#psycho-acoustics

[arbis-official]

1, 5, 9, 15, 16, 17, 19, 21 For your boy. You know who I'm talking about.

my boy varan! (my current icon)

1. What influenced or inspired the creation of this character?

this is actually kind of an interesting story--i was trying to flesh out the personalities of some characters i had for a story i was writing, so i wrote them all playing dnd together to give them a chance to develop without worrying about plot. the character who ended up being varan was who one of the story characters played (the rest of the party actually served as inspiration for his old adventuring party as well). i also. uh. was trying to work out the logistics of how to interrogate a player character in a way that was emotionally impactful, so... sorry for the missing body parts, varan.

5. What creature would they like to have as a pet?

boy can’t even take care of himself, much less an animal.

9. How would this character react to someone confessing their love for them?

ghost them so hard they wouldn’t know what hit them. it’s happened. multiple times.

15. What is the best gift they could receive?

best for him and his well-being? .......... therapy

what would make them happiest? probably a bottle of vingradian wine

16. If they could instantly kill one person in the world without consequence, who would it be?

garrett [last name pending], no question.

17. If they were in possession of a trio of wishes, what would their three wishes be?

“to go back in time about 5 years” is a little bit of a cop-out, so probably bringing his old party leader back to life, destroying The Gem, and uhhhh something that would force renyuska to give vingrad its independence back.

19. What are their guilty pleasures?

bold of you to assume this boy feels guilty about his pleasures

21. Have you actually played this character yet?

no and i die every day i don’t

[arbis-official]

For the dnd ask thing do every question with a 4 in it. (I rolled for the 4)

this ended up being long as fuck, sorry

4. Your current campaign.

    *sweats* we technically have four in-progress campaigns but one’s on hiatus

    campaign A: “world’s dumbest schmucks with a group name that’s too cool for them attempt to make a net profit on the amount of good they do in the world,” aka “why three chaotic neutrals, a lawful evil, and a neutral good should probably not be trusted to do literally anything. sometimes they will take over a slaver boat and free its people.” sometimes they’ll annihilate an entire country. you won’t know til it happens. the cast: GOO Girl, tiny grump with a cursed knife, chaos tiefling?, chaos tiefling?’s whipped boyfriend, and hydrophobic slut.

     campaign B: “five children and young adults with varying levels of trauma get blindsided into killing a king and toy with the idea of romantic subplots but are too emotionally incompetent to act on them” aka “world’s most heterosexual campaign.” the cast: #lunaforqueen2k19, anxious plant boy, sssssssnake man, knife uncle, and ADHD chaos wizard.

     campaign C: “three of the most normal-ass fucking normies in waterdeep keep ending up in the right (wrong?) place at the right time and whoops i guess we’re gonna go track down some money and open a bar together” aka “all boys means ALL BOYS.” the cast: sweet adorable sweet baby boy, tired and jaded husband of a tenuous marriage (that isn’t really a marriage), and “10% altruism, 20% arrogance, 70% guilt” bojstoj

14. answered

24. How much planning/preparation do you do for a game?

      as a DM, i’ve found that planning generally happens about 2 days in advance for the first 2-3 sessions, then 1 day, then 8 hours, then 5 minutes before when you flip through your notes and go “shit sure i guess”

     as a player, it’s more as it comes. if there’s Big Plot Shit that needs to be planned for/dealt with before the session starts it’ll be “hey let’s periodically bring this up over the course of four days.” in terms of character preparation, i sometimes take a few minutes beforehand to get into a character’s headspace via having mental conversations with myself, and to practice their voice if i have one

34. Do you tend pick weapons/spells for being useful or for flavor?

     hm, that’s tough. I would never do anything that would contradict a character’s motivations/thoughts/choices (i.e. if i was playing anything but a chaotic neutral assassin i probably wouldn’t have attuned to the SUPER cursed dagger we killed a (fake) child for even though it would make me immune to disease), but i do definitely value usefulness.

     … i’m now just remembering i have a bard with a whopping 1 offense spell because it would go against his character to not take every single spell he could which fulfills the role of either “how can i easily get out of the bad situations i’ll inevitably get myself into” or “how do i stay pretty,” so i think i’m solidly in the “flavor” category, actually

[arbis-official]

5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30 you pick the character

I can’t pick between Cerene and Varan so uh expect variety

5. If they could hang out with one famous person in 18th century American History, who would they want to hang out with?

I do not know very many famous 18th century American figures. Uhhhh. I’m gonna expand this to worldwide bc Varan would totally hang with Marie Antoinette. Other than that I have no idea.

10. What’s their best stat?

Varan’s is charisma. Cerene’s are charisma and constitution. Believe it or not, I usually don’t make charismatic characters, but they are a bard and warlock.

15.  Most despicable thing they have ever done?

V: Hoo boy. Well he kind of caused the deaths of the entire royal family of the kingdom he lived in by giving information to a warring kingdom, leading to its being taken over, and then uhhhhhh ran away before they could find out he was the one who spilled. So he doesn’t feel great about that.

C: She left her daughter in the care of her sisters-in-law for several years because she decided her job was more important. Also didn’t feel too great about that, but she did eventually quit.

20. Are they religious? If so, what god or gods do they serve?

C: Probably not. She does have a patron, but I don’t know who it is to know if her opinion of them would be… favorable.

V: If he was, he isn’t anymore.

25. Favorite animal?

C: Once she can get a familiar it’ll be a hunting falcon. She also likes doves because they remind her of her daughter.

V: I don’t know if it would be his favorite, but I strongly associate him with a peacock.

30. Would they smooch a ghost?

C: She might be dead, but no. She still… kind of… considers herself married. As Kate said, depends how literally you take the “til death do us part” line.

V: HELL YEAH!!!!!

[jazzresin]

(jazzresin)

[cicatrice-e]

[activatedsilence]

Maryanne Amacher: Psychoacoustic Phenomena in Musical Composition.

always wary of ideas about "objective music," but- food for thought. this stuff is pretty cool. 

[aap-hristo-blog]

Psycho-acoustics and Echo

Psycho-acousticsis a scientific study in the psychological and physiological responses to sound. Every living creature perceives sound through their natural or biological equipment – ears and brain. Thus the need of an understanding of how our body translates the vibration of sounds and creates beautiful music or irritable noise.

http://www.newmusicbox.org/articles/The-Musical-Ear/

Echo – echo is the reflection of a sound that arrives to the listener’s ears after the original sound has already been absorbed. 

[adherentlyawesome]

playing back a recording of my own singing, i sing an alternative harmony against it to play with the chord formation, which involves going from a third to a fourth instead of parallel thirds. when the upper voice (the recording) goes up against my own sustained pitch, I feel a vibration in my jaw: THE NOTE ONE OCTAVE BELOW THE RECORDING IS MAGICALLY PRODUCED. 1. catie flips out 2. catie to make sure it wasn't a fluke. 3. catie then deduces from her basic acoustics education from last semester that psychoacoustics are bleeding MAGICAL and the brain decided that the two pitches produced by myself and the recording were the upper harmonics of a missing pitch. I JUST REPRODUCED WHAT HEADPHONES DO. WITH MY MOUTH. (and a laptop) 4. this is only super exciting because it caught me off guard and I haven't had the chance to apply this aspect of acoustics to my life very much. Conclusion: Catie is a nerd. but that was so much fun. excuse me while I go experiment with more sound files.