Okay so I've been trying to create a makeshift way of translating Eridian language into stuff we can actually in writing and not sheet music and this has created possibly the funniest scenario ever. In my opinion, at least.
So, imagine this (from Grace POV):
I'm finally meeting another one of the biologists who helped synthesize all the food currently keeping me alive as I possibly can be. I've heard a lot about them--Rocky has insisted that they were one of the nicest and most conversational Eridians that he and Adrian got to work with, and he still insists to me now that I'll absolutely love meeting them.
However, something puts me on edge. It's not an anecdote I've heard, or some sort of sneaking suspicion based on their description, or even remaining weirdness from being the first human to ever meet a sapient alien species. Nothing like that is the root of my worry.
But somehow, I still feel like my death is awaiting in the other room.
Shut up, Grace. I tell myself. That's an unfounded claim. There's no reason to be feeling this way.
Still, it persists.
I walk into the room where they wait regardless.
All and all, the conversation is fine! Their self introduction sends another spike into my gut, but other than that, every millisecond of my interaction with them is great. They're perfectly sweet, and even though I'm trying to steer clear from giving Eridians weird human names now, I almost want to name them after a dessert. Cupcake or cookie, maybe. They're just so nice, and food is obviously on my mind since they helped create some.
I still leave the encounter shaken, though. Rocky is definitely concerned, and keeps asking if I'm feeling ill, but I don't think that's it.
When I get home, I just...start scrounging the web. Relaying the conversation back in my head, trying to figure out any adverse psychological affects of meeting specific people, or...something? I'm so confused that my sentences are beginning to fall out of grammatical standards.
Finally, I give up and just look up the notes in their name. Someones faces just don't match up with the name they're given, even Eridian faces.
And then I see it.
Alright, who was going to tell me that one of my saviors' names is literally the Dies Irae, the musical motif for death and the apocalypse?
Okay I cannot be any more real about this. Literally just write the thing.
Very rarely have I actually gotten any of my writing projects done in the slightest sense of the word. I'm really bad with keeping pace and finding motivation. I always hold myself back and force myself to think further about whatever I'm doing. I force myself constantly reread my work and never finish it.
I also just finished 2+ goddamn pages of writing because I just started and didn't stop. I just opened a doc and started writing. I didn't hold back. I just did it because I could, and it was fun.
I've never written so much so fast in my life.
Stop holding yourself back. If you have an idea, write it down. If you think it's bad and cringe, write it down. If you feel like you might ditch it later, write it down. If it's been burning in your brain for minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, WRITE IT DOWN.
Even more--share your process with people. I sent so many fucking progress screenshots to my friends. It felt awesome. I felt so cool. Don't be afraid to ask for constructive criticism or reassurance. Just ask. Get 'er done.
Hey guys. I’m a certified Stupid Linguist in Training Freak(TM) and I am here to tell you:
How to write and read the accents in Great God Grove accurately
Because if I have to see a very sad and pathetic Hector talk like he’s from 2020 and “UwU” is the hot new thing one more time. I don’t know what I’ll do. (If you’re doing that for comedic effect or like obviously on purpose though you’re good you’re fine he does act cutesy)
FOR THE RECORD: I AM AND WILL BE JOKINGLY AGGRESSIVE THROUGHOUT THIS ENTIRE POST. I’VE MADE THE SAME MISTAKES, PLEASE DON’T COME AT ME. IF YOU DON’T WISH TO FACE MY COMEDIC WRATH, DON’T PROCEED UNDER THE CUT.
Okay, first off, who specifically am I talking about? Because there are a TON of weird accents and dialects in Great God Grove. Cobigail, Styella, King, Razz*, etc. It's a very diverse cast!
Unfortunately, I will only be discussing the accents of The Bizzyboys (including Inspekta) and Click Clack in this post, because they happen to be misread most often. And it bothers me. Be the change you wish to see in the world, etc etc.
*Razz's inclusion of Spanish in her speech is technically a secret third thing. I can't tell if her way of speaking counts as Spanglish or not. (feel free to correct me or inform me about this choice, I'd love to hear it)
Anyways. Let’s look at some accents, shall we? Starting off with my inspiration for this post:
The Bizzyboys Need Some Cawffee ON DA HOUSE!!
The Bizzyboys all speak with an exaggerated New York accent, and the differences in pronunciation are all listed on this Wikipedia page. The page has audio files as well as some neat bullet points and graphs, which are VERY useful to look at.
However, there's quite a lot of stuff on that page, and it's all very academic. It spooks me. I’m quite frightened. So let’s break it down!
