The voices in my head...

[No brains]

... When I read characters from the comic.

What does everyone think the Order of the Stick sounds like? I tend to imagine Roy with a rather non-descript voice, as his flaws aren't glaring enough to sway me toward any kind of pitch or timbre. Haley I imagine sounding non-descript, but with a bit of a whine in her voice.

Durkon gives a pretty clear impression.

Elan I imagine having a voice like Stewart from those MAD TV sketches, only not as intentionally hammed-up. As for V, I ALWAYS imagined them having a distinctly male professor-y voice; I wasn't even certain he was supposed to be androgynous until they started joking about it (supported firmly by the fact he does not have breasts like every other female character.)

Belkar is a bit hard for me becuase I reflexively imagine hims sounding snotty, but I really try to imagine him sounding exactly like Cartman, especially when he's doing something evil.

I wouldn't have made a thread if I wasn't curious what other people thought. So unless you can't predict the expectations of someone with No brains, I would like to hear what some other people think.

[CynicalAvocado]

everyone has british accents. because the man in my head decided to be british this year

[DeadManSleeping]

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=22

As for me, while there are voices, I cannot find the words to describe them.

[Dr.Epic]

Durkon gives a pretty clear impression.

Gerard Butler?

Also, shouldn't this go in the OotS section?:smallconfused:

[SMEE]

Aye, it belongs to the OotS forum.
Thread moved

[Nimrod's Son]

everyone has british accents. because the man in my head decided to be british this year
Do you mean they all have different regional accents, or they all speak like stereotypical upper-class English people? "A British accent" is as meaningless as "a European accent".

[Secris]

They all sound strangely like me. Which is weird, because none of the other voices in my head do.

[Innis Cabal]

Do you mean they all have different regional accents, or they all speak like stereotypical upper-class English people? "A British accent" is as meaningless as "a European accent".

Not when you arn't from Britain I am afraid. Do you think all American's speak with a Southern Dialect?

[Nimrod's Son]

Not when you arn't from Britain I am afraid.
You're telling me that Scottish, Scouse, Cockney, Welsh, Northern Irish, Brummie, Geordie and Cornish all sound exactly the same to everyone who isn't from Britain? I highly doubt that's even vaguely true.


Do you think all American's speak with a Southern Dialect?
:smallconfused: Of course not. Saying "Everyone has American accents" would have been equally pointless.

[Thufir]

You're telling me that Scottish, Scouse, Cockney, Welsh, Northern Irish, Brummie, Geordie and Cornish all sound exactly the same to everyone who isn't from Britain? I highly doubt that's even vaguely true.


:smallconfused: Of course not. Saying "Everyone has American accents" would have been equally pointless.

But, the thing is, that sort of impression can happen. If I listen to someone with an american accent, I will identify it as an american accent. If I listen to two people with different regional american accents, I can tell they're different, but to me, they're still both just 'american accents'. On top of the fact I'm not great on accents anyway, I simply don't have enough experience with the various regional american accents to pick them out specifically, but I can pick out the common elements which mark them all out as american accents. While I can't know for sure, I imagine the same would be true in reverse.

[Nimrod's Son]

I'm not asking anyone to be an expert on regional nuances, just to acknowledge that "Everyone has British accents" is a meaningless answer, and no more describes how CynicalAvocado hears the cast talk than if he'd said "they all speak like people from Earth".

[Durgok]

I'm not asking anyone to be an expert on regional nuances, just to acknowledge that "Everyone has British accents" is a meaningless answer, and no more describes how CynicalAvocado hears the cast talk than if he'd said "they all speak like people from Earth".

But it does, it narrows it down to a much smaller region than the entire planet.

Now it might not be a very accurate way to describe someone, but with him saying they all sound like they have British accents I'm fairly certain that you won't be thinking that he means Haley has a southern belle american accent.

