hells_half_acre | Urge to Write Rising....

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Urge to Write Rising....

I don't know what it is with me the last few days, but I suddenly want to write ALL THE THINGS. Except, I already have a few things on the go that I need to FINISH.

Today I was listening to Storyboard on Geek and Sundry over at YouTube while I worked - because there are some days where my job is so monotonous that if I don't have something to listen to, I go into a coma. Anyway, Storyboard is "Hangout" with a bunch of fantasy authors talking about writing, and it's something I can tune in and out of as required by my job...

But man, today it made me want to write the epic fantasy novel that I had an idea for ten years ago - so that's what I've been mentally doing for the past two hours, even though I have fanfic to finish... also, my epic fantasy novel doesn't have a plot, it just has a main character... and I don't even know his name or what he looks like, I just know who he is and I love him. So really, all I've been doing for the past two hours is thinking about an awesome guy that I made up ten years ago... and when I put it like that, it sounds rather pathetic.

In completely unrelated news: I follow some teenagers on tumblr who can't tell the difference between legitimate photos and manips... and it makes me want to weep for the future, because honestly, it should be pretty bloody obvious that that's Jensen's head on the body of a porn star. I feel like this should be taught in Junior High at some point: "Okay, Class, today, we're going to cover how to spot manips so that you don't look like an idiot on the internet - you'll thank me later."

Also, completely unrelated: Is it just me or has LJ been crazy quiet as of late? I feel like I even have less people chatting with me here. Maybe it's because I stopped writing epic Harry Potter crossovers? Maybe it's because people have moved on from the show? Maybe people have moved on from LJ? Maybe everyone is on tumblr reblogging manips? I don't know. Tumblr is far more narcissistic than LJ, which is I think part of the reason why I can't get into it that much. I basically only use it to look at pretty pictures of good-looking men... and to keep tabs on the Sherlock fandom.

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I'll just respond to this one, because *shrug* I do not know what's going on with your replies... but it doesn't really matter. It's not like I can't keep track of the conversation if it's not nested.

Yeah, they keep talking about different rules for hockey to try to minimize the concussions... it's hard when an essential part of the game is the tackling, and you're moving at ridiculously fast speeds on hard ice surrounded by plexi-glass, while holding wooden sticks. :P

On the one hand, they used to play the game without helmets or padding - so it should be safer these days. But on the other hand, I think there's a false sense of safety with the helmets and the padding, and players/coaches don't really realize that they can only protect you from so much.

I hear Lacrosse can be pretty brutal too. Fun fact: Lacrosse is actually Canada's official national sport... we just all seem to like hockey better.

Nah, you don't really need to watch 7x22. Anything that happens in 7x22 is readdressed in 8x01 anyway (or neatly summed up in the intro).

True, Firefly's gag reel was pretty awesome! :)

Yes, ice hockey is not a sport that screams "safety" :P

You have told me that thing about Canada and lacrosse before! Still find it weird. Wiki says ice hockey is your national winter sport though.

Fun fact, England does not, apparently, have a national sport. Wales however have rugby union, so Wales win.

Wales is pretty awesome. I also like the way people talk there. (To be fair though, I like the way people talk most everywhere).

I am reusing my trivial fact knowledge! :P Maybe lacrosse is our national summer sport?! I don't know, I just was born, grew up, and continue to live here. :P

I like how people talk everywhere too. Apart from Estuary. Estuary is not a nice accent.

Hey I wouldn't worry. I had to look up our national sport. :P

I'm not a huge fan of South-Western/Montreal Quebec-French accent. The further east you go in Quebec, the better the accent sounds, in my opinion. That being said, I still like it more than the Parisian French accent, that accent grates on my every last nerve. (Mind you, my friend that can do it probably exaggerates it just to drive me nuts.)

As far as English accents go... I'm not sure there's any that I really despise. But then, I'm not that familiar with all of them.

Again I wouldn't worry. It still takes me ages to work out if someone is American or Canadian when they're talking. I'm getting better, but I'm not great.

Just as long as when you mistake a Canadian for an American, you don't say "What's the difference?" when they correct you. I got that a lot when I was traveling through Ireland, and it made me want to hurt people. :P

The problem with telling Canadians and Americans apart by speech pattern though is that there are a LOT of Canadians in the American media (actors, news anchors, etc.) The generic Canadian accent and the generic American accent that actors try to use regardless of their mother-accents (like the accent Jared and Jensen use rather than sounding like they are from Texas) are basically exactly the same.

