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.