[Leecros]

de'ja vu. I recall having the exact same conversation with my girlfriend(who is Scottish) just a couple of days ago....


the one about the Brittish and American accents....not the voices in my head. They say silly things like "Murder all Humanity" and "Go ahead, burn that house down":smalltongue:

[Swordpriest]

The two British accents I can identify, as an American, are that irritating upper class British accent :smallwink: and caricatured Cockney. The rest basically just fall into "shades of foreign".

To return to the original topic, oddly enough, the only character in the comic I supply a voice for is Xykon, and I imagine him as having a crisp but nasal mid-range tenor like a bad radio announcer :smallbiggrin:. I know he's supposed to sound like James Earl Jones, but that's never how it comes across in my head.

[Thufir]

But it does, it narrows it down to a much smaller region than the entire planet.

Now it might not be a very accurate way to describe someone, but with him saying they all sound like they have British accents I'm fairly certain that you won't be thinking that he means Haley has a southern belle american accent.

This. And if one is not familiar with the regional nuances, one cannot narrow it down any further. And since those accents do have some common elements, to someone else with a similar viewpoint, the description should give a reasonable impression. They may not imagine the exact same accent, but they'll be in the right area.

[yaklin]

Any time I read anything, its just my voice with slight variations in pitch and volume. Like when I read something in all caps, I read it in my voice but louder.

[No brains]

I see that 'British' keeps popping up here. Is this because the creator is british or that the major readership (including those previous posters) are british?

Also sorry, I missed the OOTS-specific section.

[Bleak Ink]

In response to your original question, Brains, I don't have designated voices in my head, but rather a pitch and tone.

I've always imagined Roy as having a low, not-quite-monotone voice, the breath stretching the stomach and chest more than the shoulders.
Elan, the higher end of medium-ranged, with little use of his full lungs in the breathing and sound. Fast-speaking, with his shoulders moving with his breath, rather than the stomach moving.
Haley I hear with a.. for lack of better word, "sassy" voice. Shallower breathing, like Elan, and medium-ranged in tone.
Durkon, as you said, gives a pretty clear indication of what he sounds like. Personally, I hear a medium-low, well rounded voice, with a fatherly/grandfatherly tone much of the time- not gravelly or rough as Dwarves tend to have. Breathes from the stomach and chest, like Roy, leaning more to the chest than stomach.
V kind of goes back and forth for me. I see her as female much of the time, but male!V has a lot of evidence to him, balancing my final judgment. As such, a perfectly medium-range voice suits hir for me- no leaning one way or another. A very dignified tone, perhaps a slight accent, that carries well.
Belkar's a pain for me to get a tone for. His Small stature means his air intake and vocal cords are much smaller than a Medium sized person, but I could never, ever imagine him with anything higher than mid-tenor. So, I'll just say medium tone, with a sharp edge to his speech. Invader Zim has suddenly come to mind as I type, but, not quite there. Maybe it's the homicidal urges they share.

Now, Team Evil is where I start having fun with it...

[Nimrod's Son]

This. And if one is not familiar with the regional nuances, one cannot narrow it down any further. And since those accents do have some common elements, to someone else with a similar viewpoint, the description should give a reasonable impression. They may not imagine the exact same accent, but they'll be in the right area.
How so? Thing is, when someone from the US says "British accent", it usually means one of two things:


The two British accents I can identify, as an American, are that irritating upper class British accent :smallwink: and caricatured Cockney.
So which is the case here? Those two accents sound absolutely nothing like each other. They are as different from each other as they are from any regional US accent. I genuinely have no idea what CynicalAvocado means when he says he hears the cast with "British" accents, other than that it's very likely one of those two - hence my original request for clarification.

[Innis Cabal]

You're telling me that Scottish, Scouse, Cockney, Welsh, Northern Irish, Brummie, Geordie and Cornish all sound exactly the same to everyone who isn't from Britain? I highly doubt that's even vaguely true.


:smallconfused: Of course not. Saying "Everyone has American accents" would have been equally pointless.

