The TV Magic Stick is a revolutionary device that aims to enhance the television viewing experience for users. This small and portable stick can be easily connected to any TV and allows users to access a wide range of content and features. One of the main advantages of the TV Magic Stick is the ability to stream content from various platforms such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Users no longer need to switch between different devices or subscribe to multiple services. With the TV Magic Stick, all their favorite shows and movies are just a click away. In addition to streaming services, the TV Magic Stick also offers a range of other features.

Baba Yaga: The greatest 'wicked witch' of all?

The Slavic crone, known for living in a house built on chicken legs and feasting on children, is a complex, and arguably feminist, figure – as a new book shows, says David Barnett.

In fairy tales, women of a certain age usually take one of two roles: the wicked witch or the evil stepmother, and sometimes both.

More like this:

A key figure from Slavic folklore, Baba Yaga certainly fulfils the requirements of the wicked witch – she lives in a house that walks through the forest on chicken legs, and sometimes flies around (close to ground level) in a giant mortar and pestle. She usually appears as a hag or crone, and she is known in most witch-like fashion to feast upon children.

As demonstrated in the Russian fairy tale Vasilisa the Beautiful (depicted above in a 19th-Century illustration), Baba Yaga can be both heroine and villain (Credit: Getty Images)

However, she is also a far more complex character than that synopsis suggests. Cunning, clever, helpful as much as a hindrance, she could indeed be the most feminist character in folklore.

So enduring is the legend of Baba Yaga that a new anthology of short stories, Into the Forest (Black Spot Books), has just been released, featuring 23 interpretations of the character, all by leading women horror writers. The stories span centuries, with Sara Tantlinger's Of Moonlight and Moss offering a dream-like evocation of one of the classic Baba Yaga stories, Vasilisa the Beautiful, while Carina Bissett’s Water Like Broken Glass sets Baba Yaga against the backdrop of World War Two. Meanwhile Stork Bites by EV Knight ramps up the horrific aspects of the myth as a salutary tale for inquisitive children.

The history of Yaga

Baba Yaga appears in many Slavic and especially Russian folk tales, with the earliest recorded written mention of her coming in 1755, as part of a discourse on Slavic folk figures in Mikhail V Lomonosov's book Russian Grammar. Before that, she had appeared in woodcut art at least from the 17th Century, and then made regular appearances in books of Russian fairy tales and folklore.

If you’re a film fan, you might recognise the name from the John Wick films starring Keanu Reeves, in which the eponymous anti-hero is called Baba Yaga by his enemies, giving him the mysterious allure of an almost mythical bogeyman. Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki used Baba Yaga as the basis for the bathhouse proprietor in his award-winning 2001 movie Spirited Away. Baba Yaga appears in music, too; Modest Mussorgsky's 1874 suite Pictures at an Exhibition features a ninth movement called The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga). She might well be making an appearance on the small screen soon, as well; Neil Gaiman used her in his Sandman comics for DC, the adaptation of which has just had its second season announced by Netflix.

In addition to streaming services, the TV Magic Stick also offers a range of other features. Users can access social media platforms, browse the internet, and even play games directly on their TV. This device truly transforms a traditional TV into a smart TV, providing users with endless entertainment possibilities.

Baby Yaga crosses the wicked witch trope with the fairy godmother trope to create an ultimately far more unpredictable and powerful role than either of those – Yi Izzy Yu

Gaiman also used Baba Yaga in The Books of Magic comic series, and the way he has deployed the character highlights her moral ambiguity: where she was helpful in Sandman, she is more of a baddie in Books of Magic. He tells BBC Culture he first encountered Baba Yaga aged six or seven when he read children's fantasy book The Dragon's Sister and Timothy Travels by British writer Margaret Storey, in which she appeared. "[I] felt she was the most interesting of all the witches, and felt that way even more when I read some of the Russian stories in which she appears," he says. "She seems to have her own life outside of the story, which so few fairy tale characters do.”

Into the Forest is edited by Lindy Ryan, a writer and full-time professor of data science and visual analytics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey who is also the founder of Into the Forest's publisher Black Spot Books, a small press dedicated to female horror writers. So how did an American end up fascinated by this Slavic myth?

