Acknowledgment

Although Metalmade is a short story and I spent only a handful of months working on it, many people were still involved in helping me produce this story. As always, I'm grateful for my parents for their endless support of my hobbies. It's not easy to dedicate time to writing and drawing when you have a full-time job in an entirely different industry. I'm lucky I have parents that help provide me with a lifestyle where I can write and draw during the nights and the weekends. Their encouraging comments make this hobby feel like a truly creative and relaxing pursuit, instead of the stressful activity that I know writing stories can otherwise be.

Thank you to Fiona McLaren, my editor, for her amazing feedback. I was a little nervous about my ability to execute this concept, but she helped ease my concerns while helping me flesh out the story even more. This final version is quite different from previous drafts, and if you feel like the plot is stable and logical enough, you have Fiona to thank for that.

Biggest shout-outs to my beta readers Julz Riddle and Lia T.! Their feedback regarding characterization and world-building were incredibly helpful and precious. Sometimes when I'm writing, I think I know a character or the setting or the way these two things interact, but it isn't until beta readers start asking meaningful questions that I realize I can dive in deeper. If Yaya feels like someone who lives in a bustling trading community, if Binhi or Luwan feel more than just a name, and if the threat and plight of the aswang feel real, Julz and Lia deserve all the thanks for that.

Any shortcoming in the story, whether in the concept or the execution, rests solely on my shoulders. Everyone else involved have truly been an honour to work with.

Thank you to everyone on Tumblr who offered to beta-read, or helped get the word out, or wrote nice comments and tags on my Metalmade posts. It's very heartwarming to see so much support for this story. Thanks to my long-time online friends, Maryetta and Lia, for all the cheerleading they did back when I first posted about this idea on my blog.

And finally, thank you, dear reader. I hope that you enjoyed hanging out with Yaya and Digan for a short while.

The setting of Metalmade is largely inspired by precolonial Tagalog society. Much of the information that helped me form the basis of the societal structure of Takatak comes from William Henry Scott's Baranggay. Although Tagalog words pepper this story, from datu to katalonan, the story doesn't take place in a real historical region I can point to on a map. Instead, it's a completely fictional place extrapolated from its cultural inspirations. It's a place where magical blessed rocks coexist with aswang and with an advanced form of metal smithing.

Aswang is a general term for a wide array of mythological creatures across the Philippine islands. Maximo D. Ramos's The Creatures of Philippine Lower Mythology meticulously lists all the many traits that Filipinos ascribe to the aswang, and they vary depending on the region. I depicted the aswang in this story in a particular way, picking attributes that I hope preserve the concept of the aswang, while avoiding jampacking the creatures with all their alleged characteristics as to become unwieldy for a short story.

Traditionally, the katalonan are believed to be able to commune with spirits, whether these are ancestral spirits, nature spirits, or evil spirits. The concept of the clarification ritual, however, is entirely fictional. If there existed a similar process historically, or even currently among modern practitioners, it's completely coincidental on my part. Another thing that the katalonan in this story possess is the ability to feel the pressure of souls surrounding them. This mostly serves as a world-building device, and again, if there exists a similar ability among practitioners, it's coincidental on my part. I'd like to encourage anyone who's interested in the real practices of a katalonan or a babaylan to consult a practitioner or conduct their own research.