God I love the Brothers Grimm; Judge me all you want!

Ah, alas, we have finally found my one weakness: The Brothers Grimm FairyTales. these were the very first type of fairytales I ever read or was told about as a kid. oh, the nostalgia, it hurts. anyways, in case you don't notice, I love these stories. They are like disney but with more twists than an M. Night Shymalan film and more strangeness than a Steven King Thriller. They really drag you in with obscene gestures and out of right field ideas. I love it! and where was I going with this again? ohhhhh right. The main things that fascinate me most about these stories are how unpolished and crude they are, it really makes it work. 

For instance, in the story The Juniper tree, the main line thats echoed throughout the story (My mother she killed me, my father he ate me…Must I go farther?) is just plain gruesome. although, it does sort of end in the lighter side of things with the kid turning into a bird so I guess its not all bad. but still he does get killed and eaten by the very two people who birth him. Thats not even the strangest story. That whole business with the bird, the mouse, and the sausage is just plain looney toons if you ask me. I mean, if a talking sausage is a main character in your story, theres either something very wrong with you or theres probably some really strong substance you're on. 

In reading all of these stories, they all have something completely insane about them I seriously cannot believe parents actually read these stories to their children to teach them lessons. I mean I am sure as hell they would work 110% of the time in scarring children into learning to do and not to do some things. I do enjoy the seriousness mixed with eccentric twists with a passion. I kind of wish these were required to be read in elementary schools. they would have been so much more enjoyable to read then like shakespeare and grapes of wrath, plus you could have been able to laugh morbidly at these stories and not even be looked at funny. I mean the evil stepsisters in Cinderella getting their eyes pecked from their heads by the helpful birds is funny in a vengeful sort of way, nothing weird about laughing at their pain cause they deserved it, right? Kids would totally dig these more then any story that teachers told them in school and it would give them some solid morals to hold on to (in most cases), you sure as hell aint going to get morals from someplace like Romeo and Juliet. well, at least not ones kids have any actual need to retain. but these stories stay true for kids century after century and decade after decade for the most part. Okay thats enough of my spiel for the night, Thanks for listening!

My mother chopped my head off, my father swallowed me. My sister buried all my bones, under the Juniper Tree. Ka-twee! Ka-twee! You'll never find, a prettier bird than me!

(If you're wondering, yes I wrote that title entirely from memory.)
I know these are the Grimm's fairy tales, and violence is to be expected, but even so this set of readings seemed somewhat darker than the previous. Maybe it's because the new readings are stories I'm not familiar with and therefore I haven't become accustomed to their dark nature like I have been with any of the ones that Disney has gotten hold of. If you're wondering what I mean, I'm taking about the traditional ruination of your childhood via internet: "Hey, you used to like Cinderella, did you? Did you know in one of the older versions she doesn't wake up, and the prince rapes her comatose body?" Once you get enough of that from online randos you kinda become numb to it, but NOW I get an all new set of stories to make me say "wow okay that just happened." I do think happy endings where everybody gets along are overrated though, so needless to say I was pretty okay with when the stepmother in The Juniper Tree got her head smashed in with a millstone and when the shoemaker in The Two Traveling Companions got his eyes pecked out, went mad and died lost and alone in the forest. People  back then knew how to write a satisfying ending.

However, if there's one story from the readings that I think is Disneyfiable, it has to be Iron Hans. Kid's born into a rich family, does a noble deed by helping a strange man escape enslavement, henceforth befriending the man and getting taken out of his sheltered life. Then he's exposed to the wild man's magic that turns his hair gold, henceforth marking him as a "special snowflake." He is thrown out into the real world, where he takes on the roll of the mysterious-and-secretly-superior underdog, and he and the princess playfully charm each other and fall in love.Then he uses the very Genie-like powers of the super special friend he made to become a hero, get the girl, and get dem monies yo. Reunites with his family and releases Iron Hans from the spell that was put on him then I guess Hans like, becomes his godfather or something? And everybody lives happily ever after. The only thing it was missing was an identifiable villain, which would obviously have to be the king of the opposing army in the war, who plots to kill the good king, destroy his kingdom, and take his daughter for his bride in the Disney version. There's simply no other way to do it.

