This website is under construction.
Welcome to the homepage of the Motulang Project!
This website is under construction.
It is a conlanging fanfic project I started, back in mid-2012, with a goal to develop a set of fictional languages and scripts set in the context of the Motuverse.
Motuverse is a short-hand way of referring to the fictional world of the Masters of the Universe (MotU) franchise, originated by American toymaker Mattel Inc. in the early 1980s, and which, helped in part by the success of two twin cartoon series developed by Lou Scheimer's Filmation animation studio, went on to become a huge bestseller in toy aisles across America and many other countries around the world, as well as a cultural phenomenon that left a lasting impact upon many of the children who were growing up during that decade, with characters like He-Man, Skeletor and She-Ra having achieved the status of pop-culture icons.
Since the 1990s, this franchise has remained mostly lying fallow, kept alive mainly by a devoted fan following, relatively small in terms of, say, the size of the fandoms of current blockbuster franchises like Star Wars, but with enough passion to power and keep alive one of the most successful adult-collector toylines ever (Masters of the Universe Classics), which has been running continuously for already over a decade with well over 200 items released so far.
There were a couple of short-lived mainstream toyline and cartoon revival attempts, one in the early 1990s and another in the early 2000s, which failed to rekindle the success of the 1980s, at least in part due to Mattel's commercial mismanagement practices. On the other hand, the prospect of a new live-action movie remained marred in what seemed like a neverending development hell for about two decades.
However, the success of the recent new She-Ra cartoon, developed by Noelle Stevenson for Dreamworks and launched through Netflix in Autumn 2018, and the news of an upcoming new live-action He-Man film starring Noah Centineo and produced by Sony and Mattel with the Nee brothers at the helm (a potential blockbuster, currently slated for release in Spring 2021), may mean that new life might be about to be infused into Motuverse for new generations to get to know and love this rich fictional world like so many children of the 1980s did.
Because, apart from a long-time fan of anything (con)linguistics, I also happen to be a long-time fan of MotU since my childhood days in the 1980s and, even though this fictional universe is very rich in such elements as characters and locations (featuring with well over half a thousand characters), unfortunately (and I believe mostly due to its origins as a toy-based, visual-centric franchise) its has never featured any significant conlinguistic aspect to speak of.
Quite unlike, say, the fictional world of Lord of the Rings, conceived from the start as a scenario for J. R. R. Tolkien's artlangs, like Quenya and Sindarin, to be spoken in (as Tolkien's primary interest was actually in the realm of linguistics). Or unlike the fictional world of Star Trek, where the Klingon language has been gaining ever more importance, to the point that even The Klingon Hamlet has seen a mass-market edition. And also unlike several other recent franchises, like Game of Thrones and James Cameron's Avatar, for which the notable conlangs Dothraki and Na'vi were specifically created by linguistics experts as part of what appears to be a fortunately increasing contemporary recognition and appreciation for the role of that fictional languages can play in generating and defining richer and more realistic fictional worlds.
The only exception so far worth mentioning among the conlinguistic barrenness of the Motuverse (apart from the random symbols seen on Grayskull's throne and Gwildor's device in the 1987 movie, and the intriguing letter-like symbols in the recently unearthed illustration for an obscure New Adventures-era concept playset called Monster Mouth Arena), is the fictional First Ones script recently developed for the new She-Ra series (the identity of whose designer I am not yet aware of, so if anyone has any clue about this, please let me know). Which, even though its visual concept seemed to offer promisingly novel features, unfortunately most of the potential I see in it seems to have been left untapped, having turned out to be used just a simple half-baked cipher for English words and orthography and not having been truly developed any further.
So all in all, the world of MotU offers a very rich visual world and extensive mythology, but it is still severely lacking in the conlinguistic deparment. So I thought I would take upon myself the task of filling that void with my own fanfic conlangs.