Reading Notes: Lang's European Fairy Tales, Part B

Wow, so Peter Bull was just really sad, if you care about animals. I can't believe that clerk got away with killing that couple's cow that they loved so much. Like, yeah, it was weird that they thought of the cow like a son and tried to have it taught how to speak, but still. They were just peasants, and they didn't know any better, and the clerk didn't face any consequences. At least the merchant went along with it, even if only for the money, so their hearts weren't broken. That story just sucked. I don't even want to rewrite it because thinking about it makes me sad.

I liked the Master and Pupil, but I don't know that I have any interest in rewriting it. I don't think there's anything I'm just burning to change, so I guess I'll leave it alone.

The Cottager and His Cat was also a cute little story. It could be interesting to rewrite it where the young man doesn't take heed of his dream, but I think I like this story too much to make it sad.

I thought Andras Baive was pretty cool, and it could be a really interesting story to tell from the perspective of the bailiff or a townsperson, maybe a little kid. Since Andras Baive was a legend, a kid in town presumably would have been really excited to watch him get into a contest with the bailiff. I haven't really written from a child's perspective before, so it would definitely be a challenge. I would start with the kid rambling about how amazing Andras Baive is and then have him be present for the bailiff's challenge and give him a first row seat to the action, with maybe a little hint that the bailiff isn't all that he seems.

Image: Cat.

Bibliography: Lang's European Fairy Tales, by Andrew Lang. Source.

Reading Notes: Lang's European Fairy Tales II, Part A

This week I read some of Lang's European Fairy Tales. In this first half there were actually only a few stories, most of them broken into two parts. That's nice because then there's more room for detail, but it's also harder to figure out what part of the story to rewrite, since most two-parters are too long to rewrite the whole thing.

I didn't like the first two stories very much. Half-chick was mostly annoying, though it was kind of funny to think about him hopping everywhere on one leg. His comeuppance just seemed way too harsh. He was rude, not a murderer or anything. If I rewrote his story, I think I'd probably try to either make him less of an asshole or change his punishment so that it wasn't permanent, even though the point of the original story is that it explains why there's a rooster on weathervanes. I just think he should have more of a chance to grow as a character, I guess.

Clever Maria didn't make any sense to me. It was like whoever came up with it kept forgetting what they had said before? So Maria's dad gives her and her sisters plants but after her sister's plants die that's just never mentioned again? It's so freaking weird. I didn't at all understand why she ended up with the king. If I were rewriting this I don't think I would even know where to begin, so I'm striking it off the list.

I think my best possibility for rewriting would be the Seven-Headed Serpent. It would be kind of fun to try writing a fight scene, since the main story entirely skips it. Not that it's an actual fight, just the hero chopping the serpent's heads off one by one, but it could be cool to narrate.

Image: Seven Headed Serpent.

Bibliography: The Yellow Fairy Book by Andrew Lang, illustrated by H. J. Ford (1894).

Tech Tip: Bookmarking

I use bookmarks a lot, for everything from quick links to my email inboxes to important links for classes like this one. I also use bookmark folders to keep track of links to sources for papers, especially when I'm first looking for sources and am just skimming. During those times, I'll add anything that looks promising to the folder, and then I can go through later and narrow the sources down to the ones I'll actually use.

Image: Bookmarking. Source.

Week 14 Story: The Girl Who Became a River

5/1/18

Dear Diary,

It was another boring day, like every day in this stupid town. I went to work, put up the new display for May, which is just the April clothes with the mannequins in opposite windows, helped the same boring customers, ate a grilled cheese for lunch, went to class, and went home. In class, Marianna said my sweater was “interesting” and that kind of hurt. I know she’s my friend, but sometimes she just seems like she hangs out with me because it makes her feel better about herself. Anyway, I made nachos for dinner, and watched Netflix for three hours. There’s just nothing to do here, and no one to do the nothing with, and it freaking sucks. Maybe something new will happen tomorrow. Or not. Probably not.

5/5/18

Dear Diary,

I went for a walk today, through the forest on the edge of town. Marianna told me not to go, but I just felt called, you know? Like there was something in the forest I needed to see. So I went down this little path, until I got to a river, and then I just sat by it for a bit. I listened to the flow of the water and after a while I thought I heard it whispering to me. I don’t know how I understood, but I think it told me it wasn’t always a river? That it was a person? I know that’s really weird, but it also didn’t feel strange at all. Talking to the river felt perfectly natural and I don’t know why. I’m going to go back tomorrow, and talk to it again if I can.

