Storybook Brainstorming Styles

Image information: Siren by John Dotegowski: Source: Fantasy Fiction

Topic Brainstorming:

As a tribute to my sister who is currently very far away from me due to college, I’ve decided to go ahead and focus on the mythology of mermaids/sirens. I want to focus on the duality of mermaids/sirens in literature and how some are portrayed as inherently good or inherently malicious. I think that I am going to begin with the stories “The Mermaid or Siren” from Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art by John Vinycomb and “The Mermaid” by Kreutzwald.  

Bibliography:

            “The Mermaid or Siren” by John Vinycomb. Website: http://www.sacred-texts.com/lcr/fsca/fsca66.htm

            “The Mermaid” by Kreutzwald. Website: http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/hoe/hoe2-24.htm

Style Brainstorming:

1.     Journey: I think that it would make a lot of sense to write a storybook from the perspective of an adolescent going on a journey around the world to discover whether or not her fate is sealed as it is told in the stories, or if she is the master of her own story. The frame could be she ran away after some ceremony where she was to become an adult. So now she is traveling the seas to find stories of others who did not share the same feelings as her culture on mermaids and finding herself in the process. Would be written in the third person, and each story could be told to her about a mermaid who shirked the “normal” life of mermaiddom.

2.     Bedtime Story: A bedtime story arc wouldn’t be too bad of an idea either. It could be a mother tucking her children into bed and telling her of the two types of sea creatures: the mermaids and the sirens, and how each child will have to chose a side as a coming of age. She could be a storyteller of ancient stories, all of which show her children what the life of a mermaid and the life of a siren entails. She could even go into her own story and her own past and tell of what forced her hand into her own personal decision.

3.     Quest: Instead of good/malicious being a choice, in this story arc it could be a decision that is made for you based on a quest each merperson has to go through at some point in their development. Each chapter could have a theme outlined by a mythology text, and the merperson would have to make choices in each one that would dictate whether or not they became a mermaid or a siren.

4.     Anthology of mermaid culture around the world: This one would be a cool idea to do as well. It wouldn’t be a connected story as my other ideas were, but instead would just be an amalgymation of stories from different cultures about the moral origination of mermaids. I could compare and contrast how each culture viewed mermaid tales and speculate on what that implies their feelings are on the human condition.

Week 3 Storytelling: Devi

Image information: Juno discovering Io and Jupiter by Pieter Eastman: Source: MythIndex

For Devi the worst period in her life began like all other horrible things tend to—a coincidence, a chance encounter that became so much more. For Devi, it began during a simple trip to the grocery store.

            Sitting in her car with the a/c on full blast, Devi scratched down an increasingly longer list of things she needed onto the back of a crumpled receipt. A bead of sweat began to form and fell along the ridge of her brow and eventually fell onto the paper, smearing her ink across the page. Huffing she rubbed at the water with her thumb and continued to write on the now mostly-ruined writing surface. Throwing the pen into the passenger seat, she reaches down to grab her backpack from the floor and throws her keys, her phone, and her wallet in the bag before getting out and making her way into the store.

            Her first interaction with him is while staring at frozen pizzas. “Dude, you totally don’t want to get that,” and then grabbing a different pizza box from the display, “This one is about a thousand times better and is way cheaper.” She holds the box out to him and smiles as he reaches for it.

            Devi makes to move on with her shopping but the man stops her with a quiet, “Thank you.” She looks back and smiles again, waves and then moves on. Devi doesn’t think about the man for another couple of months and almost completely forgets the interaction entirely.

            At least, until the day that she pulls into her driveway after school and sees him sitting on the steps of her front porch. Putting the car in park and grabbing her backpack she cautiously begins to make her way over to him.

            “Uh, hi. Can I help you?” She comes to a stop in front of him and waits for his reply, fidgeting with her car keys while he stares at her.

            “Hi Devi.”

            And those two little words marked the worst day of her life. After that all she knew was pain and betrayal and being ripped from parts of herself that she once held dear to her. Raped and left pregnant by a man whom she met only once. Left hated by the wife of the man whom inflicted this upon her. No justice, no forgiveness.

