Hello I am asking as someone who is not American and does not have a strong grasp of American regional accents. I know the Fleet accent has been talked about before but since it keeps getting remarked upon so much in all the non-Fleet POV books, I GOTTA know. How... how does Rich say peoples' names?? What does 'Rafael' sound like phonetically when said by the big boy???
The short answer is that he hits the first consonant/syllable--D and T noises very swallowed/softened--and then kind of makes a mouth noise in the general shape of the rest of it lmao. Which in Rafael's case means it ends up kind of like. Similar to "Raf-ale" if he's enunciating, and "Raf(vague vowel sound)" if he's not.
The LONG answer is this collection of musings on accents I picked out from the author chat.
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roach —
yknow he probably pronounces his whole name rich'r
rich'r merl
rafael: your name, for example, has four syllables
rich, counting: ....no?
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
the L on Basil's name ends up so swallowed Sol spent the first two visits thinking Rich's boyfriend was named Bays
roach —
oh my god
Bays Rye
like yeah sure whatever that's a reasonable name for a boat cultist
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
Rafael meanwhile will pronounce the whole damn thing
which gives the fleet guys a distinct feeling of being in trouble
because nobody enunciates your whole name that clearly unless you're about to get scolded
roach —
oh man yeah
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
Rafael, very crisply: Basil Wright?
Bays: 8(
roach —
rich keeps hearing the other guys going riTCH and is like. you don't have to go that hard. doesn't it wear your mouth out.
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
Sol is using his WHOLE mouth like. SO much. does he not get tired.
there's so many consonants in there
roach —
i think instead of a fully enunciated tch noise like we do it's probably more of a /dj/ like in jazz?
rollerskatinglizard —
Ridge Mehrl
roach —
yeah these are our boat boys, bays, midge, and ridge. and yes, they smoke weed.
......leam
god rich is handicapped in following iambic pentameter or whatever it is
he gets done in half the time
rich you actually have to say the words on beat
all of each word
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
Rich: this is Liam
Rafael, enunciating very clearly: ..............Leem?
Rich: nah 's Liam. like, Liam?
Rafael: Leem.
Rich: Liam
THAT'S WHAT HE SAID, RICH FOR PITY'S SAKE
rollerskatinglizard —
Rich finally spells it in total exasperation
Rafael, in disbelief: LIAM????
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
who the fuck is Lee-Um
Rafael's name probably comes out like. Raffle.
roach —
raf'ale
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
Rafael pronouncing his own name is giving three whole fancy syllables
Rich will sometimes manage two if he's trying real hard
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roach —
UNRELATED but i feel like the first time sol hears rich pronounce 'christmas' he has to pause like. crimmis. really???
rich: crim...is.
sol: you are so close to having an actual t in there somewhere
rich: the t is silent, it's always been silent, you can't tell me it's not
sol: CHRISTMAS
rich: bullshit
--
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
........I bet the Fleet ship Versailles is almost ubiquitously pronounced "ver-sails"
in the same way that Notre Dame the college is almost universally pronounced "dame" instead of "dahm"
--
roach —
today's silly thought: connor making any kind of issue out of how rich pronounces things and sol being outraged
like 'worst guy you know makes a great point'
rich: hurn
connor: it's HUNNERT
sol, seething: hundred
rich: yeah that's what i said
--
roach — 10/1/24, 12:39 PM
connor: payerENCE
rich: pay rent?
connor: no like your momma
rich: oh! pance
sol: parents
connor: no 🙂
rich: no 🙂
[...]
Splickedylit, RN, BSN —
Sol gets a lot of shit about his new york accent but at least he's COMPREHENSIBLE. you country fucks.
roach —
rich: brooklyn
connor: broom? boiling?
rich: haha bowling lanes?? no like new york
sol: brooklyn
connor: fuck off
rich: bru'n
sol: BROOK. LIN.
rich, mockingly: brogn
--
roach —
d'rain in spain fas mainyonna plain
there, nailed it, next question
rafael: say 'around'
rich: rown
rafael: around
rich: ROWN
sol: say 'shakespeare'
rafael: don't
rich: shays-per
I'm trying to remember the last time I've enjoyed the interactions of an ensemble cast this much... and I think Run Aground has dethroned Star Trek TNG for me, which is odd to think about, because the tones of the two series are so wildly different.
