#palatawan

[henriediosa]

palatawan nerdy prudes! or, new current working title: hindi ako loser

image description and translations in the alt text!

more palatawan lore under the cut. more palatawan (tagalog hatchetfield) stuff here!

the "suspenders and a bow tie" joke doesn't work anymore because filipino high schools have uniforms — i have a couple versions of that scene in mind, including one where i just acknowledge the joke doesn't work (the one in the drawing), or it becomes about his long hair (he'd get called gay for that, and not in a fun way), or the joke changes to how he still wears the uniform outside of school, and that's his attempt to avoid getting bullied

steph with her coloured hair and peter with his long hair are both dress code violations and it's kind of cute that they have that in common

steph gets away with it because her dad's the mayor

[sillystringedrat]

hi, this is henrie diosa, i just wanted to say thank you for all the nice comments you left on my palatawan work. i often worry that my work will never find its people, and then lovely folks like you come along and i am reassured.

in the postscript i have attached a little gift for you. (i actually have emma’s quitting speech in my drafts, maybe i’ll finish that up and post the whole scene!)

thinking about the implications,

henrie diosa 💕

—

— Hello??? Hello??? Diyos ko po, isang kapeng barako lang—

Lalabas si Emma na may dalang coffee pot.

— Kapeng barako, parating na ‘ko 🎶—

— ‘Wag po!! Emma, ‘wag kang kumanta, parang awa ng Diyos!

— Ito na, ito na. Ikaw naman oh, naaalala kita. Si Pablo, di ba? Bakit nga ba ayaw mo ng kumakanta?

— Emma! Kinakausap mo ako… na parang normal na tao…

— At pag napansin tayo ng boss ko, I’m fired. New company policy: we sing kada tip, kada pasok, kada order — bawat galaw ko ata dapat kakanta eh!

Gumagawa ng kape si Emma.

— Emma, sa tingin ko may napakamali sa mundo ngayon.

— Puta, talaga. Buong umaga ko kayang inaral ‘yung tanginang bagong tip song, ‘kakapagod.

Hihilahin ni Pablo si Emma sa tabi.

— Emma, Emma, Emma. Pakiramdam kong may… nakakahawa, na masama, dito sa Palatawan. Alam kong hindi ito kapani-paniwala, at hindi rin katakot-takot, pero nakakatakot siya kapag naintindihan mo siya ng lubos. Mangako ka na iintindihin mo siya ng lubos!

— Okay, okay, promise.

— Emma… parang yung buong mundo nagiging musical. Kumakanta.

Paalis na si Emma.

— Pag-isipan mo! Kahit sandali lang.

Tatango-tango si Emma.

— Nakakatakot, di ba?

— Okay, medyo takot na nga ako ngayon…

— Dapat lang!

Lalabas sina Nora at Zhoey. “Emma, tiiiip!”

— Ay salamat sa Diyos, sandali lang, yung tanginang tip song!

OH MY GOD!??!!??!?!? I didn’t even know my inbox EXISTED and I get hit with THIS!!! A wittle snippet for lil old me what the heck that’s amazing!!!!!!!! Thank you so much this is wonderful, very excited to hear you’re working on more! Salamat Mwa Mwa!!💖🎀⭐️

[henriediosa]

milo 💚💙

Kuya! Good morning kuya!

Big brother! Good morning, big brother!

Pinagtimpla kita ng milo.

I made you some milo (hot chocolate).

Try mo naman oh.

Try it, come on.

Masarap yan.

It’s delicious.

Mapapakanta ka sa sarap.

So delicious it’ll make you sing.

id in the alt text and under the cut! this is from before npmd, so pete looks a bit more like nick lang. and i was thinking about how he was in the la dee da dah flash mob. more palatawan (tagalog hatchetfield) stuff here!

id: pencil on paper sketch of peter spankoffski/jakolino, a young boy with large glasses and short messy hair wearing suspenders and a bow tie. he is drawn from the waist up, holding two mugs of hot chocolate. the clouds of steam coming out of the mugs are drawn angular, like lightning. id ends.

ko-fi

[henriediosa]

Why doesn't he want to sing?

