As far as this week's reading goes, I particularly enjoyed some of the semi-linguistic research I did on the etymologies of names from Cebuano and Tagalog in the tales from the Philippines that I read. I was also interested by the Christian themes, such as the cross and the devil, that came up, presumably since the Philippines are 86% Roman Catholic. Even though I did not end up writing about them, I am still very fond of the crab king and his sheriff. I also think the idea of an earlier kingdom populated by such creatures interesting, as I'm pretty sure evolutionary theory would place them on earth before humans.
I thoroughly enjoyed writing for my project this week. It was initially more challenging than I expected, since I wanted to modernize it and it's difficult to put a creation story at any time other than the creation of the world. However, I think my favorite part was creating my own spin on the characters of Tiamat and Qingu, who were traditionally villains. The original scribes who wrote and copied the story inserted variations on which gods were most important, though Tiamat was always present, so I carried on that tradition and gave Qingu more of a backstory. I am now quite attached to them both.
 |
| The Fight with Tiamat. Web Source: Crystalinks. |
