#For some reason he had a southern accent which is weird cause I’m from australia | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

jesterlady · 8 years ago

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Absolutely feel free to skip this one because it’s very long and very spoiler-y.

How can I explain Farscape? No, I'm not going to do the Mean Girls thing, it wouldn't do it justice. I think what makes Farscape so special was that it wholly embraced its scifi-ness and yet somehow managed to invert most of the tropes therein, in such a way that still managed to make it seem ground breaking and yet completely scifi. One of the ways it does this is the fact there's only one human on this show. John Crichton is our guide to the universe and the eyes through which everything is filtered (totally making him like the companion on DW, lol) but the show is a big melting pot of alien. Even the aliens that are humanoid or look human have very specific cultures, physiology, mannerisms, and values that make them completely alien. It's a bit shocking to get used to. Before I watched Farscape the only thing I knew about it was that it was extremely popular and made with Muppets in Australia. In fact during the first episode I got all confused because all along I'm been assuming John Sheppard from Stargate Atlantis was Crichton, whoops. The first episode itself didn't immediately make me fall in love but it didn't take much more than the first half of a season to make me completely involved, in a good way or a bad way. Like I said, this show doesn't play by humanity's rules. Crichton may be the lead of the show and he may influence them all in huge ways, but these are incredibly different creatures with extremely different morals. One of the very first episodes deals with three of the characters cutting off the arm of the Pilot in order to secure maps to their home worlds. I was so pissed off and I kept on being pissed off through the whole episode and you know what...they don't apologize or realize it was wrong and they weren't influenced by the alien bad guy like I thought at first, in fact, in the end scene D'Argo even says he'd do it again. He was attempting in his own way to make it up to Pilot, but he wasn't backing down. I fretted and fumed about it for a while and then started writing fic in my head to fix it, but the episode brings home an important fact. This isn't Star Trek, these aren't people, this show does things differently, and the main characters might not always be likeable. John and Aeryn both bring up the incident later when they're being accused of something to remind everyone that that they were the ones who were a. psychotic about reaching home and b. not exactly careful about treating Pilot well, but that's all you get on that front. So, yeah, it's an interesting show to get used to. The cute little Muppet is a dirty, greedy, rotten old man who betrays them countless times and constantly deserves to get spaced. When Chiana joins the crew later she's like a little alien street rat who uses her body and whatever else she can to get by, but even though the only thing alien looking about her is makeup, her physicality is so incredible. The actress just makes her move and stand and be alien, it's amazing, she's like a living puppet on strings. It's not the greatest budget on the planet and the special effects weren't amazing, but using the prosthetics and the puppets, actually made it really cool. I love shows set in Australia, they just don't care if they reuse actors a bunch or if everyone speaks with an Aussie accent, they just focus on making their show and trust it to deliver what the budget can't. It's very inspiring. And like I said, it turns things on their head. Our lead John Crichton is so very Southern and he's all action hero and all, but he's also a scientist, an astronaut, incredibly smart, peculiarly fitted to understand space and learn to live with aliens. His plans are insane and they always work even though they require a lot of improvisation along the way. He's a pop culture machine, always spitting out references, which we get, but the aliens don't. It's always a joy to wonder what he'll say next and what new nickname he'll give someone. Now, he's got a reason to act crazy. Literally just being shot to the other end of the universe and living among aliens would do that, but then he is hunted by Crais, Mr. Head Peacekeeper, and then gets the most wanted tech in the universe, wormhole knowledge, encoded in his brain. So literally everyone wants to capture him and when he does get captured, he's tortured and then turned into Mr. Nosferatu Scorpius's pet science project, up to the point of having a chip in his head and then neural clones. Imagine living with your worst enemy in your head. I mean, it's no wonder Crichton is insane. To be honest, I love Insane!Crichton, he's hilarious. But...it's torture to watch at the same time. At the end of S2, when they're desperately trying to get the chip out and each time it doesn't work out, I was audibly begging the invisible showmakers to please let him get the chip out. Of course the torture didn't end with the chip, why would it? What is most torturous and most wondrous about the show is John and Aeryn's relationship. I mean, talk about a romance for the ages. They're never fully together it seems, they're never actually apart, but it doesn't feel like a 'will they, won't they' type of deal. They are bound by astonishingly amazing chemistry and it just builds and