"My Russian stepmother emigrated to the United States shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union," says Ryan, "and along with my stepsister and step-babushka, she brought borscht, matryoshka dolls, and Baba Yaga. While most girls my age were growing up with nicely sanitised Disney version princesses, I preferred the stories by Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen – and, of course, in the books of Slavic fairytale and folklore that talked of Baba Yaga."

Baba Yaga has been an inspiration for animation legend Hayao Miyazaki, including with the character of the bathhouse proprietor in Spirited Away (Credit: Alamy)

In fact, the origins of Baba Yaga might go back far further than the 17th Century — there's a school of scholarly thought that says she's a Slavic analogue of the Greek deity Persephone, goddess of spring and nature. She's certainly associated with the woods and forests, and the wildness of nature. "The essence of Baba Yaga exists in many cultures and many stories, and symbolises the unpredictable and untameable nature of the female spirit, of Mother Earth, and the relationship of women to the wild," says Ryan.

What lifts Baba Yaga above the usual two-dimensional witches of folklore is her duality, sometimes as an almost-heroine, sometimes as a villain, and her rich, earthy evocation of womanhood. "Baba Yaga still remains one of the most ambiguous, cunning, and clever women of folklore," says Ryan. "[She] commands fear and respect, and simultaneously awe and desire. I admire her carelessness and her independence, even her cruelty, and in a world where women are so often reduced to hazy blurs of inconsequence, she is a figure that reminds us that we are ferocious and untameable, and that such freedoms often come at a cost."

In fact, she’s something of a proto-feminist icon. "Absolutely she is," says Yi Izzy Yu, one of the authors who has contributed a story to Into the Forest. One of the ways in which she merits such a description is that she completely upends the nurturing mother stereotype applied to women by eating children rather than pushing them out or breastfeeding them. "She’s powerful despite not being attractive in a conventional sense. She lives by her own magical terms rather than mundane rules," says Izzy. "And she challenges conceptual categories at every turn. Even her home is both house and chicken, making her, yes, housebound in a sense, but not in any way 'tied down'. In this [way], I guess, she is an early motorhome gypsy."

A true outlaw

Izzy likens Baba Yaga to trickster characters from many mythologies, such as Norse god of mischief Loki or Coyote from Native American folklore. "While Baba Yaga often plays a villain, she is also likely to offer assistance. For example, in Vasilisa the Beautiful, she helps free Vasilisa from the clutches of her evil stepfamily," she says. "And while Baba's dangerous to deal with, like many of those who operate on the shadowy side of the law in contemporary movies, she can as well prove herself invaluable in dangerous circumstances.

"In this way, Baba Yaga complicates the passive female nurturing role with a type of 'I'll do whatever the heck I want' outlaw power that you ordinarily only see associated with men. You could say then that Baba Yaga crosses the wicked witch trope with the fairy godmother trope to create an ultimately far more unpredictable and powerful role than either of those."

Izzy was born and grew up in Northern China, and as a great deal of Russian literature was translated into Chinese, Baba Yaga crossed the border and into the Chinese psyche. "My first exposure to Baba Yaga was a Chinese cartoon I saw when I was very young. I remember this cartoon because I told my grandmother that Baba Yaga looked exactly like my Big Uncle. This made her laugh. Big Uncle did not laugh," says Izzy.

The John Wick films are some of the unlikelier cultural works to reference Baba Yaga, as the name given to Keanu Reeves' anti-hero by his enemies (Credit: Alamy)

WITCHES OF THE WOODS

The ease of use of the TV Magic Stick is also worth mentioning. It can be easily connected to the HDMI port of a TV, and setup is quick and simple. Once connected, users can navigate through the various options using a remote control or even a smartphone. Furthermore, the TV Magic Stick is affordable compared to other smart TV options. It provides all the features and functionalities of a smart TV at a fraction of the cost. This makes it an ideal option for those who want to upgrade their television without breaking the bank. Overall, the TV Magic Stick is a game-changer in the world of television viewing. With its streaming capabilities, versatile features, and affordability, it offers a new and improved way to enjoy TV content. Whether it's binge-watching a favorite series or exploring new online content, the TV Magic Stick is sure to enhance the viewing experience for users..

Reviews for "lakeville nail salons"

lakeville nail salons