Catching up on NOISZ STARLIVHT!

Wowie... it's already been a year since the launch of NOISZ STΔRLIVHT—the rhythm game x visual novel x bullet hell mobile game that I have the honor of singing for as Asuka of idol group SUNRaiSE. ☀️

To celebrate, both groups SUNRaiSE and STΔRLIVHT came together for a collab track called "Clash of Twilight!" It's a cool song filled with cryptic lyrics referring to the game's story, which btw really keeps me on my toes and after every chapter I just want to find out more. The devs have poured a lot of passion into this fantastic game. Also love that all of the vocalists, plus Malcolm who's behind the videos, are all from the youtaite community. ❤️

STΔRLIVHT: Grace (k*chan) / Sera (Angela) / Sumire (KT) / Hakuno (Leon)

SUNRaiSE: Shion (Niko Vargas) / Asuka (Eva) / Hikari (Phoebe)

We're actually running a Kickstarter right now where you can buy some merch including a CD of the entire game's soundtrack! It's super freaking cool how many members of the youtaite community have participated in it—beyond the idol group cast there's also chiisana, fome, and Miyolophone in the song credits! We're all on an album together!!! Too cool!!

Clash of Twilight (Lyric Video) / STΔRLIVHT vs. SUNRaiSE 
(prod. Shirobon & MegaSphere)

---

SUNRaiSE has two songs which you can check out below!!
Both are bright, hype-inducing, uplifting songs! The notes in "Parhelion" were crazy high to sing haha. To be fully honest I'm not satisfied at all with how I characterized Asuka's singing voice and wish it were more unique. ;;

Rise Above (Music Video) / Soleily ft. SUNRaiSE

Parhelion (feat. SUNRaiSE) / Reku Mochizuki

I actually uploaded a playthrough/reaction video of the first time I played Rise Above in the game... 😳 Been meaning to film again while playing Parhelion, combine the two parts, and upload onto my vlog youtube channel, but...yeah my backlog of things to do is huge lol...

---

NOISZ STΔRLIVHT Release Celebration Live

Finally, here's the official VOD of our livestream that we did one year ago for the launch of the game! I wrote about it in-depth in this post, but the entire idol cast went on stream as vtuber models of our characters—a huge challenge for me to conquer due to my stage fright and throat issues. But it was fun. And we did it. We did that!

This VOD was also edited by me! I added the subtitles and song names and tried to smooth out some of the technical issues we had. After the stream I just couldn't bring myself to listen to what I'd sounded like (EMBARRASSING!!!) so you can bet... much screaming and cringing happened while editing this .....

PS: Wait omg, I can start an "original music" tag for this post... Still going to tag it as a collab cover though even if that's inaccurate heh.

2023 New Year's Resolutions

Hello!! Welcome again to the new year! Ignore that it's February!!

For a long time it's been my personal tradition to conjure up with 100 "New Year's Resolutions" ranging from serious goals, things I'd like to work on, faraway ambitions, to silly castaway thoughts—then do a full retrospect on how I fared. It's interesting looking back at my different priorities each year and what I'm most proud of accomplishing!

Not much to review this time since I decided to skip resolutions at the beginning of 2022:

"There's too much uncertainty about whether/when my throat will recover and the other health things preventing me from working on projects or my skills much—I've been set back so much that I don't want to think too hard about distant goals. This year I really just need to take care of myself by staying disciplined and extremely careful about my lifestyle, appreciate the small things in life, and keep my pessimism in check believe that everything will get better soon!"

I think 2022 for me could be called a "good year" in that nothing majorly bad happened, progress was made, challenges conquered, I grew as a person, created and nurtured a lot of great things, made some new friends, my loved ones are well, and I'm grateful for that. It was also a rather dark year that challenged my patience and was spent thinking a lot about my own health and mortality... This year had so many ailments one after another. Plus grasping at copium as my best friend moved to another country haha.

For the most part I succeeded in my goals of focusing on my health, discipline, making some recovery (albeit not enough), taking many hard looks at what's happening, the potential reasons behind them, how to improve things, what next steps could be made.

Sadly it was also a year of constantly compromising: all of my hobbies, things I enjoy, food, motivation, comfort, freedom, companionship, my time, energy, mental strength, one branch of health in exchange for another. Probably brings home the prize of The Most Frustrating Year I've lived thus far. 😂

Going into 2023, it seems it'll rather be a year of Exploring Solutions—my situation is no longer as uncertain and my goals are much more defined. I have a pretty good idea of what I need to do, which is promising! But unfortunately all serious things which probably will make for a dreary and boring post, sorry lmao.

We shall see if I make it to a hundred or give up early, here we go... ✌️

Bold for especially big ones for me this year.