Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses 1, Part B

Echo

In the section about Tiresias’s plight, I found it interesting that gods are unable to undo the act of other gods—that the most they can do is try to counteract or make up for the punishments or blessings other gods give. A modern pseudo-political story about a war of the wills between a set of gods could be fun, and so could a spun, modernized take on the way Narcissus is constantly being chased and admired and running away from all of that. I was also intrigued by the idea of Echo—a girl who can’t really speak herself, and struggles to communicate through others—but I think she would work better as a supporting character than a protagonist.


Narcissus

One thing that interested me in this story was the fact that a spurned love interest merely had to call down a curse upon Narcissus, and Nemesis happened to hear it and decided to grant it. I think that might be fun to play with in a high school setting. The other lines that caught my eye read, “Fool, why try to catch a fleeting image, in vain? What you search for is nowhere: turning away, what you love is lost!” So I’d also be interested in using that idea as the initial/catalyst conflict for a story, with a protagonist who’s lost a loved one and is desperate to get them back.


Pyramus and Thisbe

I found this one almost as irritating as Romeo and Juliet (though at least these two actually knew each other enough to somewhat justify their actions), but I did like the image of the two kids communicating through this secret fissure that no one else can see or detect. If I used that aspect and gave the story a supernatural element, I think I could have fun with it.


Mars and Venus

Sol's role was the one that caught my attention in this one; he almost reminded me of a private detective hired to catch a cheating spouse, and I liked that even though he went straight to Vulcan to report back on Mars and Venus, he was still sorry that he'd found out—sorry that there was ever anything to find out. It could make for an interesting main character: I'd probably set it in a contemporary high school, featuring a character hired by classmates to look into significant others.


Perseus and Andromeda

Though I tend to enjoy Perseus's stories in general, my favorite gem in this one was the part where Atlas heard who Perseus's father was and immediately feared him and sent him away, because of an old prophecy involving a son of Jupiter stealing from him. I'd like to use this aspect in a retelling, in which the protagonist is proud to be his father's son but is constantly met by fear and judgment because of it.


Perseus and Medusa

The Graeae sisters, who live in a cave, all look alike, and all share a single eye, were definitely the inspiration-highlight of this one for me. I'd be interested in taking that element and transplanting it into a different type of story, starring the sisters as the main focus and switching up the setting and possibly the genre.



Bibliography: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: Narcissus by Caravaggio. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses I, Part A

Deucalion and Pyrrha

From the story of Deucalion and Pyrrha, the aspect that intrigued me most was the idea of stones eventually being refined enough to come to life as people, like marble statues. It reminds me a little of the myth about Galatea, and I feel like something interesting could be done with those marble-veined people who represent “the toughness of our race.”


Io

In this story, it was Argus “with his star-like eyes” who caught my attention. I like the idea of interpreting the character and his hundred eyes and omnipotence a little less literally, but keeping some other elements—his constant vigilance, the way he doggedly dragged a crying Io away from her father in order to get her to isolation and carry out his job properly—in place.

Phaethon and the Sun

With this story, I found myself less interested in the looming threat of the chariot than in the dynamic between the absent but idolized father and the son desperate to be claimed by him. That's something I'd like to explore in a more modern context, though I wouldn't want to lose the larger-than-life quality of the dad in that transition.

Phaethon's Ride

Like I mentioned above, I'm not as interested in the chariot aspect of Phaethon's tale, so this story didn't grab me as much. If I were to use this as inspiration, I would probably do a loose interpretation involving pyrokinesis and a character who can't control it.

The Death of Phaethon

I liked the human aspect of Phaethon's sisters grieving for him, so I might be interested in reinterpreting the tree angle but still looking at a group of sisters transformed by grief for their dead brother.

Callisto

In this story, the bit where Zeus "took on the face and dress of Diana" caught my eye. It seems like a great opportunity to do a story with a shape-shifter, so I would probably use that aspect but remove it from the larger context of the tale it comes from.

Semele

If I were to take something from this unit to work with, it would probably be the idea of a destructive relationship; I like the idea of exploring a non-romantic variation of that.

Bibliography: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Tony Kline. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
Image Credit: Relief showing the sun god Helios, from the temple of Athena in Troy. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Wikipedia Trail: From Ursula K. Le Guin to Ghost Towns

One post from the Twitter feed that grabbed my attention this week was a quote from fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin: "The story is not in the plot but in the telling." Because the quote resonated so much with me, and because I'd heard of Le Guin many times but didn't actually know much about her, I decided to begin with her for this Wikipedia Trails project.

