Yamkumama
Stories written today often use modernized elements of folklore tales because those elements are still meaningful today. For example, in the case of Summer of the Mariposas, many characters are from the folklore of Latin America. The Yakumama appears as a gigantic anaconda with blue scales and eyes glowing like the headlights of a boat. Yakumama is the same creature known as Boíuna or Cobra Grande in Brazil and would be a great rival in this story. Is capable of entrancing prey into immobility with her gaze and drawing victims to her like a magnet. When happy, she blesses people with plentiful rain and abundant fish. When angry – which can happen for no discernible reason – she summons storms, fogs, and whirlpools in addition to putting her enormous bulk to destructive use. In the new scene, I have written for the Summer of the Mariposas to modernize the Yakumama, I have kept many characteristics of the original monster so that it is recognizable, but I have modernized the tale by writing that it was just meant the whole time and that it wasn't happy. So since it said that it is nice to people but gets mad for no reason instead of it being nice to them and giving them food for example it just went straight to mean.
In some ways the two depictions are similar. Like the original character, the Yakumama in the scene I created can also create whirlpools and fog. When Odilia sees it at first it is just swimming around not bothering or doing anything wrong. Now like the original, ‘’the Yakumama got mad and started to create fog and whirlpools.’’ The reason why it did that was that as it says in the original folklore It says that it would get mad for no reason and that's why it created the fog and stuff like that. Another thing that I kept from the original Yakumama folklore was its eyes. The thing about her eyes was that ‘’they looked like headlights. They were big and yellow.’’
I have also modernized the monster by taking away the fact that ‘’it was nice and gave people food’’ and stuff like that. This is because I wanted to add another problem for them to run into since that one part of the story they were having a “good time” since they were looking at a bunch of cool stuff. Even though most of the stories about the Yakumama are good I wanted to change them and make them mean for this point of the story so I could add more suspense to the book. Another thing that is different about it is that I completely blocked out the point that sucked up all the fish so the fishers could not get them. I could have added it cause there were some but I didn't.
I have kept many of the physical characteristics of the original Yakumama monster in the new scene in the same. This is to make sure it is recognizable as a character from Latin American folklore. At the same time, I have modernized the monster for a different purpose. This illustrates the theme that things are not always as they appear. Stories written today often contain modernized elements of folklore stories. This is because those elements are still meaningful and relevant today. My new version of the monster can help us see that we live in a society of individuals from many different cultures and ethnic backgrounds, and we do not all look the same. Instead of judging people negatively by their appearance, we should celebrate this diversity. We should learn what people are like. Hopefully, readers will also understand that just because someone or something looks different, it doesn’t mean they are bad or scary