this post was submitted on 21 Jun 2024
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[–] [email protected] 142 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Seems like OP is not familiar with fae mythology.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Could you offer what you know?

[–] [email protected] 79 points 4 months ago (3 children)

You can’t trick me into giving you all my knowledge, faerie!!

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[–] [email protected] 52 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Off the absolute top of my head there's the redcap. Depending on the material it can be depicted as a gnome, goblin, or kobold with a jaunty looking red hat (generally long and pointy like a gnome hat or like Link's hat in Legend of Zelda).

It keeps the hat red by dying and regularly re-dying it with its victims' blood.

There's also a number of depictions of pixies as essentially flying piranha.

But this sort of mythology isn't some deep secret, it's everywhere outside of the kid friendly/disney filtered stuff. I'm sure a simple search will net you tons of content.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago

Shoot, I was just referencing the modern interpretations of fae, but that’s absolutely fascinating! As recompense for unintentionally misleading you, here are a few of my favorite fairy artworks by Arthur Rackham

[–] [email protected] 45 points 4 months ago

One of the best jokes I’ve seen is everyone with adhd accidentally answered yes to a fae asking “could I have your attention”

[–] [email protected] 23 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Or basically any European mythology.

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[–] [email protected] 123 points 4 months ago (1 children)

European cryptids can be creepy as hell if you look into older, non-disneyfied versions.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 4 months ago (2 children)

They've (euro cryptids) have gotten nerfed over the centuries, and the especially nasty ones probably got wiped out during world War II.

Our (American) culture is strongly combative, and our last giant local war was over a century and a half ago or so. The dark things that have crawled forth from our deepest nightmares and waking dreams are far hungrier, crueller, and have had much more time to proliferate than your feeble, mischievous survivors.

Your cryptids crave petty things, like food, stealing names, or the occasional child. Ours crave the end of all things and the souls of the multitudes, to truck is into turning each hand against every other, and ultimately to drag our shattered remnants kicking and screaming into the dark places under the Earth.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago

Honestly the disneyification fits in pretty well with old european folklore, the gambit for a lot of our mythological creatures was tricking you into thinking they're your friends and then a whole towns worth of people vanishes. We have some wendigo stuff style too and it tends to follow a similar style of moral lesson about don't do x or you will turn into the monster or the monster will come get you.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (3 children)

European Crypitids

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horror-devil-vampire-571389417

How europeans deals with them

Van-Helsing-2262630066

[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (1 children)

The only thing I vividly remember from this movie is the pretty lady just about sitting on Hugh Jackmans face.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I love this movie. It's probably one of my favorite schlock fantasy movies. The casting was way better than it had any right to be - Hugh Jackman, sure, but Kate Beckinsale? Well, I guess she was fresh off Underworld, so she was still in that headspace. And Richard Roxburgh doing the perfect amount of scene-chewing for the villain.. introducing himself properly as Vladislaus Draculea.. and the opening scene, shot just like a 1920s Universal monster movie! I legitimately think it's the closest we'll ever get to a live action Castlevania. I could go on, but I'll spare you. Might be time for a rewatch.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

Waaay classier

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 4 months ago

Someone didn't play the Witcher

[–] [email protected] 39 points 4 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 4 months ago (9 children)

That brings me back memories of when is was ~5 years old and visiting my father's cabin in the forest, which had a copy of that painting on the wall. He would put hall of the mountain king on full blast just to scare me from time to time.

Nøkken was scarier though, kept me from going down to lake alone after dark, which I guess was the original intention of that creature.

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (2 children)

Tbf, the Europeans have some pretty fucked cryptid lore, it's just that they're more chaotic neutral and less chaotic vengeance than the American variety. My favorite american cryptid is an old one you don't hear much of anymore, and was born from Pacific NorthWest loggers: the Hide Behind. Basically, this mf stalks your shit and will always duck behind a tree when you turn to look at it; it's fast enough to never be seen clearly, but you can just catch glimpses of it if you're fast/lucky. Eventually, it catches and eats unwitting loggers who let it sneak up on them.

Edit: I also like the deer stories. One of my all time favs was a free text about a deer stumbling up the street very clearly saying "BEEP BEEP BEEP" like a car being unlocked, followed by "Honey, I'm home!" over and over. That was the whole story, just a weird fucking deer stumbling up the street and talking to itself. 10/10 would gladly read again.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

I like Not Deer. Weird Birds are in a similar vein. I doubt they're established well enough to be considered a cryptid, but they're kinda similar.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 4 months ago

I like that Japanese foot that slams into buildings and demands you wash it

[–] [email protected] 24 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

That's definitely a bad idea to invite them to tea:

  1. They know you saw them
  2. They've got permission to enter you house
  3. You are giving them food!!

It sound like a recipe to get your daughter stolen from you, or to have your house falling down on your head, or losing your mind or straight being skinned you and your family.

Carefully go back so they don't know you saw them.
Do not ever speak to this to anyone, not to your parent, your neighbour, your child not to your SO, not on the internet or your diary and lets hope you don't speak in your dream.

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 4 months ago (3 children)

America's got some goofy cryptids too. Like the hugag. A large, moose-like fearsome critter with a big floppy upper lip and no elbows or knees. Unable to lay down or kneel, it can only eat bark from trees around the height of its head, and it can't lay down to sleep so it leans against trees, sometimes causing the tree to lean.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Can't forget Squonk. The gross pig thing that is so ugly it cries constantly. It can dissolve itself with its tears at will.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago

These sound like Gen 1 Pokedex entries

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 4 months ago (4 children)

why have I never encountered the word 'cryptid' until 2024, specifically in meme form, multiple times? Odd thing. tf are the kids up to these days

[–] [email protected] 36 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Funny enough, the term was coined in the 80's

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (2 children)

It's of course because these creatures came from crypto currencies. They just took a while to mature to a point where people started witnessing them

[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago

All of the best creatures are on the block chain.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago (1 children)

You didn’t watch enough trashy Discovery Channel shows from the 00s onward?

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Brazilians with our cryptids:

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 4 months ago (3 children)

Jackalope: Am I a joke to you? I hope so. It's kind of my thing.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

This stereotype is just based on Europeans exoticising native American culture

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Bigfoot doesn't seem so bad.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Ah, fig boot

[–] [email protected] 12 points 4 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 11 points 4 months ago

Americans with Cryptids:

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I guess you've never heard of German cryptids... Or Polish cryptids... Oooor Nordic cryptids...

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

If any cryptid out there actually exists, my bet is on bigfoot just because it would be the most mundane, boring thing to be proven real. Just a big ape? Fuck that. I want the Dover Demon to be real because it's actually interesting.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 4 months ago

MOTHMAN MOTHMAN

[–] [email protected] 8 points 4 months ago

I keep trying to make friends with skinwalkers but they run away when I try to hug them.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago

Translation: War it shall be, then

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