nanti damai setelah kau selesai
I've been spending the past week traipsing all around west Java and rural Yogyakarta on family business, so I have been having Indochester thoughts, WHICH I WILL NOW SHARE WITH YOU.
DJINNVERSE // Dimas wakes up in Sumedang. He lives in a little house with his wife in one of the little village-ish clusters off the main road where the streets are barely big enough for a car to get through and it would be arrogance to try. 'Cos like, Dean romanticizes the apple pie family life, but for Dimas the romanticization of family gets caught up in the memories of a home he never really knew, the country he left when he was just a boy. Indonesia becomes that all-encompassing dream on which he can blame and thank for everything. His outsider status in America is not just that he's some penniless violent drifter hunting ghosts and monsters, but that he is also a foreigner. He is minoritized even more.
Anyway, djinnverse, Dimas wakes up in Sumedang, but then I get stuck, because what happens to his languages? Do people notice his American accent? His stiff and child-like articulation in Sundanese? Or, because this is djinnverse, does all that get washed away and Dimas is surprised to find Sundanese rolling off his tongue like he's been surrounded by people who speak it all his life? However, I do also like the notion of him on a phone call with Satrio (who still made it to a university in the US) and talking in English, and Satrio being surprised at it and asks, "Since have you been sok jago Inggris?" all suspicious and stuff.
CULTURE IDENTITY ISSUES // ON THAT NOTE. The way Dean felt kinda superior to civilians? Dimas feels that too, but add to that the culture clash and he also feels superior to Americans and rolls his eyes at their rational cynicism.John Joko was prone to proclamations like, "IF ONLY WE HAD A PROPER DUKUN, WE COULD'VE SOLVED THIS HAUNTING YESTERDAY," and that may have wormed its way into Dimas's mind. He differentiates himself from Americans, is proud to be separate from them in a way that Satrio has said is only sour grapes. Dimas speaks Indonesian and Sundanese like he's making a point, and Satrio has no patience for it. It's not quite sour grapes per se, not entirely. Like many immigrants, Dimas is only trying to hold fast to the parts of his identity that he perceives are truly his and clings to them lest they fade. It is, in many ways, a defensive move.
THE COLT IS NOW A KERIS // BECAUSE. KERIS ARE FUCKING COOL. Exhibits one* and two. Supernatural purportedly rolls around in Americana, so the Colt makes sense as a plot object that recalls the Wild West. But for Dimas and Satrio, maybe KERIS PUSAKA DARI JAMAN MAJAPAHIT. SO INSTEAD OF GOING BACK TO THE OLD WEST, CAS ZAPS THEM BACK TO 14TH-CENTURY JAVA.
THE KERIS, OKAY. For to make a proper keris, you have to summon a spirit which will then inhabit the keris. A proper keris can balance on the point of its blade. CAN YOU IMAGINE WHEN DIMAS KILLS AZAZEL AND WHAT IF JOKO IS THE SPIRIT INHABITING THE BLADE?? Okay, new favorite thingstiel.
* Can someone who also speaks Indonesian verify that on that website, under #5 where they're talking about the Condong Campur Keris... the keris themselves are fighting each other? Like some sort of blood-crazed keristiel? And then the losing keris slips into space to become a comet?? IS THIS THE KERIS THEY USE TO STAB THE DEVIL?? HOLD STILL, LUCIFER, WHILE I STAB YOU WITH THIS COMET.
And I have also been having thoughts of Castiel's S5 God search. This one's not Indochesters, just the white American kind. ...THOUGH COME TO THINK OF IT, CAS TAKING DIMAS TO INDONESIA IS MORE FEELINGSPLOSION THAN CAS TAKING DEAN TO INDONESIA OMG. WHERE TO EVEN BEGIN WITH THAT? That's probably a whole other post. Yes. YES. OMG.
- The shape of the house of the Lord doesn’t matter, so sometimes Castiel circles back to a mosque he favors in Yogyakarta and takes off his coat and shoes and socks and blazer, he rolls up his sleeves, and he washes his hands and feet, he splashes water on his face as the muezzin sings the adzan, and then he goes into the mosque with everyone else and faces Mecca and seeks revelation.
