today i met tiny chris
poor wean's da got et by a 'bon. now he wants 'em all dead. wiv' crossy eyes like them as drawed in the picture shows. dinnae get et and ye might be his new da.
he actually made me think about two things - the npcs/people we've helped along the way, and the writing of accents.
it's no secret i gave biff this accent - it tells you he ain't a city slicker but rather a rural boy, it tells you his folks ain't got a lotta money (at least, one would think), and it associates him with a specific cultural/ethnic profile (gaelic, i know/studied a little more about irish than scots so i lean irish)
i think we should, as a society, be wary of continuing to associate class with specific ethnic communities, but i'm not learned enough to make a post dedicated to my specific thoughts on that (yet? tbd)
mostly, i think it's important to look at the way characters speak as a vehicle of writing. when you write a character's accent, is it useful for what you're trying to establish in the scene? is the noble supposed to fail to understand the vernacular of his server? is it useful if the character is always going to say "dinnae" instead of "do not"? when dealing with non-western characters with accents, how far is it okay to go until the dialogue goes from representation to racist charicature?
writers have the power of flexibility. writing is about persuasion more than anything else, and we should remember to persuade our audiences that these are people. they aren't real, so don't bother with "realistic" - but they represent real ideas, concepts and associations in our world. it's important to be careful what you do with these, intended or not! and if you make an oopsie? acknowledge, accept and continue on your journey to being your best.
my preferences for writing accents based on my experiences, observations and education lean thus:
pick and choose what words require emphasis. if the whole sentence requires it, then so be it! but make conscious choices. words weigh differently, and they carry double the weight when they're written out to represent an accent. just really think about whether or not this is the point you want to say to, t', ta, or tae. the whole sentence doesn't need to be written out phonetically b/c avoiding doing that helps us steer clear of reiterating caricatures.
include culturally specific verbiage. "what's the craic" or "how's it hangin'" depending on who your character is. in india, lots of people greet each other with religious phrases (in english, it'd sound like saying "god is good"/"good is god" call and response) - so a thavnairian character could say anything between "sisters be with you" to "mindhurva guide your path today" (and also yours, brother/sister). but also: wain, wean, child, sweetling,
be careful which non-english words your character uses. i don't call it chai tea latte, i call it chai latte. my wife doesn't call it green tea latte, but matcha latte. i actually don't drink chai latte, i drink chai. but i call it both chai and tea interchangeably; so, when i want someone to know how to prepare my tea, i might ask for chai instead of tea. because with chai, you get half or whole base milk instead of water. you get dried ginger or an array of spices depending on the auntie. with tea, you get dried up leaves and some hot water. big difference for me.
above all, make sure it's legible most of the time. you can do this by avoiding writing a character's accent out completely phonetically. this isn't to say "conform your character to what people think they should talk like". this is about being aware that writing implies an audience. if you want your writing to connect with people, the important parts should be clearly communicated in the text. especially if you're writing in english. if i wanted my characters to speak hindi, why would i bother writing the story in english at all? you want people to see your character a specific way. write them the way you hope they'll be seen--if you've done a good enough job, it will lead to so much joy and satisfaction. if you haven't--it's back to the drawing board! but you get the chance to learn even more.
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Marka loves them all, she just has a very weird friendship with Lae'zel, respects Minthara but has a very different sense of morals and looks up to Jaheira but is also pretty sure she'll try to kill her if she fucks up too much with her Dark Urge-ness
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It’s the hypocrisy for me because if people are gonna complain about the show whitewashing Rhaenyra and Daemon (tbh I wouldn’t be so sure about Daemon since the show had him kill his first wife which may not have happened in the book and erased some of his more redeeming qualities like his relationship with Laena but w/e) then maybe they shouldn’t have been showering so much praise at the writers for doing the absolute mother of all character rehabilitations on Alicent instead keeping her as a one-dimensional evil stepmother who makes snide remarks about her teen stepdaughter possibly being groomed. Because that characterization for Alicent would’ve been far more ~accurate~ to the source material but I don’t believe that’s actually what y’all care about.
Then there’s all the call outs about the show’s handling of the Velaryons as black and how insensible it has come off as, which don’t get me wrong, is completely true but I didn’t see y’all concerned when the show took the canonical close relationship with romantic undertones that Laena (now played by a black woman) had with Rhaenyra and gave it instead to Alicent. On the contrary y’all were praising the show to the moon and back and gushing about the “lesbian divorce drama” so again, not so concerned about the source material or black characters being mistreated and sidelined, are we?
And just to be clear, the show could have turned Daemon and Rhaenyra into mustache-twirling villains with no redeeming or sympathetic qualities whatsoever and Alicent and Aegon could be innocent angels who have never done anything wrong in their lives and guess what? The throne would still be Rhaenyra’s by rights. Yes, the Dance of the Dragons is a horrible conflict caused by a bunch of morally reprehensible nobles veering for power and willing to do despicable things in order to achieve it, and yet at the heart of the matter remains the fact that society is sexist and simply Won’t Let A Woman Rule. Rhaenyra was the heir and was usurped by Aegon because of misogyny, everything that happened afterwards doesn’t negate that simple truth.
But anyways, none of that matters because f&b is an unreliable source and we can’t trust anything it says ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ so yes Rhaenyra is in every single way better than her younger half-brother, who’s a pathetic little wet-rag r*pist, and the green fraction is gonna support that pathetic little wet-rag r*pist because they hate women and children born outside the sanctity of marriage that much. Galaxy brain level take on the writers’ part. Truly immaculate lmfao.
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