#(adjacent I'm counting it)

[serpentface]

WARDI WRITTEN LANGUAGE (BASICS).

Couya's full name (properly 'Haidamane Couya') written formally and with common handwriting conventions.

The Wardi written language derives from earlier proto-language systems consisting exclusively of logograms without direct phonetic meaning or grammatical structure. These symbols gradually became simplified and abstracted to the point of many having little intrinsic clarity, and combined to communicate abstract concepts.

The development of a full written language did not occur independently (as very few written languages do), and its phonetic elements (namely its use of syllabograms) were largely derived the 'ancient' Burri writing system, gradually synthesized with native writing conventions, and in the contemporary forms a wholly distinct system. The language's Relatively universalized form is a very recent phenomena, developing within the past two centuries with the region's conquering/unification into a single entity.

The contemporary written language is a mixture of logograms and syllabograms. It is read from right to left and arranged in horizontal columns. The most formal variant of this system contains each character within a square outline, usually separated by a small space. This outline confers little phonetic or symbolic information beyond making distinction between syllables exceptionally clear, and can be (and often is) omitted in handwriting. The separation of words is conveyed through a narrow rectangle or line in formal contexts, and again often omitted in handwriting (instead indicated instead by a wider blank space).

The pure logograms that have been retained in this writing system tend to be those of very common words or specific concepts (most logogram characters for types of livestock, key crops, water, major body parts, etc are widely recognized and in common use). There has not yet been any attempts to fully 'formalize' the language and omit potentially unnecessary logograms, and they remain frequently used as shorthand while conveying the same semantic information.

Many of the syllabogram characters are directly derived from logograms that depicted monosyllabic words. For example, the spoken word 'gan' means 'cow', and the character for the syllable 'gan' is identical to the common logogram for 'cow'.

The name Gantoche (literally "cow-eye") could be written either fully with syllabograms as:

or through logograms as:

Both ultimately communicate the same meaning, but the former clarifies pronunciation (the words gan and atoche are contracted, it's gantoche and not gan-atoche).

It is a relatively easy written language to learn, as the pure syllabogram characters indicate their own pronunciation with little ambiguity and often have consistency to their construction (ie the character for the syllable 'man' contains most of the same elements as that for the syllable 'wan'- the dot placement in particular has indication of the vowel sounds).

The inclusion of logograms in general and many of the syllabic characters being directly imported From logograms complicates matters. These characters lack visual consistency, and can be confusing to the large swath of the public who know common logograms but not the full written language itself. Ie: the word 'ungande' meaning 'liver' will be composed of logogram-derived syllable characters for 'un' (which alone means 'hand') and 'gan' (which alone means 'cow'). Someone who is only semi-literate in common logograms may be confused at the meaning, especially since these same exact same characters may be used elsewhere on their own to indicate 'hand' or 'cow'.

One major exception to this tendency is that current religious doctrine requires established logogram characters describing God to be used in place of syllabic characters. The word for god is 'Od', and has its own unique character (as do each of the Faces, the capital F 'Face', and Its deified pronoun). The syllable 'od' [oʊd] is very common in the Wardi language, and a wholly separate character is used for the phonetic sound when it is not a reference to the deity (ie 'lion' (odo [oʊdoʊ]) does not contain the same character for God in spite of its first syllable having the exact same pronunciation). Names are a bit of a gray area (ie: the name 'Odabi' is very common and carries the meaning of 'gift/blessing from God'). Religious leadership is currently experiencing a mild schism on whether the written character for God is separated due to being wholly sacrosanct (and thus inappropriate to include in the written form of a personal name) or as more of a functional delineation of the sacred and mundane.

[soleminisanction]

On a whim, I decided to hunt down the first appearance of the Cluemaster, just for historical context and to see where the character actually started pre-Dixon, pre-Crisis, and especially pre-Steph. It actually turned out to be... pretty interesting, in terms of the grand sweep of Bat-continuity. At least I think so.

So Arthur Brown, alias the Cluemaster, made his first appearance in Detective Comics #351, published in May 1966:

That timing is interesting, because it means this issue would've been coming out right around the time the '66 TV series was wrapping up its first season. Which means that this is the period of continuity when, following Detective Comics #328 from two years prior, Alfred had been killed off via giant falling rock (seriously) and replaced with Dick's Aunt Harriet in a slightly desperate attempt to make the living arrangement in Wayne Manor seem less gay.