What a lovely compliment! I haven't watched any Star Trek but from what I know of it. You're totally right that it's a different tone and vibe, BUT the leap from the Michigan Fleet to Star Fleet feels weirdly intuitive lol.
God tho. Bad vibes on a bad ship are bad enough, but a Sympatico-style situation on a spaceship sounds absolutely nightmarish. Nowhere to go but the vacuum of space, baby!!!!!
(I was going to draw some of the Run Aground guys as well but I got hung up on whether Sol would be some kind of beautiful space elf or like. One of the hyper-capitalist alien guys with the big whorly ears. Ferengi?? Don't @ me lol)
Can I just say that I love how the colour saturation of the Run Aground illustrations reflects the narrator’s mental state?
Ah! :D As the Colors Guy in the illustration process, I'm glad to hear it! I wanted the change from Prologue!Rafael to Chapter One to be really jarring, with similar poses but colorful/glowing/energetic vs monochrome/static/stiff, and Ray's lines really elevated my doodly sketches and gave me a great jumping-off point for the colors--or greys, I suppose. :D
The slow fade to color, and widening of the blurry edges to take in more details of the world, I have intentionally kept very slow even though having to dim my colors after I lay them down makes me want to chew on the walls lololol. Keep an eye out for more colors-related fucking around from me in future illustrations as Rafael's mental state varies through,,, a whole lot more Happenings lol.
Do you have a roundup anywhere of all of the AUs y'all have kicked around for the Run Aground gang? Any chance that the extras in the final version would include any AU snippets?
Well the FIRST question is fairly easy to answer because I recently went through and compiled all of our extremely scattered side-fic documents into collection docs so we would stop losing things lmao. I categorized them thus:
CANON DIVERGENT - Mostly aligned with the canon plotline or world, but riffed on, shifted, or alternate in some way:
Patron+Patrician - Rafael makes it big on the west coast as an actor instead of *waves hands at canon* and takes Rich on as a sexy hoverboarding patron. Then gets brought over to visit NYC and meet Rich's east coast patron. Sol has. A night.
1950s Reskin - a brief little style experiment from Ray about how the writing style/dialogue and the tech of the Fleet might differ if it was written several decades ago.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor I)- Instead of Rich having been sent off to deathboat, Basil went; he comes back to the Reliant deeply burned out in the brain+implants+emotions from storm piloting with a baseline brain.
Basil/Rich But Watch Out - Rich doesn't have Trimmer in his corner on the Sympatico and comes back to the Reliant much pushier and meaner, with the expectation that people wanting sex with him is a play for his protection. Basil does a sort of a horse girl+beast tamer thing in between Nasty Fuckin.
Babydoll!Rich - Little snips of Hastings+Babydoll!Rich, centered around the scene in After The Storm where he meets (in this version, SS-modded) Liam. And they fuck about it. That part is going to be a theme in many of these lmao.
PRT!Rich - Thena comes and finds Rich on the Sympatico and bails him out, and gets him an interview and subsequent job on the PRT ship that Liam's mom and his friend Jordan work on. Fucking ensues but honestly probably not as much as you'd think.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor II) - Rich's shitty Sympatico supervisor kicks it, and Rich becomes supervisor and hires Basil in. Culture clash ensues.
Sympatico Basil (Flavor III) - Instead of the Sympatico getting gutted and flipped, the admiral sends a fixer captain with a mandate to get the place in order, who very quickly pegs Rich as a really helpful guy to have on his side and makes him department head. Basil gets hired in but this time also has to deal with the fact Rich is completely starstruck about an authority figure being nice to him and has definitely contrived to blow the new captain.