            Three years later, Devi turned off her car in a similar parking lot of a different grocery store, wrote her list on the back of a left-behind receipt, turned off her car, and pulled her baby from the backseat. “Hello again, baby,” she babbled as she put the baby into the front of the cart, “are you ready to go shopping?” Then she made her way into the store.

            Her story did not end with redemption or in the stars.

Author's Note: 
I wrote this short story as a response to the struggle faced by both Io and Callisto in Greek Mythology. Both raped by a man and then left to deal with the consequences of his actions alone as well as shunned by their people and hated by Jupiter's wife, I wanted to kind of bring the story into a more modern day setting where being forced to deal with your shame of rape and keep living your life shouldn't be a commonplace occurrence. 


Bibliography:

Callisto story source:  Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000).

Io story source: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline (2000).

Essay Week 3

Image information: The Greek God Jupiter (Zeus): Source: Greek Mythology Pantheon

There are a lot of things about Greek/Roman Mythology that differs from modern day Gods and Goddesses in books and stories. Firstly, gods and goddesses are treated in a very different manner in Ovid's Metamorphoses than they are today. Today Gods and Goddesses are portrayed as regal and elegant, but more often than not they are above humans. There is very little human interaction and when they do it is to act in good faith. But after reading through a select stories from Ovid's Metamorphoses, that is not the impression I got from the Gods and Goddesses written about in them. 

Instead, the Greek gods give off this feeling of aloofness of human interaction--until it benefits them or if they are completely taken with a certain individual. Most noticeably is how Jupiter acts towards pretty much all women. He is uncaring of their consent or the lives of the women that he has ‘relationships’ with. Instead of acting like the man with super power in his universe, he acts childish when others discover his harmful actions. He does not take responsibility for his infidelity and instead tries extremely hard to cover up his actions by turning his lover into animals. It is hard to imagine that anyone would be willing to put a lot of faith in a god that does and is okay with doing irreprehensible things to other humans with any semblance of consciousness to the harshness of his actions.

But Jupiter is not like that when interacting with humans alone. He has no regard for the other gods. Jupiter cares not about the feelings of his wife or how his actions might affect her, nevertheless, he doesn’t worry about how her subsequent actions can affect the women he raped.

Gods and goddesses of today and yesterday were viewed in a very different manner. It is not surprising that over time gods and goddesses have evolved into creatures that are depicted as more and more aligned with humanity. People went from following gods who worked in their own favor and had their own agenda to a god (or many gods) who are invested in the lives of all humans, and their personal well-being.

     
     

Week 3 Reading Diary B: Ovid's Metamorphoses

Image information: Danae by Gustav Klimt: Source: Gustav Klimt

      This is part two of my Reading Diary log for the Unit of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Please feel free to ignore at will.

Echo:

Division by nature between the nymph and Narcissus and although she loves him she can only repeat the last word spoken by someone else. So she follows him around and hopes that he will see her and fall in love with her also. Instead he sees her, rejects her and she withers away until literally the only thing left of her is her voice. Extremely depressing.

Narcissus:

Turnabout is fair play. Just as Narcissus scorned Echo and the other nymphs and some other men he is cursed to fall in love with his own image. He becomes so enraptured with his own image in a pool that he wastes away so that he can look at himself more. There is a lot of scorn and then revenge in these stories. His hits his chest and it colors and turns him into a flower. In the end no one is gifted with requited love. Honestly very sad and very dramatic.

Pyramus and Thisbe:

Past Romeo and Juliet. Kind of ridiculous how their “love” is. They have known each other for such a short amount of time and they are willing to run away together. But when they go to run away together the whole thing is steeped in misconceptions. Pyramus kills himself because he thinks Thisbe was killed by a lioness. The whole story is just riddled with bad choices and overreactions. And then Thisbe comes back sees her dead love and kills herself. And their blood dies the mulberry tree’s fruit blood red. So weird.

Mars and Venus:

Another story about infidelity. But it was weird to me that it was easily laughed off. Was it because they are both gods? Or what?

Perseus and Andromeda:

Another story in which the lady of the story is paying for someone else’s actions.

Perseus and Medusa:

Killing Medusa was this great prize—worth earning the dowry of Andromeda. But if you look deeper this poor woman was once so beautiful that she was envied by all was raped by Neptune. But surprise surprise, her punishment is to have her most beautiful feature turned into something that is feared and hated by everyone.