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Extra Credit Reading Notes: Crash Course - Mythical Places

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Extra Credit Reading Notes: Crash Course - Mythical Places (Flying Spaghetti Monster: Image by dopplerduck ) I really enjoyed these videos. One of my favorites parts of them was in the Mythical Caves and Gardens video. I thought the story about people originally living underground but having different features and such was really cool. I also liked the cameo of the Flying Spaghetti Monster that was made during that part. I also liked seeing the story involving the greedy king and the mountain that held valuable things in the Mythical Mountains video. I can definitely recognize the tropes usually related to mountains that were discussed in the video, as I have witnessed them in other stories as well. I really enjoyed the Tree Myths video as well, since many of the trees it mentioned are trees I recognize from other stories or video games, especially Norse trees like Yggdrasil. Norse mythology in general is pretty common in video games. It was also interesting to see the imp
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Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Crane) Part B

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Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Crane) Part B (Swan: Image by pixel2013/2133 images ) This section of the Brothers Grimm (Crane) unit was interesting and fun to read, just as the first was. The Six Swans was different than I was expecting, but I still enjoyed it. I liked that the king's daughter was brave enough to go and look for her brothers after they were turned into swans. Not only that, she went through hardships staying quiet for such a long time trying to break the spell that had been put upon her brothers. The Three Spinsters was also a refreshing story in a way. Normally when people making promises to other characters such as the spinsters in this story, they end up breaking those promises and suffering consequences for it. That was not so in this story, as the main character kept her promise to the spinsters and had a happy ending because of that. It was wonderful to see the the story of Snow-White here as well. As a big fan of the other iterations of this s
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Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Crane) Part A

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Reading Notes: Brothers Grimm (Crane) Part A (The Robber Bridegroom: Illustration by Walter Crane ) The first part of this unit was an interesting read. I was only familiar with the Cinderella story that was included, but I still enjoyed the others as well. It was a little upsetting that the fisherman in The Fisherman and His Wife never stood up to his wife bossing him around and requesting outlandish things. I wish we had been given more information about the fish, as he was an interesting character. As for the story of Cinderella, or Ashenputtel , I have heard this story before in several other forms. My favorite version of this story is probably the movie Ella Enchanted. The story in that film is not as close to the original as many others are, but it includes several of the same setting elements such as Ella having wicked step-sisters and a step-mother. The Robber Bridegroom was also quite an interesting story. It definitely surprised me that cannibalism was involved. I
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Extra Credit Reading Notes: Crash Course - Tricksters

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Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course - Tricksters (Coyote: Image by U.S. Department of Agriculture )  I have always liked trickster characters, so it was fun to watch these crash course videos that focused on them. I was saddened when it was mentioned in the first video, Tricksters: An Introduction , that trickster characters are always male, since I generally prefer female characters. I think making a trickster character female would be great. I was not familiar with the Anansi character before watching this video, but it was interesting to see how the story about that trickster is used to explain why ants are often carrying very heavy things. I liked the video about Hermes and Loki for the information it provided on the invention of the lyre and its importance in telling stories. Also simply because it involved Loki, as it is always fun to hear about him. I thought the Coyote and Raven, American Tricksters video was interesting as it highlight the differences between Native
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Reading Notes: Grimm (Librivox) Part B

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Reading Notes: Grimm (Librivox) Part B Fairy Tails by the Brothers Grimm (Fox: Image by 12019/10266 images )  I enjoyed the rest of this unit very much. I liked The Queen Bee , as the other brothers greatly underestimated their dwarf brother and in fact, made fools of themselves compared to him for most of the story. The story really showed how bad arrogance is, as it clearly affected the brothers who thought so little of their dwarf brother. I also enjoyed The Fox and the Horse . It is nice to see a story where a fox is not just mischievous or evil, as this fox helped out the horse. I felt bad for the lion, however, as he was deceived by the fox. I thought that the farmer did not deserve to have the help of the horse again, since he treated him so poorly. The story The Willow-Wren and the Bear was also quite interesting. At first, I thought the idea of the King and Queen birds going to war against the bear was silly. However, the next few lines of the story made me realize t
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Reading Notes: Grimm (LibriVox) Part A

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Reading Notes: Grimm (LibriVox) Part A, Fairy Tales by the Brothers Grimm   (Rapunzel letting down her hair: Image by Anne Anderson )  My favorite story to read from this section of the unit was Rapunzel , as I had previously heard or seen other versions of this story. My favorite version of the story happens to be the movie Tangled, but I found the version in the movie/musical Into the Woods has the most accuracy when relating back to this version. I still enjoyed this version very much. I also liked the theme in The Mouse, The Bird, and The Sausage . Though I think all of the characters dying at the end was too much, the story showed that people do not realize how things are for others and what kind of effort they put in. It also showed that sometimes it is best for everyone to specialize in something they are good at. I was also pleasantly surprised by the story The Travelling Musicians , as it seems that some of the movie Rock-A-doodle may be based on this story, and I lov
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Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course - Monsters, Horses, Dragons

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Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course - Monsters, Horses, Dragons (Sigurd and Fafnir: Image by Hermann Hendrich ) It was fun to watch Crash Course videos again, as I recognized many of the things that were mentioned in them. From the Monsters video, I have seen several of these monsters in video games that I have played or movies that I have watched. A very accurate depiction of the Greek Sphinx that I witnessed recently came from a video game where the Sphinx guarded a ruin my character needed to access, and in order to be allowed in I had to solve a riddle presented by the Sphinx. I have also played a game that had a good depiction of a Wendigo in terms of how it came to be and what kind of mannerisms it had, though its appearance differed from what was presented in the video. I found it interesting that centaurs are considered more like horses, in the Horses video. The Dragons video also presented dragons that I am mostly familiar with from video games. Fafnir has been depi
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