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[parodeity]

TELEPATHY | TEXT | VOICE | VIDEO | ACTION

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[splinten]

It's something to keep in mind if we can think up an option.

[An apple! Possibly a better apple than usual?

[parodeity]

There's not really a need.

[ it looks better than usual! of course, he can't do that at top speed midbattle, which will be his standard for "good", but dave gives no indication as to what he thinks about his whole thing, just glancing over at dirk for further instructions. ]

[splinten]

[He isn't sure how to answer that. Either of those. He suggested this but now he feels unsure and worried, like he is just making their tenuous relationship worse. Dave said he wanted to try to be friends; Dirk isn't sure he's even adequate at being an acquaintance.]

Usually, I just practice a thing until I can do it reliably. You could have a few more goes with the apple and then we could try it from another perspective.

[parodeity]

Like...move the apple to another angle and draw it like that?

[ but okay. he takes that as instructions to just keep drawing the same apple again and again, and accordingly keeps drawing. ]

[splinten]

Yeah, like with a cone. It's a circle from straight on bottomways, an ellipse if you cut it across the sides, a parabola from one side to the base, an isosceles triangle if you cut it from apex down to base at a right angle, and a right angle triangle if you divide that in half.

[He sketches one of these and also this.]

Likewise, lookin' at the apple from other angles nets you different shapes when you consider it from that two-dimensional perspective.

[parodeity]

[ he's interested in the explanation despite himself, and it makes sense in the sense that he does like math and it's slightly mathematic. ]

...Got it. [ however he's not relaxed enough to make a joke or ask a dumb question, so he just kind of keeps trying to draw the apples.

eventually he will need to learn to do this without looking, probably. god. currently he has to keep his eyes trained on the paper, careful of mistakes. ]

[splinten]

[Dirk pauses for a moment, then decides maybe Dave would do better if Dirk wasn't looking at him. So he turns back to his own paper and just starts picking random shapes and breaking down how they change from different angle. He already has the conic sections breakdown, so he does a cube and a cylinder for more variety.

Of course, Dirk focusing on a thing means he's probably going to start rapping under his breath again.

Less than a minute in, he can be heard muttering,]

Cone, sphere, shapes in a shake down,
Look over here and I'll give you the break down,
4D's runnin' length width breadth time,
1D's shunnin' three until it's a line,
Take 'em up in 3-space, it's infinite planes,
X, Y, Z right angular frames,
Spin a shape how you like then you can pin it,
A prism's just a prison if you trap yourself in it,
We're expecting projecting from three onto two,
Fractions of abstractions show you what to do—

[Honestly he's just going to keep rapping]

[parodeity]

[ dave stops drawing. he looks up. ]

[splinten]

[Dirk freezes in the middle of rhyming 'quadrangle' with 'star spangle' and stares at Dave blankly behind his shades.]

Habit. Sorry. I can not.

[parodeity]

It's fine, I just... [ wasn't expecting it. ] Still used to bein' the only person who does that.

[ not that he has, around dirk. not that he will for probably a fairly long time, because he's not relaxed enough to start up his muttering.

he starts drawing again. ]

[splinten]

[Dirk almost asks to rap with Dave, then hesitates and looks back down.]

So you don't mind if I do it.

[Just getting that confirmed.]

[parodeity]

It's fine.

[ no offer made to rap with him, and dave continues his careful apples, one after the other. as he completes them, they come to life, though it's slow going as he makes himself go through the motions again and again and again. ]

[splinten]

[It feels wrong, somehow, setting him ill at ease. He watches Dave a moment longer, unsure how to approach it. Ordinarily, he has no problems giving positive or negative feedback to his friends. This strikes him as different.]

The imitation is really solid. The only issue here is that going through the motions over and over won't help you find the shapes in other things. I'm thinkin' that it'l be better if we went back to the start and talked about how shapes can be broken down and projected onto a 2D plane.

[parodeity]

It would definitely help me do apples on demand.

[ which. there are worse things he could do on demand, so? ]

But ok. Where's the start?

[ he stops drawing apples. he has not even touched any of the apples he's been drawing, but he can hand them out to people later, or leave them for the wild boar to find. ]

[splinten]

[He pushes his drawings over so Dave can see them better.]

I was thinking about it in terms of what you said about time and music. It got me to thinking about dimensions. [It's what was behind his rap.] Music is an experience that exists in time and in the sound. So maybe we could talk about how you work with it when you're mixin' things. Like, how you work with it when it isn't sequential sound vibrations, but is instead somethin' that you mess around with.

[parodeity]

Talk about it how? I just kinda go with what sounds right. [ slapdash as an explanation, but he isn't lying; dave works on instinct more than he does pure knowledge about 80% of the time.

he looks at the drawings as they're passed over, though, careful to examine them thoroughly. ]

[splinten]

Like, if you splice files and look at them on the monitor, or if you sample them and mix them based on hearin' and adjust to make it fit right, or whatever.

[parodeity]

More the second than the first, usually.

[splinten]

Okay. So if someone sang you somethin', could you sing the same notes back to me but out of order, or usin' repeats to mess with 'em? Just from hearin' them.

[parodeity]

Yes. [ he has to hold timelines in his mind's eye all the time, and if dirk asked him to repeat back everything he'd said to him so far today, dave could probably do it. he's too tense not to pay attention to the things bro says, even now. ] That's not really hard, though, is it?

[splinten]

[He is. Genuinely surprised?]

Dude, it's a serious skill. It's the kind of skill that musicians train desperately for and that some never nail. You probably have perfect pitch. [Like, without the ability to label it probably, although Dirk doesn't know that Dave had basically no formal education, but when it comes to analyzing frequency information, Dave obviously has the ability to remember and reproduce any given frequency.] Being able to remix sounds orally by perfectly reproducing the frequency in your vocalizations isn't a common skill.

[parodeity]

But you can do it?

[ he assumes. and really, it is easier than managing a million time loops at once, a one-man circus. it's easier than most of the things he's done in his life. the ability to copy bro as exactly as he was able saved him worse pains (maybe; he's never sure) even when he couldn't quite reach the top. ]

[splinten]

Not reliably. [He feels a little like a disappointment, but he also isn't willing to pretend he's better than he is on this. On anything anymore, really, but with Dave it seems worse.] I tried to learn it, but I never got it down solid.

[parodeity]

Oh. [ he has no idea what to say - he's not even sure why dirk asked. he feels like he has to explain or make excuses, though - ] I juggle timelines. It's probably a skill the game felt I had to be born with.

[splinten]

I'm not sure about that. It isn't even clear in academic research whether it's something that a person learns or is born with. You had to have practiced it to keep it as you aged.

[Dirk turns the apple over in his hand, thinking about it.]

It requires different faculties, but it's the same idea. Frequencies are heard over a continuous range, but you can accurately and consistently break them down into the unique notes. Time is in flow, but you can sort out the discrete moments and understand how to arrange them. You've never practiced that kind of breakdown with still shapes, but you have it in movin' ones based on how good you are in a strife. There's no doubt you have the capacity for this. We just have to work out what the best way into it is.

What if I showed you the apple from an angle, and you broke it down into the geometric shapes you could see there? Not put together, just spread out on the page.