The Cat and the Bat

2021-03-07 #diceRollProse

Stats

Words: 146
Words-of-the-day: 23
Inclusion: 16%
Sentences with no words-of-the-day: 0
Most words-of-the-day in one sentence: 3

Nouns: 11
Adjectives: 6
Verbs: 6

Words of the week

Puellile (adj): (formal) girlish.
Avowal (n): an acknowledgement or admission.
Locomote (v): to move, especially by self.
Malleable (adj): science for bendy.
Liniment (n): medicinal salve.
Exude (v): to ooze liquid or gas.
Cocoa cake (n): waste product from cocoa bean processing.
Cromulent (adj): acceptable or legitimate.
Stolid (adj): not easily aroused or excited.
Grubstake (n): capital to start an enterprise.
Impunity (n): exemption from punishment.
Antitail (n): its… the sunshine from a comet… like a tail but not a tail… like a big torch beam… google it.

Breakdown

It was a late decision to base this piece on Catwoman and Batman. Originally, because of lily-livered, I had lined up a cowgirl in the middle of a train heist; which was really cool but I wanted something more atypically romantic. It wasn’t until I came across the Charlie Wilcher’s illustration after learning what an antitail was (seriously google it) that I found my story. If it’s not clear, an antitail is huge stream of light that beams away from a comet much like the caped crusader’s bat-light. The icing on the cake was pitch-black, a flexible word but also symbolically and synonymously linked with both characters.

Suffice to say, random words thrown at you from dictionaries aren’t likely to be romantic by nature off the bat. To pull off the love theme I needed rely heavily on analogy. Words that immediately stood out to me were cocoa cake and liniment. Cocoa cake is a very textural word, isn’t it? I’ve never seen one but I imagine them to be just like the cakes you get from the coffee machine in the office. Have you ever broken one up? So crumbly. I thought it would make a nice analogy to a persons melty heart when they make that precious first kiss. Also liniment, a gel you apply to skin to soothe bruises and sprains, another word with sensual connotations. Ever used Deep Heat? It burns at first, but after it’s nice and toasty on your muscles. I’ve never used a liniment but I want it to be like that.

Other words that I knew would lend themselves to romance: avowal, malleable, exude and pair off. I knew I’d be able to wrangle them into a tasty story. The real fun, however, came when I had to meld the story around my protagonist, Catwoman. We’re all familiar with the sexual tension between the cat and the bat. So this story needed to be feisty to do them justice. With words like puellile, bridesmaid and megaphone I had a strong feeling I could make something satire. And comeuppance and abhor were drawing me into a vengeful finish.

My favourite sentence by far is: ‘exude me into this crumbling cocoa cake free to contaminate in your embrace.’ I’m quite proud of the dynamic alliteration I pulled off. Obviously the /k/ sound is alliterate, but the /e/ sound at the start and end of the sentence is as well. On top of that I snuck in three words-of-the-day too, go me!