Along with the assigned readings, I also read The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs and The Girl with no Hands. I'll give you one guess as to which one has heavy religious connotations, and I'll tell you that it's not the one with "Devil" in the title. Seriously though, I thought I was reading something straight from the bible with all the devil trickery and the praying and the angels. It's a totally feel-good god-loving thing that's saying everything will be alright as long as you belieeeeve, and nobody got killed, maimed, or otherwise beaten down in that one, so it really was not up my ally. Well, except for the main character spoiler: she loses her hands, but her hands grow back, so everyone's happy and not at all maimed la-dee-da. I know it's not a show I payed for but I still want my money back.

This isn't the Shakespeare I know and don't really love

I'll say this first: I do not have a ton of experience with Shakespeare and his works. I've read Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet, but that's all. I was aware of The Tempest and some of its themes because of an anime I watched a few years ago called Zetsuen no Tempest, but that's another subject of discussion.

From my experience with Shakespeare, I thought he had a hard on for tragedy and senseless death. Well, The Tempest changed my mind on that, I guess. No one died? No one was cursed forever? Needless to say, I was quite shocked when I reached the end and everyone was smiling and going their merry ways. The most surprising part for me was Ferdinand and Miranda and their love lacking tragedy. I fully expected one of them to die in some contrived way. Guess I was wrong; good on you, Shakespeare.

I enjoyed The Tempest more than other Shakespeare works, because of those reasons. Maybe a happy ending was kind of convenient--characters went from plotting murder to exchanging pleasantries--but I still enjoyed seeing everyone survive and the couple being happy and all that fluffy stuff.

I found it kind of strange in Act 4 how Prospero completely forgot that his life was in danger and then suddenly went 'Oh shit I forgot about the whole thing where people want to kill me' I guess he was scheming so much that it slipped his mind. It's something I remember thinking when reading other Shakespeare works; people come to sudden realizations or change their minds about something out of the blue. I suppose that has to do with them being plays, where extended character developments aren't all that interesting to watch on stage.

I still don't really like Prospero as a character though. I've never been a fan of the scheming types. I can never trust them. Even until the end I expected him to pull something out and do evil stuff so good on him for being peaceful and giving up his magic and servants I guess. He used his magic for selfish reasons and that sucks but at least he didn't kill anybody. I'll take it.

The End!? (Tempest)

Well the last two acts were in interesting read. To me it kind of seemed to end on a simple happy note. The supposed bad guy turned a new leaf. All was forgiven. Love flourished. Everything tied in a nice little bow. It doesn't seem like a typical Shakespearean ending, with death and dramatic twists etc.
So you have Prospero win. He gathers everyone. All truth is revealed. He renounces his powers and gets his dukedom reestablished. You find that the Boatswains are all alright and the ship is ready to go (pg. 161). Prospero deems everything that occurred as "happened accidents." (pg. 163) I feel that he sugar coated that. I mean he caused a tempest that threw everyone on a island. I think it was more than a little incident/coincidence.
What I really want to talk about is the magic in the story, or should I say "art". If you notice no one really gets hurt from the magic happening in the pages. You have a storm. Everyone gets on the island. Clothes dry. Some are asleep. Nothing really dangerous happens. I was kind of waiting for the other shoe to drop. I was expecting a death or sacrifice. At least that is what I pair magic with now after reading Kors/Peters. But this magic was very indirect and sneaky. It was demonic magic or blood sacrifices. It was elemental. The water and air. It is curious to note that Prospero calls his art "rough magic." (pg. 149, line 59)

 His perception is that this was really powerful and scary stuff that he was doing. In reality, if you take what read in other readings, magic can get a whole lot darker and scarier. It is interesting to see his perception of his magic. I like how he coins it "art". If you think of art you think visuals, feelings, interpretation, eccentricities, colors etc. It kind of seems parallel to how is magic works. The entire time Prospero is guiding everyone in places or positions he needs them to be in. He uses the senses as a way to manipulate others. Such as seeing shapes. He also plays on emotions like love (or lust), anger, greed, fear, kind of how art plays with our emotions based on how we look and interpret them.


