Category Archives: Other Media

Other Media, Uncategorized

On Avatars

This might be kind of obvious because my progress on these ran to a screeching halt, but I had a lot of trouble figuring out what to write for Ashgar, who is the 4th member of the “adventuring group”.

Ashgar is me, in a lot of senses, so figuring out what to write feels like I’m trying to decide what my own character traits are, what faults I’m okay with a fictional version of myself having, and bragging about the things I’m good at. Introspection is hard, and also it runs into how private I am about my own life.

That said, I do still want to get this project advanced a bit, so I’ll be working on character profiles for my other characters. I’ll get to myself eventually, and hopefully that will also let me address some spots where I have personality type gaps. Fiction doesn’t have to perfectly mirror reality, after all.

Character Bios

On Kori

This one was one of the wild cards. This is the first one where the character design was done by someone else, as I was trying to find a character to fill a “mostly dragon, size large” role in the party.

Kori is another one who is not based on a previous RPG character of mine directly, but is very related to one. My sorcerer-turned-dragon (it’s a long story) from a previous D&D Campaign is her patron and also probably her dad. Neither of these is public knowledge in-setting.

The third member of the Order of the Silver Scale, Kori is the largest and most-imposing of the party members. She’s posing as a Dragonborn (she’s a dragon) and a Sorcerer (she’s a warlock, mostly). An extremely gifted ice mage, she mostly fights with things made from her own breath (daggers, etc) and a sword that seems to be made from non-melting ice. She’s also handy with improvised tools.

As for her personality, she has a good sense of humor; her dragon-like nature means that Tizak treats her with great respect. She is fond of straight-forward solutions to problems, and believes that dragons are better than everyone else.

It’s probably this belief that explains why she’s stuck walking around with an adventuring party. Her patron has sealed away her true form, and encouraged her to “learn more about the world”. Perhaps if she figures out that the “lesser races” aren’t, then she’ll be able to take to the sky with her real wings.

Character Bios

On Tariel

This is why you shouldn’t tell me that a character I’m asking you to draw is “too boring” or tempt me to explore the capabilities of Heroforge.

Tariel is not based on any existing character I have or have plans to play, and more grew out of the need to have something resembling a physical character in an otherwise all-caster party. He competed for this role with a kobold barbarian that may or may not exist in the future.

He is another member of the Order of the Silver Scale, and he’s a “Kitsune” according to his own words. Just because no other known kitsune have scales, four arms, spine ridges, or a dragon tail have not gotten in the way of this claim. I’m pretty sure he’s an Eastern-style dragon, but it’s a little unclear how he ended up in a setting where no one else has even heard of those.

Maybe it’s this.

Tariel is the Serious member of the party, which makes him a frequent target for practical jokes from Tizak. He fights using his staff (which can shrink/expand) and martial arts; it certainly adds a bit to hand-to-hand combat when you have more hands. He does prefer to avoid fights, and frequently ends up paired with Tizak for any situations needing a moderately delicate touch.

Tariel is with the group primarily to find out more about himself, and to do whatever good he can along the way. This also works for Tizak, who always wants to know why this particular individual seems very dragon-like and yet not at all like most dragons. This is in contrast to one of the other party members…

Character Bios

On Tizak

While it might have made sense to start with Ashgar, it turns out that’s basically describing an idealized version of myself and that’s hard. So here, have a Kobold.

Tizak is a Dragonscaled Kobold, servant/envoy of the blue dragon Zydroxa, although that’s not exactly a well-known piece of information. As he’s my character in a currently-running Pathfinder game, what he gets up to in his original setting is yet to be fully determined. Deeds so far include helping to found a settlement and working very hard to improve the opinion of kobolds and dragonkin among the other races.

In my setting, he’s the leader of an adventuring party called the Order of the Silver Scale. It is in this capacity that he’s gathered up a few other potentially notable individuals (one of whom might be a bear) and really, is still working on that whole “opinion of kobolds” thing. It’s a little pretentious that his party is named indirectly after a well-known dragon, but when the kobold is the one with the third-strongest claim to dragonkind, it fits pretty well. The “summoner” part of his abilities is also de-emphasized a bit here.

Images courtesy of Ammo

Ultimately Tizak is the go-getter of the group, the first to jump into danger. He’s not averse to making plans, but does not always wait to consider consequences before starting on a course of action. He’s also an actor and a musician, and enjoys exercising these skills to make money and also demonstrate that kobolds are good for more than just making traps.

Other Media

On Video Editing

If you missed it, an earworm was inflicted on the Aggrochat crew a little while ago and refuses to go away. The song in question is a remix of Boney M.’s Rasputin, as seen in the following video:

https://youtu.be/YgGzAKP_HuM

Beyond being super catchy, this is actually a surprising feat of video editing The original song has nothing to do with Rasputin, or Russia, or funk. Love the Way You Move is about ~136 BPM and the music video for it is 3:40 long. The remixed song is closer to 150 BPM, and is also 3:40. But the music video has a lot of parts that match the beat, so just playing one over the other wouldn’t look very good.

As a result, the final version does quite a bit of audio and video editing. The most notable part is that any beat-matched sections are sped up to match the new tempo. This includes the working with tools near the beginning and all dance sequences (including the flashing siren near the end). The tradeoff for this is that most parts that didn’t need to match the beat were slowed down. This means the introduction, most of the middle section, and Putin’s arrival. In order to make this work, a little bit of audio editing was also necessary. Love the Way You Move has a 16-bar chorus, the chorus of Rasputin is only 8 bars. In order to make the end section fit, an extra repetition was added in.

I just thought this was interesting to note.

Other Media

On Knowledge vs. Experience

1 Comment

Blaugust Post #3

For a while now, Tam and Kodra have been talking on the podcast and otherwise about Sword Art Online, an anime which at this point is actually 3 years old. Yesterday I decided that maybe I should become more familiar with it, and watched the first 15 episodes. Prior to this, I was familiar with the premise and the two main characters. I’ll avoid specific spoilers in this post, but some basic plot info follows. If that’s too much for you, tomorrow’s post is likely to be about something else.

SAO_logo

All Fun and Games

Sword Art Online (SAO from here on out) is an anime about an MMO. Its central conceit is that the players are all trapped in the game, and if they die in the game they die for real. SAO takes this premise seriously, because there’s not point in making such a threat if no one actually dies. This much I knew before Tam and Kodra even started talking about it. I learned prior to watching it that it does focus more on relationships than I originally thought, and it’s not really an “action” show. I figured that this would tell me what to expect.

sword-art-online

…

I was not prepared. SAO knows how to deliver the emotional punches really hard. The first arc of SAO is probably a good 8 sads out of 10, and the lead-in to the second arc doesn’t make it look like it’ll be happy either (although Episode 15 also inspires other feelings). It starts early, as one of the most memorable moments is in episode 3. It doesn’t stop there, but that’s really the first hint that not everything is going to be okay. Even knowing that bad things were likely to happen, it hit me pretty hard.

I will say that SAO got me very interested in its world and characters, and I see why certain other people have been going on about it. I did pick up the game (It’s pretty cheap at $20), so you may hear about that in a little while.