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Dimas and Satrio's Excellent Adventure
I signed up for Racebending Revenge at ![[community profile]](https://s.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dark_agenda because do you know how long I've been threatening to write Indonesian!Winchesters? Since March, apparently. And then I missed the July 2 posting deadline because I was off celebrating someone else's independence day. LOL. Better late than never! ALSO, the icon for my Dreamwidth post is pretty much the appropriatest in many ways. Someone randomly made a map of Indonesia the background for a Winchesters icon, and hey! Now it's time for Indochesters.
I have grand plans to write more in this 'verse, but here are two ficlets for now. 'Verse summary: They follow the trail of the thing that killed their mother from West Java, Indonesia to the USA. This is Satrio. This is Dimas. Handy-dandy Indonesian/Sundanese translations are here.
North for the Winter
Pre-series. One of the few times their father took them north in the wintertime. "Do we even have a word for snow?" 590 words.
Jejak Kaki
Early S1. Brothers on the road, rediscovering. The title means 'footprints'. "It's not that Satrio has anything against his mothertongue, but Dimas speaks it like he's making a point." Also 590 words.
And now for some cultural identity soapboxing!
Differing attitudes about multilingualism is something I brought up in my aforelinked post about Indonesian!Winchesters, wherein I realized that to racebend them into Indonesian immigrants, I had to languagebend as well. In the USA, the kind of multilingual exchanges that Dimas and Satrio have seem to be associated almost exclusively with immigrant/multicultural families. Sure, both Indonesia and the USA have their lingua franca (Indonesian and English respectively), but Indonesia also has hundreds of living languages, several of them older than the lingua franca itself. A lot of people grow up speaking the regional language(s) alongside Indonesian.
As an exercise, I tried writing SPN fic in Indonesian, and one of the things that struck me was how compelled I was to have Sam and Dean switch between Indonesian and Sundanese. It's pretty common in Indonesia to switch between Indonesian and the regional language, but I was weirded out writing it because Supernatural, like much of the media I consume, is adamantly monolingual. But it's like, if I were writing SPN fic in Indonesian (and not even with Indonesian!Winchesters! Even if I were still writing about white American Winchesters, but in Indonesian), I couldn't have it be 'authentic' or whatever without also having Sam and Dean slip into Sundanese occasionally. And that's just 'cos I'm from West Java. If I were from Sumatra, Sam and Dean might slip into Batak, and if they were from Bali, they might slip into Balinese. I love to complain about how stiff and formal Indonesian subtitles for movies and television are, but I guess it makes sense now that I think about it. If the subtitles were gonna include slang and authentic cadences, which region's slang and cadence would they go with?
I reckon one of the things about American bilingualism is that there seems to be this tendency to assume that the non-dominant language is imported. In the US, the Spanish comes from Latin America, the Mandarin from China, etc. In Indonesia, languages like Javanese and Sundanese have been around for over a thousand years. Indonesian is the new kid on the block, its current incarnation having branched off from Malaysian during colonial times and standardized under the self-interested eye of the Dutch. This is not to say that Sundanese and other regional languages have remained unchanged throughout the years, and neither is it to say that these languages coexist without hierarchy and threat, but that is a whole 'nother kettle of fish for another time. My point is that multilingualism is more the norm in Indonesia than it is in the USA, and I reckon part of it is because in Indonesia, it is not perceived to be a sign of foreignness.
So now throw English into the mix! My family and I talk pretty much like how Dimas and Satrio talk, except not about killing monsters. A sentence has at least two languages, and we conjugate interlingually. Convention seems to favor monolingual stories, and translation seems to assume Language1-to-Language2 transitions. For purposes of this project, however, I decided to keep Dimas and Satrio's dialogue multilingual. After all, if your default is Indonesian and English, how do you decide which parts of your identity to italicize?
I've also been wanting to write Indonesian!Pevensies since a year ago. That's still on the to-do list, as is Muslim Indonesian Jimmy Novak. I also just signed up formundane_bingo and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
spnsupporting because I am a crazy person. I've yet to get my bingo card, but my spnsupporting characters are pretty predictable.
[originally posted at http://whynot.dreamwidth.org/27062.html |
comments]
dark_agenda because do you know how long I've been threatening to write Indonesian!Winchesters? Since March, apparently. And then I missed the July 2 posting deadline because I was off celebrating someone else's independence day. LOL. Better late than never! ALSO, the icon for my Dreamwidth post is pretty much the appropriatest in many ways. Someone randomly made a map of Indonesia the background for a Winchesters icon, and hey! Now it's time for Indochesters.I have grand plans to write more in this 'verse, but here are two ficlets for now. 'Verse summary: They follow the trail of the thing that killed their mother from West Java, Indonesia to the USA. This is Satrio. This is Dimas. Handy-dandy Indonesian/Sundanese translations are here.