5/7/18

Dear Diary,

The River and I have been talking a lot. Her name is Laurel, and she used to live in town, but she hated it, like I do. One day she walked into the forest and just…never left. She sat up against a rock and let her thoughts flow, like water, until suddenly she was water. She says I can do it too, if I want. That’s why she can talk to me, because I could do it.  I could be a river, or a tree probably. I just have to go back out to the forest and let myself really join with the world around me. I want to. My job sucks and Marianna is my friend but she isn’t very nice and hanging out with Laurel in the forest all day sounds so much better. I think I’ll try tomorrow. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just come back.

5/8/18

In a forest outside a small town, a girl sits next to a river, legs crossed. She has been sitting for several hours, but they have passed like minutes, and the edges of her form are starting to blur. Slowly, she begins to dissolve.

5/9/19

In a forest outside a small town, where one river flowed, two now cross, waters mingling as one for an instant before returning to their separate channels.

Author's note: The original story I worked from is about three orphans, two sisters and a brother, who always had to work really hard and were never lucky. Their lives were very difficult, so they decided to wander and become great rivers, because that's just a thing that was possible then. They go to sleep in a swamp, and the sisters sneak off to take the best places to flow, and when he wakes, the brother angrily chases them in river form until he runs into the sea. Essentially, the story explains how three Russian rivers came to be.

I only took the part of the story that says people are able to turn into rivers, and wrote a story about a girl that lives in an ambiguous small town, hates her life, and learns that she can turn into a river from one that used to be just like her.

Image; River. Source.

Bibliography: The Metamorphosis of the Dnieper, the Volga, and the Dvina from Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887). Source.

Reading Notes: Russian Folktales, Part B

Well, I was rather horrified by the story where the loyal dog gets killed after he defends the master that abandoned him. Were I the dog, I'd hold a grudge too. I don't see why he should have been killed instead of just given to someone else, but as I said in my last post, Russia's a harsh place, I guess.

There's such a strange mix of stories with happy endings where a risen corpse or demon is defeated and stories where a bad thing happens and that's all. Or at the least, there doesn't seem to be any sort of happy or satisfying conclusion, at least not to me. I have lots of possibilities if I decide to use one of my favorite rewriting strategies and change an ending to suit morals that I like better, but I feel like I've gone that route so often during the semester that I don't know that I have any interest in doing that sort of rewrite again in the class.

My other go-to is to change the perspective a story is written in. Almost all, if not all, of the readings for this class are in third-person, which makes it relatively simple to just tell the same story in a different voice. This is a viable option for any of the Russian folktales, which are all in third-person. The method can make for an interesting character study, particularly if put in a format other than the character seeming to narrate directly to the reader. I haven't done a diary entry kind of rewrite yet, though it's a bit similar to the letter I wrote for Amten. As mentioned in Part A of my reading notes, the river story would be a great candidate for this format, and is currently what I'm leaning towards. I also will be trying to keep it on the short side, since I have a lot of other assignments this week.

Image: Russian Moujik (peasant). Source.

Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887).

Reading Notes: Russian Folk Tales, Part A

This week I decided to read Russian folk tales, and boy were they strange. I was both surprised and not surprised about the sadness of many of the endings. Russia is a harsh place. A couple of the stories just didn't seem to make sense at all. They felt a little like anti-jokes.

I did find the stories about Wednesday and Friday kind of fun. Either one could be interesting to try and update to a modern setting, or tell from the perspective of the day/demon/goddess? I'm also interested in doing something related to the story where the siblings turn into rivers. With that situation, I think I'd like to write some sort of first person perspective for a character that knows they have the ability to just turn into a river forever if they feel like it, and does. I could get into how they knew, and how they came to the decision to do it, and how they feel about it afterward. That could play out as a series of diary entries + 3rd person for post-river thoughts, or something closer to a stream-of-consciousness with first-person all the way through. I'm actually pretty into this idea.

I could also try my hand at something creepy, and try to write a more suspenseful and dramatic version of the story where the dead mother is found suckling her living child. I don't go in for scary stuff very much, so it would definitely be a new experience for me as a writer.

The story about the bad wife was also amusing and intrigued me, but I don't know that there's anything I particularly want to do with it. I think right now my number one choice is actually the river story, though I found it kind of boring initially.

Image: Anti-joke Chicken. Source.

Bibliography: Russian Fairy Tales by W. R. S. Ralston (1887).

Growth Mindset Acronym

Try Often, Don't Abandon Yet

This is an acronym of TODAY to remind me to do things now instead of putting them off, to always keep trying, and to never give up or stop adding "yet" when I feel like I can't do something.