Wow! I've been so stressed out lately. This article is being written on the 18th of February, 2022. I'm usually not this late, but like I said! Stress!
Wiki Wednesday #159 - MiNai's VESTA
This UTAU is exactly why I switched to the current format where I just write stories. The information given on the Wiki is "Height: 171cm; Weight: 57kg". That's it! When you download the bank, you learn "Gender: Female. Age: 17 years old. Date of birth: August 28."
Her design is so pretty, it's silly-pants how pretty it is.
Who is Vesta?
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| Official Art by Mitsuko Naito |
"Supposedly" fictional Chia here. I want to tell you about my native language.
There's no point in giving it a name beyond that. It's impossible to transcribe using Latin characters, and it's even more impossible to say with a human throat.
To begin, it's important to point out that without a painful process, my species cannot expel air through our mouths. Our mouth leads to our stomach, and our nose leads to our lungs. We get runny noses and congestion just like humans, though. If our noses are sufficiently blocked, a bone plate that separates the two pipes flips and we can breathe through our mouths. You must be on the edge of passing out for it to happen naturally, and it is painful. I'm emphasizing that it is painful to illustrate why we don't use our mouths to talk.
This evolutionary trait comes from the concept of choking on food and drinks being especially dangerous, apparently. Almost all vertebrates on my home world have this system, so it's not some adaptation to help us sapient beings.
Our vocal cords are extremely complex and also not even remotely vocal cords. While humans, and most Union members, have flaps of flesh that vibrate, my species has a collection of bone outcroppings and flesh that can interact to make popping and rattling noises that come out through our noses. It's extremely common for the bones to not grow properly. Surgery to fix it was too advanced and risky before The Union entered the picture. That meant that we had legions of people who had serious speech deficiencies.
When vocal cords are lumps of flesh, everyone is mostly on a level playing field. When they are finely tuned bones, subject to evolution throughout generations, accents and dialects can become a large issue.
I had a friend in school. Her mother was from the North and her father was from the West. While her mother could speak her father's dialect by swapping upper clicks for middle clicks, my friend's vocal cords were barely functional. You'd think that would make us blazingly racist and against intermarriage, but no. Those issues could happen to anyone just by the misfortune of developing improperly. My people are kind, loving people.
We had these tools we called Clickboxes. The Union has given us better tools thanks to my successful enlistment, but I always keep my old Clickbox in my hand when I go home. By pressing buttons and flipping switches, you can "speak" my language without any issues.
People who hear me explain my language always ask the same question: why not use sign language? Don't you already have sign language for the deaf?
We don't. My people may be good and kind, but we often don't think about better solutions. When a child is deaf, they are expected to hold onto their mother's throat to feel the pops and clicks as they happen. That's their insight into our world. They can go off into the world with an aide who will repeat everything for them to hear, or they can learn to read the popping and rattling in our throats by sight.
The Union isn't much different. Instead of helping our deaf develop a sign language, they handed out devices that mimicked the movement of their mother's necks.
I had a lovely throat before my surgery. I could make almost every sound, and I wasn't missing a single feature from my dialect. Luckily, people tell me that I have a lovely speaking voice now.
My sacrifice was worth it, though.
How is VESTA's voice?
VESTA has a one pitch CV bank. She has a lovely, soft voice with pretty good quality!
Where can I download VESTA?
You can download her from her UTAU Wiki page. She is very nice, but she is only CV. If you like CV banks, you definitely should try her out!
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