I do have a source story picked out, though: the fifth part of the Blood Boy saga, from the Blackfoot Stories unit.
The thing that struck me most about this story is the way that the blood boy's basically just wandering the country looking for fights—the way he drifts from town to town, curb-stomping the bullies before moving on again. That much was clear with his confrontation of the snake chief, which went like this:
And the takedown that followed was pretty great, too. But I think it's even more obvious when he asks the old lady he saved where he can find another community, and she tells him about one in the mountains—but then warns that he can't go there, because this terrible villain lives there, and "He will kill you." Blood boy's reaction? "Kut-o-yis' was glad to know that there was such a person, and he went to the mountains." It all makes for one of the most interesting characters I've read about so far this semester, and I'd definitely be interested in doing something with that.
Really, the more I think about it, the more I feel like my interpretation of the character might be cursed with immortality—after all this time, he still can’t die, though he desperately wants to. So he goes around picking fights and being reckless and making terrible decisions.
I’m still trying to decide if I’ll use him as the protagonist or get an outsider’s perspective on the whole thing; I gravitate towards the second option, but we’ll see. If that’s the case, in the end, it’ll look like he’s dead, and there’ll be this held-breath moment where the POV character thinks he is and has some pretty mixed emotions about the whole thing, truth be told—but no. He’s bruised and bloody and broken as heck, but still alive. And that’s his curse.
The thing that struck me most about this story is the way that the blood boy's basically just wandering the country looking for fights—the way he drifts from town to town, curb-stomping the bullies before moving on again. That much was clear with his confrontation of the snake chief, which went like this:
Kut-o-yis' picked up the dish and ate the berries and threw the dish away. Then he went up to the big snake, who was lying there asleep, and pricked him with his knife, saying, "Here, get up; I have come to visit you. Let us smoke together."
And the takedown that followed was pretty great, too. But I think it's even more obvious when he asks the old lady he saved where he can find another community, and she tells him about one in the mountains—but then warns that he can't go there, because this terrible villain lives there, and "He will kill you." Blood boy's reaction? "Kut-o-yis' was glad to know that there was such a person, and he went to the mountains." It all makes for one of the most interesting characters I've read about so far this semester, and I'd definitely be interested in doing something with that.
Really, the more I think about it, the more I feel like my interpretation of the character might be cursed with immortality—after all this time, he still can’t die, though he desperately wants to. So he goes around picking fights and being reckless and making terrible decisions.
I’m still trying to decide if I’ll use him as the protagonist or get an outsider’s perspective on the whole thing; I gravitate towards the second option, but we’ll see. If that’s the case, in the end, it’ll look like he’s dead, and there’ll be this held-breath moment where the POV character thinks he is and has some pretty mixed emotions about the whole thing, truth be told—but no. He’s bruised and bloody and broken as heck, but still alive. And that’s his curse.
Then again, it might also be fun to go the opposite way with this: to take a character who knows he's going to die (and soon), and maybe even how he's going to die—and so he decides to take all the risks he can before then, because he knows none of them will matter.
Not sure yet, really. But that's why I'm going with the story planning option this week, so I have some more time to stew over it before I actually commit to taking one route or the other.
Bibliography: Blackfeet Indian Stories by George Bird Grinnell. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
Image Credit: Person Writing by Unsplash. Source: Pixabay.
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