Week 2 Storytelling - Rama Defeats Ravana

As Rama tears through the forest in high pursuit of the Golden Deer, he begins having conflicting thoughts about pursuing this deer. "Why should I enslave this animal because it is beautiful? Is it not a crime to not let it be free? Something is amiss. Sita would never have such materialistic pursuits. A dark force is in play. I must figure out the truth from this deer before it's too late!" Rama shoots the deer in the leg and it suddenly changes back into Maricha. Rama instantly recognizes Maricha. He recalls his fight with Maricha and Subahu many years ago. Rama forces Maricha to tell him of Ravana's plot to kidnap Sita.

Immediately, Rama is off at racing speed to where Sita first spotted Maricha disguised as the Golden Deer. Rama is traveling at such high speed he is able to travel from tree limb to tree limb and dart through the giant expanse of forestry. He quickly finds where Sita was but only sees signs of a struggle and he instantaneously concludes that Ravana has already captured Sita. Rama looks within himself to figure out a way to stop Ravana before he reaches his impenetrable fortress in Lanka.

Rama knows if he can reach Sita’s thoughts, he will be able to find out which direction they are heading in. Rama sends out his thoughts in every direction and frantically searches for Sita’s thoughts. He suddenly reaches them but they are faint and he can only make out feelings of fear. Sita is far away and getting even farther by the second.
At once, he rushes in the same direction, pursuing Ravana at the same racing speed as before and readies his bow and arrow for one final blow to end his evil reign. Rama is now able to read Sita’s thoughts as he narrows the distance between them and assures her that he is on his way but to not alert Ravana in any way of this. Sita keeps calm as Ravana carries her off into the distance.

Soon Rama spots Ravana with Sita in tow and quickly engages him into battle. Ravana suddenly grows through a process of metamorphosis. Ravana begins to grow even more heads and grows to over twenty feet in height. Ravana dashes toward Rama with multiple arms bearing different weapons such as tridents, conches, and chakras. He swings his arms with blinding speed and his whole body turns into a cyclone of spinning weapons. Rama knows he cannot engage Ravana directly in hand-to-hand combat and pulls out his trusty bow to defend himself. Rama keeps his distance from Ravana’s twister technique and strafes from a safe distance. Rama focuses his aim on Ravana’s many flailing arms and begins shooting arrows through each of his hands. Rama shoots an arrow through each of Ravana’s eighteen arms and soon Ravana shrinks in size and brandishes his favorite sword Chandaras. He charges Rama in a blind rage. Rama breathes in a deep breath, stands firmly upright with his chest out, draws back the arrow and lets it fly. The arrow flies with pinpoint precision and hits Ravana between the eyes. Instantly, Ravana turns to dust. All is well again for Rama and Sita.

Author's Note: This story is an alternate and quicker ending to Rama’s battles with Ravana. In this version he foils Ravana’s plans much sooner. I removed Lakshmana completely from the story because his role would be very minuscule in my retelling of the story. I used most parts of the original story. The only major change I made was killing Ravana much sooner. Also I had Rama find Sita through his own powers, instead of having her drop a piece of her jewelry.  I added a long intense battle scene between Rama and Ravana into the story because I have loved all the epic battles we have read about in the past seven weeks in this class. All the intense battles between the characters, especially the wars between Rama and Ravana’s armies, are what inspired me to write this little battle scene into my short story. I am extremely fascinated with the various weapons all the characters use and hope to include some in my forthcoming stories as well. I also just wanted to share that the image I used for this story is my favorite. Although this is a picture of Kumbakarna, I like that it shows Rama with his bow and it's the best representation I could find of the final scene in my story.

Rama shoots Ravana with an arrow

Bibliography:

• Buck, William (1976). Ramayana: King Rama's Way. 

Week 7 Storytelling - A Wife and a Mother's Role

There once was a simple married couple. A man and a wife in union under love. The wife served the man hand and foot and never let him raise a finger, once he had returned from work. Everyday she would clean the house and cook his favorite foods; awaiting his arrival. She loved to see the appreciation in his eyes from all her efforts.

