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snippetsincolors — Half Horses
#centaur #greekmythology #tikbalang #filipinofolklore #humorcomic
Published: 2015-03-15 01:07:23 +0000 UTC; Views: 561; Favourites: 5; Downloads: 0
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Comments: 17
An honest mistake for him to make; it can be quite confusing when you look similar to another group. Speaking as an Indian who as a kid thought "Indian" was the same as "Native American".
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I could totally understand this, especially if you were born and raised in America and have no concept of other countries yet, ie India. I remember a story about an Asian girl who was born in the US (or at least somewhere there in the west) and she had no idea she was Asian thinking all along she was Caucasian! It was only later on when she was older that she was able to spot the difference.
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It's more proof that race is a social rather than a biological construct, because some factors that influence our nurture influence how we view ourselves.
This comic works on so many meta-levels, hence why I shared it (crediting you) on Tumblr and Twitter.
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Thanks so much! That's a good point, that race is a social construct; I never quite viewed it that way before!
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Oh, that's how I was taught in elementary school, when we did a unit on African-American literature and contrasted Booker T. Washington's speech with W.E. Dubois's legitimate disillusionment with the system in the United States. My teacher there recommended a few books that talked about prejudice and racism being engrained for no biological reason.
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Amazing how you remember that much detail way back from Elementary School. I do not have any background egarding those speeches and when I was in elementary I do not remember being taught stuff about prejudice and racism-- must be because our country have mostly homogenous(?) people. It was only later that I realized it is an issue in some countries!
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Ack, sorry, I meant high school! Whoops. Though in elementary school we did talk about slavery and Martin Luther King, Jr.
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Silly me. High school was the time to learn the world wasn't perfect.
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I keep meaning to ask you... I'm unfamiliar with the folklore creatures in your strip. I'd really like to know what they are so I can read up on them.
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Thanks for asking! Actually, when I was starting this strip, I was hoping to have other people know more about our local folklore creatures. I haven't done much on that field though since they act like normal kids nowadays.
Richie is a "tikbalang". They are half-horse forest dwellers who sometimes make people lost in the woods.
Kap is a "kapre". They are smoking giants living in trees.
Kat and Mutya are "manananggal". They're our version of vampires-- normal people by day but winged monsters during the night.
LoveJoy is a "puting duwende". In english it means "white dwarf" and they're normally helpful dwarves.
Anger/Fury/Contempt are "itim na duwende". In english, "black dwarves". Unlike white dwarves, they're often mischievous and harm people.
Jake is a mummy. Not really a local folklore creature-- he and his family are immigrants!
Neko is an "aswang". It's not obvious since he looks like a normal kid and I have yet to expound on it, but he's an animorph.
Most extra characters like teachers, etc are the same types, "multo"/ghosts or "diwata"/fairies.
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Thank you! I shall have to look them up sometime, I love learning about folklore.
Ah, I actually knew manananggal! I've come across them occasionally in my vampire research.
Hmm. So out of interest, what are fairies like in Filipino folklore?
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Now I know you really like vampires if you know manananggal.
Sometimes in my cartoons I depict them with wings but I think fairies with wings is a western thing (like tinkerbell). Plus I couldn't pinpoint the specific fairy equivalent here; both "diwata" and "engkantada" could be fairies. Anyway, they are forest guardians mostly depicted to be good but could harm/punish people if these people don't give respect to the place they are guarding. They're like those nature creatures in greek mythology-- I forgot the name at first but I googled-- dryads.
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Those do sound like kinds of fairies. Although, fairies over here don't have wings in actual folklore. There are lots of kinds of fairies, and they're more like demons than the twinkly flower-loving things you see in the media today (The Victorians are largely to blame for that) They usually come out at night, and sometimes they reward humans for being skilled or brave, but they're easily offended and fickle and some of them will hurt humans just because they feel like it. Sometimes they steal children or brides on their wedding night, or even switch out adults for fairy changelings. Also like demons, they will punish humans for bad behaviour.
For example, there is a tale of a man who would do nothing but party and drink and stay up all night causing trouble... and one night he is up late and drunk, wandering the roads and he comes across a troop of fairies. They're having a funeral procession and they ask him to help, because they've dropped the body on the floor. When he goes to help pick it up, it climbs on to his back and clings there. No matter how much he yells and tries to shake it off, it's stuck there. The lead fairy tells him that it won't come off until it can be properly buried, and gives him a list of churchyards it could be buried in, if there is room. He says if he can't bury the corpse by sunrise, he will be lost and adds something like 'And let that be a lesson to you for being a drunken wastrel'. The man has to carry the heavy corpse .. that keeps talking to him, giving him directions and stuff right in his ear... from churchyard to churchyard but there's never any room for the body until very last one on the list, and he can see that the sun will rise any time. He hurriedly digs a grave and buries the body just in time and never drinks again...
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It's cool to have deviations from the normal fairy depiction. Could totally imagine them being naughty and fickle and punishing people just because they feel like it. I believe the story was meant to show how bad fairies could be but something good still came out of it, yes? So I forgive the fairies.
I have to read up on the fairy changeling thing. I see the words from time to time but have no idea what they are-- we probably don't have the same thing here.
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Fairy changelings are in folklore fairies that are swapped out for humans. The changeling is usually sick or mad. Usually, they are swapped out for human babies but switches with adults sometimes occur. (it is an explanation for babies that don't thrive through genetic disorders or for people who have stokes back when they didn't understand these things. They used to call people who had strokes 'fairy-struck' - in stories, sometimes fairies will strike humans as a punishment, making them blind or dumb. That's what they thought had happened.)
In my own work, I use the word 'changeling' to mean any fairy with a cloak. These kinds of fairies turn up all over the world, so you probably have some equivalent. The usual story is that a man comes across some women bathing in a pool or stream, with their clothes/wings nearby. He steals one and hides it, forcing the fairy who is left to become his wife. Later the fairy woman somehow gets it back, and flies back home. (although sometimes I think they are not fairies, but a goddess and her handmaidens)
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Interesting! Never heard of those before; I didn't think fairies could pass off as humans unless they could morph somehow...
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