#using my literally thousands of words of DA fic headcanon stuff

[bogunicorn]

have you ever had such intense imposter syndrome that you'll see a real-world thing that's inspired literally dozens of fictional equivalents and still be like, "but if i do that people will know i'm a horrible evil plagiarist who steals all the ideas"?

[cutesilyo]

Notes and References for i know your eyes in the morning sun

Hi! These are notes and references for my IndoPhil fic i know your eyes in the morning sun, so please check it out before reading this!

Title: i know your eyes in the morning sun Summary: When a homesick Indonesia is unexpectedly taken out of his meeting for a day trip in Rome with Philippines, he isn't expecting much more than exhaustion ahead of him. Instead, what happens is a whirlwind of food, fun, and a surprising amount of reflection on their histories and differences as nations. And as he looks deeper and deeper in the other nation's bright eyes, he learns to come to terms with the feelings he's been ignoring for far, far too long. Alternatively: a nation who's too attached to the past goes on a date with a nation whose entire philosophy is built on trying to live in the moment. Yes, there is kissing involved. Read on: AO3 | FF.net

Scene 1: Pizza al taglio

As coincidence would have it, the G20 2021 Summit actually will be held in Rome, Italy. However, it’ll be on the end of October rather than the end of September like how its depicted in the fic. I’m also very much ignoring the COVID-19 pandemic. Pretend it never happened.

Borobudur is the largest Buddhist temple in the world, found in the island of Java, Indonesia. It was built way back in the 7th Century and it's probably Indonesia's top most visited site.

Terang bulan is basically like a really large, fluffy, folded pancake. It also has a variety of different names and is also eaten in Brunei, Malaysia, and Singapore.

If you could have a convenience store dedicated solely to pizza, that's what pizza al taglio establishments are like. Its literal translation is pizza by the cut, and since it's a lot more common to find in Rome than in other places in Italy, it's also called Roman-style pizza. The layout for the al taglio shop that Indonesia and Philippines go to is inspired from the shop that me and my family went to: a small family establishment just a short walk away from the Vatican.

You can actually find a recipe for Indonesia’s arugula and mozzarella pizza here: https://shared.publicmediaconnect.org/docs/atk/Pizza_Taglio_Cooks_Illustrated.pdf

Scene 2: Souvenir store + Bus stop

Indonesian rupiahs are notoriously hyperinflated, so the 15 euros that Philippines uses to buy the keychains convert to 250k+ rupiahs. That's around 50k short for actually being able to buy a local economy flight on Lion Air. For comparison, the same amount of euros convert to approximately 900 Philippine pesos. It’s also a few hundred pesos short of buying a local economy flight on Cebu Pacific.

There actually was a point when a G20 meeting was held in the Coliseum. It was the G20 culture ministers meeting just a few months ago, in July 2021.

Yes, on top of the thousands of festivals we already have, Filipinos also celebrate Oktoberfest! It's more of an excuse for local beer companies to shamelessly promote their product and encourage drinking fests on a massive scale, but a more legitimate Oktoberfest celebration is organized by the German Club in Manila. Lucky Philippines gets to celebrate it authentically in Munich with the German brothers, who historically aimed to conquer the Philippines before America managed to stake his claim. So if you sense that Germany is being oddly shy towards Philippines here, that's just Germany being embarrassed because of their history.

Italy's major international airport in Rome is Aeroporto Internazionale di Roma–Fiumicino "Leonardo da Vinci", so you generally just call it Fiumicino for short. A possible travel route for flying from the Philippines to Italy is Clark-Dubai-Rome, and another is Manila-Hong Kong-Rome.

Scene 3: Gianicolo

Bali, Boracay, and El Nido are beaches that serve as major tourist destinations.

Vietnam has already been mentioned to be a menace when she's drunk in her most recent character introduction. Laos is at the top of ASEAN when it comes to alcohol consumption, with the average Laotian drinking seven liters of pure alcohol every year.