Ursula K. Le Guin

An active author since the early 1960s, Le Guin has become one of the most awarded, influential writers in the fields of fantasy and science fiction. Though I'd heard about her Earthsea from many different sources, that was about the extent of my knowledge about her, so I was surprised to learn what a long career she's had and how many people her work has shaped. By now, she's influenced four generations of readers and other writers, including Neil Gaiman and Salman Rushdie. Though her list of awards and accomplishments is definitely nothing to overlook, it's that legacy—the footprint she's left in the field of storytelling—that impressed me the most. Part of what inspired Le Guin to explore the complexities of culture in her work was the fact that her anthropologist father and his circle of friends studied the Native American man Ishi, who was known as "the last wild Indian," as he navigated modern life. I decided to learn more about him.

Ishi

After surviving disease, bounty attacks, and the Three Knolls Massacre of 1865, Ishi was eventually left as the last living member of the Yahi people of California. Once he lost the few remaining members of his people, he lived alone in the wilderness for four years before heading to a town in California in an attempt to find food. Word spread about him quickly, and when the University of California found out about him, they brought him on as a research assistant at the university, where he also lived and was studied. In the five years between his arrival at the school and his death by tuberculosis, he helped anthropologists understand and record information about the Yahi culture.

California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush made life much more difficult for Ishi and his family, but it led me to the third stop on my Wikipedia trail. This era of quick growth and sweeping migration has always caught my imagination, but I was interested to learn that many of those who rushed in to pan for gold actually came from different countries and continents. Searching for gold also became a family affair for some: the women brought in steady incomes, which gave their husbands the chance to try to find gold.

Ghost Towns

After the gold fever passed and opportunities dried up, some of the boomtowns became ghost towns instead. Although ghost towns themselves don't represent anything new to most people, I was intrigued to learn about a handful of former ghost towns that have actually been resettled—either as tourist towns due to interest generated by their status as ghost towns, or simply due to availability and proximity to more in-demand locations. One of these revived ghost towns is Walhalla in Victoria, Australia, pictured above.



Image Credits:

Ursula K. Le Guin giving a reading at Danville, California, in 2008. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
Photograph of Ishi. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
San Francisco in 1851, during the Gold Rush. Source: Wikimedia Commons.
A revived ghost town of Walhalla, Victoria, Australia, including original and newly reconstructed buildings. Source: Wikimedia Commons.


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Growth Mindset: Reaction

Listen to other people gripe often enough, and you'll pick up on a couple of points pretty quickly: it was always better back in the day, and every system is broken.

Not to say that either one of those complaints is necessarily invalid, just a bit overworked. That said, after hearing enough about how unprepared my generation is for the real world of jobs, Dweck's growth mindset findings make perfect sense.

In some ways, I tend to come up against a fixed-mindset wall myself. Not in the sense that I quit trying to improve once I've achieved a certain level of success—I push myself a little too hard for that—but in that I'm much more likely to drop something if I'm not achieving enough success. It's not exactly flattering, but I'm not a good loser, so I either get frustrated and quit, or decide my time is better spent elsewhere and move on to some new task or project.

That's one reason I'm glad to have had Dweck's findings pointed out to me, because it's a good time in my life for it. It's my last year of school, so I'm doing a lot of thinking as I get ready to take that final bow—thinking about what I've achieved here, what I want to achieve in the future, what kind of job and life I want to set out to make happen.

A lot of the time, at this point in life, it's more encouraged to think smart instead of think big, to be grounded by steady, realistic goals. And as much as I think that's important to keep in mind, I think it's more important not to be held back by that, not to get wrapped up in and strangled by your safety net. At the end of the day, that's the main thing I want to avoid—and by keeping all of this and Dweck's growth-mindset proof in mind, that's what I plan to do.



Image Credit: Growth Mindset Meme Cat by Laura Gibbs. Source: Growth Mindset Memes.

Starting the Semester

For me, in a lot of ways, organization is a trap.

It's brightly colored Post-It notes and tab dividers in snazzy patterns and the shiniest aisle at Target—but it's also a one-way ticket to procrastinating on the stuff I actually need to get done. Slippery slope and all that.

Then again, though, there are still a few tips I try to stick with to make life easier on myself:

1. I plot out readings, assignment deadlines, and test dates for all my classes on one calendar. Sometimes the whole "out of sight, out of mind" thing tends to rear its head at me, but this way, I can avoid all that and know that no deadlines are going to sneak up on me. That said, one giant mass of due dates isn't always the clearest way to view my schedule, which leads to the next point.

