all my keysmash are belong to you

You know that feeling you get when you are supposed to go to the beach but then you get sick and you can't go? It's a shitty fucking feeling. I HAVE THAT FEELING RIGHT NOW. A CANYON OF SADNESS FOR ME.

So instead, you're getting my thoughts on 'Once Upon a Time' because oh my god. So it's like live-action traditional fairy tale fanfic, right. It's almost like an isurrendered meme come to life. The more I was babbling about it to animus_wyrmis, the more I realized that the story is doing in its actual canon what I strove to do with, say, Susan Pevensie and the Novaks. ( Why should you settle for being a character in someone else's story? General spoilers. )

Also, me and my weakness for gangster movies are kind of super really excited for 'Manila Kingpin: The Asiong Salonga Story'. Asiong Salonga was the boss gangster in Manila in the 1940s/50s. There's been at least three movies based on his life already, so... here is number four, I guess? IT'S RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS THOUGH SO OKAY.



HIGH-SPEED CALESA CHASE/GUNFIGHT SEQUENCE AHAHA GIVE IT TO ME. Also here is a music video of one of the soundtrack songs already. The title translates to 'King of Tondo', Tondo being one of the poorest and most underdeveloped districts of the city. The music video functions as an extended trailer basically: "Hari ng Tondo" by Gloc 9 feat. Denise Barbacena

This is pretty cool: "WorldView is a series of monthly interviews with the world's foremost leaders, where you ask the questions. This month we are interviewing President of the Philippines His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III. You can submit, and vote on, questions that will be asked the President of the Philippines when WorldView interviews him on November 4, 2011. This will be the first WorldView interview with an Asian leader." Two more days to submit questions! Someone badger him about the RH bill, my god.

Unrelatedly, a few months ago, my parents and I went to Jogja to pay respects to various ancestors, and then we stopped at Borobudur because it was on the way, why not. My parents refused to climb up to the top anymore, so it was up to me to ( take all the pictures. )

yvi is hosting a discussion for the creation of a non-English language fest. I'm not quite on board with a couple of their points or the way some points are articulated, but I love the basic idea of flexing our non-English-speaking muscles.

Ever since I moved back to the Philippines, I've been pondering the monolingual bias more. I've talked about it on my LJ before, so bear with me if I'm being repetitive. In Manila, people switch back and forth between Tagalog and English pretty much all the time (and then there is Taglish!), so if I were to write a story in English that was set here, how would I deal with the multilingual aspect? Not everyone in Manila is equally fluent in both languages, but it's still not just a matter of slipping into one language for a while; it's both the languages all the time. Someone on my flist was talking about a book -- the title escapes me, forgive me -- where the whole story is in English, but one language uses regular quotes, the other language uses italics, etc. in order to show the way the different languages interact in the protagonist's story. This strategy has the right idea. The thing about compressing everything down to one language, no matter what language it is, is that it stunts the nuances of codeswitching and social cues.

For example, let's approach it from the opposite side: I tried writing SPN fic in Indonesian one time. Not Indochesters -- just canon Winchesters and Jimmy!Castiel, except it was in Indonesian. A thing that stuck out to me was that whenever Dean cursed, I felt an impulse to switch to Sundanese (a language in West Java). My family slips into Sundanese from Indonesian when they're excited or surprised, so it's become a language I associate with high emotion and intimacy. There are systemic reasons for this association. Indonesian is the language of commerce/government/media in the country, and this keeps regional languages like Sundanese to the informal spheres, such as between family and friends, or traditional spheres, often shorthand for 'folk'.

In the USA, this kind of multilingualism seems to be associated almost exclusively with immigrant/multicultural families. In Indonesia, people who also speak Sundanese, Javanese, Balinese, Batak, etc. are not immigrants but have been there for like forever. However, their language has been minoritized and deemed informal anyway. When I write in Indonesian about American Dean cursing, can I switch to Sundanese for these couple of sentences? The sociolinguistic foundations between Indonesia and the USA aren't the same, and the implications of being multilingual are different.

As far as writing in one language about characters who don't always do goes, my favorite solution thus far is alt-text. The first fic I've seen that does this is Promise of the पुरवाई by dhobikikutti, which is about racebent Mary Poppins. She uses alt-text for transliteration in the fic, but I used it for straight-up English translations in my Indonesian!Novaks fic. It makes translations available for those who only do English, but also keeps the nuances for those who also understand Indonesian. This is one more argument for e-publishing also, I think. Modifying alt-text in e-pub technology to help popularize multilingual writing, y/n?

I think I just got jossed by urban development. In my "Cas finds God in Manila" fic, he finds God in Greenhills, but I went there today and my god, they have completely revamped the place. It's bigger than I remember. Do they even still have the pond with the bridge and the adjacent chapel anymore? Maybe Cas was traveling through space-time and looking for God in the Manila of a few years ago. Manila, you move fast.

Anyway, let's talk about the opposite of jossed. ( SPN 6x19 + 6x20 stuff )

You've probably heard about this already. But. I guess you can stand to hear about it again.

HEY. HEY SOUTHEAST ASIA. CAN YOU LIKE. CALM YOUR SHIT DOWN. RING OF FIRE, CAN YOU TAKE A CHILL PILL, THAT'D BE GREAT. JFC.

