i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Huh, the idea that it's making fun of someone's accent seems pretty strange to me. I use it in my writing and have seen it come up in other places besides fan fiction.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I guess it depends on what degree the phonetics are taken and if the reader is familiar with the character already.
The first I really remember seeing it was Alexander Anderson from Hellsing, and having to read all his stuff in a crazy thick Scottish Accent worked well with his character. He sort of is an exaggerated character, anyhow.
I use it with the Apple family in my MLP fics and I think I've only had one complaint where I was sort of using it in an area where even I thought it might be a bit much, but it's never been suggested I stop entirely. Of course, here everyone has an idea what the characters sound like, so the dialogue lends itself to that.
Scots is a legitimate language; if care is taken to represent it accurately i don't see the problem.
i don't really see the need to represent the Apple family's accent phonetically, since they use dialectal terms with enough frequency that any reader can infer their accents from that.
Like i said, even privileged accents aren't actually phonetic. It's always kinda weird to me when i see someone online try to represent an RP accent phonetically, since i've been brought up to regard it as neutral, but relative to an American accent it obviously isn't.
It seems to me to carry the implication that the speaker is uneducated, or at the very least that their accent is less legitimate than whatever the writer/main character speaks with. Whether or not that's the intention, that's how it comes across to me.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
^^ As a writer it helps me with their dialogue a bit and I don't mind reading it when I see it. I've seen it enough where it seems to be something of a tool when writing if someone is another character that comes off as more 'hick' than the Apple family.
A.J. and Apple Bloom's phonetic alterations are probably on the light to medium side, with A.J. actually having a fairly impressive vocabulary. And I've seen writers do something similar with these two and lay it on thick with other characters to get across they're even more 'country'.
I guess an important distinction to make here is I actually do this with every character to some degree.
Scootaloo has a tendency to drop the 'g's of words like "walking", "flying", etc... so I have "walkin'" (the Apples do, too, but it's not limited to them).
Then then most my characters tend to use things that aren't exactly words like "kinda", "oughta" (and then Pinkie makes up words like crazy and utters a lot of things that are basically just sounds) stuff like that, with only the more refined, proper characters (Rarity, Twilight, Celestia, Luna, Sunset Shimmer) not really using slang except if they have their own verbal tics.
Then there's the situations where a character's mouth is full and they're talking anyways where I sprinkle in a bunch of 'f's and 'w's and add a few vowels to get across what they sound like.
So I guess things depend a bit on how the author is doing dialogue in general. If everyone is speaking perfectly written, grammatically perfect English, except for two characters. I can see how that would seem very off.
Though, in my case, everyone is basically speaking their own version of the language with only a handful really speaking 'proper' English.
I guess my point is, I like phonetic rendering, but I like it to such a degree that I want it on all characters. :P
Dorothy L. Sayers goes so far as to represent dropped consonants in upper class dialects, as well as drawing attention to words like 'reely' (how else are you supposed to say it?)
irritates the heck out of me
i don't mind things like 'kinda' or the odd dropped 'g', and if the character's mouth is full that's fine
it almost always strikes me as cartoonish and distracting, you should be able to get the reader to infer how a character speaks through sentence structure and context.
it almost always strikes me as cartoonish and distracting, you should be able to get the reader to infer how a character speaks through sentence structure and context.
Well, I'm writing fan-fiction for a cartoon. In my case, I'm trying to represent a visual and auditory medium via text.
I actually do sound effects and onomatopoeia. The only time anyone has had an issue here was the one story that's written in 1st person present tense. Which I can see, since the focus is more on the single character and her thoughts, rather than the others which are more about the actions of many characters.
kind of continuing in the vein of the recent discussion in the tumblr thread, i have a question
i have a story concept about two children from a middle class home who get sent to live in a big house in the countryside
it's supposed to be a fairytale-like story, and i want to play with anachronisms in order to keep the setting purposefully ambiguous, but i also want to make the main characters ones my child-self could have related to, giving them the kind of speech patterns and mannerisms that come naturally to me
the intended readership is children, and i have no plans to actively explore SJ issues (which i don't believe i could deal with effectively or bring anything new to the table), so i was thinking i'd just refrain from mentioning anyone's ethnicity or sexual orientation
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
But i want to be careful. i don't want to encourage prejudice.
Sometimes i feel like i shouldn't be writing at all because there's already an overabundance of privileged white middle class authors writing safe entertainment fiction
Sometimes i feel like i shouldn't be writing at all because there's already an overabundance of privileged white middle class authors writing safe entertainment fiction
No-one should refrain from writing simply because other people like them write; the inverse should be true, of course, because rarer voices ought to be heard more clearly, but that is not the same thing. Not everyone can be a transgressive minority writer, after all.
Sometimes i feel like i shouldn't be writing at all because there's already an overabundance of privileged white middle class authors writing safe entertainment fiction
Uh... dude? Seriously... pull up a bit. I think you need to step away from tumblr. This is not a healthy outlook anyone should have.
This is why I have trouble with the whole privileged idea of looking at inequality. It seems focused on bridging the gap on equality by punishing those at the top instead of trying to raise those at the bottom. Furthermore, it can only really target those willing to listen to it's message, which are often probably the last set of people who need to strictly adhere to privilege checking.
Just write and try to make people happy. Your skin color or social-economic status shouldn't matter unless your trying to write social commentary, or something...
However, I will add that keeping in mind personal biases and gaps in knowledge and experience when you are writing is positive. But there is a huge difference between knowing yourself well enough to see when you are stepping over a line and denying yourself because you are not 110% experienced in all walks of life.