builds until their UST is enough to make you explode. But even that's all backwards because they have sex like first thing in the first season, and then it's never a thing really. But they talk and talk and talk and work well together and protect each other and look at each other and sometimes even cuddle in Pilot's den. Now Aeryn is stiff and bred for war and was taught love was a weakness. She is an outcast from her people and adrift amongst the very people she was born to kill and hate. It's difficult, oh yeah. All through S2 she's just fighting it like crazy. There's this whole 3 parter where John actually gets married to and has a baby with some Princess but he'll never live long enough to see his child and Aeryn is off freaking out while he's being held hostage in this situation. At the end...do we get a beautiful reunion? Nope, we get them both knowing that they're compatible and smiling. Finally, finally when she does admit she loves him, he's being taken over by the evil clone in his head and he ends up killing her. Oh, and then when she's brought back to life by Zhaan (so sad Zhaan died like that. I mean, it was beautiful, but I hated that she was gone) Aeryn admits to John she loves him but she won't be with him because Zhaan gave her life for Aeryn and Aeryn won't risk feelings because it would get people hurt. Trope annoyance alert! I hate the whole 'I love you but I won't be with you because I would lose focus and it would hurt more if one of us died' bits. You're gonna be worried about him anyway, honey, you might as well enjoy the fun part of love. Anyway...S3 was all sorts of fun and angst. Because they twin John so now there's a copy and an original. As soon as they didn't resolve that by the end of that episode I knew there was going to be angst about it, I spent like 10 episodes analyzing everything they each did and trying to figure out who was the copy and who I should root for to live and be with Aeryn. By the way, they never reveal who the copy is. So I will never know if John Crichton actually died in the Uncharted Territories. This show, this show. But what they did was actually really clever and interesting. They split the crew up for most of the season on two ships. One Crichton on each. So they got to develop some interesting storylines that way. Of course, as soon as Aeryn ended up with one of the Crichtons on Talyn, you kind of felt he was doomed. Red shirt alert! Another trope not inverted but held for maximum angst. Because of course she and that John got together and it was beautiful and perfect and wonderful. Then in a dramatic two parter, that John finally unlocks the wormhole tech in his brain and gets rid of the Scorpius clone living in his head while with Aeryn in beautiful, tangible love so...naturally he dies of radiation poisoning. It wrecks Aeryn, she finally opened up and then she had to grieve so she clams right the hell back up. I mean, I knew it would happen, but I was so sad for the other Crichton because he's been on Moya missing her like hell and the saddest moment in all of Farscape (apart from Zhaan and D'Argo's deaths) is when he runs up to the transport pod with the cutest love struck look on his face, so anxious to see her again, and she just cuts him. Oh, it breaks my heart to think about it. Of course, then they have to work together and it's obvious they both still care. I get it with her, but I'm just like 'girl, you have the best opportunity in the world, to watch the one you die and still be able to have exactly him.' They've both had to watch each other die at this point. At the end of the season she leaves and he tries to stop her but she can't deal and he lets her go because they freaking toss a coin to see who wins that argument. Wow. Of course, magically (this whole bit is kind of silly) he finds out she's pregnant after she goes! (Neranti is just weird but again, a delightfully non human element of the show that they just stick in.) So next season when they get reunited and she's finally figured things out a bit, but she still can't tell him the whole truth or if the baby is even his (weird alien gestation alert) and so he decides he can't trust his heart to her. Ack! Then she's working on building his trust back up and he's taking drugs to dull his feelings for her. I am usually with Crichton on their relationship stuff cause she's so bad at (unused to) it but this time I was about ready to smack that boy. I was clutching a pillow and yelling at the screen for him to say no to drugs for so much of that season. Turns out it was all a ploy to protect her and the baby from Scorpius (which is also silly) but then as soon as she called him on it they started a secret relationship and it's going to be fine but she gets kidnapped and tortured and he breaks all hell and makes a deal with the devil to save her and they accidentally start an interstellar war and the Scarrans are going to attack Earth and Crichton collapses the wormhole that would let him go home again and then the baby is his and he proposes and they kiss and are happy and happy and happy and then they get shot and turned into crystals and the series ends... Yeah, this show ends every season on a cliffhanger and they got canceled. I actually only found that out at the start of S4 when I started to question if it would be okay. I freaked out and googled it and found out they had a miniseries to wrap things up. Heart quieted at that point, maybe it was knowing that the story would continue on, but actually the ending wasn't