A collection of thoughts if you will, mainly pertaining to fandoms or other musings. I enjoy reading, writing, drawing (though I can't say that I enjoy the end product of my creations), and would be happy to assist whenever I can. Also, music. That I can be of great assistance, mainly pertaining to classical music and percussion.
Sharing the secrets of your hearth with strangers who will never be able to meet or thank you. Honoring the dead through learning their traditions of the home; emulation and exaltation. A good carrot cake.
i know it’s been said many times before but i will never get over how jacob anderson, a british man with a british accent, not only nailed a louisiana creole accent but also developed a studiously (almost eerily) generic accent that louis uses in the present AND showed the first accent bleeding into the second accent at key moments as a way of aurally externalizing his character’s inner journey. what did god put in this man when she created him.
@dedalvs anything to add about jacob anderson’s accent/valyrian pronunciation work?
Pardon me, but is someone praising Jacob Anderson without letting me praise him first?!
Backing up. It’s October 2009, and my Dothraki is chosen as the official version for HBO’s Game of Thrones. Absolutely the job of a lifetime. Conlangers were never hired to create languages for big budget productions, and language was central to A Song of Ice and Fire. The fact that this was on HBO guaranteed that it was going to be huge, and now I was going to get to be on the set of a TV show, work with actors, go to Hollywood parties, and create a language that would be as popular as Klingon.
June 2011, only one of those four things had happened, and of all things, it was going to a Hollywood party—the season 1 premiere event for Game of Thrones. It was very cool! None of the cast attended, but it was cool! But as for the rest, the idea that I would ever actually talk to any of the actors or be on the actual set was, apparently, laughable. And as for Dothraki, it had a very loyal following of about 6 or 7 people, all of whom I came to know personally. Dothraki was discussed in the press, sure, but nobody was going to learn it; there were never going to be any Dothraki conventions. It wasn’t the next Klingon.
June 2012, and by this point I’d gotten used to seeing my work on screen—and by that I mean I’d gotten used to seeing it performed…so-so. Every so often it was really good, but for the most part, I got used to hearing jumbled consonants, dropped syllables, missed words… I’ve always been a perfectionist, so this was difficult, but I didn’t have much choice. I had absolutely no control over it. I never got to work with any of the actors, so all they had were my recordings, and a series of dialect coaches who had absolutely no idea what they were doing with my stuff. (And, as I would learn later, just because an actor nails 9 out of 10 takes doesn’t mean the editor won’t like the one take they screwed up. Sometimes that’s the take that makes it to the screen.) Basically, if someone has an English line on a TV show that goes “It looks like the mechanism got screwed up somehow”, and what they say is “It locks like a manism got scroot up someho”, they’re going to reshoot the scene until the actor says it right. If that happens with a conlang, no one will notice or care. This was now my life.
July 2012, I get the opportunity to create High Valyrian (yay!), and then a “dialect” of High Valyrian to be spoken in Slaver’s Bay. Knowing the history from GRRM’s books, I knew this “dialect” was actually a full daughter language with lexical/phonological material from an extinct language (Ghiscari) that I wasn’t being asked to create, so I was going to have to create two languages at once, and at least have an idea for a third one—and, in fact, there was going to be a lot of dialogue in this new daughter language. Consequently my focus was split. I can honestly barely remember creating Astapori Valyrian, because I wanted to be sure that High Valyrian was right (I knew book fans didn’t care about Dothraki, but did care about HV). Despite the lack of attention, I did realize that Astapori Valyrian had a cool sound and a great flow (it really does!). I wish I’d had more time to appreciate creating it as a daughter language (I wish High Valyrian had been as complete as Dothraki was at that point), but I was pleased with the result. I was curious to see how the actors would handle it.
April 21, 2013. I am absolutely over the moon. I’d just for the first time saw a scene that I loved in the books because, for once, I predicted what was going to happen (as a reader, I’m sitting here thinking, “How do you trade your entire army to someone and not wonder if they’re going to use it on you after they get it?!”), and it actually plays better in the show than the books, and it all hinges on a language I created. I still get chills watching that scene: Episode 304, Daenerys revealing she speaks Valyrian. To this day that’s still the best thing I’ve done. The same issues I mentioned above were present, as always (watching thinking, “Did she say mebatas instead of memēbātās…?”), but they’re minor. The scene is outstanding. I realized that whatever was going to happen after this, I would always have this scene. That was a good night.
April 28, 2013. After last week’s episode, I wasn’t really waiting for anything. In episode 305 there’s only one scene with any conlang work in it—nothing really major. Introducing Grey Worm, characterization, etc. Everything in this episode is about what’s going on in Westeros. At this point I’d heard a fair amount of Astapori Valyrian in Slaver’s Bay. It was good! Definitely good enough. Did the trick. The prosody wasn’t quite what I did with it, but it was good. I was somewhat interested in this introduction in 305. Grey Worm only speaks Astapori Valyrian at this point, so this actor wouldn’t have had had any other speaking lines, and aside from one short line and saying his name at the beginning, his next line is a huuuuuge speech, comparatively speaking. I was curious to see how he would do.
