StorySpotting: Skin and bones (Terminator: Dark Fate)

StorySpotting is a weekly or kinda-weekly series about folktales, tropes, references, and story motifs that pop up in popular media, from TV shows to video games. Topics are random, depending on what I have watched/played/read recently. Also, THERE WILL BE SPOILERS. Be warned!

I really wanted to do a Terminator post about strong women and female warriors and whatnot, but then this random tidbit was so funny that the post just wrote itself. Sorry.

Where was the story spotted?

Terminator: Dark Fate (2019)

What happens?

In this movie we see a new type of terminator, the REV-9, which is designed as an infiltrator. As Wikipedia so eloquently put it: the REV-9's "primary feature is the ability to split its mimetic polyalloy exterior and endoskeleton into two separate units." Basically, its skin separates from its (carbon-based) bones, and goes walking around separately, taking on other people's form.

What's the story?

The first one that came to mind was a folktale from Palau, titled Budel and Iuesel. They were brothers, the children of the same woman; Budel was just an empty skin, and Iuesel was a skeleton. Iuesel went fishing every day, but one time Budel wanted to go too. The skeleton carried his skin-brother down to the seashore, where he could sit on a rock and spear fish. However, suddenly they saw an enemy war canoe coming in. They had to run back to their village, but as Iuesel ran, Budel kept flapping behind him like a cape. Eventually, to make things easier, the skeleton slipped his brother on himself like a sweater - and skeletons have been wearing skin ever since.
(Find the story here.)
Taking off your skin and putting it back on is a surprisingly common thing in folktales. In a folktale from Liberia, titled Tola and the Sea Monster, a girl declares that she will only ever marry a man with perfect skin. A sea monster, hearing this, borrows the smooth, perfect skin of a sea goddess, puts it on, and seduces the girl, carrying her away into the underwater realms. (She is eventually rescued by her brother). There are also many stories in the Central American and Caribbean region about people (especially women) who take their skin off, and go flying around at night. In many cases someone (often the husband) eventually finds out, and rubs the empty skin's inside with salt and/or chili peppers, so when the person comes back, they can't put the skin on anymore. There are many variants of this story in Elsie Clews Parson's collections, and I also found some from Nicaragua and Belize.

Conclusion
Don't try this at home, kids.

I is for Indian Almonds and Idepeluochel Bats (A to Z Challenge 2019: Fruit Folktales)

It is not exactly easy to find a fruit that starts with I (I wonder why), but I managed to track one down: The Indian almond (Terminalia catappa), known by various names such as "sea almond" or "tropical almond" has edible fruit, and it figures into some stories of south and east Asia, as well as Oceania.


A legend from Babeldaob (the largest island of the Republic of Palau) says there once lived a giant bat in the Idepeluochel jungle. This monster had "unappeasable appetite" for sweetmeats - especially two kinds, one made from Indian almonds, and one made from grated coconut. As far as monsters go, this doesn't sound so bad, right?

Wrong. One day, the bat found out that there were plenty of almond and coconut sweets on the island of Angaur (another island of Palau, far to the south), in the bai, or meeting house. The bat flew over, and in its search for its favorite food, it thrashed its giant wings, destroyed buildings, collapsed the bai, and took off with the sweets.

The people of Angaur, of course, could not let this go. They rebuilt the bai, this time with spears sticking out of it, and then placed more almond and coconut sweets in it. Like clockwork, the giant bat appeared once again - but this time, it got impaled on the spears.

Image and story from this book

The best part of this story? We know it from a source none other than a bai itself. In Palau, legends and tales were illustrated on the beams of the meeting houses (like early examples of comic strips), and the giant bat appears on one of them. You can see it in the Airai Meeting House (Bai ra Irrai) on Babeldaob, which is on the US National Register of Historic Places.
I wrote about Palau legends and tales in my "Following folktales around the world" blog series here.

(By the way, the Palau Flying Fox is a near endangered species, you can read about conservation efforts here)

Have you ever been to Palau? Would you want to go?

Have you ever tried Indian almonds?

Tales in color and style (Following folktales around the world 3. - Palau)

Today is Folklore Thursday on social media! If you want to find out more, follow this link, or click on the #FolkloreThursday hashtag on Twitter! Hosted by @FolkloreThursday.

Today I continue new blog series titled Following folktales around the world! If you would like to know what the series is all about, you can find the introduction post here. You can find all posts under the Following Folktales label. 

It is getting more and more difficult to find books for the islands I'm looking at. This time I accidentally ran into a small little volume in a digital archive. The upside: You can read it online too!

The Palauan handicraft guidebook, and 30 Storyboard stories
Goree Ramarui, Rita Limberg
Palau Community Action Committee, 1970.
(Online here)

This tiny collection is only 24 pages long - but it still contain the condensed version on no less than 30 folktales and legends, and even the bare bones are very much enjoyable. The book(let) opens with introducing the traditional crafts of Palau, ending on storyboards.

Storyboards are a traditional Palauan art form - they are essentially traditional stories carved out in a narrative, visual format. They used to decorate the rafters of men's gathering houses, but recently they have also been produced in smaller, more portable sizes for trade. According to the book, there are more than two hundred commonly carved stories - out of which these 30 were selected. The most popular ones were marked with an asterisk. Even in their condensed form, each tale included their most recognizable visual elements. For example, in the storyboard below you can see the tale of the magic breadfruit tree - the tide would push fish through the hollow trunk and the hollow branches, so it was easy for people to gather them. Eventually, as usual, envy and greediness ended the good times (you can read the story in the book). I was happy when I found this picture and recognized the story.

source of image

Highlights
One of my favorite stories was the one about a "dandy," Ngiratumerang, who was accused by other men of being a coward. In order to prove them wrong, he went and found a master to teach him the martial arts. In the next battle, he killed five of the enemy's best warriors, proving everyone wrong. I especially liked the way he proved his courage to the master: He climbed a tall, thin betel nut tree until it bowed all the way down and he had to reach the top upside-down.
Another fun story was that of Skin and Bones, who used to be brothers. One day, they were attacked unexpectedly. Since Bones did not want to drag his skin-sack brother after him, he put Skin on like a shirt... and ever since then, we have skeletons inside out body.

Dugong

This was by far not the only amusing story in the book. I also liked the one where a god fought another god by throwing various sea creatures (including rabbitfish) after him. Or the one about how two young lovers discovered the 15-day nesting cycle of sea turtles, because an unsuspecting turtle made off with the girl's discarded grass skirt, and only appeared again 15 days later...
There was even a tale about where the first dugong came from. According to legend, she had been the daughter of an overbearing mother, who eventually ran away into the sea.

Connections

Picture from here

I found a tale very similar to the fruit bat boy story in the Papua New Guinean collection. In this case, the single mother was rescued by her human son and owl daughter from a terrifying sea serpent.
I found another version about the origin of Palauan money (see image on the right). I also learned that the legendary Yapese giganic stone coins were also brought from this island. I also found a second version about how women originally gave birth via C-section - in this one, it was not another girl who taught them better (like in the Micronesian collection), but the spider-god husband of a pregnant woman. There was another monster-heron (this time, defeated by a spear-throwing technique learned from actual herons), and another vagina dentata, this time with two biting eels hidden in the wife's lady parts... I expected to see more Palauan stories repeated from the previous collection, but I was happy to find that most of the 30 were new to me. As short a read as it was, it was definitely enjoyable.

Where to?
The Marshall Islands.