Replay 💗

Oops I once again fell into that mentality of "I already have Twitter for light posts so I need something more substantial to write blogs;" "If I update my blog, I ought to address those heavier topics that have been on my mind;" which ends up uh..... gatekeeping myself from my own blog? lololol Something the other day reminded me that I still greatly cherish my blog—that I'd like to continue keeping it for a long time and that it can absolutely be my comfy space to post random, unimportant, lighthearted shit and rambles and whatever :D

Years ago I used to often post about my celebrity crushes so I've come here to say!!!!

Help, I fell in love with two people this week. o<-<

First is the person that inspired this post! Voice actor & singer Irino Miyu is someone I've admired ever since Syaoran from Tsubasa Chronicle became my favorite anime character when I was in middle school—and I highly regret not closely following his career all these years.....

During Anime Expo in 2017, I got to attend his panel and had glowing things to say about him ;;;U;;; Though a confession: somehow I completely forgot I went and thought I imagined it lmao.... I just find it hard to believe that I was able to get into the panel—how long did I line up for?! I actually saw Irino Miyu himself in person!? And did I really go by myself ? ! ? Chiisa figured out the reason for this was because she was in Japan that year and not at AX which explains soooo much--- (also I hella laughed at this)

In catching up with Irino Miyu I discovered a few things that made my heart very happy . . .

First of all is that he still updates his blog..!! T__T 💕💕💕 The one that he's had since 2009!! I really admire when people stick to things for a long time, even if slowly but steadily. This alone has revitalized me and sealed this man into my good favor.

Secondly is that he's still been releasing music!! He's so damn talented—I did the math and it blows my minddddd that he was only 17 years old when he voiced Syaoran and not only was he an incredible seiyuu but also already a great singer even back then 😭💚 In 2020, he put out a full-length album titled "Life is..." that he says he poured his entire heart into and even wrote lyrics for a few songs! I love love love that he's still passionate about creating his art and music and everything he does feels so personal.

Crossfade for 「Life is...」

(the entire album can be listened to here!)

My favorite tracks in this album are probably "SKY" and "Alive" which are midtempo songs that touch your heart and tell you that you're not alone—and also "確かにそうだ" which is the energetic feel-good title track!

I think though my personal favorite of his music so far might be his "DARE TO DREAM" 2016 full-length album which is almost entirely upbeat with a lot of pop-rock and super enjoyable to listen to! This review describes its perfection perfectly. ✨

For a heartwrenching ballad, there's "誰からも愛されるあなたのように" from 2019 mini-album "Live Your Dream." It's sung beautifully and the bittersweet meaning stirs my heart. T__T Miyu's falsetto and vibrato are so pretty here....

🎵🎶

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The other person I fell for this past week was the goddess Miyeon from girl group (G)I-DLE. 🥺💗 Her appearance in BTOB's amazing (& hilarious) performance of "Blue Moon" on Kingdom was gorgeous and I was curious about her chemistry with SF9's Hwiyoung in their web-drama REPLAY so started casually watching it.... and it was a cute and enjoyable little show! Short, sweet, and fun without dragging out the frustrating aspects ;u; Expectations were low because web-dramas do tend to be low budget and campy but it certainly exceeded them—I was pretty impressed by the cast's chemistry and acting, especially considering most of them are newbies.

Since I love K/DA and casually like (G)I-dle, I was always aware that Miyeon was pretty and had a nice voice but now after spending a series with her . . . . . see, it almost always feels rather unrealistic in dramas when all the characters act like a certain character is the center of the universe and they're just so outstandingly stunning and irresistibly charming that they're fought over and everyone in class/on the street stops to look at them and flowers appear when they smile 🌸. . . . . . . .

But with Miyeon, I believe it. What a face. What a nose.

Seriously, I've never seen anything like her nose before and apparently it can't even be achieved through plastic surgery T__T This girl was born to be a celebrity. All of her features are so pretty and I adore her dimples too.

But .. but no, she doesn't stop at just being visually astounding and having a great personality and sense of humor... She took on a new challenge of acting and is doing a wonderful job at it..... AND SHE'S THE MAIN VOCAL OF HER GROUP AAAAAA. SUCH GOALS.

Her OST "Dreaming About You" for the web-drama is so pretty TT I love how sweet & angelic her voice is here... Her timbre has such a nice texture and she emotes with her voice flawlessly. It's perfect.