The years went on and things remained the same.

After sometime, the couple fell onto financial hardship and the wife was forced to take a job that required to live outside of the home. The man and wife worked through the financially hard times and the man ended up taking a second job in order to allow his wife return home.

Now the husband was coming home twice as late and as tired as ever, nevertheless the wife waited on him tirelessly hand and foot for she knew how hard he worked.

Eventually, his efforts paid dividends and the couple no longer needed to worry about financial problems.

Life was now much more relaxed for the couple. However, the woman's desire to serve her husband was just as intense as ever before. She wanted now more than ever to bore him a son. She soon became pregnant and the man's love grew even more in the wife's eyes.

The child was born and it was a girl. The man was happy, however not nearly as happy as he could have been. The wife could see it in his eyes. He yearned for a son and the fact that his wife had not given him one made him secretly unhappy with her.

The days pressed on and their daughter grew by the day. The wife had a new joy in her daughter and now had new vigor to serve another loved one.

More days drew on and the husband's affection slowly faded into absence. The man asked for a divorce and the woman gave it to him without a word.

Mother Nature Protects the Wives and Mothers

Author's Note: I was truly inspired to write this story because of Sita's undying spousal loyalty to Rama, and her symbolism as self-sacrificing and dedicated mother. Sita went through so much in her life and is mistreated so much it truly makes me sad. She is never rewarded for all the amazing things she has done. Sita really touches me as a character because she reminds me of my mother. My mother loves me and my brother so much its unfathomable. I know she would do absolutely anything for me and reading about Sita being taken away by Bhumi really makes me appreciate my own mother even more. In this story the wife is Sita and the husband is Rama. This story is inspired from all the triviality Sita faces in her life and then being abruptly taken from the whole world. And abruptly the wife and man separate similar to Bhumi taking Sita. I plan to expand this story for my portfolio.

Week 7 - Famous Last Words

I feel as if I am getting better about managing this class, I have been working ahead somewhat and it makes the workload in all of my other classes much less stressful as well. I have a Physics test next Wednesday so I plan to work ahead in this class and my Physics Lab class so I will be able to focus on studying for my test next week. I also have not been feeling well off and on since last Monday.

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling terrible and finally decided to go to the doctor. Turns out, I have strep throat and the doctor ended up giving me a shot of penicillin in my side. I am feeling better since yesterday, however definitely not 100%. Hopefully I will feel better by Thursday when I shadow a doctor in Chickasha.

In other news, this past weekend was good to me sports-wise. My favorite team the Dallas Cowboys had a huge upset over the heavily favored New Orleans Saints at home. The Cowboys played incredible, they ran the ball well, passed well, played good defense throughout and created takeaways. This game really got my hopes for the rest of season and showed me that the Cowboys really are capable of making some headway this season. The win by my boys definitely helped me to start off the week right.

I really hope that I can stay on course and keep working ahead. OU/TX is slowly approaching and I don’t want to have to worry about a bunch of homework and studying I need to do while I am trying to enjoy such a fun time during the first semester. I have a Microbiology test the Wednesday after OU/TX and that really stinks. I will definitely need to start studying early for that as well, if I want to enjoy that weekend. 

Demarco Murray and Travis Frederick celebrating a TD this past Sunday against the Saints.

Typing Test Tech Tip

I like how RankMyTyping.com works. Its almost like a little game to track how well you type. The words scroll across the screen in sentence format and as you type each word it slides to the next word. I did really well at first and then when punctuation and capitalization came into play I started messing up some. I was really curious to see my results but after clicking 'submit' the test would not show me my results. I tried this twice to no avail. 

Week 7 - Reading Diary B

I feel like the ride on the chariot back to Ayodhya is almost a summary of some of the things that took place. All the lavish gifts that are given amongst the major characters are really cool and interesting things. Such as the waters from every river and Sita's pearl necklace. When I first read Rama's intent to abandon Sita it did not make much sense. In a humorous sense however,  its quite ironic that Rama would go through such great lengths and many battles to save the kidnapped Sita, yet abandon her so easily after being gossiped about. I hate that Kusha and Lava are forced to live apart from their father and it really confused me when Bhumi took Sita underground. Overall, I felt very unsatisfied by the way Rama's later years were. It really jars me that Lakshmana, and Sita both don't live to Rama's death. I really did not like this section of the book very much, I only liked the ending where Hanuman rips his flesh and shows that Rama lives within him. This is an extremely popular picture that i have seen ever since growing up as a child.