Critters and gentlefolk, that night I witnessed a miracle.
NEVER had I heard ANYONE speak one of my languages better than me until that night.
Every word, every syllable, EVERY SOUND OF EVERY CLAUSE Jacob “You Heard My Name” Anderson uttered was ABSOLUTELYFLAWLESS.
I was stunned. My mouth literally hung open—probably for the rest of the damn episode, at which point I went back and watched that scene—again, and again, and again.
And so you don’t have to go searching, this is Grey Worm’s line (not the first two short ones—the big one [note: j is [ʒ], except in Daenery’s High Valyrian name, where it’s [dʒ], dh is [ð], q is [q], r is [ɾ] and y is [y], in IPA]):
“Torgo Nudho” hokas bezy. Sa me broji beri. Ji broji ez bezo sene stas qimbroto. Kuny iles ji broji meles esko mazedhas derari va buzdar. Y Torgo Nudho sa ji broji ez bezy eji tovi Daenerys Jelmazmo ji teptas ji derve.
That was my translation of this English line:
“Grey Worm” gives this one pride. It is a lucky name. The name this one was born with was cursed. That was the name he had when he was taken as a slave. But Grey Worm is the name this one had the day Daenerys Stormborn set him free.
That is a LOOOOOOOOOONG ass line. And go watch that scene. There is nothing on the screen but his face. It’s a closeup the entire time. Any slight deviation would be visible as well as audible. Take a look:
This…KING just casually dropped the greatest performance I have ever witnessed on screen at a time when I had already given up on ever seeing a truly great conlang performance on screen.
And then he proceeded to do it again and again and again and again and again for the rest of the entire show. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the very last conlang line of Game of Thrones is his. They knew how much I loved him—I told them. I told anyone who would listen and twelve people who wouldn’t, along with their next of kin. He didn’t take my language and make it his own—no, no. He is graciously allowing me to claim that I created his native tongue—the one he’s been speaking since birth. THAT’S how good he is.
So yeah, accent work? In English? I guess I’m not surprised he’s pretty good at that. Something like that to this…adonis, this living, breathing Master Class™ in perfection is like yawning to an ordinary human. Jacob Anderson can walk into my house in the dead of night, take anything out of my refrigerator, and then leave the door to the fridge and the house open when he leaves. He has earned no less.
me normally: i’m not personally a huge fan of modern art
me around right wingers: I love modern art sooooo much and I think there should be litter boxes in schools also
fucking obliterated lmao
[image description: Screencap of replies to this post. Bottlepiecemuses: “Modern art is not celebrating special talent. It celebrates mediocrity.” Adriftinhilbertspace: “@bottlepiecemuses: If modern art celebrates mediocrity where’s your exhibit” End description.]
so prefacing this with the fact that I know that the fun is sorta taken out of this by me translating, but not everyone will have the energy to look it up themselves, so I figured I’d help out.
Morse code: AEEEEE FELL DOWN AND TROKE MY PENIT TODAY YEOWCE OUCH YOUCH!!!! SENT FROM MY TELEGRAPH
Every single craft has been paying “The Passion Tax” for generations. This term (coined by author and organizational psychologist Adam Grant) — and backed by scientific research — simply states that the more someone is passionate about their work, the more acceptable it is to take advantage of them. In short, loving what we do makes us easy to exploit.
If the phrase “vocational awe” isn’t part of your lexicon yet, stop scrolling and read Fobazi Ettarh:
Vocational awe describes the set of ideas, values, and assumptions librarians have about themselves and the profession that result in notions that libraries as institutions are inherently good, sacred notions, and therefore beyond critique. I argue that the concept of vocational awe directly correlates to problems within librarianship like burnout and low salary. This article aims to describe the phenomenon and its effects on library philosophies and practices so that they may be recognized and deconstructed.
I see it in every field I’ve ever worked in: publishing, open source software development, higher education. It describes pretty much every industry that relies on creativity, altruism, or both.
Hey. Peeps on the museum fields. These apply. It takes work not to be taken advantage of because we love what we do. And it also takes work to be better and do better and not rest on our laurels and stop learning
If I can recommend you do 1 low-effort thing for the love of God it is this:
Keep 5 cards in your pocket. One will say “yes”, the second will say “no.”
If you lose your voice, or lose speech, or want to make a dramatic embellishment at the right time, it is an elegant and efficient solution that is right there at hand.
But what if people question you from there? “Why do you have that card? Why would you do this? How long have you had that in your pocket?” For this, or whatever else they say, the third card: “I don’t have a card for that.”
“What the fuck,” they ask. They laugh. They are bemused. You bring the energy back down with the fourth card: “I have laryngitis. I’ve lost speech. My throat hurts”. Whatever you expect to occur.
The joke is over. Rule of threes. Now they are curious. YThey wonder about logistics. “How did you know I would say that? Is everyone so predictable?”
As a three-part bit, nobody ever sees the fifth card coming.
ALT