And to flex on her versatility, there's her appearance on King of Masked Singer where she sings with a much darker and richer tone which is soooo cool... How is she real ??? And of course she's the perfect Ahri in K/DA!! Goals. Goals goals goals goals

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SPEAKING OF K/DA, I've still been practicing the dance for "The Baddest" since last summer and I'm currently working on becoming more fit (I fell so out of shape and health orz) and would like to try filming some short dance covers soon !!

Actually as of this week I'm currently debating whether I want to attempt doing the dance while singing & rapping the song live too 😳 or just purely focus on getting the dance right since it's not like that's a strong point of mine. The former will take a lot more practice and time probably... But the fact that I can consider it is kind of amazing?! When I first began learning the song, my initial intention was to practice singing while dancing but because it was such a struggle I dropped the singing—and now I tried it and I think I can hold up better than before; I was pleasantly shocked...... idk!!!

poopy birbs

this happened the other day 🦜🦜 pic.twitter.com/JOJ61AFtPb

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) May 20, 2021

[youtube]

To add more to the story, this actually happened on the day of Chiisana's birthday 😂..... It's why she mentions a "bird doodoo fiasco" in her tweet!

The birds appeared in my room while the mochi cake was baking and my mom (who helped me make it ^^) had to take it out of the oven and pack it up for me because I was like AAAA I HAVE TO WATCH TO TAKE NOTE OF ALL THE PLACES THEY MIGHT POOP AT. And yes I'm still cleaning it....

Twenty-eight

Posting a little late because I've been busy but I'm here with my yearly birthday post!! I turned 28 on May 2nd ^^ It certainly feels strange to have hit this age where you can now say I'm nearing 30 years old, but I think I've been mentally preparing myself for it and also able to embrace that............it doesn't mean anything. LOL

I've been "an adult" for long enough now that I'm okay with the responsibilities that come with that status—but also now I know that there are a lot of "requirements" that I don't need to check off in order to feel worthy of my stage in life. I'm always growing but I'm still perfectly incompetent at a lot of life skills and still have little interest in things larger than me! In the end it doesn't signify much. We're just all here on this planet to do what we can, and I just want to take care of myself and others.

Something that was significant to me about being 27 over the past year was that it was when I finally felt somewhat comfortable/more confident with presenting myself in varying styles, the biggest challenge being cute ones—and I'm really proud about this! It was liberating to be able to tell myself, "No you're not too old or too awkward to wear twintails; that's a dumb prejudice you've been having all this time. As long as you like wearing them then you're allowed to wear them until whatever age you want without judgment! It's okay to want to dress in a cute style! It's okay for people to perceive you as different things at different times!" ⭐️

This is something I've been wanting to break through since I was a teenager—when I already liked cute and feminine things but didn't feel that it was right for me to be that, because I was so tall and awkward and such a wallflower. And my parents would even often relate femininity with weakness; they'd tell me that I should dress more boyishly or plainly, act 'tough,' but don't stand out, so that nobody would want to target me when walking home from school by myself.. Sure, it's kind of a legitimate safety concern (freaking sad) but.... man it took more than a decade til I started being able to unlearn it.

Oh and one other thing that was special about 27!! Last summer I read Persuasion (1817) by my favorite author Jane Austen and the protagonist Anne is also 27 years old!! It was sooo refreshing to have a female young adult character on the older end—past the age that is typically romanticized for youth but before the mature beauty of the 30's. I loved how Anne is incredibly sweet and competent and takes wonderful care of others—it's why people can trust her but also end up taking advantage of her—and the story is about how she sheds her wallflower-ness to bloom again at the age of 27. And a second chance between her and her almost-fiancé-turned-stranger from years before! It's really a lovely story.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to finding out what will be special about 28. :3

I'M REALLY REALLY PROUD I ACTUALLY TOOK MY YEARLY "Birthday Girl" SHIRT PHOTO EARLY THIS TIME...??? Compared to past years when I didn't get it done til July.... November... A few days ago I did my hair, makeup, and nails to shoot a lipsync video for a collab so I took the chance to do this too!

It was my first time ever doing this little curl thing on my hair like this and I'm a fan of it. ✨ With a lot more practice, this may end up becoming my signature this year hahaha. I also ordered some midi/maxi skirts that are on the way, since I've been wanting to try wearing long skirts more; my fingers are crossed for them to be pretty and comfy!