Week 7 - Reading Diary A

This was probably one of my favorite sections to read because shortly into the reading we get to see some intense fight scenes with my favorite character: Jambavan. I loved the fight scenes that included the two magicians as well. I really like how they is such a variety of demonic characters and the various powers they can have. It makes it seem like an endless catalog of demons and I feel like that adds even more background detail and helps establish the story even more. It was also cool to see Kala make an appearance in the epic, because she is one of the deities I have grown up hearing about. All the various preparations by Ravana before his fight really helped build my excitement for the fight even though I knew he was going to lose. The ground battle between Rama and Ravana reminds me a lot of when Hercules fights the Hydra. I don't know how i feel about the addition of a post-death letter by Ravana. I feel as if it takes away from his evilness.

Week 6 Storytelling - Omnipresent

It was a cold night in the middle of winter. A boy lay asleep in his bed. Sleeping, sleeping peacefully at the beginning of his slumber but then the boy began to tense up and his body language became contorted as if to convey messages of pain. Now we enter the mind of the boy and see what he dreams of. The boy is in an big empty room, he slowly navigates through the darkness looking for a way out. He sees a faint light and frantically presses forward. He feels as if something is following him and is too scared to look back. He breaks out into a run and storms through a door leading outside. Its nighttime, and there is no moon to aid the oppressing darkness. The area is heavily wooded and the young boy has no choice but to navigate through the forest. He does not think about it long because he feels that same feeling of being followed by an ominous omnipresent presence. The forest is very dark and not much light from the sky peeks through the dense forestry. The boy begins to hear a ringing sound, as the forest progressively grows darker and harder to pass through. The boy decides to change direction and find an easier path to traverse. The ringing subsides however the forest still grows darker. The ringing begins and the boy becomes feeling helpless. But this feeling soon subsides as the boy makes it out onto the forest and onto a mile wide unpaved road with forestry lining both sides. The boy cannot see when this road ends for the darkness does not permit it. The boy begins his journey down the unfinished path and stares intently forward. His fear compels his pupils forward and blurs his peripheral vision from gazing. However, for this reason the boy thinks he sees something. Peeking out of the forest, a tall slender entity. He can not make it out and closes his eyes to clear his vision but see nothing. The boy awakens in his room, drenched in a cold sweat with a putrid smell enveloping his nostrils.

Authors Note: I loosely, loosely based this story off of the prompt based on Ravana’s dreams during his slumber. The only thing that I retold from that story was that the main character is experiencing something while asleep. I just wanted to tell a story about a nightmare a boy was experiencing because some entity is haunting him and his dreams. I left the ending as a cliffhanger so I can see what people interpret happening and taking that feedback and extending the story for my portfolio. 

Painting of an entity that haunts children in their slumber

Week 6 - Reading Diary B

Overall, I really enjoyed this part of the story even though we did not get to witness the epic clash between Rama and Ravana. There were still a lot of cool fights. I never realized how truly powerful Indrajit was until this part of the story. Its funny how most of Ravana's cohorts even tell him that battling Rama is a bad idea but he simply ignores them. This is truly the reason for his undoing.

Week 6 - Reading Diary A

Just like I had stated earlier with the valiant effort of Jatayu, It really hits home when Sampati hears of his brother's death. I don't why, maybe because I have a brother as well, but for some reason I really like these two bird characters. Hanuman's travels are actually quite interesting, I find it cool that he turns into a cat, and when I have imagery for this in my head I think of my little kitten Onyx haha. I don't like that Hanuman decides to cause a chaos in Ravana's quarters. I feel like if he had not done any of this then he would never have been captured by Indrajit. I am really excited to read the next part of the story because I feel like Rama and Ravana's clash is drawing near.