Mars Boys - Kind of a borderline case with the full AUs below; Trimmer ends up actually in a Mars program like his genetics were intended for, and gets bundled into a space station pod with a huge extremely nervous Hastings kid.
NYC!Rich - Rich does actually get run aground after the last fight on the Sympatico, and ends up in New York, where he saves a pretty little guy from being run over by a hover-taxi and Sol offers him a couch to stay on in return while he gets his feet under him. And they fuck about it. Also there's daemons in there.
Young Carraway - Back-shifts several decades to catch Arthur at the point in his life when he just stole his mansion and needed a quartermaster, and inserts a Hastings Rich in there. Who has high standards and no patience for Sandgren and redirects things in a way that would make a lot of peoples' lives a lot nicer if it had happened lol. EDIT there are daemons in this one, it appears.
Catch-And-Release - Hard to sum up! Run Aground adjacent situation but messing around with how the guys would interact and what would keep them coming back if they were disparate visiting booty calls instead of prisoners? Came with the terrible realization that in this situation Connor would not actually go for Carraway as much and would instead default to just the worst hookups with Sandgren the world had ever seen.
Conditional Freedom - almost put this in the "snippets that didn't end up in the novel" doc, but for a second there was going to be a point in Run Aground where Rich argued Liam into being allowed to come out and be around the other prisoners. Didn't end up happening because of Liam's temperament, but a few hundred words remain.
Harem Redistibution Logistics - Angela Bane's squad of Hastings soldiers break open some old lykoi guy's compound; Rich is put in charge of getting some rich boy back to his weird little boat commune, along with some other hotties that tag along for the ride.
CANON ADJACENT - These started out as non-AUs that could have happened or did happen off-page, and I don't know if they're of much interest? I will briefly pause to call out:
Various AtS scenes but there's daemons in
Various RA scenes but there's daemons in
Various (Upcoming/Redacted) scenes but there's daemons in
Quite a few scenes cut from RA, largely fun but unhelpful fucking.
Two docs-ful of fragments that would eventually hammer into the shape of Run Aground--character introduction scenes (now very OOC and wrong) character dynamic scenes (several of them no longer correct) and a prologue and part of a chapter from Rich's POV of meeting Rafael, who then got an idle fragment of same written from HIS POV, and who quickly grew into an interesting enough guy we pivoted lol.
FANTASY ETC - Full AUs, usually sorted as such because of fantastical elements that aren't part of the main canon.
Demon Lord Merrill - Basil gets isekai'd into a tech on the Michigan Fleet, the backstory/origin of the cool scary landside warlord character in his favorite sexy fantasy novels--and finds out he's uh. Some guy with trauma named Rich.
Soulmarks (Fleet) - "When you touch (one of) your soulmate(s) a representative image appears in that place and them touching it feels nice" edition--brief little snip of Trimmer finally unbending enough to let Rich touch the little sparrow-holding-a-human-heart on his arm and everybody involved is relieved that theirs isn't the kind of "feeling nice" that's kind of horny.
Soulmarks (Landside) - Similar to the above but it's flowers that fill in with color when touched and then wither or bloom depending on the love and attention given to the relationship. Rafael meets a big Hastings soldier in the woods and comes away with a colored-in soulmark and a lot of questions, and Rich Bane following him around like 🥺💞
AB/B/A/O Shenanigans - Listen I know there are only like three people in the world who have any knowledge or interest RE: my blood-type-based homebrew A/B/O hack. And yet!!! Various configurations of characters fucking and having extra gender be upon ye except not because it's all in a doc lol
Various fantasy creature bits - Largely in the form of sex, lol. Establishing shapeshifter!Rich, classic Vampire+Werewolf friends Basil and Mitch, vampire/fae Rafael, half-elf Sol, still a witch!Andy, and Carraway primarily as a werewolf/vampire/(other stuff?) mix.
