Escapists? I have a question.
But first of course, I shall tell you a tale, spin you a yarn, trot with your pigs and all that humbuggery.
You see, I went on Xbox live a wee while ago, some time last year to be more precise. I remember it quite clearly. The sky was overcast, the air was cold and Jethro Tull was playing through the wireless (which in those days I called the "talky box"). I had sat down on my trusty ol' couch, made myself a toasted cheese sandwich and brewed up a nice cup of green tea.
These simple comforts taken to heart, I cleared my throat, straightened an imaginary tie and began an adventure into the unknown, thus delving into the dark depths of player-to-player communication that is the xbox live community.
It wasn't so bad.
It wasn't good, as it's kind of hard to ask scores of thirteen year old boys to be courteous (and maybe stop talking so much) when they're all trying to kill everyone, and too busy screaming about how unfair being killed just like everyone else is to notice your suggestions. But beyond that I found the overall experience okay. Not great, not good, not bad and not vomit inducing horrible, just okay.
I left the pockmarked fellows on Halo 3 and followed my gut to Farcry (not Farcry 2, whatever the poorly made port from the xbox version was called), which seemed to be filled with older players, but who for the most part, were stoned off their collective tits. Shortly after inquiring how the hell I could get out of the hole I had fallen into in a player made map, I was greeted by one such player, who helpfully lobbed a grenade down and killed me (which may well have been a sporting gesture rather than an exercise in asshattery, as it's quite possible that there was no way out of the hole).
This new fellow soon rounded on me with questions about my origins, not so much about wombs and fertilisation, but more along the lines of, as he put it "Why y'all talk funny like that?" I proceeded to explain the phenomenon of regional accents to his drug addled mind for a while, he learned fairly quickly, was impressed by his new found knowledge that there were other places in the world apart from America, Africa, Europe and China. But unfortunately hit a rut when it came the the idea of he himself having an accent (see, this
is relevant).
The closest we came to a realisation was something along the lines of the following (Though I can't remember the exact wording and have probably made some minor changes, like enhancing my ability to speak good and simultaneously degrading my conversational partner's ability to do so as well)
Iron Ninja:"Alright, so I have an accent right?"
Other person:"Yeah"
Iron Ninja:"And British people have accents right?"
Other person:*laughs raucously for a few seconds* "Yeah"
Iron Ninja:"And by that we can say that they 'talk different' to how you talk, correct?"
Other person:"Yeah"
Iron Ninja:"So using basic logic, we can say that likewise, you 'talk different' to British people and myself. Right?"
Other person:"...Yeah?"
Iron Ninja:"So then, if British people and people like myself talk different and as such have accents. Since you talk different to British people and people like myself, you too have an accent."
Other person:"What? But you're the ones that talk funny, you're the one that has the accent."
This was a common view, and not just amongst the stoned players. It probably didn't help that all of them had the same accent, I'm not an expert on the accents of the different regions of America, but I think that they were all from Southern States. This made it awfully hard to explain that they were different too when they all sounded alike. Eventually I gave up and got back to actually playing the game like I should have been from the start. Later games, if the question of accents came up, I just rolled with the idea of being from an island in the middle of the Atlantic that plays host to scores of Ninja, Pirates, Vikings and the ghost of Jimmi Hendrix. And if asked, I resisted correcting anyone and just pretended that English was indeed my second language.
Maybe it was just that game, maybe it was just that day, maybe I was just unlucky, but such an event didn't happen again on later playing sessions. In any case, a few days later I forgot about it and moved on to other things. And this memory stayed forgotten until, just a mere twenty minutes ago, I made myself a toasted cheese sandwich.
I don't know exactly what it is about toasted cheese sandwiches that makes me reminisce on things so, perhaps there is something in this grease filled, yellow mess of a food that jars my thoughts into activity, perhaps the government is putting something into my bread, I cannot say which. What I do know is that when I sat down, putrid bubbling cheese dripping out of the bread onto my pallid skin and causing minor burns, I thought back to my short, free trial powered trip to the realm of Xbox live, and it's various unruly denizens.
So I thought "Hey, why not haste everyone's time with a needlessly long OP that could have just said 'LOL, Post about your accent and how aware of it you are and stuff.'and acheived the same result?"
And so my thoughts did return to accents, both my own and those of others, and I said aloud to myself "Hey (Iron Ninja's real name here), those fellows and fellowettes at the Escapist know their stuff, why don't you see what they have to say on the subject and open up a door of discussion?"
So I did.
So, since looking back up there is a hearty amount of words preceding these ones, I'll put a handy dandy list of discussion points below for all those fancy pants "too long, didn't read, here's my opinion anyway" types.
Iron Ninja's Handy dandy list of discussion points said:
-Have you ever put much thought towards your accent? How it sounds, the similarities and differences it has with other accents?
-From a global perspective, how do you think your accent (note: Accent, not the country/place of origin in question) is viewed?
-Since we're sort of on the subject, what's a foreign accent you have fondness for (it would help to say what country you are viewing this foreign accent from so I can see if there is a link between accents and what accents are liked by people with said accents.
-In the same sense as the above, is there any accent you don't care for at all, or find downright infuriating?
And while I'm here, I might as well ask
-This whole Toasted cheese sandwich thing, is it just me? I'm thinking it might be that there was a toasted cheese sandwich present at the time of the original event, but it's not the first time such a sandwich has sparked a memory like this. Maybe I just need to go outside more.