Also, not sure if I linked this one, but It just won a writing contest. It's straight up Dan Vs. (okay, I might have snuck in a bit of a reference to MLP) I'll upload it to FanFiction.net sometime soon.
Man is a most complex simple creature: see what he weaves, and how base his reasons for doing so.
For my TRPG book, I had the idea of instead of making write-ups for every organization and stuff, I'd just make viewpoint characters that can view the operations or be the operators, and allow players to extrapolate the details from there. To save on the word count, because the whole thing is starting to turn out to be a lot and a lot of words already.
I wonder if it would be effective. Because I really want players to make their own stuff up.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
I think that's a pretty nifty idea. Just a short story to give out some hints of what a group might be like. Sounds like a good way to get players involved.
Ah, another child come to disturb me. Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you. Seems that every week I get a curious little tyke up this hill to see if old Granny Sarah is really an old witch after all. I certainly fit the mold; I live in an old rickety cottage, I pick strange herbs, and I daresay I’m not usually one for company.
Well, let me let you in on a little secret, child. The truth is that I am a witch. But that’s such a trivial, unimportant thing it might as well be a lie. The real truth, the real real truth, the truth of the Gods themselves, is a mite more complicated. Sit down, I’ll fix you some tea. No, no, don’t be worried. I bought these leaves from your mother, after all. I doubt she’d want to kill anyone. Old Margaret, now, she’s another story, but I don’t buy tea from her. Alright, there we go. Nice and hot. Don’t burn your little tongue. Now listen close, because I don’t tell this story to just anyone.
Granny Tippins was her name, and though she wasn’t a day over forty, she walked with a terrible arch and scowled with scorn enough to scare away any hag or crone; so the people found themselves calling her “granny” anyway. She carried with her such a horrible scent that no hill or wood and certainly no hamlet would house her, so she wandered the world, her only company being worms, slugs, snails, and a little pouch where she kept her tobacco. She would roam the countryside, picking corn and eating it straight off the husk, or biting berries off bushes. And since she never lingered, the farmers learned to tolerate her; at any rate, they figured, it would mean they would never have to talk to her or come near her stench.
Granny Tippins was roaming as usual one day when a small child, as old crows like her tended to attract, came up to her, and, to her surprise, never flinched nor grabbed his nose.
“Child, what ails you, that you would come up to me with my foul presence?” she said with a glower.
“Nothing ails me missus, and what foul presence do you speak of?” the little girl said to her with a look of confusion on her face.
“Surely you know of my horrible odor?” she said.
“My nose don’t work right, never has.” the girl said. Granny Tippins snorted and began to walk off, continuing along the hillocked northward road as was did before. The girl ran in front of Granny and held her tiny arms out, seemingly attempting to create some sort of impenetrable four-foot barrier.
“Wait!” he shrieked, “There’s a great big hole up there!”
“I’ve seen holes,” said Granny. “And they’ve never given me trouble before.” The girl went wide-eyed.
“No,” she said, “a big big hole! It sucks people in and drives them mad!”
And maybe have the girl come back a bit earlier. Have the witch explain what's going to happen and pass the torch on to her instead of just leaving it for her to pick up
It had been a long time since Prae had thought about anything. It's hard to say what, on this particular, unremarkable day, compelled Prae to turn his eyeless gaze sunward for the first time in a thousand years, and observe the rays of the heavenly father pierce the cracks in the slate grey shell that was the sky above, but he did. He thought of time, of the four thousand years stretched behind him, and the millions stretched before. And he tried, briefly, to express this thought aloud with a deep sigh, before he recalled that it had been millennia since he had last possessed a mouth, much less the connected organic machinery to make it speak. This moment passed, unwitnessed by any being save a rat-dog digging in the sand to try to find a meal. Prae lowered his gaze, and stared into the endless desert before him, as he had been, and as he would be, until the next stray thought, in the next few thousand years.
So, this is going to sound really weird, but Roko's Basilisk has inspired a semi-mythical anecdote in the story I am writing. I suppose that I shall share it later, when I am finished it.
Comments
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i don't really see the need to represent the Apple family's accent phonetically, since they use dialectal terms with enough frequency that any reader can infer their accents from that.
Like i said, even privileged accents aren't actually phonetic. It's always kinda weird to me when i see someone online try to represent an RP accent phonetically, since i've been brought up to regard it as neutral, but relative to an American accent it obviously isn't.
It seems to me to carry the implication that the speaker is uneducated, or at the very least that their accent is less legitimate than whatever the writer/main character speaks with. Whether or not that's the intention, that's how it comes across to me.
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
irritates the heck out of me
i don't mind things like 'kinda' or the odd dropped 'g', and if the character's mouth is full that's fine
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
kind of continuing in the vein of the recent discussion in the tumblr thread, i have a question
i have a story concept about two children from a middle class home who get sent to live in a big house in the countryside
it's supposed to be a fairytale-like story, and i want to play with anachronisms in order to keep the setting purposefully ambiguous, but i also want to make the main characters ones my child-self could have related to, giving them the kind of speech patterns and mannerisms that come naturally to me
the intended readership is children, and i have no plans to actively explore SJ issues (which i don't believe i could deal with effectively or bring anything new to the table), so i was thinking i'd just refrain from mentioning anyone's ethnicity or sexual orientation
is this bad?
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Thank you. This has been worrying me.
Maybe i worry too much.
But i want to be careful. i don't want to encourage prejudice.
Sometimes i feel like i shouldn't be writing at all because there's already an overabundance of privileged white middle class authors writing safe entertainment fiction
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
i get so angry sometimes i just punch plankton --Klinotaxis
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead
Assassin poems, Poems that shoot
guns. Poems that wrestle cops into alleys
and take their weapons leaving them dead