You Might Be Mythtaken

Cupid and Psyche in the Louvre. Photo by Lienyuan Lee. Found on wikimedia . Venus and the Goddesses  So, while it is just a small section of this story, there is an interesting premise. What happened in the world while Cupid was off with Psyche and Venus was taking a mental health break? It gets described as "that all was boorish, rough, unkempt; no nuptial rites, no friendly gatherings, no love of children; only a vast confusion, and a squalid disregard for the chafing bonds of marriage." What would it have been to be in this world? How would children react to no longer being loved by their parents? Was obligation enough to hold people together or did society fall apart in that time? Babies dying from not being loved and fed, murders from people who used to love each other turning. Family feud boiling over without that love to hold it off. What would that carnage look like? And how would Venus coming back change that? How would all these people deal with the wreckage

Psyche Served by Invisible Spirits by Luca Giordano. Found on wikimedia . Psyche's Beauty and the Anger of Venus  This story is being told within a separate narrative, bookended with the tale of a kidnapped young girl being comforted during her ordeal with this story. I'm focusing in on the beginning of the story, because I think something really different and fun could be done here. Psyche is the youngest of three sisters and the most beautiful. People are speechless in her presence. People begin worshipping her instead of Venus, leading Venus to despise her. Venus asks her no good, trouble making son Cupid to do something about it, avenge her. According to her plan and wishes, Psyche would fall in love with the worst guy possible- ugly, not money, no social standing, pretty much useless.  What if this was told through duel perspectives? Venus furious about this young upstart taking her place, people going to see her rather than worshiping in the temples of Venus. Her

When I started looking at the articles about feedback, specifically perfectionism, I was a little... well, not shocked, to see a lot of my personal traits listed.  Meme I made on memegenerator.net  The article 14 Signs Your Perfectionism Has Gotten Out of Control rattled off a list that was unnervingly close to my own personal traits. I tend to procrastinate. I am critical of myself and others. I do have a typically not do things that I think I could fail at. I always think that whatever I have accomplished is only a step towards a greater goal, something more, because it is never enough. I want to be excellent at everything, and average just doesn't cut it. I like grades because they are a measure of success that doesn't change. And I do have my fair share of good old fashioned Catholic guilt. The article claims that I should open up and be more vulnerable.  But I looked at the article Recalibrating the Perfectionist Mind for more information. They speak of performanc

So any way you shake it, I want to place my story within a museum. Shocking, I know. But the how and the content would change based on the topic chosen for the project.  Urban Legends  I think urban legends could be particularly interesting. There could be artifacts from hauntings or sightings. And as you pass each item, the object tells it's tale. A video interface could play and the story be written like a closed caption of a documentary about the item. A mirror used to summon Bloody Mary . A car scraped by The Hook. A haunted doll. I think dolls are one of the creepiest things imaginable. It would kind of be like the Black Museum for Black Mirror (if you haven't seen that show, you really should).  The Brother Grimm  Items and artifacts from the stories on display for everyone to see. The focus would be on princesses and their dark and twisted tails, focusing in on aspects of stories that are not known or publicized (in favor of Disney mythos). It could be told th

Gloomy view of a forest clearing in Alsace, Eastern France. Photo by JovanCormac. Found on Wikimedia . The ghosts watched on as a warrior entered their forest, intent on gaining honor on his warpath. His footing was sure and his face determined as he reached his stopping point for the night. As he set up his camp, the ghost gathered to discuss the new arrival. "Who will go first? What test should this warrior meet?" said the gnarled woman as she gazed at the young warrior.  "Me," said the singer, "his strength and perseverance needs to be tested."  "His intelligence and courage surely need to be tested first. He is near my grave," said the woman, "So that gives me first claim."  "Fair enough, but I get to test him as he travels deeper into the woods.”  And so it was. The woman approached the sleeping warrior, moaning "My son! My son!" She inched closer and the man still feigned sleep. She grabbed his foot,

Camp fire by Eric Dufresne. Found on wikimedia . This week, my favorite story was  The Indian Who Wrestles with a Ghost by Katharine Berry Judson. This Teton Lakota ghost story features a warrior moving through the woods at night. He is on a quest, presumable to win honor and favor through the defeat of his enemies. The ghosts that confront him when he is camping take on different roles, testing him in different ways. Their trials tell him that he will defeat his enemies and steal many horses. The first night a woman comes from the wood crying for her son. When she came on his campsite, he pretended to be asleep in order to gain the element of surprise and to evaluate the situation further. She finally shows her intentions of stealing his foot off of his apparent dead body. He then springs up to confront her and scare her away. The first trial is of intelligence and cunning. The second night, a ghost comes and demands food. When given it, he offers the warrior a chance to wr

I found three units or stories that drew me in. The concepts are interesting, and to be quite honest, that is what makes a good story, a compelling narrative to me. Turkish: Fear So, I was originally drawn to this story because, hey, it's a story about fear so that must be creepy. And we have already established I like creepy. But this story took me in another direction. The main character is trying to find fear; he can't experience it. He goes around trying to find fear, with different people trying to lead him to fear. Not to mention the supernatural elements trying to frighten him. I wonder what it would be like from their point of view. "Well, I appeared as a floating hand in a graveyard. And what did I get? A literal slap on the wrist! Not even a jump scare! It's your turn Bob." (why did I just name this character who was a woman in the story Bob? I don't know, it was the first thing that popped into my mind). I might want to explore this more later.

