Alicornutopia

So, I may be unusual in this, but when I read any fiction, I like reading character dialog in as close an approximation to their voices as I can make my brain come up with. Sometimes this is easy enough (characters straight out of film or TV with more‐or‐less unchanged voices), other times not so much, and occasionally I am surprised by a character’s accent suddenly being commented upon and it being very different to what I had thought (the only reason this happens as little as “occasionally” is because accents are rarely commented upon in the story itself, I’m sure there are many characters whose accents I am thinking of wrongly).

So, to the (admittedly, but somewhat intentionally, nebulous) question: Alicorn and Kappa, I am interested to know your take on what your characters’ voices sound like. Specifically, perhaps, any characters whose voices differ significantly from the voice of their facecast (as the facecasts are what I approximate most of the voices based on).

Oh, and I perhaps didn’t make it clear, but I’m mainly interested in Effulgence characters at the moment, but I do intend to get around to reading most of Alicorn’s and Kappa’s stories when I can.

Ooh, I like this question but I'm afraid I don't have great answers for you. I'm capable of storing audio information in audio format, but it's not my native process, so unlike Kristen Stewart's face, I haven't internalized her voice. Characters have accents appropriate to their upbringing (I can produce a list of the first few Bells from an old email if you want, and construct a paragraph about any other green moiety character you care to name) but in terms of vocal timbre I don't have much. (I will say that before boy Bells' voices change they sound like their female counterparts, and daemons sound like template members of the correct sex - e.g. Pathalan and Cam sound alike.)

Some of my facecasts are based exclusively on pictures and I've never heard the actors in question speak. I've got no idea if, say, Diane Kruger, could do the saccharine insinuating voice of a Chelsea or if Keke Palmer can materialize the cadence of an Olympian. I'm pretty sure Astrid Berges-Frisbey is a native speaker of French and I don't remember much about how she talked when she was a mermaid in Pirates of the Caribbean.

I have no spectacular skill at acting but I'm willing to record and share my best reading of any reasonable number of green-moiety lines on request. Maybe I'll coach my fiancé for the ones that require a more masculine voice.

Alicorn wrote:Ooh, I like this question

Yay!

Alicorn wrote:but I'm afraid I don't have great answers for you. I'm capable of storing audio information in audio format, but it's not my native process, so unlike Kristen Stewart's face, I haven't internalized her voice. Characters have accents appropriate to their upbringing (I can produce a list of the first few Bells from an old email if you want, and construct a paragraph about any other green moiety character you care to name) but in terms of vocal timbre I don't have much.

Okay, it looks like I need to specify my question a bit more: “accents appropriate to their upbringing” covers characters from roughly‐present‐day Earth well enough, but the trickier characters in terms of this general question are the ones from worlds like Quinn or Chronicle, where I have no idea what the accents are supposed to sound like; the answers I’m hoping for are along the lines of “the Welchin accent (and thus Kiri’s accent) sounds like X, Thilanushinyel elves (and thus Sarion’s accent) sound Y, and Glass has an accent that sounds like Z”, with those letters being replaced with a regional accent of some reasonable amount of specificity (Scottish, Californian, Cockney, Australian, generic English, etc.). Some of my lack of knowledge on this may be due to being unfamiliar with the original canon for many of them, but that also depends on how much of the background world‐building you’ve filled out yourself as opposed to it being specified by the original author (and this now appears to be getting further and further from my main question, but it’s all related).

Alicorn wrote:(I will say that before boy Bells' voices change they sound like their female counterparts, and daemons sound like template members of the correct sex - e.g. Pathalan and Cam sound alike.)

Makes sense.

Alicorn wrote:Some of my facecasts are based exclusively on pictures and I've never heard the actors in question speak. I've got no idea if, say, Diane Kruger, could do the saccharine insinuating voice of a Chelsea or if Keke Palmer can materialize the cadence of an Olympian. I'm pretty sure Astrid Berges-Frisbey is a native speaker of French and I don't remember much about how she talked when she was a mermaid in Pirates of the Caribbean.

All interesting, and yes, I realize that exceptions make sense for facecasts whose accent is clearly going to be different from the character’s.

Alicorn wrote:I have no spectacular skill at acting but I'm willing to record and share my best reading of any reasonable number of green-moiety lines on request. Maybe I'll coach my fiancé for the ones that require a more masculine voice.

