#character voice reference

[lilybug-02]

Eimmet High...temmiE high. OMG!

Part 28 || First || Previous || Next...(Hiatus)

--Full Series--

Next update may take...much longer! I have finals and an internship and not to mention I have to draw- A LOT :')

[formthethird]

veronica

[greenglowinspooks]

(DCXDP) The obligations of a rogue versus those of a parent (Pt. 5)

—

Tw: torture scene (GiW agent receiving), general angst, canon-typical violence (DC), nobody is having a good time

Will be crossposted to AO3 eventually

(Masterlist/subscription post)

—

It was pretty easy for Danny to forget that Dr. Crane was a rogue at times.

Most of the time he wasn’t comically evil, like what he’d expect of a Gotham rogue. He was helping Danny, even if only because he didn’t want to be taken in by the GiW as well. He was even downright nice most of the time, or at least neutral.

Sure, he had a strange obsession with fear and psychology, but that wasn’t really out of the ordinary for Danny. It didn’t feel like living with a rogue, just like…staying with a distant relative, or something.

He seemed like just an ordinary person.

Today, though, Danny was brought back to reality.

The GiW agent they’d tracked down together writhed on the ground, screaming in pain and terror. Scarecrow was sat a few feet away, setting up a syringe of the antidote he’d made.

After a few more moments, he injected the man with the antidote, watching him like a hawk the entire time.

Suddenly, the man surged forward, lunging at Scarecrow with a feral scream.

Unluckily for him, though, he was still weak from the fear toxin in his system, and from the beatings he’d received prior. Scarecrow easily wrestled him to the ground, settling himself on the broad part of the agent’s back with a vice grip on one of his arms.

“Let’s try again,” he said sharply, all of the warmth Danny had grown used to gone from his voice. “Where is the GiW base of operations?”

The agent took several shuddering breaths before spitting at Scarecrow, defiance and hatred written all over his face.

For just a moment, the room was utterly silent.

“Fine, have it your way.”

Scarecrow began to twist the man’s arm further. It wasn’t long before the agent began to squirm, then writhe, beneath him. Danny’s stomach churned.

“You know,” Scarecrow began, almost conversationally, “there are plenty of jobs that one can get without the use of their legs, especially with the level of education you have. Anything that doesn’t involve hard labor, really.”

The man’s face was beginning to turn red in his struggle not to scream. He took in gasping breaths, the way that his mouth moved almost reminding Danny of a goldfish.

(He felt awful for the comparison, but it was true.)

“However,” Scarecrow continued, “I find you’d be rather hard-pressed to find a job without the use of your arms. Especially in a place like Gotham, where you can always be replaced by someone eager to do your job for even less money. Of course, you could most likely coast off of savings and severance pay for a while, but…”

He leaned closer to the man’s head, his voice lowering.

“Would you be able to live like that? To live with yourself, if you no longer have a purpose?”

He allowed the agent a few seconds of rest before increasing the pressure on his arm. The agent gasped, letting out a strangled hiss. His arm bones were making fascinating noises in response to the strain. Danny felt sick.

“You seem like a rather driven young man. I’m sure your family would hate to see you unmotivated, directionless. Would they resent you, do you think?”

“Fuck you, you—”

The man was cut off by his own scream as Scarecrow finally allowed his arm to break, audibly splintering into thousands of useless shards of bone.

He had the exact pressure memorized. Clearly, he had done this before.

This was wrong. This was wrong.

Shouldn’t Danny step in, do something?

“That won’t heal cleanly. Even with the best medical care in the world, you’ll end up with permanent damage.”

The man below him wheezed and sobbed, choking on air as Scarecrow let go of his arm carelessly, letting it flop back onto the ground.

“Just the sort of thing something like you deserves,” Scarecrow hissed, his voice cold.

“You tortured a child, and you enjoyed it. You laughed with your friends about it. In your notes, one of your friends complained about the screaming,” Scarecrow brought his leg around, grinding his boot into the man’s broken arm. He howled in agony, writhing uncontrollably.

“Was it inconvenient to him, do you think? Too loud? If you were joking about it, clearly you thought so, too. I could fix that as well.”