Aa,,, this is the 14th year in a row that I've taken this mirror photo and... this is also the first time I felt brave enough to compile all of them into a collage. 💀 Or well, I had enough courage to do it and I'm happy that I've grown but still dying of embarrassment LOLOLOL byeeee--

Adventure Day! 🌱🍽 Photo Blog

Hello!! I went on an adventure today ☀️☀️ and want to re-live the full nostalgic experience of an adventure by blogging about it aaa

I'd like to write more about it later but basically for the past month I've been doing what I can to pull myself out of the lowest point of burnout I'd ever been through, and this week I finally, finally cleared my urgent work projects and felt comfortable taking time off from my job! It's my first time taking a proper break since September 2019 when I took a trip to Vancouver.....because even over the holidays I was always busy with big projects......and we're about to start another huge project in May.....so yeah...... I really fucking needed this.

My heart is so full. I wanted to go on an adventure for once—and not be holed up in my room anymore, spend time with a friend(s), be free from the shackles of computer monitors & eye strain headaches, emulate the excitement of travel without safety risks, and have so much fun that there was no room for me to worry about work or feel guilty about productivity—so badly... and we pretty much fulfilled all of that in one day and more. 💗 (tho i'll confess i did read and replied to one email which my boss chided me for lolololol ah i have a long way to go)

The day was spent with my friend Myst who—like myself—has had basically no risk of COVID exposure in over a week and we both live with our parents who are already vaccinated (+ we have a bit of immunity from our first doses), so we felt comfortable carpooling together and not socially distancing between us which was greatly refreshing. ;v;

For our adventure day we considered, let's see.... hiking (both of us: "nah"), a beachside city, or San Francisco... Both of the latter are about an hour's drive away and places we don't frequent but ultimately SF came out on top for the sole reason that it would have better food HAHAHAHAHA. And we happily continued with our philosophy of following our stomachs for the entire day! Literally my purpose in life to be honest!!!!!

And as we were driving home, we realized just how shocking it was the amount of experiences we had for a day with little plans... We had a lot of fun. :> I'd like to make myself remember that I was able to have a day full of so much enjoyment, tasty food, and good fortune and encounters—even as we're in a pandemic and after such a long period of. I don't even know how to describe it. Stress? Drought? Isolation? Bad vibes? Feeling unfulfilled? All of the above.

quarantine diary page 6

<< page 5

[ written from my phone so I have no idea what the formatting will be like oops! ]

Aaa I can now update this with really spectacular news—I was able to receive the first dose of a vaccine today!!

Here's me with the ice cream I treated myself to afterwards ehehe it's "spiced butterbeer" (a vague descriptor for cinnamon butterscotch) on a mochi egg puff waffle 🍦 T'was tasty but lord I forget how large the portions are; it's practically the size of my head lolol.

I really feel extremely privileged to be able to start my vaccination process so early. The rollout in many parts of the US has been strikingly impressive but the inequity that most other countries are facing in being unable to obtain vaccines is terrible—it's shocking to compare TT What I have right here is straight up privilege...

Originally we were hearing that vaccines would be available for everyone 16+ in California starting in May, which already came as jolting news to me... Then it was announced April 15th which is insane! My expectation was that I'd be unable to book anything until after the first mad rush was over, but suddenly (and quietly) my county opened their eligibility starting the 13th and a coworker luckily sent us links to a ton of open appointments so that's how I was able to get in much, much earlier than I expected..!!

And if that's not lucky enough, there's apparently an auditorium I've never heard of before that's only a couple miles down the road from where I live, that became a vaccination site?! I arrived expecting to wait in line for an hour like my coworker did a few days ago but there was no line..... It took a few minutes to fill out paperwork and then I waited another few minutes before a station was ready for me, then the deed was done and I was sent to a large room full of socially distanced chairs to be "observed" for 15 minutes lest I have an allergic reaction. Then I yeeted to get ice cream. So easy!!!!

Something I didn't expect to so greatly appreciate there was the energy—it was BANGIN'. The place was well-staffed and those near the entrance/exit would clap and cheer as if we were all heroes on an epic journey XD Everyone's spirit was high and since my appointment was near the end of their opening hours I often heard staff members asking each other how they were doing, offering support, and being like, "We got 3000 signed up for tomorrow, let's do this!!" Environment 10/10. Overall a great experience!

Admittedly my health hasn't been great recently (I've been trying to force myself to walk and exercise more to get back to better condition!) so I've honestly been nervous about how much the side effects will very likely wreak havoc on my rather already weak body. So far I'd say my arm is killing me but my left arm/shoulder have been killing me for months already so I'm expertly ignoring it. 😎 Also felt the sensation of menstrual cramps which is apparently a symptom that's little talked of.

