Week 14 Lab: Writer's Write

The first article I read was titled "What is a Paraprosdokian?". In this article, I learned that a paraprosdokian is a type of sentence that ends in an unexpected way. Typically, a paraprosdokian is used for comedic effect. I learned that while I've made use of paraprosdokians in my humor, it would be interesting to try to learn to use them in my sentences.

Source: Amanda Patterson. "What is A Paraprosdokian?". Writers Write. https://writerswrite.co.za/what-is-a-paraprosdokian/

The second article I read was titled "3 Super Sidekicks & What They do for Your Story". This article focused on how a sidekick is essential to the plot of many good stories, and it also says when to leave sidekicks out. The article focuses on three sidekicks: Doctor Watson (Sherlock Holmes), Samwise (Lord of the Rings), and Obelix (Asterix). The article explains that a sidekick should not be used unless it furthers the plot, but, even then, special attention must be paid when writing a sidekick. The sidekick should help the protagonist or bring out more of the protagonist that would not be visible without someone close with him.
The author makes note that Doctor Watson was particularly effective as a sidekick because his character was so well-developed. Further, Watson also told the story of Sherlock Holmes, giving more insight into Sherlock Holmes as a character without giving away all of Sherlock's secrets.
Samwise was so good as a sidekick because he was so supportive of Frodo throughout the entire series. Without Samwise, Frodo would not have been able to finish his quest. However, J.R.R. Tolkien did an excellent job of not making Samwise into the main character. Samwise also added comedic relief and keep the books relatable to readers.
Obelix was a great sidekick because he was necessary to the comic and was like "the other half" to Asterix. Obelix was strong and sometimes dumb. This caused Obelix to unwittingly mess up Asterix's plans, creating comedy.

Source: Christopher L. Dean. "3 Super Sidekicks & What They Do For Your Story". Writers Write. https://writerswrite.co.za/3-super-sidekicks-what-they-do-for-your-story/

The next article I read was "The 3 Best Tips For Writing Dialogue". Anyone who has read my stories this semester knows I struggle with dialogue. In real life, I'm a simply-spoken person. I prefer to keep my vocabulary simple and understandable, and I do not go on-and-on about anything (unless it is civil engineering related; don't even get me started on concrete...). However, this has sadly leaked into my writing style in a manner such that dialogue stories I write are too straightforward and don't build much plot.
The article stated that the three tips for better dialogue are read, listen, and watch. This article can be summarized rather quickly. First, does your dialogue match the tone your story is trying to set? Don't use wording that wouldn't actually be used in that scenario. Second, it is very important that the character acts like they speak. If a character is speaking something sad, it is useful to show that the character is sad through descriptive wording. The final piece of advice is to never write with an accent. Readers do not want that.

Source: Christopher L. Dean. "The 3 Best Tips For Writing Dialogue". Writers Write. https://writerswrite.co.za/the-3-best-tips-for-writing-dialogue/

An image of dialogue from Public Domain Vectors

Reading Notes: Epified: Mahabharata, Part B

Kunti was adopted by a king. Durwasa visited the king and Durwasa was known for giving out curses. Kunti served Durwasa and Durwasa became delighted with Kunti and he gave her a way to summon any god she wanted to summon. Kunti then summoned Suryadev, the sun god. However, the mantra also had the sun god bring her a child who was born with golden earrings and armor. Kunti had to send her son down the river because she was unmarried.
One day while hunting, Pandu shot an arrow at a hermit who was making love with his wife. The hermit placed a curse on Pandu that he would die as soon as he had a son. Kunti told Pandu about her gift from Durwasa. Pandu told Kunti to have sons with the gods, unaware that she already had a son.
Yama, god of truth and death, was first god Kunti summoned. That child was Yudhishthira. Then she summoned Vayu, the wind god. This child was Bhima. Then she summoned Indra and had Arjuna. Then, Kunti said that she would not have any sons but Kunti summoned twin gods to come for Madri and had Nakul and Sehdev. Kunti returned from the forest and found Pandu dead because he tried to make love with Madri. Madri threw herself into the fire with Pandu and died as well.
Ghandari gave birth to a lump of flesh instead of a child. Dhritarashtra gave cut the lump into 100 pieces and put them into oil. The oldest son was Duryodhana.
Duryodhana was jealous of Bhima and challenged Bhima to a wrestling match but was brutally beaten by Bhima. Shakuni, Ghandarvi's brother, led Duryodhana to believe that the Pandavas were pretenders for the thrown. Duryodhana poisoned the food of the Pandavas and they fell asleep. Duryodhana tied the hands and feet of Bhima and pushed him into the river.
Snakes found Bhima but Bhima was able to fight off the serpents. Bhima met Vasuki, the king of the snakes and Vasuki gifted Bhima a magical potion that gave him the strength of 1,000 elephants.
While playing with a ball, Bhima accidentally threw the ball into the well. A poor Brahmin, Drona, helped get the ball out by throwing reeds with perfect aim so the boys introduced Drona to Bhishma.
Nakul and Sehdev became great with a sword. Bhima became great with a mace. Arjuna became a perfect warrior and could handle all weapons perfectly but decided to focus on archery. Arjuna and Drona's son, Ashwatthama, were taught to use the devastras, weapons that could control the weather.
Ekalavya had made a dog be quiet by filling its mouth with arrows without harming the dog. Drona had taught Ekalavya according to Ekalavya. However, Drona had not taught him. Drona had turned him down long ago. Drona made Ekalavya cut off his thumb to prove his worth.