Overall, I thought this was a odd way to end a story like this. It seemed so simple and to neat. If someone threw me over a boat, had me seeing shapes, chased by dogs (spirits), etc, I wouldn't be so keen to just chalk it up to a sorry.

Insults of the past….. GENIUS!

Hey guys, sorry I’m doing this so late, I have been unusually busy. I am writing tonight to talk about the first chapter of “The Tempest”. Now you are probably expecting me to say something about magic and or mysticism. Normally you would be correct but something else caught my eye. Something crude yet satisfying. As I was reading through the first chapter, I marveled at all the wonderful expressions and jokes the characters were making. But, that is not all; I also kept a watchful eye out for colorful insults and the like. As I began to focus on that and the strange expressions, a whole new world opened up to me. Turns out, Shakespeare was quite the creative fellow when he put his mind to it. Plus when you really take the time to read through his stuff rather slow and calculating, you find sooooo many funny things.

In just the first act of the book, we hear the comic relief making good jokes and even greater one liners. Antonio and Sebastian as they are setting off to leave the ship have a little exchange where Antonio says we should die with the captain and Sebastian retorts that they should leave him. I thought that was really funny. Then we have Miranda in act 1, scene 2, listening to Prospero intently. Prospero asks her if she can hear him and she tells him “your tale, sir, would cure deafness”(Act 1, Scene 2, Line 127). That’s a great expression. I honestly don’t know how he comes up with this stuff. I am wondering if it’s just him or does everyone have a mind for clever retorts in his age. The insults are even better! In act 1, scene 2, Prospero is talking about the ship he traveled to the island on by saying it was “A rotten carcass of a butt…[that] the very rats instinctively quit it.” He is literally saying this boat is a piece of crap that not even the rats can deal with. That’s freaking genius if I ever heard it.

When I read through all these expressions, I got to imagining how it would be like if people actually thought of clever insults rather than just go the mainstream way and calling everyone an asshole or a butthead. What ever happened to creativity people?! I want to try and start a trend where people insult others through newer and more creative ways. For instance, instead of me calling someone a tool, I can say you useless sack of pig feces or you generic piece of giants toe jam. Like that’s actually genius (hey look, I’m modest too). So, if anyone calls you a name, think of something clever that not even they will be able to begin to comprehend. Sayonara, folks, and seeya next time.  

It's Very Shakespearean

So this reading assignment has shoved how terrible I am at reading old(er) English so far up in my face that light is no longer able to reach my eyes. The summaries at the beginning of each scene helped a lot with giving me the foundation I needed to work with, but then I had to use the bricks of detail given to me by Shakespeare to build a proper house of story understanding in the neighborhood that is my mind. Normally I'm a pretty good carpenter, but now instead of normal house-pieces it's like I'm working with some sort of weird stone blobs and odd shaped doors that are just really hard to figure out how to put together. Then if you can't figure out how to fit the plot-pieces together and you just start placing them wherever or leave some out because you don't think they're important for the structure, then they don't fit right you get some weird shape but you think "a little mistake is fine, nobody will notice when it's done" and then you keep building, but the mistakes keep piling up and then your house ends up looking really awkward and ugly and nobody wants to live in it.

 I turned Hamlet into an M.C. Escher painting.