Tomorrow is where the symptoms really unleash themselves so I have every expectation of idling away in bed with an irritating fever; hopefully it'll be somewhat painless but we'll see!!! 🤞 Take care!!

april fools ✨

thank you for 1.6k followers! :)

as promised, here's the first sneak peek at my #VTuber model 👀✨ pic.twitter.com/KCQ4z8XOGp

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) April 2, 2021

Tag Me (@Me) #SingingMarch

【CHAOS x DREAM】 Tag Me (@Me) by Weeekly

WHAT A DREAM COLLABBBBB 👏 

Razzy organized this as a birthday chorus for Ryan—who is my longtime friend and fellow member of Gemini—and it includes the vocalists of DREAM✦SCAPE (aka the three girls of Gemini plus Aerin!) and vocalists from 「CHAOS」 which is an awesome, powerful group that I look up to. They were the winning group of FCCB back in 2015!

The result is just...pure.....girlgroup vocal supremacy.... It sounds so good.... D✦S and CHAOS girls have a TON of vocal chemistry in our own groups respectively—and when you put us together it's this amazing balance of sweet, powerful, sassy, and energetic voices. 💖🔥 And made all the better by THIS FABULOUS MIX..!!! So impressed with Naya's work! I want to know all the secrets behind being able to produce a pop cover that sounds this polished and professional.

And how fun is the video...!! It's such a ride and I'll never get over how clever it is to emulate the line distribution videos that Ryan enjoys watching. Oh and we did a secret, last-minute premiere to watch it with Ryan for the first time and that wAS WILD. I had to be the one to be like, "hey are you online rn!! oh tHANK GOD.. can you help me with something? i need you to help check this link for me" ☠️☠️☠️☠️☠️ while sweating bullets hahahaha;;; We had a lot of the singers gathered already and the premiere had to be set for a specific time so....if Ryan was not available at that exact time, we would've had to reschedule it but also couldn't reveal it to him too far in advance. Anyway it all worked out perfectly for a delightful surprise. :>

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A fun trend happening this month is #SingingMarch which is a set of daily prompts created by @KerriSama. Lots of my friends have been participating! Including my good friend KT who, for day 6's "Duet" theme, took the opportunity to add to the recording of "Koi wa Nandarou" that I did last year YEEESSSSSSSSSS. Both of us were in the Mermaid Melody cover scene back in 2007 but somehow never overlapped until years later after that culture submerged—ha, get it.

Impromtu duettttt 🥺 KT's lovely singing puts mine to shame (cringing) but I'm sooo happy for both the existence of this and to see any resurgence of Mermaid Melody hehehe

day 6 of #singingmarch - duet!!!

eva sent me this gem a few days ago so i shamelessly sang over it (:
(she sounds like a real idol tho go sing with her too)

koi wa nandarou from mermaid melody!! https://t.co/pYxRXbzlO4 pic.twitter.com/zZBLmFojef

— KT (@katieheehee) March 7, 2021

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As for me, I've only participated in #SingingMarch once so far—it was maybe 2 or 3 AM one night when I'd already been irresponsibly staying up late and decided to indulge in my spontaneous idea of recording a certain song for the "From before the 2000's" prompt, furthering my irresponsibility. (So irresponsible.)

The song choice I don't believe anyone on this planet could have predicted hehehe it's "Desperado" by The Eagles (1973) with the arrangement that Pristin's Sungyeon sang on the show Girl Spirit and dedicated to her grandmother! I loveeee her rendition to bits and always sing along to it in the car by myself. Typically I don't care much for oldies or country so this is an exceptional sort of outlier. I really enjoyed all the emotions I was able to pour into it!

🎤 [ TWEET / GDRIVE ] 🎤

waterpixieVA (but not actually)

NO I DON't dare smear the name of actual VA's by claiming to be one--- dksjkfj

Fun fact: when my first youtube account 'waterpixie' was suspended and I came back as 'waterpixieva,' there was a bit of confusion about whether it was meant to indicate that I was going into voice acting but nope it's just my name. 😅

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I've been having a lot of fun doing a couple of spontaneous small projects in between my larger ones now that I have a break from urgent matters... like, a lot of fun. I always struggle with motivation so I think I really am the happiest when I have these little rare moments filled with sparks of inspiration ✨—and it's so gratifying to get to jump right in and see that passion through. Plus they're less pressure and actually get done quickly so I can move on before it has the opportunity to burn me out LOLOL

In January, I did a Genshin fandub clip with myself as Ganyu and my wonderful, precious friends Mimi as Paimon and Chiisana as Lumine—and I wrote a bit about what influenced me to gather the courage to record it, how unconfident I was about the whole thing, how I almost scrapped it...

