Reading Notes: Week 11 "Marriage Tales" Part A

 

Red Fox in Snow. Igor Shpilenok. (Source: One Big Photo)

    This week's Part A was definitely a first for me in that no story or plot really jumped out at me. There wasn't anything in particular about plots or characters that stuck out to me. Instead, it was the general world of Native American mythology which grabbed my attention. It's very strange to me, not in any bad way, just in a way that makes me have to step back for a moment to reorient the landscape in my mind to accept the new information from these stories.

    They're definitely not bad stories. I found most of them very entertaining. However, past all the nonchalant shape-shifting and human-animal relations, I found the world to be strange in the best way. It's definitely a world I would love to walk into and explore, pick my way through all the stories.

    Of this world of Native American mythology and folklore, the magic is the best part. My two favorite instances were in "Splinter-Foot-Girl" and "The Fox-Woman." The latter I've heard before, mentioned in a YouTube video I watched. The former, I'd never heard of. Needless to say, a story about a little girl with a horde of caring and protective dads was absolutely fantastic. I'd love to write about a little Foot-Stuck-Child figuring out some of her powers and giving all of her dads heart attacks.

    In "Splinter-Foot-Girl (end)," FSC performs some powerful magic. She closes chasms in the ground, keeps a boulder from moving for eternity (thus making the ground unmoveable for eternity), and sends her dads and herself up into the stars to live peacefully by kicking her ball up and down on her foot. All the magic so far is done so casually, it just makes me more in awe of it.

    It's also really cool that it's mostly the females who have the awesome magic powers in the readings so far. It's really fun to see and read.

    In "The Fox-Woman," the magic centers around a selkie-type creature. Instead of a seal, she's a fox. Unfortunately, she doesn't get a happy ending because she gets her feelings hurt when her husband asks what the musky smell in their house is (it's her). I'd love to have a story that shows when she became his wife because, when the story starts out, as far as he's concerned, he's single.

    All this casual powerful magic is just thrown around, and it's such a nice change from characters being awestruck by such things. As a reader, I'm going to be awestruck, but it's nice the characters aren't. I could definitely see the Native American mythology/folklore "world" being the set of an urban fantasy/alternate history fantasy story. Just all the tribes' worlds, traditions, and stories being thrown into a beautiful, chaotic world.

Bibliography

Splinter-Foot-Girl from Arapaho mythology by Stith Thompson

Splinter-Foot-Girl (cont.) from Arapaho mythology by Stith Thompson

Splinter-Foot-Girl (end) from Arapaho mythology by Stith Thompson

The Fox-Woman from Labrador Eskimo by Stith Thompson

Miscellaneous Myths: Animal Brides by Overly Sarcastic Productions