I'm somewhat familiar with the tools included for our use of blogging. I worked with the Creative Commons during high school when I was on newspaper. I learned how to do a CC search and look at the copyrights held by the owners and what I could use in publication. During this time, I also learned how to use PhotoShop and InDesign. I bought PhotoShop Elements a few years back, so I will be able to use it during my final project to manipulate images to create a cohesive design and theme for my storybook.  The meme I am most proud of. LifeAlert couldn't help General Wolfe. I also have used WordPress and blogger before. I helped my mom set up a blog way back in the day (like 2012) and have experimented with WordPress more recently, but I thought using the same platform as the rest of the class would be easier and more beneficial. I have had a tumblr since, well, since I think it became well known. Before that I had a site on the now defunct Buddy4U, which was like a tumblr pr

Regarding the assignments for this class, I am excited that there will be so much reading and exploring different myths and narratives from around the globe. I like the format of the class and how much control we have over assignments and content types during the semester. Every person will be writing with a different style, a different focus, a different point of view. And that's what will make this interesting. The opportunity to work ahead, and finish early, is fantastic. I can try to get this class done and then focus on my capstone paper.  In addition, I really appreciate the abundant amount of extra credit is something that I have yet to see of a professor during my four years here. I also hope to learn some more tech skills this semester and the extra credit opportunity to do so intrigues me. I have wanted to learn HTML and how to do basic coding for year- I actually knew once, but it's been years since I used it. Anybody know what Buddy4u was? Basically, I was on Tum

TIME FOR SOME UNDESERVED BUT NECESSARY FREE-FORM CREATIVE PROCRASTINATION by Topher McCulloch. Found on Flickr . In the immortal words of Buffy Summers, this semester "I'm a busy beaver" (Season 4 Episode 16). And to help mitigate and further my work output and prepare for the dreaded LIFE AFTER COLLEGE, I'm going to need to work on and confront my time management. During my college career, the hardest thing for me to do was just start something. A paper, or a report. Really anything that inclosed writing. Don't get me wrong, I would have all the research done and the paper outlined weeks before. But that step of actually writing someone in a word document, That's what I just couldn't bring myself to do. To be honest, I still have that.  Take this blog post for example. I read the article and outlined what I wanted to say days ago, but what did I do. Not write it, that's for sure. Instead, I did laundry, cleaned my apartment, made dinner, ch

( cheezburger ) I've never heard of Growth Mindset, per say, but I have heard of the ideas and strategies it features. The actual words were new but the concept is not. The fact that we can live and grow, that adversity and facing challenges improves us- well, none of that was groundbreaking. The way that Carol Dweck outlined strategies for creating process based ways to look at problems will certainly be helpful in the future for teachers, parents and other figures guiding kids to their best. I pretty much always followed the idea that adversity is something to overcome, fight against, become better than. That or I'm just stubborn. In elementary school, I played softball- one of my seasons ended with me getting hit tin the face three time in one week with a ball. For the record none of them were my fault. My sister threw a ball at me while I was reading, a pitch went wild and hit me in the face, and a ball jumped while fielding grounders. See, totally not my fault. I w

My top three storybooks from previous semesters all have something in common- other than the fact that they relate to this class. That is, they all seem like something that would be featured on The "History" Channel (not that they feature that content regularly) or the Travel Channel. Yes, these are the my most watched tv channels, excluding Food Network. I told you I was actually a grandma. PinkFloyd The Wall Image Source: Greta Christin a Bab's Urban Myths   This concept really drew me in. I really like that they rewrote urban legends and updated them in the context of one central character, who has really bad luck. And who didn't summon Bloody Mary in the bathroom of the Catholic elementary school, am I right? No? Just me? Okay. This content drew me into my strange obsessions as a child. You know the ones that made you read Goosebumps and watch Ghosthunters? The content seems like something I would like to explore- the urban legends and myths that surround

When asked to name my favorite places, I came up blank. How do you evaluate a location without a specific set of guidelines? What does it mean to be a favorite? A favorite memory? Or a place that you would love to go back to again and again? Or the experience that taught you the most? So, instead of choosing, I decided to name a place or each category. Musee D'Orsay- Nan Palmero (2017). Source: Wikimedia Commons . PLACE I WOULD LOVE TO GO BACK TO  Paris- well, more specifically, the Musee D'Orsay. I had the opportunity to study abroad in 2016 and was able to visit a grand total of 11 countries in those 4 months. My favorite museum to visit was the D'Orsay out of, quite frankly, an absurd number of museums that I went to. It's what I do when I travel. I go see museums and art. You can tell a lot about a culture based on what it finds worthy of display, of saving. Whether the D'Orsay was just one of the first museums I saw or it really was exceptional, I d

(photo information: personal photo of me in Prague; December 2016) Hi, See that photo? That's me. I'll be the one posting and updating you on this blog. Now, you should probably know a little bit about me before jumping right in, right? Let's start with the stock college intro. Hi, my name is Elizabeth. I'm a senior from Tulsa, OK. I'm an art history major. Yes, we really do exist. Although there is only about 8 of us at OU and 5 are graduation this semester. So you know one! Congratulations. I’ll be graduating this spring and by the end of this semester I’ll know what the future holds. Unfortunately, I have to wait until March/April to hear back from the graduate programs I applied to. Here is the obligatory list of places I applied: University of Houston, Texas Christian University, University of Texas (I know, sacrilege), University of Delaware, Case Western Reserve University, and Georgetown University. I guess I’ll tell you a little about what I’ll b