Week 5 - Storybook Styles

Rate My Rishi — social media (Rate My Professor)
I was attracted to this storytelling style because I am familiar with the website "Rate my professor" and use it all the time. I like how they took a spin on it and made into a dating website. This reminds me of a bollywood movie I watched that centralizes around social media.The movie was called "Mujhse Fraansip Karoge?" or something similar to that. I have never used this style and would like to use it if i could think of something creative enough to use it for. 

The Trickster of OU — OU setting
I was attracted to this storytelling style because I also obviously go to OU and that makes it easy to relate the storytelling style. I was really interest in seeing how a fellow student sees the OU campus. Also it was cool to see an Indian Epic retold in a setting that I completely know and understand. Because I feel some epics we have read require an extensive amount of background information and one written in this style would personally not require any. 

HGTV: Homer and Garden Television — television show (HGTV)
I liked this storytelling style because personally I used to be an avid viewer of the television channel. Although I didn't like the particular television shows they picked within the website: "House Hunters" and "Next Top Model". Both of these shows were extremely annoying and repetitive to me but there were a lot of shows that I did like on HGTV. So maybe this could be a storytelling style for me in the future. 

Bedtime in Oz — bedtime story
I was attracted to this storytelling style because I had already researched it. I feel like it is easy to write in a bedtime story or children's book storytelling style because many of the details are made more simple  and the plot is made much more simple in order for children to understand easier. But I am not saying that being an author for children's books is easy. 

The Towers that Be — inanimate object as narrators
I was attracted to this storytelling style because it made me think of another style I have researched in the past: Having the story told from a different perspective. I feel that perspective is a very important thing and can change many details when told from the eyes of someone else, because the way they think and react to things is completely different. Two people could both describe something they witness completely different and still both be right because everyone has a different perspective  

Week 5 Storytelling - Intense Envy

There once was a woman who loved a man. Every day she would watch him leave his house and go to work. She would watch from inside of her bedroom at 7:00 am sharp. She would pick up her finely polished binoculars and zoom in to see every detail of the man. 
She loved his jet black hair. She loved his brown tanned skin. She loved his freshly pressed suits. She loved everything about him. She would toil for hours on end awaiting his arrival home just for that one minute to be able to gaze upon him. 
She had wanted to tell him for years on end how strong her feelings were for him. She remembers the first time ever gazing upon him. She had just moved into the neighborhood and witnessed him sitting in the front yard alongside another woman. This caused one problem. He was a married man. A married man that loved his wife so much that he never noticed the woman. He only had eyes for his incredibly beautiful wife and this made the woman feel a deep pit of sorrow inside of her. This sorrow was only comforted by the woman's short gazing sessions as the man came and went to work. Soon this sorrow was replaced by anger, and from this anger stemmed intense envy for the man's wife. 
One day, the woman plotted to kill the man's wife. As soon as he left for work, she quickly crept into the back of the house and upstairs to slay the sleeping wife. 
However, the wife was already awake inside of her bedroom gazing out the window through a pair of binoculars. 
As the woman slowly crept upon the wife, she caught a glimpse of the envious woman behind her in the lens of the binoculars and quickly swung around to engage her in a struggle. 
First, they fell to the ground and began pulling each other's hair. The jealous woman’s rage fueled her as she quickly got up and began dragging the wife by her hair. The wife looked for anything she could grab to fend off the woman from dragging her across the floor.  As she frantically looked around, her eyes landed upon a fireplace poker and she quickly grabbed it and stabbed the jealous woman in the side of the leg. The woman shrieked in pain and the wife quickly ran to the attic. The wife hid in the attic and hoped the jealous woman would not find her. But nonetheless she appeared. The jealous woman drew nearer and her eyes were fixed in a crazed look, conveying a readied look to strangle the wife. She stepped closer... and closer... until BANG! She fell through the floor of the attic and hit the ground below. Motionless. She had misstepped on a beam and fell straight through the living room ceiling to her death. The wife was safe.  

