20. Bonus question: share any additional thoughts, art, favourite scenes, anything you've been waiting for a chance to ramble about
i've been thinking recently about........ leitmotif................. my dream is to actually compose musical motifs for every main character, but i'm not very musically inclined. for now, i've just started with what instrument comes to mind for each of them! so for those i consider my mains:
mieras feels firstly like a xylophone, i've been listening to this song a lot recently and that plonky beat (i'm very bad at id'ing instruments in songs so that might be something completely different actually) reminds me of him. you'll find me really biased towards percussion probably, since i did used to play drums when i was much younger c: i spoke with verg abt all of these the other day too, and hy pointed out that it's probably bc it feels pretty oingo boingo, which i also tend to associate him with :p hy also suggested a theremin, which i can very much see in an audio sense but leans just a little too futuristic for him i think.
the biggest problem in creating a motif for him centering just one instrument would be the variety of ways in which he's presented. he starts the story as another villain in my mind, maybe even the very first, in a particularly scary way. i love writing him this way, with other characters terrified of him, a reflection of the very real fear of monsters in du Roi and the very real harm that he's embraced bringing to people. in his human disguise, he appears to most people as unsettling, foreign, and intimidating for his work, the fear only increasing as he reveals himself and his exact plans for any given person thrown his way. after he joins aster's party however, he becomes a lot more lighthearted, borderline comic relief, though he still has his moments
to me this necessitates something with a wide scale, which, again, percussionbrained leads me farther than one might think. overall, the slightly childish, alien sound of a xylophone (and i Do mean xylophone, specifically, and not a glockenspiel or marimba or bells or etc.) has a vibe that fits him as he is in multiple ways, across keys
meat wonderful strikes (🥁(🥁)) me as a bass drum, a little limited in tone, but deep, foundational, resonant, present, and again, intimidating. he's built on changes in rythm, not note, but that's not the only function of the bass drum, even - think whale song. i associate him with bass-heavy songs in general, too! verg suggested church bells for him too, which is an awesome pick and has a similar large, resonant, and intimidating vibe. the one issue i take in constructing something from church bells is actually something that still makes them fitting - their momentum. it's very hard to construct much with church bells, as once they're going, they're in their pace and hard to stop or change
draugr is a fiddle! verg suggested this before i told hym it was my choice, too! of course there's a whole strong southern vibe to his character, it reflects in a lot of music i associate with him too. the thing about a fiddle is that it mentally conjures a certain sound, a way of playing in these quick patterns, but it's really just another word for a violin, whose immediate associations are more refined, and, to me, melancholy. he embodies a lot of mixed interest and duality, so once again, there's this ability to construct multiple motifs for his own varied nature while keeping the focus of one common instrument played multiple ways.
i am actually considering vesker one of my main ocs atm given how much trouble he's caused me, and my first thought for him is a trumpet, though i'm not 100% sold on it. verg suggested a church organ, two for two on very specifically religious sounds, so i think we're doing okey dokey on consistent theming 👍 i like that angle, but it embodies his world more than him. immobile, huge, reverent, terrifyin-- do i really make all my characters that intimidating?? god. anyway, check out this video about organs and horror and come back and you'll get why it's the first thought for the godzilla guy. ignore the part where he says organists are feet people. or, uh, don't, since... well, anyhow.
the trumpet, however, is more personal. for one, this is another middle school band feeling but trumpets... are sorta annoying. to me, the sound of brass instruments on their own is almost always feels... awkward? they can be pretty abrasive. incredible in range, but i don't think jazz for him. i think military, but not necessarily grand. i don't have a good idea of where i'd actually land his melody because of that range, but well, he's not solid enough to be percussion, he doesn't have the flow of a woodwind, he doesn't have the movement of strings, i feel like he must be brass.
and then quick off the cuffs, stevie is a guitar (i thought electric, verg said acoustic, he plays both, both are right), valtor is a dulcimer, eliss ives is a didgeridoo, shari is... a lyre? maybe?? since we were just talking about mousetrap they're probably some incredibly specific small percussion, like some kind of shaker or fish
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