To be frank I've always hated my speaking and while I like making vlogs I can never bear to rewatch them with sound on hahaha. I especially loathe my accent and my muddled, slurred way of enunciation. Admittedly it's been on my mind more lately as I watch my friends dive into the world of streaming which I dare not touch. But I've been finding that when I "voice act" ... it's like I can turn on a switch and make my timbre more bearable and hone in on improving my enunciation—and also redo it over and over and edit as I see fit. Then I don't hate my speaking as much! And recently after seeing how Khoi Dao has embraced his accent, it's made me feel like maybe it's not such an evil!!

Posting that clip, talking with my friends, and receiving an unexpectedly insane amount of compliments??????????? @___@ really gave me a huge confident boost.... Might I even say it was life-changing HAHAHA. Now I have a new little hobby that I enjoy doing and am working at improving in ;u; And you know what: I didn't realize until this very moment that it makes sense given that my favorite thing about singing is expressing emotions so this isn't too far off!

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A week ago after clearing some obligations, I treated myself to trying out part of Ganyu's character teaser which I've really liked since it came out 🥰 Interestingly, all of Ganyu's four VA's in different languages had varying approaches to the joke at the end but I was especially stirred by the Japanese version with Ueda Reina—I just adore how she goes from pensive [bait] to playful while being soft and sweet and a little awkward!

(I also attempted the Paimon line—which btw is supposed to be "no way!"—though I can't quite yet produce a suitable Paimon timbre heheh)

i love Ganyu's character teaser so another quick VA attempt ❄🌙

(may or may not have improvised paimon's line heh)

would u,,,, accompany me/// pic.twitter.com/Wk7z4uSGMN

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) February 21, 2021

[YT mirror]

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And then two days ago Genshin released the official first look at Hu Tao and IMMEDIATELY I WAS TAKEN IN BY HER ENGLISH VOICE.... Her voices in all languages are delightful !! and tHE CHEEKY DARK HUMOR......... Homegurl is the director of a funeral parlor joking about the death rate of adventurers and offering us discounts 💀

I thought I'd just try it out because there's a lot of room to play with inflections and then before I knew it, I was seriously working at it and having a lot of fun..! It was much, much harder than the Ganyu clips ahah. Also my past two attempts left a lot of regrets over my pronunciation which I've been trying to work on so I'm much more pleased with how I did here. Kinda proud! I do think I'm missing something in the timbre to suit Hu Tao but overall surprised myself by exceeding my own expectations!!! ⭐️⭐️

apparently i'm a genshin fandub acct now- 👻

i tried out hu tao's lines!! i love her voice in every language so far omg she's so fun pic.twitter.com/fIbl2V6c7m

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) February 27, 2021

[YT mirror]

(the gremlin snickering isn't part of the original script; it just kinda came out... hurhurhrurhur)

yeah, I'm a Born Hater

Epik High's new album inspired me to dig up my rendition of "Born Hater" that i never posted.

i wrote and rapped this in 2014 when i was a film student angst'ing against pressure to change majors. anyway i work in video production now & it's going gr8 😊

warning cuss words !!

(yes it's just the same text copy and pasted from my tweet—just b/c I always feel like the embed is on the verge of breaking or in case my twt account ever goes down LOL)

Epik High's new album inspired me to dig up my rendition of "Born Hater" that i never posted.

i wrote and rapped this in 2014 when i was a film student angst'ing against pressure to change majors. anyway i work in video production now & it's going gr8 😊

warning cuss words !! pic.twitter.com/6wHYyr2mTW

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) January 21, 2021

[YT link]

Honestly surprised at myself for never posting this all these years... If I'm remembering correctly I think I wrote this before Epik High announced their Born Hater cover contest—and then aaalllll the cool rappers started posting their versions and I got intimidated HAHA. It's a bit cringy but I'm embracing it as part of my story. :3 Still would likely consider it better writing than what I can do now!

Lyrics:

Gemini [gals] Impact

SCREAMS this wasn't on the agenda aT ALL but ..... instead of sleeping at a responsible time last night I was spontaneously inspired to try voice acting. As Ganyu, the new ice archer chara that just came out in Genshin Impact! Lolol leading up to her release, I somehow had very little interest in her but the more I got to know her.... who am I kidding, she's an ice archer—I was never meant to stand a chance. 🥺 She's also kind and hardworking and wise and beautiful...