so bad if it had ended there. I could have happily pretended the last two bits didn't exist and that it ended with them getting engaged and having a baby and defeating the Scarrans. I don't know. What I do know is that there was a miniseries that wrapped things up really well, completing the arcs and wrapping up the wormholes and the Peacekeeper/Scarran war and resolving John and Aeryn perfectly, giving them the happy ending they deserved with marriage and baby. Not to say that everything ended happily because D'Argo died and I don't like that at all. He kind of asked for it, resolving things with Chiana and Jothee like that. Now, bits of the show that were weird and involve all of that. D'Argo and Chiana get together in S2. It was a bit weird and out of the blue if you ask me. Not that they couldn't be together, but I feel like it was fairly obvious that D'Argo and Zhaan were really heading somewhere and then it just...stopped. D'Argo and Chiana were not an obvious couple and she's all innocence and sensuality and little girl (D'Argo always felt a bit like her dad to me). D'Argo is all honor and loyalty and commitment. Now...D'Argo has been searching for his son Jothee for the last two seasons and they finally reunite at the end of S2 and it's so beautiful and gorgeous, but all hell breaks loose and they have to fight a war and all that and in the chaos Chiana and Jothee sleep together. WHAT? Chiana's been freaking out about D'Argo preparing to ask her to marry him, but geez. It's another example of how the show is not afraid to make its characters do things that aren't likeable and aren't human, but still, that one threw me. I feel like there were so many other ways they could have gone with that. I would have really liked to have had Jothee join the show and have him and D'Argo really struggle with getting to know each other again and, if they weren't meant to be, Chiana and D'Argo could have plenty of relationship issues without that huge betrayal. Maybe Jothee and Chiana could even end up together but only after proper development. But instead, they did that. Jothee leaves and we don't see him again until the miniseries. D'Argo forgives Chiana but they don't get back together until the end of S4 and then things get all good between them in the miniseries and then, naturally, D'Argo dies. John and Aeryn name their baby after him! Sob! But like I said, the show wrapped everything up pretty well and they were extremely good about pacing, really, about telling a deliberate story with plenty of room for natural development along the way and making sure every character and relationship and story arc got fulfilled. The only thing I felt like got dangled and forgotten was from S3. Stark, I have a special place in my heart for Stark, not sure why. Boy is legit crazy and sane at the same time. Him and Zhaan could have been nice. But they do this whole thing with him being on Talyn while the crew is split up where he finds out what Crais and Talyn are up to and there's this whole menacing threat to Crais and then when he leaves, he encodes a message for Crichton on his mask and when John starts to listen to it, it gets interrupted and we never hear what Stark wanted to say. Even when Stark comes back, it's never referred to ever again. It might have become a moot point because Crais and Talyn sacrifice themselves for everyone at the end of that season, but I still feel like it was a pretty big thing to just leave hanging like that. So...I can't describe Farscape and what it means to me. The show completely wrapped itself in my insides and won't let go. ��I just want to watch it over and over again and I wish there was more and yet I'm so glad it ended the way it did. This show lived and breathed naturally and it wasn't afraid to make bold choices, assuming its audience's intelligence, and yet it entertained. The episodes Crackers Don't Matter and John Quixote are so hilarious. Every bit where John interacts with Harvey in his brain is so amazing and funny. The acting is flawless, the writing brilliant, the creativity boundless. This show is submersive, you can't help but be drawn in and caught up in the plight of the living ship Moya and her crew. Found family is one of my favorite things and this absolutely encapsulates that. I remember reflecting in S1 that I didn't think they could ever all be a cohesive whole because everyone was so different. That never changed but even the unlikable characters (Jool started out so so annoying but I actually really grew to like her) and the people who did things that made you angry, somehow they're still a vital and amazing part of a family and they fight for each other, they're trying to survive. They're caught up in a galaxy's machinations and politics and wars, and mostly what they want to do is go home and protect each other. They have to do horrible things along the way. They don't always win. There's a truly awful episode where they go back in time and end up causing the slaughter of a bunch of nuns! I mean, wow. But in the end, you root for them and you will die rooting for them. All the different interactions are important. Obviously John and Aeryn are the heart and soul, but Aeryn's relationship with Pilot is so touching and tender. Crichton and Chiana have this slightly sexual but yet not, brother and sister relationship that could be weird yet never is. John and D'Argo's epic, bickering bromance is a thing for the ages. It's just beautiful. It's like Crichton, a plague that has ruined my life.

