Lots of stories like that. Um, after world war two is where Paul Bunyan starts to have its diminishing returns. I guess it's the best way to turn it and story. A lot of folklorists who were just starting to solidify their scholarship

discipline, uh, as a collegiate idea, uh, treated it as fake lore and thus just said it wasn't worth their time basically and because they focused on fairy tales of like you know grim and all these other ones and so they basically they did not allow that it's like it was like the wikipedia of its time it just was not allowed in academia it just they didn't want it there. They called it fake lore, which is funny because if you really think about it, all fairy tales start from a similar story.

And these come out and are sort of generated in very much the same way and for a lot of the same reasons. And this is kind of an interesting thing that I've noticed. Sorry, quick sidebar. And this is kind of an interesting thing that I've noticed. Sorry, quick sidebar. An interesting thing I've noticed in academia just in general is that old things are much more venerated or are treated as something totally different from anything that we do ourselves. And so we couldn't possibly have originated our own folklore or fairy tales because that's something like ancient people do. Uh-huh. And I don't know.

That's very interesting. It's kind of funny because there is a book that I read and I did a report on this. It was based off of Gilbert Seltz's The Seven Lively Arts. And this was written back in the 1940s, I want to say, or 1923. It's the seven lively arts. And this was written back in the 1940s, I want to say, or 1923. It was basically the idea that pop culture, if it lasts long enough, becomes history, becomes a part of our educational environment. jazz music, comics, old comic strips from the 1920s and stuff that were considered disregard regarded as not art, but with time they would become considered art,

which I think a lot of people would consider comic books, jazz music, especially jazz is definitely considered as like a, now, now it's like a classy highbrow thing. If you're into jazz music. Exactly. So what's funny about that now is i was writing that on the juxtaposition of pop culture now so video games um movies was another one back then

that was considered not art yet um but yeah like video games and certain things within in that kind of environment will eventually be considered art with time. And my college professor actually gave me shit about that. He's like, that's bullshit. Video games will never become art. But honestly, with time, a lot of people are starting to look back at video games as art form. So that's kind of the same thing that's happened with Pulp Onion and folklore back in that time, as it just got looked at as too recent. It also did not help. It was in the broadening time of commercialism when a lot of these stories were taken and commercialized. But it still had a very strong oral tradition back in the late 1800s, a good 30, 40 years of oral tradition. So the fact that it just was dismissed was kind of sad and not that it did give the appreciation it deserved. from there the Paul Bunyan story really sticks around thanks to things like

the Disney American folklore cartoon I think that's I think when you to watch that movie or if anybody looks it up I believe you can find it on YouTube if you will post it to our Facebook page and Twitter yeah they have it in two part because I don't think technically it's supposed to be on

YouTube but you know whatever but I don't think a lot of people would know who ball bunion was if it wasn't for those, those kinds of stories. In fact, I think a lot of fairy tales, you know, as much as people like to give Disney movies a hard time,

I think they, they have sustained fairy tales that probably might've died otherwise in culture just to the times. But yeah, that's, that's all my stuff. Wow. I,sey already said it but i just want to say it again that i don't think either of us ever would have really thought to do an american folktale kind of for the same sort of biased reasons i think that folklorists

in the um the 20th century weren't really interested in including them as part of their academic study. I honestly kind of dismiss a lot of American folklore myself as kind of like not interesting to me. And I kind of forget that they're born from the same place and they often feature a lot of the same things that I like about mythology and and i i just i just kind of tend to want to ignore my own my own uh mythology from from my country and from my people but big partially because it also has a lot of connotations that i you know i just don't enjoy thinking about about the kind of inherent presumptuousness of, of a Paul Bunyan like figure in American folklore of, of, oh, it was Paul Bunyan who created the Great Lakes or

the Rocky Mountains. That is just so incredibly presumptuous and, and, and kind of damaging and not a little bit racist. So I never would have really thought or wanted to include it, but I'm really, really glad you did because it is interesting and the stories are adorable and we should definitely talk about them, especially through a critical lens. Yeah, and I will say I had the same reservation earlier, mainly because Paul Bunyan, I would say, is kind of a B- in terms of offensiveness, if you really think about the darkness behind it. um in but then you have john henry which is about a black man going up against the machine as a steel driver doing the train against the doing the railroad tracks back in the 1850s uh and there there was definitely some connotations there that i i was like i was i wasn't ready to

even go into that because that was my favorite story as a kid i love i love the man versus machine but i was i was afraid that was going to be one where i go back and read it and and go yeah this i can't even broach this one um but this one was kind of in that middle range the other one was johnny apple seed which is literally about a man going through the world and planting apple trees which is uh so low end on the destructiveness like he made and there it was based on a real it was based on a real life guy who was just a really nice guy who just went around and planted apple seeds uh and uh i thought about doing that but i was like no paul bunion was one of the big ones for me as a kid that was the one i loved and and and it like it was kind of tarnished

as an adult looking back and knowing that's kind of some things I don't want to approach. But I decided to dive into it. And I'm glad I did because it is a good – it's a part of our history as America that's dying. It doesn't mean – it shouldn't still be addressed, the problems with it. But it's still a good story regardless yeah great story and that's honestly what we do here at fairy tale fix i mean we love these stories but we still call out their problematic themes and we fix them we fix them right up so that was a perfect example yeah and just yeah, great, great stories.

