About a week ago, a Nexus commenter mentioned that I had literally no standards with regard to recruiting voice talent. Well, that just isn’t true. I did cast a goldfish to play Rongeir initially, but he died during recording. Something about being unable to breathe on dry land. So technically, I do have standards. The actors must be alive. After that, all bets are off.
Still, despite my limited standards, for some reason I seem to have trouble casting female beast roles. I’ve been trying to get a certain actor to voice a Khajiit for almost a year now, with little success. Then came this email:
Some might call this a joke. Or perhaps a clear message that filling this role is a Sisyphean task. Nevertheless, I am choosing to take this literally, and not in the Nexus commenter’s meaning of the word. I mean literally, literally. After all, this may seem like an impossible task, but I believe the gathering of 10,000 Egyptian souls is nowhere near as difficult as casting female beasts. And I’m going to prove it.
This is a race. Which will happen first, the delivery of 10,000 souls, or the casting of this role? We shall see. Here are the first five:
Soul #1 – This is an Egyptian boy named Billy. He was ahead of his time and predicted the popularity of the name “Billy” for young American boys before the name or America was invented. Unfortunately his drunken ramblings of the future and the rise of something called the “Hokey Pokey” resulted in him being branded a servant of the evil jackal god Set, and was subsequently tortured to death.
Soul #42 – This was a farmer’s daughter named Bahiti, which is Egyptian for “fortune.” Bahiti did indeed earn a fortune by the age of sixteen, by selling her soul to the wealthiest merchant in town.
Soul #955 – This soul was a bit of a voyeur. He would constantly spy on his neighbors. When he wasn’t doing that, he’d spend all afternoon on the roof of his house, studying the passersby go to and from the market. For this reason, many contend he was the world’s first Egyptologist.
Soul #7,143 – This soul is actually one of Egypt’s first celebrities. His name was Fenuku, which I think is Egyptian for “three-nippled.” While Fenuku did not achieve celebrity status during his lifetime, mostly due to his excessive nipple problem, centuries after being mummified he was cast in two separate but unrelated IMAX movies starring The Rock.
Soul #9,999 – This soul belonged to a brother of a Pharoah. His favorite things to say were “Let my people go” and “I’ll give you my slave whip when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.” He would later lead the Jews to freedom, whipping them across the Red Sea. God congratulated him briefly before killing him for having an uncircumcised penis.
5 down, 9,995 to souls to go. Or 1 Khajiit.
How do you come up with this stuff? xD (I sort of want to see the idea behind your 1000th written “Egyptian soul”. I wonder if they´d get more or less wacky.)
This soul belonged to a man called Figusheadh (no one has any idea of his mother got the name from), and he was a fig trader. He was beheaded by the pharaoh after trying to present her with a fresh fig in the winter, having the plot of “Princes et Princesses” not work out for him.
Soul #2,089 – This guy’s name was Tutalmostkamon, he invented the dance we call “tutting” nowadays. He publicly performed it on the streets, and was sentenced to death due to people thinking he was making fun of the tastes for art of his contemporaneous nobility. During his final judgement with the pharaoh, he tried to seduce her using said dance. He was executed in the spot by strangling on the hands of the pharaoh herself.
Yes, more comments like this. We will get to 10,000 soon enough. Then I assume the actor will fulfill her end of the bargain.
Do you truly have the sense of humor you seem to have when it comes to commenters like the one you mention here, or are you secretly gnashing your teeth and twisting the heads off your Barbies? Because, man, my skin is not nearly as thick as yours seems to be.
Well yeah, anyone who says it doesn’t piss you off a little would be lying or a robot. I don’t wanna say you get used to it, but I’ve learned to look at it a certain way – criticism is very valuable, given I’m not perfect. You need someone to tell you what’s what. The problem is how it’s presented, but that’s something that’s never going to change when people are anonymous.
So what I do, after burning my ninja turtles, is ask myself, is the critique specific? Otherwise, you can’t challenge or check if changes need to be made.
If it’s specific, you can then evaluate it. For instance, I saw someone on a forum saying he didn’t like the mod. I asked him what his beef was, and he said “S’vashni doesn’t have a quest.” Then I realized he hadn’t played the mod in over a year. Another guy “hated the voices.” When I asked him which ones, it was apparent he just didn’t like women with higher pitched voices, despite them fitting the character in question.
In some cases, I will agree with the critique, but perhaps there may be other behind the scenes circumstances that the user isn’t aware of. And sometimes I may agree and make changes right away, or maybe over time if enough people give feedback. But it all starts with getting something specific to evaluate. That’s the beauty of a mod – nothing’s really permanent.
Soul #9,999 was not an Egyptian, he was Hebrew. [/nitpick]
That aside, this is pretty much exactly what I would have done if I found myself in this situation XD
Soul #13 – This soul is from a man called Nagus A-Fhel, he was the engineer that designed the Great Sphinx. He was sitting beneath it during the first Alien Battle that was to decide which of the two factions would come to influence the political situation of Egypt due to abundance of the highly praised mineral we call “dirt”. One of the parts greatly miscalculated a shot that came to hit the Sphinx’s nose, which fell on the engineer’s head, to his demise.
Interpol makes it so damn hard to move Egyptian souls. And then Homeland Security wants to tell me that, somehow, bringing over the souls of long dead Egyptians is some kind of security risk. I blame the “Mummy” movies.
In regards to standards, to be fair, I did audition for the role of Gnives very early on and was turned down, but only because my mic quality was lousy and I was unable to acquire a better one. When I first encountered Gnives in the mod, I almost shed a tear simply I really wanted to do that voice. That being said, I have yet to hear single voice in the mod that I feel doesn’t fit. There’s a reason this mod has become essential to me. :)