Reading notes Week 11 Part A

This week the Reading was interesting to read mostly because I grew up in the Southwest and so the readings that came from the Pima tribe in Arizona were interesting to read simply because I have heard similar stories but from different tribes. The story that stood out to me most this week was The Creation of the World. This stood out the most to me because the way it started off really got me. It was different than the other stories because the other stories are super blunt and to the point as where this one was a little more detailed. There was more of a plot to it. It wasn't choppy like the other ones. there wasn't as much repetition either. The rest of the stories would use the same word a couple times over and over again. It was more annoying than anything but I get why it was used like that. The message still got across just in a faster way.

Creation from nothing 

Photo provided by Vimeo 

Bibliography: "Creation of the World" from the Southwestern and California Legends By Katherine Berry Judson Webtext

Week 11 Story: The Fading Light

Two orphaned boys were out living in the streets of a small town. Their names were Justin and Alex. They were sleeping in a box with no protection from the harsh winter. One night Justin heard a noise outside the box, he went out to check it out and saw a dark figure wandering through the alley. As he approached the figure he heard a woman crying.

Unsure of what to think he asked "Ma'am are you okay?" The woman snapped her head back and Justin froze. This woman had an evil grin and in an instant snatched Justin up and took off. Alex heard screams and came running out but it was too late. His brother was gone.

 Alex followed the tracks in the snow and was led to a shack outside of town. There he heard the woman weeping just as Justin had heard. A fire was burning inside and lit the entire shack. He looked through the small window and saw how hideous the woman was. In the light he could see her wiry hair, long dirty fingers and a scarred face. Chills were sent up the spine of Alex just by looking at this woman. He then saw his brother, something was wrong though. Justin's body was laying on the table, lifeless.

"Nooooo!" Alex screamed, this alerted the woman and she came running outside. 

Anger flowed through Alex at this point and he grabbed the closest thing to him. The object was a ragged branch and he swung and knocked the woman to the ground. As she fell unconscious Alex ran inside and saw the rest of his brothers body. It was cut open as if this woman was dissecting him. still furious, Alex looked around and saw a blade inside a glass box. It looked like a small dagger. He broke the box and grabbed the dagger. When he turned around the woman was right behind him. she threw Alex across the room. 

"You foolish boy, didn't you ever learn that you're not supposed to come near the witches house?" she asked. 

"Witch?" replied Alex nervously, "D-d-don't kill me." he stuttered.

"Oh I think I'll keep you around for a bit." she said as she walked towards Alex.

Alex had the dagger gripped tightly in his hand hiding it behind his back. As the Witch walked closer Alex felt a hatred surging through him, the dagger seemed to amplify the effects. The witch grabbed him but as she did this Alex sprung forward and pierced through her heart. The dagger began to grow as the witch's life faded. It started to melt the witch and Alex noticed that the dagger had grown slightly but also became red hot. He was unaware of how this could be possible until a ghostly figure appeared. 

The figure began to speak "You have freed me from the curse that bound me to the witch. To show my gratitude I will serve you and continue to grow in power with every enemy that you defeat."  

Then like that it vanished back into the blade etchings. Alex at this point realized exactly what he needed to do. He began a journey that would define the rest of his life. He started small but he took on quests that required him to kill the supernatural evils of the world. He became, Alex the Reaper.

The Magic Dagger

Photo provided by Pixabay

Author's Note: The original story was The Eagles Revenge by Kathrine Berry Judson. It was originally about a Native American hunter whom woke one night to a loud whirring sound to find that an eagle was eating a deer. The hunter decided to shoot the deer and the eagle and bring them both back to his tribe claiming that he had killed both. The tribe had a celebration for a successful hunt but did not realize that eagle had a brother. Eagles brother appeared as a warrior and pretty much snapped his fingers and killed three of the tribe members without touching them and then vanished. For my story I decided to take the idea of revenge and make an origin story for an earlier story of mine "Reaping Feared Demons." Alex the Reaper is the main character in that and is also the main character in this story. I thought I would incorporate how the Broadsword from the earlier story got its magical powers. Kind of a follow up idea on the original story. Overall the story turned out how i wanted it too and I am thinking about doing a final Alex story in the next couple of weeks. 

Bibliography: "The Eagles Revenge" from Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Kathrine Berry Judson

Reading notes Week 10 Part A

This weeks reading for part A was a little frustrating by the fact that the stories seemed choppy and didn't flow as smoothly as they could have. I understand that the way it was told is in part because of the culture and how they told stories but it seems repetitive when every paragraph or sentence starts with the word now. Other than that I think that the stories proved to get the messages across to the listener. I especially liked the one with the Eagle and how the hunter shot him and then the Eagles' brother came and avenged his death by killing three members of the tribe. This story would be a good one to recreate. I think there would be a good chunk of detail that I could add to beef up the story and make it a story that is even more so interesting to the reader. I'm not sure if I would put a modern day twist on this one or if I would maybe do another Alex the Reaper story. I could say that Alex was a normal person working as a Blacksmith maybe and then his brother was killed by a witch (how the blade in the first story got the power) and Alex went and hunted the witch. Once the witch was slain he meets up with a random traveler that tells him what he must do with his new found powers. I think this might be a good origin story.

Eagles that was shot in the story. 