After playing her story quest, I fell in love with her Japanese seiyuu's soft, sweet voice so I thought it could be fun to try my own take of Ganyu in English ;v;.. It's surprising how different her Eng VA's approach is to her personality—it's more rigid, cold, and unapproachable. AND THEN AAA two of my closest friends mimi and chiisana agreed to record on a whim too! Honestly I have absolutely no aptitude for voice acting and almost scrapped this entirely before even asking them but mimi and chiisa are way, way too perfect for their parts so this feels extremely precious; I'm happy we did this. 😭 Thus the first yolo Gemini girls' fandub was born: 

quick little #GenshinImpact dub!
🧚🏻‍♀️⚜️❄️

paimon: @mimi_moiselle
lumine: @chiisanauta
ganyu: @waterpixieva pic.twitter.com/HRe6ZZXsce

— Eva ❖ CODEX // Gemini (@waterpixieva) January 15, 2021

[YT link]

Also would like to give credit to Albedo's Eng voice actor Khoi Dao for being the inspiration that gave me the courage to try this ;; English is his third language and now he speaks it so well...!! Here a link to him talking about his journey with trying to fix and then learning to accept his accent. So awe-inspiring. I wish him every success and also he's super funny; I am a fan of this dude now.

PS: Wowow I get to make a "voice acting" label!! Also tagging "mixing" because this surprisingly took a lot of complex audio mix work 😳 A whole lot of EQ, multiband compression, and even frequency spectrogram work.. but I'm really pleased with how the mix came out considering it was my first time! I learned so much about VA even from this very short clip ehe

2021 New Year's Resolutions

At the start of 2020, for some possibly prophetic reason I didn't do my usual 100 resolutions because I didn't feel ready to set new goals for myself; though I wrote out 40 as "mid-year resolutions" in July!

It feels all too soon to have a whole new, long list of [silly to serious] ambitions but I'm determined to do this right now. 💦

I'm sure we've all already heard all the reasons last year was rough for everyone, but I think on top of everything there's been this unspoken layer of restraint when it comes to speaking honestly about or processing our mental health and personal progress outside of productivity? There certainly have been times when I was experiencing darkness but didn't feel that I ought to talk about it especially publicly, or burden others when they had plenty of 2020 darkness to deal with already, or even write it out it in my private diary as an outlet—and I try to be fairly expressive about these topics so I can't even imagine the extent that others have suppressed themselves. ;; "People are drawn to shiny, nice things that help them forget about their troubles so they won't like me if I talk about negative subjects" is a thought that I imagine has probably crossed many people's minds. I've seen so many people act as strong as they can while silently burning themselves out emotionally.

And I'll also confess this from my perspective as a youtaite while watching the vtuber migration through the year—seeing so many of my peers being celebrated for being a character has made me both worry about their fatigue while having to suppress the flawed sides to their humanity, and also wonder if I ought to do the same. But I've kinda realized that that's not me. I've publicly documented all my shortcomings since I was a child hahaha.

So with this list I hope to be a bit more open than I was in 2020 and signify that I'm gonna do my best to take better care of myself, be introspective, and try to healthily progress towards improving my wellbeing and whatever little goals I have! ;^;)9 More than anything, I want to focus on breaking some stubborn mental habits and reprogram my outlook to be less grim & more forgiving towards myself!

Food for Thought: The Growth of Creation and Creating to Grow

I've been thinking lately that man.. with my insecurities, moderate skill levels, and lack of inclination towards pursuing a specialty, I'm really glad that I was born into the generation that I was—to have been part of the pioneers of the developing era of internet-based hobbies. Specifically in the area of creating covers and the audio/video production involved in it!

People argue that those starting out now have it easier due to the accessibility of resources and tutorials that didn't exist when we were first learning everything on our own—but let's be real, it's really rough to be a newbie posting any sort of content online in a landscape that's already fairly developed and where people are trained to look at numbers..... It takes thick skin that I don't know if I would have but I respect others for having. x__x

It was such a drastically different time when I was first posting covers back in middle school and high school... Admittedly I never look at analytics because 🤢 but I just peeked at the view history for one of my covers from 2010—and it had 8k views in its first year and 6k in its second year!! That's a LOT considering it's not a good cover by any means LOL. It's very telling of how much I benefited back then purely from the novelty of not many covers existing at the time (and especially those that were somewhat mixed; I did earn myself that advantage at least!).