That's not even vaguely to what I am saying. Or what I said in the first place for that matter. I am saying people from other area's will give you what they think is an accent of a particular place without thinking that there might be more then just the stereotypical one. If you asked a common person what an American or British accent sounds like they'll give you one answer. Even if there's more then one to give. Hence, when you ask a non-British person what a British accent is, they aren't going to give you the very varied answer that would be a proper answer. If you ask a non-American what the American accent is, they're going to give you at most two answers. Southern and the other one. When there are more regional dialects in North America then even I can name off.

Is the answer wrong? No, just mis-informed. Not only that, but if you ask someone who isn't from Britain (And I bet you most people from Britain will also answer this) a good potion of those you rattled off aren't exactly British Accents, but UK accents which are by and far not the same thing. Same as a Canadian Accent or any of it's mutations are not the same as American accents even though they're on the same continent.



I see that 'British' keeps popping up here. Is this because the creator is british or that the major readership (including those previous posters) are british?

Also sorry, I missed the OOTS-specific section.

It's neither since Rich is American and so is the majority of the leadership.

[Felixc-91]

How so? Thing is, when someone from the US says "British accent", it usually means one of two things:


So which is the case here? Those two accents sound absolutely nothing like each other. They are as different from each other as they are from any regional US accent. I genuinely have no idea what CynicalAvocado means when he says he hears the cast with "British" accents, other than that it's very likely one of those two - hence my original request for clarification.eh, i can only cast my two cents in but what i figured CA meant was the "irritating upper class" accent (its the first british accent i could identify as being British)

[Nimrod's Son]

Is the answer wrong? No, just mis-informed.
...Which is kinda what I'm trying to address here. :smallsmile:

(Well, that and - as I said - for the purpose of this question it's not a very informative answer.)


Not only that, but if you ask someone who isn't from Britain (And I bet you most people from Britain will also answer this) a good potion of those you rattled off aren't exactly British Accents, but UK accents which are by and far not the same thing.
I shouldn't have included Northern Ireland in the list there for that reason, you're right. But that's the only one I mentioned that is from the UK rather than Britain. In fact apart from Welsh and Scottish (which in themselves are also over-generalisations), every one I listed is an English accent.

[137beth]

Elan and Belkar sound like children. Haley sounds normal, except when she's talking to Elan...

Varsuvius sounds like a show-off/know-it-all (with a moderately pitched voice, not distinctly male or female).

Durkon sounds gruff and dwarf-like.

Roy sounds normal.

[SadisticFishing]

British accents are a much smaller subset of accents than... "they speak like humans".

British *tends* to mean the super upper class, and often Cockney, and some people can barely tell the difference between those. They do all sound similar to us, though I can vaguely tell the difference between 4 different "British" accents (five if you count Australia, which I wouldn't have thought was necessary before my Australian friend got made fun of for being British [which was wrong on at least two levels]), they're all similar enough that it's a very fair description to anyone that doesn't live there.

To MOST of North America, "British" is what those Monty Python guys sound like.

[TheBlackShadow]

For what it's worth, I can imagine Nale with a stereotypical over-the-top villainous upper-class English accent. If anyone here has played the Metal Gear Solid series of video games, I can explain it fairly accurately as "Nale is Liquid Snake".

[BayardSPSR]

Can we agree on defining a 'British' accent as a group of related regional accents? Likewise with 'American' accents? Or 'Indian' accents, even? I don't think it's realistic to claim either group as a single accent by any means, but would it be fair to say that (very broadly speaking) they sound just close enough to be identified as related but not identified as distinct to someone who hasn't been well exposed to that group of accents?

[Nimrod's Son]

:smallsigh: Sheesh.

Right guys, I stand corrected. Hugh Grant sounds exactly the same as **** Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. It was daft of me to claim otherwise.


