Milestones, Turning Points, and Activity Updates – December 2021 + 2021 in Review

Again, it’s the season of the birth of the Bread of Life in some feeding trough in a cave in a town called “House of Bread.” In other words, Merry Christmas, my fellow filthy animals, and may we also have a Happy New Year.

And speaking of happy years, I’m sure 2021’s the happiest year I’ve had so far, funnily enough. I mean, yeah, there’s still the pandemic, but it’s another year of more saved money thanks to not having to commute such long distances to and from my day job’s office, a development that gave me the chance to have stuff like better-produced music uploads (including one that got some freaking awesome recognition) and an overconfident attempt at a VTuber project (which updated twice for the last time this month) In short, I’ve been so lucky, I further think that I’m an illegal existence. But we all love breaking the rules as long as it’s convenient to us, right?

And yeah, I think I’ve gained a bit more of an edge during 2021, or maybe I just bothered to be more accepting of the gigantic load of grit within me. Maybe it’s the latter, considering a certain Recommendation Yell of an album I once roasted like the bigoted dumbass I usually am, but hey, I might be faking this apology like any other public figure. Besides, I’m gonna need to have better humility in obscurity, or else I can’t handle being humble in popularity, so why not get me cancelled as soon as possible?

Seriously, I thrive on little achievements which I exaggerate to my senses, such as managing to cover with my recently revived stupid Japanese-English comprehension all three tracks of ||:Caesura of Despair, hololive English VSinger IRyS’s first EP: “Caesura of Despair,” “diorama,” and “HERE COMES HOPE.” That, and extreme thirst moments like my overdramatic Calli-targeted remix of Mikito-P’s “I Shared a Kiss with Hatsune Miku” and my detrimentally wilder remix of Calli’s “guh.” And unfortunately for you, more of these are coming next year…in the first half at least…hopefully.

Now, a change of topic to numb(?) some of the pain you just got: I still managed to write stories this year, but mostly fanfics with pretty ladies, and I think my favorites among those are some angsty Honkai Impact 3 yuri and a friendship fanfic featuring my favorite character in Ao-chan Can’t Study! As for my other favorite writings I wrote this year, emphasizing my bias for Ao-chan Can’t Study! is my Recommendation Yell for it. And I think I should emphasize my wack sense of marriage as well here. Fortunately for you, I don’t know if I’d be able to write more fiction, whether original or fan, next year. But don’t be too happy about that, okay? I seem to have quite the knack for nasty surprises, and I don’t like you people being stupid about people like me, so yeah, be careful~

Is there anything else I should mention? Well, there are three YouTube playlists: one for my stupid memes, one for my more overt overbearing seriousness, one for videos by more talented and skilled folks simping for me, and one for some videos led by folks who bothered to let me work with them for some reason.

And I guess that’s it for my blog posts this year. I’d now like to get back to my villainous scheming, and may God Almighty keep on helping us fools into becoming actually sensible folks.

I’m So Done with Lisa the Tearer

I’m So Done with Lisa the Tearer

some commentary on Lisa the Tearer by his manager, The Overlord Bear/Jem De Ocampo

He’s gonna graduate next month.

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Previous Part: “Lisa the Tearer is on a Whole New Level of Scary Right Now”

First Part: “Introducing Lisa the Tearer”

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get up, harebrain – A TOB Remix of Calliope Mori’s “guh”

On the road to learning and doing good self-deprecation, there is the struggle to differentiate it from bad self-deprecation, a.k.a. self-loathing. As appreciative as I am of a certain rapper going by the name Calliope Mori striving to go down that road well, stumbles are to be expected here and there, and “guh,” her crazy groovy and somewhat profound track dedicated to self-deprecation, ignited an urge within me to do a riskier take on its themes, because for one, I’m pretty sure that truer self-deprecation is likelier to put a status like she has right now as a hololive VTuber in danger. And I think it’s likelier that she won’t bother with this, let alone notice it, for a variety of good reasons, but there’s also me on another part of my quest to better figure out and deal with these complicated feelings I have for this woman, and getting this out here the best I can right now is my minimum goal for this production. Besides, I think I’ve also found other ways to get those other things I want. I mean, there are the other covers I’ve been and I’ll be making, for example.

