The voices in my head and you.
The first thing that makes most people uncomfortable about Soulcatcher is the way she speaks. In general, every sentence she speaks is in a different voice than the one before it -- not simply a different tone, but an entirely different voice. Some are young, some old, some male, some female. At times she matches them up to the content of her speech; at times they are awfully inappropriate. Sometimes the voices definitely belong to other people that she has met.
When she feels conflicted about something, or is trying to make plans, she will sometimes talk to and/or argue with herself. Her voices can and do talk over each other.
If you spend a lot of time conversing with Catcher, you may notice that when she is most serious, she tends to use one particular voice, which is adult, female, and businesslike.
In camp, I will be making multiple comments when Catcher is saying things in multiple voices. Assume that every icon she uses is a different voice. This seemed like a less obnoxious method than anything else I could think of (like text formatting, special characters, etc etc). Please let me know if it gets obnoxious and I'll try to find some other way to work it out -- this is really central to her characterization, so I feel like it needs to be represented somehow, but I don't want it to cause problems for anyone, either. ♥
...If she's speaking in the voice of someone else from camp, I will note it in the comment.
What are the voices, anyway?
Canon isn't clear on this. The short answer is, you don't know for sure.
A lot of people, especially in the north where Catcher's originally from, take her voices as evidence that her name should be taken literally -- that those are the voices of the people whose souls she has stolen. Sometimes she definitely is using the voices of people she has killed. ...Sometimes, though, she is using the voices of people who are still alive, and who presumably would not be, were they no longer in possession of their souls. Later, in the south, one of the characters who has to interact with Catcher on a regular basis notes that some of her voices are more prone to irrational decrees than others. It is possible they're just manifestations of her insanity!
So the other short answer is "sob my canon," because I suspect what's really going on is that Cook has changed his mind about how they work a couple of times over the course of writing the series. But really, the way that it won't come clear is part of the creepiness charm! So it's all good.
When she feels conflicted about something, or is trying to make plans, she will sometimes talk to and/or argue with herself. Her voices can and do talk over each other.
If you spend a lot of time conversing with Catcher, you may notice that when she is most serious, she tends to use one particular voice, which is adult, female, and businesslike.
In camp, I will be making multiple comments when Catcher is saying things in multiple voices. Assume that every icon she uses is a different voice. This seemed like a less obnoxious method than anything else I could think of (like text formatting, special characters, etc etc). Please let me know if it gets obnoxious and I'll try to find some other way to work it out -- this is really central to her characterization, so I feel like it needs to be represented somehow, but I don't want it to cause problems for anyone, either. ♥
...If she's speaking in the voice of someone else from camp, I will note it in the comment.
What are the voices, anyway?
Canon isn't clear on this. The short answer is, you don't know for sure.
A lot of people, especially in the north where Catcher's originally from, take her voices as evidence that her name should be taken literally -- that those are the voices of the people whose souls she has stolen. Sometimes she definitely is using the voices of people she has killed. ...Sometimes, though, she is using the voices of people who are still alive, and who presumably would not be, were they no longer in possession of their souls. Later, in the south, one of the characters who has to interact with Catcher on a regular basis notes that some of her voices are more prone to irrational decrees than others. It is possible they're just manifestations of her insanity!
So the other short answer is "sob my canon," because I suspect what's really going on is that Cook has changed his mind about how they work a couple of times over the course of writing the series. But really, the way that it won't come clear is part of the creepiness charm! So it's all good.