Badger, anyone?

POSTED BY: mal4prez
UPDATED: Wednesday, September 27, 2006 20:59
VIEWED: 4365
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MAL4PREZ

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 2:43 PM

So... I've a little Badger problem. I'm not sure how to make his accent show up in writing. Does anyone have examples of Badger in a fic that reads well?

I'm having a really hard time because my DVD player is broken, so I have to go by memory. Ack!

Thanks!

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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.

SPACEANJL

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 3:34 PM

I haven't seen many fics that try for Badger. But the general tone is careful, see? He's a businessman, got standing in the community, don't like to be made to look a fool. Don't drop his g's like some uneducated backbirth. And the slang he uses - well, there's a little of the old country as creeps in here and there, a little touch of the old homestead. (Careful about the pronunciation of his h's, too - don't want to be taken for anything less than a gentleman) Of course, should you be wanting to do a little business with him, you would be welcome to stop by and chat. Always a pleasure.

There's a feral, and slightly manic, quality to the grin and eyes. He's the sort of man as would have had a weak chest when conscription came around, but would see it as nothing less than his patriotic duty to see that the troops got their smokes at nothing less than cost.

It's that slightly questioning inflection, see? And a certain sense of his own importance in the scheme of things. He's a busy man, after all, can't be bothering himself over the little details.

I don't know if any of this is helpful, but I used to live in London, and I heard people that sounded like him all the time - not cockney, but that quick, sharp combatative style, like a small terrier in an ill-fitting suit.

MAL4PREZ

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 3:41 PM

Thanks Spaceanjl! That does help!

Referring to the h's - drop them? That `appen to be a good thing, or bad?

I may just run some dialogue by you sometime...

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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.

SPACEANJL

Tuesday, August 15, 2006 3:56 PM

No probs. I think he might drop his h's if badly flustered, but otherwise, they would be carefully pronounced. Not quite the articulation of the good doctor, but aping it. It's the swallowing of the t's which is difficult to write. Go too far, and we're in Dick Van Dyke territory, and nobody wants that...

LUCASHARPER

Wednesday, August 16, 2006 1:22 AM

Don't know if it'll help you, but I did some Badger in my ongoing story The Calm Before The Storm. Around chapter 5 or 6 I beleive... just search around there somewhere. It's in my profile.

www.guyandpenguin.com

SIXSHOOTER

Thursday, August 17, 2006 12:30 PM

A couple of years ago I wrote for my student movie a British caper movie ala Snatch or Lock, Stock
If I was having trouble with finding the right words, I'd just stop what I was doing, read through a cockney rhyming slang list and write a quick short story.

http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/

I find it helps things along if you have a theme to the stories.
I did animals.

It warms you up; I also developed my own east end accent and would just randomly break out now and then.

Here are some examples that I wound up finishing.

Orang-utan.

So’s anyway, right,
There I am in Piccadilly,
Round eleven-ish, as I took on a few of the late shifts ona count that me the misses were at sixes at sevens at the time.
And it was just in front of that ugly great big red hotel;
You know the one, without any windows or doors, just a little chimney on top.
Anyway, A fair jumps in the back, and guess whom?
This bloody great big fucking orangutan.
Well anyway right, he wants me to take em to Kings Cross Station, so here we are driving along and the fucker asks me if I know where he can pick up some bananas, can you believe that?
The cheeky bastard had the bollocks to just ask me outright!
So's I tell him,
“Sorry chum, I run a clean cab here, I ain't got the foggiest idea as to where you can pick up some bananas, and I’m happy without one, that sort of things not my cup 'o tea,”
After all, I got a misses and kids back home to worry about, Y’know?
At that point I light up a fag and he starts asking all about my lighter, cept he calls it, get this: ‘Man's red fire.’
Fucking monkeys and the way they talk, it’s a wonder anyone can understand them.
They don't talk the English like us proper folk,
Anyway right, he's all like, “Hey cuz, how about you hand over the secret of man's red fire?”
And I tell him,
‘Sorry mate, but my Pa, god rest his soul, gave me this lighter, it ain't for sale.
But he keeps at me the whole time, eventually I gotta pull over and tell em that I ain’t selling it to him and that’s that!
Then the cheeky bastard has the audacity to pull out some of his own feces and yell at me:
“Listen man-cub you better hand over that cr-azy lighter or the shit ain’t gonna be a-hittin’ no fan, it’s gonna be a-hittin’ you!
Can you believe that?
The fucker called me a man-cub in my own fucking cab no less!
So I reach under me seat for that old shooter I keep under there for just these kinda situations and I stick the thing right in his Chevy and I tell em,
"You’d have better get the fuck out of my cab Chim-Chim or I’ll make you holier then John-Paul!"
Sure enough, the fucking gutless thing shot off like a light,
I wouldn’t be so sore about it if it had of taken its shite with it, but it just left it there on my seat. Damn dirty ape!

Polar Bear

So anyway right, me and my best mate Nigel, and the rest of the gang, we’re at this pub, see?
And Nigel he's hitting on this bird, and she's like really into it, if you get me, but then her significant other rocks up which, y'know usually wouldn't be a problem.
See my mate Nigel, he's a big boy, been in a few scraps if y'know what I mean?
But problem is though; the lady he’s got in his sights is dating an escaped polar bear from the zoo, right?
So Nigel he's trying to talk it all down,
But you could just see the bear was gonna bite him with it’s powerful jaws,
So Johnno he grabs a chair and breaks it over the bears back,
But the fucking thing didn't blink, so it swipes at him and cuts him clean in half and all his entrails are pouring out all of the floor, right?
And here we are all slipping ‘round in it, while trying not to get bitten by this crazy polar bear.
That’s when Davey, who was Johnnos best mate, rocks up, see, Davey right, he's some kind of artic explorer and he had, as luck would have it, brought his anti-polar bear gun to the bar that night, and blows half the fucking things face off,
But, the fucking thing it just got more agro, right?
So anyway, then he, that being Davey that is, pulls out his bowie kni

MAL4PREZ

Thursday, August 17, 2006 2:53 PM

Thanks Lucas - I'll have a look!

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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.

MAL4PREZ

Thursday, August 17, 2006 2:54 PM

Wow, sixshooter - that's excellent! Thanks for the help...

it's part of my problem that the accent isn't solid in my head, so this is really helpful!

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I'm the president. I don't need to listen.

SMARTBUTDUMBBLONDE

Sunday, August 20, 2006 2:39 PM

There's a bit of badger in the prologue of my "Three of a Kind" fic, but I don't know if it sounds right, though.

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DESKTOPHIPPIE

Wednesday, September 27, 2006 8:59 PM

Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger Badger mushroom mushroom!

Sorry. Just had to get that out of my system.

Thanks for the info, all. I'm currently writing Badger and this has helped. I can assure you that the above song will NOT feature.

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