This is significant because, following the era-specific splash page introducing "The Cluemaster's Topsy-Turvy Crimes!" the story proper actually begins with Harriet:

For some reason, despite being the "den mother," Aunt Harriet was always left out of the loop when it came to the Batman and Robin schitck, so this opening sequence after her two years on the job was a whole deal.

I can see how Arthur got a reputation for being a D-lister villain -slash- kinda pathetic when he's getting upstaged as a threat in his first appearance by, "Quick, we need to gaslight not-Mom." The way he gets actually introduced into the story almost feels like an afterthought -- like, "Oh yeah, this was supposed to be about the villain guy."

"We've been waiting for them all week!"

Oh. Oh, I think they're trying to make him pathetic.

That would explain so much about Arthur's terrible costume. I always thought that thing looked like it was designed to be awful. And I think it was. I think we're supposed to take him as a wannabe the heroes aren't taking seriously. At all.

Side note, I'd forgotten how many creative monikers they gave the boys back in these days. Masked Manhunter I've heard before, but Teen-age Thunderbolt is new to me.

All that said, Arthur can't be totally incompetent or they wouldn't have a story, so he does manage to slip away and leave him with his supposedly signature clue...

But even that kinda feels... off? Because then Arthur gets this whole monologue to set up that his thing is that he thinks he's smarter than everyone else, and his real plan is to try to figure out Batman and Robin's identities...

...only to be foiled by the Aunt Harriet b-plot and have the Duo just kinda give up on his clue altogether.

Like seriously, they foil a completely unrelated robbery and then stumble on Arthur's big Arabian Nights heist on accident. Only to get dropped down a hole which, admittedly, doesn't make Batman and Robin look so great in comparison either.

There's an odd tone to this story because it really doesn't feel like we're suppose to take Arthur all that seriously as a threat? Like, even for the time, he's goofy. He feels like a parody of the Riddler, who was very popular at the time. And yet, based on the logic of the story, his plan of distracting them with terrible clues while he secretly followed them to their secret headquarters would've worked, if not for Aunt Hariet's efforts to also learn their secret identities accidentally screwing him over.

Also... sure, we'll call that a "sea serpent" and not a "very obvious upside-down duck." Whatever you say, comic.

The Arabian Nights one is a little more clever, but is it racist? I genuinely don't know. Maybe. Unrelated to all that, I like how Bruce and Dick are drawn in civilian mode by this artist (Carmine Infantino, designer of Barry's OG Flash costume -- a legend). He captures their ages well without over-exaggerating anything, Dick looks like a pretty, acrobatic teenager, Bruce looks like a handsome athlete in his 30s, they're wearing clothes that suit them and fit well. IDK, they just look nice.

Also, heh. Duck marina. Tim's new home, foreshadowed 60 years in advance.

Anyway what was I talking about? Right. Arthur. Harriet's camera gave him away because his painting was radioactive.

It was the 60s, everything in this franchise was radioactive. Not sure how this plan parses with the fact that the Batmobile of this era was supposed to be nuclear-powered too but whatever. From there foiling his dastardly plot is as simple as following his henchgoon home...Dick jumps on a grenade just to squeeze in some last-minute drama...

And then Bruce and Dick successfully gaslight both him and Aunt Harriet with the power of disguise and a little movie magic.

"Someday, we'll tell Aunt Harriet! But not now. For reasons. It'd be easier, but we're just not going to."

Also, it took me until writing up the page descriptions to realize that the two goons that Bruce and Dick pose as are the same two they take out for stealing televisions, so that would be why that random moment is in there. That did not track for me, probably because it's not so obvious from the framing of the fight scene that Dick is tackling a guy who's basically the same size as him.

--

In conclusion: Arthur should use more bombs. That's clearly more this thing than the clues, which it turns out where never actually a compulsion at all, but shtick to try and show off how smart he is. Like the foundational difference between Riddler and Cluemaster appears to be that Riddler has a legitimate compulsion to leave riddles behind and Cluemaster's just a know-it-all tryhard who's challenging Batman purely to prove that he's the smartest guy in the whole wide world.

It's also funny and a little sad to me that, despite this issue prominently featuring Aunt Harriet, a character who got a lot of attention in the '66 TV series, when they needed a quick Riddler expy to fill in for an episode in the second season that they couldn't use Frank Gorshin for (because he was asking for more money than the studio wanted to pay), they didn't use Cluemaster, they used the Puzzler, a Superman villain from the Golden Age.

