11. How are they vocally expressive? What kind of voice, accent, tones, inflections, volume, phrases and slang, and manner of speaking do they use?
mary has a moderately high voice, although it’s dropped somewhat and is lower/huskier in tone now that she’s in her 50s. it’s got a bit of a nasal twang that is, hdsgshg, just because m*chelle g*mez is inexperienced with an american accent, but given the new england-y vibes of greendale and its comparisons to salem, mass., it actually works--the different varieties of the new england accent are known for being nasal (e.g. e.g.).
in conversational speaking, especially in people or situations where she’s not terribly confident, she will periodically fumble over her words and use conversational fillers quite a bit--“you know, um, ah--that is to say, what i think, well, i think that...” generally it’s a combo of having a lot of thoughts at once that she’s trying to articulate clearly, plus social anxiety, but once she gets in her groove of speaking--and especially once she has developed a rapport with whoever she’s speaking with--she becomes much more fluid. she generally needs to know that the other person is... “plugged in” to what she’s trying to say--that they’re connecting--before she’ll start to feel confident about talking to them freely. if someone doesn’t respond in the way she’s hoping, she’ll stumble a lot more and might eventually just stop talking.
in lecturing and teaching, she’s much more confident. in those scenarios she’s in a position of authority from which she can speak on subjects she knows quite a lot about, so she doesn’t fall back on “um”s and “ah”s. she’s really quite a good teacher and when she’s in Teaching Mode she’s very clear and expressive, and has quite a calm energy in the classroom--she’s rarely frantic or excessively passionate about her material (especially bc as a high school teacher she’s rarely teaching the material she cares about the most), and students probably think of her as soft-spoken but articulate.
“soft-spoken” is probably a byword of all impressions of mary. she’s not actually like, very soft-spoken--she’s not dramatically low in volume--but she rarely raises her voice and is unlikely to be loud unless she’s in a specific situation (calling to someone or speaking in a large room) that requires her to project her voice. she’s not the person you can hear having a conversation from across a room.
42 character development questions. ☛ @highwiitch.
