Tida Wanorn: Characters

Nena and her family 

Nena - A girl born from the brief (though legit), sad marriage of her wrongfully convicted father and his boss’s barely middle aged daughter, Nena lived with the Sumatran jungle animals after she and her dad tried to escape the destruction of her mum’s family alive. Fostered and befriended by both a herd of Sumatran Elephants and a family of Sumatran Orangutans (brother, sister, mum and dad), Nena has an adventurous life in the Sumatran rainforest. 

Willem - Willem is a rather unlucky guy.

The recurring characters 

Rudi Lubis - Rudi is the only female one of Nena’s numerous neighbours to have a major role; she is a cunning pain in the butt and she knows it. 

Mia Lim - Trinity’s bubbly daughter and Nena’s friendly rival. 

Sondang Hutabarat - One of Rudi’s friends. 

Hamza Iskander - Natalia’s workaholic and often estranged Lebanese Maronite ex husband. 

Maya Iskander - Hamza’s rather abrasive and obnoxious much younger sister. 

Ken Sihala - Rudi’s butt monkey ex-boyfriend and Maya’s older brother. 

Trini Ching - Medan based estranged childhood friend of Tony Damanik.

Damon Lim - Trini’s often hurt Chinese Indonesian husband.

Ahmad Yusuf - Trinity’s childhood best friend. 

Daniel Lim - Trinity and Damon’s trickster son. 

Tony Damanik - One of Daniel’s friends.

Lia Yusuf - Ahmad’s estranged mother. 

Sheila Lubis - Nena’s dad’s childhood pen pal, a Mandailing from the south of North Sumatra, whose brother is Asma’s husband and Rudi’s father.

Asma - Asma is Rudi’s meaner and filthier mother. 

Harun Lubis - Sheila’s older brother, Jaya’s husband and Rudi’s father. 

Helena Sihala - Nena’s childhood friend from the village. 

Pandapotan ‘Pana’ Hartono - Sonny and Sangkot’s son.

Sonny Hartono - A friend of Harun from Medan, Sonny has a rather screwed up family consisting of himself, his brothers Shen and Ron, and their dysfunctional parents, both of whom died overworking at a factory while Shen was at college. 

Yanthi - One of Asma’s old friends. 

Monang Hutapea - estranged son and the older brother of Sangkot. 

Hotna Hutapea - Monang and Sangkot’s estranged father. 

Cindua - One of Sangkot’s old friends. 

Sangkot Hutapea - After her boyfriend Sonny Hartono got unceremoniously dumped out by his corrupt former superior Kamal Rahman, whose relationship with his low level bandit older brother Shen Hartono remains close but estranged, he couldn’t be seen much again until recently. As a result, Sangkot reluctantly becomes a struggling grassroots democratic organisation’s leader. 

The Main Villains 

Shen Hartono - College dropout turned moody and arrogant gangster-soldier Shen Hartono long worked for his corrupt advisor Kamal Rahman. Being antagonistic and sly, he’d have been very estranged from Sonny before the latter had even graduated high school. Their own highly dysfunctional mum preferred their little brother, who turns out to be a high ranking paramilitary mobster. 

Ron Hartono - Ron is probably the youngest and most deeply screwed up of the Hartono brothers. Whereas Shen is still somewhat redeemable and Sonny being quite an enduring explorer, Ron is quite apathetic and has high ranking gangster friends who are just differently brought up from him. He also is his Acehnese boss’s amoral favourite and his growing adherence to the Acehnese Islamic code is partly a result of it. He often doesn’t care about anyone other than himself for the most part, but what he does show is a seldom seen (albeit reasonable) fear of being abused to death by radical fundies forever. 

Natalia Ginting - Natalia is a sly and cunning Batak Karo cubicle manager working at the office of a macho company looking for husbands. Thankfully, despite being such a sly fox until the final episodes, she just wants to have good friends and would steadily marry the somewhat redeemable Shen Hartono, and helping their rather imperfect love is that their daughter can be a much better person than both of them. 

Kamal Raman - A Hadrami, Kamal Raman is the scheming boss of the company where Natalia worked on. Thankfully, he ain’t a fundamentalist Muslim unlike the greater scope villains of the whole story, the traffickers who tour the island in order to prey on both young women and men alike.