Storybook Project Week 3: Brainstorming Styles

Topic: My storybook will be about the lives of fairy tale princesses after the end of their stories. Most stories don't cover the entire lives of the main characters (from birth to death) so there is usually more that happens after "The End" or things that happened before "Once Upon a Time." I want to use the details of the fairy tales to make reasonable inferences about what the lives of the happy couples would be like as their relationships continued to grow and change. One story I definitely want to include is Beauty and the Beast because it has always been one of my favorite fairy tales. Another story I want to use is Cinderella because I'm interested in imagining how she would transition from being an emotionally abused maid to a pampered royal. Finding stories of other classic fairy tales like Sleeping Beauty, Snow White, and Rapunzel should be a cinch, and there will likely be a number of variations of each story so I can pick the version I like the most.

Beauty and the Beast by Walter Crane (Wikipedia)

Bibliography:
1. Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête), from The Young Misses Magazine, Containing Dialogues between a Governess and Several Young Ladies of Quality Her Scholars, by Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont (1783).
2. Cinderella; or The Little Glass Slipper, from The Blue Fairy Book by Andrew Lang (1891), based on a story of the same name (Cendrillon, ou la petite pantoufle de verre) by Charles Perrault (1697).

Possible Styles

The Real Housewives of Far Far Away. One fun way to do this storybook would be to do it like a modern-day reality TV series. Each story would be an "episode" from the show's first season. It would include descriptions of each princess's daily life along with commentary by/interviews with the princess, her husband, and any children they might have. I might even be able to work in a group meeting of all the princesses at the end for a get-together or maybe a "reunion show" where we find out even more about their lives since "filming" ended like real reality TV shows do sometimes. This would be a good style for the topic because it would make the stories feel more modern and relate-able than the original stories.

Fairy Tale Princesses: Where Are They Now. This is similar to the first style but with a few key differences. While the first style focuses only on their current lives and information given by the main characters, this style would be like the popular "Where Are They Now?" documentaries with an overview of the princess's story (including recently "discovered" information not in the stories), interviews from less central characters (e.g. the ugly stepsisters, the witch from Rapunzel), and of course, interviews with the princess herself. These stories would be more isolated from each other than the reality TV series idea (which might have all the princesses coming together to interact). This would be a good style for the topic because it would inform the readers about the details of the particular version of the fairy tale that I chose to base my stories off of so that they aren't confused by things that weren't in the versions they might have read (or seen in a Disney movie).

Forgotten Sequels. This style is more straightforward than the previous two. It would be a collection of sequel stories (supposedly written by the same authors) that, like many movie sequels, didn't do as well as the original. I could make the stories cheesy and try to capitalize on the success of the first fairy tale by sticking with "what worked," like what usually ruins a cinematic sequel. Conversely, I could write the stories more seriously and have them be "forgotten classics" that were good but simply overshadowed by the wild success of their predecessors. This would be a good style for the topic because the stories would be more natural continuations of the first stories because the storytelling styles would be similar (straightforward, traditional storytelling).

The Untold Tragic Ends to Classic Fairy Tales. This style would have a much more gloomy tone than all the other style possibilities. The basic theme is that though "happily ever after" was written at the end of the stories, the events coming after those words (the "real" endings of the stories) are very tragic. There's the possibility of the princess dying, the prince dying, a scorned villain getting their revenge, or perhaps just an unhappy marriage that ended in divorce (or worse, they stay together and are miserable for the rest of their lives). While the other styles could include one or two tales of woe, every story in this storybook would be a tragedy. This would be a good style for the topic because it would actually be very similar to how the original stories were told. Most of the princesses started out in bad situations (deceased parents, nearly murdered or abused by a stepparent, stolen by a witch or a beast) but got a happy ending, this time they would not though.

YouTube Tech Tip

Google Translate Sings: "I'll Make A Man Out of You" from Mulan (ft. Caleb Hyles)

Mysterious as the dark long of the shoeeeeee!

