#personal | me!

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“-turn this world upside down-”

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Perhaps it’s because of my huge interest in music, perhaps it’s because my Blixer kintype makes me more much inclined to associate things (from themes, to people, to memories) with music in some way...

But I typically kind of associate all of my kintypes with certain instruments.

I know that this is far from rare; almost everything is often associated with music in some way. However, these connections are just very special to me, and they tie in with the whole “voices=melodies” thing.

Blitz - Guitar, Bass, chiptune/synth, for obvious reasons. Hearing electric guitar instantly brings Blitz to mind. Very energetic and intense, as well as powerful. And anything with droning, low notes, like a blaring roar, just screams Annihilate. On the more specific end, get some autotuned voices or Vocaloid and the like and YES YES YES. The perfect mix of instruments and a natural voice that Pink-Boss brain can make sense of.

Marx - Accordion, Cello, possibly Viola. Compared to the violin, the viola in particular is often pretty overlooked, so that definitely hits home when it comes to Marx and his past. As for how the instruments sound, the accordion in particular just has jester vibes to me. Autotuned/synthesized vocals also remind me of Marxie, though for different reasons. The voices of the Novae, anyone?

Devi - Bells, Theremin; interestingly, I’ve realized that I was actually.. a bit mistaken at first as to what Devi’s like. I’ll cover that in more detail later, but for the most part, I associate them more with visuals than music; the few auditory things I associate them with include ambient noises or alarming sounds that bring to mind sirens.

A lot of my favorite songs that remind me of them include these instruments, 

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This is very messy, but I had to scribble it down really quickly.

I got a very vivid image of what Marx’s home village looked like, and I am About to Cry, honestly-

Marx lived pretty far away from the rest of the village, in a formerly abandoned old observatory.

There was a small, glowing well in the town center. I think, in my canon, these wells were offshoots from the main Fountain of Dreams, and this one in particular could grant very small wishes due to holding some of the star power required to summon Galactic Nova. (That’s also why it’s like, golden instead of just water).

Seeing the full Galactic stars themselves glittering at night was always beautiful. I think Marx stared outside to watch them every night.

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HALLOWEEN COSTUME?

You’ve heard of Gir Hoodie, now it’s time for.... Scenecore Demon. /j

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So, apparently Macabre was the one who caused Annihilate in my canon..

And that realization brought with it Real Sad Feels, so I decided to draw it.

I’ll probably explain more in depth later, but this image wouldn’t leave my head.

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Voices, continued

Now, I said in the last post that I’d go more into detail as to why both “normal human teen voice” and “wordless chirping melody” clicked well with my memories of the square.

Well, to put it simply, that’s exactly what shape voices were. Just music. Most of the actual words are just how they’d translate.

Every non-hero shape has a triangle piece embedded in their chest, which produces sound like a speaker. This is also the source of their songs.

The song is the "raw", unfiltered sound, the purest essence of what's in a shape's soul.

In order to speak, this sound must be filtered through the mouth to properly form words and such. Due to their voices originating from song, shape voices are naturally very melodic and may even sound slightly like instruments or synthesized tones.

It takes a lot of practice to rid the voice completely of that "sing-song" tone. (I think Blitz was pretty good at that, considering I tend to think of the “human equivalent” of his voice more frequently than his actual song-voice.)

The only sounds that can be produced without using the Treeangle piece at all are growls, hisses, chirps, and the like. Animal-like sounds that require only the shape equivalent of a respiratory system to create. Thus, non-hero shapes are predisposed to be rather animal-like in my canon, in more ways than one. The song, the voice, affect the appearance and self, after all.

Hero Shapes, however, have no lungs or throat, no organic respiratory system at all to speak of and thus cannot naturally create growls/hisses/etc. They're pure music and humming. And as they had no mouths, they filtered words in a different way. I think it had something to do with the “horns” that they had (a feature pretty unique to my canon and obviously not in the actual game). Something like giving out a signal of sorts, a broadcast. 

They can manage a synthesized chirp or two, with practice, but most don't learn to do so unless raised around non-heroes.

Not sure when I’ll remember more. It kind of just came to me when I heard a song with instruments that sounded very similar to the tones of certain shapes’ voices. It was a very bittersweet feeling, hearing that music.

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Vocal Confusion

For the longest time, I knew that Blitz’s voice wasn’t that deep, which was obviously super confusing. How could I reconcile the noema of Blitz’s voice being “mid-range” with that of his voice being considered rather low. 

Same thing with my memories of how the square sounded. Split between an average, gender neutral tone and that incessantly high melody that I associate with them musically. Both register as “their voice” for me, though in vastly different ways. I’ll cover why both the voice and the “song” equally sound like them to me in a future post.

But what bothered me the most was the odd dichotomy in the actual vocal pitches. I was afraid that I was remembering wrong or confusing myself.

And finally, after much pondering, the realization finally hit me.

I think pitches of sounds in Paradise were kind of.. off??? In a way??? Or at least the general perception of them was skewed.

Like, shapes of all kinds naturally have much broader range of both voice and hearing. So what sounds high pitched to a human is kind of mid-range for a shape. They could probably even comfortably hear stuff like dog whistles. And on the opposite side of the spectrum, they could hear extremely low bass tones with perfect clarity.

And overall, shapes of all types tended to have higher voices. Sure, there were exceptions, but they tended to have ehhh... kind of “chirpy” tones.

So, although Blitz’ normal speaking voice would be rather.. average in tone by human standards, his voice was considered lower by Paradise societal standards.

Annihilate on the other hand? Now that’s bass, for both standards!