Bhima and his mace. Image from Wikimedia

Source:
"Epified: Mahabharata, Part B" Epified. YouTube. Found online here

Reading Notes: The Mahabharata, Epified, Part A

Bharata dictated the Mahabharata to Ganesha the first time it was ever told. The war was also known as the Karmic Revolution.
King Shantanu who ruled over Hastinapur fell in love with the river goddess, Ganga. He promised that he'd never question her. Queen Ganga drowned baby after baby and Shantanu didn't question her. Eventually, he did question her after the eighth child. Ganga told Shantanu explained the truth and left with the one remaining child.
Shantanu met his long lost son Devavrat while he was shooting arrows at the river. Shantanu brought back Devavrat as the prince. Shantanu tried to marry Satyavati but her fisherman father said no. Devavrat went to talk with the fisherman about letting Shantanu marry his daughter. Devavrat vowed to never marry and became known as Bhishma (he with the terrible curse).  Shantanu recognized the sacrifice and gave Bhishma a boon to be able to choose his own death.
Vitchitraveerya, Bhishma's half brother, became king of Hastinapur but he was not in good health. Bhishma then went to another kingdom (Kashi) and stole their three princesses to marry Vitchitraveerya so that he would have an heir. The princesses were named Amba, Ambika, and Ambalika.
The eldest princess pleaded to go back to the man she loved. Bhishma reluctantly agreed but then sent the princess to go beg to marry with Bhishma. Bhishma said no though because he promised his father that he would not marry. Amba was very upset. No one would marry Amba because no one wanted to challenge Bhishma for her. Amba wanted to be the reason for Bhishma's death.
Vichitraveerya soon died and had no king or prince despite having two queens. Queen Satyavati ordered Bhishma to have kids. Bhishma would not comply. Soon, Satyavati told Bhishma of another son that she never told him about named Vyasa. Vyasa came when Satyavati asked for him to come. However, Vyasa was not attractive and the two queens were not happy.
Because Vyasa was not attractive, his son with Ambika was doomed to be blind. The other son with Ambalika was doomed to be pale. But the next time a servant was sent that loved Vyasa and they had a son too. Ambika's son was Dhritarashtra who was blind. Ambalika gave birth to Pandu who was pale and weak but a great archer. The servant gave birth to Vidura who grew to be wise. Bhishma was the teacher for each of the children. There was always rivalry between Dhritarashtra and Pandu.
Dhritarashtra became King of Hastinapur. Pandu became director of the army. Vidura helped Pandu and Pandu was seen as king. Dhritarashtra became married to Gandhari who blinded herself so that she could match Dhritarashtra. Pandu married Kunti and Madri.

Image of Bhishma taking the oath. Image from Wikimedia

Source:
"Epified: Mahabharata, Part A". Epified. YouTube. Found online here

Famous Last Words: The Busiest Week of My Semester (so far...)

This week was quite a crazy one. I was on campus from 8 AM to 12 AM almost every single day. Even on Friday, I was on campus from 8 AM to 9 PM but went straight from campus to hanging out with friends which was fun. I slept for an average of 5 hours each night. It was just an unfortunate week where I had all sorts of homework due at the same time. And last weekend, my family was visiting from Iowa to watch the OU versus Iowa State football game (which almost came back to haunt me when we thought they were going to win) so I was not able to get to any of my homework completed during the weekend leading up to last week.

In my Dynamics of Structures class, we had homework where we were finding the natural frequencies of structures. Basically, everything has a frequency that it likes to vibrate at. But it gets more complicated. Technically, everything has an infinite number of natural frequencies and the vibration is best modeled using a Fourier Series. But the natural frequencies get harder and harder to hit. We're talking in excess of 100 radians per second after the 3rd, 4th, or 5th term of the Fourier Series (that's an excess of 900 rpm). The only way to excite the structure would be to use a motor. But each mode (I'll loosely define mode as the deformation shape associated with a natural frequency) gets less and less crucial to the structure's governing natural frequency. To make this more complicated, every beam is technically an infinite number of small beams. Anyways, I had to model this for my homework using MATLAB, stiffness methods for structural analysis, principles of dynamics, and linear algebra to complete my homework and it took upwards of 12 hours for 5 questions.