That would be… way more than I was expecting from this question, how useful it’d be would depend on how well you can put on a different accent (I’m not sure that counts as acting skill, I’d say it’s much easier than acting, but depends very much on the person). The most obvious set of lines that come to mind, simply because it’s recent and involves two female green‐moiety characters from a world that isn’t a modern Earth, is from when Kiri first met Patience.

Voices! :D

I'm much more natively audio-oriented than Alicorn, so I can dig into this a lot faster from the get-go.

Broadly speaking, boy Tonies sound like Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man and boy Sherlocks sound like Robert Downey Jr as Sherlock Holmes - except that Sherries also carry an influence from Paul Bettany as Jarvis, where applicable. The girl versions have virtually the same cadence and intonation, with only very slightly higher pitch. In worlds where the local accents don't map onto Earth ones, I still imagine them having roughly the same respective voices where at all feasible; for example, Pearl's Capitol-influenced accent sounds a lot like an English accent in my head. From worlds where they can't feasibly have very different dialects - Iron and Steel in Chronicle, Tia and Sary in Quinn - I usually default to imagining them both as closer to the standard Tony Americanized accent, except that Sherlocks still carry their distinctive cadence and vocabulary. Special mention for Minus: Minus speaks in a way that is noticeably distinct from other Sherlocks in general. You mostly hear it in word choice, though, and just a little in intonation. Also, Sherlocks are phenomenal vocal mimics and can put on any accent they hear enough of.

Matildas sound like Mara Wilson in the Matilda movie, aged-up where applicable, which might not end up sounding like what Mara Wilson actually sounds like because I haven't heard enough of her grown-up voice to internalize it. There is one Matilda from England who has never spoken onscreen and she sounds like that, but in an English accent.

Ekador Serlast sounds exactly like Ichabod Crane in my head. This is probably not feasible given that he's not from an Earth, but I'm totally going to imagine him ending up with exactly that accent when he learns and begins speaking in English.

Now to go through all my templates in the spreadsheet, sorting for ones you've actually seen...

Bridget Banner sounds like a feminine version of Mark Ruffalo's Bruce Banner, with some influence from Amy Acker as seen in Angel. They mesh surprisingly well in my head.

John Blake sounds exactly like he does in canon, which I'm given to understand is pretty much just Joseph Gordon-Levitt's voice.

Chainsaw sounds a lot like David Boreanaz as Angelus on Buffy/Angel, with subtle differences I'm having trouble describing. His younger alts like Sandy and Dao don't have well-developed voices in my head, but can be assumed to mostly sound like a younger version of that, modulo the obvious fact that Dao has not yet actually spoken English and probably sounds way different speaking the native language of the AtLAverse.

Eights and Anna and their alts, surprisingly, don't have well-developed voices in my head either; they mostly just sound exactly like my internal monologue. From what I remember of Rebecca Hall as whoever she played in Iron Man 3, you probably won't go far wrong if you imagine that voice for Eightses.

Darcies sound exactly like Darcy Lewis in the Thor movies.

Dominiques don't have well-developed voices in my head; you may assume that Yseult sounds Vaguely French, Damaris sounds like whatever Samarians tend to sound like, and Helen's accent resembles Kas's. If you want to imagine them with Anne Hathaway's general timbre, be my guest.

Finches and Hilaries don't have strongly well-developed voices in my head, and you can largely assume that they sound like they belong in Forks, except when they appear in places other than Forks, where you can assume they sound like they belong there instead.

Ikes sound (I just looked up the movie trailer on Youtube to check) exactly like Michael Cera as Scott Pilgrim. Vals probably don't sound anything like Emilie Dequenne, as I've never heard her speak. I would describe the voice of Vals in my head as louder and... steadier? than Ikes, but with basically the same accent and frequently similar intonation, adjusting for the fact that Vals have well upwards of double the self-confidence.

Jnis (Janine and Junia) probably don't sound like their facecast, because I've never heard her speak either. They have a broadly similar speaking style to Ikes, except that where Ikes are sort of a little bit breathless a lot of the time, Jnis instead tend to sound bright and cheerful. As for the baseline timbre of their voices, I'm not sure, but you can probably get somewhere by imagining a more feminine Ike.

