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Uff. I was not planning to spend all day rehosting the 2008 Mary Sue Invasion RP, but guess what? That's what happened! {= D

I'mma go do normal people things like food now.

~Neshomeh

Have a suit of Tau Recon Armor. When the Space Elves come for you you'll need it.

The other day, a friend of mine linked me to one of the LotR Missions and down the rabbit hole I went. Creativity struck, and my brain started creating vague plotlines and characters.

Anyway, I'll be lurking around here and the Wiki for a while so I can learn about the culture and history before I try to contribute my own Missions and such.

It would explain the use of the Ring poem, and the presence of Lindon. It would also explain why they've left a conspicuous space to the east of the 'Eriador' label - they can't stick Arthedain in there easily (it would need to share space with said label), but Eregion would fit nicely.

The two big problems are:

-Calenardhon is a Sindarin name, but the population at that time were Men of Darkness. Sindarin wasn't used by the Numenoreans who poked their noses in, only by the later Gondorians.
-The East Bight appears in Mirkwood, which was probably cut in the mid-Third Age. But... y'know, Amazon.

Both of those are surmountable, though.

If they've got the rights to it, seeing the First War of the Rings would be incredible. You've got recognisable characters to play with (Galadriel and Elrond both take part), Numenorean superfleets on the horizon, elven magic on a scale never seen before or since, Annatar-a-la-Lucifer... there's a lot to play with, and not a lot of canon details to mess things up.

Plus, if they're looking to pilfer the Game of Thrones market: the Numenoreans were already into the slavery business by then, and Celebrimbor is not only the grandson of the biggest hothead of them all - he's working in Forbidden Arts. 2/3 of your 'Good' nations are morally suspect (and Lindon has a bit of the 'build a wall, keep 'em all out' thing going on, too).

... and it would actually fit the title. The Lord of the Rings, indeed - both of them, at each other's throats.

... meany-pants. Now you've got me all excited. -_-

hS

... that we're going back to the time the Rings were first made? Annatar, Lord of Gifts, getting in cozy with the smiths of Eregion and handing out shinies?

Perhaps the War of the Elves and Sauron?

THAT could be fun. Even if it means we're not getting the Adventures of Young Indiana Estel yet.

~Neshomeh

1/ An extremely socially inept Scot who's aware that you're supposed to talk about the weather, but not really anything else. They slipped up on the last word, and were actually just saying what was outside: "Hail, and well wet."

2/ Agent Smith. We've missed you.

3/ A McDonald's employee who's been working far too many shifts and had to bite down on "Can I help?".

4/ This is the CAPTCHA entry; no-one talks like that in 2019.

5/ The organiser of the protest. It's not actually a greeting, it's the first part of a chant. Soon, they will be asking When Do You Want It.

hS

"Seven for the Dwarf Lords, in their halls of stone...

(Explorable map)

Calenardhon. Lindon. Forodwaith.

-Calenardhon is Rohan before the Rohirrim, placing it at least 500 years before the War of the Ring.
-Lindon is technically a valid name down to LotR, but it's mostly used of the region before the elves all left. I would say Lindon died with Gil-Galad, but you could make a case for its use in the early Third Age.
-Forodwaith is probably just used from the map, but it's notable that the people by that name died out during the Second and early Third ages. The Lossoth, who helped the last king of Arnor, were their descendents.

Calenardhon is a HUGE curveball, setting the timeframe of the map back halfway to the days of the Kings. I tremble to think what might show up on the third iteration of the map ("Nine...")

hS

And now there is one eerily looking like Ralph wanting a family... Anyone interested?

Since I wasn't able to get to my sketchbook this week, instead of an art update, y'all who are interested get a bit of trivia!

All the Knights' names are intentionally selected so that they match names I liked at the time they each represent. This means that all but one are borrowed from persona-type OCs I created during those times.

- Cass Kingside is my planned Newgrounds pseudonym.

- Update, I'm changing Myla's name to Luna, because I'd been thinking of naming her that originally, but at the time, the OC "Luna" was still active, and I don't like having multiple characters with the same name. I threw away the story recently, and so the option to do this was opened.
- (Who was Luna? Luna was me, Sue-ified. You'll learn more about her in another post.)
- (And as for the name "Myla", it's an alternate spelling of a shortened version of "Ludmila", the female lead in a very odd opera I learned to love at the time.)

- Sakura was a character I made for a role-playing group I briefly had with my school friends. She went by the nickname Mountaineer because of her earth powers, but her real name was Sakura, because I overused Japanese names a lot. She later became the basis for one of my agents-to-be, Amber Callahan.