This image is a sample from my MATLAB code for the homework. Here, at the top I am showing the mode matrix, [Phi].
Then, the diagram plots out the rough shape of the beam's bending. However, the beam would be curved, not linear as shown. For the homework, we only had to analyze 6 modes because it'd be so much work to model many more modes.

However, I did finish all of my homework for this class which felt great. I really want to finish this class up in 14 weeks like the schedule plans for us, and I didn't want to delay my progress by missing assignments. This week I watched the Epified videos about Krishna. I found the videos to be really entertaining. They packed so much information into a 2-3 minutes video. I was amazed. I learned a lot and learning more about Krishna makes me understand much more why Yudhishthira chose Krishna to be on his side instead of Krishna's army. Then, writing my story, I had to recall all sorts of events that happened and it really engrained the story of Krishna into my brain.

I am excited for the final week of this class. I get one last week to learn about Indian mythology and I'm going to do my best to learn as much as possible! I'm also excited to see what my project turns out to be in the end!

Week 13 Story: Kamsa's Nightmares

Kamsa was the cruel king of Mathura, a city in India. The people of Mathura badly wanted a new king. However, Kamsa kindly helped arrange a marriage between his sister, Devaki, and her husband, Vasudev. The day of his sister's wedding, a voice spoke down from the heavens telling Kamsa that he was to die at the hands of Devaki and Vasudev's eighth child. Kamsa was furious and terrified. Ironic, isn't it? Kamsa's death would ultimately be due to one of his very few kind acts. Kamsa immediately acted upon his fear and anger; Kamsa wanted to kill his sister and her husband. However, he was convinced to imprison them instead.

Devaki and Vasudev spent their honeymoon in a prison cell in Kamsa's palace. Kamsa didn't really feel bad. He was only doing this to protect himself. However, no one else saw it the same way. When Devaki gave birth to her first six children, Kamsa would visit the prison cell and throw the baby at the wall, brutally killing the baby. This cruel display of power disgusted the guards, Devaki, and Vasudev. However, Kamsa felt that he was only doing what he had to do.

Kamsa had nightmares about what his death would be like. Hearing his fate left Kamsa on edge at all times. He faced serious anxiety about dying some day. He would much rather have not known how he was going to die. He would regularly have nightmares about his death. One night, he had a particularly vivid nightmare. His dream was filled with flashes of bright light and a feeling of impending doom.

When Kamsa heard that Devaki had given birth to her eighth child the following morning, he visited the cell to once again kill the baby and save his fate. However, when Kamsa got to the prison cell and saw a baby girl, he was confused. How could he die at the hands of Devaki's daughter? He did not think he had a chance of being killed by her. Nevertheless, he felt the need to save his fate. He grabbed the baby girl and was about to throw her at the ground when all of a sudden a bright flash of light stunned him. In that moment, Kamsa was certain that his dreams were foretelling this moment. If his nightmares had foretold this moment, what else had they correctly foretold? Kamsa snapped back to reality to notice Durga standing before him. Durga told Kamsa exactly what he was now aware of: Devaki's eighth born child was moved to another location and he would someday kill Kamsa. Durga wanted Kamsa's fear of his fate to consume him over the next years. Kamsa was confused as to why the process had to be drug out for so long. He couldn't take the anxiety. He wanted the resolution and he wanted it quick. If it resulted in his death, at least he didn't have to live in constant fear.

He couldn't be certain of when his foretold death would occur, but he was going to fight fate. He couldn't believe how cruel the gods were to make this all happen so slowly. He decided that his only option was to deal with rakshasas to fight his destiny. He was going to send out rakshasa after rakshasa to find and kill Devaki's eighth born child.

Kamsa trying to kill Devaki's 8th child only to learn
it had been swapped with Durga.
Image from Wikimedia

Author's Note

This story was developed from the Krishna series of Epified videos on YouTube. The videos explained Krishna's life from his birth to slightly after the killing of Kamsa. In my story, I tried to focus more of the plot on Kamsa and less of the plot on Krishna. I wanted to show that Kamsa was truly going mad with the frustration of not knowing when he would die but knowing how. It seems very harsh to know how you're going to die, but not when. It would surely consume a person. And it is shown to in this story. Kamsa was going to kill his own sister on her wedding day but spared her after intervention from others. However, he still locked his sister and her family in a cell for the rest of their lives and killed all of their children. I hoped to not make people feel bad for Kamsa, but to understand that he truly went crazy and would resort to anything to preserve his life.

