Guys, a new game based on the Russian fairy tale Vasilisa the Beautiful has recently been released.
It's an adventure with gorgeous visuals and great music. Just look at this:
The story is basicaly retelling of the fairy tale "Vasilisa The Beautiful", so if you haven't read it yet, this game is a great way to familiarise yourself with the tale.
The gameplay is a little bit clunky, but it's still a great experiance for an evening, try it.
You can find the game in Steam: Vasilisa and Baba Yaga
TRANSLATING A RUSSIAN FAIRYTALE!!! It’s called thumbelina!
There lived a woman. She didn’t have any children, but she wanted to have one so bad. She visited an old witch and bought from her a magic seed. She planted it at home in a flower pot, and from it grew a big and wonderful flower.
— Ah, what a beautiful flower! — exlaimed the woman and kissed the flower bud.
And something in that flower clicked, and it fully opened. Inside it, on a green chair (?), sat a beautiful girl, not bigger than a thumb.
And so the woman called her - Thumbelina.
Once at night, a toad got into the house, that lived in the swamp with her son. She took Thumbelina and carried her away.
— my son!— she said. — He will be your husband, and you’ll nicely live with him in the muck.
But the girl didn’t want to marry her gross son. She sat on a lotus and cried. The small fishes pitied her, and bit down on a leaf stalk. The wind carried Thumbelina fastly-fastly from the terrible frog and her ugly son.
The whole summer Thumbelina lived singularly in the woods. She knitted a bed from grass and hung it under a burdock leaf, ate sweet flower pollen and drank dew.
And so passed the whole summer, the whole fall, and the cold winter was approaching.
The girl’s dress wore out, and her bed was soaked with autumn rains. The girl left the forest and seeked for shelter for a long time.
Suddenly, Thumbelina saw a burrow, and inside it lived a rich fieldmouse.
— Well, come here quickly! Eat and warm yourself up! — said the mouse and let the girl in through the narrow door. She was a nice old lady.
The mouse told her neighbor about the girl — the neighbor was a mole, and he paid them a visit.
The mole was mesmerized by her beauty and decided to marry her. They started to prepare the wedding. Thumbelina was very sad: they didn’t let her out to sunbathe and the only thing she could do is walk through the passages that were dug by the mole.
The mole warned Thumbelina, that somewhere lived a dead bird, so that she wouldn’t get startled. And once, while strolling, Thumbelina saw the dead martlet. At night, Thumbelina snuck to the bird and covered her with a pretty blanket to warm the poor up.
And the bird regained consciousness! She was able to hear its heart beating.
But the swallow was still very weak. Thumbelina secretly took care of the bird. She really grew to love it and got attached to it.
The martlet told the girl, how it got its wing hurt against a thorn bush, and how it wasn’t able to fly away with the rest of the martlet flock into the warmer climes.
The mouse and the mole didn’t know about anything: they didn’t visit where the bird was, since they didn’t like birds.
As soon as spring came and the sun warmed ground, the martlet, now fully strengthened, told the girl.
— I know warmer climes, it’s far away from here. It’s always warm there, come with me, dear little girl! — called the martlet.
Thumbelina was delighted, since she didn’t want to marry the ugly mole and live under ground, never seeing the sunlight.
— Yes, I’ll come with you! — she hopped onto the back of the little bird and tied herself with her sash to a big feather.
And here are the warmer climes! The sun here shined much brighter.
On the shore of a lake stood a white marble castle, under its roof were martlet nests.
In one of the nests lived the martlet we know. She placed Thumbelina on a petal of a flower.
Now that’s a marvel! Inside the flower sat a small human! They liked each other, and the elf prince, which was the small human, proposed to Thumbelina to marry him and become the queen of flowers.
Of course, she accepted!
She placed a golden crown on Thumbelina’s head, and the elves gifted Thumbelina transparent dragonfly wings.
so, um, my friends and i do this podcast thing that might be useful if one wishes to create a story with weird elements of Russian folklore, but doesn't know where to look for legit tales/research/analysis
usually we ask a native English speaker to narrate a tale or a fragment of a tale; in this case, our narrator chose the tale himself
(i tried to talk him out of it, it's enormous compared to most tales, and it's i n s a n e)
so, yeah, now we have this tale about death, gambling, and a wildly unexpected Jesus
an image of bdubs as a small spirit that lives in your house was living in my head for a few days. more info about him below !!! (i rambled quite a bit)
a few days ago a certain thought came to me: "hermits as creatures and spirits from the old russian tales. that would be cool." and the new au has started.