He drew out another needle, this one once again filled with fear toxin.

“Scarecrow, wait,” Danny choked out.

Scarecrow turned to look at him.

Even his posture was different than usual. He looked… stiff, more like an animal than a man. When he tilted his head at Danny in a silent question, it looked like something in his neck had snapped, his head lolling to the side.

Danny wondered if he was consciously moving like that, or if it was habit at this point.

“You—we don’t have to do this. We can get information some other way, right? You don’t have to…”

Danny looked down at the GiW agent below Scarecrow. He didn’t even have it in him to glare up at Danny like he had before. Instead he laid limply on the ground, tremors rolling through his body uncontrollably.

“We’ve exhausted every other option and you know it,” Scarecrow said, his voice low, “this is the only way we can move forward.”

“Still, I—I don’t,” Danny swallowed, his throat tight, “this isn’t—this isn’t right. Isn’t there some other way to do this? Like—a truth serum, or something?”

“Truth serums are notoriously unreliable. They’re almost as bad as lie detectors. We’re much more likely to get a reliable result from this.”

Danny just stared at the GiW agent and his splintered, ruined arm. He began to weakly wriggle in Scarecrow’s grasp, which was graciously ignored.

He vaguely remembered himself doing the same thing when he was on the operating table; even if he knew there was no chance of escape, he still thrashed and screamed, desperate to get away. The jagged I-shaped incision on his torso felt uncomfortably warm.

What was there left to say?

“The Bat does the same thing at times, you know,” Scarecrow said, “him and the rest of his brood. By using my toxin, I’m actually lessening the amount of permanent damage that I’m doing. Physically.”

“Still, that doesn’t make it right,” Danny said desperately. “Even if—even if everyone in the world did this, it wouldn’t make it right.”

Scarecrow hummed.

They were both silent for a moment.

His next words were gentle, absurdly so when compared to the scene in front of him.

“I would love an alternative. But…”

He shrugged, hand coming to rest on the break in the GiW agent’s arm. Even without applying any pressure, the man stopped squirming immediately.

“There aren’t any other options,” Danny repeated, his voice flat and his body numb.

“Yes,” Scarecrow said. “I’m sorry.”

There was a pause. No one moved a muscle. Eventually Scarecrow spoke again, his voice strangely empty.

“You can stand outside and keep watch, if you’d like. At such a short distance their radars won’t pick us up.”

Danny said nothing, leaving the room silently.

He sat outside for quite a while.

He was grateful that Scarecrow had, with his help, dragged the agent to one of his previous hideouts. It was soundproofed, after all.

He was glad that he didn’t have to hear the rest of what Scarecrow did to the man.

After what felt like an eternity, Dr. Crane left the building, joining him outside. He guided Danny back to his beat up old truck and they drove home in silence.

“Did you at least…do you know where they are, now?” Danny asked as they entered the apartment, his voice small.

“They didn’t share the details of all of their locations with any one person. I know where one of their locations are, but not their main base of operations.”

Danny felt disgusted. With himself, with Dr. Crane, with the GiW.

He was disgusted by the agent, too. Did he just hate the restless dead so much that he would prefer to be tortured than to give them the upper hand? Did he really think he was in the right?

Was there a chance that he was?

Danny felt very, very small, and very stupid. Stupid and weak and cowardly.

“Danny,” Dr. Crane spoke, his voice soft.

“I’m truly sorry that this is happening to you. I really, truly wish that you didn’t have to endure my company. I…”

He fell quiet. Danny wondered if he was just saying this to pacify him, or if he truly meant it. He wondered if it really mattered in the end.

After a few moments of silence, Dr. Crane sighed, looking truly pained.

“I don’t know. I’m sorry.”

Danny was quiet.

“I’m going to bed early,” he finally said, turning away and leaving without a second glance.

—

[ghosted-jazz]

Cringetober Day 2: Tsundere

Gotta love a guy who has all the powers in the world, but can't admit he actually likes hanging out with his goofball friends. The most platonic of tsunderes.