So much has changed.. Back then, online "fandom" hubs were much smaller and also younger in average, standards were low because this stuff hadn't been done for very long yet, and DIY production wasn't nearly as accessible or an object of most people's interest. Nowadays the entire internet is pushing the unhealthy stigma that if you're not a content creator yourself, you're falling behind 💀

It makes sense that with so many things being created and available, everyone's expectations raised exponentially. Song covers, I think, were particularly hit hard by the loss of novelty—and I'm sure all youtaite will attest to this TT... It was a hot topic for a while and it led to many people sharing threads and playlists of covers they liked, which was awesome! Personally I especially enjoyed this playlist by AKA which is full of underrated gems 😭 I don't understand how so many of these talented, charming singers haven't gotten the attention they definitely deserve...

I often hear and even catch myself thinking, "I miss the times when we could quickly throw together covers and upload often and just enjoy the simplicity of it all!"

The counter: "Well you can just stop caring about others' opinions/views/engagement and just do it anyway!"

And I'd say that for others but ahh.... The problem for me then becomes that my own justification isn't about validation and more that it's hard for me to let go of my self-inflicted expectations of what I want to create 😔 Especially since I've been doing this for so long, I'm less forgiving on myself than towards those less experienced and I would hate for anyone or for myself to think, "After all this time this is the best you can do?" ;; (I know it was a compliment but I was a little embarrassed when someone said that I deserved more subs for someone who's been at it for this many years..) And for me in particular, I was able to skirt by without being necessarily a good singer when standards were lower—though it was always the case that I made up for it by doing a lot of other things like rapping, mixing, animating, filming/editing videos—but now I don't know if I can go back to just singing and uploading it because it wouldn't be anything interesting ksdjfkfdsj Whenever I upload, I keep thinking that I want to show something near the best that my abilities have to offer and I do lament that it takes me so long to finish anything, especially big projects that I really want to put my all into and end up intimidating myself with. There are some ambitious [scary] things I still want to do... This mindset of chasing novelty and personal perfection is admittedly unhealthy hh.

Still I'm in a position where even if I'm not polished at any of them, at least I've learned the elementary basics of many skills—though I actually do want to venture into more dancing and try drawing again!—and have built a great network/community that would probably support me. 😭

I imagine that for those just starting out in singing/mixing/animating/etc it can be easily discouraging, especially when comparing themselves to those who are more experienced, and especially especially if they're young and impressionable and only know the current competitive climate of content creation (the CCC of CC!! goodbye)—they may likely end up dropping their pursuits before even getting a chance to grow which takes time.

The internet is full of more than a decades' worth of my scrappy, cringy, developing, budding attempts at doing Stuff and I think without them I wouldn't have made it to where I am on my path now! :>

Yet I wonder what would've happened if I were my younger self in the present timeline just learning things and if I would've been discouraged by own utter mediocrity..? I guess if I do go forward with trying to learn digital art as a complete newbie, we'll find out what happens there (I am very intimidated by this lolol and don't look forward to finding out how shitty I am at it and reconfirming what I already know about how I have no aptitude for artistry or aesthetics and how much effort it'll take for me to improve and whether I can expend that effort ☠️) ..

There's one more thing that I feel like I unfortunately have an advantage in, which is having grown up without caring about views or subs/followers—before the internet started preying this hard on creators who now can't help but measure their success in numbers. Especially when I look over into the vtubing sphere, I think it's amazing that a whole new hobby grew up out of the ground and is blooming and now this whole new generation gets to grow and learn with it! They get to be surrounded by everyone else who is also scuffing which is a natural thing! But oh man I do be concerned seeing how much the numbers game is affecting a lot of people and how much they take it personally TT I hope they can see that there's more to it than numbers imply.

The bottom line I guess is just that everyone regardless of experience could use more encouragement + patience and the reminder that growth takes time. Recently people's kind words gave me the courage to look back at some of my covers and it made me think: you know what, even if I don't bring the greatest skill or quality, I'm really really glad that I've made everything that I've made and that I try all the things that I try 💙

Now Playing: "NEO SKY, NEO MAP!"

Not sure if I'm just biased from this invoking the ~feels~ that happen at the end of each Love Live! Nijigasaki ep but I've been really into this song; it feels magical 💓

In an alternate universe where I have a lot more free time I would probably be in the middle of organizing a collab cover of it ahaha. Though I have no idea who I'd cast myself as-- 💦

I finished watching the Nijigasaki anime which ended a few days ago!! I really loved most of it... I liked the story from playing the All Stars game and strangely enough I feel like the anime didn't exactly carry over some of the things I liked from the game? lol But instead they delved into each individual member's stories nicely I thought—and I appreciated the time they took to focus on each character which is perfect considering [MAYBE SPOILERS?] they're all solo idols rather than a group. If the girls weren't made relatable then I at least felt that they were made very likable ^^

Many of the girls had the theme of learning to be able to express themselves / be honest with themselves / let go of their self-restrictions and I found all those to be heartstring-tuggingly relatable. Ayumu (well her early arc) and Rina especially!

