Dimas and Satrio's Excellent Adventure

[whynot]

I signed up for Racebending Revenge at 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 | comments]

Comments

[maerhys.livejournal.com]

Your take on linguistics is fascinating. I really, really wish more people would write in languages other than English (even if that means I can't read it).

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.

Definitely, and it works out that way because the only languages being spoken fluently by a group larger than a few thousand people are new "immigrants" (quotes because often the border crossed the people, not the other way around) and America's xenophobia, oh lawd. Because the USA is so monolingual, I wonder if that is why people in my area take regionalisms, dialects, and code-switching very seriously? I was taught from the time I can remember that there is home-speak and everywhere else. Home-speak is a blend of purposeful accents, regionalisms, English, Cherokee, and a mix of the two.

I am also doing mudane_bingo and thanks for the heads up on spnsupporting.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

I can't seem to find it but somewhere on jhameia.com ('Intersectionality Dreaming') is a post that really struck a chord with me, about the difference in the attitudes of Chinese-American and mainland Chinese people about other groups borrowing from Chinese culture. It observes that the Chinese-Americans tend to be more defensive, whereas the mainland Chinese are more live and let live, or even enthusiastic. This is a generalization of course, and I'm probably glossing over key points, but your point about taking regionalisms seriously reminded me of it, and, like, for all the culturefail Supernatural likes to wallow in, there is still a part of me waiting to see an Indonesian tuyul or Filipino tikbalang as MOTW. Colonial mentality? At least a bit, I won't deny it. A few years ago, there was a WW2 movie with Joseph Fiennes and James Franco called 'The Great Raid' about a mission to rescue American soldiers from a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. Manila ATE IT UP. They LOVED IT partly because their country and countrymen got to share screentime with big-name honkies. The Philippines' own WW2 stories are rich and tragic, but it was sidelined here and ppl were just happy that Hollywood was acknowledging us :-/. I mean, I went to watch that movie in theaters feeling very hopeful but ready for disappointment, and then unsurprising disappointment was unsurprising.

But back to taking regionalism seriously! Ya, I wonder if part of it is that Chinese culture in China (or any X culture in X, really) is ubiquitous and dominant and there's enough to go around, so to speak, so people get complacent about it. But here the culture is kind of shoved into a corner and jostling for space with itself and others. People hanging on tightest to what feels the most threatened. People relating to feeling wronged and bullied and different and belittled. It's almost like there's not enough identity to go around, so you hold on damn tight to yours, goddammit.

I am going through the mundane-bingo prompt masterlist and I am IN LOVE. How much do I love "food disasters: kicked off the bus for contraband durian"? If I don't get that for a bingo square, I might have to write it anyway.

[maerhys.livejournal.com]

for all the culturefail Supernatural likes to wallow in, there is still a part of me waiting to see an Indonesian tuyul or Filipino tikbalang as MOTW. Colonial mentality?

Maybe. If so, I partake as well. I've used Two-Face in my fic and I praised the use of Mocker Raven in a big bang last year. I was pissed as all hell (not that fandom noticed, because you don't crit the show!) that the Trickster became a Christian angel, because the trickster is a generic indigenous myth that a lot of people connected with on a show that showcases western/Christian horror and myth.

A few years ago, there was a WW2 movie with Joseph Fiennes and James Franco called 'The Great Raid' about a mission to rescue American soldiers from a Japanese POW camp in the Philippines. Manila ATE IT UP. They LOVED IT partly because their country and countrymen got to share screentime with big-name honkies. The Philippines' own WW2 stories are rich and tragic, but it was sidelined here and ppl were just happy that Hollywood was acknowledging us :-/. I mean, I went to watch that movie in theaters feeling very hopeful but ready for disappointment, and then unsurprising disappointment was unsurprising.

I know this phenomenon well. :/ I am unsurprised by it now, but children and elders are always excited to get something (anything) in which Hollywood recognizes us, etc. I went through it myself when Disney did Pocahontas. Ouch. It's difficult because I hate being the negative one but damn if this media is not incredibly problematic... and well, just awful most of the time. -sigh-

People hanging on tightest to what feels the most threatened. People relating to feeling wronged and bullied and different and belittled. It's almost like there's not enough identity to go around, so you hold on damn tight to yours, goddammit.

Yes. I want to explore this in a million words or less, because it's so true in just about every marginalized culture I've come in contact with, with friends and family and how it's almost a stage of identity that we don't grow out of.... on any level.

LOL! That is too awesome. I hope you got it. My card is pretty awesome. I got corn boiling which is definitely leading me to write more Ponca!John Winchester.

[twoskeletons.livejournal.com]

And then also Loki! Stop bogarting the whole archetype, Gabe.

Ya I vacillate between "omg it's us!" and "...omg is that us?" and then at some point it slips into "oh it's them". But I think I cling to the "omg it's us!" more than I should.

I HAVEN'T GOTTEN MY MUNDANE BINGO CARD YET, I AM VERY SAD. :((((((