A series of ID pic portraits of an imaginary Filipino cast to go with my Tagalog translation of The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals!

A version with the blue shit under the cut (cn: blood), along with some Palatawan lore

From left to right, top to bottom:

Ken Davidson - third culture kid with expat parents running a ""call center"" on the sleepy little island of Palatawan

Lottie Magayon - nervous sweetheart who takes way too many smoke breaks. iglesia ni cristo. Magayon means beautiful in bikol, and is also the name of an active volcano.

Ted Jakolino - department head, but nobody calls him Sir Ted out of the office. ccf. Jakolino is making the same pun as spankoffski

Elmo Mangubat - best friend and struggling dad. mangubat = go to the forest = wood-ward

Melissa - nobody knows her last name, she's just Miss Melissa. likes cats

Emma Perez - disinherited rich kid doing a TESDA agriculture course while working at Beanie's, hates being called Ate (big sister) Emma so of course Zhoey calls her that all the time. her full name is Ma. Emmanuella de los Reyes Perez.

Enrique Ermita - kooky reclusive biology professor who is inexplicably also a heroic tenor. his students call him Prof Kiko.

Pablo Mateo - two first names. default man, palatawan born and bred. has never left and never wants to

Random fun things about Palatawan that I just want to share

The Witchwood is called Pinagputulan (the place of the cut-off things)

CCRP is one of those shady call centers that take up way more space than they're supposed to.

The Latte Hotte is the Beanie-bini (binibini)

ID: (1) a 3x3 collage of eight digital portraits that look like monochrome ID pictures: sir ken, miss lottie, sir ted, elmo, melissa, emma, prof kiko, and pablo. in the centre are the words "bakit ayaw niya kumanta?"

(2) the same collage, but all of the portraits have dark grey backgrounds except pablo, who has a cyan background. all of the characters except emma and pablo have cyan eyes and various degrees of blue gore on their faces, and all of the other characters are looking at pablo. ID ends.

[henriediosa]

[Naka-vocal rest ako. (Ano daw?)]

[I’m on vocal rest. (What did she say?)]

Naka-vocal re—

I’m on vocal re—

Pak shet. ‘Banaman Ate Emma, now I have to make timpla tea with honey maygahd ‘kaasarrr

Fuck shit. Oh come on (big sister) Emma, now I have to brew tea with honey ohmigod how annoyinggg

although there’s really no way to succinctly translate how conyo zhoey is being here. imagine a valley girl accent, except when she swears in her aside. yeah i added an h to her name for no reason except to make her look more conyo. this is zhoey chan, the beanie-bini (latte hotte), emma’s manager. she still calls emma áte just to rub it in that emma’s older than her.

id in the alt text and below the cut. more palatawan (tagalog hatchetfield) stuff here!

id: pencil on paper sketch of zoe chambers/zhoey chan, from the neck up. she is a young woman in a barista uniform, wearing her hair up with a visor, and a blouse with a peter pan collar and a black bow. her expression is pleased, and then annoyed. id ends.

[henriediosa]

palatawan: the old money families

one of the things that i think makes palatawan really work as a tagalog translation of the world of hatchetfield is the class divide. if i could drive you through manila right now, you'd get it — the high-rises next to the slums, the sheets of metal covering the shanties next to the highway. there's something very filipino about an island with resorts and mansions on one side and a trailer park on the other.

i think the old money of palatawan are the panginoong maylupa, the landlords who bought up the land and built the mansions. so let's start with the people who made hatchetfield their own little satanic paradise:

the waylon family

Agatha and Mathias Flavio - so waylon is from the old english name weland, which probably means "cunning". it's the name of a legendary smith. someone who makes metal implements is a very cool namesake for the family who built hatchetfield. so i went for the name of our own legendary smith, ang panday (which is just The Smith in tagalog). he's a comics character. but it felt too on the nose to just use panday (after all, they're not the smiths, that would be too plain) so i went for his first name.

the perkins/houston family

Ma. Emmanuella de los Reyes Perez - it's emma! yeah, i think she comes from old money — her parents had land that she turned into perky's buds, and she had the freedom and resources to go backpacking as a young woman. we don't see it much from her because emma's trying to distance herself from her family, and i bet the backpacking has sort of roughed her up a good bit. perkins and perez both derive from the name peter.

