The six fantasy creatures in American culture

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Dont forget the most important small American creature---Danny Devito

I Laughed way too hard at the segment on dryads

I always think of Pixies as being more mischievous then fairies. That might be the influence of Harry Potter

Hadn't heard of brownies before! As a knowledge trade, Dryads are basically nymphs but are guardians/spirits for trees specifically

A cool follow-up video for this could be how D&D modified Tolkien to create an American fantasy canon and via gaming had a massive effect on modern fantasy.

"Irish-themed cereal" Explaining this to someone who had no idea what Lucky Charms was would just seem so absurd 😆

“Sprite Boy” sounds like a spicy insult, somehow.

I might be able to shed some additional light on nymphs and dryads! Those creatures are actually among the few on this list to originate from Greek folklore. A nymph was a type of minor goddess, who was associated with some natural environment, such as the ocean, freshwater, mountains, or the sky. And each environment had its own subgroup of nymphs associated with it. One such subgroup were the dryads, tree nymphs (specifically oak trees, but the name also can refer to all tree nymphs). Dryads were among those nymphs that were associated with particular natural features, as each dryad was seen as the embodiment of a specific tree. In fact, some dryads were so strongly tied to the tree they represented that, if the tree were to die, the dryad would die with it, making them one of the few deities in Greek mythology that can be killed. They feature in many stories, usually ones centered around the goddesses Demeter and Artemis, who were themselves strongly associated with nature. And as you might imagine, many of those stories involve dryads being tragically killed by reckless woodcutters, who are then subject to divine retribution.

Fun fact: Zwergstatt is a wordplay, combining the German words for dwarf, "Zwerg", and workshop "Werkstatt". Also, the German word for garden gnome is GartenZWERG, (garden dwarf) so it fits very well.

As a former Girl Scout Brownie, I don’t think we were ever given a reason as to why we were called that, and I’ve never heard of a brownie as anything other than a Girl Scout rank or, waaaay more commonly, a tasty baked treat.

I feel like one cannot discuss fairies in the modern context without mentioning William Shakespeare's play: A Midsummer Night's Dream and how fairies are depicted in that work being both mischievous as well as magical.

A cool topic would be how the original Zelda game on the NES is based on traditional western mythology (fairies, sea monsters, centaurs, sword and shield) essentially but also adds in the American horror canon (mummies, bats, ghosts) as well in a way that works well. An extension of that could the made-up names they gave those creatures like gibdo, keese, lynel which is both inexplicable but also creative.

A catch-all term for a lot of these creatures could be Fey/Fae. At least that's how Dungeons and Dragons collectively refers to most of these creatures.

Let's not forget the Brothers Grimm's story The Elves and the Shoemaker where elves fix shoes unbeknownst to the cobbler who runs the shop.

As a former brownie and girl guide, brownies are just the level before guides. It starts with Sparks for kindergarten age, then Brownies, Girl Guides, Pathfinders and finally Rangers for older teenagers.

The "pixie cut" is way older than you suggest; the fashion model Twiggy made it famous in both name and style back in the 1960s.

Gnomes had such a glow-up 😭

The part about East Germany being the source of the Garden Gnome was hilarious. Mainly the stasti arrest those guys for owning them. Maybe that could make a good period film about the fall of East Germany.

I’d like to add how much British culture adds to the American fantasy canon. Orcs were originally created by Tolkien to be evil elf creatures but would be reimagined into the hulking, dim witted, green skinned, barbarians we know today thanks to the British table-top war game “warhammer fantasy battles”.