2. At the beginning of each week, I look at the compiled calendar and break it down into an informal to-do list of things I need to get done each day. For one thing, let's be real—checking a task off a list can be weirdly satisfying, a tiny slice of therapeutic goodness. But this is also handy because it breaks the months and weeks into manageable chunks, and lets me see how I need to prioritize errands and assignments. Sometimes the things that feel really urgent can actually wait a day or two—and other times, by plotting out the to-do list, I realize I can be much more efficient by combining two tasks I might not otherwise have thought to tackle back-to-back.

3. Granted, this last one is probably pretty obvious, but I use a different folder for each class/project. There's basically no start-up effort required, but it pays off for the rest of the semester: scrambling to pack my bag for the right classes in the morning takes no time at all, and it's also easier to bring other-day assignments along to work on between classes.



Image Credit: To-Do List. Source: Pexels.

Reading Options

For week 2, I've chosen the Ovid I unit. I've always found stories about physical transformation interesting, plus I like that they can work on multiple levels, be used to convey just as much about the inside of a character as the outside. I clicked with the stories of this unit because of the humanity in the characters, and because I think a lot of them would work translate well to flexible reinterpretations and modern updates.

As for future units I'm interested in, here's a rundown of several that caught my eye.


KING ARTHUR

While I've always been a fan of Arthurian legend, one thing that appeals to me about this unit is the fact that it includes the time when Arthur was young and hadn't yet established himself as the king of legend. I like the idea of stripping this larger-than-life character down into a young guy just now getting his start, and I think that might be fun to potentially play around with in the future. Besides that, I'm always a fan of complicated sibling dynamics, and I think experimenting with a version of Arthur and Morgan might be a lot of fun.

RUSSIAN FOLKTALES

Witches and warlocks are always entertaining, but one of the main reasons I've chosen the Russian folktales is the array of supernatural creatures it offers. Partially because so many of my favorite books and television shows include twists on the supernatural, it's become one of the genres I love the most, and I think this unit has a lot of potential for inspiration and creative freedom.


WELSH FAIRY TALES (EMERSON)

One of the things I find most interesting about stories of fairies is all of the duality found in the different takes on them. My favorite interpretations involve the cold but cunning, almost trickster-like versions of fairies, unpredictably capricious in their dealings with humans. Also, the idea of fairies as exorcists is something I've never encountered until now, and I think it a lot of things could be done with it.


WELSH FAIRY TALES (THOMAS)

Though I've already selected the Emerson Welsh fairy tales, I was drawn to the Thomas version for different reasons. It includes a lot of the elements I mentioned earlier that I was interested in, and would be a good chance to combine some of them in different ways. The haunted lakes and different spells, though, are what ultimately convinced me I wanted to look deeper into this unit in the future. I think this unit has the makings for a very interesting story atmosphere, which is something I want to get better at crafting in my own writing.



Image Credit: "How Arthur Drew the Sword." 1902 illustration by H.J. Ford. Source: Project Gutenberg.

Storybook Favorites

Though there were loads of interesting stories to choose from, I've selected the three below because each one of them is representative of elements I liked when wandering through all the storybooks.

LOST IN THE WOODS

The aspect that initially drew me to this storybook ultimately ended up being my favorite thing about it: I appreciate that, instead of a simple, bare-bones frame story or one that feels too gimmicky, the frame is a complete story instead of simply a narrative convention, with a separate plot that’s interesting in itself. The mystery element not only kept me reading, but intrigued and actively involved in trying to figure out the story. Though there were a lot of characters, they were all developed enough to be distinct from each other—and the titles of each section were great, hooking me from the beginning. I also liked that instead of telling me the situation, the introduction showed it to me instead. The layout with tabs at the top, left to right, seemed to flow better in that it mimicked the turning of pages.


THE TALES OF THE SEVEN PILGRIMS
I loved how this story takes two very familiar, somewhat tired concepts, and they instantly feel fresh because of how striking their combination is. Also, I thought it was a smart move for the writer to use the Canterbury Tales characters’ stories as background information and to inform the characters themselves, but not try to shoehorn their tales into the main narrative. It’s more interesting having the additional information available as a footnote instead of crammed awkwardly into the story. The introduction as a case file before the interviews works well; because of the way the stories are set up as files in the case, the up-down navigation (which I usually wasn’t as much of a fan of in other storybooks) feels like a natural fit.


LSD IN A YELLOW SUBMARINE

Though this one was shorter and could have done a bit more to incorporate the myths, I chose it because I like the storytelling decisions it represented—a looser approach to interpreting and incorporating the mythology and folklore, instead of being a slave to fitting it into the frame story weakening that story as a result. Beyond that, it was also one of the more unique takes I saw, and I thought it was refreshing to find a modern story with fairytale elements thrown in, instead of the other way around.

Image Credit: Vasilissa by Ivan Bilibin, 1899. Source: Wikipedia.