[inafieldofdaisies]

Jessica Chastain for Beymen's Fall-Winter 2024/25

[artificial-radiance]

Path Through the Woods: The Monster

gets home from work. makes a reference within an hour + a half or so. gets off computer

i needed to make a ref at some point (and i saw people may wanna draw stuff for this au, which, thank you for the support <3)

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Hello! I absolutely love your blog, it has saved my ass from looking like a fool nine times out of ten. I was wondering if you have any tips for describing voices? Like the tone or even how someone's accent sounds, things of the sort. Thank you :)

Haha, I'm so glad to hear this. Thanks for telling me :)

Abrasive - causing irritation; rude and unfriendly

Acidic - marked by the use of wit that is intended to cause hurt feelings

Adenoidal - exhibiting the characteristics (such as snoring, mouth breathing, and voice nasality) of one affected with abnormally enlarged adenoids

Airy - exceptionally light, delicate, or refined

Animated - full of vigor and spirit; lively

Anxious - characterized by extreme uneasiness of mind or brooding fear about some contingency; worried; ardently or earnestly wishing

Authoritative - recognized authority; clearly accurate or knowledgeable

Barbed - characterized by pointed and biting criticism or sarcasm

Baritone - a male singing voice of medium compass between bass and tenor, also: a person having this voice

Barking - to speak in a curt loud and usually angry tone; snapping

Bass - deep or grave in tone; of low pitch

Big - expressed in an enthusiastic or unrestrained way; hearty; of great force; in a loud or declamatory manner

Bitter - caused by or expressive of severe pain, grief, or regret

Bland - not irritating, stimulating, or invigorating; soothing; dull, insipid

Blasé - apathetic to pleasure or excitement as a result of excessive indulgence or enjoyment; world-weary; sophisticated, worldly-wise; unconcerned

Bleak - lacking in warmth, life, or kindliness; grim; severely simple or austere

Blunt - abrupt in speech or manner; slow or deficient in feeling; insensitive

Bombastic - marked by or given to speech or writing that is given exaggerated importance by artificial or empty means; marked by or given to bombast; pompous, overblown

Booming - making a loud deep sound

Bored - having one's patience, interest, or pleasure exhausted; monotonous

Brash - lacking restraint and discernment; tactless; piercingly sharp; harsh

Braying - to utter the characteristic loud harsh cry of a donkey

Breathy - characterized by or as if by the audible passage of breath

Breezy - airy, nonchalant

Bright - lively, cheerful; intelligent, clever

Brisk - sharp in tone or manner; energetic, quick

Brittle - easily hurt or offended; lacking warmth, depth, or generosity of spirit

Broken - discontinuous, interrupted; imperfectly spoken or written; subdued completely; crushed, sorrowful

Bubbly - cheerful and high-spirited; lively, vivacious

Burbling - babbling, prattling

Calm - free from agitation, excitement, or disturbance

Casual - feeling or showing little concern; nonchalant; informal, natural

Caustic - marked by incisive sarcasm

Childish - marked by or suggestive of immaturity and lack of poise; simple

Chirping - to utter (something) with a cheerful liveliness

Choked - to become choked in breathing; to lose one's composure and fail to perform effectively in a critical situation