- CAN YOU GUYS HELP ME THINK OF A REASON TO PUT CASTIEL IN A BATIK SHIRT?? Maybe they can detour to the Philippines at some point and I'll put Dean in a barong. MAYBE WITHOUT THE UNDERSHIRT.
- LOLOLOL OKAY, TIME TO ANCESTOR SUE. My dad's side of the family is full of tall tales, it's kind of amazing. I think it's because he's descended from Javanese sultans and YOU KNOW HOW ROYALS GET. Because of this, family history and local folklore get kind of twisted up in the most O RLY of ways.
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT KI AGENG SELO, a simple guy who just wants a simple life loving God and farming, who once CAUGHT LIGHTNING. HE WAS OUT THERE IN THE PADDIES, AND THE SKIES GOT ALL STORMY-LOOKING and Ki Ageng was all, "Mehhh, it ain't no thang," and then lightning struck him AND HE WAS STILL LIKE, "MEH," and then the lightning turned into an old man, and Ki Ageng saw it fit to capture the guy and, in collaboration with the sultan, set the old guy up in an iron cage in the city square*. As one does. (Don't worry; the lightning escapes later with help from a mysterious old woman, WHO IS ANOTHER LIGHTNING BOLT IN DISGUISE. SHE IS IN FACT THE CAPTURED LIGHTNING'S LOVER.)
So, Castiel goes to Ki Ageng's tomb, steps into the other realm, and is like, "Ki Ageng Selo, I need you to tell me how you caught him."
"What?" Ki Ageng asks. "The lightning?"
Castiel hesitates. "Yes. The... The lightning. Precisely."
* This is the second story I know of in my family where my ancestors get up to no good taking sacred/supernatural things that aren't theirs to take. Another famous folk tale and supposed ancestor of ours is Joko Tarub, who once coerced a sky spirit into marrying him because he stole her magic clothes while she was bathing in the river. Without her clothes, she couldn't fly back to the sky, you see. So she becomes his wife, she bears him children, but one day she finds where he hid her clothes and she returns to the sky immediately. Ahaha, okay, now I want to do this for
dc_everafter.
Coincidentally, you can find variations of this folk tale all over East Asia. I remembering reading a plottily similar story in elementary school, and it was Korean. Hell, this is also similar to the selkie stories from the British isles, no? Some otherworldly being crosses your path and you try to tame it but it always ends up leaving you. What does it mean? Don't look behind the door? Stick with your own kind? Don't meddle in worlds that aren't yours? But the point is also that worlds that aren't yours ALWAYS intersect with your world. You are always part of other worlds, whether you want to be or not.
In conclusion, my dad's side of the family is fun at parties. Also, I am part sky spirit.
- Okay, so sometimes Castiel brings Dean along on the God search for whatever purpose.
-- Dean pretends he likes the rendang. When Cas isn't looking, he glugs down like a gallon of Fanta but his tongue is still burning and shit shit shit maybe he should've ordered the fried rice after all. He declines to finish the rest of it, claiming he is full, and spends the rest of the day hungry.
-- What if this pretty much becomes "Dean eats Lass's favorite foods", what if??
-- "Why couldn't you have zapped us straight to the top already?" Dean pants as they climb Borobudur.
Cas replies, "It's customary to enter through the eastern gate."
-- They visit a woman in Gunungpring and Cas converses with her in fluid unaccented Javanese. At one point she looks at Dean and says something to Cas that sounds like a question, and his answer makes her laugh. Dean pouts. "It's not true, whatever he told you," he jokes, and she smiles blankly at him the way people do when they don't understand. At the end of the consultation, she takes Dean's hand in hers and says in English, "Be careful. You will be safe." She is unsure with the language and seems diminished in it, and Dean wonders if she means her contradictory statements or if they are a mistranslation. She turns to Cas and says something in Javanese, sure-footed and clear-voiced again, and Castiel clenches his jaw and nods solemnly.
-- Maybe they get sidetracked into a hunt?! MAYBE THEY TEAM UP WITH A DUKUN AND THERE IS A POSSESSED GIRL IN CIBUBUR. MAYBE THERE IS A KUNTILANAK IN BOGOR.
-- They are at peace watching the view from atop Merapi until Dean learns it is an active volcano.
-- I believe we've covered the time they make out in Jepara.