Indonesia is sometimes known as the Invisible Nation. What this means to say is that there have not been many things that Indonesia has done that made massive waves on the global scale. From what I’ve read, this seems to have been an especially popular sentiment among Western analysts during the Cold War.

Australia's awkward attempt at an apology is a reference to when the Australian government had allegedly monitored and spied on the phone calls of several Indonesian officials. Indonesia and Australia have a history that goes far deeper than that though.

Monas is a common abbreviation for Indonesia's Monumen Nasional, proudly standing tall in the middle of Merdeka Square as a commemoration of the fight for Indonesian independence. Taman Surapati is a large, chill public park; it also has a monument dedicated to commemorating ASEAN there. Both are located in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital. Meanwhile, Philippines' mention of Luneta refers to Luneta Park. It's also known as Rizal Park, as it's the place where the national hero Jose Rizal was executed for the influence he had in encouraging the fight for Philippine independence.

In Rome, there are seven major hills: they formed the geographical heart of Ancient Rome, with Palatino and Campidoglio as the most significant given how connected they were to Rome's founding and Rome's religion. Gianicolo is outside the boundaries of Ancient Rome, and as such, it isn't counted among the seven hills. It is dedicated to the Roman god Janus and was a place for the augurs to divine the will of the gods — kind of like a prophecy, if a prophecy could be divined from bird entrails. Now it's a great spot for a scenic view of modern Rome which features, among other things, a large statue of Giuseppe Garibaldi. Garibaldi was a major figure in the Italian Reunification.

Nusantara means many different things, but in the era of the Majapahit empire, it referred to the vassal kingdoms in what is now modern-day Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, Timor Leste, and the southern parts of modern-day Thailand and Philippines. Modern usage of the word in Indonesia generally refers to the Indonesian archipelago, but it can also be used to refer to the entirety of maritime Southeast Asia. Culturally and historically, Southeast Asia is divided into the mainland region (the countries connected to the Asian continent: Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar) and maritime (the countries that are islands and archipelagos: Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Brunei, Philippines).

Italy, together with the United Kingdom, is the largest European migration destination for Filipinos. The largest migration destination for Filipinos in general is America.

Shout-out to Ro-na for this wonderful headcanon of Philippines being sickly in his early days as a Spanish colony! The galleon ships used to facilitate trade between the Philippines and Mexico (perhaps the Philippines' most major contribution to the Spanish crown) would often be attacked by pirates or destroyed in typhoons, especially in the first few decades.

Majapahit and Srivijaya are only two of pre-colonial Indonesia's many powerful empires. A lot of the pre-colonial stuff has been simplified for brevity's sake, but a brief summary of it all basically goes like this: pre-colonial Indonesia was involved with everyone in maritime SEA, where everyone traded with each other; and mainland SEA was non-stop fighting where the major powers were the empires that would later become Vietnam and the Khmer empire that would influence everyone else in mainland SEA. You can find a more detailed look into mainland SEA history by Gemu in her posts here, who is my main influence for everything mainland SEA-related.

A young Brunei picking flowers for a young Philippines is a reference to all the marriages that had occurred between their nobility during the pre-colonial era.

Scene 4: Apartment

The turtle fountain in Rome is a real thing: Fontana delle Tartarughe was originally designed with dolphins in mind, but the dolphins were removed and replaced by turtles. In fandom, you usually see Philippines calling Indonesia kuya, which is Tagalog for older brother. In at least one Indonesian language (I can't remember which one at the moment, sorry!), kuya means turtle.

Tondo, Seludong, Butuan, Sulu, Sugbu, and Panay are all polities in pre-colonial Philippines, two for each of the main island groups in the country: Luzon in the north, Mindanao in the south, and Visayas in the middle. Unlike pre-colonial Indonesia, the societies in the Philippines were never united by a single kingdom or empire; the Philippine islands were only united through the efforts of Spanish and American colonization.

Filipinos tend to sing a lot. Many of us are really good at it. Karaoke is really popular here.

Philippines' PIN code of 8862 is a reference to when ASEAN was founded: August 8, 1962. The founding members were Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.

