My Cinderella Story

Once upon a time there was beautiful girl named Eleanor, with a normal happy family. Her mother had passed away, leaving her and her father to care for themselves, consumed by his loneliness, Eleanor's father remarried the first woman he found. To his dismay, the woman was not who she claimed to be, and after discovering the woman's dark secret, she silenced him once and for all. Years passed and Eleanor grew up into a young woman, along with her older stepbrother who constantly bullied her, and made her do many chores and serve for him and his friends. Her only friend being the cat in the house, she was very lonely, and put all of her emotions into the music she listened to.
The very large and popular Sweetlife concert was days away and her family all had tickets, except for poor Eleanor. Her favorite band was going to be there, and she wished for nothing but to meet the members. As soon as Eleanor mustered the courage to ask her stepmother if she could go to the concert, she was quickly sabotaged by her stepbrother Trent, forcing her to clean all of his football teams equipment, which would take forever. After her family left to go to the concert, Eleanor cried alone in her room, until she heard a knock at her door, "Who could it possibly be?" she thought. As she opened the door, she saw a small pixie like girl smiling in front of her. The girl said, "I'm your fairy, any wish is mine to make true", astonished Eleanor told the girl everything, and in the blink of an eye, Eleanor was decked in VIP passes and a brand new pair of vans, limited editions. "But how will I get there?", Eleanor asked. And with a flick of fairy dust the household pet cat had turned into a new Porsche, and off she went to the concert.
The concert was crowded with people, so Eleanor thought that her family couldn't possibly recognize her in the crowd. Her favorite band was up, and Eleanor made her way to the front of the stage so that she could see them up close, to her surprise the lead singer, Alex Prince, noticed her and inviter her to dance on stage with him. All of the girls were envious of the mystery girl, and no one could figure out just who she was. It was the greatest moment of Eleanor's life, until she realized that her family had scheduled an after party at their house at midnight. She rushed off of the stage, leaving behind one of her brand new limited edition vans on stage, along with a confused, love struck lead singer. Eleanor raced back home, and made it just in time to have her new clothes turn back into sweats, and her car turn back into a cat. The next day at school, Alex Prince was searching all over to find his mystery girl, until he spotted Eleanor and recognized her, he asked her what the shoes she was wearing looked like and once she described them perfectly, Alex Prince and Eleanor rode off to on the bands bus for a world wide tour.
THE END

Fairy Tales in today's world

As common as fairy tales are in the world, some may use that to their advantage, for example in advertising. Most children grow up reading, watching, or hearing about fairy tales, making it very memorable to them. I remember a very clever television add for GPS devices in AT&T cellphones, where a Hansel and Gretel make their way through New York City, leaving breadcrumbs that are being eaten, lost, and unrecognizable. Once they get to their destination, much like in the fairy tale, the crumbs are also gone like in the story.
http://whatitsallabout314.wordpress.com/2012/06/19/att-hansel-and-gretel/

Many songs are written about love and loss and everything in-between, many popular songs with girls at a young age involve loves like in the fairy tales, some of these songs can be directly related to the plot of many classic fairy tales, for example in the song Today Was A Fairytale by Taylor Swift, this song states her being a damsel in distress, then after meeting her prince they both fall in love and live happily ever after like the classic fairytale stories.
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdVYSLsBs80

Lastly, commonly seen are versions of fairytales, movies on tv, such as a popular movie series depicting Cinderella, each movie has a different cast with a different life, but all remains close to the classic Cinderella tale resulting in a happily ever after movie ending.
Listed are examples of the movies:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zW4ljMk4W_g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhB2LnE8HXE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QH8JnUYIeWM
I have seen all of them, naturally

What is a Fairytale? Differences and Similarities amongst the stories of Cinderella

Cinderella is certainly one of, if not the most popular fairytales in existence. All over the world are told many variations of Cinderella, coming from all sorts of cultures worldwide. The most recognized is that of Charles Perrault, where the english stepdaughter is bullied by her stepmother and step sisters, forced to be a maid, and isn't allowed to go to the ball but is rescued by her fairy godmother; she is able to go to the ball, and the prince falls in love with her, yet she must leave by the stroke of midnight, drops her glass slipper, he finds her the next day, gets married, happily ever after. Most Cinderella stories go by the same plot, girl has bad life, girl goes to ball, girl loses slipper, girl gets married, the end, although the variations of Cinderella stories the come from around the world is what makes it interesting because you'll see the similarities and differences of the same situations all around the world. Now in the Chinese version you'll see that she too is a servant in her own home due to the jealousy of her stepmother and stepsister, she wants to go to the 'ball' but in this case is a festival (note the slight differences in culture between these two Cinderella's), her 'fairy godmother' is a magical fish whom her stepmother killed but the bones were still magical, which grants her wish to go to the festival and she receives beautiful clothing and golden slippers. Instead of being forced to leave due to the time, she realized her family was beginning to notice her, so she rushes home, leaving one of her slippers. The king finds her slipper, tries to find the woman who it belonged to, 'Cinderella' tries to steal the slipper in this case but he catches her, then realizing her beauty he allows her to stay and marries her.

My Own Myth

The Story of Maryland - A myth by Phoebe

In the deep ocean of the Pacific, there were many kinds of animals, fish of all kinds, crabs, and as many mollusks as you could count. One day the king blue crab of the Pacific had gotten into an argument with another king crab. The two crabs were always fighting, they would fight over anything they could possibly fight about. "The Pacific Ocean is not big enough for the both of us!", said the king blue crab. "Then I guess we'll have to fight for it!" said the other. So the two crabs fought, and fought, and fought. The rockfish and the oysters were on the king blue crabs side, they fought alongside the mighty blue crab for as long as time, until the other king crab finally caught up with the blue crab. The battle was indeed great, but the blue crab was not as strong as the other crab, and so he lost the battle. And as the blue crab king was dying, all of the blue crabs and rockfish and oysters carried him to safety to what is now the Chesapeake Bay, finally laid to rest, where his mighty claw became the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. And even now, all of the blue crabs and rockfish and oysters stayed alongside their mighty king at his final resting place.

Creation Myths

Creation myths are all very similar, beginning with how a place, or something in the world came about. Most creation myths start out with a main character, who goes about there regular life, but something ends up happening which ends with a result of a new creation. Not all creation myths are like this, because wherever the myth derived from, they are bound to have different qualities in the myth. For example, one myth could be about how the gods created humans, others could be about how humans came from the earth. It all depends on where the myth came from, how one thing came about in one culture, could be extremely different in another culture.

#9 Ted Reaction

I think that this video was extremely eye-opening,  and made me think of a new way to look at myths and mythology. I think that Pattanaik's definition of a myth is slightly different, and he looks at it in two different ways, world-wide or personal. The world differs from my world because different things might matter and the perspective changes with whoever it is. Perspective is all about how people see things from their point of view, so it is sort of like the saying, "one mans trash is another mans treasure".

#12 Define Myth

I think that myths were used to help make sense of the world and how it came to be. Myths, like stories, can be exaggerated, and I think that because no one else had reasoning for what the world really was, people had no choice but to believe it. Different myths surround different cultures, but one thing is the same; they were all trying to understand life and the world.