I just realized that my Jimmy/Amelia fic counts for the 'using chopsticks' square of my
mundane_bingo table. Is that still even going on? I have ceased planning to get any kind of bingo, and am now just using this as a prompt table basically, if I ever use it at all. Which I almost never. Also relatedly and belatedly, my croatverse Claire/Cas can also count for my
spnsupporting Claire square, but I think I have missed the boat to post it to that comm. Maybe I should just scrap these tables.
I close with Texts From Last Night à la The Borgias.
DJINNVERSE // Dimas wakes up in Sumedang. He lives in a little house with his wife in one of the little village-ish clusters off the main road where the streets are barely big enough for a car to get through and it would be arrogance to try. 'Cos like, Dean romanticizes the apple pie family life, but for Dimas the romanticization of family gets caught up in the memories of a home he never really knew, the country he left when he was just a boy. Indonesia becomes that all-encompassing dream on which he can blame and thank for everything. His outsider status in America is not just that he's some penniless violent drifter hunting ghosts and monsters, but that he is also a foreigner. He is minoritized even more.
Anyway, djinnverse, Dimas wakes up in Sumedang, but then I get stuck, because what happens to his languages? Do people notice his American accent? His stiff and child-like articulation in Sundanese? Or, because this is djinnverse, does all that get washed away and Dimas is surprised to find Sundanese rolling off his tongue like he's been surrounded by people who speak it all his life? However, I do also like the notion of him on a phone call with Satrio (who still made it to a university in the US) and talking in English, and Satrio being surprised at it and asks, "Since have you been sok jago Inggris?" all suspicious and stuff.
CULTURE IDENTITY ISSUES // ON THAT NOTE. The way Dean felt kinda superior to civilians? Dimas feels that too, but add to that the culture clash and he also feels superior to Americans and rolls his eyes at their rational cynicism.
THE COLT IS NOW A KERIS // BECAUSE. KERIS ARE FUCKING COOL. Exhibits one* and two. Supernatural purportedly rolls around in Americana, so the Colt makes sense as a plot object that recalls the Wild West. But for Dimas and Satrio, maybe KERIS PUSAKA DARI JAMAN MAJAPAHIT. SO INSTEAD OF GOING BACK TO THE OLD WEST, CAS ZAPS THEM BACK TO 14TH-CENTURY JAVA.
THE KERIS, OKAY. For to make a proper keris, you have to summon a spirit which will then inhabit the keris. A proper keris can balance on the point of its blade. CAN YOU IMAGINE WHEN DIMAS KILLS AZAZEL AND WHAT IF JOKO IS THE SPIRIT INHABITING THE BLADE?? Okay, new favorite thingstiel.
* Can someone who also speaks Indonesian verify that on that website, under #5 where they're talking about the Condong Campur Keris... the keris themselves are fighting each other? Like some sort of blood-crazed keristiel? And then the losing keris slips into space to become a comet?? IS THIS THE KERIS THEY USE TO STAB THE DEVIL?? HOLD STILL, LUCIFER, WHILE I STAB YOU WITH THIS COMET.
And I have also been having thoughts of Castiel's S5 God search. This one's not Indochesters, just the white American kind. ...THOUGH COME TO THINK OF IT, CAS TAKING DIMAS TO INDONESIA IS MORE FEELINGSPLOSION THAN CAS TAKING DEAN TO INDONESIA OMG. WHERE TO EVEN BEGIN WITH THAT? That's probably a whole other post. Yes. YES. OMG.
- The shape of the house of the Lord doesn’t matter, so sometimes Castiel circles back to a mosque he favors in Yogyakarta and takes off his coat and shoes and socks and blazer, he rolls up his sleeves, and he washes his hands and feet, he splashes water on his face as the muezzin sings the adzan, and then he goes into the mosque with everyone else and faces Mecca and seeks revelation.
- CAN YOU GUYS HELP ME THINK OF A REASON TO PUT CASTIEL IN A BATIK SHIRT?? Maybe they can detour to the Philippines at some point and I'll put Dean in a barong. MAYBE WITHOUT THE UNDERSHIRT.
- LOLOLOL OKAY, TIME TO ANCESTOR SUE. My dad's side of the family is full of tall tales, it's kind of amazing. I think it's because he's descended from Javanese sultans and YOU KNOW HOW ROYALS GET. Because of this, family history and local folklore get kind of twisted up in the most O RLY of ways.
LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT KI AGENG SELO, a simple guy who just wants a simple life loving God and farming, who once CAUGHT LIGHTNING. HE WAS OUT THERE IN THE PADDIES, AND THE SKIES GOT ALL STORMY-LOOKING and Ki Ageng was all, "Mehhh, it ain't no thang," and then lightning struck him AND HE WAS STILL LIKE, "MEH," and then the lightning turned into an old man, and Ki Ageng saw it fit to capture the guy and, in collaboration with the sultan, set the old guy up in an iron cage in the city square*. As one does. (Don't worry; the lightning escapes later with help from a mysterious old woman, WHO IS ANOTHER LIGHTNING BOLT IN DISGUISE. SHE IS IN FACT THE CAPTURED LIGHTNING'S LOVER.)
So, Castiel goes to Ki Ageng's tomb, steps into the other realm, and is like, "Ki Ageng Selo, I need you to tell me how you caught him."
"What?" Ki Ageng asks. "The lightning?"
Castiel hesitates. "Yes. The... The lightning. Precisely."
* This is the second story I know of in my family where my ancestors get up to no good taking sacred/supernatural things that aren't theirs to take. Another famous folk tale and supposed ancestor of ours is Joko Tarub, who once coerced a sky spirit into marrying him because he stole her magic clothes while she was bathing in the river. Without her clothes, she couldn't fly back to the sky, you see. So she becomes his wife, she bears him children, but one day she finds where he hid her clothes and she returns to the sky immediately. Ahaha, okay, now I want to do this for
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Coincidentally, you can find variations of this folk tale all over East Asia. I remembering reading a plottily similar story in elementary school, and it was Korean. Hell, this is also similar to the selkie stories from the British isles, no? Some otherworldly being crosses your path and you try to tame it but it always ends up leaving you. What does it mean? Don't look behind the door? Stick with your own kind? Don't meddle in worlds that aren't yours? But the point is also that worlds that aren't yours ALWAYS intersect with your world. You are always part of other worlds, whether you want to be or not.
In conclusion, my dad's side of the family is fun at parties. Also, I am part sky spirit.
- Okay, so sometimes Castiel brings Dean along on the God search for whatever purpose.
-- Dean pretends he likes the rendang. When Cas isn't looking, he glugs down like a gallon of Fanta but his tongue is still burning and shit shit shit maybe he should've ordered the fried rice after all. He declines to finish the rest of it, claiming he is full, and spends the rest of the day hungry.
-- What if this pretty much becomes "Dean eats Lass's favorite foods", what if??
-- "Why couldn't you have zapped us straight to the top already?" Dean pants as they climb Borobudur.
Cas replies, "It's customary to enter through the eastern gate."
-- They visit a woman in Gunungpring and Cas converses with her in fluid unaccented Javanese. At one point she looks at Dean and says something to Cas that sounds like a question, and his answer makes her laugh. Dean pouts. "It's not true, whatever he told you," he jokes, and she smiles blankly at him the way people do when they don't understand. At the end of the consultation, she takes Dean's hand in hers and says in English, "Be careful. You will be safe." She is unsure with the language and seems diminished in it, and Dean wonders if she means her contradictory statements or if they are a mistranslation. She turns to Cas and says something in Javanese, sure-footed and clear-voiced again, and Castiel clenches his jaw and nods solemnly.
-- Maybe they get sidetracked into a hunt?! MAYBE THEY TEAM UP WITH A DUKUN AND THERE IS A POSSESSED GIRL IN CIBUBUR. MAYBE THERE IS A KUNTILANAK IN BOGOR.
-- They are at peace watching the view from atop Merapi until Dean learns it is an active volcano.
-- I believe we've covered the time they make out in Jepara.
I just realized that my Jimmy/Amelia fic counts for the 'using chopsticks' square of my
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I close with Texts From Last Night à la The Borgias.
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I would go to all the parties with your family.
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Good lord, child. Rendang. Do you want to torture the poor man.
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yesssssssssssss. *draws hearts around this 'verse*
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So I HAD to click over and verily, that does seem to be the story and I couldn't stop laughing. Condor Campur sounds pissed, yo.
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(There is
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