Can we agree on defining a 'British' accent as a group of related regional accents? Likewise with 'American' accents? Or 'Indian' accents, even? I don't think it's realistic to claim either group as a single accent by any means, but would it be fair to say that (very broadly speaking) they sound just close enough to be identified as related but not identified as distinct to someone who hasn't been well exposed to that group of accents?
That's just it though, the various British accents often aren't related to each other, and before the invention of "standard" English were near-as-dammit to being different languages to each other. Saying they're all "close enough" is a lazy cop-out, and woefully misinformed.

I've never been to New York, but I know for a fact there are several very different accents from that one city, and even simply saying a "New York accent" is not particularly helpful if you're trying to give someone a clear picture of how a certain person speaks. Now I realise that this has a lot to do with the pervasiveness of American culture, which rarely works in reverse (a very high percentage of British shows get remade with American actors and setting before they'll get shown in the US, for example, whereas the idea of making a British version of the likes of Friends or Seinfeld has probably never even been considered). But just because you can't personally tell the difference doesn't mean that difference doesn't exist. That's like a colourblind person claiming that green and brown are the same thing, and that it's just splitting hairs by differentiating between the two.

It might not matter much to you, but you're still factually wrong, and it's a bit sad that I've had to argue it at such length when I only wanted clarification on what CynicalAvocado meant in the first place. Lazy stereotyping is never a good or productive thing, and given the high level of very specialised knowledge displayed in this forum it's disappointing that so many people are willing to just handwave it away.

I mean, there are people on here who know minute details about different types of sword, and which historical cultures used them. I wouldn't dream of butting in and saying "Ah, who cares guys? They're all big sharp bits of metal used for killing people, what's the difference?". Shame people feel the need to do much the same thing thing here.

I guess language just isn't as "badass" as weaponry, though. :smallwink:

[ClockShock]

Hugh Grant doesn't have anything nearly as interesting as an accent.

I struggle to pin down the actual 'voice'
I tried re-reading the latest comic to work it out, and reading anything now seems really weird as internally i'm trying to listen to what i'm saying and how i'm saying it, whilst pretending that it isn't me saying anything.

[Cybertoy00]

Roy: Snarkey. That's all I can say.
Durkon: Scottish
Elan: For some reason, I imagine his voice is like Freakazoid's...very energetic and childish.
Haley: whoever said, 'sassy' I agree.
Varsuuvius: Femme-Masculine (Like Zero from SD Gundam Force...)
Belkar: Cartman-esq of South Park sounds right on.

[Nimrod's Son]

Hugh Grant doesn't have anything nearly as interesting as an accent.
Ha! Excellent. :smallbiggrin:

[Durgok]

:smallsigh: Sheesh.

Right guys, I stand corrected. Hugh Grant sounds exactly the same as **** Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. It was daft of me to claim otherwise.


That's just it though, the various British accents often aren't related to each other, and before the invention of "standard" English were near-as-dammit to being different languages to each other. Saying they're all "close enough" is a lazy cop-out, and woefully misinformed.

I've never been to New York, but I know for a fact there are several very different accents from that one city, and even simply saying a "New York accent" is not particularly helpful if you're trying to give someone a clear picture of how a certain person speaks. Now I realise that this has a lot to do with the pervasiveness of American culture, which rarely works in reverse (a very high percentage of British shows get remade with American actors and setting before they'll get shown in the US, for example, whereas the idea of making a British version of the likes of Friends or Seinfeld has probably never even been considered). But just because you can't personally tell the difference doesn't mean that difference doesn't exist.

It might not matter much to you, but you're still factually wrong, and it's a bit sad that I've had to argue it at such length when I only wanted clarification on what CynicalAvocado meant in the first place. Lazy stereotyping is never a good or productive thing, and given the high level of very specialised knowledge displayed in this forum it's disappointing that so many people are willing to just handwave it away.

I mean, there are people on here who know minute details about different types of sword, and which historical cultures used them. I wouldn't dream of butting in and saying "Ah, who cares guys? They're all big sharp bits of metal used for killing people, what's the difference?". Shame people feel the need to do much the same thing thing here.