I watched 4 seasons and 1 mini series in 14 days. It was perfect because I was on vacation for the first 10 days and I actually really took my time, feeling like I had the time. I started it casually, but it quickly consumed everything. I lived and breathed Farscape for those days even when I was doing other things and I made sure I did other things. My hands were shaking, my heart was racing, I clutched pillows and yelled at the screen, and I did happy squee flailing and monkey dancing around my living room on more than one occasion. This show is not casual, it is a lifestyle. I am so glad I was not watching it while it was on air because having to wait even a microt for between seasons would have been horrible and too much. It is such a blessing though, the perfect sci fi show. It's not a perfect show like Leverage is literally perfect and I would never change a thing about it and it's not fluff and happiness and comedy like Parks and Rec is perfect, but it is everything a scifi show should be and it has all the ingredients necessary to make it absolutely one of the best shows I have ever seen. 10 out of 10 recommend. Make sure you have some time because binge watching is so necessary with this one but do it, do it, do it.

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learnspanishfans · 8 years ago

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How to Speak English Like the English

Two of my favourite articles on Fluent in 3 Months are Benny's classics How to Speak English Like the Irish and its sequel Advanced Hiberno English. So, being from England, I'd like to share some thoughts on how to speak English like the English. Let's start with a story you might hear from a mate down the pub in any town in the south of England:

Bloody hell mate! A fortnight ago I was down the local having a chin-wag with this fit bird, feeling pretty chuffed with myself, when some dodgy-looking bloke came up and started getting lairy with me. I don't know what he was on about; I thought he was taking the piss, but he wouldn't stop giving me aggro. I reckon he must have been off his tits. Next thing I knew the Old Bill had shown up and nicked this geezer before he could scarper. What a load of bollocks!

If an English learner saw the above paragraph on a language test, they might decide to give up and learn Esperanto instead. If an English person saw it, however, they'd effortlessly understand that the narrator had been talking to a pretty female in a pub two weeks ago when they'd been accosted by an aggressive and possibly drunk man who was then arrested by the police. If you're a native English speaker staring at the above and wondering if I'm just making it up, I assure you, you ain't seen nothing yet. In this article, I’m going to share how to speak English with an English accent. Before I do that, I’d like to clear up a few common myths about England, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.

Myth 1: The British Accent

I need to clear one thing up. There’s no such thing as a “British accent”. We Brits rarely use that term ourselves, and we tend to roll our eyes when we hear it used in American TV shows. It’s far more common in the UK to be specific and talk about English, Welsh, Scottish, or Northern Irish accents, the four of which are very distinct from each other. These four accents still only represent broad categories that can be subdivided further.