#1: The letter /r/ sucks. Get it out of there. Specifically, if the letter /r/ is the end of a syllable and/or does not have a vowel following it, you ditch it. That’s why Inspekta’s name is like that; Inspector -> Inspekta. The ending, -or, is an r-colored vowel, which counts as an /r/ so we throw it away. Instead, we put an "a" sound there, which doesn't always have to be transcribed all the time, but it's important to keep in mind.
extra fun facts: younger generations and higher class New Yorkers tend to keep their /r/'s at the end of syllables, which could be fun to play with in transcription! Showing how Patty is a bit younger than all the others via her accent differences or depicting Hector attempting to reclaim his /r/ sound to cater to upperclassmen are good subtle uses of this nuance.
#2: The “th” sound is not your friend. New Yorkers replace it with a [d] or [t] most often. Capo advertises that you join "da" Bizzyboys, not "the" Bizzyboys. Sometimes a little bit of that "th" sound remains, but that nuance delves a little more into exacts, which I am not here to do.
extra fun facts pt 2 electric boogaloo: this dropping also varies depending on the class. The higher the class, the higher the chance the "th" will stick around. This is most likely because of German, Italian, Irish, and Yiddish immigrants that entered low class New York in the 1800's.
#3: This is extremely stereotypical (fitting for the Bizzyboys, but still important to keep in mind), but New Yorkers sometimes add a bonus "g" after an "n" sound like the one in "long". Not needed for transcription, but still worth keeping in mind.
#4: This is most often not worth transcribing, but I love it so much I have to just include it. Often, in English, the words "caught" and "cot" are homophones, but New York English does not do this. Caught, as well as words like talk, law, cross, etc, all share a vowel sound that, for lack of a better way to say, gets “puffed up” when spoken in the New York accent. That’s where I got “cawffee” from instead of “coffee”. Basically, you put an h after your consonant and puff up the vowel to make it sound more like an open mouthed “aw” sound. I just really like the way that sounds so I wanted to include it.
There’s a lot more on the Wikipedia page, but I’m too tired to write it all down, and not all of them are too important.
However, I have more links! This performance (starting at 3:19, it has giant non-realistic bug puppets in it) has a really good example of an exaggerated New York accent, as well as this one from the same musical. I kind of imagine Inspekta’s voice (specifically Inspekta not Hector lol) to sound like Veeto. It was the first thing I thought when I realized what his accent was.
That’s it for the Bizzyboys! Always remember:
If Hector sounds like this, you may have messed up.
Anyhoo:
THIS JUST IN FROM HOBBYHOO: CLICK CLACK IS, IN FACT, NOT BRITISH!
see my little rhyme there. hehe.
Click Clack has a transatlantic accent, the lovechild of British and American English. If you've ever seen a 1950's-ish American Movie, chances are you've heard this accent. Wikipedia links for this accent include the Good American Speech page and the Northeastern elite accent, which are both good resources.
However, I don't know enough about the Transatlantic accent and my shitty ADHD brain can hardly process words right now, so my examples are only videos. My only tips are to drop the /r/ again and take away the "ee" sound in words like "happy" in favor of the "ih" sound in "skit". Other than that, here is a hilarious skit of FDR realizing his wife is gay. I have watched this way too many times. You must watch it. Now. Other than that, @/thegroveofgreatgods does a great Click Clack. I highly recommend. Their Bizzyboys are really good, too. Very good. Anyways, I'm gonna draw and sleep now. Thanks for reading :D
My aforementioned spec bio and culture notes that are hideously unorganized!!! YIPPEE!!!
If you don't wanna read allathat the general summary is that hives are like colleges/organizations that you can join several of after study to participate in wider amounts of discussion, and these hives are kind of what control eridian society. not all of them obviously but at least some of it. my second point is hitting eridians with the argentine ant beam and making them pretty nicies to one another and not as territorial but EXTREMELY territorial with everything that isn't Them. I also hit them with the agricultural revolution beam but through detritivores (things that eat dead things) and Gas like hydrothermal vents. that's basically it everything under the cut are notes i took in a very unorganized fashion to get to the above slightly less unorganized notes. the pictures are very bad but there's also an eva stratt in there
Okay I honestly should be doing my homework but I gotta rant about this or I might explode
It's been so fun to indulge in PHM fan media because of the boom its been having, and that especially goes for tumblr because of how neurodivergent everyone is
like we all looked at the very little info we have about eridian society and went "yup. neurodivergent heaven." and i definitely agree in some parts (especially the eating. hhhhoaugh. all of my food trauma would vanish if i lived in a culture where eating wasn't a public thing.)