This might be as good of a time as ever for me to mention that I am depicting Philippines and Indonesia as Catholic and Muslim respectively. Filipinos are predominantly Catholic and the Philippines is the largest Catholic country in Asia, while Indonesia has a number of official religions and is the largest Muslim nation in the world.

Special thanks to Desa for helping me with Indonesia's prayer times! Normally, Muslims pray five times a day, but when travelling Muslims are allowed to pray only three times. This is called Qasr salah, or Qasr sholat in Indonesia. What is usually Fajr (called Subuh in Indonesia), Zuhr, Asr, Magrib, and Isha becomes only Fajr, Zuhr-Asr, and Mahgrib-Isha; essentially, without getting into the specifics of time, a prayer for sunrise, afternoon, and night. The mosques will remind everyone when it's prayer time with adhan (called adzan in Indonesia), but in non-Muslim countries abroad, many Muslims have to use websites and apps to keep track. Something I didn't mention in the fic is that Rome actually has the largest mosque in the Western world, Moschea di Roma, so Indonesia could have potentially prayed there. 

Scene 5: Apartment dinner table

Sholat wouldn’t take Indonesia more than a few minutes, so imagine that he did something else while waiting for Philippines to finish cooking.

Baked fish with sliced lemons is a meal that got served to me a lot in Italy. Chop suey is Chinese, but China has had a significant cultural influence for most of Southeast Asia throughout history; the Indonesian version is known as kap cay. Indomie Mi Goreng is a particularly tasty and famous kind of instant noodles from Indonesia. It's very popular in many Asian countries. Indonesia doesn’t drink, but Philippines is drinking white wine because that’s what you’re supposed to do when eating fish. Red wine goes with meat.

Admittedly, this is my own personal headcanon, but I like to think of Philippines living in Spain with the other Spanish colonies while everyone else in maritime SEA were left behind to live in their own countries. It's my own neat Hetalia universe explanation for how much Spanish influence there is in Filipino culture, and how isolated Filipinos can sometimes feel among their neighbors.

I do think that Philippines would have a Hispanic-sounding human name, but I've never really settled on what name actually would be: in fandom, Felipe, Lorenzo, and Jaime get thrown around a lot. In contrast, it seems like most people have settled on Dirga (short for Dirgantara) for Indonesia.

Philippines is sometimes called as la colonia abandonada in Spanish sources: the abandoned colony. Because the Philippines was so far away, Spain couldn't manage the colony directly and had to rely on Mexico/Nueva España to do the dirty work until Mexico became independent. This led to a more relaxed manner in how the country was managed for most of its Spanish colonial life; some scholars even go as far as saying that Spain's treatment of the Philippines was kinder than Spain's treatment of Latin America. I don't really agree — it was different, sure, but it wasn't kind in the least.

Contrast that with Indonesia as the largest and most important colony of the Dutch empire. Aside from all the money and economic prosperity that Indonesia gave to the empire, you'll also find many Dutch songs and hymns that are all praises to Indonesia. Much of the research in Indonesian history, ethnography, and archeology was made possible because of Dutch interest and support; until now, the Netherlands remains to be Europe's leader when it comes to Indonesian studies. This isn't to say that Netherlands treated Indonesia well, however.

After the Japanese occupation of Indonesia in WW2, Netherlands fought to keep power over the archipelago. Needless to say, the Netherlands failed. Indonesia was recognized as an independent country soon after.

Indië is the Dutch colonial name for Indonesia.

APEC is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, of which Philippines and Indonesia (and Thailand!) are members.

Scene 6 + 7: Apartment bedroom

What was Philippines doing in the 1920s, you ask? Being an American colony and trying to lobby for laws that would hasten his independence. Indonesia was in the middle of what’s called the Indonesian National Awakening; all the different peoples under Indonesia were beginning to come together and unite to fight for a single independent nation.

As a tarsier, Pien is actually supposed to be nocturnal; he shouldn't be sleeping at night at all. Maybe he just got jet lagged? Who knows.