Ironically, you really can tell the most with the words "sorry" and "about" - which American will say with "ah" sounds instead of "o" sounds (sahry, abahwt). I've been made fun of in America for the way I say those words, but I would like to point out that they are spelled with Os. :P

Anyway, yeah, there's your lesson of the day. Even though you probably knew all that.

Well I sure knew not to say "what's the difference" to Canadians when talking about their accents, that for sure. It's like calling an Irish person British. :P

And yeah, I also knew that about the "Canadian Invasion" and generic American accents. (Fun fact: It took me until uni to actually realise that American's had more than one accent, and they, like us, mocked people from their own country for how they talked. This seems really really stupid, especially as I have known about Deep South accents all my life, but somehow it never actually sank in.)

And that sahry and abahwt thing doesn't actually help with Canadian accents. Because we pronounce the o's as well, so now you sound British in my head. :P

Well, I HAVE been mistaken for British before by a Canadian (who perhaps had a more pronounced regional accent than I did.) But it's not actually a bad way to tell the difference - if someone sounds American but with slight British leanings in their speech, then that person is probably Canadian.

Everyone sounds Canadian in my head, because that's the way I read people words, even if I know they're Australian or British or something else entirely. :P

It actually took me a while to figure out that Canada had different accents. My family all speaks with a pretty generic Canadian accent (basically, we sound like we're from Toronto). I mean, I guess I knew about the Newfoundland accent, and the French-Canadian accent... but it wasn't until I was in my teens that I realized that there were different accents to the west too.

Well I shall keep that in mind. I am getting better at it at least, but I don't come across many Canadians often.

But... it seemes so silly to me, to realise it so late. I mean, York has a different accent to Leeds, and they're half an hour appart (the Leeds accent isn't great). Of course America will have regional accents. :P

Well, it probably doesn't help that a lot of American media whitewashes the accents... so, a lot of what you hear in movies is just ONE general accent. Whereas British movies tend to preserve accents.

Part of the reason America has to do that, of course, is that a lot of their accents are pretty damn hard to understand. I mean, besides the New York accents, and your general soft southern accent, I think the first movie I saw with a purposefully distinct regional accent was Good Will Hunting.

(And in Canada, there was the way me and my friends spoke - which was the same as the news-casters on TV and the radio... and then there were comedy troupe shows from Newfoundland/Nova Scotia. The Kids in the Hall were predominately from the Toronto area too, so they're accents weren't that special to my ears.)

But yeah... it's probably just one of those silly things that your brain for some reason never connects together. Like... I was in my late teens before I realized that "The Count" on Sesame Street was "The Count" because he counted... I just genuinely believed that he was a Count. :P (It doesn't help that they dressed him up like Count Dracula - who WAS A COUNT.) But yeah... according to my friends, it should have been obvious.

I get that some American accents are hard to understand, but at the same time, have you heard Glaswegian? I mean really. I think half the reason we can't understand some American accent is because we never hear them. So America should get on that. :P

Also, Good Will Hunting is regional American accents? Of where? Where's it set again? Detroit? Chicago?

I guess that's a thing too. If you speak the same as the people on TV you're less likely to realise. Same way as having parents with different accents to your own.

And yeah, it's proably a brain thing. Like that moment you realise that funny squiggle infront of the Disney logo is actually a D. :P

Good Will Hunting is full pretty much all Boston accents (except Minnie Driver and Skarsgard(sp?) for obvious reasons).

But how often do you have someone with a Glaswegian accent telling you the news on TV or featuring prominently in a TV show or movie? That's the thing, you aren't going to put the really really hard accents into media that you want to have wide-audience appeal... because then you'll have people writing in and saying "I can't understand what the hell X is saying!" So yeah, it'd be cool if the harder to understand accents were heard more, because then we might start understanding them... but there's the transition period to consider where you will have no idea what that person is saying.

That being said, I was watching a show on Canadian TV once and the two hosts had the most adorable accent that I had ever heard... so I looked up where they were from: My hometown. (They just had the area's rural accent, which I had never picked up, because I grew up in the city and was raised by parents who favoured the Toronto/general Canadian accent).