- Jacqueline was one of my first OCs, and definitely a Mary Sue. She was a Viking from Berk and fought alongside Samurai Jack. *Snrk*

- Elinya was one of the many characters I briefly invented for a single session of dress-up. Her name was "Elina" (the character Barbie plays in "Barbie: Fairytopia") plus a y.

- The name "Aldegund" was never actually used for any characters I had, as it sounded a bit unwieldy, but I know I eyed it. It's an ancient Germanic name meaning "old war".

- Scarlet was my character in a recurring RP I did with Moon Moon, called "Path Wars". Because it was Pathfinder (the D&D offshoot), plus Star Wars... plus Minecraft? With our hypothetical mods? Anyway, she was definitely a servant of the Emperor, and used Nether Star amulets (my creation) to augment her power.

- Teyori was a medieval-ized name for me, Twistey. The name was used in a fanfic I planned to write involving a friend and I being stuck in Stephen King's book The Eyes of the Dragon and having to find the portal out of the continuum. Interestingly enough, that fanfic yielded a concept I created for a multiverse like the PPC's... except worse. Yeah.

Alright, that's it for Knights trivia!

-Twistey

http://springhole.net/writing/character-voices-and-slang.htm

Feel free to check out the rest of this writing site too. It's a good site.

-Twistey

So it does actually sound good. Well then. I guess it'll just be like the first Frozen, good until the hype kills it.

As for the shipping, that is why I advocate the creation of fan-characters... and why everyone else advocates the nonsensical kidnapping of Jack Frost from Rise of the Guardians to be Elsa's boyfriend.

-Twistey

Thank you for contributing to this teaching moment. {= )

You could, perhaps, continue by writing what each of them says next? I dunno, I'm making this up as I go. ^_^

~Neshomeh

I matched #1 to Ultima because Ultima really is infamous for its gratuitous poorly-written ye olde English. It's... truly a sight to behold, even in the games less afflicted by it.

As for #2... that's just a greeting Cal uses a lot—and just to be clear, I don't mean anyone fictional, I mean our Cal—particularly in the one soft voice that indicates Danger if she's DMing for you. :-P

#3 just sounds... really excited. And goofy. And... I dunno. Just imagine it coming out of a corgi's mouth! It's so adorable!

#4... yeah, that's just how Lancer talks in Fate. Well, close enough, anyways. Dude's pretty chill and zen and all that when he's not murdering people.

#5 is entirely a joke, and also a tense trainwreck. Sorry, I was tired and typing on my phone at the time. But yeah, in a lot of RPGs, shopkeepers have no personality and their sole purpose in life is to ask what you want and then sell it to you. It made sense at the time...

What would be the mini for Wreck-It Ralph's verse?

And I watched the movie yesterday.
Meh, whatever, both of them look grat.

Go on, then, you cheeky blighter. Why do those greetings match with those characters? {= P

~Neshomeh

1: Probably an Ultima character desperately trying to get over their crippling addiction to bad Old English and gratuitous thees and thous.

2: Depends on tone, but I think it's Calliope. She's either had a tiring day, or she's plotting something. Or both.

3: A dog has just learned how to speak and he's terribly excited about it.

4: Cú Chulainn? What're you doing here?

5: I doff my hat to this poor fellow, he's been afflicted by RPG Shopkeeper Syndrome. Once he was a normal man, but the disease had taken its toll, eroding his personality until all he's able to do is sell them things. Sad, really.

...Ooh, I wonder if he has a +3 sword. :-P

As of... Monday, I think it was, we have officially moved to https://ppc.fandom.com. Please update your links accordingly (she said hypocritically, having not yet done so herself).

Also, I have now updated a whole bunch of hS-related links that have moved from Webs to Neocities or Gdocs. I'm happy to do the rest of them as soon as they're moved, too, especially since it looks like ppchistory is down at the moment. Bloody Webs.

~Neshomeh

Pretty clear who is speaking and whom they're addressing in that instance. *g*

~Neshomeh

They could all plausibly be wizards! 'Hail and well met.' is just the most formal construction.

... Well, and five could also be the Lone Power being annoyed by a wizard. ;)

Me being me, I haven't stopped thinking about this topic, and it occurred to me that an excellent demonstration of how complex writing speech gets is the vast number of options you have when it comes to a simple greeting. Rather than trying to discuss them all, though, I'm going to give you five, and you (if you so choose) will respond with what you infer about the speaker, based on their choice of greeting alone.

We'll assume each speaker has just been greeted by a neutral-to-friendly but unknown person in a neutral setting, such as a social gathering, where it would not be weird for someone to strike up a conversation.