Basically the task I set for myself while reading this was to figure out who the heck it is that I'm supposed to be rooting for (joke's on me and it's probably going to turn out that everyone's terrible and anyone who I actually like will die anyway, as per Shakespeare). My current consensus is thus: The king and duke are assholes, the slave kid started out pretty cool but then turned out to be a creepy rapey weirdo, the daughter and the prince are the arbitrary hormonal teenagers that decide they're in love because they are opposite gender and happened to make eye-contact, Ariel is just a perfect wonderful innocent little spirit who can do no wrong, and the wizard guy doesn't seem too bad, except I feel like his grudge about being out-duked is going to go bad places AND HE'D BETTER KEEP HIS PROMISE TO FREE ARIEL OR I SWEAR TO GOD. What I'm saying is, screw the mortals, Ariel is my protagonist.

There's no doubt a lot of details that I missed, since I don't understand half the things these people say and the stuff on the left pages IS NOT VERY HELPFUL. Seriously though, half the time there's a phrase I don't understand and the book refuses to help me, half the time it decides to help me with something that I'm honestly insulted it thought I couldn't figure out on my own ("incharitable: i.e. uncharitable" Really? REALLY!?), and some of the time it actually aids me in figuring out the story. (I may have rounded these values.) Basically all I picked up from the whole first scene was that the ship was sinking, and in retrospect I guess the prince guy was on it? So if anyone picked up on any details that would probably affect my character opinions, please tell me I feel so helpless.

Is Merlin Really Dead? Dun Dun DUNNNNNNNNN!!!

Hey guys, Peter here with another episode of "Your Crazy, But Keep Talking". Okay, so I was going from underline quote to underline quote and went from space to space in between. On the very last page of the "Prose Merlin", where he is entombed in a dark, dank, hole in the ground, the story mentioned how his cries could be heard throughout the land. No they never mention if or when they go silent. So (stick with me here), what if he dug a really deep hole out the bottom and into the air letting him out? I mean he is born of a woman AND a demon. I dont think even a very large boulder could stop him from getting out. He is magically and all powerful and, with those attributes in mind, he is most likely immortal too.


But, that is not why I am writing today. Some of you folks may not know this already, but I am a bit of a conspiracy theorist (yeah, shocking isnt it?). As I sat thinking further and further about Merlin and his so called "death", it hit me. I remembered that when Merlin was born, he was gifted with quite a bit of extra hair. Later on in his life I imagined he got rid of it at least for the sake of holding up appearances or hanging out with royalty. With that hair issue he had, there is a great way he could put it to use----- as a disguise for, say, hiding in plain sight or rather somewhat hidden site in the forests and swamps of the world. after all, in the "Vita Merlini" that we read for last week, he sounded like he enjoyed hanging out in the woods with the animals, at least until he had that McMansion built for him.

That whole idea of living in the woods brings me to my next theory: Merlin is the Sasquatch! *Cue Dramatic gasps from the audience(Lisa, Jennifer thats your cue)* I mean it would explain how there are so many sasquatch, skunk apes, boogey mman, and bigfoot sightings all around the world. He is again very powerful and magical which would make it possible for him to be in two places at once or more. Maybe, he willed the hair on his body to grow thick and matted and began to use fairies as stilts to make him look taller. Or maybe, he really was that tall and thats what made people see him as magical; which makes my sputterings just sound like the insane utterings of a man who should be residing in the looney bin with all the other crazies. But, then again it is possible! so therefore I am not insane I tell you, I swear it! Thanks for listening to my ramblings for the day and goodnight FREDERICK!!
(PS I know these are wookies but I simply could not resist)

Merlin the interesting life story.

Sorryfor the late post, didn't understand the switch. Now I am not to familiar wi the history of Merlin, but I did enjoy the readings. There is so much going on here I just want to touch on a few things.

First off, talking baby. I never pictured Merlin young. I just had this image of him as old and powerful. So when the story highlights his youth and his flaunting demeanor it struck me. Another element of Merlin's humanity is that he ages.