Jokers... are complicated. By and large, they range from sounding like Heath Ledger as the Joker to sounding like Heath Ledger as the Joker minus the more exaggeratedly weird cadence and emphasis. If you're not seeing vowels italicized in the middles of words, default to imagining the latter. Female-PB versions sound largely the same, but a little more feminine. The difference is small, however. Miscellaneous other PBs also sound largely the same, although they may vary in details too subtle for me to capture. Other variations exist: Winter in particular is likely to have picked up the Vaguely English Narnian Accent; Micaiah has a noticeably wider vocal range for singing than Joker average, which he sometimes employs in regular speech; Beast is Vaguely French; Felicity is twelve.

Kolyas are Russian, but speak fluent English with very little accent. You probably wouldn't go far wrong imagining Aldis Hodge, although I think he might not usually sound like he could plausibly be from Toronto, which Kolya does. Lazaruses are in fact from Toronto, except for the ones who are from non-Earths, but they all sound the same in my head. I don't actually know what Adrien Brody sounds like, so Lazaruses probably don't sound exactly like him. Oh, and then there's the demon Lazarus from Sunshine - heck if I know what he sounds like, but I'm reasonably likely to describe it if he ever speaks onscreen.

I do not know what Liselen sounds like. Well, I can hear him in my head, but I don't have a good reference for it. He defaults to the same accent as my internal monologue (and I am from Toronto), but I haven't firmly decided that that is actually how he talks.

I just looked up Drew Barrymore on Youtube to see if Chrises sound like her, and I found her talking to Ellen DeGeneres, and discovered that Chrises sound a lot more like Ellen DeGeneres. But Chrises are very rarely as excited as these people are getting. Go look up Drew Barrymore talking to Ellen DeGeneres, and imagine a merge of their voices with a more Ellen-like timbre and a more Drew-like accent, but very calm and dry and without that little uptick in intonation at the ends of sentences that Drew does a lot of and Ellen a little.

Jameses sound broadly like Chrises, but their voices might be a little higher. I've looked up Ellen Page, and I think she's a pretty good model for the timbre of young Jameses. Older Jameses (as portrayed by Sophia Bush) sound like that, but... older. XD They get even closer to Chris's deadpan intonation as they grow up.

Giles sounds exactly like he does in canon. His younger alts speak in a noticeably different English dialect, but I don't know enough about the available options to confidently choose one.

Ethan Rayne and his alts all sound pretty much exactly like he did in canon, with appropriate age and (for some you haven't seen) gender variance.

Nathaniel, Voice, and their alts are an interesting case! All of their voices are based in my head on the character of Steven from Alice Cooper's albums Welcome To My Nightmare and Along Came A Spider. Nathaniel sounds broadly like... well, this, except less creepy. Voice sounds like roughly the same person speaking as described in Voice's narration, in that weird whisper. Nathaniel used to sound a lot closer to Voice when he was a child (except, again, less creepy), but now that he's grown up he's gotten less quiet, closer to the "no I'm a great big man"/"no Steven you have to go back now" in that video. Other alts may vary depending on individual circumstances; you might find it instructive to look up the Along Came A Spider album and listen to some of the speaking segments in those songs, to get a good idea of the range they vary over.

Thor's female alt sounds like Thor, but female. And minimally changed from the original Thor.

Pepper Potts and her alts sound exactly like Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper.

Howlett sounds exactly like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine; Lycaelon sounds similar, but younger; Luhan is pretty much exactly like Howlett.

I mostly don't have a firm idea of what the dialects from the various non-Earth worlds sound like, except for things like Pearl's Capitol accent sounding Sherlock-English in my head.

:D Kappa, that’s pretty much all was hoping for and more. Looks like I have a lot to go look up, but I was expecting that.

I do not know what Liselen sounds like. Well, I can hear him in my head, but I don't have a good reference for it. He defaults to the same accent as my internal monologue (and I am from Toronto), but I haven't firmly decided that that is actually how he talks.

I’ve been imagining Liselen with the voice of Eddie Murphy playing a certain donkey. ;) The personality seemed to fit very well.

...pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

You know what, that is definitely not how I hear him, but it is an alternate interpretation that I firmly support. XD

Also, like Alicorn I'm tentatively willing to record particular lines by request, but I have perfectionist tendencies when it comes to some things, so I might end up writing off some suggestions as impossible to get myself sounding right. And I would have to dig up my microphone and that would take Effort, so I'm not going to promise anything. But there's no harm in making a few suggestions if there's any purple lines you really want to hear.

Oh, I haven't been doing nearly enough conlanging to tell you what Welchin or Pax or whatever sounds like, I'm afraid. I'm also not good enough at doing accents to give you much about that by speaking into a microphone - I'd be supplying things more along the lines of tone of voice and emphasis, not whether the vowels in "pin" and "pen" are the same or whatever.

Here's that old email about accents, anyway, (slightly edited, and with spoilers about future Bells removed - ask in Spoilerland if you want the whole shebang), which is about how Bells sound when they're speaking English either natively or via coin:

It occurs to me that since Cymbeline is from a Vague England, he will default to a British accent when speaking pentagoned English. This amuses me. A catalogue of accents when Bells speak English:

- Stella, Golden, Juliet, Pat, Cam, and Aurora (and, later pealing, Phoenix, Phaetonbell, Izzy, Butterfly) all have native, ordinary, turn-of-the-21st-century American accents. (Juliet's has more California and no Pacific Northwest; the others are a mix of Pacific Northwest and Arizona, but Phoenix will pick up some stuff from interacting with the significantly isolated wizard population at school. For anyone who can pick up accents in that much detail, like Sherries.) Golden can use accents she's been exposed to easily without expending coins on it because vampire, but doesn't have reason to bother.

- Amariah has been described as having a witchy accent; since the witch population skews old and has different second languages than mortals when they have second languages, and interacts differently with other populations, I think it's reasonable for there to be a distinct character to witches when they talk overlaid on regional stuff. And she has no Arizona in her accent, regionally speaking.

- Angela, Sarion, Glass, and Etty (Ace, Chi, Stormy) all spoke languages basically unrelated to English (Angela's and Etty's have some related etymology but not enough to make a difference) and pentagoned English to converse with the peal. They wound up with the standard American Bell accent since that's an attractor and they didn't specify, maybe with some distinct lilts and cadences from their native tongues.

- Shell Bell, Aegis, Tab, (T'Mir) speak English natively, but ~future~ English, and they all come from different futures. T'Mir's English isn't really contaminated by Vulcan more than any other Earthling's is where she's from, but certainly English has been affected by exposure to alien languages plus a few hundred years. Shell Bell has a District Four accent, Aegis's regionality has been almost completely wiped away by Battle School cadence and slang and Stark, Tab probably talks in whatever the standard accent-people-have-on-TV-in-Gift is, which might or might not match Kers/Aelise (people pick up accents more from peers than guardians and she was pretty deprived of peers) but probably does (why wouldn't everyone standardize their accent on Aelise?). Actually, is it likely that Tab has learned more than one language pre-pealing or would that not have been a focus? I think maybe she learned to read but not speak whatever the second most common language is on Gift, if there are still multiple languages about, but that won't really affect her accent in English.

- Rose speaks Callian natively, which isn't French, but is in places mutually intelligible with French - *and* she was also exposed to Albish, which is Rêverie's Vague English, before she pealed. She probably retains a Callian accent - enough for flavor, not enough to make her hard to understand - and also shades of Albish pronunciation and diction, when speaking English. To a Sherry this presumably has a texture all its own, to most people she sounds like a Frenchwoman who learned excellent English from a Brit.

- Cymbeline's native language is his own world's Vague English (Loegrian). He'll probably just slide into something that sounds like a British accent from there, with Loegria flavor.

- Aether's language, Pax, is not related to or mutually intelligible with English, but it does have a metacausal sympathy with English (it is the language AE chooses to represent as English, whereas there's other languages she renders as French or Latin or whatever) which probably leaves her more fluid with English idiom than Sarion or somebody else coming from nowhere nearby. She would, however, slip into the Standard Bell American Accent upon pentagoning.

- Loki - I don't know, this depends on how if at all she interacts with Earth. Are we doing Allspeak as a thing?

I have "standard" voices that I use to tell different characters apart, but they are chosen randomly. I tried to give Cam Daniel's voice, but it was so hard, like trying to act a play while reading the script

What do the blue characters sound like?