Clear - easily heard

Cloying - excessively sweet or sentimental

Coarse - crude or unrefined; harsh, raucous, or rough in tone

Complacent - unconcerned; self-satisfied

Conflicted - to be out of harmony or agreement usually noticeably

Contralto - a singing voice having a range between tenor and mezzo-soprano

Cracked- marked by harshness, dissonance, or failure to sustain a tone

Creaky - marked by creaking; squeaky

Croaking - to utter in a hoarse raucous voice

Crisp - notably sharp, clean-cut, and clear

Crooning - to sing or speak in a gentle murmuring manner

Curt - sparing of words; terse

Discordant - shrill; marked by or producing a harsh combination of sounds

Drawling - to speak slowly with vowel sounds that are longer than usual

Dreamy - quiet and soothing; delightful, ideal

Dry - reserved, aloof; lacking smooth sound qualities

Dulcet - pleasing to the ear; generally pleasing or agreeable

Earnest - characterized by an intense and serious state of mind

Ethereal - marked by unusual delicacy or refinement

Falsetto - an artificially high voice

Faint - lacking strength or vigor; performed weakly or languidly

Feathery - extremely light

Feeble - indicating weakness

Firm - not weak or uncertain; vigorous

Flat - lower than the proper pitch; lacking in animation, zest, or vigor; dull

Fierce - marked by unrestrained zeal or vehemence

Fretful - disposed to fret; irritable, restless

Gentle - soft, delicate

Goofy - being ridiculous or mildly ludicrous; silly

Grating - having a harsh or unpleasant sound

Guttural - articulated in the throat; velar (i.e., formed with the back of the tongue touching or near the soft palate)

Hesitant - slow to act or proceed (as from fear, indecision, or unwillingness); showing or feeling reluctance or hesitation

Hissing - to make a sharp sibilant sound; to utter or whisper angrily or threateningly and with a hiss

Honeyed - pleasingly sweet

Husky - hoarse with or as if with emotion

Hypnotic - readily holding the attention; soothing; tending to cause sleep

Indifferent - marked by a lack of interest, enthusiasm, or concern; apathetic

Insinuating - tending gradually to cause doubt, distrust, or change of outlook often in a slyly subtle manner

Jubilant - feeling or expressing great joy; exultant

Lifeless - lacking qualities expressive of life and vigor; insipid

Lilting - characterized by a rhythmical swing or cadence

Lush - sensual; pleasing to the physical senses

Mellifluous - having a smooth rich flow

Melodious - having a pleasing melody

Monotonous - tediously uniform or unvarying in tone

Nasal - characterized by resonance produced through the nose

Neutral - produced with the tongue in the position it has when at rest

Obsequious - marked by or exhibiting a fawning attentiveness

Piercing - loud, shrill

Piping - shrill

Polished - characterized by a high degree of development or refinement

Punchy - vivid, vibrant

Querulous - habitually complaining; fretful, whining

Raucous - disagreeably harsh or strident; hoarse

Reedy - having the tone quality of a reed instrument

Resonant - continuing to sound; echoing

Ribald - marked by coarseness or lewdness; crude, offensive

Robust - having or showing vigor, strength, or firmness

Saccharine - ingratiatingly agreeable or friendly; overly sentimental; mawkish

Scornful - full of scorn; contemptuous

Sibilant - having, containing, or producing the sound of or a sound resembling that of the s or the sh in sash

Silken - agreeably smooth; harmonious

Silvery - having a soft high clear musical tone

Sleek - smooth in speech or manner

Sluggish - markedly slow in movement, flow, or growth

Slurring - to utter with such reduction, substitution, or omission of sounds

Sly - lightly mischievous; roguish

Smarmy - revealing or marked by a smug, ingratiating, or false earnestness

Smoky - having a low throaty quality

Snide - slyly disparaging; insinuating

Somber - of a serious mien; grave

Sonorous - full or loud in sound

Soprano - the highest singing voice of women or boys and formerly of castrati, also: a person having this voice

Sour - unpleasant, distasteful

Staccato - marked by short clear-cut singing of tones or chords; disjointed

Steely - resembling or suggesting steel (as in hardness, strength, or coldness)

Strained - done or produced with excessive effort

Strident - characterized by harsh, insistent, and discordant sound

Stony - manifesting no movement or reaction; dumb, expressionless

Suave - smooth in texture, performance, or style

Surly - irritably sullen and churlish in mood or manner; crabbed

Tart - marked by a biting, acrimonious, or cutting quality

Teasing - to disturb or annoy by persistent irritating or provoking especially in a petty or mischievous way

Tender - delicate or soft in quality or tone

Throaty - heavy, thick, and deep as if from the throat

Thunderous - marked by a high volume of sound

Tremulous - such as is or might be caused by nervousness or shakiness

Unctuous - having, revealing, or marked by a smug, ingratiating, and false earnestness or spirituality

Undulating - to rise and fall in volume, pitch, or cadence

Velvety - having the character of velvet as in being soft, smooth, or thick

Wheezy - wheezing (i.e., breathe with difficulty usually with a whistling sound)

Whiny - having a high-pitched, shrill or plaintive quality

Wistful - full of yearning or desire tinged with melancholy

Effectively describing a voice requires encapsulating the volume, pitch, tone, style, and feeling evoked by the character. Choose specific adjectives to capture your character's voice.