I found it also quite interesting that God gives Merlin these powers because as the it says in the text "he gave this ability to the child, whose need was greater." Merlin was influenced by demonic powers. So the best way to cancel that while still givin Merlin free will is giving him good powers and letting him choose. I want to highlight the part about Merlin's need is greater. He obviously needed to be blessed by God and given such holy powers or else we might have had an antichrist roaming around. The thing that I find so interesting, is all the Mystics we have read that received their visions; they were in great need too. And so God gave them visions. Maybe Merlin was one of the first Mystics in a way

Lastly, I want to talk about how religious or how much Merlin refers to God, Jesus and the last supper. I never thought of merlin this way. He is a magician, a sorcerer, a master of the magical arts. He poofed the stone heads to where they are now (just one of many origin stories about this lol). But a man of God. Never would have pictured that. Even from the beginning my thoughts don't jump to the conclusion that God gave Merlin these powers. I just thought he was magic, one of the first know beings of magic. This is what I think anyway.

Now there is his death which I won't get into since it frustrated me. But he died in a very human way which was sad, but he was powerful so as Merlin says man should not fear death and nothing does not come that does not end,

Merlin was a cool guy except for when he wasn't

My mental image of Merlin has always been mixed in with how I think of wizards like Gandalf and Dumbledore. I've never really internalized who or what Merlin was, so when I approached this reading I was interested to see what there was to learn. It was the Prose Merlin that I enjoyed more, so that's what I'll write about for this blog post.

First off, I was put off a bit by Merlin's conception. I had absolutely no idea of his origins; I always kind of assumed he was just a normal person who had discovered how to use magic and see the future and all that cool stuff. But here I was introduced to the Enemy, some devils conspiring amongst themselves, to use a woman to conceive a child with their powers. I found it interesting that the power to see the past was given by the Enemy while the power to see the future was given by the Lord. Why is that? Is it because trying to change the past is wrong while thinking about the future is right? I'm not sure of why these powers are given the connotations they are.

When Merlin spoke suddenly using full sentences, I got an almost horror movie kind of feeling from it. Like a haunted baby doll came to life and was suddenly threatening to kill people. He was born as some hairy creature that repulsed people from the start, and then he starts talking about knowing the past and the future. Pretty unsettling stuff, if you ask me. And then Merlin insults the mother of a judge who has a hand in deciding the fate of his own mother. He was one pushy child for sure.

Jumping forward to something that was a little bit more familiar for me, there is the king and the Round Table. The mental image of fifty men who had never met gathering and partying for a week before deciding that they're all brothers and want to stay forever made me happy. There's no devils or demons to talk about here, just good old friendship. These guys got together and had such a good time that they said they wanted to move their families there so that they would never have to leave. And then, after creating this environment, Merlin says he doesn't want to take the credit for himself, so he leaves. All that work and he's pleased to just leave and pursue something else? What a guy.

And then as I'm continuing on thinking, "Yeah good stuff this is great I like these things" I get hit in the face with some grimy love story featuring the king and a married woman. At first it seemed rather innocent, with the king falling head over heels for this beautiful woman (ignoring the fact she was already married I guess). He even realized that he couldn't openly pursue her because she was indeed married, so he tried to woo her on the low. In typical fashion, he responded to rejection by throwing more parties and trying to ignore the pain instead of trying to move on with his life. Now, I'm not popular with the ladies by any stretch, but even I know that harassing them with gifts in an attempt to get with them isn't going to work.

So Ygerne and her husband flee from the king's creepy advances and so on and so forth and I felt like I was reading some kind of wacky romcom or something. As such I wasn't at all surprised when Merlin was brought back and disguised the king as the woman's husband so that he could do husband and wife things with her. I guess Merlin is still kind of a bro in that way because he DID help the king out but the whole situation was dripping with scumminess. Not cool Merlin. Not cool Uther.

(I'm sorry that this post was late, it honestly slipped my mind that I was supposed to post because I skimmed the schedule and didn't see "Water" for today. It didn't register that I was supposed to post. My bad)