A Thousand Thousand Islands
Zedeck Siew and Munkao are two malaysian artists whose collaborative work in the field of Role Playing Games has caught our interest here at Hinsides. Mr Håkan Lindell managed to get both of them to answer some questions about their grand epos "A Thousand, Thousand Islands" and what lies behind such a distinctive artistic vision? Read further to hear the story out of how this peculiar narrative came to be and how it resonates to South-East Asian folklore and culture.
- Written by Håkan Lindell -
(All images belongs to the artist and are used under kind permission)
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Hello Zedeck and Munkao and welcome to Hinsides Magazine! Please explain to our readers a little bit about what it is that you do and where you are located?
MK: Hi Hinsides, I’m Munkao, an artist and game designer. I'm based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I do the drawings in A Thousand Thousand Islands.
ZS: I'm Zedeck. I'm a writer, translator, and game designer. I'm based in Port Dickson, Malaysia. I do the text in A Thousand Thousand Islands.
How did you begin working together and what drove and inspired you both to create something like A Thousand Thousand Islands?
MK: I think it was 6-7 years ago when I first played Dungeons and Dragons 5e and got sucked back into the fantasy genre and started picking up drawing again. So I spent about a year or two researching, conceptualizing and sketching what Southeast Asian fantasy could be like. I think I did not talk to Zedeck much in those months and when I met him again, it turns out he was working on something similar. So we were both already working independently on a similar setting when we started to work on the zines together.
ZS: Munkao and I were both part of the same art-scene cliques, in Kuala Lumpur. We bonded over a shared love of games and the feeling that we needed to hide that love, like a shameful secret, because it felt like a waste of time. Designing games together was a way to help us feel better about being addicted to games. "Hey, when we play games it's work, okay?" Our previous collaboration was a card game about Malaysian parliamentary politics, called POLITIKO. It was pretty well received.
Who came up with the name A Thousand Thousand Islands, and is there a meaning behind it? I think its a really intriguing name!
MK: I was setting up a Patreon page for what I was working on so I was trying to get a name. I shared with Zedeck my lousy names, one of the names being “A Thousand Islands”. Zedeck messaged me a few days later with the fantastic suggestion of "A Thousand Thousand Islands". I thought the name not only points to the maritime / riverine nature of Southeast Asia but also the mandala-ish silos of communities and culture.
Tigers, crocodiles and all kinds of wild and potentially dangerous animals are numerous in the zines. Here in Sweden we have little to none really dangerous animals. How much impact does the Malaysian wildlife have on your everyday life and on your writing?
MK: I stay in the city but even then sometimes we would see civet cats and monitor lizards, but they are getting rarer. Southeast Asia used to be rife with wildlife (most stories and folklore involves animals) but we’ve worked hard at killing, exploiting and destroying their habitat. Though not wildlife, humans are probably the most dangerous animal to impact my everyday life.
ZS: A civet cat visited my porch just last night! And one of my neighbors has a photograph of her father standing next to a tiger district officers had shot in a nearby plantation. Maybe 60, 70 years ago? Their potential danger and apparent ubiquity made us callous. Now the Malayan tiger, which is on our coat of arms, is nearly extinct; latest numbers put them at less than 200 individuals.
Page 7 of MR-KR-GR “The Death-Rolled Kingdom” (One part of “A Thousand Thousand Islands)
I myself sadly know very little about Malaysian myths and stories. How much influence do these have on the sort of stories and creatures we see in ATTI?
ZS: They are certainly a big part of the work. Almost everything in the zines are inspired by something we remember, or some footnote in some book, or some anecdote from a friend -- composted over time, in our heads, as we draw and write. Hantu! is my personal musings about literal, real-life ghosts. A lot of Andjang came from Mun Kao's personal experiences in a creepy bungalow in Cameron Highlands. We've just finished a zine inspired by Kelantanese boat-carving forms.
We don't copy-paste the actual stories, of course. We also don't use real names from real-life things. Because there's a fine but significant difference between "inspired by" and "representing”. The latter is not something we can do, or are interested in doing.
What do you think is typical for malaysian storytelling? Is there any difference between the regions?
ZS: A feature of Southeast Asian culture that is distinctive from the Western standard, in my opinion, is our relatively lax relationship to taxonomy. What is the difference between a ghost, a god, and a spirit? Those pigeonholes don't make much sense, here -- you could argue that a Na Tuk Kong is all three, all at once. (Also, many Na Tuk Kongs are Muslim -- ie: they are gods who are also followers of a monotheist faith that would dispute their own godhood!) Likewise, genre is an odd beast for this region. What is the difference between "genre horror" and "realist fiction" if the supernatural isn't seen as particularly uncanny, in real life -- not any more than the risk of running into a wild beast?
Which is your favorite creation in ATTI and why? And is there any concept you wished you would have evolved to a greater extent?
MK: One of my favorite characters is Jolo San Zan, Half Sword from our first zine Mr-Kr-Gr. He’s basically an offspring of a woman and a sword, and has a knife edge for his nose. It’s absurd and funny but also rooted in Southeast Asia’s beliefs (that things have spirits, especially swords). For me, it sets the tone of what I try to go towards in the zines that followed.
