To Emma

[reacher]

Thank you all for the replies on the werewolf question I think I will stick to not becoming the harbinger and sleep soundly with Vilja and not with beastblood from the wolf it doesn't matter really
as the companions quest line after dustman's cairn and the fire breath are not really up to much
fist fight a woman or kill a skeever in someones house the other places they give you are in the main
storyline already you only lose 1 shout animal allegiance which is not much use anyway but thank you all once again for your replies and thank you Emma the Vilja romance and wedding are up to your usual high
standard but I still have to beat vilja's little sister at rock paper scissors

[misha]

Sorry for resurrecting this thread, Emma, I found it while searching for something else, but I just have to throw in my two cents.

First off, I had to laugh when I read those old troll comments on the Nexus about your accent being "not authentic", "too much" or "fake." Laugh because I'm an expatriate Scandinavian and, as such, I know a genuine Scandinavian and, in your case, Swedish accent when I hear one. And I laughed even more because I'd been playing Skyrim for quite a long time when I found your fantastic Vilja mod and had been facepalming like it was going out of style listening to the "authentic" Norse Skyrim accents in Vanilla who, to me, sound at best like Arnold Schwarzenegger on drugs. And he, last I checked, is Austrian, which is nowhere near Scandinavia and, as you know, in Europe we actually teach geography. Sorry, I dearly love my adopted country, but to read those clowns slamming a real Nord for "not sounding Nord enough" was just pricelessly dumb.

And I, like so many others here and elsewhere, love your accent. To me especially it's like a taste of home, although I'm Danish rather than Swedish, but we're neighbors and to hear Vilja talk just makes me smile every time, even though I've played with her so many times that I've heard most of the lines before. And that takes a LONG time with all of the effort you put into recording dialogue. She still surprises me with some of the things she says. Amazing job.

What I also want to say is how alive she is, this creation of yours. I actually care about her, even though she's "just a bunch of code and not real." I started over after two years of not playing Skyrim at all, only this time with her, and I find myself constantly thinking "what would Vilja think?" whenever I make a decision. I want this digital creation to approve of my actions, I love it when she says something nice to me, even when my actions don't change my ability to finish her quests. She's "real" when I play, to the point where I'll tell her to stay at home when I have to go on quests that I don't think she'd like to know about.

Imagine that. An imaginary friend that you actually, truly do care about.

And you did all of this on your own time, for free, and chose to share it all with us.

I love Skyrim, Bethesda made an RPG deeper than anything I've ever played, even the Vanilla version, and I played the everloving snot out of it when it came out, this is not a criticism of the original, but you gave it a second life that has made me play the everliving snot out of it a second time, only so I can see how Vilja reacts, and you did all of this as a hobby.

That's amazing, Emma! If I'd achieved half that much, I'd be immensely proud and with good reason.

I'll go back and play Oblivion again too now, just so I can have more adventures with the girl you created, because I really didn't plan on ever playing that again. That's all you.

And some trolls who have most likely never achieved anything beyond changing their socks have the nerve to criticize that?

It is to laugh.

Please don't ever change, Emma. And thank you so much for breathing fresh life into a game that was already awesome.

Du er fantastisk, du har talent ud over alle grænser, og du har givet mig og så mange andre så meget. Og altsammen fordi du kunne og havde lyst til det. Gud velsigne dig!

[Sniffles]

Ну положим.

[Emma]

Misha, thank you so much

[rhyls]

Misha hi, I too find myself exactly as you do caring aboput whether Vilja will like something,  I hate not having dialogue to answer some of her remarks as if I'm ignoring her. I even search for nice dresses for her and worry about her armour covering her properly without too much cleavage.
As you say, she really is just an AI but now so real, I can't play without her.
In fact, have just done that trying a different companion and feel bad about it already.
rhyls

[rhyls]

Emma I wrote this a long time ago as gavain2. to repeat what I said then I have copied it from my original post in 2012. To strengthen and underline what I said then. Don't have any voice lessons it will change Vilj ans she and you are wonderful being you/ her.


