The Once and Future Blog

Prelude: I highly recommend listening to this song,  La Libellule et le Baobab , whose name and sound gave me the inspiration for this story. No really, I promise it improves the story.  A Great Baobab Tree At the center of a great, seemingly unending plain, there was a large lake at which many different animals came together to drink. Against the strain of the food chain, the animals here did not fight - the watering hole was not just an oasis against the elements, but against violence as well. No matter the day, no matter the rain, no matter the famine, no one dared to break the peace of the watering hole, lest they become the victim of its inhabitants in retaliation. Just a hair north of the lake was a great baobab tree, thousands of years older than any of the animals there. This baobab was no ordinary tree, but a spirit of unknowable wisdom and age. It was the symbol of peace at the lake, and told tales from eons before any of the lake's inhabitants were born. All ...

For the conclusion of the Japanese mythology, one particular story that better fits the themes I discussed in the Part A readings is the story of Urashima (I read the prose version, since I find verse particularly hard to digest), that is, Uraschimataro and the Turtle. This story more closely hits my "fairy tale or fable" theme I was hunting for in the first half, since my Thursday writing will likely be in the same direction. The story of Uraschimataro is a tale of a how a diligent man's mercy of a small creature, the turtle, leads him to utmost luxury and love, while his desire to return home and see his loving parents leads to his downfall. The tale's moral isn't obvious, or concrete, at least how I read it. At first, it stresses the importance of benevolence and mercy, showing how anyone can become a prince through good deeds, while it later shows how not fully believing in your place leads to your downfall. It seems to be a rewarding tale for those show merc...

Today's bits of stories do not necessarily help toward my project particularly, but they do offer a not only interesting but unique set of qualities to them that are intriguing as a reader and a writer. I've had my mind on a short fable-like story, so many of the more folklore-y stories lately have been helping to develop it for a finally original story. Susanoo and the Serpent The one story that checked many of my favorite boxes this time around was the story of The Eight-Forked Serpent of Koshi. I'm always a sucker for monster-slaying, and especially for the use of trickery therein. When dealing with gods in stories, it can be difficult to split the whole "omnipotent god" idea away from the reading - after all, if they were omnipotent, we wouldn't have any sort of interesting story! This particular story offers no shortage of gods - the gods are the characters needing help, providing it, and the one causing the destruction. It's no sort of divine ...