This also explains what those pellets on Steph's OG costume were supposed to be, which I'm not sure she ever actually used in canon. Gimmick grenades stolen from her dad's stash could've been a fun shitck for her, they should've leaned into that. Imagine her upgrading to glitter bombs. That would've been amazing.

[fisheito]

This has to be the start to APOLogies to all the blade fans who have to put up with blade stuck in eternal 3p. He can be ur devil or u angl (ghost nun vs magigirl) WITHIN MONTHS OF EACH OTHER. His bayonetta legs are killin it and yep it still feels like I'm hallucinating

[tea-cat-arts]

"Chilchuck is a tumblr sexy man! Senshi is a tumblr sexyman!" Shut up. The only one qualified to be a tumblr sexyman is Chimera form Falin

[teh-nos]

"are people not into that?" i ask, after posting my weird niche shit to the internet, despite knowing it to be weird niche shit.

[warrior-of-waistbands]

this video has been stuck in my head for weeks and now I'm unleashing it upon you. Huzzah! Anyway. Stepdad-stepson bonding hours.

[chicago-geniza]

just remembered "you were the only one who cupped the balls." why is eric bogosian Like That

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: What I'd Like To Read By The End Of The Year.

I was feeling ~Whelmed~ over the weekend about all the things I still want to read, and I thought to myself, "Gee Why Is That??", so I pulled everything off my shelf and stacked it up basically in the order I'd like to read it and then went "....ah I see, carry on."

Now this stack WOULD be fine, except everything from ALWAYS COMING HOME down through HOUSE OF LEAVES is stuff I'd like to read adjacent to writing projects, namely: 1. IN BETWEEN (which I'm working on now but need to wrap up by the end of August) and then 2. NANO (which, y'know. Starts on November 1). So the sixteen (16) books between ACH and HOL are for the next three (3) months, and then I'll come back for the side-leaners during/after NaNo, I think.

(Not pictured in this stack is STARLING HOUSE, which I don't have in hand yet but will also be a NaNo Prep book!)

Basically my plan is to read down through this stack in this order and see how long it takes me! I finally got set up with my coworking space today, so hopefully I'll be writing late a couple nights a week starting. tomorrow. Which. will eat into reading time pretty significantly, hopefully.

But there's so much cool stuff I want to read! And write! And knit!! You see why I'm having A Time, huh.

[itsgonnagetinspiringsoon]

was thinking about how pretty much all the bad kids are legally related at this point and out of curiosity I made a family tree and I can absolutely connect every single one of the bad kids (except for gorgug poor guy) on it through their parents.

[the-acid-pear]

I'm having one of my iconic calming down and coming down from what felt like a trance to realize where I'm at. So sorry if I've been out of it here on Tumblr dot com I've been busy hallucinating and dissociating and being overall anxious. But I'm kind of coming out of it.

[charliespringverse]

I catch a glimpse of Lister grinning at me, a soft smile, one that reminds me of years ago, back when this was all new and exciting and fun, back when we really were children. Then he yanks the cape and skips away.

forever one of my favourite moments (thank you thursday)

i love how such a brief interaction manages to capture the running themes of distance/proximity, growing up, and magic so easily

[parentheses-posts]

The word you're looking for is "parenthetical"

A set of parentheses is called a parenthetical.

That makes sense I think. But I've also never heard it. As much as I would love to use this to be grammatically(?) correct, I think I will keep using the phrasing I have been, just to be the most clear.

Jeez, you'd think that they'd teach you the basics like this when you literally study the fine arts of it, but I guess not. Fun!

This post has 1 parenthetical.

[furnace-arden]

I don't think I'm a furry, but I'm getting the urge to design a seal fursona after seeing a sketch of a seal-trans-guy

[shanedoesdoodles]

You ever look for a specific word/thing to describe a feeling you're having and think you've found it but as you look more into it it turns out it was a simular concept but very distinct from what you were looking for? And then when you try to be more specific everything that pulls up is still the same close but definitely not the same thing to describe it? I'm a stuck in a bit of a loop at the moment

[roseverdict]

microdosing on childhood nostalgia by staring dead-eyed at a windows 98 screensaver while sick enough to hallucinate*

[soapoet]

More future spouse readings please you kill them 🫠😭

Thank you!! ♡

I'm currently working on a future spouse adjacent reading that someone suggested if that helps??