Post by gavain2 on Dec 7, 2012 at 5:50pm
('m very happy that there are accents in Skyrim, I think it adds to the flavour quite a lot. And it also makes it easier for me to voiceact. I have a strong scandinavian accent, and in Oblivion Vilja was the only person with an accent, which wasn't that good... In Skyrim, it is "normal" to have an accent, which makes my accent more acceptable. So, I'm grateful for this, although still somewhat puzzled that so many nords seem to have a dutch accent. I mean, dutch accent is nice, but not what I personally associate with high mountains, huge forests and lots and lots of snow)...
,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Emma,just read this old post. I wanted to say that your accent in this modern age is completely acceptable. Here in the UK the cafe I frequent is owned by two Turkish guys, there is a Polish woman in my local library. I visit with a neighbour who is a french speaker And When I was living in Germany there was a native German woman who I thought was Scottish because she had a strong Scots accent(married to a Scottish soldier). I think languages now particularly the European are cosmopolitan. 'AND' I really think the accent is part of Vilja's appeal,


gavain2

[Sniffles]

Emma has a funny accent! Really? I heard real funny accents a while ago that had me nearly ROTFL. Two people were discussing where to find a place. One had the thickest cockney accent I have ever heard and the other had that hog slop Georgia southern drawl. They might as well have been from different planets. Neither could understand hardly anything the other was saying.

What is also rather funny is the average cockney English person insists theirs of the most common and neutral of all accents.
And, according to a linguistics study, 4th year up Germans studying English have the best, most articulate English, followed by Danes, Swedes and Norwegians. Natives from Britain weren't even in the top 5! Oh wot, meantersay moit!

[rhyls]

Hi Sniffles. I wanted to underline(if there had been people complaining) just how much support Emmma has from all the Vilja addicts(which we are I think)
No one who actually plays with Vilja has any problems with Emma's voice.
When I went to my original post I was surprised to see it was in 2012. Then went to live in Germany again so left Skyrim completely.

[Emma]

Oh, Rhyls, so you are the original author of this thread? I didn't know this! When you started it, it actually meant a lot to me, as I was going through a rough time right then. Not so much because of the bashing of my voice and accent, which was quite intense at a time when every other npc in Skyrim had an american accent or a fake-accent based on american accents. But, my father passed away the morning after Vilja was released, so I was under a lot of emotional and practical pressure at the time, and reading some posts certainly didn't make things better. It was a comfort to read the friendly posts in this thread, starting with yours .

You are right about brits and accents; of course in Britain, like in the rest of Europe, people are very used to meeting people from other countries and other cultures, which makes interaction easier.

[Sniffles]

Dear Emma,
It has become obvious to me I owe you an apology. My comments regarding accents could easily be taken as flippant and callous. Well, in fact, they were. Directed towards people who would deride a person for their innate traits.
But then I am coming from a psychologists point of view. People who deride others have psychological problems, from simple inadequacies and insecurities on out. What they actually say really only has value in determining their underlying problems in order to diagnose them.

I'm very sorry to hear of the debut of Vilja being criticized in that manner. The effort you put into things is obviously far beyond simply making a mod. Vilja is a child to you in a way. Coupled with a personal tragedy that must have been very difficult times.

As others have pointed out, criticizing your accent is ridiculous. Especially in light of the fact Bethseda intended to portray a Nordic race. Well, in name anyway. As you mentioned, those odd noises the Skyrim NPCs make that Bethseda thought to be appropriate accents. But if you think about it, their efforts weren't wrong. They were the authors. They could choose any accent they wished and be correct for it is their fantasy world.

The same applies to Emma and Vilja. You produced a work of art.

Allow me to inject my own personal view here. I always found the nord(sic) aspect of Skyrim comical. Really, it's bordering hilarious. Maybe they wanted to portray nords or maybe it is a tongue in cheek farce. Viewed objectively I feel it's the latter. Their accents, as you mentioned, aren't Nordic. As for character portrayal, I'm not sure what stereotype they had in mind. The vikings? Which? Like my 6' 10" Olympiad grandfather or my 5' 4" geek cousin?
Oh wait a minute! I was made fun of. 5' 10" in the 6th grade!

