Topic Brainstorm

Hello All,

To brainstorm for this project I started by thinking about fiction books that I like to read that might be related to this class. Right off the bat I though about vampires, werewolves, and witches. A classic trio, but the first two have really been in pop culture a lot in recent years so I decided to go with witches. That thought lead me to think about other magical topics which is where I thought of Merlin. After that I was just clicking through links looking for inspiration when I found a book in Freebookapalooza about religion and magic, then got linked to The Sacred Texts website where I found a page about Atlantis. So that is how I found my four topics, and now to tell you a little bit about each of them and my ideas.

Witches across cultures: Witches appear in many cultures across time and have been a reading interest of mine since I was a little kind. A useful link might be this one from the History Channel, although it will likely not have much that isn't European in origin. There would also be lots of material spread out throughout lots of the units in the Untextbook. For this topic I could write it like a witch researcher (think Anne Rice's David Talbot).

Merlin: I read two of the three Mary Stewart Merlin novels when I was younger and really loved the focus on Merlin instead of King Arthur. I thought that I could do a similar thing by taking stories about King Arthur and rewrite them from the perspective of Merlin. For this project The King Arthur Unit of the untextbook will be useful as Merlin is a character in the Arthur stories.

Magic and Religion: This free book from the Freebookapalooza page looked interesting, and got me thinking about the dynamic between Christianity and magic. I am not as solid on an idea as the other three, but in general I think that it would be interesting to look at how magic and religion have interacted over time. I am not sure how I would write stories about this, and it would be quite a broad topic so it might not be a great idea for a storybook, but I thought it was interesting.

Tales of Atlantis: Like I mentioned, I came across this topic while snooping about on Sacred Texts. I thought about the Disney movie Atlantis and thought that it would be interesting to find out more about the legend and where it came from, so I decided to include it as a topic. I could tell stories from the perspective of someone searching for Atlantis or from the perspective of someone living in Atlantis.

Sacred Texts my be a useful sight regardless of topic although there are restrictions on some of their material that would have to be handled carefully.

Photo via Pixabay by XxBA666xX: Magic Smoke

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