Essay: Assessment of the Ovid's Metamorphoses (Books 8-10) Reading Unit

This week I read the Ovid's Metamorphoses (Books 8-10) reading unit and I don't know if I could be happier! The stories I read this week were really interesting because they were mostly Greek myths that I had never heard of before. Last week, I did a reading unit over Aesop's fables and while a few were new to me, many of them I had heard of before. I like making new discoveries (especially when the experience is positive) so this unit was a good fit for my interests. The myths in this weeks unit were a little odd, with plots including things like male lovers of the (male) gods, incest, and sexual attraction to inanimate objects. Yes, it was a little weird, but you have to expand your horizons! You don't usually read stories like these, so it brought a new dimension to the readings I've done for this class and for personal enjoyment.

There were a few times I wish I had known more about the backgrounds of certain myths. The previous unit included complete notes from Dr. Gibbs, but this unit did not (This was made clear beforehand but I decided I was comfortable reading the unit without them). One example where I feel like background information might have helped the story make more sense to me was the story of Ceres and Erysichthon. I have no idea why Erysichthon cut down Ceres' favorite tree. Is he just a bad guy? Did they quarrel before this story took place? I just don't understand his motivation. The story of Ganymede and Hyacinthus might benefit from some information about homosexuality in Greek culture. I'm not sure what the prevailing opinion about the practice was in ancient Greece. I know it was at least somewhat acceptable in some places but also not acceptable in other places. I would have liked just a little bit of history or a link to a website where I could read more about it.

Erysichthon fells Ceres' favorite tree (Ovid Illustrated website)

What I learned from this unit is that I need to read more about Greek mythology because I really enjoyed this unit. What has always scared me off from Greek mythology is the style it is usually written in (epic poem form) and the generally large vocabulary needed to understand what is going on. However, reading these myths proved to me that there are readable versions of Greek myths; you just have to find them. While the warning given before the unit worried me initially (i.e. "Just remember that you are reading a poem intended for a sophisticated literary audience in ancient Rome; you were not Ovid's intended audience!"), I found that I had no difficulties whatsoever with the language of the stories.

I would highly recommend this reading unit to anyone who is interested in it, with the only precaution being that you need to be prepared for a little weirdness as there are stories about somewhat taboo subjects like I mentioned before [i.e. incest, homosexuality (if that kind of thing bothers you), and sexual attraction to inanimate objects]. If none of those scare you off, you should enjoy this unit much like I did. :)

Week 3 Storytelling: Insatiable Greed

The sky was filled with puffy white clouds, pushed along by the cool breeze ruffling the tree tops. The sun's rays reached out and lit the whole forest as if it were a neon green welcome sign. What a beautiful day to destroy a forest. Erys Goldmire stepped out of his shiny black car, dirt crunching under his expensive, black leather shoes, and surveyed the scene before him. A tiny shack of a house sat off to the right, and behind it, a sea of bright green trees just waiting to be felled. In front of the ramshackle building stood a frail and ancient woman, a local who had tried to prevent Erys from obtaining the land. If she had agreed to sell it when he had offered, she could have received a much bigger payment than what the government had given her as compensation for taking her land under eminent domain (and Erys wouldn't have had to spend the 1.5 million to pay off that government official). She was looking his way, eyes squinting not in defense from the sun but in hatred of the man before her.

"I prayed that you would never come back," the old woman said, eying the large construction machinery parked all over her yard which had left scars of their tracks behind them. Her brown, wrinkled face scowled angrily up at the man who had stopped at nothing to rob her of her childhood home.

"I hoped you would be dead before long," Erys flung back at her. He had tried to be charming to win her over at first. Once he realized he wasn't going to get anywhere, he had dropped the act and let his contempt for the old hag spill out from him.

It was at that moment that he spotted the tree--the old woman's favorite tree. She had dressed it in ribbons and set up an altar in front of it, an altar she used to pray to the pagan patron goddess of the forest. Needing to drive home his triumph over her, Erys grabbed a chainsaw from a near by equipment rack and headed right for the tree. Not bothering to clear away the altar or ribbons, he yanked the chainsaw to life and sneered at the old woman before proceeding.

"Where's your great protector of the trees? Is she not going to stop me?" The woman stared passively at the crazed man, no sign of outrage or frustration on her face. This only fueled his madness more. He plunged the rotating sharp teeth into the trunk of the ancient tree, a loud whine like a scream emanating from the point of contact. As the blade sank deeper and deeper, sap began to pour out of the open wound and bled all over the altar. Finally, with a loud crack, the trunk snapped in two and the massive tree plummeted to the earth, crushing the altar underneath it. Erys looked to the old woman for any sign of emotion.

