The Myths/Folklore Blog

These Persian stories were very surreal – the characters just seemed to do random things that managed to either work out in a completely different way than you thought or seemed to have no motive. In one story, a woman cuts off her two thumbs in front of her daughter after hearing about multiple other beings doing something similar. From shaking feathers to muddying up the creek, these beings responded to a terrible thing happening in very odd, but somewhat endearing ways. They felt the pain of Mushu, who’s new wife had just drowned in a pot of soup because the wind had pushed her into it (see what I mean by surreal??). The overall tones of the stories reminded me of a simple narrator, that had very odd ideas for what a story was compromised of. They really didn’t have a plot per-say, they mainly focused on the characters doing fantastical things that pushed the story forward in some way. Things “just happened” that didn’t have any forewarning during the story – the second story ...

For this week’s reading, I decided to go over the Ancient Egypt stories because I’ve always found the gods of Egypt extremely interesting. First off, these stories were definitely not what I was expecting – I never realized that the gods of Egypt were at one point human. That makes the gods that much more relatable in the stories told about them, that they walked the Earth just like their believers/subjects, that their power could be seen directly by those who followed them. However, moving on from this, some of these stories were a little disturbing. The most obvious disturbing event from these stories happened in the “Death of Osiris” story, where his brother Set tricks him into laying in a coffin, thereby trapping and killing him. Furthermore, the coffin is thrown into the Nile, where it eventually lands in Syria. It doesn’t end there, though. Osiris’s wife, Isis is so distraught over his death that she endlessly looks for his coffin – when she finds it, she winds up slaying m...

For my Storybook project this semester, I'll be diving into Texan urban legends, namely those that deal with ghosts.  Themes that I'll try to explore are going to be: loss, relationships and how they can spiral out of control, and family ties. Ghost stories, namely urban legends are "based" in reality, so each of the stories that I'll be telling will be heavily connected to real life, meaning less of a "myth" and more of a realistic fiction story. Story sources can come from a number of places - the best resource for figuring out the "basis" of the urban legends comes from Weird U.S ., a site that delves into odd American history, folklore, and culture specific for every state. They have a bunch of urban legends within the website (and I have the book at home) so this source will be extremely good for gathering ideas and how to tell the story.  The writing style that I'll be using is going to vary with each of the stories that...

Texas Urban Legends La Llorona By Denise Rowlands , Flickr Click HERE to visit my Storybook!

The Crash Course videos provided some insights into myths and mythology that I previously had never given any thought to. Theories of myths are something that seems pointless at the surface level – why do we need to understand where/why myths exist? They’re just stories for people to tell one another. However, after these videos, I’ve gotten more of an understanding of the theories and the people who propose them. First off, I thought it was interesting that even during the time when myths were being invented/spread around more so, people were critiquing and analyzing them. Xenophanes was criticizing myths during the Greek period – that myths provided dangerous information, pushing the faults of man over to random gods that people worshiped. Another viewpoint, when looking back to the early time periods, is the belief that myths could be considered rudimentary science. As in, since myths were people trying to explain why things are the way they are in a very un-scientific manner ...

The next set of readings that I did delved mainly into Odysseus dealing with the ghosts of those who are found in Hades after dying. He needed to deal with them in these stories in order to gain a prophesy from Teiresias. This type of thing within a story (an oracle) can lead to some great plot points, especially if they’re crafted in a way as to not give away the entire story, but add some tension to it, dreading what is going to happen in the future. I felt sorry for multiple of the ghosts, mainly Elpenor, who died because he got too drunk to remember where he fell asleep, leading him to plunge to his death from a roof, breaking his neck. This death just seemed pointless except for the fact that now Odysseus had to go back to Circe and gather his body to burn it. The idea of communicating with the dead from our past has some importance, especially when it’s a beloved friend or family member. The emotional significance for the hero of the story when he meets his mother’s ghost is...

This set of readings was a lot more interesting for me this week, especially since I’ve read some of them in the past. It was nice to re-read some of them and get filled in on the areas I didn’t remember as well. Overall, the adventure story that involved life/death along with creatures/gods is something that I love to get caught up in. One thing that I noticed from the stories was that deaths happened a bunch, and Odysseus was somewhat accustomed to it – or he was just really brave. When trapped in the cyclopes cave, men were brutally smashed against the walls/floor and then eaten in front of their friends. For such subject matter, it’s told with such little detail other than “they were dashed against the ground” so the deaths have less impact overall on the reader. The second part of the reading included Odysseus and his men experiencing what Circe could do on her island that they landed on after escaping the island of cyclopes. The imagery of turning men into animals is very st...