Bibliography

"Epified: Krishna: Part A". Epified. Youtube. Link

Reading Notes: Epified Krishna, Part B

Krishna went out with cowherd friends. Brahma watched Krishna. Brahma saw Krishna sharing a plate with the same plate. Brahma wanted to test Krishna's divinity so he kidnapped his cows and his dogs. Krishna decided to create the cows and cowherds from his own body.

There was a bull named Hastin that was ferocious and the source of all of the cattle. Krishna said that he would ride Hastin. He decided to play the flute for hours every day standing near Hastin until Hastin got more comfortable with Krishna. Eventually Krishna was able to ride the bull through town. This showed the town that kindness is the ultimate strength.

Krishna wanted to marry Radha but he did not have permission from anyone. Krishna asked the priest and the priest determined that Krishna's future held something else more important than Radha.

Kamsa decided to try one last time to kill Krishna. He sent Akrur to invite Krishna to a dinner. However, Akrur admitted to Krishna that Kamsa just wanted him in Mathura to kill him. Krishna was not scared of facing Kamsa and told Yashoda that he wanted to go do it. On the ride to Mathura, Akrur saw Krishna's true form - Vishnu. Akrur knew that Krishna would soon rule over Mathura.

Stories of Krishna's kindness and strength had spread through Mathura before he got there. Everyone was happy to see him. Trivakra was paralyzed and had been told that Vasudev's son could heal her. Krishna hugged Trivakra and she was healed instantly. Soon, Kamsa heard of Krishna's feats and was angered. He knew that he would die in Krishna's hands. He was going to try to use his elephant to kill Krishna. Krishna ran into the elephant on his way and the elephant tried to trample him. Krishna grabbed the elephant by the trunk and killed it. People praised Krishna for killing the elephant with ease, further angering Kamsa.

Then, Kamsa sent two of his wrestlers which were easily handled. Kamsa then sent his army after Krishna. His army was defeated by Krishna. He saw the face of Vishnu of Krishna during the fight with Krishna. Krishna ended up defeating Kamsa and killing him.

Krishna was then led to his parents by Akrur and he released them from prison. Ugrasen, the father of Akrur, was made King of Mathura.

Krishna playing the flute while in the form of Vishnu.
Image from Wikimedia

Bibliography
"Krishna" Epified. Youtube. Link

Reading Notes: Epified Krishna, Part A

Krishna had many enemies before he was even born. Many of these enemies even tried to kill him before he was born.

Kunti gave birth to Arjuna the same day that Krishna was born. Kamsa was an evil king, and a voice told him that his sister, Devaki's, eighth son would kill him. Kamsa decided to kill them. Instead, he threw them in prison and was going to kill all of their kids. Kamsa killed six of their kids. However, the seventh child was moved to Deaki's husband's first wife. Krishna was the eighth incarnation of Vishnu. Vasudev is Devaki's husband and Krishna's father. 

The guards fell asleep, and a voice told Vasudev that it was safe to escape the prison will Krishna. Devaki was okay with them just leaving as she understood. Vasudev had to cross the Yamuna River and a serpent protected him. Krishna was left in a cowherd's camp with Yashoda.

Kamsa learned that Devaki had given birth to her eighth child. Kamsa wondered if this was his last day of his life. When Kamsa saw that Devaki was holding a baby girl, he laughed. Kamsa knew the girl wouldn't kill him. He was going to throw the baby against the wall, there was a burst of light and Durga appeared (she was in disguise as the baby).

Yashoda woke up to having a baby boy instead of a girl. Her husband brought another baby boy home. Her husband told her the story of Mathura's king slaying babies. Putana paid Yashoda a visit. Putana quickly became part of the family. She turned into a demon one night and kidnapped Krishna. She was going to try to feed Krishna some poisoned breast milk. Krishna was draining powers from her while drinking the milk. Krishna killed Putana. Yashoda knew that her baby was something special when she found him next to Putana's dead body.

Krishna slaying Putana. Image from Wikimedia

A cart lost balance and rolled towards Krishna (still a baby). The cart was broken because Krishna kicked the cart away from all of the children. Krishna was a trouble maker. One day someone told Yashoda that Krishna was eating mud. Instead, when she forced Krishna to open his mouth, it had all of the universe inside of it instead. Yashoda now knew that her son was Brahma.

Krishna choked a tornado that was actually a demon to save himself. Bakaasur was another demon who came for Krishna was killed by Krishna. Kamsa had been sending the demons and was running out of demons.

Krishna told the people to worship Govardhan Hill instead of Indra. Indra got mad and sent torrential rains. Krishna picked up Govardhan Hill with one finger. Indra realized he couldn't do anything to overpower Krishna and went to Earth to apologize to Krishna.

Krishna loved Radha. She let him drink water off her feet to cure him.

Bibliography

"Epified: Krishna: Part A". Epified. Youtube. Link