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There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:

仁智懷德聖虞唐，

貞志篤終誓穹蒼，

欽所感想妄淫荒，

心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:

Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,

zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,

qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,

xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:

傷慘懷慕增憂心，

荒淫妄想感所欽，

蒼穹誓終篤志貞，

唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:

Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,

huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,

cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,

táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:

蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:

- A love letter (expressing personal longing)

- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)

- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)

- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)

- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

The reason it was so important for narrative purposes, was that the plot concerns the visit of the Astronaut, in his completely opaque spacesuit, to a planet populated entirely by self-aware robots (originally from Earth) who have built their own society and are petitioning to be allowed to interact with Earth again as equals.

They have a democratic government and free choice of careers etc. as the orange robot serving as guide tells the Astronaut.

The Astronaut notices that there are two different types of robot on this world; the orange ones, who are in charge, gifted access to all information and facilities. and the blue robots, who are seen as more limited in function, have less access to information and resources, and are not allowed positions of power or as wide a choice of employment opportunities. Even transportation is segregated.

The Astronaut investigates further and discovers that the blue and orange robots are actually structurally identical, there is absolutely no difference between their potential or capabilities, and it is only because the orange robots are instructed by their Educator system to consider themselves superior, that the difference exists.

The Astronaut tells the robots they are not ready for re-alignment with Earth, until they come to terms with their own unfairness, and how Earth had had to deal with this issue themselves. When that time comes, the robots will be able to ally with Earth.

Then he leaves in his spaceship, and it's only in that one final panel that we see the Astronaut is black.

Not subtle, nor should it be, but for 1950 this was a breathtakingly powerful statement, perhaps the first of it's kind in the genre.

And then you have Remmick and his song. There's uniformity in the dancing!!! in the singing!!!! in the movements!!!!!!! Those same people who were dancing so freely and expressively!!!!! Now following remmick step after step!!!!!

like okay if sammie hadn't gone to the juke joint, remmick probably wouldn't have shown up. but then the klan would have. okay smoke took those assholes out solo, if it was him and stack maybe they could have handled it. well the juke joint would have shut down in a month because no one had any real fucking money because of the sharecropping scrip. not to mention two seperate mobs are on their way to fuck the twins up (what do you MEAN you robbed al capone??). okay maybe they covered their tracks, well they're still in the fucking jim crow south and stack and mary have a cool 35 years until loving v virginia so best case scenario is he's broke and watching the love of his life from afar until he's 70. plus annie implied the twins were on borrowed time anyway since she'd been quietly protecting them the whole time they were gone.

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

Enter Adriano Celentano: a top Italian rockstar. Effortlessly talented, deservedly popular, and extremely funny. Celentano decides to use his talent for evil. He composes a kind of a parody: a song that mimics English but is entirely gobbledegook, improvised to such an earworm you will find yourself humming it while doing laundry 5 years from now.

He performs it on Italian TV. It's an instant hit. Tops all the charts in Italy. And France. And Germany. And Belgium. Everyone goes nuts. It's a great comedy of American rock-and-roll. And of music itself.

Sorry it took me so long to get to all of these, I’ve spent the last few weeks scrounging up every single resource I could get my hands on so that I could make a comprehensive list of which nicknames are canon and which are fanon and it took a SUPER long time. The bottom line is I ended up accidentally making a whole-ass Google Slides for every single batkid nickname, and while the whole project isn’t anywhere near finished yet, I managed to complete the slides needed to answer all of these questions. So...yeah! Here’s what I found:

Dickie/Dickie-Bird:

Jason seems to be the main nickname-user of the family, so aside from the aforementioned comics, there isn’t very much content of Dick being called “Dickie” or “Dickie-Bird”. (I also want to bring up “Big Bird,” which I see Jason calling Dick sometimes in fanfics. That one’s not canon anywhere, unfortunately.) Dick used to be called “Dickie” sometimes as a term of endearment during his circus days, but after that it’s not likely you’ll see any of his family members calling him something other than Dick. 

Little Wing:

Sadly, “Little Wing” hasn’t been used in any canon content after this comic, which is a major bummer since the fandom has turned it into one of Jason’s most popular nicknames (from Dick at least).

Jay/Jace/Jaylad/Jaybird:

(I didn’t list the comic sources for the more widely used nicknames since they’re so common in comics that you could find them pretty much anywhere.) 

I’d say that Bruce called Jason “Jay” far more during his Robin days than he does now, though that could be attributed to their more distant relationship nowadays. (Or maybe I just didn’t happen to read the specific modern comics in which he called Jason “Jay” or “Jace/Jase”.)

Yeahhh, sorry about this one. “Jaylad” is kind of the Schrödinger's cat of nicknames. The fandom ended up misconstruing the term over time. and losing the comma between “Jay” and “lad” so it became “Jaylad” and everyone just stuck with it.

The main person who seems to use this one is Roy Harper, as I haven’t yet found a comic in which one of Jason’s family members calls him “Jaybird”. You can open pretty much any comic with both Jason and Roy in it and expect Roy to say it at least once.

Timmy/Timbers/Timbo:

I haven’t seen anyone calling Tim “Timmers” in canon, but otherwise, most of the other common nicknames derived from Timothy are canon.

Pretender/Replacement:

I always found it wild how Jason never once called Tim “Replacement” in a comic, and yet we all managed to latch onto it anyway and make it his go-to nickname for Tim? That takes some dedication, man. Otherwise, Jason called Tim “Pretender” a few times during Batman: Hush, and that was about it. 

Baby Bird/Baby Bat:

I know a lot of people hate the nickname “Babybird” (for whatever reason), but honestly, I’m really hoping that DC makes it a thing because dammit, we deserve this breadcrumb at least. As of right now, the only batkid who has ever been called “Babybird” was Damian, and it was by his mom. (In fanon, it’s typically Tim who is called “Babybird” while Dick is “Dickie-Bird” and Jason is “Little Wing”. Who decided this, I have no idea but I’m not complaining.) I also included “Baby Bat” since I see that one pretty often too, and that one is sadly not canon either. The DC writers really don’t want us getting our hands on any family fluff whatsoever, huh.

This started as attempt to read every issue of every series where Dick and Tim interacted. It’s kind of spiraled from there, into this thing - an attempt at cataloguing what the Batfamily call each other, and how it’s changed over time.