The last few episodes felt pretty rushed though; like the conflicts were fine ones but I wish they had more time to iron them out—the season needed to be longer.

ALSO THE MUSIC WAS SO GOOD. Niji has had so many good songs 🥺

Here a playlist I threw together of my fave tracks so far!

▶️ LL! Nijigasaki faves 🎶 ▶️

Unboxing Snow Miku 2019 Nendo ❄️

Oops I have a ton of projects I need to work on (and I will as I have more time off work through the holidays!) but instead ?? I yolo filmed and edited a quick unboxing vlog ???

❄️✨❄️✨

There's a stupidly specific chain of events that led to this happening LOL.

1) Fome surprised me by having a microphone boom arm delivered to my house—the exact item that I've been meaning to buy for myself but kept procrastinating on... Thx fome!!

2) I wanted to shoot a small vlog thing about the Before vs. After of my mic setup.

3) But first, needed to embellish my new desk setup a little! My workplace just bought me a sit-stand desk to have at home and it's CHANGED MY LIFE. ✨

4) I decided it'd be super cute to have the Snow Miku nendo accompany me on my desk......

5) It was also a gift from fome from last year so I thought I should show him my reaction and I felt my friends would probably be interested in seeing cute Hatsune Miku nendo as well!

6) Somehow I ended up just filming a whole unboxing video on my phone and quickly edited it and uploaded in the same evening HAHAHAHAHA ???

Here is my unexpected low effort vlog upload!!!

【Unboxing】 ❄️ Nendoroid Snow Miku 2019: Snow Princess Ver.

Light it up like 🧨

A good post! A very positive post!!

It's been a while since a collab I'm in has been released (since July ;o; Edit: oh wait I uploaded a collab in Oct but it's not the same thing as being in a collab not organized by me b/c that was more anxiety than excitement LOL) so it's been exciting to experience all the hype around an upload again this week!

This collab has just been a fun time through and through—the entire process—and it's been so refreshing and a source of hope especially in this year's depressing landscape of many singing projects being put on hold and lots of people leaving the community... 😭 It's really been a standout project for me! Miffy, our organizer and animator, led us with lots of passion that energized and inspired us and I appreciate her so much 💕 Through this collab I also met new friends whom I'm already very fond of—they're super sweet and fun to talk to and I feel so comfy in our Discord chat. ;U;

ALSO...... omfg I cannot believe this is my first official collab with Gino?!?! Honestly I said yes to this collab just because this song is a bop and I'm a big fan of Miffy and her work but I DIDN'T EXPECT THE BLESSING OF GETTING TO FINALLY COLLAB WITH MY GOOD FRIEND OF 9 YEARS...... Gino was Gemini's senpai and was one of the judges of DUBattle Royale back in 2011 (which we participated in and ultimately won ;u;) where we became friends on Skype, then met up in person after finding out that we + chiisana all lived in the Bay Area, and we've been IRL friends ever since! We've sung together at karaoke... and even worked on an official kpop singer's music video together...... Wild. 😭

If I have to be completely honest I'm personally not too pleased with how I sound on this song ;; but I LOVE LITERALLY EVERY OTHER ASPECT OF THIS VIDEO..... The visuals are pure serotonin and I just love how creative Miffy got with it—also the color palettes and the cute art by Anya and Hachee 👌👌 Gino, Alys, and Arcee's voices are all to die for... I am legit big fan..... I will listen to them all day..... And Ship did such a great job with the mix and the effects! I was quite impressed especially with how fast she worked (and by herself) yet delivering such quality.. Goals.....

Hope you enjoy our cover of the bop of the year!!

🧨🧨🧨🧨

BTS (방탄소년단) Dynamite【4 singers】

Vocals:

Alys ( https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzCG... )

Arcee ( https://www.youtube.com/user/arceersro )

Eva ( https://www.youtube.com/user/waterpix... )

Gino ( https://www.youtube.com/oksoitsgino )

Audio: Shipalltheish ( http://www.youtube.com/c/Shipalltheis... )

Art: Main art - Aynanyoot ( https://twitter.com/aynanyoot )

Staff art - 8KO ( https://twitter.com/hachee_ko )

Video: mifflue ( http://www.youtube.com/c/miffluemifuru )