"You will pay," she said hollowly. Without a word more or a glance back, the woman silently left the scene.

"Get to work!" Erys bellowed. "I want to be able to see the horizon by tomorrow morning." A strange uneasiness settled over the cruel businessman. He was anxious to have the forest cleared and construction started, but it was more than that. He wanted more. More land, more buildings, more money, more business. He wanted a foothold in every country, an enterprise in every state. He hungered more than he ever had before, and he needed these things now. Though he had intended to oversee all aspects of the project, Erys climbed back into his luxury car and ordered the driver to take him to the airport immediately. He had work to do.

...................

Six months later, the man was a wreck. He spent days at the office at a time, haggling deals for land, approving designs for new buildings, monitoring the success of each enterprise. With each new parcel bought, each new building erected, and each new profit report received, his hunger only grew even more. No number of acres or building square footage or amount of money could fill the ever-growing hole inside of him. The feeling of need gnawed at him day and night; even in his sleep he could not find peace.

Soon Erys was up to his ears in dept. He was buying for his newest ventures before the old ones could make any money. He made bad deals for poor quality land, spent millions constructing lavish hotels, and tens of millions on bribes that would help push approvals through faster. He even pawned off his daughter to the son of another wealthy businessman as part of a deal for his worthless swamp land in Louisiana.

It was not long at all before Erys was on the fast path to self-destruction. He drank alcohol as if it were water and did drugs to keep him awake throughout the night so that he could work as long as possible. Work was his food source, and his body began to waste away because of it. One night, he found himself on the roof in a drunken stupor. He staggered around on uneasy legs, taking in the scene of his surrounding empire on the very edge of the roof. A strong sense of vertigo engulfed him and his body, ravaged by hunger and toxic chemicals, could hardly hold him upright. Now a cool, strong breeze was stroking his face, just like the one he had felt that day on the outskirts of the beautiful forest, long since gone. His vision blurred as the speed increased. It could have been his imagination or a drunken hallucination but he could have sworn he heard the wind whisper in his ear, "I told you that you would pay," right before his body hit the concrete sidewalk thirty stories below the top of his skyscraper office.

Scene from the movie Greed (1924) Erich von Stroheim

~*~*~*~*~*~

Author's Note: My story is based on the Greek myths about Ceres and Erysichthon, from Ovid's Metamorphoses (translated by Tony Kline, 2000). In the original myths, Erysichthon cuts down Ceres' favorite tree with his own hands after his men refused to do so themselves. The tree was actually a nymph and when he swung into the trunk, blood poured forth from the wound. Enraged, Ceres sends a messenger to ask her antipode, Famine, to inflict her torturous power upon Erysichthon. He becomes unable to be satisfied no matter how much he eats, sells his daughter multiple times in order to get money for food (she keeps running away from the buyers but is taken back by her father), and eventually cannibalizes himself in the end. When I read this story I thought about this as a metaphor for man's destruction of nature and insatiable greed. In my version, I give Erys(ichthon) a motivation for cutting down the tree whereas in the original myth you don't really know why he was set on destroying Ceres' favorite tree (at least in the stand-alone story that I read for this class). It was easy to retell the story using this kind of metaphor, but I did end up eliminating the role of his daughter, Mestra, because she didn't work into the plot of my story very well. It was tricky to figure out how Erys would "eat" himself but I decided that it would make sense for him to destroy his body with drugs, alcohol, and ultimately suicide.

Reading Diary B: Ovid's Metamorphoses (Books 8-10)

Here are my favorites from the second half of Ovid's Metamorphoses (Books 8-10):

Orpheus and Eurydice: This is a sad story but it also seems like a turning point in the mood and themes of the unit. It kind of reminds me of that story from the bible where the guy is leaving a city and he's not supposed to look back at his wife, but he does and she turns into a pillar of salt. While the ending is tragic like so many other Greek myths, they kind of throw you a curve ball at the end. The narrator tells you how Orpheus never married again and you think, "Awww, how sad and sweet," but then they slip in at the end "Oh, by the way, he switched teams to men and was the first gay guy is Thrace." They just throw that last sentence in there and you don't really know what to think about it. It doesn't make me like the story any less, but it just makes it feel like the ending was rushed and there's probably an interesting story there that we don't get to hear.

