hello everydork at special request of dear mutual @padonkadonk and as a thank you from me for their wonderful art and conversation, lets talk about SQUEACH
or for those of you that dont live in my head, iggy and lemdogs twin language. a delightful mashup of squeak and speech, largely consisting of seemingly random noises.
iggy and lemmy met in the jungle when they were kids and became Very fast friends. however iggy didnt have the best grasp on language. tends to happen when you have a mysterious backstory largely involving dwelling in the jungle for your formative years. lemmy taught iggy a lot of language, hence why iggys accent is a bit all over the place but we'll get to that when i answer that ask in my inbox. probably later today, ive been inspired and i have another 2h bus later.
lemmy could make friends with a fuckin cinderblock so befriending jungle boy wasn't too hard. communicating with jungle boy was a tad more difficult. iggs had a very basic grasp of whatever they call english in the soupiverse edition of the marioverse; his sentences would be a little jumbled, he'd interrupt himself, he had childhood tics, and he had a Stutter. quite a prominent stutter, until he was about fourteen. hed get frustrated with his own abilities and lemdogs a problem solver.
enter, squeach.
squeach is a largely lemmy invention and it consists of a lot of Sounds rather than words. words have pesky s's and t's and twins not good with those. click for yes, two clicks for no, different sounds correspond to different ideas. squeach isnt meant for intricate conversations, thats what too much eye contact is for. lotta hand gestures too, overtly complicated handshakes transcend language. lemmy borrowed bits and pieces of his homes sarasaland dialect, which is a little jarring to hear from iggy. most things are jarring to hear from iggy tbf. but the point stands. squeach has no written form. duh. but they do have a basic tapping sound system whenever they cant talk out loud or cant see each other, which was useful when they shared a room and wanted to talk after dark.
they still use it sometimes, less so as they've grown up but they'll use bits and pieces here and there. clicks, whistles, things that drive ludwig up the wall. bowser thinks its a drug thing. lock in dude theres no words for do you wanna get high in the woods with me. its just a Look. they're more likely to use it around other people, partially because it pisses their siblings off with the sounds and partially because nobody needs to know their business. eye contact tends to be their primary public communication, they can read each other so well words are hardly needed. iggys extremely expressive face does help. you can tell what this dude is thinking in any scenario. you could read this guy with your eyes closed. lemmy can read him from another fuckin room. they are freakishly in sync.
iggy takes a Lot of inspiration from he and lemmys kid languages for the zillion different made up languages he uses for his dnd campaigns. dude is a FIEND for a conlang.
is the sliver of iggys backstory helping make sense of why he is the way that he is
thank you for your request chichi i hope this is satisfactory and i am very happy to talk about these two little chuds, they bring me great joy. little rats. thank you eternally for your wonderful art.
this goes for all yall who have ever drawn me things of the souplings, i love seeing what you guys do with them and it makes me so happy knowing folks think fondly of my creatures. i love artists. i love art. i treasure everything yall make for me with every fibre of my being.