Indian Epics

Part C of the Mahabharata was a great read! It had great sections of solitude and patients that got us ready for the great war or battle that was to come. That is where it ended us, wishing to continue to read on as we get to the climax of the epic with the much anticipated war. There is a story in this section that I am most particularly excited about because it will work perfectly with my portfolio and future story that I have wanted to do. For this I wanted to do an origin story for my magical gold pistol from a past story I did "The Preacher in the West". The story that I have just read, " Arjuna and Shiva" came along at the perfect time and will be a great story to retrofit for my golden pistol origin story. In the original, Arjuna goes out into the wild and begins to praise the Great God relentlessly in Gold Revolver the Preacher would get .  a special place until at last he appears after many days and gives him some mighty weapons. I think  I could essen...

A long time ago in the kingdom of Lanka there lived two twin princes that were coming of the age to look for a wife and be wed. The two boy’s names were Shirma and Brahima. Although they were twins, the two young men were quite different from one another in both looks and attitude. Shirma was the first born of the two and was much larger and mightier than his brother Brahima. Shirma had long flowing hair and skin that was as fair as a lotus petal. He was also much more out going that Brahima. In today’s lingo, one might say he had a certain “bad-boy” swagger to him. Not that he was looking for trouble or was trouble but instead like he knew he was better than anyone else and let everyone know he knew. Brahima on the other hand was quite the opposite. He was meek, and mind toned. Now, each knew that their time for marriage was coming upon them and both knew that there was only one princess in all of India that would be suitable for them as a wife. That was the fair Shala from Sikki...

For part B of the Mahabharata reading, I found that it was a lot of the same essentially. You see the family still in hiding as Brahmins but yet still getting together and fighting fowl people. Bhima does an assortment of battles with bad men in which he becomes an overwhelming victor in each. It though it was kind of funny when I was reading the story where he fights the demon of the forest and then when he fight the evil ruler that enforces the blood tax. In both cases he fights and wins but what was funny was the way that he won. In both cases he broke the back of his adversary rendering them slain. Just thought that it was funny that the story would use the same death for both characters. One of my favorite stories of this section is " Draupadi's Swayamwara". We have read many different versions of different peoples Swayamwara at this point and this one by far is the most interesting. The Task  First, the task is one of the most difficult. It is not just an all ...

I just got done reading the first little bit of the Mahabharata, that is part A of the public domain version. This story is quite different from the previous epic that we have read, the Ramayana. It is written different. It has a completely different plot and feel to the story. To me, it has been a little confusing so far in the epic, mainly because of all the names and people in the story. I am excited to get further into the story so I can see more of the similarities between this story and the series Swayamvara in the Mahabharata. It is the section of the epic in which Bhishma does battle to take the hands of three princesses. It is, in a way, like the part of the Ramayana where Rama is able to bend a magnificent bow to win the hand of SIta. It is yet to be known if these princes will hold as big a role as Sita did in the Ramayana. I think that his story could be redone into a more modern version where guys at school are trying to impress a group of girls to get them to go to t...

This week I was torn between a couple options story wise as to what I should write about. After re-watching the animated film "Sita Sings the Blues" one more time I am still not sure what route I want to go, but I am leaning more toward extending the ending. I think that it will be a hard task in keeping it under the 1000 word limit, but maybe with some specific techniques it can be done. First, I would take the story up right where it left off with Rama shedding a tear and telling his son's that even though I just met them that he must leave them the throne and search for Sita. I think that I could make the introduction to the story longer to give some background and then on his travels give more of an outline feel for what he does. Leaving relatively longer paragraphs for people he meets along the way as well as the ending. Maybe, even, I could leave the ending of the story open. He might see Sita sitting on a far mountain and then end the story with him walking toward ...

So, I just got done watching the second part of "Sita Sings the Blues" and it was just about as good as the first part. Of course, like the first part the authors did a fantastic job of explaining the plot and what was going on in each story. I thought that the side story about the American boyfriend and girlfriend was kind of different. Not at all what I really expected to happen but it goes along with the story pretty good. With it being Valentines Day I think that it could talk to a lot of people out there that might be sad that they are alone. We can all find happiness eventually, sometimes you just got to A map of Middle Earth that one could  use to get inspired for Rama's travels. move on. Staying on the happy side of Valentines Day though, I think that for a story the ending of this video could be continued. Rama was fowl towards Sita until at the very end when she was taken up by mother earth and away from him forever. In the video he even shed a tear wh...

Sita sings the blues poster This week I chose to change things up a little bit and instead of read a story, I thought it would be fun to watch a movie based on the Ramayana. It was a very interesting rendition to the original epic. Having the three narrators there to not only discuss different topics but also to pronounce names and locations was really nice and helpful. They kind of give background to each person and gives you a better understanding. I thought it was most interesting that they said how Ravana really wasn't a bad guy like he was made out to be. Really the only thing that he was wrong in doing was stealing away Sita. Because of this I thought it might be interesting to create a story that Ravana isn't made out to be the bad guy but instead was misunderstood in what he was doing. Maybe perhaps Sita had seduced him and then Rama being who he was, everyone just believed him. For the movie, I thought all the animation were very well done and funny too! It was eas...

