Reading Notes: Agent Egyptian Myths and Stories, Part A

Creation

Right away, the first words of Ra, the Egyptian sun god, grabbed my attention: he explains that he is "Khepera at dawn, Ra at high noon, and Tum at eventide." I find the idea of a supremely powerful being with multiple personalities interesting, and think it could lead to some fun character work and conflict. The idea of Nut could make a compelling monster or villain, too, I think: a creature of darkness who never gets tired and burns with stars.


The Secret Name of Ra

Isis's manipulation of Ra to learn his real name and take his power was the main takeaway of this story; it actually reminds me of some of the stories of fairies, who have to obey the orders of any person who learns their real names. But more than that, I found Isis's motivation behind the manipulation more compelling: she's a goddess stuck in a human form on earth, and she's tired of the mortal world and wants to rejoin the rest of the gods. I like the idea of a protagonist stuck in a different form and desperate to get back to his or herself, only to realize in the end that that doesn't necessarily mean what he or she expected that to be—either because people and circumstances change, or because he didn't know his true self as well as he thought he did (metaphorically or literally).


Ra and Hathor

In this story, I loved when Ra gathered up all the rest of the gods in secret at his temple for a meeting. So if I were to use this one as the basis for my assignment this week, I'd probably end up going with a sort of impromptu family reunion/summit of a bunch of dysfunctional, squabbling gods, called together because their power over men is weakening and the humans are planning to rebel or replace the gods entirely.

That said, when I read on to the introduction of Hathor, I felt like she would be the basis for an interesting story, too—this gleeful, destructive force who the gods unleashed to go around slaughtering humans and flooding the place with blood, and then had issues reining back in once she'd caused enough damage. I think a reimagining of that conflict, featuring a protagonist who has to stop that force once she's unleashed, could be worth looking into.


The Sun's Journey

From this section, I liked the concept of a group of "magicians" protected by Osiris, god of the dead, and charged with protecting mankind from all sorts of evils. The idea that the god of the dead keeps a squad of life-savers under his wing is all kinds of counterintuitive and interesting, and I think it could be fun to experiment with. I also loved the idea that Ra gets weak every so often and has to rely on others to chant invocations to "overcome the demons of darkness who are his enemies." Nighttime is this long, drawn-out battle for Ra; he always eventually emerges victorious with the sunrise, and I find it interesting that he and his protectors know the battle's coming and how it's going to end, but have to keep repeating it anyways. The POV of one of his protectors might be interesting to see, in that scenario.

Osiris

In this story, it was the opposition in personalities between Osiris and his brother Set that caught my eye. Osiris is a peacekeeper, achieving his victories "by reason of gentle and persuasive speech and by music and song." His brother Set, on the other hand, loves warfare, and he's got a "heart...full of evil" and "wicked designs" to "stir up rebellion in the kingdom." It makes me want to write about a pair of brothers who are completely different; but instead of playing with the light brother/dark brother duality and leaving them as archetypes, I'd like to look at their dynamic and how they complement each other and act together as a stronger whole. I'm also interested in taking a closer look at the good in the dark brother and the bad in the light brother, and at a situation in which the light brother ends up being the corrupt one deep down after all.

The Death of Osiris

This time around, I was interested in the end of the story, when Isis feels pity for a weeping mother whose child has just been killed by one of Isis's scorpions, and brings the child back to life. If I were to use this story, I'd probably keep the concept of someone supposedly taking pity and bringing the protagonist's family member back to life—only for the protagonist to realize that the relative's corpse is just being inhabited by some creature planted there.

The Journey of Isis

In this section, I found Horus's destiny pretty compelling: he was killed as a child but brought back to life by the gods, who decided that it was their will that he would grow up into a strong fighter and kill the current king. If I were to do a story based off of this, I'd probably play around with the idea of a kid like Horus, raised from the dead and groomed by the gods after that to fulfill this destiny they've decided on.

