z

Young Writers Society



Okami and The Three Colonies

by Dynamo


I have an acting for animation class this semester and our first assignment is to take a popular fairy tale or nursary rhyme and write our own representation of it. I chose to do something on the one about the wolf and the three pigs. I'm just looking for general opinions about the piece itself, I'm not looking for detailed critiques like spelling and grammar since that's not what this assignment is about.

Okami and The Three Colonies

This story happens after a large group of Chinese outcasts were shipped out of China with the promise of living in a land of paradise. The large island they were sent to would soon be known as Japan. All the settlers split off into three groups to create three separate colonies. There are no records that tell the names of these three settlements. But what is known as fact is each settlement had an abundance of livestock, namely pigs.

The first colony was founded in the southern most point of Japan along a beautiful coast. The weather was fine all throughout the year, and the sea provided them with bounties of fish. To speed up the time it took to expand their colony, and because the weather was always beautiful, the settlers built their houses and barns out of things they found off the ground, like straw and twigs. The first colony was the most prosperous out of the three.

The second colony was founded in central Japan, where the surrounding lands were lush with forests. The only problem with the location was that it tended to rain once or twice a month. So, the settlers built a lumber mill to cut and process wood to build their houses and barns with to help protect them against the rain. Although not as prosperous as the first colony, this settlement was the most relaxed and easy living of the three.

The third group of settlers, despite the concern of the other two groups, decided to found their colony far to the north, where the land was always covered in snow. Because of the harsh conditions of their location, the settlers knew that houses made of straw or wood would not keep them warm. So, they built a masonry where they could collect stone from the nearby mountain and turn it into building material to make their homes out of. Because of this, the third colony was the slowest to develop, as the settlers had to take much time to build houses and barns that would protect them and their livestock against the constant blizzards.

One day, the clouds over the sea south of Japan began to darken and change form. A tsunami was beginning to develop. This tsunami would be later known as Okami because it struck fast and swift, like a wolf. The mass of rain and powerful winds began to move north, toward the first colony. The straw houses were ripped asunder as both people and livestock were swept up into the sky. There were significant causalities, only a handful settlers survived.

Okami continued its path upward, toward the second settlement. The houses made of wood fared a little better than the first colony's, but the damage was still catastrophic. The land was riddled with debris and up-rooted trees in the tsunami's wake.

The third colony was the last to be hit by Okami. The rain from the tsunami became froze and turned into snow, which turned it into a blizzard the likes of which no one had ever seen. The entire colony was buried in snow. But, when Okami passed the settlers dug themselves out of the snow. Their stone houses, despite the sheer force of the tsunami, all remained in one piece.

The survivors from the other two colonies learned a valuable lesson. From that day on, everyone made their houses out of stone.

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Mon Sep 28, 2015 7:09 pm
BrumalHunter wrote a review...



Salutations!

I realise it's been almost two years since you were last active on YWS (it will be exactly two years in eighteen days, it seems), but today, a friend told me there were still works submitted prior to October 2012 that had yet to receive two reviews. That is absolutely shameful, so even though this review is six years too late to be of any true value, I still feel your hard work deserves its due minimum.

Normally, I'd write an extremely long review that practically analyses a work line by line, as well as in general, but this time, I shall use a reviewing format that three other friends are also using for a competition. (It's called Last Man Standing, but that's besides the point.) The first half of the review consists of "Notes", which are general observations regarding spelling, grammar, etc., while the second part consists of my "Impressions" concerning your work. This makes up most of the review, so you needn't worry about my inner Grammar Nazi going crazy. ;)


Notes

1. I noticed you split several words that are normally written as one. For example, "southern most" is actually just "southernmost", and "up-rooted" is also just "uprooted". Mistakes like these are common enough (I once wrote "intact" as "in tact"), and the worst part is that computerised spellcheckers (I almost split that one myself) don't realise it's a mistake. That's why having another person read your work is always beneficial.

2. You wrote "a masonry" in the fourth paragraph of the story, and while everyone can deduce it means the place where masons work, it's not the correct word. "Masonry" has two meanings: it either refers to the trade of a mason, or it refers to the stone-/brickwork of a building. I'd advise rather saying "mason's shop" or something similar.

3. In contrast with the above two notes, this one is only praise. Often, people consistently use short or long sentences, and depending on which of the two happens to be the case, the paragraphs also tend to be of similar length. You, on the other hand, vary your sentence and paragraph lengths. I commend you for that.


Impressions

1. Why would outcasts be sent to a land of paradise? Add that to your use of the term "colony", and I think settler is what you meant to say.

2. It's interesting to see how you incorporate the elements of the three pigs and the wolf into your adaptation of the tale. Even though you only briefly mention that all three colonies have an abundance of pigs, the core element of the story remains, and since that is what counts, I'd say your goal has been achieved.

3. Another thing that I like about this story is how you cleverly adapted the building materials of the three pigs' houses to suit your story's purposes. We were never really given a reason why the pigs chose straw, wood and bricks, respectively, only that they kind of felt like it, but here, you provide realistic reasons as to why the colonies selected the materials they did.

4. I like how you compared the tsunami to a wolf, thereby referring back to the original fairytale, but your description of the tsunami is incorrect. The word "tsunami" translates more or less to "harbour wave" and describes the phenomenon that arises when an earthquake occurs close to the coast or underneath the ocean. The force emitted by the earthquake creates a wave that increases in size the closer to the coast it gets, and it is this wave that causes such horrible destruction. That part you got right. However, tsunamis and storms are independent of each other, which is to say a tsunami cannot cause a storm, and a storm cannot cause a tsunami.

5. I have seen how far a tsunami can travel inland - truly, it seems to have no end. But for a tsunami to travel across the whole of Japan from south to north? That is too far a stretch for it to be believable. Had you simply said they settled on an island off the coast of Japan, it would have worked better.


I am glad to see the moral of your story is still the same as that of the original fairytale, i.e. diligence is a virtue. Your version is certainly one of the more unique versions I have seen, and the apt descriptions combined the maturity of your vocabulary makes for a refreshing read.

If you ever do return to YWS and have another work you'd like to be reviewed, feel free to post on my wall and I shall get to it. Until then, farewell!

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Thu Aug 08, 2013 2:08 am
Aley wrote a review...



Hi, I'm here to encourage you to come back and join us <3

That being said, I think this story is really a good example of the lesson, and the main idea of the three little pigs with it's own added twist. I like it. You have a good flow with your words, and it mimics the telling of folk stories very well. The story itself has lost some of it's mystic properties when you bring it down to such a stoic level of travelers and settlers. I would almost like to see this written as survival letters or something with a little more spark in it just from the standpoint of something more interesting to read, but it held my attention to see exactly what the wolf was going to be. I was kind of hoping for some more metaphors, and a few more things that would show the reader how things happened, like being in the village instead of this being more of a report back to the homeland. Perhaps it could literally be set up as a report, with the exact number of casualties. It doesn't really need the information about who built what how, aside form that being the excuse for why they built their houses that way, and how they're rectifying the situation. It's pretty clear that one's going to be straw, the next logs, and the last bricks once we know it's the three little pigs, so adding some more spice with just jumping to the climax or the conclusion could really improve things.





History repeats itself. First as tragedy, second as farce.
— Karl Marx