The Myths/Folklore Blog

For this week I again choose to look into the TV tropes website to see what kind of genre staples I could find that I didn’t even know existed (or had a name for). In the past, one of the things I noticed the most was how the most basic of information had a trope surrounding it, things I didn’t even realize were tropes. This week, I choose to look into Media and what tropes exist there. More specifically, I choose to look into “New Media”. What I found there was highly interesting. The first one that I saw (and that annoyed me the most that it exists) was the ‘New Media Are Evil’ trope. Where it’s basically the Ok, Boomer of TV tropes, where the older generation will always be opposed to certain aspects of media/technology that is advancing forward. It’ll happen with our generation too, there’s always going to be people who are somewhat afraid of progress/too stubborn to move forward with it. In modern society, especially, we like to demonize media today (sometimes for good reaso

The Brothers Grimm have a highly distinct story telling style that encapsulates what it means to tell old fairy tale stories. They’re filled with easy to follow plots that progress in a logical manner, they have rich detail the captures the essence of the story, and finally, they have gruesome details that really hone in on how it is VERY bad to be evil in these stories. This week, my favorite two stories out of the bunch were “The Six Swans” and “King Thrushbeard”. I was originally more of a fan of King Thrushbeard, but now looking back on how it ended/what took place to get there, I appreciate The Six Swans more. Each was filled with great details that highlighted exactly where the characters were in the story. An example of this is when the swans finally appeared, “and the fire was about the be kindled, all at once she cried out loud, for there were six swans coming flying through the air, and she saw that her deliverance was near, and her heart beat for joy.” Choice words her

The first stories from the Crane unit of the Brothers Grimm were quite enjoyable to read. I remember reading some of their stories in the past, but I haven’t read these before. I obviously recognized “Aschenputtel” as it is the original Cinderella story, but with the other two, “ The Fisherman and His Wife” and “The Robber Bridegroom” I had never heard of before. There were a few distinct things that set these stories apart from ones I’ve read in the past. First, these stories were super dark. The first one wasn’t too bad, with a valuable lesson being taught (which was don’t be greedy if given something good), but the other two had some pretty intense violence. In Aschenputtel, the evil sisters cut off parts of their feet in order to fit into the shoe that the Prince brought by. I wish Disney kept this in the movie, definitely would’ve added a more adult rating! (just kidding) At the end of the story, in traditional Brothers Grimm fashion, the evil sisters get their comeuppance when

Once there was a young boy, Mark who lived in a normal suburban neighborhood in Oklahoma. Mark didn’t have many friends, he was a bit too odd. That didn’t bother Mark at all, he filled his time with adventure books and exploring the nearby fields that surrounded his town. One day, as Mark was exploring, he came across a manhole cover. Normally Mark wouldn’t have taken notice but there were a couple of things that drew in his attention. One, instead of having a rusted color (like most manholes Mark has seen) it was chrome! Two, when Mark drew closer to it, he could hear a pleasant humming noise coming from underneath it. So, naturally, Mark went to the manhole and tried to lift it. The cover flew off, it was as Mark had the strength of 10 men! He thought to himself, “Aren’t manhole covers supposed to be really heavy?” However, before he could give thought as to why this manhole cover was so odd, a huge gust of wind pushed him into the hole! Mark felt the wind gushing past him

Again, Lewis Carroll does a great job of subverting expectations and giving us a great reason to keep reading his works! The situations that Alice finds herself in keep on getting stranger and stranger, with the story eventually culminating in her becoming a queen in Wonderland! Who could have seen that coming? The characters that she surrounds herself with are again unique and entertaining. My personal favorite is the Red Queen, with her evil-like, no-nonsense attitude. This is characterized extremely well through quotes such as, “Speak when you’re spoken to!” and “You can’t be a Queen, you know, till you’ve passed the proper examination”. This shows that she relies on what being a queen is all about, that she won’t let anyone take a queen spot who isn’t worthy, especially not someone as young and as normal as Alice. The Red Queen further humiliates Alice, making her seem less in their eyes, by asking her odd type of math problems. This is a recurring theme throughout Alice’s advent

Lewis Carroll has such an interesting way of telling a story. Not only are the characters that he creates unique and inventive, but they stand out which such vivid detail that is it just tremendously easy to imagine them. The way he uses words is also highly distinct – whimsy cuts through the story because of the dialog between the normal Alice and the absolutely abnormal circumstances. I’ve never read the sequel of Alice in Wonderland, so this was interesting for me to read it. It was obvious right from the start that this was a sequel to such a fabulous adventure from last time. He also has a ways of putting pretty fantastic poetry within his stories, something that people struggle with JUST having a poem in the middle. An example of fine poetry (that’s funny at the same time) was the “Jabberwocky” poem, which was filled with all sorts of great wordplay and odd use of language. An example of odd wording was, “ ‘Twas brillig, and the slithy toves”. I’m not even sure what this ph

This week, for my Story Lab post, I decided to delve into the media tropes website again, just because I found it so interesting the first time I was looking at it. For the first area that I explored, I went into the love tropes, because I wanted to be able to put a name on some of the things I’ve seen so commonly used. The “sub-genres” of love were all over the place – from attraction, to forbidden love, and to love is a crapshoot, there were way more areas of love than I originally thought. The first sub-genre that I looked at was the Attraction Tropes. Some of these feel like they’re simply observations of normal aspects of human life – an example of this was the trope “Has a Type”. Yeah, while that is used within television/media, that’s a regular, everyday type of thing. An example of what I think is more of a trope is the “Hot Librarian” trope. This isn’t an everyday thing, this is something that was started by popular media, not the other way around. While reading through

This week’s reading of Alice in Wonderland was full of even more of the expected whimsy and great characters. After thinking about it after last night, I came to one of the conclusions that part of the reason why Alice in Wonderland is so widely read about and praised is because of the characters and setting that the story in contained within. It brings out everyone’s childlike wonder, with a touch of imagination thrown in to build the characters. Every character is unique and different from any of those around them. They stick out like a sore thumb and will plant themselves in your imagination. Take, for example, the Mad Hatter, The Dormouse, and the March Hare (which were read about today). While sharing one larger trait (they were all crazy!) they each had derivatives of this that made them stand out, providing great interactions between the seemingly normal Alice and themselves. By having a contrast in insanity, Carroll is able to defy expectations by making Alice seem the cr

This week's readings were something that I have definitely heard before - Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is a staple of most children's early lives. The whimsical story that is laid out by Carroll is rich in detail and the right bit of silliness to appeal to so many throughout the world. But what makes it so special to everyone? There have been stories in the past that are similar. Maybe it was because this book almost pioneered this type of fantasy writing. Not taking everything so seriously, making sure that the story is actually fun to those who read it, and the fact that it's characters/situations are so unique. My favorite sections of this week's readings was "Advice from a Caterpillar" (although when she fell down the rabbit-hole was a close second). The reasoning behind my liking it was the conversation that the two of them had between each other. From going round in circles about asking who each person was, to the grumpy/mean disposition that h