King of the Dead

Osiris finally gets some resolution in this story, and his fate is actually quite inspiring: the rest of the gods pieced him back together and restored him to life, and he became Judge and King of the Dead. I love the idea of someone dead being brought back to life—which, let's face it, would be enough to mess anyone up a little bit—and, because of those job qualifications, having power over death and other dead people, probably as a street-level necromancer.





Bibliography: Egyptian Myth and Legend by Donald Mackenzie. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.
Image Credit: "Anubis" by Steve Maw. Source: Flickr.

Story: The Man Who Sold the World

It was mid-June, and Apollo had been missing for two weeks.

Some people insisted he wasn’t really gone, he hadn’t left us. Others said he’d finally had enough of us and skipped out. I wasn’t sure what I believed, but I did know that people had been dropping like flies ever since he’d supposedly bailed.

My little sister, Ariel, was starting to catch on too. “Maria says her cousin in Tampa caught the sickness a few days ago,” she said, kicking a Styrofoam McDonald’s cup lightly along the sidewalk after softball practice. “Where’s Tampa?”

“Florida.”

Ariel looked solemnly up at me. “Do you think they’ll find a cure, Tate?”

I looked down at her. She was seven, ten years younger than me, born well into Mom’s second marriage. Even for half-sisters, we didn’t look much alike.

But before I could answer, we rounded the corner to our apartment complex, and she charged off to find her cat. I followed.

“Aren’t you old enough to drive?”

I paused. Our new neighbor, Cyrus, was knelt in the community garden, over a patch of drooping hyacinths. Every time I went outside, he was either in the garden or on the little covered balcony next to ours, surrounded by old poetry books.

“No car,” I said. Then I raised my eyebrows, because he could only be in his early twenties. “Aren’t you a little young to be obsessed with gardening?”

He grinned. “Touché.”

Up in our apartment, Ariel couldn’t find her cat, so I headed outside to look.

Cyrus was still in the garden. He swore quietly at the flowers, like it was their fault for dying. Then he passed his hand over them.

The hyacinths’ stalks slowly straightened, strong now instead of slumped-over, color bleeding brightly into their faded petals.

Cyrus glanced around, a little late now, and saw me. For a second, we stared at each other, frozen.

Then I turned and went inside.

*** 

A few weeks later, the sickness was spreading like gossip, and we’d all figured out that the world was ending.

The worst part was watching the sickness develop: people would get weak, then shivery, and then their skin went translucent and their bodies started wasting away altogether. Like their health had just abandoned them. It took a week to kill you, and nobody knew what caused it.

I was starting to think I might, though.

I took Ariel to practice, then stepped onto our balcony.

Cyrus sat in his rocking chair, red sneaker propped up on a stack of dusty books. When he saw me, he went still, but didn’t say anything.

“Everybody’s looking for you, you know,” I said.

“Oh?”

I snorted. “You don’t have to admit anything, but don’t bother lying, either. I already know. You aren’t exactly subtle.”

He frowned. His blond hair was swept to one side, and he wore a ratty plaid shirt, and he looked impossibly young. “What?”

“Planting hyacinths in the garden? The poetry books? I mean, Cyrus means sun; you really thought nobody would notice?”

He looked away, down at the garden below. “Sometimes I get tired of being Apollo. Sometimes I want what you guys have. A life where you can do anything, because none of it’s going to matter.”

“Thanks,” I said flatly.

Cyrus sighed. “I just want my own life, okay? To get away for a while.”

“People are dying.”

Cyrus’s face and clothes and hair said worn-out college student, but when he looked over at me, his eyes said Apollo—god of the sun, god of poetry, god of health. “People have always been dying, Tate.”

“So you won’t come back?”

He shook his head. “My life is here now. And while I’ve got that life, I’m not leaving it. I feel like you can understand that.”

And it sucked that people were dying, but the thing was, I did understand. Humans were always running with scissors and traipsing across landmines. We ruined everything we touched—including the world, and especially each other.

It had to get old cleaning up after us.

***

The next week, when I woke Ariel up for practice, she was shivering.

For the next three days, all Mom and Paul did was cry. Ariel’s skin was getting translucent enough that her veins stood out like a roadmap, but her muscles weren’t visible yet.

