Jake

Idle Thumbs 201: Adults Only

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Cara is from Aberdeen, so it's probably not an accent you hear much unless you're from Scotland.

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Yeah it raised an eyebrow for me as well, though in this case I don't know if its much different than the remarks we'd get if Robert Florence (a Glaswegian sometimes-games-personality) were on the show.

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Me da's a scot and Cara's accent definitely made me pause for a second trying to figure out what was up. It's sort of mutated. Not annoying at all though to me.

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I assumed they were bothered by the accent.

 

Which I also find weird and a little distressing.

 

I loved it! But maybe that's also weird!

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I find it weird and little distressing that people were bothered by a woman's voice.

 

While I won't deny the potential for a gender bias component to that sort of criticism, I'm pretty sure people pointlessly criticizing how someone's voice sounds is a regular occurrence with podcasts. I'm thinking back to GFW Radio where someone like Ryan Scott got a lot of flak for having a nasally voice.

 

Regardless, people ought to show a little humility. The vast majority of us are not gifted with a soothing NPR radio voice. Instead our voices will be strange sounding and vaguely unappealing when we talk into a microphone. Part of what I like about podcasting is you get to hear from people that don't get to appear on TV or radio for very superficial reasons. Lets celebrate that instead of needlessly knocking people down.

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So far the opinions on Cara's voice have been:

 

I found Cara's voice to be grating and harsh
I thought Cara sounded awesome
originally Cara's accent bugged me on Not a Game Podcast but now I welcome it
yeah, Scottish accents are great
Cara's voice irritated me until I realised there was a Scottish accent there then I really enjoyed it
It's sort of mutated. Not annoying at all though to me.
I loved it!
I thought it was different, but different is good!
Cara is the best and her voice is awesome
 
I'm not sure how this is getting interpreted as people being bothered by a woman's voice or people showing a lack of humility and needlessly knocking people down.

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I don't think it's fair for any of us to be judging the quality of anyone's voice until we've heard all of them sing. That is the only way this raging debate will end: an Idle Thumbs Sing-off.

 

Chris wins!

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I don't think it's fair for any of us to be judging the quality of anyone's voice until we've heard all of them sing. That is the only way this raging debate will end: an Idle Thumbs Sing-off.

 

Chris wins!

 

That's a weird way to spell "Justin McElroy".

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So far the opinions on Cara's voice have been:

 

[entirely drawn from this thread]
 
I'm not sure how this is getting interpreted as people being bothered by a woman's voice or people showing a lack of humility and needlessly knocking people down.

 

There are large Idle Thumbs communities on NeoGAF and Something Awful, and I'm sure the hosts know of other places with lots of Idle Thumbs listeners. The hosts also would have received emails that aren't being taken into account.

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Oh, well if it's outside stuff that's being referred to then that makes more sense, I just didn't see any suggestion of that in Argo, Jake or sclpl's posts.

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Regardless, people ought to show a little humility. The vast majority of us are not gifted with a soothing NPR radio voice.

Haha the thing is MOST people on NPR bug the shit out of me because they tend to have lisps or have their mouths full of spit when they talk and I wonder why they are on the radio speaking so much. There's also some reporters that drag certain syllables that I can't stand either. I spend a lot of time in my car with NPR on. :/

 

Anyway I think you can chalk up the Cara stuff to it being an accent not a lot of people hear. I certainly can't even tell it's Scottish after being told it's Scottish. I don't know if it was me who sounded sexist but considering the other women on Not a Game Podcast's voices, I don't think it's that.

 

Nothing is as terrible as everyone saying "Woof!" over and over, which is something women DON'T DO. Also Travis McElroy cannot pronounce "robot."

 

 

And while I'm at it, fuck everyone who can't say car-a-mel, jesus christ people.

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I definitely was speaking in a very general sense because I've seen these types of comments with some regularity on forums before. I think it is bad manners to start critiquing someone's voice, a thing they are born with and have limited control over. I had a bad stutter as a kid that I had to go to speech therapy for. I received a ton of grief from other kids because kids are little shits.  It just really is not good when you see echoes of that shitty behavior.

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It's pronounced karmel.

I will kill you.

 

I definitely was speaking in a very general sense because I've seen these types of comments with some regularity on forums before. I think it is bad manners to start critiquing someone's voice, a thing they are born with and have limited control over. I had a bad stutter as a kid that I had to go to speech therapy for. I received a ton of grief from other kids because kids are little shits.  It just really is not good when you see echoes of that shitty behavior.

I think there's a certain inherent forgiveness given to podcasts because most people are not going to have voices for radio and instead do podcasts as a DIY thing out of love. I guess unless you are Ricky Gervais.

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I dunno what's so hard it's only two syllables!!

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I love carmelized onions, they're the best. 

 

I share this love.

 

Caramelized leeks, on the other hand, are malevolent flavor ghosts that seem tasty at first but will haunt your mouth and contaminate all other tastes for 24-48 hours even after you brush your teeth...er, judging from my one experience with caramelized leeks.

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If anyone's interested in the story of how/why the Tomb Raider sequels were made, Richard Moss at Ars Technica has a good story on the fall of Core Design (the original developer of the series who eventually lost the rights to develop Tomb Raider games and went under).

 

Tomb Raider's problems didn't end there. "By [the end of] Tomb Raider II we basically thought that's it. Finished," says Rummery. "We were a bit burned out." They felt that they'd done all they could with the existing engine, and their plan was to have Tomb Raider take a few years off from the spotlight while they worked on a PlayStation 2 sequel. The gods that be at Eidos decreed that there would be another Tomb Raider on the PS1, however, and it'd be out that year—made by another team at Core.

 

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