The Shannara Chronicles
- Thread starter Sparkle Fabulosa
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I believe the point being expressed is that if your grand parents are from Brooklyn, your parents are from Brooklyn, and you are from Brooklyn, that you will all have similar intonation and pronunciation; with only minor discrepancies in vernacular between generations.
Now in our own world of course that's changing. With the global village, and pop culture being such an easily accessible influence to young impressionable minds, that rule of thumb is sort of irrelevant now. If a kid in Northern Ontario is in to skate/surf culture - and absorbs content that reflects that demographic -he can easily develop the speech patterns of the California surfer dudes. Eventually I see accents between native language speakers disappearing due to the homogenization provided by their individual pop cultures. But I digress, that wouldn't apply to a post apocalyptic fantasy world.
Back on topic, I have the real answer as to the mystery behind the kings different accent. John Rhys-Davies is awesome, so they cast him. That's why he has a different accent. It's the same reason a russian submarine commander had a Scottish accent in The Hunt for Red October.
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But that's the root of my problem. Poppy Drayton has an English accent, which sounds beautiful in the behind-the-scenes interview I saw, but in the show, they make her use an American accent, which makes her much blander. It's not the in-universe plausibility that bugs me, it's simply the fact that I think I would find the character more appealing if the actress got to use her real accent -- and it would be logical for her to do so, given that her grandfather also has an English accent. Sure, it's possible for a granddaughter and grandfather to have different accents, but it's also possible for them to have the same one. So the decision to have Drayton hide her real accent seems unnecessary.
I suppose it's just a non issue for me. Now if the Dwarfs break in to a Proclaimers, or Great Big Sea song while drinking, then I will get completely sucked out of that fantasy world. But as far as the accents go, there's so many more elements I prioritize in critiquing IP like this, and it has to do mostly with tone, narrative, and direction. I'm pretty laxed on most sci-fi/fantasy properties.
Dudes, I like totally don't have an accent.
All I'm saying is, the actress seems more interesting with an English accent than an American one. That's independent of any larger questions about the world. I'm talking about her performance. I don't think the American accent helps it.
I don't personally mind that Amberle has an American accent when Eventine doesn't, but to each their own.
For all the book readers out there, I came across a couple of things that might be helpful in understanding some of the decisions that were made (if you're struggling with them):
June 2015 Ask Terry: http://terrybrooks.net/2015/08/june-ask-terry-posted-5/
Terry interview with IGN: http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/01/07/terry-brooks-on-how-to-adapt-fantasy-right
For all the book readers out there, I came across a couple of things that might be helpful in understanding some of the decisions that were made (if you're struggling with them):
June 2015 Ask Terry: http://terrybrooks.net/2015/08/june-ask-terry-posted-5/
Terry interview with IGN: http://www.ign.com/articles/2016/01/07/terry-brooks-on-how-to-adapt-fantasy-right
You saw the space needle and the dwarves are from teh westland, so if it's the far western of what what's left of the Unitd States, its Eleventine's accent that's out of place. And Allanon is older than the king, truthfully it's hard to tell jsut how old Allanon really is.
From a purely real world angle, I do have to agree. I've been following the production pretty closely, and I've seen Poppy Drayton talking with her normal accent several times, so I was shocked when she used an American accent in show.
Considering that they're obviously in the post-apocalyptic United States, it'd be even more weird if everyone spoke with a British accent rather than an American one. Rhys-Davies's character is the oddball, not the other way around. And he probably just refused to even attempt an American one.
I did not realize that English accents are the only proper fantasy language. 
I did not realize that English accents are the only proper fantasy language.
Villains also.
Considering that they're at least a few thousand years past the fall of the United States, a present-day American accent would be no more realistic than an English one. There's no way they'd even be speaking any version of English we could understand.
Hopefully this timeline will be useful to anyone not familiar with the novels. It doesn't include the final trilogy, Dark Legacy of Shannara, but it shows just far into the future Brooks' books go.
http://www.alitheia.org/shannarafiles/Shannara_Timeline.php
http://www.alitheia.org/shannarafiles/Shannara_Timeline.php
Sorry, but between an English or American accent -- which is what I actually said -- an American accent makes far more sense given the location and setting.
I know that's what you said, but I disagree with it. Because given the temporal setting, neither accent makes any more sense than the other. Languages and accents evolve over time. Having characters in North America speak with a United States accent makes sense if the story is within, say, 200 years of the present either way; the accent and vocabulary would surely change somewhat over that span of time, but not so much that a present-day accent wouldn't work as an approximation. But we're talking about a time frame some 2100 years in the future, judging from Procutus's link. 2100 years ago, English didn't even exist. So 2100 years from now, it will probably have evolved into some unrecognizable descendant language, and nobody in North America will be speaking with anything remotely like a current American accent.
Anyway, looking at that timeline, it says that Allanon founded the Second Druid Council some 500 years before Elfstones. Is the series compressing the timeframe, or is Eventine just really, really old?