Ganymede and Hyacinthus: This story was interesting because it was sort of an anomaly. Most of the time, the stories are about gods and their female lovers or goddesses and their male lovers, but this story is about two of the gods' male lovers. I didn't even know they had those until I read this story (although, it doesn't really surprise me because Zues/Jupiter has always been a very promiscuous character). Of course, the ending can't be too happy; it is a Greek myth after all. The male lover of the god Phoebus, named Hyacinthus, is killed when the earth throws Phoebus' discus back to him that Hyacinthis was going to retrieve and the discus ends up striking the boy in the head, killing him. Apparently, the male lovers of the gods are as prone to tragic ends as the female ones.

Pygmalion: This story is just odd. A guy falls in love with a statue he carved and Venus turns her into a real woman. But before that, he touches it and kisses it and puts clothes on it and lets it "sleep" in the bed with him as if it were a real person. If this story were to be told today, it would be about a creepy guy who treated a life-size doll or something like his girlfriend. If I were to rewrite the story, though, I would do something kind of like the movie Her. The guy (or girl) falls in love with a computer program or machine that (s)he created and it becomes a real person in a dream (s)he has. Overall, it was an interesting story but still very odd.

The Foot Race: The last story that caught my attention was about Hippomenes and Atalanta. The girl is literally running from being married and killing all the males who fail to beat her in a foot race, but she's so pretty that guys keep coming to race her. Hippomenes manages to beat her with some divine help, but it's alright because they are actually in love. If only the story had ended there. The two end up desecrating a sacred temple and are both turned into lions. Did any people in Greece NOT have a tragic tale of woe? Imagine being raised on these stories instead of the classic fairy tales we know and love. I think our ideas of life and love would be a lot different. Maybe I could do a story about that, about a modern day girl who is brought up on Greek myths instead of fairy tales and how her romantic relationships are affected by this. Would anyone be interested in reading that?

The Race between Hippomenes and Atalanta by Noël Hallé(Wikimedia Commons)

Reading Diary A: Ovid's Metamorphoses (Books 8-10)

Here are my favorite stories from the first half of Ovid's Meamorphoses (Books 8-10):

Philemon and Baucis: What I liked about this story was that it's one of the few where the usually wrathful gods are actually nice to some humans. Philemon and Baucis remind me of a sweet, hospitable old couple and their kindness to the gods Jupiter and Mercury causes them to spare the couple's lives. I guess they haven't completely given up their wrathful ways because they still flood and drown an entire neighborhood because the people didn't let them into their homes, but at least they didn't punish Philemon and Baucis for the mistakes of others. I also liked their transformation into trees so that they did not really die and can continue to be next to each other.

Ceres and Erysichthon: This is one of the stories where I feel like the human victim of the god(dess) really did deserve their fate and instead of pitying him, I feel like justice was served. What made this story a favorite, though, was the story idea I got from it. If I were to rewrite this story, I would update it, giving it a modern twist. In our society's desire for commercial expansion, a lot of the environment (including important habitats for certain animals) has been demolished to make way for strip malls and hotels and casinos and other commercial buildings. Along with this destruction of nature, we also seem to have this unquenchable need for material goods, which is a lot like the hunger (famine) Ceres plagued Erysichthon with (I'm pretty sure, I don't know how to correctly pronounce either of those names, but at least I can just spell them in a blog post).

Achelous: I found this story to be a little bit humorous. Achleous insults Hercules, his parentage, and even mocks the feats he has accomplished seemingly because he's not a god, just a demigod. I understand that a certain amount of pride comes with being a god, but in this case, Achelous had to put his money where his mouth was and it didn't work out very well for the "almighty" god in this story. While Hercules may not be a god, he sure has superhuman strength, not to mention a fine set of combat skills from all the trials he overcame successfully. To put it plainly, Achelous talked crap about Hercules and got his tail whipped for it (he even lost a horn which Hercules snapped right off his forehead).  There are several different lessons one can take away from this story, like the downfall of pride, being able to back up your words, and how words can have consequences.