Ma. Janella Perez Corazon - áte (big sister) janella. i changed her name because jane in a filipino accent sounds too much like jenny, and they could be confused with each other. going into psychology is a really interesting choice for her, because we don't actually have psychiatric workers for our population right now. so i think it speaks to how perfect and pure of heart she seems.

Tomas Corazon - the hugh in "hugh's town" (houston) means heart, and so does corazon. i think it works for a guy with such big feelings, who cares so much about his family.

Timothy Corazon / Tim - this is a personal thing that you may have noticed if you look at how i name my own characters, but i like it when characters have full names that they can derive nicknames from. he can't just be tim on his birth certificate, that's not a whole name. give your babies (characters) whole names.

the murray/monroe family

Rosalinda Iñiga Camella Villar Rivera - you bet i gave linda a long fancy name. camella villar is a reference to an actual filipino land-owning political family, and iñiga is a reference to one of my exes. hey, i can be petty too.

Gerald Rivera - so fancy and yet so generic. he stays in the background and that's exactly where he should be

Rio, Abra, Pasig, and Chico Rivera - all of linda’s children are named after rivers. is it because the monroe also means (the mouth of a) river? i’m not sure why, but i am keeping the pattern.

Roman Milagroso Villar - he just felt like he needed a second name. why not miraculous? it fits his ego. murray comes from an old irish name that means "master", so i picked a surname derived from the latin word for a village. they own the village (the hatchetfield boating society and the honey queen pageant board)

the young family

Sherman and Sheila Cabataan - this one's easy because the name is obviously a nod to their eternal youth. so it's kabataan, "youth" but spelled with a c to make it look vintage. (when the philippines was colonised by spain, the /k/ sound was spelled with a c like it is in spanish.)

so i've already done CCRP and the nerdy prudes (+ max); which section of hatchetfield population would y'all like to see translated next?

[henriediosa]

i'm still thinking about names, so. palatawan nerdy prudes

stephanie "stef" ngsinco - lauter means "lute player", and the "ng" in ngsingco means lute. i think the lauters are old money, like the youngs and the murrays, so i spelled their chinese surname like it's from the spanish colonial era (think of the cojuangco family). it also lets me make a pun about how she's a singko bc her grades are terrible (a 5 [cinco/singko] is the worst grade)

peter "pete" jakolino - his other nickname is milo bc that's what i wanted to name him back when he was still Hot Chocolate Boy and i wanna keep it. maybe just ted calls him that? or maybe that's another name the bullies call him bc he has low blood sugar and they caught him snacking on milo powder. jakol-ino is making the same pun as spank-off-ski

ruthwina ayah "rutay" malate - fleming comes from flanders which means "waterlogged land", and malate means "marsh" and is also the name of a place. i didn't have anyone with a classic filipino portmanteau name yet, so i picked her. (in my mind her mom's name is ruth and her dad's name is edwin, so: ruthwina)

ricardo "karding" magbanua - lipschitz is a place name, but instead of trying to match it in meaning, i wanted to give him something that the bullies could use to tease him, like shit-lips. magbanua means "villager" and the bullies call him mag-banyo, "go to the bathroom"! because he's stinky!

grace dalisay dimaano - dalisay means pure, and dimaano is "one who cannot be touched/affected/injured". it's technically in a "cannot be harmed in battle" warrior sort of way but now it's also in a chastity way. her parents call her lasya (from grace/gracia). when people call her chastity instead of chasity, what i'm gonna do is change the accent from dimaáno (cannot be touched) to dimaanò ("can't take a hint", but also, euphemistically, "cannot be fucked")

bonus:

maxwell macatangay - jägerman means hunter, and macatangay means "the one who can snatch away". also the bit when he calls himself the "jägermeister" is "maka-tanduay" (tanduay is rhum)