This week's Tech Tip I decided to do something I should have a long time ago, I downloaded the Google Chrome Word Counter. This tool makes things in this class, and other classes, so much easier. In the past I would either pull up Word to track my word count or use an online source. Both of these make you copy and paste what you are counting. I have sometimes even accidently deleted the material that I was trying to copy and paste over which is devastating! With this all you have to do is highlight and click and it tells you what you want to know. Great! For me, this will come in handy because sometimes I struggle to meet the word limit. Well, that is until story writing time and  I may flirt with the max word limit.

Shoot out Thank you for taking the time to read my stories. Please use this space to give me any kind of feedback you feel I need to change or rework my stories so they can be the best possible. Thanks! To reach my portfolio if you haven't seen any of my stories yet, click here .

Back when the west was still wild and the buffalo still roamed free, there was a town in Montana that had become the place to come to. People from the east heard of their terrific shops, meat markets, hotels, and saloons. What was even better was all the farmland that was available just outside of the town. The lands were flat and wide and had many streams flowing. This made this are great for raising crops. For many years people flocked to this town. Everyone worked together to help one another and this created a town that did not only thrive economically but also just felt safe. That was, until one day someone showed up to town. One day in the middle of July the infamous bandit Joel rode into town. Some of the citizens knew his face immediately and packed up their things and fled. Others that weren't so lucky welcomed him as a new guest. Joel had been known for going town to town in the west, pillaging and taking everything from thriving towns. It was early in the days of the w...

Rama battles Ravana If you have looked at any of my past reading notes posts, or have taken a glance at my ideas for a storyboard, then you can mostly likely take a good guess and which story or stories were my favorite in this part of the Ramayana epic. If you guessed that the final battle between Rama and Ravana, you were correct! The three stories, Indra's Chariot, Battle of Rama and Ravana, and Ravana's Death were by far the greatest stories to me and ones that I could see myself retelling. The whole story comes full circle here. You have the hero Rama, the villain Ravana, finally duking it out in a final match together. Finally the god's initial plan comes full circle and can be completed. All Rama's friends that he had made to help him on his journey to get to this place come together. The celestial weapons that Rama had obtained get to do their final job. Finally, in the end all peace is brought back to the land. I have been watching and listening to a lot o...

Moving on to read more into the Ramayana I was really excited to see what was going to happen! It Rama about to cast an arrow into Vali   was filled with excitement in the beginning of this section and then toward the end, to me, it seemed like a lot of waiting. Like "Superman v Batman" critics would say, it was slow. This could be because the story is preparing and getting ready for events in the future which is fine and is something that must be incorporated into all great epics. I liked how in this part Rama was assembling his army if you will. He was no longer going at things alone or with his brother but instead was creating ties with many people. That is in part why my favorite story or stories in this section was the prelude up to and the fight between Vali and Sugriva. It was interesting to get a look at an animal kingdom that would soon come to fight beside Rama. I enjoyed the format of the story for the fight. It was different then just simply paragraph form an...

This week was pretty hectic for me. I had to get things around at the beginning of the week to get prepared for the rest of the week because i had a death in the family. The funeral was scheduled for Thursday with viewing to be held on Wednesday. All my family lives in northern Kansas so this meant that i needed to have all my things that had to be done my Thursday or Friday done on Tuesday because that is when myself and my sister would be leaving to head North. Deaths and funerals are always a weird occasion for me. I do not show much emotion and because of this funerals can be a little awkward. They are also weird for our family because we are spread out around the country, so when someone dies it in a way brings everyone back together and is kind of a joyous time. In any case that is how this gathering was. It was deffinately a celebration of my grandfathers life. I always knew he was an interesting guy but i had no idea until i began to hear stories from his brothers and closer fa...

how animals eat

Feedback as I alluded to last week is complicated. This is why there are professions just in this category, aka editors etc.. After the brief introduction to "feedforward" I decided I wanted to learn a little more one the topic. I believe that this is good way to go about feedback and the principle is a nice one to use, however it cannot be used in all cases. For instance, when instructing a class and an assignment is handed in, unless the student is unable to resubmit the assignment the feedforward approach gives him or her no help on the current assignment. Most often also the next assignment will be different and use a different way of thinking about a set material. That being said, for this class it works great. This is a creative class, so one's style or opinion should be put down because it is different than their owns. Instead just give encouragement and "tips" on how they may want to take a story next time. In the "Try Feedforward Instead of Feedba...

I don't know if it will be the first story I peruse but one of my favorites that I will end up telling is the end battle stories in the Ramayana. Mainly I will focus on "Rama and Ravana" and "Ravana's Death". The end battles are always the most epic right? For the second portion of my storybook I thought that I would work more on the Mahabharata. It has some interesting battle scenes in it and also deals with a more in depth look at death. I thought I could use this to create a battle scene in the afterlife. "The Battle Begins" would be a good place to start because of the peril that the men will soon face. Many will die which will leave them in the afterlife trying to find their way and perhaps in another battle in the underworld.  The last story I found of great interest was "Indrajit". I think that this is a great story to tell because it could have essentially two battle scenes in it. One where the army gets dismantled then heal...