What is Marichin Marukoy?
A. What happens when your intrusive thoughts win and you attempt to turn a hobby into a day job.
B. A midlife crisis moment.
C. A shapeshifting orphan who learns to make friends.
D. All of the above.
Because things can be more than one thing diba?
This all started from what felt to me was a revelation – that the word ‘aswang‘ was more about the ability to shapeshift over the Lilia Kantupay bloodsucker image. Salamat Sir Rolly Borrinaga, always for your insightful facebook posts. Horror mistress Yvette Tan wrote about the modern perspective of the aswang as asian vampires as possible Colonizer psy-ops. Also you might want to look up the connection between “Kapre” and the Kaffir slaves that Spanish priests dragged around. Racist diay tu.
There’s also a Maritess version of this story, and If we’re on tea time terms, you’ve probably already heard it. But instead of commenting on drama, I wrote Ang Aswang, which Sir Myke Obenieta published on his kabisdak poetry blog.
Ang Aswang
Sa una didtos’ amoa
Its ironic that the urge to write in Bisaya has become stronger for me away from the motherland. The tendency to romanticize sets in. Time kind of freezes to that moment of departure. To pleasant memories. No wonder my mom loved telling me stories about her childhood in the province. They did nothing to prepare me for the culture shock of actually living there.
Anyway, Sir Myke said it sounded like a children’s book. I thought it was too dark for children, especially at the end.
But the thought lingered and I ended up going to my storyboard artist Tom Jopson about it, talking Over the Garden Wall and Graveyard of the Fireflies. Over facetime, flipaclip, and premiere pro, we put together an animatic to start the ball rolling. Winsse Cirujales provided voice acting. To the Cebuano cinema nerds, she starred in Christian’s short film, Gugma ni Olivia:
But how we were going to turn that animatic into a polished piece together was beyond us. Tom is the sort of artist who needs the physical presence of collaborators as motivation, and I didn’t yet know how to pitch this or who to pitch it to. Dude’s strengths were on canvas and it would’ve been a cool traditionally painted project but I didn’t want him to go hungry doing it.
I’d made a friend a few years ago, Xiomara Demetrio Glindmeyer – a Goddess incarnate Cebuana designer who’d moved to the US before me. We shared a love for dolls and dark folklore and it was she who turned me to Blythe dolls and Icy dolls and other bug eyed babies. She had infected me and I finally had some money to pursue a hobby. So I customized a doll inspired by the coloring of Sama Bajau people and landed with the name “Marichin” – because 1)it sounds like a filipino nickname, and 2) because it is Sanskrit for “Radiant” and associated with the sun. Sunkissed parin mga ulol. Meanwhile, ‘Marukoy’ is a term in the Visayas for sneaky or cunning. I looked at that face and thought, “Doesn’t she look Marukoy?”
I sourced sewed and commissioned a few costumes and props (if you wanna give me something for Christmas, make it 1:6 scale for furniture and 1:4/1:3 scale for food. Hehe) and made reels of the process on instagram, and later tiktok. I wrote out more of her backstory and the prior story changed a bit. I Made other dolls for my cast of characters – I found them sold second hand and damaged and learned through trial and error how to modify them to look like little filipina girls. I experimented with stop motion and puppetry. I commissioned Maddy Boone Migallos of Astraberry for the logo and Meream Pacayra of Peregrina to design me some sets.
All the while I watched the social media analytics and responded to it almost mindlessly. Because hello, a genocide was happening. Sometimes I felt ashamed for playing with dolls while people were dying. But I’ve done all I could do everywhere else and I needed this to keep me sane.
Stories have always been my escape. I could live vicariously through the adventures scrappy little Marichin had with friends in living jungles where food was abundant and you could just fly away when the kitchen got too hot. Wishful thinking.
Inquiries for production design started coming in. Short films, styling work, small favors. The stop motion stuff went into boxes to make space for paid work. I learned that I needed a better work life balance. I was often confronted with the reality of working out of your bedroom and needing more space for projects to really take off. If I could shrink myself and live in one of Meream’s tiny houses with all my creature comforts and not be bothered about being a mess that would be sweet.
And then Maddy pitched the idea of creating a storybook based on my script in time for the Cebu Art Book Fair in September. She had a decade of experience as a storybook illustrator and knew her way around publishing. It was only going to be a few frames and activity pages plus Meream’s set design illustrations and a working map. We agreed on maybe 20 pages. Cut to two weeks before the festival (I think?) and Maddy had drawn the entire story! Talk about a powerhouse! All I really needed to do was adjust the text, we even found a solution for the darkness.