The Death of Hercules: I have mixed feelings about this story because it is quite sad and gruesome. A dying Hercules, in immense pain from a poisoned shirt, decides to burn himself on a pyre to relive his suffering. Hercules is a great hero so this is a sad way for his epic story to end. However, the feeling is reduced by the gesture of Zues/Jupiter who takes the immortal part of him and puts it in the sky as a constellation. Jealous Hera/Juno does not speak out against the action, even though she has hated Hercules and put him through many trials throughout his life. In fact, it is overcoming her many trials that made him famous throughout Greece and beloved by the gods. Although, you can hardly blame Hera for hating him since he is one of the many illegitimate children her husband has had. Still, he didn't deserve her wrath or his painful death, but at least he was immortalized in the sky.

Hercules on Mount Oeta
(Stories from the Greek Tragedians)

Storybook Project Week 2: Brainstorming Topics

Topic: Life lessons from Aesop
Comments: I really love Aesop's fables, so I would definitely be interested in doing a storybook focusing on the most important morals (in my opinion, at least). I would have the storybook set up as if it were the class website for MORAL 1113: Life Lessons taught be Professor Aesop, a special guest professor at the University of Ancient Greece. One story would be learning from the wisdom of a character, another from the foolishness of a character, and a third from the cunning of a character.
Possible stories: I read a bunch of Aesop stories for my reading unit this week and I would likely use this unit to find stories I'm interested in rewriting. There's also another reading unit of Aesop's that I did not read and could be a source of additional stories, if necessary.
Sample story comments: I really liked The Lion and the Statue and this could be the wisdom story in my storybook. I really enjoy the insight the lion gives to the bragging human.
Bibliography information:
Sample story: The Lion and the Statue
Book title:
Book author: Joseph Jacobs
Year: 1902

The Lion and the Statue illustration by Walter Crane

Topic: Dark and Mythical Creatures
Comments: This would also be set up like a class website but this time for Hagrid's NEWT level care of magical creature class. I was thinking of ways to possible include the Harry Potter series into my storybook somehow and this idea just came to me. I've always enjoyed learning about mythical creatures, so this topic could be a great fit and an enjoyable project for me to work on.
Possible stories: There are a lot of source for mythical beast stories under the example topics page of the class blog. I found lots of online books from websites like sacredtexts.com, the Aberdeen bestiary site, and Charles Gould's Mythical Monsters book. I would like to have stories about at least three creatures, possible werewolves, dragons, sphinx, mermaids, or maybe basilisks!
Sample story comments: I found an interesting story about a witch who turned herself into a wolf which could be a good tie-in to the Harry Potter theme of the storybook. It also had a cool description of the witch mid-transformation as she's turning back into a human.
Bibliography information:
Sample story: A Witch as Werewolf
Website: Werewolf Legends from Germany

Topic: Marriage Stories of the Tlingit Nation
Comments: I found these stories to be very interesting because they were unlike many marriage or love stories I had heard before. They were all mostly sad or had unusual endings or plots. Although different from what I am used to, reading unfamiliar stories keeps the reading interesting and helps expand the way we think about certain stories.
Possible stories: There were some stories that I found on sacredtexts.com as well as different Native American story eBooks that I could use. There was also a helpful section called Myths and Legends of Alaska. I also personally own a book with a lot of Native American stories and some of them might be Tlingit stories.
Sample story comments: One of my favorite stories I came across was The Woman Who Married the Fire Spirit, which reminded me a little bit of the story of Persephone. In the end, the woman leave her fire spirit husband and remains in the human world, though she is quite unhappy.
Bibliography information:
Sample story: The Woman Who Married the Fire Spirit
Book title: Tlingit Myths and Texts
Book author: John R. Swanton
Year: 1909

Topic: The Real Housewives of Far Far Away
Comments: I'm an avid reader of fairy tales, old and new, so it was likely that a fairy tale related storybook idea would come to me. I've always wondered what happened after "happily ever after" and my stories would explore that, based on certain princess stories.  What are their lives like after "the end?"
Possible stories: There are endless possibilities for stories and sources of stories. You have the popular princess stories (although, most of them don't actually start out as princesses): Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid. You also have the long list of popular authors to choose from: the brothers Grimm, Perrault, Hans Christian Anderson, just to name a few. There are endless books and websites with fairy tale stories.
Sample story comments: Beauty and the Beast is one of my favorite fairy tales (and, coincidentally, Disney movies) and one of the main reasons is that I've thought a lot about what their lives would be like after the spell was broken.
Bibliography information:
Sample story: Beauty and the Beast
Website: Beauty and the Beast