Yeah I get that, but basically I'm saying that there could be more diversity. OK so we don't have incomprehensible Glaswegian accents on TV, but we do have pretty strong Scottish accents (I was going to list some and then realised that you wouldn't know who half the people were. :P). I guess you could say we're in the transition period. But then again, the US now has things like True Blood and... well I'm sure there's other things that I also don't watch/know of. So. *shrugs*

Yeah, okay, I agree with you.

I don't watch a lot of things, so I'm not sure how much diversity is really out there. It'd be nice if there were more accents though, I agree.

...This has been a very long conversation about accents. Huh.

Pet peev. In trashy American films English accents are used to mean "foreign accents". Surely it's not that difficult to put on the accent of the country you're pretending to be from. Seriously guys. (This shouldn't annoy me but it does.)

You'd be surprised. I find North Americans (including myself) are amazingly bad at putting on accents... and speaking other languages. That being said, I'm talking about general North Americans... probably if you are a trained actor, you should have additional skills, or at least the ability to hire a speech coach.

And yes, an oddly long conversation about accents. :P

I think it's a thing actors should at least try. I mean, worked pretty well for the Lord of the Rings didn;t it? Though that was English accents again. I heard Swedish didn't work so well for the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo though. So maybe you have a point.

Matt Damon's French and Russian in the Bourne Movies (granted, not accents but actual lines in the languages) was pretty laughable too - for a character that's supposed to be a really good spy anyway.

So, yeah, I think depending on the actors, it can be hit or miss. Still, I guess it depends what your story can support. It'd be nice if actors could just use whatever accent they have naturally... like, maybe we could have had a Scottish Tenth Doctor with David Tennant... but, then if it doesn't make sense for the story, then it doesn't make sense, I guess.

Yeah but I did read somewhere that Matt Damon has explicitly said that he it truly awful at both languages and accents so I forgive him.

Scottish Ten would have been grand. Not sure why they didn't do that...

Yeah, that's kind of my point - it's really a case by case basis. Sometimes you have an actor and a story that can support and accent, and sometimes you don't.

I figure Ten just wasn't Scottish because the Doctor has never been Scottish... though Nine was "from the North" so I don't see why they couldn't have gone a little bit MORE North...but whatever, I don't work for the BBC. I happen to love David's accent though, and I'm sorry I only get to hear it in interviews.

Yeah I guess. I think sometime I just want the acknowledgement that fantasy and thrillers and such are just as worth the investment as "serious" films..

Oh man I love that bit "How come you sound like you're from the north?" "lots of planets have a north!". Aww Chris Eccleston was my favourite.

"Rose I'm.. I'm trying to resonate concrete.."

Oh and it's like Colin Morgan's accent. MAN I love Irish accents. Him, Aiden Turner, Katie McGrath, all Irish rugby players ever... :P

I love Chris Eccleston period. So yeah, I was a huge fan of Nine.

Colin Morgan's accent is adorable. Apparently when they were doing the screen tests for Merlin, they actually had him run through a bunch of accents - one of which was more of a Dublin-Irish accent)... but yeah, then they went with the standard "British" accent (I have no idea what you call that general accent you guys have.)

I'm a huge fan of Irish accents too. I cat-sitted the other week for a couple where there husband is Irish, and my goodness, he's too old for me and I'm not physically attracted to him, but he only needed to talk to me and I swooned. :P

I... don't know what we'd call it either. Because really most of the time what people online call "British accents" are actually a variety of accents. (Though to be fair, calling them British accents is actually pretty fitting then, no?) but it's not Queen's English/RP... most of the time it's just the least exaggerated southern English accent. So.. southern English I guess is the closest..

Oh man, Irish. I can find even Jedward slightly attractive thanks to their accents. Do you know who Jedward are? If not... keep it that way. If you do, please please don't think less of us. :/

Sadly, I do know who Jedward are, because I like to watch Graham Norton on the interwebs. But, I won't think less of you... technically Justin Bieber is Canadian, after all. It's not like I have some sort of high-culture leg to stand on. :P

I guess it's kind of like the general Canadian accent, which I just think of as "Southern Ontario"... even though I'm sure there are people in Vancouver and Alberta who sound the same and would get horribly offended if I called it that.

Is it weird that one of the reasons I like Bradley James is because he's from Devon, which is also where Draco Malfoy lives... so, I like him because he sounds like a fictional character who is also blond? (Probably that is weird.)

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Urge to Write Rising....

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