BL stands for the boy's love genre of TV series. For years, Thailand had been the lead when it came to BL production with shows like TharnType and SOTUS. Recently, the Philippines has also been developing BL series — Gameboys specifically had achieved worldwide acclaim and is distributed globally through Netflix.

Filipino languages tend to have more complex verb conjugation and sentence structure compared to Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia. The linguistic explanation for this is that most of the Filipino languages are based on the older Proto-Malayo-Polynesian language while Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia are based on the newer, more simplified descendants of Proto-Malayo-Polynesian.

Pramoedya Ananta Toer was an Indonesian author that focused a lot of his work on nationalistic sentiments. He has a quote on bravery that I really like: Dalam hidup kita, cuma satu yang kita punya, yaitu keberanian. Kalau tidak punya itu, lantas apa harga hidup kita ini? Loosely translated, this reads as: In our life, we only have one thing, which is bravery. If it’s not, what is the value of our life?

Indonesia, as a large archipelago in the Pacific Ring of Fire, has a lot of active volcanoes. In contrast, the Philippines is regularly hit by tens of typhoons annually.

There are an estimated 12 million Filipinos overseas, and this number consistently rises through the years. It's one of the largest diaspora populations: name a country, you'll probably find a Filipino working there somewhere. OFWs (Overseas Filipino Workers) account for 10% of the country's population and the remittances they send back to their families account for 10% of the country's GDP. Indonesia has a similar phenomenon with TKIs (Tenaga Kerja Indonesia), of which there are 4.5 million worldwide.

Post-independence, Indonesia was very paranoid over Western influence in Southeast Asia. In that same time period, Philippine delegates to international conferences would always speak of democracy and the looming threat of Communism; even though most of the Asian delegates would prefer to move past Western problems and disputes to focus on a united Asia.

Telenovelas are soap operas produced in Latin America. They became popular in Southeast Asia as they were distributed and remade here. The Indonesian equivalent is the sinetron, and the Filipino equivalent is the teleserye.

Additionally, I cannot stress enough how much this fic is built on the foundations laid by others. I’ve already mentioned how much I took inspiration from Gemu’s depiction of mainland SEA, but I also credit Indonesia’s thing for temples to Desa; the passive-aggressive energy between Thailand and Philippines to Hali; amnesiac Piri to Koko, Kopi, and Sopas (among the many). There are a dozen other things I can attribute to a huge assortment of writers and artists: that Singapore has trouble remembering his pre-colonial roots as well, that Piri might have had a good relationship with Romano, Piri’s general flirty and flighty attitude, Indonesia’s awkwardness and big brother aura, etcetera, etcetera. If you’re someone that has been contributing to the SEA fandom these past few months, thank you. Thank you so much. 

[trashboatprince]

Time for another one-shot of Beast Bendy’s time in the studio as a little toon.

Dober, if you want me to change anything, let me know, I’m just going with my own headcanon on Bendy’s creation from the Ink Machine for this.

On with the fic!

--

Thomas Conner never expected that when he was hired by Joey Drew to work on installing things, that he’d eventually find himself involved in creating life through machinery and animation and not in the way it was done upstairs.

Months and thousands of dollars went into rebuilding the inside of the studio. Parts were left the same, but many others were completely rebuilt from scratch. Upstairs, in an area once used for offices, had been converted into a whole new room for a big project, the Ink Machine, designed by Wally Franks. However, the one that stood before Thomas now was the prototype, the one that he had designed with Joey and Wally, to show GENT what it was that they were investing in and having sponsorship with.

The machine was meant to produce more and more ink, enough for the animators to use for years to come without ever spending a dime to any ink-producing companies. It was obviously a huge expense to save a couple hundred bucks, that’s what Tom thought, until Joey began explaining more and more of what else it was going to do.

‘Bring life to the cartoons’, he had happily announced when the mechanic asked about any other purposes for the Ink Machine.

Don’t animators do that already? With all those drawings and music and stuff?