I decided to delve a bit more into Texas Urban legends this week. The first story deals with the Donkey Lady  who is a fabled woman who lives beneath bridges, deformed after a fire ravaged her body, giving her stumps for arms/legs along with eventually giving her the infamous name Donkey Lady (since her face was unfortunately horribly burned). Now she stays beneath a bridge in San Antonio, looking for late night drivers to get her revenge on. An interesting way that this story could be told would maybe be from the perspective of someone who's related to her, whether it be her family, or someone who was simply a friend of hers. "Donkey Lady" From Weird Texas Another urban legend that I found highly interesting was the Woman Hollering Creek , which describes Hollering Creek as being haunted by a woman who drowned her two children in it - she now lurks around the creek, pulling anyone who gets too close in to their watery doom. This again works with my love for ho...

The best way, like the Try  Feedforward Instead of Feedback  article mentioned to give feedback to others is to do it in a constructive, positive light. If you're focusing on past mistakes, that might not always be the best method to prevent future mistakes - instead, engaging in a dialogue over mistakes you've made with the person you're trying to correct. "Changing the future" is the point of feedback, trying to change their mistakes in order to make them a better writer along with a more well-rounded person. Like the article mentions, showing how someone can be right instead of showing them how they were wrong frames their mistakes in a positive light, making it more likely that they would heed your advice over what you have been telling them about. The other article that I read, Be a Mirror , I loved the last piece of advice that was given over how to correctly foster a growth mindset within their mistakes - it described that we need to avoid using "I...

Walking up to the gleaming Palace of Three, Armistice could feel the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. No one was allowed past the white gate – what his grandfather had told him of his parentage must have been true. Armistice had a normal childhood, at least by mid-world’s standards. Living within the country had taught him the true value of things: justice, vengeance, and power – in this order, specifically, he was told how to rise up in the world, to be a representative of the place where he came from. He didn’t want to disappoint his teachers. That’s why he walked past the gate, why he was told of his relation to one of the three. Armistice didn’t simply want power to control his own fate, he wanted to control the fates of everyone around him – no one could get in his way. He was in front of the large marble door now – he could see the engravings of past revolts, with Vengeance coming down upon the masses with her fiery whip. Next to these revolts was Power, the weak...

Out of the 6 stories that I read today for the Part B readings of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Pyramus and Thisbe stuck with me the most. Basically, Shakespeare adapted the Roman version to be his Romeo and Juliet. In this version, instead of fake poisoning, Pyramus thinks that Thisbe had been eaten by a lion after discovering her bloodied veil in the place where they were supposed to meet. This is one of the only stories that I read that didn’t include an overt god who meddles with the characters in it. In two of the other stories, the gods are back to their meddling with human lives because of silly reasons. In, “Echo”, Tiresias is made blind by Juno after disagreeing with her viewpoint that men experience more pleasure during lovemaking. A detail that I found fascinating within Pyramus and Thisbe was how their deaths were described, how, “the blood spurted out, like a pipe fracturing at a weak spot in the lead…”. This is much more vivid than the previous stories described death – mak...

In Ovid’s Metamorphoses , quite a lot happens that stuck with me. First off, the way that human life is regarded seems to be from the perspective of an unfeeling god. Deaths are somewhat glossed over, no sure detail is gone into them as seen from the quote, " Overflowing, the rivers rush across the open plains, sweeping away at the same time not just orchards, flocks, houses and human beings, but sacred temples " . Furthermore, when humans are transformed into something else (that I absolutely wouldn’t want to happen) it’s often done because of the god’s vain outlooks on their situations. Tragedy seems to be common with the Roman’s. Io and Callisto are both raped by Jupiter, simply because he wants to. From this pointless and terrible act, both women are punished in severe ways, with Io being transformed into a cow and Callisto (1)  into a bear (and then constellation with her son). These acts are preventable, but told in such ways that they seem not to be a “big” deal with...