Hey so I’ve gotten some really sweet messages from Genshin players of various Asian backgrounds, regarding hearing someone w/ my name + accent in the game

I wanna take a sec to thank y’all for ur kind words, and share a bit about myself & my relationship w/ the English language

I was born in Vietnam, and spent most of my childhood moving around the French-speaking regions of Europe, before settling in Singapore for a bit, where I finally learned English as a third language.

But I didn’t pick up “Standard American” until much later in life, several years after I’d moved to the US.

And it was a bitch and a half to learn because of all these regional influences I was contending with.

To this day my mouth is still an extremely confused instrument.

Thing is I wanted to be a voice actor. So. Bad.

Like, I loved anime and video games and drama And an implicit rule was u should speak in a way that doesn’t “pull the ear.”

So i took a bunch of acting classes. And signed up for some good ol’ accent reduction

Which sucked. The accent reduction part I mean. Because:

A) You can only game your own biology to a certain point

B) The thought that an accent was something to “fix” bugged me more and more as my instructors steadily grew angrier with my lack of progress

So I stopped those, and just went for it. I figured if my accent was really such a huge problem, I’d just never book anything and the industry would naturally usher me out.

Took me years to book my first paid, standard-rate gig. Fun fact: it was never released lmao

But yeah. Here I am, years later, still fumbling around in the dark for work like everyone else.

Occasionally, I’ll manage to grab on to something pretty cool tho.

Point being it is absolutely doable you guys.

Anyway. I wanted to share this info, just to assist any discussions out there regarding whether or not I have an accent (I do), or if I’m a native speaker (not really)

I used to freak out whenever I’d see someone go “wait does he have an accent” regarding my work, but that’s slowly starting to change.

Still, I wanted to get ahead of the speculation.

I mean, yeah man. Life gets a little bit better when you learn to accept your own unique flavors

The lesson here is love yourself bitch. Happy holidays!