In the words of the flompy guy in Windhelm: He's a real nord. He'll come around.
Around where?

[questinghood]

I would agree that Vilja is a work of art

[CollinMacleod]

I think the only real Nord accent in the game is Esberns'.

[Sniffles]

Just to set the matter straight. There is no real Nord accent. Skyrim is all about Nords. Nords don't exist. The word Nord is mostly credited to the French meaning north. It appears Bethseda deliberately chose to use the word Nord as it has nothing to do with the Norse peoples. See www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Nord and www.uesp.net/wiki/Lore:Nord.

Emma/Vilja is Norse. Originally this term was attributed to the Norwegian peoples then applied to include others. The word became synonymous with proud, fierce, fiery, strong. Technically, she is Scandinavian which is the correct term for the grouping of countries with a similar language. You can also get more technical as there is greater Scandinavia and Peninsular Scandinavia.


So in a sense Emma's detractors are correct. Her accent would be wrong and the accents commonly heard in Skyrim, mostly Americans trying to sound guttural, are the correct ones.

Skyrim is entirely a fantasy world that has no real relationship to the Norse peoples or the Nordic lands. It is obviously inspired by the Norse peoples and to some degree mythos but is entirely fictional. There never has been a high king of the Norse for, as a rule, they have always been fiercely independent peoples living in a very large area; including bodies of water, significantly larger than western Europe. The Norse lands have been divided into three kingdoms, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, but have never been a single 'country' under a single authority.

It seems to me that it could be said, to give an analogy, Vilja is to Skyrim the equivalent of imposing the Norse Mythos, the Eldar Edda, into the modern day northern (Christian) Europe. I hope that doesn't sound too weird. I say this because it wasn't an invasion of the Imperials or Romans or whomever that tamed the Norse and cost them their independence. It was the religious invasion.

[wotan]

Scandinavia is made up by the countries around the Skandes mountain range - Sweden, Norway and Finland and Denmark.
But if you want get to the roots of the Norse language and culture, you have to go to Iceland - Icelandic is the closest to Old Norse you can get. They have the largest amount of writers per capita in the world, I believe - which says a lot about their culture. They created the famous Edda (Snorri Sturlasson but there's also an Older Edda that is a collection of poems from Iceland and Norway)

You are probably right about the French influence in the word Nord. They had a major impact on the English language, adding some 20.000 words. The story is that the French king gave land - Normandy - to the Vikings to settle to appease them and prevent their raids. Of course, the Vikings also had a major impact on the English language, mostly in the centuries before the French conquest. There are many Viking settlements in the British Isles. And it was Vikings who gave Britain law for one important thing.

[Sniffles]

Sept 13, 2014 12:37:32 GMT wotan said:

Scandinavia is made up by the countries around the Skandes mountain range - Sweden, Norway and Finland and Denmark.
But if you want get to the roots of the Norse language and culture, you have to go to Iceland - Icelandic is the closest to Old Norse you can get. They have the largest amount of writers per capita in the world, I believe - which says a lot about their culture. They created the famous Edda (Snorri Sturlasson but there's also an Older Edda that is a collection of poems from Iceland and Norway)

You are probably right about the French influence in the word Nord. They had a major impact on the English language, adding some 20.000 words. The story is that the French king gave land - Normandy - to the Vikings to settle to appease them and prevent their raids. Of course, the Vikings also had a major impact on the English language, mostly in the centuries before the French conquest. There are many Viking settlements in the British Isles. And it was Vikings who gave Britain law for one important thing.

Very correct. But include the reason why Iceland remained relatively untainted; it's isolation. When my mother went to translate various Norse mythos, as all scholars, they had to go to Iceland for the unmaimed and unadulterated original works.

I'm going to add a cynical note here. The generosity of the Europeans to the Norse peoples was born mostly from fear and offered as placations very similar to the US Government in their gradual genocide of the natives.

PS Okay Falion. I lied. I hold two grudges. The religious destruction of the Norse Edda tradition and the genocide of my forebearers in America