Another page from; MR-KR-GR “The Death-Rolled Kingdom”
These days you hear a lot about the term ”cultural appropriation” regarding who gets to write, say and express what kind of culture. What would be your take on it, if for example Dungeons & Dragons (a game based on mostly western lore) would write something like ATTI? Would that feel weird?
MK: If I am not wrong, the original conversation around “cultural appropriation” was less about who gets to write, say and express what kind of culture, but rather the unequal power dynamic and structural oppression of marginalized communities suffer? It is most apparent in America where Black/Native American communities with long histories of slavery, exploitation and oppression that would have their cultural products taken/stolen and then profited by corporations or individuals who continue to perpetuate structural oppression of the communities they have taken from.
I personally am hesitant to view things through the lens of cultural appropriation because most of us do not have that clear and sustained history of oppression with each other and using the term brings with it so much baggage to unpack.
The porch of Mr Zedeck. (Comes along with plants and cats, apparently.)
Having said that, a rule of thumb to approach things would be to do the homework, have good intent, and be respectful.
Though you can still be wrong even if you’ve done the homework and have good intent, and part of being respectful is to hear people out if they are offended/upset and to reflect and change if necessary.
ZS: Cultural appropriation can be a useful tool to talk about material inequalities between the privileged and the marginalized, between metropoles and the colonized world. But how it is popularly discussed in the West feels like a red herring, to me. Take a question like: "Would it feel weird for Dungeons & Dragons to make something asian inspired?"
This question is ultimately concerned with the behaviors and actions of (American, corporate) WOTC / the Dungeons & Dragons brand. It centers what D&D should or shouldn't be doing. Whether D&D is or isn't ethical and, by extension, whether the (generally Western) audience for D&D is or isn't making a mistake. The question doesn't particularly care about Southeast Asians, really.
A better question to ask would be: "How can more Southeast Asian creators participate equitably in RPGs?"
Focusing on the means by which culture is produced, on the ways we can make those processes less unequal, would make the most difference to marginalized creators' lives. And, as the power differential in the field of expression lessens, the ethical urgency of "who gets to write what how?" unsnarls itself. Thinking about this does mean thinking about how creators/audiences in the West may need to give up their place as the default centre of the conversation, though.
Which is probably why it doesn't happen often.
A Thousand Thousand cats, showing some love by fertilizing the plants of Munkao.
ATTI is a great Role Playing Games product, but I think it might stand on its own in other forms as well, for example as a kind of art or inspiration-books. Is this something you have tried to do or are you content with ATTI in its current form?
MK: Right now, we’re just concentrating on working on more zines, but would really love to have something like that out in the future.
ZS: RPGs are part of ATTI's DNA but I'd note that we did design the zines with a non-RPG audience in mind, as well. The first time we sold our zines we did it locally, at art bazaars around Kuala Lumpur. They had to be legible to folk who didn't play games.
The workplace that Zedeck shares with his partner Sharon Chin.
When you´re not creating amazingly inspiring worlds, what do you do? What does a normal day for you look like?
ZS: The pandemic has significantly changed daily life, for me. I live away from the city -- even with lockdowns eased, I haven't been back. I haven't needed to! Mostly I'm at my desk, writing. Or reading in bed. With breaks to make meals. And working in the garden, evenings. Really homebound! My partner (Sharon Chin, she's a visual artist) and I spend a lot of time talking about the stuff we're working on -- having that second head to push back against, so that the creative process isn't just an echo-chamber of anxieties, is really important. Now and again we beach comb, and walk through our local mangrove.
Name some of your most important inspirational sources for writing and creating art!
MK: For ATTI specifically, I get a lot of inspiration from reading history books, trivia, material culture, old objects excites and inspires me a lot.
ZS: Honestly; Where I live! Port Dickson is a small seaside town. On the surface it is very boring. But it has many layers. It is named after a British colonial official. It is known as a beach destination -- but also host to two massive petroleum refineries. Mirroring the shift in geo-politics, the refinery once owned by Dutch Shell was bought two years ago by a Chinese chemical corporation, Hengyuan. Our gardener's family settled here during the colonial era, as indentured labour for rubber plantations; every year their local temple hosts coal-walking rituals. Another temple rears a turtle with oracular powers. Last year, a biologist working at the local marine lab named a new species of sea slug. My town is a mandala, radiating outwards.
Ok, for all the people that get curious about your stuff, where can they find it and how can they reach you?
MK: We have an itch.io to get PDFs ( https://athousandthousandislands.itch.io/ ). We are also working on a new website with a proper shop. Please sign up for our newsletter here ( www.athousandthousandislands.com ). I share my research and behind the scenes art here on my Patreon ( https://www.patreon.com/athousandthousandislands ).
ZS: I've got a blog, sporadically updated ( https://zedecksiew.tumblr.com/ ).
And I'm on Twitter! ( https://twitter.com/zedecksiew)
Thats it! A Thousand Thousand Thanks from Hinsides Magazine!