That was fantastic. The second one, I think, was absolutely my favorite. Well, that's because I did it in my Western voice. I just love the idea of he rides his blue ox to the North Pole and throws Chuck's icebergs in the water. And floats Florida. I just really enjoy that kind of mythology like like you like you were saying like the the just the the Herculean like feats that Paul Bundy accomplishes are just delightful to me yeah not enough sourdough salmon the second one for me fair you know what I love about this is it had all the wonderful stories of like the Hercules gods without the incest or animal sex.

Yeah, I mean. I felt like I was missing, but that's just a personal preference. Just a personal, personal preference, you know. Those Greek myths are spicy. Yeah, it was actually I just messaged. So you had just, Dustin you had um recommended i watched the great and it i have been absolutely loving it and it totally made me wonder why they haven't made kind of a same comedy drama series based on zeus and all of his antics like i feel like that

would be so much fun why hasn't that happened because it needs to yeah i would love to see about like any kind of scenario like that where it's just like a time when there's overwhelming like when it comes to the upper class just just filthy amounts of wealth and prosperity and somebody coming in to just straighten all that shit out is, is I want more of that in my life. Absolutely. I, I would, I will say,

cause I would watch it. I absolutely would watch it. There would be some things, there would be some things that I would like, I just, some stories that we could definitely skip visa. Like how rapey Zeus is. Oh yeah.

Yeah. Or a re recontextualize somehow, but I would absolutely watch like a Greek gods soap opera. It'd be fun. Well, that's what I liked. So that's why the great made me think of it because it walks a really interesting line of having all of those horrible rapey type scenes, but it's also funny.

So it's definitely like a comedy drama where you're like, oh, wow, we're serious now. But then it's funny again. It's funny. And then you throw in a few huzzahs and you have that show. Yeah, and break some glasses. So in closing, before we finish, I just wanted to bring up,

so in our Listener tales episode from a few weeks ago we mentioned that uh a collection of a collection of german fairy tales that have not been heard very often have been uh hidden away in an archive in austria i believe and have recently been found and reprinted. So Dustin, I mentioned that I was going to look into it, but I hadn't actually done that yet. And then Dustin naturally did so immediately and sent me a copy. And then Kelsey completely independently also bought herself a copy. And then Kelsey completely independently also bought herself a copy. So you will be hearing stories every so often from Franz Jaever von Schoenwuth.

And this collection of fairy tales is the Turnip Princess and other newly discovered fairy tales. And since Dustin is our guest today, I wanted to make sure that he got good value for his purchase and heard what I think is my favorite one so far. Yay! Oh, boy, yeah. It's three paragraphs, so I'm just going to read the thing entire. And it's called... Do you want us to make predictions? Oh, you're going to make a prediction.

You're going to make one prediction each, and I'm going to tell you the title. In the Jaws of the merman that is the one i fucking chose i'm not even kidding how nuts is that that's nuts i read through like a few of the one pagers in this book and I was like, okay, I like this one. So I am going to read. It's not in the beginning of the book either. It's like in the middle of the book and yet you both found the same one. Yeah, I know. Did you read it too, Dustin? Did you already read that one?

Oh, no. I haven't read the book. I just sent it to you. Okay. I like my stories told to me by two beautiful women. Thank you very much. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do.

I love out of the hundreds of fairy tales in here. We both picked the same one. In the Jaws of the Merman. I mean, what a great title, though. Well, I imagine you guys were looking through the table of contents and you saw Merman and immediately looked into that and read it. That is exactly why I immediately flipped to page 140. Like, skipping all of the rest of these, then I went straight

to 140 because Merman. Excellent. Well, I will refrain from making predictions because... Dustin, make me one prediction for In the Jaws of the Merman. I have a feeling this is like a creature living in the jaws

kind of scenario i would say that in the jaws of the merman is a tiny creature that is been a princess turned into whatever the creature is in in the jaws map okay jaws of the mermaid okay does that make sense yes that makes sense so your prediction is that the story will be about a creature us like that was formerly a princess who was living in the merman's jaws yeah or like stuck in the jaws and is trying to bargain its way out for example or something like that i love it i love it so much prediction that's great um you're wrong but i also want to i also want to hear that story i want that story too though there once was a village near a large body of water and many beautiful girls lived there the more often they swam in the lake, the more lovely they became. Everyone adored them.

Girls living in other places heard about them. But since many were ugly and couldn't stay underwater as long as the girls in the village, they did not become prettier. So sad. It's very upsetting. In fact, many of them drowned. I don't know why I'm laughing. That's terrible. It's funny.

Girls stopped traveling there, but suitors from all four points of the compass came courting. All the girls in the village were married on one day. And the morning after, there was an enormous uproar everyone was running and the grooms had grabbed their wives by the hair and were pushing and shoving them to the point of exhaustion and then they raced away the group it's unclear if it's the grooms or the brides who raced away probably the grooms that's what i assumed it turned out that there was something not quite right with the girls. They had fish scales. A judge appeared on the scene with his officials, took a look at the brides, and ordered all of them to be burned at the stake at once.