Myth 2: The United Kingdom and England are the Same Thing

To those who don't understand the difference between the United Kingdom, Great Britain and England - or where other places like Scotland fit into all of this… look it up. Seriously, it’s not that hard to understand. (This video does a neat job of explaining.)

Myth 3: English Citizens Speak the Original Version of English

Do English folk really speak the the “original” version of English? It’s actually a dubious claim. Linguists agree that over the last few hundred years, the accents and dialects of Britain have changed more than the American dialects they gave birth to. In other words, modern American speech is closer to the way British people spoke in 1776 than modern British speech is. [caption id="attachment_20244" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] This is how I imagine it sounded.[/caption] Suffice to say that I'm from England (specifically, I grew up in Oxfordshire), and I can tell you a little bit about the way they talk in the other three Home Nations (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland), but this is an article about English English, one of the oldest dialects of the world’s biggest language, and the one that gave it its name.

English vs. American English - What’s the Difference?

1. The Rhotic Accent

How exactly then have our accents diverged since the Boston Tea Party? Many books have been written about the precise phonetic details of different English dialects, but for now I’ll stick with just one: rhoticity. If you have a “rhotic accent”, that means you pronounce the letter “r” every time it’s written, and most American dialects (along with Irish and Scottish ones) remain fully rhotic. In England, on the other hand, most of us at some point in the last few hundred years stopped pronouncing the letter "r" when it comes before a consonant (or is at the end of a word). For example in my own name, George, which I pronounce like the word "jaw" with an extra "j" sound on the end, no "r" to be found. In most parts of England (the main exception being the West Country), people pronounce "father" identically to "farther", "pawn" identically to "porn", and "panda" identically to "pander", while to most Americans and Canadians those word pairs are all distinct. Non-rhotic accents can be found outside England too, particularly in places that we colonised more recently than North America like Australia and New Zealand. They can be even found in a small number of places in the U.S., most famously in Noo Yawk. But rhoticity remains one of the clearest, most prominent dividing lines between different varieties of English.

2. Vowel Sounds

Vowel sounds have shifted a fair bit over the years. In many cases sounds which used to be pronounced differently are now pronounced the same, or vice versa, but the merger or split only happened on one side of the Atlantic. I pronounce “cot” very differently from “caught”, but to many Americans they’re homophones. Similarly with “merry”, “marry”, and the name “Mary”, which are three distinct words in British speech, but sound the same in most American accents. In the other direction, I’d pronounce “flaw” identically to “floor” (there’s that lack of rhoticity again), but in American English those words are usually separated not just by an “r” but by two noticeably different vowel sounds.

3. Vocabulary

Where things start to get really confusing is with vocabulary, and I’m not just talking about slang. In Britain the Royal Mail delivers the post, while in the U.S.A. the Postal Service delivers the mail. Confusing, huh? Many of our vocabulary differences are totally arbitrary: if I did something on Saturday or Sunday, I'd say that I'd done it at the weekend, whilst an American would talk about having done it on the weekend. Other differences allow for extra shades of meaning: Americans only talk about being "in the hospital", whilst British English retains a distinction between being "in the/a hospital", which just means you're literally inside the hospital building, and "in hospital", which heavily implies that you're in the hospital as a patient. It's like the difference between being "in school" and "in a school"... except Americans use the word "school" slightly differently too. In the U.S., "school" refers to any educational establishment including college, whilst in the U.K. it's only used to refer to primary and secondary education: the school that you do before going to “uni”, a British abbreviation for “university” that Americans don’t use. To add to the confusion, "public school" means something completely different here; for historical reasons a "public school" in the U.K. is a type of very expensive and exclusive private school, whilst a free, government-funded school (what Americans call a public school) is a "state school." Do you follow? If you’re from America, you may have raised an eyebrow at my frequent use of the word "whilst" in this article. This word sounds very archaic and old-timey to American ears, but it lives on in the U.K. as a synonym of "while". The verb "to reckon" is also alive and well in the British Isles, while in the U.S. it’s not really used anymore, except stereotypically by rural moonshine-drinking folks from the South: ”I reckon this here town ain’t big enough for the both of us!” Then again, I find it weird when Americans say “I wish I would have”. This construction sounds just plain wrong to me. In England we say “I wish I had”. Where do you go to buy alcohol? In the U.S. it's probably a liquor store, but in Blighty (that means Britain) it's more likely to be at the off-licence, so named because it's licensed to sell alcohol for consumption off the premises, as opposed to a bar where you can both buy alcohol and drink it in the same building. After a visit to the off-licence (or "offy", where I'm from), a Brit might get pissed, which means "angry" to an American but "drunk" to us. Another American synonym for "angry" is "mad", but in the U.K. that word exclusively means "crazy" - which caused confusion recently when Bill Clinton described British politician Jeremy Corbyn as "the maddest person in the room". In context it was clear that Clinton had meant “angry”, but many British commentators misinterpreted the statement as a comment on Corbyn's mental health.