1) VOLCANO, specifically Java's Mt. Merapi has claimed at least 33 lives, 17 injured, but WAIT! THERE'S MORE!
2) EARTHQUAKE roundabouts the Mentawai Islands, which caused a
2A) TSUNAMI. At least 311 people dead, 400 still missing. 20 villages leveled and approx 20,000 people displaced, because nature loves to kick Sumatra in the teeth.

This all happened in under 24 hours. I BELIEVE THE CORRECT PHRASE IS "WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK." I called my parents asking if our peeps in Yogyakarta (by Merapi) are okay - they're okay! - so yaaay. Also I guess Jakarta flooded the other day? As did West Papua. EVERY TIME I TURN AROUND, INDONESIA, YOU ALWAYS BE BLOWIN UP IN MY FACE.

PHILIPPINES, YOU ARE NOT OFF THE HOOK EITHER. I SEE YOU WITH YOUR SUPERTYPHOON OF 110 MPH WINDS. There were much fewer casualties with the supertyphoon because for the most part, people were on top of their shit with the warning systems, early detection, and evacuations. Food security's gonna go down the shitter a bit because the northern Philippines is the country's rice basket (the stairway to heaven in Banaue, natch), and that's the general area where Juan/Megi stormed through. The Merapi evacuations, eh, could've been better.

BUT LOOK AT YOUR LIFE, INDONESIA'S TSUNAMI WARNING SYSTEM! LOOK AT YOUR CHOICES!:

Indonesia's [tsunami early warning system], completed in 2008 with German aid, has since fallen into such disrepair that it effectively stopped working about a month ago, according to the head of the Meteorology and Geophysic Agency.

The system, which uses buoys to electronically detect sudden changes in water level, worked when it was completed, but by 2009 routine tests of it were showing problems, said the agency chief, who uses the single name Fauzi. By last month, he said, the entire system was broken because of inexperienced operators.

"We do not have the expertise to monitor the buoys to function as intended," he said.

As a result, he said, not a single siren sounded after Monday's quake. [source]

SO THAT HAPPENED. OR DIDN'T.

Surfaid International will take your donations to tsunami relief in Australian dollars. You can also call 1-800-257-957.

Do you guys know of other ways to help out? Other sites to donate to? Surfaid International is the only website I've found that has a specific focus on the Indonesian double whammy. Other websites just have like general donations to the organization. Like, there are some of those here, I guess...

ETA: mercredigirl posts links to some relief efforts we can donate to.

( H50 1x03 & 1x05 -- minimal squee )
( NCIS 5x11 -- no squee )
( Merlin 3x06 -- angels! )

Here are the rest of the meme answers for vanitashaze, hiza_chan, murron, metonomia, cherryshadowz, zempasuchil, dayadhvam_triad, and animus_wyrmis.

( You can probably guess which ones of these I want to turn into actual fic. )

motherlessguns, you guys! It's like gid_hanasheh but for Winchesters. That is to say*, a comm for posting poems that remind you of Winchesters, and poems that you wrote about Winchesters. Come join! SPAM IT WITH SIKEN.

'Kay, so we got a heaven poetry comm, an earth poetry comm. To round things off, we need a hell poetry comm for poems about Ruby and Alastair. y/n?

*Can we popularize the acronym TITS already?


I uploaded some songs from SinoSikat?'s debut album for some people, and I'm gonna throw the links up here too because SinoSikat? are pretty sexy, lemme tell ya. They're from Manila, and they got this badass soul-jazz-groove thing going on.

So Blue - the single. The music video is also pretty cool.
Praning - the 'tude
Akin Ka - the jazz


Item the third, I watched My Bloody Valentine. What an emotionally complex and intellectually satisfying movie that was! The decapitation-by-shovel scene was such a nuanced commentary on the duality of man, and the naked girl titty-bouncing in the parking lot moved me to my very core.

Okay seriously now, where is the Dean/Tom fic.

Things that happen in chat when you're supposed to be sleeping: Castielfest, ya'll! Raise your hand if you'd be interested in a Castiel-centric fic exchange. Gen, slash, het, whatever -- as long as Cas is top-billing. We're thinking sign-ups begin a few days after the S5 finale airs, stay open for a week or so, then participants have a month to write at least 1000 words upon receiving their assignments. vikki has a poll here to gauge interest, and it would be awesome if you could fill it out and let us know your questions/concerns/disagreements/suggestions.

It's Three Weeks For Dreamwidth time, trying to generate more Dreamwidth activity to celebrate its 1-year anniversary, hence the cross-posting. If you, like me, are still like "Dreamwhat?", it might behoove us to check out stepps's Lonely Planet guide to Dreamwidth. And, here's something cool that DW-clicking did for me recently: ephemere's thoughts on Filipino identity and writing about other cultures led me to the post that sparked it ('No Foreigners Allowed' by Charles Tan), which in turn led me to the sidebar of Charles Tan's blog, which is stuffed full of links to Filipino speculative fiction fkdjsfklkjk AWESOME.


This old meme:
1 - Leave a comment, saying you want to be interviewed.
2 - I will respond; I'll ask you five questions.
3 - You'll update your journal with my five questions, and your five answers.
4 - You'll include this explanation.
5 - You'll ask other people five questions when they want to be interviewed.

maboheme asked me five fannish questions ( under the cut. )