1. Hail and well met.

2. Good afternoon.

3. Hi!

4. Yo, what's up?

5. What do you want?

So, what can you tell about each of these speakers? There's no one right answer, so don't be shy! The point is here to flex your mental muscles and to demonstrate just how powerful word choice (and punctuation!) is. {= )

~Neshomeh

Actually, first, allow me to refer you to PoorCynic's workshops on characters and speech. There's a ton of good advice in there, and it'll save my fingers. ^^

Now, to elaborate a bit on what's in there: how do you determine what unique word choices to give your characters? PC touches on this a little—a coarse character may swear a lot, a sociology student will talk differently than a high-school educated person, etc. But what does that mean?

Here are three things to consider when finding your character's voice.

1. Background

Where did your character grow up? What kind of language and speech cadences did they hear around them as a child? Someone from a big city might speak more briskly, use more blunt language, and use choppier sentences than someone from the rural South, where life happens in less of a hurry and more emphasis is placed on manners than rapid conveyance of information. People from different countries, who may or may not have English as their first language, also speak with different rhythms, variant vocabulary, and possibly nonstandard grammar (following the habits of their first language).

Also, some families are more inclined to get loud with each other than others. You can convey intensity of speech with shorter, simpler sentences without having to resort to lots of italics and exclamation marks, but you can use those tools (sparingly) to set one character apart from another, too.

2. Education

This is a biggie. How much, where, and how your character was educated is possibly the biggest influence on how they speak as an adult, because like the clothes we wear, it's a huge part of how we choose to present ourselves to others—although, in moments of great stress or excitement, people tend to revert to the mannerisms they learned as a child.

A quick way to set a highly educated person apart from a less educated person is the percentage of Latin- and Greek-derived words they use. Someone with a college-level education knows more of the fancy Latinate synonyms to the simple Anglo-Saxon building blocks of English, and uses them naturally. They'll also speak with stricter grammar than someone who has never known or cared what a split infinitive is.

It's important to note here that "less educated" does not mean less intelligent. Intelligence is reflected in one's ability to process information and make good decisions about what to do with it. The more world experience you have, the easier this gets, but just because someone has lived a more isolated, less complex life does not make them stupid.

The exact kind of education your character to has will influence their way of thinking, and therefore their way of speaking, even further. That sociology student thinks and expresses themself in sociology terms. A movie director thinks in terms of cinema. A politician (theoretically) is always thinking about the impact their speech will have on people's perception of them. A self-taught entrepreneur will also have self-made speech habits, drawing from the books they've read and the people they know.

The point here is that people learn to speak in ways that most effectively convey their interests (helps us make friends), and status (we all value this to some extent), and intent (helps us get what we want) to the people around them. An educated person who has learned to communicate with similarly educated people has a different set of tools for doing this than a less educated person who has learned to communicate with less educated people.

3. Personality

This is perhaps the finest level of refinement when it comes to speech. A character's background and education give them certain tools in their linguistic toolbox. Their personality determines when and how they choose to use those tools. A selfish person might talk about themself most of the time and use the highest status speech they know to impress. A considerate person listens to and asks relevant questions of others, and leaves themself out of it. A happy, excitable person has a faster cadence and uses shorter, bubblier words than a taciturn one.

Personality determines the amount of swearing one chooses to use, whereas their background and education determine exactly how they do it.

Personal interests and hobbies can influence the figurative language a character uses. Someone who loves music may use musical metaphors and similes. Someone who loves math may explain things in terms of equations and functions. Someone who loves The Lord of the Rings may quote the books and/or films to make a point.

And so on, and so forth.


I hope that helps! Speech is complex, because it's completely wrapped up in the sociology and psychology of human beings. To really understand it, you have to understand people. It's hard, but you can get pretty far just by listening attentively to how other people talk and paying attention to how other writers do dialogue. Personally, it's my favorite thing to write, and I've put a lot of thought into it. I'm happy to talk about it more if you have more questions. ^^

~Neshomeh

Come up with a few personality traits and a backstory. These can be very simple (cynical, parents killed in freak knitting accident) or incredibly detailed. But having something to focus and build around helps a ton. From there, you can develop outwards as you write until you have something fully fleshed out.

IIRC (bitter, deadpan, serious, cold, typical Thousand Son) was Thoth's original attribute/backstory list, if you're curious.

I've been creating characters for as long as I can remember. The problem arises when I try to write them into stories, where I find that all the dialogue sounds the same no matter who is saying it.

Do you have any advice on how to create distinct character voices? Because I could use some. Thanks.