Reading Notes Epified: Mahabharata Part B

For part B I am continuing to watch the Epified Mahabharata videos. I really enjoy the simple quick presentation of the content. Part 9 continues where 8 left off. kunti is preparing to be married but has a dark secret. When she was younger she accidentally summoned Suryadev, the sun god to her room. After being embraced by the god and enveloped in his light, she is left with a child. A beautiful child clad in armor, destined for greatness. Because she was unmarried she decided to but the child in a basket and cast him off down the river. I think this has a lot of potential to be a story. One thing that surprises me with these stories is the similarities they have with a lot of the stories in the bible. Another interesting part was ep 14-The Magic Potion. Bheem is pushed into a body of water, asleep, and tied up. As he sinks he begins to be bitten by poisonous snakes. Instead of dying he breaks free and kills the snakes. He finds himself in another realm and meets Vasuki, the snake king and a relative. Vasuki gives him a magic potion that gave him super powers-strength of a 100 elephants. Bheem swims off and decides to become all he can be. This has a lot of good elements for a quest story. Him escaping and defeating attackers. Meeting a weird king. The magic potion. I can see taking this story the exact opposite direction. Instead of tied up and thrown in water to sink, my hero will tied to balloons to float away in the sky. Instead of sea serpents it will be giant birds. I will replace the underwater kingdom with a sky/cloud kingdom with a giant bird creature ruler.

A castle in the sky

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Epified: Mahabharata

Reading Notes Epified: Mahabharata Part A

For my reading this week I did the Mahabharata series of YouTube. This is a series of short videos that narrate while an artist draws. I did another series like this a few week ago and liked it a lot. I was interested in this reading immediately. The first story is about the king Shantu and his wife the river goddesss Ganga. Ganga married him under the stipulation that Shantu could never question her decisions. This is put to the test when she has his child. She kills the child immediately. She does this for their first 7 children. Before she kills child number 8 Shantu questions her. Shantu explains that she had to give birth to the 8 Vazus. Celestial spirits cursed to live as mortals. Ganga agreed to kill them at birth to release them from the curse. Because Shantu questioned her Ganga left with the 8th child. This story reminded me of a lot of fantasy style writings like lord of the rings. I can see using this material in a lot of different types of stories. Some ideas I have is telling a story with animals. I also could see this story working in a sci fi setting. A Post apocalypse world where live births are very rare. I will need to think of why the first few will need to be killed. I also think having someone who does ridiculous things, but can not be questioned would be another story direction. Maybe have a boss or military leader who does increasingly crazy things. In the end it is revealed to be for an important purpose. A Nazi life regime where questioning your commander is death. One underling finally cant take it anymore and has to question his orders. A lot of the other stories did not have a lot of striking details for me to latch onto. The last story the Blind Bride was also interesting. A blind king must marry. A suitable candidate is found but her family does not want her to mark a blind man. She knew she was destined to marry a blind man so she decided to blindfold herself for life. Another story detail is the kings younger brother actually has most of the power.

Ganga leaving with child 8

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Epified: Mahabharata