Caitlyn's Blog for Myth-Folklore Fall 2018

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...

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 Nat...

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...

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course Myth - Epics and Heroes (One of the versions of Gilgamesh from game series, Final Fantasy: Image by PlayStation Europe ) I was quite excited to see that Gilgamesh was talked about in this batch of videos, specifically in The Epic of Gilgamesh . I did not know much about the actual story of Gilgamesh before seeing this video, but I was excited to learn more about him because he is featured in one of my favorite video game series and is quite notorious in them. Enkidu is also involved in some of the iterations of Gilgamesh in the game series I mentioned, but my favorite version of him is one where he is just a little green chicken that helps Gilgamesh. It was also interesting to learn about Rama and the Ramayana, as I believe I was the least familiar with the information from that video. I have heard about the holy grail several times before, but not in the detail that was presented in the Galahad, Perceval, and the Holy Grail video. I did rec...

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course Myth Gods and Goddesses (Baldur, from the Crash Course video The Dying God ) The first video, Great Goddesses , was quite interesting. Like in some past videos, famous psychologist Carl Jung was mentioned again. As a psychology student, I have mixed feelings about Jung, but at least Freud was not mentioned again. I thought it was interesting that primitive societies were more matriarchy focused than patriarchy.  The video about the Fire and Buffalo Goddesses immediately made me think about the movie Moana since it started by talking about the goddesses that controlled lava and other things. I had also not previously heard about the white buffalo calf woman before this video, so I found that to be interesting. The Archetypes and Male Divinities video was probably the one that presented the least new ideas to me, since the archetypes associated with male gods are quite common and obvious in my opinion. I thought The Dying God video was c...

Extra Credit Reading: Crash Course Myth- More Pantheons (Part of the Indian Pantheon from the Crash Course Video ) From the start, these videos were interesting to me since I have never known much about the Indian, Norse, or African pantheons. My limited knowledge of many of the deities included in these pantheons comes from their names or likeness being included in video games that I have played. It is interesting for me to see that many of the details I have seen about these deities in video games are actually quite accurate. I had always wondered how accurately they were being portrayed. The Indian Pantheon video taught me a lot. I did not know what Sanskrit was before watching it. The idea of avatars was also quite interesting. It was also cool to see the explanation of Norse mythology and its Germanic roots which was presented in the Norse Pantheon video. It was interesting to see all of the parallels between the African Pantheons/Orishas and the mytholoy of Native Ame...

Extra Credit Reading Notes: Crash Course Ancient Mediterranean (Herakles and the King from Crash Course videos) It's always fun to come back to Crash Course videos. The explanation of pantheons was very interesting to me since I have not ever heard this much detail about them. It was cool to learn about the Egyptian gods since I think those are some of the gods I am less familiar with. A large amount of details from the other videos related to Greece was very interesting to me as well since I have actually been playing a game that has many prominent characters from those times in them and includes historical events and icons. Though I was more familiar with some of the information about the Greek and Roman pantheons, I still learned quite a bit from the video that focused on that. The video that focused on Herakles was probably my favorite. I always loved the movies based on Hercules, so it made it all the more interesting for me to hear the original story about Herakles....

Extra Credit Reading Notes: Mythology Overview Videos (Significance and Stay Power of Myths: screenshot from What is Myth? ) For extra credit readings this week, I watched the Mythology Overview videos which included the Crash Course videos What is Myth? , Theories of Myth , and The Hero's Journey and the Monomyth . I have watched other Crash Course series and enjoyed them very much so I was happy to see them as options for this assignment. I liked that the first video explained myths and tried to nail down a definition that would make sense to most people. I knew of some of the functions of myths, but I had not heard the word "euhemerism" before and found that to be interesting. I also did not know that the idea of Aryans that influenced Germany had roots in myths. The theories surrounding myths were also interesting, though since I am a psychology major, I cringed somewhat when certain theories and ideas from Freud and Jung were brought up. However, I understan...