On the fifth day, on my way down, I passed Cyrus on the stairs. I tried to say something to him, but one look at his thin face and I knew. I knew that he knew, and he still hurried past me, looking ashamed.

Ariel didn’t have much life left, but he did, and he was clinging to it.

***

So the next day, while Mom and Paul were with Ariel at the hospital, I borrowed a gas can from the maintenance shed and slipped out to the balcony. It was mid-morning, so I hoped most people had left their apartments, but at this point I had to risk it.

Cyrus was down in the garden like usual, reviving all the flowers he’d almost killed since last week. I watched him, then grabbed the gas can and climbed carefully from our balcony to his.

The sliding door was open, probably to let more sunlight in. For a second, taking in his mismatched furniture and misguided but enthusiastic decorating, I almost felt bad. He really had made a life for himself here.

But while he had it, he was never going to be anything but Cyrus.

And Ariel was dying. We were all dying.

We always had been.

I went through his rooms, dousing everything with gasoline, making a little trail back out to his balcony. Then I crossed back over to mine, climbed down to the first step of the ladder I’d leaned against it, and took Paul’s lighter out of my pocket. I lit it and tossed it at Cyrus’s rocking chair.

And then I climbed down and watched as Apollo’s new life went up in flames.

Author's Note: This week, my piece was inspired by Ovid's "Ganymede and Hyacinthus," which tells the story of the god Apollo loving Hyacinthus so much that he gives up his godly routine and takes up mortal life for him. It wasn't so much the love as the adopted mortal life that interested me, so I focused my story on what it would look like if Apollo abandoned his post for his own reasons, in a more modern setting.

Bibliography: "Ganymede and Hyacinthus," Ovid's Metamorphoses. Translated by Tony Kline. Source: Mythology and Folklore UN-Textbook.

Image Credit: "Book burning." Source: Wikimedia Commons. 

Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses III, Part B

Orpheus and Eurydice

For me, the most compelling part of this story is the same part that's made it such a universal one: the idea of a protagonist deciding to fight death to win back a loved one. If I were to retell this story, I'd probably use that same hook for the general premise, then switch up the characters, setting, and way of going about fighting death.

Ganymede and Hyacinthus

In this story, I was intrigued by the detail of the god Phoebus loving Hyacinthus so much that he abandoned his godly duties and took up human tasks instead: "...he did not object to carrying the nets, handling the dogs, or travelling as a companion, over the rough mountain ridges, and by constant partnership feeding the flames." I like the idea of a god leaving his post and posing as a human, and looking at all the chaos that might cause if he ditched his responsibilities. If I were to use that idea, I'd probably go with a human protagonist who's figured out his secret and has to work with/convince him to go back to his real life.

Pygmalion

I've always liked the story of Pygmalion and Galatea, because with a bit of a genre shift, it works really well as a sci-fi or fantasy—or even horror—story. If I used this one for my assignment, I would still play with the idea of someone being created—but I don't think it would work out as well as it did in this version of the story.

Myrrha and Cinyras

From this story, I would take the idea of the Furies as dealers of punishment: "the three sisters, with black snaky hair, that those with guilty hearts, their eyes and mouths attacked with cruel torches, see." But I would either want to look at it from their point of view, the point of view of someone close to them, or place it in a high school or small-town modern setting.

Myrrha's Punishment

In this story, it was Myrrha's request at the very end that caught my interest: she begs to be denied both life and death, and I think something like that could lead to an interesting character and situation.

Atalanta and Hippomenes

Initially, what caught my eye about this story was the last part of the oracle's warning to Atalanta: that she would continue to live, but not be herself. This sounds like a messy, unpleasant fate to experiment with in a story, and I think it could be used in a variety of interesting ways. Later, when Atalanta met Hippomenes and heard his challenge, I felt like their dynamic felt like a more cynical, modern fairy-tale: a girl cursed with the inability to fall in love, and the boy who's in love with her, who she'd want to love if she could. Ultimately, that could be an interesting angle to tell a story from too, I think.