I guess language just isn't as "badass" as weaponry, though. :smallwink:

I agree with you post here that lumping them all together isn't fair since each dialect has its own idiosyncrasies and colloquialism to be notified as their own.

As a Canadian we tend to get lumped in with the standard "American Accent" group even though we can differentiate accents between a fair few of our provinces.

But to the uninformed; someone might know that person A has a different accent than person B but they don't know the different regions. That said someone would then (in describing both person A and person B to someone else) say "They both have British accents." Now that someone isn't necessarily wrong in doing so, especially since he can't tell a Welsh accent from a Cockney accent. It's simply not their fault.

Perhaps though, if someone knows the differences and can find audio links and/or youtube videos of the regional accents, a thread can be made with the name of each accent and a link so that people who are unfamiliar with the regional accents can pinpoint the accent they are thinking of more accurately.

[Nimrod's Son]

Now that someone isn't necessarily wrong in doing so, especially since he can't tell a Welsh accent from a Cockney accent. It's simply not their fault.
I never said anything was anyone's fault. I said that CynicalAvocado had given an answer so broad as to be meaningless, and I wanted to know what he meant by it. The number of times I've had to repeat this now is staggering.

(Since this was originally posted in another forum, and I'm not familiar with CynicalAvocado from this section, chances are he's not even still reading this thread anymore anyway. But people keep on jumping to his defence regardless, even though HE DIDN'T NEED DEFENDING IN THE FIRST PLACE. I'm not attacking him, and never was. Just said his answer could use some clarification, that's all.)


Perhaps though, if someone knows the differences and can find audio links and/or youtube videos of the regional accents, a thread can be made with the name of each accent and a link so that people who are unfamiliar with the regional accents can pinpoint the accent they are thinking of more accurately.
Don't really see the point in that. It's quite apparent that no one cares anyway. :smallfrown:

[Goosefarble]

I wasn't even certain he was supposed to be androgynous until they started joking about it (supported firmly by the fact he does not have breasts like every other female character.)


Actually all elves are flat-chested and hence androgynous in the comic, but now's not the time to discuss it.

The only voices I give the characters are kind of variations of my own, except for people like Thog who obviously have their own kind of... feel. Durkon too, because he has an accent, of course. Xykon's is kind of different from everyone else's too, I guess because he's just so much more badass than anyone else.

[Nimrod's Son]

Actually all elves are flat-chested and hence androgynous in the comic, but now's not the time to discuss it.
All (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0532.html) of them, eh (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0497.html)? :smallwink:

[MoonCat]

All (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0532.html) of them, eh (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0497.html)? :smallwink:

Was the second one a dark elf? 'Cos I thought that was a Drow.

[Nimrod's Son]

There's a difference? :smallconfused:

[CletusMusashi]

Redcloak sounds like Anthony Hopkins, although absolutely none of the other goblins share his accent.
I try to remind myself that Xykon has a alot of reverb, but I often forget that and get sucked into the dialogue, which reads like he should have Jack Nicholson's voice.
Belkar sounds like George Costanza. "I am a sexy, shoeless god of war, Jerry!"

[MoonCat]

There's a difference? :smallconfused:

Isn't there? :smallconfused:

[Durgok]

Isn't there? :smallconfused:

Dark Elves / Drow were just dark skinned elves that were banished to the underdark by the other elves for their cruel and vile ways.

And now to actually contribute to the forum topic at hand. The accents I see them with are all the same accent I have (Western Canadian)

Elan is the only one that really stands out though, and I see his voice having the same geeky qualities as Zachary Levi's in Chuck.

[Dvandemon]

This thread...:smallsmile: A while ago I was considering starting a thread about Xykon's voice (which eventually turned into, how would all the colored speech bubbles sound?) So here's a query for all of you since I don't want to start a thread dangerously close to this; What do the people that have colored speech bubble sound like to you?

For Xykon, I imagine faint whipsering due to lack of flesh, with a reverb making up the timbre