[henriediosa]

inspired by @louissatturi's portuguese lords in black post: palatawan lords in black

they're called Mga Taga-Mundong Walang Kulay "those who live in the world without colour", which also covers webby because she also lives in the Black and White. if the script calls for a distinction between the brothers and webby i think i'll just go with Haring Itim "black monarch" and Haring Puti "white monarch"

but i really don't want to use that too much bc i don't like black=evil/white=good symbolism. yes i know hatchetfield is full of that. my playground, my rules

inb4 i know we use hari for king and reyna for queen now, but hari used to not be gendered! that's why "hail holy queen" is "aba po santa mariang hari"

anyway so i started translating the lords' names because i was translating the wiggly jingle and it was really hard to do wordplay with a name that didn't play well with tagalog phonology. so i gave them nicknames the way we make nicknames in tagalog, with a repeated syllable

i was inspired by the way eugene evasco translated "Spikeys, Prickles, & Prongies" by natasha vizcarra into "Tultulis, Turturok, at Tuktusok" (link to the book)

wiggly is botbot, from kembot "wiggle"

pokey is tantan, from kanta "song"

tinky is toktok, from katok "knock"

blinky is raprap, from kurap "blink"

nibbly is gatgat, from kagat "bite"

luckily all the words i picked start with k too!

their full names (for now) are wigogibot, pokanta, tinoy-karaktok, bulinkurap, and kagatigat. raprap is the funniest to me because that's a valid nickname for someone named rafael.

webby doesn't get a nickname that follows this pattern because her brothers hate her. hannah calls her ate agiw, "big sister cobweb"

[henriediosa]

Palatawan - Petsa de Peligro - "This is Hatchetfield."

See, Becky Barnes, this is Hatchetfield. Not that ra-ra, school spirit, cheerleader bullshit that you never grew out of. It's why you stayed with Stanley, that monster husband of yours, right up until the moment he got bored and ran off. Or did you think your neighbors didn't notice you were wearing sunglasses on cloudy days? Turtlenecks in the summer? Well, they knew what was happening, they just didn't care. And that's why you disgust me. Not because you're so naive; because you're so weak. Oh, stop crying, Gerald, I wasn't talking to you.

Becky, gising! Ito ang Palatawan. Hindi iyang let's-go let's-go na chinicheerdance mo, na parang hindi ka na tumanda lampas high school. Becky, wake up! This is Hatchetfield. [1] Not that let's-go let's-go [2] that you cheerdance (that's a verb), as if you never got any more mature after high school.

[1] Credit to Kaesyo#6197 on Discord for suggesting palataw "hatchet", because before this I was either using the English name (which would not be a believable PH place name unless it was an American development [ew]), now we have Palatawan, "a place of hatchets"

[2] like ra-ra, this is a common cheer used by cheerleaders/cheerdancers

Kaya nga hindi mo nagawang hiwalayan yung halimaw mong asawa; ikaw ang iniwan kasi na-umay na siya sa iyo. That's why you were never able to leave that monster husband of yours; you were the one whom he left because he got so sick [3] of you.

[3] Umay is when you eat too many sweet or fatty things and you feel ill.

Ano? Akala mo di ka halatang-halata noon? Tag-araw naka-longsleeves, tag-ulan naka-shades? What? You thought you weren't glaringly obvious [4] back then? (In the) dry season (you were) wearing (clothes with) long sleeves, (in the) wet season (you were) wearing shades?

[4] reduplication for intensity/emphasis

Aba, alam naming lahat kung ano ang nangyayari, wala lang kaming pakialam sa iyo. Kasi kahit api-apihin ka pa dyan, hindi ka cute. Tanga ka lang, at kinadidirian kita. Ah, we all knew what was happening, it's only that we didn't care about you. Because even if you get all abused or whatever [4], you're not cute. You're just stupid, and you are disgusting [5] to me.

[4] reduplication: diminutive, like abuse isn't that much of a big deal

[5] went with a participle instead of a normal verb (ie "you disgust me") to also communicate that this is also in the progressive tense. becky continues to disgust linda every time they interact.