Author's Note: This story is based off of Shurpanakha's story of trying to court Rama. He is in love with the beautiful Sita just like the man is in love with his beautiful wife. I added a little twist at the end and depicted the beautiful wife as a crazy stalker as well. Even though she is married, she is also a stalker and doing the same thing as the jealous woman to another man. I got some inspiration from the storyline of a movie named  "Obsessed" and that’s where most of the fight scene and ending draw many similarities. I remember watching that movie when I was much younger and noticed that my original story had many similarities to the plotline of the movie “Obsessed” so I decided to make it even more similar to that movie. I did this by making the fight scene very similar and using a single woman trying to kill a man's wife because she is obsessed with the man. Although my characters are not nearly as developed and complex as the ones in the movie. I still feel like the stories are very similar. This shows the power of short stories! The story is similar to that of the Indian epic except that the wife is both Sita and Lakshmana, because she is the wife of the man (Rama) and also the one who hurts the woman.

Bibiliography:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsessed_(2009_film)

The jealous woman stalking the married man in urban suburbia

Week 5 - Reading Diary B

Overall this section of the story was not nearly as exciting as the part we read Monday. I don't really like Sugriva for some reason. And I also do not like the idea of Rama shooting Vali while hiding. This did not seem justified. In this version Rama's actions still don't seem justified. And there also is no explanation behind the way he decided to kill Vali. Overall, I feel like the search for Sita is a very boring part in both epic versions. My favorite part of this section was Jatayu's valiant effort to save Sita from Ravana. I felt bad when Jatayu died for some reason. Maybe because his efforts were so heroic.

Week 5 - Reading Diary A

Overall this was one of the more interesting reading sections we've had! Things are getting pretty intense and this section of the book really helps me reaffirm why i took this class. The stories are incredibly interesting and they're were a couple of things that really stuck out to me from this section. I really, really liked that Bharata took Rama's sandals and left them at the throne for him. For some reason I just thought that was an amazing gesture on Bharata's part for his brother. Its an amazing Hindu value to have and one that hits home with me and my brother as well. Also finally, some real intense action. All the battles were awesome from this section. Also, I still don't understand why Lakshmana mutilates Shurpanakha the way he did. I might have to do some more research about that.

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Week 4 Storytelling - A Hero's Guilt

There once was a young boy name Arthur. Arthur was born into middle class family during the medieval times and grew up within the city's walls all his life. Arthur's family owned a bakery shop near the central castle which was heavily guarded by ironclad knights. Arthur had always found knights to be extremely interesting and took to becoming a page and entered apprenticeship under a well respected knight of the city. As the years passed Arthur progressed into a fine knight and became well respected all across the land. He defeated many great monsters in his time and traveled the land far and wide to offer his services. One day, he received a letter from a king in a faraway land pleading for Arthur the Great to rid them of a foul demon wreaking havoc on his lands. Arthur accepted the request and sailed to the faraway land quickly. Upon arrival, Arthur was met with a young boy the king had sent to show him the lair of the demon. As Arthur approached the lair he began to hear a deep roar, a sound no human could make. He gripped his sword tight and braced for battle. Seconds turned to minutes, and minutes turned to hours. The two parties appeared to be in a standoff and Arthur grew restless. He poked his guide with his sword and ushered him towards the demon’s lair. As the guide was pushed further toward the darkness the demon launched out of its dark dwelling and attacked the boy, and fiercely devoured him. Arthur knew he would be next and began to run. He ran to the outer opening of the demon’s layer and sealed it shut with as many rocks as he could carry. He quickly collected his bounty from the king and left quickly. He tried very hard to forget that time. Arthur never picked up a sword again and into his old age he retold his great feats to his grandchildren. All, except one, that would go on to haunt him every night. The young boy’s life that he sacrificed so easily as mere bait would never cease to haunt him and in his grief made him take his own life.

Author's Note: This story is loosely based off the story of Dasaratha's grief over killing the young boy in the forest, and having it haunt him in his sleep. I wanted to take a medieval spin on the folklores we’ve been reading in class to change things up a little bit.

Arthur and the Demon