Raksura - I don't know enough about the Books of the Raksura to speak much on this one, but if you do, it appears Ray has made the Merrills 1/8th Kethel arbora, Connor and Basil mentors, Rafael a consort, Sol a queen, and Carraway a ruler-consort. 👍
Red Knight - Superhero Rich, mad scientist Liam, and the pretty actor Rich's human alter-ego is dating, all get picked up by some Hastings aliens and go on an adventure.
Rich/Liam Swap - Exactly what it says on the tin, lol. Liam and Rich inexplicably switch bodies, Liam gets to deal with being scary and much too big and stronger than he knows how to control, and Rich gets to deal with emotional dysregulation and being a small pretty guy who has to work to get taken seriously. And a dick that simply will not quit.
Deluxe/Fleet Swap - Rich has been Key's OC since long before all this, and was utilized in crossovers with the show Motorcity before he was in the Fleet. Swapping Fleet Tech!Rich with Dystopian Detroit!Rich provides quite a lot of culture clash.
Future/Past Swap - "Sympatico Rich shows up in (post-RA situation) and is SO small and horny and skinny and scared" Edition with corresponding "Huge Future Merrill shows up and upends Trimmer's whole life on the Sympatico" and "Six months into Rafael's imprisonment a huge Hastings shows up, breaks open the garrison, and presents Sam and Rafael with some compelling plans and invitations--and also Rafael's siblings".
Dream Boys - Rafael, in his troupe caravan, starts seeing Rich like a ghost visible only to him--it turns out they're jumping to each other when they sleep. Their blooming romance is of concern and confusion to Rafael's friends and loved ones, and Rich's Trimmer.
WHOO. So. That's not even all of the side-writing, just the stuff that's describable and of interest lol. RE: posting them somewhere, this has been an ongoing discussion! We would like to share, but almost all of (^^^) those are loose collections of scenes with no plot or solid beginning/end. (And also as you may have noticed Ray likes to write daemons from His Dark Materials into things, which is obviously not something we can sell as a novella).
The most doable concept to me is a google doc of the most shareable bits and pieces, and to just share a link! But figuring out which stories would be in there, and doing the amount of work it would take to keep them from being professionally embarrassing to post.... tricky!
SO: it's unfortunately not currently in the cards to put any of them in the extras for the novel. Although we do have about uhhhh...fuck I hadn't counted........we have about 30K of extra bits and bobs that are slated to go on there, lol. The current list including flashes of how the various guys got caught by Carraway, a novelette about a turning point in Sol's young life, and a few key Run Aground scenes re-narrated through Rich and Sol, because Rafael is a very odd character who experiences the world very differently from them, and it's fun to explore what they saw/noticed. :)
I'm sure it'll be brought up later in the story, but Neither Rafael nor Rich seem particularly keen on the details, so I figured I'd ask here. It's mentioned that Sol doesn't have 'lands' of his own. Are the Patricians trying to remake Medieval European Feudalism? Or is is more like gangs fighting over territory. 'this is my turf so other patricians better watch their step in my terrritory' and such.
A little bit of the latter, but mostly more similar to the former. Sol wouldn't be expected to personally own all of his territory and directly funnel resources from the residents up to himself, but he would most likely own some broad chunks of it--in the Fleet's day and age, often urban territory that's fallen into disrepair from abandonment or damage during the societal collapse. Sol would be expected to contribute to fixing the area up, building industry and habitability, making it a successful part of the economy without stepping on the feet of any of his neighboring patricians, who he would be expected to work with and have some degree of alliance/fraternity with.
There is a definite suspicion among the various continental movers and shakers that someday the modern Holy Roman Empire probably intends to make a play to consolidate that power, and turn its oversea patricians into a more official governing body of a new imperial territory. But that wouldn't necessarily be on the minds of the general populace, in an area where a guy just moved in with very powerful and rich allies willing to give him loans at good rates to contribute/invest in the local economy.
aw yeah next book ! can you share any details about it?
I can certainly try! A list of things about this novel.