North for the Winter
Pre-series. One of the few times their father took them north in the wintertime. "Do we even have a word for snow?" 590 words.
Jejak Kaki
Early S1. Brothers on the road, rediscovering. The title means 'footprints'. "It's not that Satrio has anything against his mothertongue, but Dimas speaks it like he's making a point." Also 590 words.
And now for some cultural identity soapboxing!
Differing attitudes about multilingualism is something I brought up in my aforelinked post about Indonesian!Winchesters, wherein I realized that to racebend them into Indonesian immigrants, I had to languagebend as well. In the USA, the kind of multilingual exchanges that Dimas and Satrio have seem to be associated almost exclusively with immigrant/multicultural families. Sure, both Indonesia and the USA have their lingua franca (Indonesian and English respectively), but Indonesia also has hundreds of living languages, several of them older than the lingua franca itself. A lot of people grow up speaking the regional language(s) alongside Indonesian.
As an exercise, I tried writing SPN fic in Indonesian, and one of the things that struck me was how compelled I was to have Sam and Dean switch between Indonesian and Sundanese. It's pretty common in Indonesia to switch between Indonesian and the regional language, but I was weirded out writing it because Supernatural, like much of the media I consume, is adamantly monolingual. But it's like, if I were writing SPN fic in Indonesian (and not even with Indonesian!Winchesters! Even if I were still writing about white American Winchesters, but in Indonesian), I couldn't have it be 'authentic' or whatever without also having Sam and Dean slip into Sundanese occasionally. And that's just 'cos I'm from West Java. If I were from Sumatra, Sam and Dean might slip into Batak, and if they were from Bali, they might slip into Balinese. I love to complain about how stiff and formal Indonesian subtitles for movies and television are, but I guess it makes sense now that I think about it. If the subtitles were gonna include slang and authentic cadences, which region's slang and cadence would they go with?
I reckon one of the things about American bilingualism is that there seems to be this tendency to assume that the non-dominant language is imported. In the US, the Spanish comes from Latin America, the Mandarin from China, etc. In Indonesia, languages like Javanese and Sundanese have been around for over a thousand years. Indonesian is the new kid on the block, its current incarnation having branched off from Malaysian during colonial times and standardized under the self-interested eye of the Dutch. This is not to say that Sundanese and other regional languages have remained unchanged throughout the years, and neither is it to say that these languages coexist without hierarchy and threat, but that is a whole 'nother kettle of fish for another time. My point is that multilingualism is more the norm in Indonesia than it is in the USA, and I reckon part of it is because in Indonesia, it is not perceived to be a sign of foreignness.
So now throw English into the mix! My family and I talk pretty much like how Dimas and Satrio talk, except not about killing monsters. A sentence has at least two languages, and we conjugate interlingually. Convention seems to favor monolingual stories, and translation seems to assume Language1-to-Language2 transitions. For purposes of this project, however, I decided to keep Dimas and Satrio's dialogue multilingual. After all, if your default is Indonesian and English, how do you decide which parts of your identity to italicize?
I've also been wanting to write Indonesian!Pevensies since a year ago. That's still on the to-do list, as is Muslim Indonesian Jimmy Novak. I also just signed up for
mundane_bingo and spnsupporting because I am a crazy person. I've yet to get my bingo card, but my spnsupporting characters are pretty predictable.[originally posted at http://whynot.dreamwidth.org/27062.html |
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Which is my way of saying thanks for writing fic that makes me THINK. <3
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Thank YOU for reading. :)
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....this actually solves a problem for me. As a sex-positive, pro-porn feminist, I'm often accused by other feminists of contributing to the objectification of women. Yet, to me, objectification is a hard-wired part of human sexuality, like it or not, and it not going to go away through simple "enlightenment". Like exoticizing "the Other", it is not going to stop because people find it upsetting. I've had troubles with balancing these issues, at a personal level, and I think this provides me something to chew on, philosophically: the interplay between being objectified and yet also being treated respectfully - that sense of being a whole person. I think it is possible, although I'm sure many will disagree, and I sure don't have proof. *chews on idea*
No no no! Thank YOU for writing! :)
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While I can see where the anti-porn feminists are coming from, I am extremely wary of people who say "THIS is how to be a proper self-respecting woman, and if you're not this, then you are fail". Feminism, like democracy, can't just be copypasted or imported wholesale to other situations. I tend to get frustrated with some feminist arguments because they can get so whitewashed, or Yankwashed, Westwashed, whatever. Gender does not exist in a vacuum!