Photo provided by Pexels

Bibliography: "Myths and Legends of the Great Plains" by Katharine Barry Judson. Webtext

Week 9 Reading: Tibetan Folktales Part A

The story that stood out most to me during this weeks reading was The Tiger and the Frog because it was a trickster story. I liked the way the story portrayed the frog as terrified when he had first saw the tiger coming. Instead of cowering the frog decided to stay and trick the tiger. The style of story telling is simple and straight to the point with details that instill imagery in the mind. I want to try and write a story similar to this because I think it would be interesting to do. I want to focus on changing the characters but keeping the main idea. I think I might do an Alex the Reapers origin story by incorporating this idea and change the ending to fit a beginning story line. I like the idea of the small guy standing up to the bully because bullying was a part of my life growing up. I do not want anyone to feel that misery that I felt growing up.

Small size of frog shown traveling. 

Photo provided by Maxpixels

Bibliography: "The Tiger and the Frog" by Albert Shelton from The Tibetan Folktales 

Week 8 Comments and Feedback

The comments and feedback that I have been receiving have been for the most part have been fairly helpful. I think the best feedback has been the critical feedback. I like taking the feedback from people that criticizes my stories and turning it into a better story. I feel that I respond best to that kind of feedback. As for my feedback, I feel that I have given some really good feedback. I try to start off with some positive feedback that emphasizes the good pieces of the story, and then I add one or two things that I believe would help improve the story. After that I reinforce the feedback by adding more positives. While reading my classmates stories I consider the styles of writing that they are using and learn new things to maybe try in my writing. I believe that the introductions to others blogs have been fun to read because you get a little insight of who your classmates are. I do not think that I am fully happy with my layout on my Portfolio at the moment but I am happy with my blog posts!
Looking forward I think that I am going to try and be more attentive to the small details in others stories because those are just as important as the other parts of the story. I think that I am going to change the look of my portfolio, just the theme and colors. Other than that I think that I'm satisfied with the blog as of right now.

Listening actively is Important to me

This photo is the one that really stood out to me because actively listening is something that I focus on when having a conversation with someone or reading their writing. Just something that I hold as a high standard of others.

Week 8 Reading and Writing

The reading and writing assignments overall are working well for me, sometimes they can be stressful because of everything going on but I usually manage to get them done. My favorite reading so far has been the Sinbad reading. I really enjoyed those stories and I loved how they were all linked together. The reading notes help me a little with my story posts but they are not the most helpful thing. The way my mind works is that I will have a great idea one minute then the next minute I will overrule my previous idea with another one. Needless to say, it is very difficult to keep on one idea before I decide to write my story. So far I am really happy with my class project. My favorite thing about it so far is the First story that I put on there. Reaping Feared Demons is great because I put a lot of thought into writing that story and spent a lot of time revising it as well. I really hope I will find a new story to write about soon because I think that having a portfolio full of great stories is really important.

This photo Is provided by Pexels

This is my favorite photo that I have used all semester, not only because it is part of my favorite story, but also because it is such a dark and mysterious photo. It really helps illustrate what I wanted Alex the Reaper to look like in my story.

I think looking forward I would like to focus more on creating stories more from my own imagination rather than using storybook details. I would like to maybe take the main idea of the story and really change it up a lot to make it a lot of my own story. I think this will make me feel like I have accomplished more in this class this semester!

Story planning: Week 7

This weeks stories have been a challenge to read. Diving deeper into the stories I decided to do some research to find out the origin. Turns out that these stories surfaced during the time of slavery. The Brer Rabbit stories were meant to symbolize the underdog in the situation. I found this to be a really intriguing fact. Understanding the history behind these stories brings out the powerful message that is hidden within them. The rabbit is meant to be a trickster but not a normal trickster. The type of trickster that the rabbit is can be explained as not using any type of power or size to defeat his enemy but rather his mind and silver tongue. This is what makes writing the story interesting and why I have chosen to plan this week rather than write. I think that I will be making my own version of the story "How Mr. Rabbit was too Sharp for Mr. Fox" which is a story about how the rabbit has to outsmart the fox in order to survive and not be the fox's next meal. My idea is to keep that main idea but make it into a story more modern in nature. Maybe doing a story about surviving in todays world with the people around us. Or possibly doing a modern rabbit and fox. The story will be interesting to write and will take me a little bit longer to write than usual so I will make sure to plan ahead for that. The nature of the text is really difficult for me to read but I have read the story at least six times now and am starting to understand more of what it is about.

This Fox represents the greedy/hungry fox that is trying to eat the rabbit

Photo provided by Flickr

Bibliography: "Uncle Remus: His Songs and His Sayings" from Brer Rabbit by Joel Chandler Harris 

"The History of Brer Rabbit" from Wikipedia by Multiple sources

Week 7 Reading Notes: Brer Rabbit Part A

Well this weeks reading was difficult at first to follow along with. The style of writing was written in a different english. After a while it did get easier to read and understand. Things I liked about this weeks reading in part A were the amount of images that were used. They all correlated to the story in some way and made it a little more interesting. This is something that I would like to try and do in the future. Another thing that really stood out to me was how direct the story details were. There really wasn't a lot of vivid imagery to pictures in your head. I think that this would be an interesting technique to play with because it could be challenging to tell a story without a lot of vivid detail and still have the story be interesting. I would like to write in the same language style but I do not believe that I have enough knowledge on that in order to do so. I think for my next story though, I will be taking from this section.

This Is the rabbit and the fox in the stories.

Photo provided by Wikimedia Commons

Bibliography: "Uncle Remus: His Songs and Sayings" from Brer Rabbit Unit by Joel Chandler Harris Webtext