Over the course of the book development process, Maddy Meream and I would talk about what it meant to us.
This was primarily for our inner children – as bisaya girls, few things were made with us in mind. We grew up with blond magic girls and blond dolls and media that did not center us or our experiences. Nothing that describes the glee of climbing a mansanitas tree and gorging on its fruit. Nothing that starred brown bulingot girls.
Maddy was also a mom, so we’d talk about the state of education in the Philippines. She talked about how the implementation of the Mother Tongue program was actually setting us back because students lost time translating complex scientific terms over understanding what they meant. Who knows what the Cebuano word for Geometry is even? Our parents sure don’t.
Sure enough, the initiative ended almost as fast as it had been established. Could it be that the Mother Tongue program was a little too late?
Bisaya content isn’t put in front of the market as aggressively as foreign stuff. We’ve also had no real rehabilitation for the decades we’d been punished for being “bisaya”.
Either there isn’t enough Cebuano media around for young generations or its not proliferated as much as it deserves to be.
If Malaysia can come up with Upin and Ipin, and Japan can give us Sucy Manbavaran – whats stopping us Filipinos from producing something for ourselves? Here’s Avid Liongoren talking about the state of special effects in Philippine Cinema as an example.
So we don’t have hollywood budgets. But we also didn’t have industry deadlines. I was doing this for myself and happened to find other people who also wanted in on the self soothing. We were free to reimagine how we were going to distribute our energy to build this vessel out. We could take as long as we wanted. People got involved through profit sharing and work trades, drawn to the project because they were also part of its intended audience. And if Nanays can make Avon empires, Nanays can make online entertainment. Matod lang ni Meream, we millenials need to learn to delegate.
We’re only hoping that there are more people like us who want to see stuff like this in the world: teachers who want supplementary material for Cebuano studies; parents who want to share what a sun drenched childhood out in nature feels like to the screen time generation – Or at least enough for us to make affordable books through offset printing to put in school shelves all over the Visayas.
We soft launched “Marichin Marukoy: Mangayo Ko’g Asin!” at CABF last September at Ayala Cebu. Shout out to Emyats, Alex and Aly of Otakufest for helping us with our booth and Inkspace and HDP for printing our initial samples and paper products! We got pre-orders and feedback from college age folks. One lady was upset we didn’t make a science textbook, pero ug naay budget for curriculum designers why not?
We consulted with publishers (Hi Christina of Sarisaristorybooks, Justine of Sawaga River Press, Wowie Catabijan of Kahel Press, and Cecilia Brainard!) teachers (Hi Teacher Ray and Teacher Yami, Britt, Ate Andrea!) and other parents (Hi Ate Jean! Primy! AMANDA <3) and children and nerded out with them over children’s picture books and bisaya nostalgia core. Carleen Sacris gave such actionable insights and eventually agreed to be our english editor in exchange of books to donate to her hometown’s library. <3
Through author and educator Ian Casocot, we found a book designer – the multi talented Victor Dennis Tino Nierva – who as a Bikolano, understood the nuances of laying out language and translation and advocated for a Bisaya first book (meaning mas gamay ang english translation); and found our Cebuano printer CLINT/KAMMS (Hi Kenneth!) through event producer and tea time friend Hendri Go. <3
I tried hard to find a Biliranon Bisaya editor so that the dialect could be preserved, but none of the folks I approached seemed interested. Fortunately, Chai Fonacier came in. She’d read drafts of the original poem and fixed some grammatical issues and recommended phrasing. So it seemed fitting for her to be the one to edit the bisaya text for the current permutation. She also did voice acting for our book trailers for socials so its kinda like she was just fixing her lines to make them flow better for the nanays and tatays who shall be reading this book to their children. Salamat for lending your voice in more ways than one Chai! Lamyu geng!
Anyway, Tadaaaaa!
We’ll be selling this first edition, as well as calendars, stickers, and two sets of recipe/post cards this November 30 to December 2 at the Cebu Litfest, Robinsons Galleria. Tigerpussy frontwoman and friend, Jan Sunday was kind enough to agree to reading the book onstage at 3pm Saturday. Maddy and Meream will be around to sign copies and I hope they have a great time talking to people about their art and all the tiny details they’ve sprinkled in from their own memories.
As for me, I’ll be using my fomo to continue writing the Marichin adventures, matter loading on tropical botany, and hunting for workshops and studio spaces to prepare for the next shape this little aswang might take on next.