What About the Different Accents You’ll Find Inside England?

So far we’ve just been looking at the differences between American English and English English. I’ve barely touched on the enormous regional variations that you'll find within England: from the town I live in I could drive two hours in any direction and be somewhere where the people sound completely different. The stereotypical “posh” (upper class) accent (often called “received pronunciation” or RP) is generally only found in the south, but it’s only the most formal form of southern speech; many shades of variation exist. Up north people sound very different not only from southerners but from each other. For some reason - probably the fact that the north historically has had a lower population density and so the towns have been more isolated - there’s much more regional accent variation in the north, and you can generally pinpoint where a northern person is from from their accent with a higher degree of accuracy than you can a southerner. Liverpool and Manchester are 90 minutes’ drive from each other, and yet the people in each city sound completely different.

We're Only at the Tip of the Iceberg, and it's Time to Go Swimming

Remember our discussion a few moments ago about how a Brit who'd been to the offy might end up pissed? If he got too plastered (drunk) last night he might be hanging (hungover) the next morning and have a lie-in (he stayed in bed later than normal). When his friends ask him what he did last night, he'd tell them that he'd gone out on the piss (gone out drinking), or maybe even on the pull, which means that he wasn't just drinking last night but looking for a fit (attractive) girl to take home. Now it's the morning, but maybe today he'll skive school (skip class), or, if he has a job, pull a sickie (call up his boss and pretend to be ill so he can get the day off). If his boss realises that he's talking rubbish (lying, bullshitting), he might give him the sack (fire him). Our British friend isn't really ill (sick), he just can't be bothered to go to work. I've never been able to precisely explain "can't be bothered" to Americans, but it's an extremely common expression in the U.K. used when you don't want to do something because it's too much effort and/or you're lazy. If you want to be more vulgar, you can upgrade to "can't be fucked", a phrase which shouldn’t be taken too literally. A happy halfway point is "can't be arsed": a fine example of the British spelling and pronunciation of the American "ass". (“Bum”, by the way, is another word for "arse" here, unlike in the U.S. where a "bum" is a homeless person, known in the U.K. as a "tramp".) Then you have “sod”. This ubiquitous British insult refers to an unpleasant or disliked person (see also "wanker") and is considered mildly rude on roughly the same level as “crap” or “damn”. It can also be used as an exclamation (“sod it!”) or an intensifier (“that sodding wanker”). To my astonishment, while researching this article I learned that the word "sod" originated as an abbreviation for "sodomite". I've been using this word my entire life, and I apparently never even knew what it meant. Sodding hell! I’ve only scratched the surface here - I could write far more about the many peculiarities of English English, and the above is just a taster. If I’m being honest (another British turn of phrase - Americans more naturally say “to be honest”), I didn’t really think about most of these things until I started travelling, meeting people from all over the world and finding that many of the expressions I thought were international are in fact uniquely English, or vice versa.

What are Your Favourite Local Words?

Do you have any other fine examples of incomprehensible Englishisms? Or do you have any favourite words or turns of phrase that are common where you're from, but that no-one else understands? Let me know in the comments.

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