whynot: etc: oh deer (Default)
Las ([personal profile] whynot) wrote2010-07-06 09:39 pm

Dimas and Satrio's Excellent Adventure

I signed up for Racebending Revenge at [community profile] 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 [community profile] mundane_bingo and [livejournal.com profile] 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 | comment count unavailable comments]

[identity profile] animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com 2010-08-26 08:19 pm (UTC)(link)
WHAT. WHAT. OMFG. NO. WHAT. THAT IS NOT EVEN. I DON'T.

MORGANA

GWEEEEEEN. GWEN HAS A BROTHER?! NO MORE MORGANA/GWEN!? MORGANA SLAPPING GWEN WHAT.

MORGANA TAKING OVER CAMELOT AND BEING EVIL WHAT. WHAT WHAT WHAT. MORGANA HOW ARE YOU AN EVIL ENCHANTRESS. I DON'T EVEN. WHAT. WHAT WHAT WHAT.

LASS HOW WHAT.

[identity profile] twoskeletons.livejournal.com 2010-08-26 08:25 pm (UTC)(link)
I KNOW I KNOW OMG I AM STILL BLOWN BY CANON KILLING GWEN/MORGANA or not, whatever, SHIPPERS WILL FIND A WAY BUT OMGGGG EVEN ANGEL SAID AT A CON THAT THE FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN GWEN AND MORGANA IS

OVER.

WHAAAAAAAAAAAAT

MY FEELINGS ARE CONFLICTED BECAUSE I THINK THIS COULD BE INTERESTING IN THE NARRATIVE BUT MY KNEEJERK IS STILL "NOOOOOOO MY GIRRRRRRLSSSS, you neeEEEeEEED EACH OTHER!! YOU L<3<3<3<3VE EACH OTHER!"

SHE SLAPPED HER

It's like bleak AU Merlin/Arthur mirroring because while the guys get closer, the girls are TOOOORRRRN APAAAAARRRRT. AND WHAT IS THIS THING ABOUT MORGANA AND MORGAUSE'S RELATIONSHIP CHANGING?! I HOPE THAT JUST MEANS THEY ARE CANONFAX DOING IT. lol

she slaaaaaaapped heeeerrrrrrrrrr

also i want more mordred.

[identity profile] animus-wyrmis.livejournal.com 2010-08-26 10:29 pm (UTC)(link)
I DON'T WANT IT TO BE OVER WHO WILL GWEN PICK FLOWERS FOR NOW AND WHO WILL HUG HER WHEN SHE IS DOWN AND WHO WILL COMFORT MORGANA IN HER NIGHTMARES don't say her sister THEY NEED TO BE TOGETHER 4EVER. I mean okay narratively maybe this is necessary and will work and also Morgana needs to renounce her friendships to be the Big Bad, she needs to be able to make everything about the personal HER VS UTHER thing because that will make her epic story happen. BUT BUT BUT YOU CAN'T SLAP GWEN SHE'S GWEN!

possibly they will be like psych! not sisters at all! NOW SLEEP TOGETHER lolz forever.

omfg me too. <3 mordred forever.