Christian's Epic Blog

Abdoe looked around, wondering how his life had come to this. It seemed like only yesterday he had been a child. Now, at only 15 years of age, he had been dragged into the war of his father and uncles. Abdoe’s father, Jaruna, was one of the most powerful warriors in the world. Abdoe had always wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and be a mighty warrior. Though he wasn’t as capable with a bow as his father, Abdoe had considerable skill in battle of his own. It helped that he had been born with magical abilities. Abdoe had mostly spectated the war from the outskirts of battles, jumping in here and there where he could. It wasn’t until recently that his family had been confident enough in his abilities to allow him to take a more central role. Abdoe snapped back to reality. He gazed at the fifty plus enemy warriors that had surrounded him. They had isolated him from his comrades, cornering him into a obscure clearing of the forest in which the battle had been taking place.

     This sections has been the most exciting as I continue to read through it.  The battle continues from the previous section, and it's only getting more intense.  One of my favorite stories was where Abhimanyu fights seven warriors by himself.  Though he put up a great fight, he eventually perished.  Upon hearing that his son has died, Arjuna becomes passionate in a way that we haven't seen up until this point.  He was determined to avenge the death of his son.  I think writing a story about Abhimanyu's last moments would be cool.  I could maybe even change up the story so that he survives, or give it some other twist.  The battle scenes from this section have been incredible.  I would love to write a different version of Arjuna on his way through an army to avenge the death of his son.  You know that nothing was going to stop Arjuna from accomplishing this act of vengeance.  As the battle rages on, more and more main characters are slain.  This really is like game of th

     Some of my favorite scenes from this week's reading come from Arjuna's solo adventures, specifically the story Arjuna and Indra.  In this story, Arjuna collects celestial weapons from the gods, though also is cursed.  He spends years perfecting the arts of singing and dancing because of this curse.  At this time he also becomes proficient at yielding the celestial weapons bestowed upon him.  My favorite part of this story, which I am thinking about writing a story based off of these events, is where Arjuna travels to fight giants and demons which are the ancient enemy of his father Indra.  He takes his father's chariot to the underworld beneath the sea, in the region where these enemies reside called Patala.  Arjuna proceeds to wage war with demons who attempted to thwart him in an epic battle. After taking down the defenses, Arjuna ravages the demon city called Hiranyapura.  I think it would be a lot of fun to write about these battles in more detail.  The PDE of the

     Bruce was watching over his four brothers and mother as they rested in the forest, when a beautiful woman appeared.  As she finished telling Bruce that they needed to get out of this part of forest as soon as possible, for there was a powerful demon with a thirst for human flesh residing nearby Bruce let out an echoing laugh. "Any demon in this forest can come get a piece, if they dare!" Bruce boomed through the forest.  His voice was nearly as large as his physique.  Bruce stood over 7 feet tall--he was a freak of nature.  His muscles had muscles and his strength was unparalleled among humans.  Demons, on the other hand, were a different beast entirely.  They would eat humans for breakfast, even powerful ones.  Bruce was no ordinary warrior though. Helga, a hideous she-demon who ran this part of the forest became enraged after hearing Bruce's challenge.  She flew to where the scent of humans was the strongest, and then charged the clearing where Bruce was stand

     One of my favorite scenes from this section of the Mahabharata was the fight between Bhima and Hidimba.  I think this would be a fun scene to recreate in a story.  I liked how Hidimba was powerful enough to put up a good fight with Bhima for awhile.  If I remember correctly they were thundering through the forest as they wrestled each other.  It seemed like Bhima wasn't completely trying however, that is until he remembered that Hidimba would become more powerful at day-break.  At that point in the fight, Bhima decided he was done messing around and straight up broke Hidimba's back over his knee! That was a disgusting move to pull out--it reminded me of the Batman versus Bane fight from the Dark Knight Rises.  It seems like that knee to the back-break move would become Bhima's trademark move.  We see him use that on a couple of other powerful villains as the story progresses, including Baka the evil chieftain.  I noticed throughout this section of the story that there

After reading through the Ramayana, I realized my favorite kinds of stories were ones that included epic heroes and epic battles.  So I as I began reading the Mahabharata, I looked out for characters and stories that I could rewrite with awesome battles.  One of the first characters that stood out to me was Bhishma.  I liked the comparison given about this being more Game of Thrones while the Ramayana was The Lord of the Rings; Bhishma stood out to me as a character like Varys or Little Finger--never really on the throne but pulling strings behind the scenes for his own agenda.  It was really cool to see him win over the three princesses with his archery ability, though.  After that, I don't recall any fighting scenes with him, at least in part A.  Obviously the Pandavas stood out as cool warriors to write about.  I think it's Duryodhana's bitterness, but the Pandavas seem much more likable to me compared to the Kauravas.  They just kind of come off more as the protagonists

The current version of this story can be found on my portfolio !     At last, Hanuman and his party had discovered where Sita was taken.  Well, they at least knew what the vulture had told them--Lanka.  Though they had no proof themselves, this was their only lead and it was at least worth a shot.  The only problem?  Lanka was many, many miles across the vast ocean.  That is, this would be a problem if not for Hanuman.  While the rest of his monkey brethren were good warriors, they were limited by the laws of physics.  Hanuman, on the other hand, had been blessed with magical powers from a very young age.  The distance across the ocean to Lanka would be trivial for Hanuman; he had once jumped across all of Asia in a single leap.  Without even taking a running start, Hanuman launched himself over the waters.  As he soared through the air going thousands of miles an hour, he noticed the water beneath him starting to get rougher.  Hanuman smiled to himself--he was going to have a littl