She's a witch. She's a witch. Or a mermaid. That would be so smelly. That's one big fish fry. Yep, right? Delicious. Cook them in butter.

Little garlic. You know, some salt. Tastes delicious. As the flames were licking at the stake, tall waves rose up and washed into the village, and a huge head emerged from the waters. It spewed water like a whale and put out

the fire the brides all walked across an arc of water as if it was a bridge leading from the wood pile back to the water and then into the gate like jaws of the merman since that time girls no longer swim in the lake the The end. The ending is perfect. I love it so much of like, it's an epic, like there's a giant merman head with like gaping jaws and these like fish scaled women just walk into it. And since that time,

girls don't swim in the lake anymore. The end. Damn though, for a guess, I was pretty close. Like in terms of like women in the mouth of this merman, I got kind of in that direction if if this story had taken place a little later in the story and we'd got more details on what

it was like living in this merman's mouth i uh i think i think you would have you would have really had something there so what i want is a sequel isn't that the case with most of these stories it's like i just want more backstory i just want to know what happens next or what happened before this or how did the girls get fish scales is it just the magic of the lake that's making this happen ursula's spell finally wore off i i kind of assumed they were all like sirens like kind of fucking with the humans and they actually just live with the merman because you know because like it says that like none of the other girls who tried to swim in the lake to become more beautiful were able to do it um because they just couldn't stay underwater long enough so i think i think

you're right kelsey i think that these ladies were already mer people of some flavor that's kind of i kind of took it as a aerial situation like they had to are like or no splash like in the movie splash because she had to get into the water when she got into the water her her fins came back but when she was out of the water she got her legs this is kind of serenade where maybe the magic was they had to go into the water to be able to keep their leg spell going and maybe they all got in a situation where they got held up and they couldn't get there and they started to get scales and everybody freaked out that's kind of what i was imagining maybe all right yeah when i read it I was also thinking like, you know, those are his brides. Must be.

He's coming back for them. He stores his brides in his mouth. Don't you burn my brides. Come in, ladies. Yeah, I guess I would predict. I mean, it's probably too late on that part. But yeah, I wouldn't change it. I don't have a fix. That's great. That was pretty wonderful.

Yeah, my fix is there is no fix. That's extremely good. It's everything I like about fairy tales in three paragraphs. And because it's also I love that it ends as it's a cautionary tale. It's a story about why girls shouldn't go swimming. I love a mysterious lake story. A mysterious lake story. The only thing that I didn't care for, and I noticed it's kind of a repeating theme in this book, is

why you gotta... Come on. You're digging on ugly girls a lot. This book has a lot of opinions about ugly girls. And I just, you know, rude. And all ladies are beautiful ladies. Beauties in the eye of the beholder. Scales and all.

Scales and all. Scales do make you prettier, though. The merman thought they were beautiful, I bet. They glow. They, like, shine in the sun. Exactly. But, yeah, no, that was a perfect fairy tale. I love it so much.

It's everything that I want. And I thank you for this book. You're welcome. I'm really glad you read it. No, that's exactly how it should be read. And they don't swim there anymore at the end. They don't swim there anymore. It's kind of like I'm imagining a mother telling their kids this story and they're like, yeah, they all died.

So don't go swimming that late. Because you'll die. And you won't get any prettier. And you won't get any prettier, which is really the point. And I guess you could drown or whatever, but. You owe the world prettiness. But you also might get eaten by a merman, so. It's either be ugly or.

Be ugly or be dead. Uh-huh. This is the end of a very, very special episode of Very Tale yeah thank you so much dustin for joining us thank you for being our first guest and for those awesome folk tales and then excellent critical analysis at the end of them uh much appreciated yeah anytime next time we'll do johnny apple seed thank you so much for listening to Fairytale Fix. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Stitcher. If you want to support us,

you can get extra episodes, merch, books, and other bonus content at our Patreon by signing up at fairytalefix.cash for about what you'd pay for a latte a month.

It's a deal. Such a steal. It's, thank you. It's a deal. Such a steal. It's, thank you. It's a steal. I couldn't remember what the phrase was, but that's what Kelsey's for. And there's so much fun stuff on the Patreon now. So many bonus episodes.

We truly save our best ones for the Patreon episodes. There's some really wacky stuff. Yeah, I really enjoy listening to him and uh you can also find us on twitter and instagram at fairytale fix pod please email us your favorite fairy tales folklore nursery rhymes and other such things at info at fairytalefixpod.com and if you would like to find Dustin and find more of his work and what he do, then you can find him at... Dustin Alexander. On Twitter and the Instagrams and then also at fantasticworldspod.com. So Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox realized that they are in a country that is not to be bent to their will

and in fact worked with the local Indigenous tribes to create a world that fit for everybody and where everybody can enjoy the fruits of this wonderful country. And there was nothing wrong with mine. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.

And they all lived happily ever after. The end.