Nope, no, no, no! Joey had shook his head, getting too close to Thomas, as he loudly informed him that he was literally going to bring life to the cartoons.

Thomas left and came back a week later because the higher ups forced him to come back to the crazy man and his little studio.

If it wasn’t for the pretty girl who worked in the sound department, Thomas wouldn’t bother dealing with listening to Joey’s plans and ideas for using magic and shit to make cartoon characters into living beings. That lovely angel kept him from also strangling Drew.

Oh Allison, you are a saving grace...

The man stared at the machine in front of him. This wasn’t going to work, this was completely stupid and pointless. He looked over at Wally, who looked nervous as he fumbled with the controls of the machine. The studio’s man projectionist, Norman Polk, stood nearby, holding a tin with a cartoon reel inside of it.

“Where’s Drew?” Thomas asked, crossing his arms.

“He said he couldn’t come for the tests, remember? He has that week-long trip he’s on, so we’re just gonna have to do it all ourselves. Says he trusts us completely.” Wally grunted as he tried to turn a loose bolt on the machine, gotta make sure it doesn’t explode on them.

“I doubt it’s gonna work,” Norman sighed, drumming his fingers on the tin, “but if Mr. Drew thinks it’ll make any sort of progress... can’t help but to try it, ya know?”

Thomas scoffed, looking around the room. There had been ink-painted circles and symbols all over, including on the floor, under the nozzle of the machine. The air was freezing inside the room, and the lights were terribly dim, poor Wally had to hold a flashlight in his mouth as he worked.

The information that Joey had given them over the month since the machine’s completion was basically summed up as ‘put the reel into the machine, speak the incantation, and let the ink flow’.

Sounded simple enough, but this was nonsense. Whatever, as Wally puts it, Joey signs the checks, might as well do this to humor him. He glanced at the doorway, knowing that upstairs was the offering room, set up with what Joey claimed as ‘gifts to the gods’ for this project. Thomas was surprised that they weren’t using the big Ink Machine that Wally had designed, but then again, gotta try the prototype first. Plus, the new machine was still in construction, can’t use it if it wasn’t fully up to speed. 

The switch in the offering room, once the break room, had been flipped already, the pipes were flowing with ink and they were gonna back up and explode if Franks didn’t finish!

“Done!” Wally grinned, stepping back. “Now for da reel, Mista Polk!” He held out a hand and Norman rolled his eyes, giving it to Wally, telling the janitor to be careful.

From what Tom knew, the cartoon was the very first one that was distributed to the public, The Dancing Demon. He had only seen it once, when he got stuck watching it in the theater room with some of the other employees. It was simple, just that Bendy character, dancing to a song, before the tune changes and he just goes nuts with his dancing, only to get pulled off the stage by a cane.

Well, almost gets pulled off. His head is taken away, but his body remains and happily continues to dance.

It was dumb and silly, but people like it, and it’s the movie that Joey insisted be used. Though, there was a bitter tone to his voice when he said that it had to be that one, it had some guy name Henry involved with it. A bit of asking around and Tom found out that Henry was the original animator for the studio and co-founder, lucky bastard escaped this place when he had the chance.

He watched as Wally inserted the reel into the machine, looking at the giant ink tank with a nervous glance. “Here goes nothin’...” He threw the switch and the machine came to life.

It loudly banged around, nearly pulling the bolts that kept it down out of the floor. Ink splattered everywhere and the three men has to hold up their arms to keep the ink from getting on them.

“Time to recite that bullshit!” Thomas shouted over the loud noises.

The words Joey made them memorize was complete nonsense to the mechanic, but he figured it was probably Latin or Aramaic, at least from what Norman figured. It made no sense to him and he didn’t want to know what he was saying loudly over the sounds of the Ink Machine.

The markings around them started to glow faintly yellow, the color spreading out onto the walls and floor as they continued to speak. The machine stopped spraying ink as something seemed to be wedged in the faucet, trying to come out.

Whatever it was, it was trying to force itself out.