     In this version of version of the Ramayana, Hanuman again stuck out as one of the most interesting characters and also my favorite!  I noticed some subtle differences in this version of the story, but I noticed some bigger differences when reading about Hanuman.  For instance, in this version it never mentioned the source of Hanuman's powers.  In the last one it mentioned that Hanuman was the son of wind god.  In this one it basically straight up said that Hanuman had magical powers, and thus could jump the 30 miles across the ocean to Lanka.  Besides from his jumping abilities, we see different magic that Hanuman is capable of.  For instance he's able to shrink himself to a minuscule size, and does this when interacting with the sea serpent.   I think he is a really awesome character, and vital in Rama's success in his siege on Lanka.  Another character which stuck out to me more in this version was Jatayu's brother the vulture.  It made me think about the mass am

Here is my portfolio website . The Aspen-Snowmass mountain range, capped with snow. Source: Commons

     My grandpa, brother and I flew to the Denver airport before renting a car and driving a couple hours through the mountains towards Aspen, Colorado.  We were traveling there to visit my sister and her fiance, who worked lived around the Aspen area.  The road to Aspen was winding, with many ups and downs and curls around the gorgeous, snow-capped mountains.  I remember eating a little too much beef jerky; by the time we were getting close to my sister's house I was feeling quite car sick.  Right as we pulled up, I hurled all over the rental car...oops.  Little did I know that this would not be the defining moment of this trip--this would only be the beginning of a rough 4th grade spring break.  I was super excited to snowboard with my siblings--my sister and her fiance were excellent snowboarders, though this trip would only be my second time on the slopes.  The day after we arrived and I tainted the rental car, we set out to go snowboarding on Snowmass mountain.  I remember we

     Indrajit looked around him, his eyes widening from the sheer brutality of what he was looking at.  His army of demons was being defeated, and on their home turf no less.  For the first time since his demon brethren began battling Rama and his army of monkeys, an unfamiliar feeling started to creep up deep from within Indrajit...fear.  Not only fear, but doubt as well.  How is this possible? My father was so sure of a one-sided victory...  the demon prince thought to himself.  An accomplished fighter in his own right, Indrajit had never lost a battle.  The confidence that Ravana had going into this epic fight was contagious to Indrajit; it would be impossible for them to lose.  But watching his demons get slaughtered mercilessly from a seemingly endless onslaught of monkeys is not what Indrajit expected in this war.  And Rama...he was as fearsome and powerful as the stories told.  He truly was a warrior of legend.  Perhaps Vibhishana was right...maybe Ravana is in over his head.  M

     This section of the Ramayana was probably the most surprising to me in terms of its plot.  I also found a couple of really neat characters that I enjoyed reading about.  One of the most important characters from this section of the Ramayana was Indrajit--Ravana's son.  For not hearing about him very much in the first several sections, he really drives the plot in Part D and turns out to be a worthy adversary to Rama and Lakshmana.  I was shocked to see Rama and Lakshmana essentially perish at the hands of Indrajit.  It seemed that many characters saw Indrajit turning invisible and attacking Rama's army as cowardly and deceitful, but I don't really know what they expected from Ravana's demon son.  And as the saying goes, all is fair in love and war.  Indrajit turned out to be very powerful, taking out Rama's forces to the point that they needed magic to recover.  The first time this happened, a really awesome new character named Garuda appeared and heals Rama an

     For Part C of the reading, my favorite characters overall were Sampati and Hanuman.  I really enjoyed the character of Jatayu, so I especially enjoyed meeting his brother Sampati.  You can really see the character of Sampati from the manner in which he protected his brother and ultimately severely hurt his wings. I noticed another repetition from the Ramayana that also occurred in Sampati's story.  He was told that he would be able to fly again if he would be patient with his grounded condition, and would serve someone as noble as him.  Upon  helping Hanuman's team in their quest to locate Sita, Sampati states that he hopes Rama was the noble he was meant to help.  There have been several other characters throughout the Ramayana who were waiting upon Rama to help them in some way.  By every way of the phrase, he is a king of prophecy.  As it turns out, Sampati does in fact begin to heal after he aids in the quest.  My overall favorite character from this part of the story

     This week I picked out a couple of articles that I felt could apply to me in particular.  The first one that I chose for this post was Preschoolers and Praise: What Kind of Messages Help Kids Grow?   This one initially stood out as I happen to work with preschoolers through first grade most of the time while I'm at work!  While this has definitely helped my patience, I knew that there were still a lot of things that I could improve upon.  At times, it's hard to understand exactly the best approach to take when trying to help young kids and I thought that this article may help.  Immediately I noticed I tend to do a lot of what this article discourages: generic praise.  One specific line about the cons of generic praise is that it lacks instructional value.  The article spoke of a different kind of praise that would be better to implement: process praise.  Process praise works to tie children's actions to their own success.  It is very similar to the idea of using "

     While I was on the fence about which topic to pick, I ultimately decided that epic heroes is the most interesting topic to me.  Reading through the Ramayana really helped to solidify my decision.  I love the character of Rama.  He is a larger than life figure with seemingly no faults, at least from what I have read thus far.  He is a natural born leader and a prodigy in every sense of the word.  It would be really fun to write about someone such as Rama.  The fact that Rama is an incarnation of Vishnu makes his story even more interesting; I can see parallels from these ancient Indian stories to other ancient Greek and Nordic stories.  For instance, heroes such as Hercules and Thor were also godlike beings and had crazy heroic adventures.  I would love to be able to write about someone who is practically invincible!  Reading through the PDE of The Ramayana helped me decide that I wanted to write about heroes.  It was cool to see Rama as a child of prophecy, basically sent to comb