Aaaaaaaand: another piece of “parent fiction” featuring Disney’s Gummy Bears. ^_^ This was is originally written in Russian, by an author who calls herself xoalexandraox. In the story, the youngest Gummy Bear wants to be a knight, but that the others tell him that you have to be very brave and daring to become a knight. Then he wants to prove that he is very courageous and goes to fight a dragon, but: the dragon is very sweet and they become friends. Super nice! ^_^ Translation by me, so all suggestions are very welcome.
Once in a while, you come across a piece of writing that deeply resonates with what lives inside you, in words you did not have yet. That happened to me, on a sleepless night. I fell in a YouTube rabbit hole and ended up at a recording of Adrienne Rich’ ‘Diving Into the Wreck’, a feminist poem from 1973. (This article was originally written for feminist magazine Lover.)
I got a new piece of “parent fiction” featuring the Gummi Bears! It is written by someone under the pseudonym of “Klarissimus” and in modern Greek. As I only learnt ancient/Koine Greek, it was difficult for me to understand it completely, but thanks to the help of Panagiotis Apostolatos, a full translation can be found below. Enjoy! ^_^
A new category for this blog, to practice my English and to introduce you to one of my favourite books: Hasse Simonsdochter (1983), by Thea Beckman. In this romanticised version of the story about Jan van Schaffelaar (c. 1445 – 1482), the Dutch cavalry officer saves Hasse Simonsdochter (the main character) when she is attacked by a couple of cattle-drivers who pass the Kampereiland. Van Schaffelaar is said to have killed one of the drovers and was sentenced to death by the people of Kampen. Hasse Simonsdochter, however, banishes him, which forces them to marry each other.
In the depths of the internet, there are many hidden treasures to be found. One of them is this Polish medieval mashup by Nvilia, an example of what I call “parent fiction” – fan fiction written by adults for children. With the help of my Polish teacher Sławomir, I managed to craft an English translation. Enjoy! 😉
The following fanfic is simply called “The Last Kingdom Fanfic” and written by jasminecanada. In this story, King Alfred gets very sick and is cured by princess Gisla, who came with her husband Rollo to attend a royal wedding. When Alfred takes his crown off, he already feels better, but he is not completely healed. Gisla finds a prayer to heal him in his Enchiridion (his notebook) in which she draws a Chi Rho sign. Alfred and Gisla talk about friendship between their peoples and Alfred explains how friendship feels for the Anglo-Saxons.
As you can imagine, the transmedial storytelling around Wiedźmin [The Witcher] combines many of my interests. Therefore, I wish to contribute to this phenomenon by means of a new translation (from Polish to English) of the short stories from the collection Ostatnie życzenie (The Last Wish) by Andrzej Sapkowski. Because of Covid, I could not meet my teacher Sławomir, but last week, he double checked this fourth story for me. ^_^ Please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
For The Art of Autism and Proud2Bme, I wrote this blog about the challenges around eating that persons with ASD might face. An abridged version (in Dutch) was also published in Lister magazine UP.
As a scholar and a musician, I can carry on with my work. Of course, things have changed – conferences became Zoom calls and concerts got replaced by recordings, for example. Still, I feel that I continue to grow in both areas from the safe place of my home. But how does this work for a martial artist? In this writing, I would like to share the various ways in which I currently work on my martial arts journey, and show you one of my “kata study drawings” as an example. It is my hope that by sharing our ideas, we can support and inspire each other to stay happy & healthy in these times of Corona.
Surakian wrote this untitled fanfiction for The Last Kingdom, in which King Alfred gets very sick (when hiding in the Athelney marshes) and Modwenna cures him. She finds out that he has a wyrm in his spinal cord, and her herbal medicine does not seem to work, but when he is as good as dead, she summons the wyrm (that is called Gifer) to go away. Republished with permission of the author.