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

Image Credit: "Venus and Adonis" (1637) by José de Ribera. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Reading Notes: Ovid's Metamorphoses III, Part A

Daedalus and Icarus

From this section, it was actually the Minotaur himself that caught my interest. I like the idea of a monstrous kid locked away in a monstrous place because of his parent's sins, and might play around with that angle, possibly with a darker Secret Garden edge.

Transformation of Philemon and Baucis

In this story, it was the idea of a couple of people fated to die together, or just at the same time, that intrigued me. If I end up using it for my story, I would change the context and background and characters of the story, plus the dynamic between the two people. But I would keep the idea of the death pact, whether it's more intentional or just some type of curse or something else binding them, and see what I could make out of it.

The Famine

This time around, I was inspired by the nature of Erysichthon’s curse: he's desperately hungry, dying for any scrap of food—but "always by eating he creates an empty void." If I were to use this story to build my own, I might use that concept for the basis of it, or at least for the core of the main character: somebody who needs something to survive, but is in turn destroyed by that something, a nasty but unavoidable cycle.

That said, I also completely love the idea of his daughter, Mestra, selling herself as a slave to make money—and then, because she can shift shape, promptly disguising herself as someone else and escaping with the cash. A magical father-daughter con story could be a ton of fun, and it's something I want to look into.

Achelous

The fight in this story reminded me almost of a high school fight, so if I found an interesting hook for that (mixing the fantasy element with the everyday high school element), I could potentially be interested in that. But in reading about the god Achelous and the then-mortal Hercules both showing up as rivals for a girl's hand in marriage, it struck me that I find the interactions between the gods and mortals in these stories very interesting. A lot of the time, instead of being aloft and revered, the gods intermingle so much with the mortals that (if anything) they seem to belong to different social classes instead of different species. Again, my ideas for that angle are still pretty hazy, but the story has got me thinking about it.

The Death of Hercules

In this story, it was the process of Hercules's death and rebirth that sparked my interest: the idea of someone dying, only for their true form to rise out of the proverbial ashes (Herc "shed[s] his mortal body" and becomes "his better part" like a snake shedding its scales). Though I love the idea the way it played out in this tale, for a short-form story, it might work better if that true form isn't necessarily a pleasant thing, and the protagonist has to deal with the repercussions of that.

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

Image Credit: "Deianeira and the dying centaur Nessus" by Howard Pyle. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Feedback Thoughts

Out of all the articles, I found the one by Megan Bruneau most helpful. That's less because I'm uncomfortable receiving feedback--I've gotten more and more used to it each semester as a Professional Writing major, since we get feedback and critique weekly on every assignment we do--but because of a specific tip Bruneau mentions that I think applies equally well to receiving and giving feedback.

When Bruneau differentiates between "state" versus "trait," she's talking about separating oneself (the state) from specific qualities (traits), so a critique on a certain aspect doesn't feel like an assault on the entire self. And that really is important to keep in mind--having areas in a piece that can be improved doesn't mean the entire piece is flawed. When revising, you have to approach your project like a surgeon would: a step removed, able to separate different parts of the whole and cut away what isn't working, then replace it with something that does.

But I also think the "state versus trait" idea is worth keeping in mind when giving feedback, too. Instead of making generalized statements about the state--which are more likely to be highly subjective instead of objective, and can be difficult to break down and apply--it's better to zero in on isolated traits and give specific feedback on those.

The only other thing I'd add is that it really does become easier the more you do it. When I first started turning in writing projects for critique, the thought of having it returned to me with criticism in the margins made me uneasy. But with every project, it's gotten easier. I honestly think that's because my mindset has gradually shifted, and is still doing so--instead of dreading critique, I actually look forward to it, because I know I'll have an end product I can feel more confident in when everything's said and done.

Basically, if you view it as just another step in the process, helpful instead of uncomfortable, it's much easier to not only get through it, but also to apply it in an efficient and beneficial way.



Image Credit: "Editing a Paper" by Nic McPhee. Source: Flickr.