Gerald, wag ka nga umiyak; ikaw ba ang kausap? Gerald, don't cry (+ emphasis particle), are you the one being talked to? (rhetorical)

[henriediosa]

Palatawan - Bakit Ayaw Niyang Kumanta? - Scene 11

EMMA Mukha tayong magka-batch ah. Bakit di tayo nagkita noong high school? We look like batchmates. Why didn't we ever see each other in high school? PABLO Baka sa Hatchetfield High ka nag-aral. Sa kabila ako, sa Sikomoro. Maybe you studied at Hatchetfield High. [I went to] the other one, to Sikomoro [Sycamore]. EMMA Tangina, Timberwolves ka? Gago, kalaban ka pala eh. Son of a bitch, you're [one of the] Timberwolves? Shithead, you're the enemy [+ particle expressing this is new information]. PABLO (Patawa) Gago nga kami. [1] (Beat.) Sabi mo kanina sa Beanies na nandoon ka sa Jesus Christ Superstar [2] noong high school ka? We really are shitheads. You said a while ago at Beanies that you were in Jesus Christ Superstar when you were in high school? EMMA (Nagmamalaki) Oo, ako kaya 'yung si Mary Magdalene! Yeah, I was that Mary Magdalene! PABLO 2003 ba yun? Kasi yun yung Jesus Christ Superstar na napanood ko… hala, napanood pala kita! Was that 2003? Because that's the Jesus Christ Superstar that I saw… wow, it was you I saw! [+ particle expressing this is new information] EMMA Puta, di nga! Bitch, no way! PABLO Puta, oo nga! [1] Wala kasi kaming teatro na subject sa school namin kaya pinag-field trip nila kami doon sa inyo para mainggit kami. Iyon ang pinaka-unang musical na napanood ko. Hindi ko siya nagustuhan. Doon siguro nagsimula. Ikaw ang dahilan kung bakit ayaw ko ng mga musical, kung bakit ayaw ko kumanta. [3] Bitch, yes way! Because we didn't have a theatre subject at our school, so they made us take a field trip to yours to make us jealous. That's the very first musical I ever saw. I did not like it. That's where it probably started. You're the reason why I don't like musicals, why I don't want to sing. EMMA Wow, so ako yung backstory mo? So ako yung pinaka-kontrabida? Wow, so I'm your backstory? I'm the supervillain? PABLO Hindi ganun ang tingin ko sa iyo, Emma. It's not like that, the way I see you, Emma.

Translator's notes under the cut!

[1] "Fucking Timberwolves! We hated you guys." "We hated ourselves." was such a fun challenge to translate because Tagalog needs so many words to do a reflexive that it was never going to be translated word-for-word. The joke is supposed to happen quickly, and translating it like "Ayaw rin namin sa mga sarili namin" made it lose its punch.

Inb4 "kami rin", that was an option but it's too ambiguous. If Emma said "Ayaw namin sa inyo" and Pablo said "Kami rin," the first assumption the audience would make is that he's saying "We hated you too." Which is not what he's saying.

So we have to do sense-for-sense. So instead I'm making Emma swear just for punctuation/filler, which she does a lot anyway, but Pablo takes her literally and thinks she's actually calling Timberwolves gago (first joke), and then agrees (second joke). It's like if she's said "Damn, you guys are the enemy," and he replied "Yeah, we're really damned." He does it again later with puta, because Paul does it in English: "No shit!" "Yes shit, yeah!" I think it's so neurodivergent of him, especially in conversation with someone he has a crush on.

[2] Brigadoon has been replaced with Jesus Christ Superstar because Brigadoon isn't very well-known where I am and specifically a local theatre group did several productions of JCS but I didn't like them because they weren't actually singing, just lip-syncing. If this ever gets staged and the director wants to change it back to Brigadoon or use a different play then I'll change it, but rn it is the play we're making fun of

[3] He has to drop the title of the show here, so I added another line, because the title in Tagalog is "Bakit Ayaw Niyang Kumanta?" (Why Doesn't He Want To Sing?). Why is the title different? Because that's how I ended up translating the chorus of the first song. I do hate that a bit of foreshadowing is lost (he didn't like musicals, because by the end he does) but maybe figuring out the question can be similarly fun for the audience as well. Translation is loss and compromise.