Running over, Thomas grabbed onto the wet, solid lump of ink without thinking. He pulled hard on it, hearing it come out with a cartoony-pop sound, ink spraying out once more as he landed on his back, a weight dropped on him hard and knocked the air outta of him.

He coughed and shoved whatever was on him off, hearing it splat next to him as the machine was shut off by Wally. “Conner! Are you alright?” Norman asked as he approached.

“Fine, uhg.” Thomas coughed, sitting up to rub at the ink on his face. He stopped when he noticed movement out of the corner of his eye, nearly jumping when the lump he had pulled out started to rise up.

The three men watched in horror as the object rose, it was rather tall, and ink was shifting about on it. A lump formed, almost like a head, where strange horn-like appendages grew from it. A blob of ink dropped from the ‘head’ and the three stared at the white, toothy smile that showed.

Tom was suddenly yanked back, pulled away from the smiling mass and the circle he had fallen in.

The mass wiggled and tried to move towards them, two bumps come from what could be its shoulders. They flailed, spraying bits of ink about, as it tried to follow them. Then it dropped forward, face-first into the floor.

“... Is it dead?” Wally whispered, gripping Thomas’ shoulders tightly.

A strange, high pitched squeal came from the thing, making them all shout in alarm. They watched as it curled in on itself as the circle started to glow brighter than before and Thomas was blinded for a moment.

The light faded, and the room was plunged in sudden darkness as the power went out throughout the studio. They were left alone in pitch blackness with a creature they created.

There was a clicking sound, and a light turned on, Norman had found the flashlight Wally had used. He pointed it at the blob, only for them to see that it was gone.

“Oh shit, oh shit...” Wally wheezed out.

“Where did dat thing go?” Norman moved the light about, trying to find it.

Thomas watched as the light’s beam moved about, before he spotted something. He stood up quickly, taking the flashlight from Norman, and pointed it at the Ink Machine. “Found it.”

There was a bit of solid black, and solid white, peeking out from behind the machine. What looked like fingers in white gloves gripped the side of the machine, and a black and white face that was way too familiar to the mechanic was looking at them in fear.

“Sweet mother o’ Mary, we made Bendy a livin’ toon.” Norman said from behind Thomas. “Dat crazy ol’ Mr. Drew was right.” “You gotta be kiddin’ me!” Wally exclaimed loudly, making Bendy hide from the shout. Thomas turned, glaring at the shorter man, before approaching the Ink Machine.

He knelt down, seeing that Bendy, if that was really him, had pressed himself against the wall, unsure of where to go or what to do.

It was amazing, he looked exactly like the cartoon character, just completely solid and alive. He looked so small and scared as he looked at Thomas with large, soulless, black eyes.

Soulless... that’s one way of putting this. There was something so strange about him, he looked just like the character, seemed to register fear and curiosity as he looked at the flashlight and at Thomas, but... he gave off an air that didn’t sit right with the man.

Then again, he was made through demonic magic, a cartoon, and ink, so there was obviously gonna be something so otherworldly of this guy.

With a heavy sigh, he held out a hand. “Come on, kid, let’s get ya outta here.”

Bendy looked at the offered hand before carefully touching it, just as the lights started to come back on. “Do we tell Joey about this?” Thomas heard Wally say as he picked up Bendy.

“Let’s see if the kid lives, who knows how stable he is with that prototype we designed. It was only meant for making ink, not creating life like this.”

“Joey’s still gonna wanna know.” Norman frowned.

“I’ll tell him when he gets back, I’ll even write down everything that happened, I’ve got this.” Thomas replied as he walked past, heading to get back upstairs and out of that room. He had taken noticed that when the lights turned on, the walls were stained a sepia tone of yellow, he hoped that it didn’t cause any problems, nor did he want to hear any complaints from Sammy if those stains got down to the music department on the floor below.

He’d deal with all of the clean up late, right now, he needed to deal with the little cartoon he had helped in creating.

He hoped this didn’t come back to haunt him.

--

The room this took place in is the room where Henry collapsed at the end of chapter one)