Here is a category system that is fairly standard:

Soprano: C4 to A5 vocal range

Mezzo-soprano: A3 to F5 vocal range

Alto: F3 to D5 vocal range

Tenor: B2 to G4 vocal range

Baritone: G2 to E4 vocal range

Bass: E2 to C4 vocal range

Basically: if it’s a descriptive adjective, it can probably be used to describe the voice of a character. You want whomever is reading the description to immediately “hear” what makes the character unique. 

5 Tips for Writing Character Accents

Accents give us information about where a character is from, and the use of distinct speech patterns can give your story a rich texture and flavor.

Here are some tips to consider when giving your characters accents:

1. Make sure your character’s speech isn’t distracting

When writing dialect or a particular accent, it can be tempting to write a character’s dialogue using phonetic spellings.

However, this use of dialect can distract your reader.

If your character is French and is constantly saying “ze” instead of “the,” the reader will be focusing more on decoding the line of dialogue than they will on plot or character development.

When writing fiction, your reader’s attention should always be on the story, and anything that distracts from that probably isn’t worth including.

2. Research slang and colloquialisms

Each region of the world has its own standard pronunciation, sentence structure, and slang.

If your main character has an Australian, Jamaican, Spanish, or Scottish accent, their word choice will likely be different than if they grew up speaking American English.

Research commonly used foreign words, slang phrases, and colloquialisms from your character's part of the world.

Listen to podcasts that feature speakers from your desired region.

Be as specific as possible. Example:

If your character is from New York, their word choice might be different depending on if they’re from the Bronx or Staten Island.

3. Use pieces of other languages

If you’re writing a character who speaks a foreign language, one way to communicate their accent is to simply include snippets of their native tongue in their lines of dialogue.

This will demonstrate the character’s native language and implied accent without resorting to the distracting eyesore of phonetic spelling.

When writing words from languages besides English, you may need to include accented letters.

Writing accented characters is simple to do on a common keyboard; you can apply accent marks and special characters by using keyboard shortcuts.

You can also change your keyboard settings to an international keyboard, which will make it easier to type accents that use accent graves or other accent marks.

4. Don’t stereotype

Writing different dialects indelicately can make you appear condescending towards non-native English speakers or people who use the English language differently than you do.

One of the most common offenders is the use of “eye dialect,” which refers to using misspellings or nonstandard spellings in order to depict a character’s accent (for instance, writing “fixin’” with an apostrophe instead of “fixing” in order to demonstrate Appalachian or Southern accents).

By focusing on the “otherness” of regional dialects and non-native speakers, a writer may give the impression that they are making fun of the way people speak.

When writing different accents, keep eye dialect to a minimum.

5. Recognize that character speech is determined by context

Accents aren’t always determined by region or nationality.

Sometimes, our own accents change depending on who we’re speaking to or our emotional or physical state.

We may slur our speech when we’re drunk, or we may attempt to use complex English words when we’re speaking with someone we perceive to be of a higher status.

Seeing a character change their accents in different contexts can serve as a clever way of revealing the emotional condition of a character.

Sources: 1 2 3 4 5 6

Writing Notes: Tone

Hope this helps! If it does, do tag me or send me a link to your writing. I'd love to read your work.

[killjoy-prince]

House M.D. but it's when a character says the name of the episode

[puppyeared]

xīn yá ref update ^_^

[pinkrose05]

Soooooo very normal about this skit btw

[yardsards]

i needed to express a sentiment in the creative stylings of @dunmeshiminimumwage

[paper-possum-party-pal]

Meet The Curator!

Here’s my take on The Curator’s human form!

The Curator was the first to befriend a ‘human’ (Stanley being some odd Demi-human) and to create a human form. Her associate with Mariella began completely on accident. Despite her wariness of interacting with people, her curiosity and thirst for information led her to creating her human form and walking amongst people. She chose to make her form taller, older, and stern looking to be less approachable to people so she could walk around in peace. She spent most of her time on earth in museums, learning about how humanity cataloged and viewed their history. Due to being around to witness some events from a distance, she could provide details around the way certain events occurred, which she would talk about with fellow museum guests. This with her appearance led to people thinking she was an actual museum employee wherever she showed up.