:D

*breaks out obsessive mental notes*

Adarins speak in a rather quiet, even tone that doesn't really scream their presence. When they're angry, their tone takes on a flat, cold quality that sort of subtly states how much contempt they feel for whatever it is that's upset them. When happy, they speak faster, but the volume change is very slight in comparison to their usual volume - tone changes more, though. Harry Lloyd is pretty much spot on for Adarins, without accounting for any sort of accent. So, please go look up an interview with him and just - attach that general method of speaking to male Adarins. Emilia Clarke has a pretty good voice for female Adarins, but she only has Emilia Clarke's typical cadence when Adana is excited, otherwise it's more quiet and smooth, though not as pronounced as the male version. Female Adarins are noticeably more animated tone wise.

Because of how the translation spell works, all speakers will tend to bring their native accent into the language a bit, so bear in mind it's somewhat hard for me to describe all of these, since they're in languages I don't actually speak. Or that actually exist.

Max and Conduit have pretty strong American accents - there is a subtle Detroit flair to their accent that has the result of them both speaking faster than other Adarins, and have a bit of a glottal stop, but it's really not very noticeable.

Cypress has got a really foreign accent that really isn't easily pinned down to something we have. It's most similar to an Irish, but is pretty obviously not Irish if you know your accents even a little. His English accent has actually kind of cribbed a bit from Ice's witch accent, and people that have a good head for accents can manage to pick that out. Over time it's sort of taken on more of the witch-accent qualities than his Kystle-accent, but when he's upset or nervous it noticeably comes out more.

Revival's got a Lunar accent - I like to think of it as slightly chirpier, and mentally compare it to a general Australian accent, but for obvious reasons it's not exactly Australian. It's more different from Australian than Australian is from other native-English accents, but that's the closest one I can compare it to.

Rain's got not only a Marlese accent, but also a subtle one from Berathyme's language. He doesn't change his tone of voice as much and it's noticeably lower, quieter, and more - perfectly practiced official language. To someone from Marlatia, he does sound very much like royalty, but it's doubtful that anyone from Earth or Earth-equivalents would ever be able to pick up on that from accent alone.

Adanir's actually done quite a lot of work on his accent, and has two depending on his company. When he's being crown prince, he has a crown prince accent, and when he's not, he drops it and goes back to his original accent.

Prime is a special case and I mentally equate him to Robert Carlyle basically in entirety. Just - listen to that man talk, drop it in a vat of in world-weary sarcasm to soak for the night, and you are good to go as far as how he talks. His accent is closest to Cypress's of anyone's, but his language has evolved quite a lot in five hundred years, and him along with it. So, he sounds pretty unique. With lots of added sarcasm.

Every other Adarin, I've given little to no thought to their specific accent.

Zevs' voices are very diametric in tone, and switch from a sort of - playful purr to a forceful blunt declaration or accusation. Female Zevs don't speak like Adrianne Palicki, at all. Maybe her voice is fine, but her method of speaking is so incredibly different I just balk at it whenever she speaks, beautiful voice though she has. It's just not Zeviana to me, her part as Lady Jaye is a bit closer but still not quite right. Male Zevs speak a lot like Sam Claflin, though with more of a force behind their words. Accents match their Adarins, with the exception of Fossil, who has a vastly different accent than Prime due to a very long time spent on the other side of the world.

Nadias/Idanias speak pretty quickly, and have a habit of saying some of the absurd things that they do with an absolute sincerity. Even when they don't mean whatever it is in the slightest. Jamie Chung's voice is perfectly appropriate, if you give her some caffeine. When afraid, she can do a bit of stuttering, but not in the way of being unable to finish a word, but in saying a word and then switching it with another word and doing that several times with multiple words until she can think of something to do. When angry, she takes on a somewhat unsettling near-saccharine tone that plays at happiness but doesn't get anywhere close to what she sounds like when she's actually happy. It's more along the lines of, 'I hate you, and I am happy that you are going to cease existing, ahahahaha.' *murder*

Lynns sound similar enough to Rachel Weisz, aside from the accent, but I imagine they sound more - calmly in control, especially for Corva. Like it doesn't matter what you do to them, because they will beat it, and then you will lose. Corva's accent is closest to Cypress, but she speaks three natively and can switch it up easily enough. Foster and Ursa have a west-coast American accent, though they're less prone to adding levity to their words.