so, domovoy. who is that? basically, he's a supernatural creature, a spirit of the house that was very popular in different tales and sayings all around russia for a very long time. "dom" means "a house". he has a long history, some scientists think that the believing in domovoy started in ancient times, when you had to make some sort of sacrifice, before starting any kind of building.
domovoy has many, many names, but whats interesting - sayings his name outloud was a taboo, people believed that it could make him angry. and an angry spirit that is literally lives inside your walls house really wasn't a good thing. so, people were just saying "he, his", or, were using metathesis - instead of "domoveyko" they were saying "modoveyko".
cool, right?
after making some research and taking notes (reading a wikipedia page) i learnt that domovoy was kinda adorable. according to people's beliefs, domovoy lived on the red shelf or behind a stove, - the most important places in the any slavic house. he was a true master of the household, protecting peace and helping the humans. domovoy was helping to take care of children and animals, cleaning the place, bringing more water, cooking, protecting the house from any bad omens and monsters.
i really liked how people thought domovoy was talking to them - before someone's death he was stomping around, shutting doors, meowing. if something knocked on the window - its domovoy, alarming humans that a fire could start soon. if he's laughing, it means something good is about to happen.
without the domovoy the household was left defenceless, so it was really important to be in good relationship with him. a custom to leave some milk and bread in the corner, or on the porch for your domovoy is living to this day, but only in villages and small towns. in old times, if you were moving to the new place, there was a few customs on how to call your domovoy with you, but ill tell you only about my favorite - before you started moving your things, you had to open your gates and place a single shoe infront of it and call for your spirit: "you're welcome, dear grandpa, to follow with us to the new home". and after moving everything, someone had to tie a string to that single shoe and pull it all the way to the new house?? because?? your tiny spirit? was riding??? in that shoe??
i just imagine a tiny domovoy with a wide smile just sitting in the shoe, enjoing the ride. just a silly little guy🥺.
so, in conclusion, domovoy was a really nice spirit to have around. if youre in a good relationship with him. if you're not, well. he was a hella annoying prankster if you managed to piss him off. usually, a few things really angried him - from an animal that he didn't like, to you not taking care of yourself or the house. an upset domovoy was creating all sorts of antics, was really loud and whiny. he was breaking the dishes, confusing the yarn, taking and hiding your things, and even pushing the cat from the stove. that bastard! but honestly, if he does that, it means it was well-deserved.
funny enough, in the north of russia domovoy usually was pictured mostly as a good spirit, but the more south you move, the more domovoy was turning into the angry one, that you had to please to live comfortably.
a little about how the domovoy looked - there is no single answer to that. some believed that he looked exactly as somebody in the family, some that he was just some random tiny hairy dude, usually, an old one. there was also beliefs that domovoy could had all sorts of animalistic features, usually to show that he was truly a spirit, something supernatural. i also found info that the richer you become, the more fur or clothes appear on your domovoy. also, obviously, domovoy could turn into all kinds of animals - but ive decided to draw him more like a mouse. i mean, that was a plan, but looking at it now, he's definetely looking like a chinchilla. and chinchillas really weren't common in russia at all, lmao. i just thought that its convinient for him to look as a smallest animal, really easy to hide this way.
in the end, ill talk about my design. im really not a pro, so i can't say much, thats why i put it as the last part. the idea was - bdubs usually in his human form only when nobody was in the house. this way it was easier to clean, to do the chores, you know. the stuff. he's still small tho, maybe about a height of a small child (def not accurate to the character whatsoever), but when people were around, he took his hood off and stepped over it to turn into a mouse (this way was really common in old slavonic tales. more to it later). the moss hood is a part of his body in the animals form, again - very easy to hide. and yeah, about the clock - LISTEN. i know that pocket watch wasn't invented by some slavic guy in 900 AD, and MAYBE i should have went for a hourglass or a sundial or something. BUT. i thought of it way too late. and i was too lazy to change it. again, im not a pro! im a loser at character design, actually. all i want is to show the image in my brain, that's it.
im still not sure that i will have enough patience and skill to finish all of the characters that i thought of, but ill do my best. at least ill try to finish all of the "house"ish spirits. domovoy was first of the five.
if any of this interested you in any way, - feel free to draw something from this au, maybe you can think of a other hermit in the role of some slavonic spirit. ask questions, reblog, like, and lets pray together that i will have the will to finish this. thanks for reading!!
Estoy tomando el tiempo de recolectar peliculas o cortos de animación rusa, y las gunte en una lista en YouTube y en Letterbox Por ahora tiene algunas pocas, peor con el tiempo iré recolectando más...
Lista en Letterbox
Lista en YouTube
Perfil de Letterbox
proximame haga una lista con películas de no animación...