Something of an answer to the common Ravishment Fantasy romance novel trope of "yeah I'm a prisoner but the sex is so sexy it turns out I'm fine with it!*"
Secondary to that, there are going to be some warnings on this one for sure! Flipping the lens on the aforementioned tropes makes for high stakes and drama but also. Content warnings.
Basil and Thena buddy roadtrip of necessity, feat. Liam's terrible landside grandma and several members of her Hastings security garrison.
Quite a few Hastings actually, as well as one of Sol's elfy European cousins, and more of a look at the lykoi soldier mod. Here there be wolves...
Another external narrative view of our big weird Fleet boy, but a very different POV from Sol's Irritable New Yorker vibe.
Old faces, and new ones! We've really come to love the new little squad of absolute weirdos, and also enjoyed getting to put old favorites into new drama and seeing how they handle it!
An actor, a patrician, a vet, a witch and a nerd the size of a fridge walk into a bar--
The free elephant herds of North America, and the sign languages thereof
Rich has feelings and opinions about the lawns and decorating habits of the landside wealthy**
Well-deserved comeuppances
Heist :)
*No shade honestly, it's a romance novel classic for a reason! But not a mode Rich is capable of operating in, haha.
**Feelings: IRRITATED. Opinions: STUPID, WASTEFUL, INEFFICIENT AND BAD.
The cover of run aground is so so so cool!!! I love how Carraway’s portrait is in such heavy shadow behind Rich and Rafael! It really makes the viewer’s gaze go straight to the foreground looking at Rich’s gentle expression and the way he’s delicately supporting Rafael, and then the portrait looms out of the background like the visual equivalent of a sudden ominous dissonance in a movie soundtrack. Those unsettling glowing eyes! That self-assured smile! You guys really nailed the layout and the coloring, it just works so well to turn a static image into a sequential experience full of dramatic tension. How the heck did you do that??
Asks that make you clap a hand to your chest and go "aww" out loud!! I really pushed in the sketching stage for an actual portrait of Carraway into the background because to me that says "no y'all, this one has a Real Actual Antagonist".
I think what you're describing is best attributed to the lighting and framing--Rich was our main character in previous novels, so it was a priority for us to point up that Rafael is our main in this novel, with Rich as a deuteragonist and love interest. So Rafael gets his spotlight, and Rich's pose is intentionally in support of him--with Carraway deeply in shadow both to keep the eye from sticking to him first (since that's definitely something the human eye likes to do) and to make an otherwise largely unremarkable portrait of a smiling old man look extra sinister. Because that IS the vibe haha.
I have a friend who is a full time travelling/camping musician, with a focus on Ren Faires. Half his social media is 'Love travel and music with my friends, Faire Life Forever :)' and half is 'Another problem with the FUCKIGN vehicle.' I think of Rafael often, seeing this. I wonder if he has any practical camping skills that haven't come up in his years of captivity, and I think how useful it would be for a travelling crew on bad roads to have a buff Tech, should Rich be road inclined (he isn't)
Rafael's car-repair experience is mostly through his utility as a dexterous and willowy guy who gets summoned to stick his arm into engine blocks and shimmy under trailers and trucks. He was quite a young man when his life went off the rails, so he wasn't usually making decisions or taking on big important tasks around the camp--more running chores and running lines and going out to try to bring in interest and extra cash whenever there was a town nearby. But he can use a compass, read a map, check the troupe's clunky old Geiger counter, set up the water filtration system at a nearby stream, build a fire, and pick from one or two ways to cook commonly-available game animals over it, even if it's not going to be Fine Cuisine.
RE: buff techs, there is a quite tangential AU in our documents where traveling player Rafael meets Hastings backliner/medic apprentice/logistics guy Rich Bane and Rich pretty happily jumps ship to playing mechanic and strong man instead of trying to be a soldier. If he already has the Fleet he's not going to be tempted, but compared to other lives he could make for himself landside, it would be a promising offer!