Mariella is a manager at one of the museums The Curator frequents, and when it became clear that she was not an employee and was somehow getting into the museum without paying or seemingly even walking into the museum, she became invested in trying to figure out who ‘The Lady in Blue’ was and how she keeps getting in. Mariella eventually encounters The Curator, and calls out to her, and The Curator panics and runs off. Mariella follows, but loses her. This happens a few more times until Mariella finally sees The Curator move through a door in a section of the museum she didn’t recognize and chases her through it. Mariella catches up and asks The Curator who she is and how she keeps getting in. Curator freezes because she’s never been fully grabbed by a person before, and Mariella tries to reassure her that she’s not in too much trouble. Curator pops out of her human form which causes Mariella to panic and try to leave, which causes Curator to panic and close off the exit between earth and the small pocket sandbox she’s made into a museum, causing Mariella to panic more. Curator pops back into her human form and helps Mariella calm down. They have a long conversation over what The Curator is and what this place was, she lets Mariella go with the promise she won’t tell anyone anything about The Curator and to leave her be. Mariella does so, but curiosity towards The Curator leads her to track her down again with the goal of befriending her. This begins a friendship where they share information about their kinds, and then about themselves.

With the information Mariella provides, The Curator makes an immersive museum experience that she offers to allow Mariella to run through. This begins their version of the parable they call ‘Mariella’s Fable’. The Curators stories are more education oriented rather than a meta comedy, and are much more relaxing, though she eventually takes a page out of her brother’s book and uses dry wit to spice things up. Mariella helped her choose the name Carol, while she would take Torrent as her last name later on. Her view of buckets as objects that deserve immense respect is sort of a joke, but her initial curiosity with humanity came with her initial observation of humans usage of tools, and specifically buckets.

Curator without the other two.

[wojtekaneko]

Some silly tma doodles I drew after finishing season 1! I'm really loving this story and all the characters T^T

[katabay]

also. a little preview of the kind of illustration the vending machine (romance partners edition) commissions will be :)

[preciouslittle-bhaalbabe]

I think some people treat Astarion too much like a fragile porcelain doll sometimes.

Listen, I completely understand the instict to be super gentle and never push anyone to do something they don't want to. But that's just the thing. Astrion doesn't do it if he doesn't want to. If you don't push him into sleeping with you in act II, he doesn't. If you don't have enough approval at the party, he doesn't propose sex. He WANTS to. The reasoning behind why he wants to may be a bit fucked up in the beginning, but if he didn't at least like you a little he wouldn't bring it up. If he didn't want to try experiencing other forms of sex again with the drow twins, he wouldn't agree. In fact, if you ask him before his personal quest is over he tells you pretty plain that he doesn't want to. He's very clear about boundaries and consent is VERY important to him. If he doesn't want to, he won't. This is also demonstrated with his reaction to the astral touched tadpole. It's a VERY clear "no".

He wants to enjoy sex again. He wants his mind to match his body's desires. He is SUPER into the player. He wants to be able to have that kind of intimacy with them.

Does that mean he doesn't struggle still during the act? Of course not. Healing isn't linear. I remember shortly after a particularly bad experience my body would refuse arousal. I was with someone I love deeply and my mind was in the right place, but my body just refused to cooperate. I feel like Astarion goes through something similar, but reversed. His body takes over (muscle memory most likely, he's done this MANY times) and his mind receeds. Having an orgasm while dissociated is not a pleasant experience. But again, if he didn't want to try, he wouldn't. He can communicate his boundaries and when he feels uncomfortable. It's not the players job to protect the smol precious sex repulsed bean. He's figuring it out on his own terms and the best thing the player can do is listen.

[vinnybox]

New blorbo C: workin on his monster form later

Voice Claim below Thai voice - Masa (Way of The House Husband) Eng voice - Gojo (JJK/Jujutsu Kaisen)