but there's also a genuine frustration i feel sometimes because (and this might be me and only me) it feels like there's no nuance to eridian society in fan interpretations of it and even in some of the original text
like the idea that eridians have no government in the book (while a whole other thing) made me want to die. like. what does that mean? what? you can't just say that to me and leave it alone. no. I like anthropology and political science get bACK HERE--
but also a lot of fanfic and/or art i see tends to paint the picture that eridians don't face any of the social problems that humans have which just feels wrong, yknow? ofc whatever issues that are present in eridian society will be inherently different and even unthinkable from a human standpoint but there's no way there just aren't any
and then sometimes others go the opposite direction and make it too human? to the point where I feel like I'm seeing human society if we all became Rocks but with human brains and modern human society
like wouldn't it be so cool if eridians struggled with individualization instead of globalization. wouldn't that be so cool. that's so fundamentally different from humans because of the fact that we are territorial whereas eridians seem to be somewhat eusocial (thrums and hives are so bee-adjacent istg)
even then I wanna talk about thrums more!!! they're so fucking cool!!!! and I have so many questions!!!!!!!! are they instinctual, or like socratic seminars? Probably some mix of the two (to a degree), right? Are hives bigger or smaller units than thrums? Are hives like NOAA or something??? are they just national/international institutions for certain subjects??? doesn't that count as a governmental institution???? AAAAGH?????
sometimes i wonder if eridians struggle with ableism because of the way that thrums work, too! like, if an eridian has trouble keeping up with the processing speed of other eridians, are they cast out from thrums because they get in the way? to what degree are neurodivergent individuals allowed in academic circles because of this? I NEEEEEEEEEEEED to hear people's ideas!!!!!!! AGH!!!!!
1: Japanese Yokai were another main inspiration for Nympho! They're basically weird little demons that can be blamed for almost any problem you can think of. Japanese folklore in general is super interesting, highly recommend.
2: When Nympho was mortal, they ran an extremely influential printing press called The Social Spider (name might change) that would document political news and speech. It was extremely controversial, but Nympho still managed to ascend to godhood.
3: Nympho moves around! It tracks linguistic change across the world, so it's always popping up in new places. He hopes to catalogue and structure language, so that there's no confusion or turmoil over misunderstandings, etc etc. They deem their home territory "under control", so they no longer need to manage the population.
4: If and when Nympho arrives in the Grove, they meet with Click Clack first through the language connection, but they move around quickly. They settle in an abandoned part in The Cove, eventually.
5: Uhhh okay quick speech fun facts! He has some sort of UK accent, not sure where in there. They are unintentionally based off of Abijah Fowler from Blue Eye Samurai, and are intentionally based off of the speech patterns of The Suspicious Man from ENA: Dream BBQ.
im bad at asks. but i appreciate this so much. thank you thank you thank you,,,,
Blasts Your Gods With Cultural Anthropology: Great God Grove
Where I take your favorite goobers from the original context of how the gods work, keep their dynamics, and say how they would evolve over time.
if i mess up and call it gods great groove at some point just know its baked into my genome at this point. i apologize.
Part I: Thespius and Cobgail are the Same Guy
"What? THOSE two?" You may be asking. Never fear. Apparently I'm Click Clack now? Regardless, yes! These two are actually what gave me inspiration to make this.
They are both gods of community-adjacent things, right? You could argue that all of the gods are like that, which is true, but those two especially focus on gathering together and exchanging some sort of art. Click Clack is also a part of this, but I'm still workshopping what's up with him because he (and King) are WEIRD. Anyways, in addition, Cobgail and Thespius are both vaguely yellow coded and particularly kind to mortals.
oh also they both have sun related motifs but i realized this later lmao
"Okay, still a stretch." You may be saying by now. Well, here is my clever refute! In Greek Myth, it's proposed that Hermes is an offshoot of the Proto-Indo-European Pan equivalent, who would have been EXTREMELY old. Poseidon and Hades are similar to this, as well (this is way more of a maybe, though. Watch Overly Sarcastic Production's video on Hades and Persephone). This all goes to show that gods can evolve in truly wild ways, and I think the same applies here! While I'm not sure exactly how this may have happened yet, I do like to think that this is true. There's a great comic by @/modmad that elaborates on why I think this/also gave me the idea in the first place. Coincidences, I think.
So uh yeah this is probably barely coherent but uh part one yippee