And I gotta send big thanks and apologies to my collaborators here. First is Joshua Hartshorn, who enthusiastically and wonderfully remade the complicated instrumental originally produced by teniwoha. With that said, I’d also like to recommend his groovy Faceless Entertainers EP, and I hope he isn’t too bothered by the lyrics that are playing with fire. Then there’s Shigeru, who definitely had to go through my stupid bars over and over as he worked on the audio engineering for my choking vocals and all that again. And then there’s Juanny Rese, my younger sister who drew the museum piece of an illustration in the MV. I don’t think she’s in the rabbit hole (yet, probably), and I had this chance to have her draw for me basically because I bought her a Seventeen album (a mini album, to be more exact, I think?) she wanted. So yeah, again, to all my collaborators here, thank you very much, I’m very sorry for dragging you all into this bonkers production of mine, and if you have to deal with flak over this, then I hope you get way less flak than I would.

Also, yes, I did use Comic Sans on the music video for extra pain. I was also going to add some commentary on the top left part of the video, but I decided not to in the end because I considered it likely to turn into TMI…or TTMI, if you think my lyrics here are already too much for you to handle.

Still, along with the mp3, here’s the lyrics sheet. If you want to, you can use the sheet to help you cover this cover on top of having something for your reading convenience, but of course, you gotta remember to credit and link me if you’re gonna do that! If you don’t, well, for one, you’ll be taking the very punishing justice that must come to me, hahaha!

And hey, honestly, I’d love it if Calli considers me a worthy opponent of hers. But hey, what do you think? Whether or not you think I’m worthy, I think y’all can give me honest constructive feedback, and again, I’d like to ask for that.

IRyS – Caesura of Despair – TOB English Cover

So as I was prepping for this cover, the buzzG sound in the ||:Caesura of Despair EP’s title track got me thinking about “Shiwa” again and trying to sing it a bunch of times, with most of the attempts involving me breaking into tears in the middle of singing. This IRyS track doesn’t hit me as hard as that, but still, I can feel the emotions in buzzG’s songwriting and Coch’s arrangement, with IRyS’s vocals wonderfully amplifying them along with the song’s fantasy vibes (And the attaca version by Yuyoyuppe, who’s going by the DJ’TEKINA//SOMETHIG alias here, is no slouch either with its booming electronic sound).

And out of the three tracks of the ||:Caesura of Despair EP, I think this song is the easiest for me to sing, with “diorama” and “HERE COMES HOPE” following with increasing difficulty in that order, which now has me wondering if the production for the EP had such thoughts in mind while deciding the order of the tracklist and how to better present IRyS’s vocal abilities and character lore through that. As for working up the translyrics here, I guess I also made the tone a bit more active and, well, down-to-earth…which I also guess is pretty much a running thing in my English covers of the ||:Caesura of Despair EP tracks, and yes, I’ve covered all three of the EP’s tracks in English. If you want to check out the previous covers, then here’s a link to the one for “diorama,” and here’s a link to the one for “HERE COMES HOPE.”

Now, furthermore about this particular cover, I’m glad I asked Shigeru to cut the bass and boost the treble on my main vocal, and I’d also like to thank him very much for nailing those parts real well! As for the visuals, the official MV features just a short version of the track, so I had to produce an original MV. And I’d like to say that I feel very honored to have ArkFord as this cover’s illustrator! Like, y’all should see how beautifully he draws the ladies of hololive as well. So yeah, big thanks to him as well!

As for more about the fact that I’ve made English covers out of the whole ||:Caesura of Despair EP, I’d like to say that it was more fun than I expected, especially in terms of working up all those fantasy vibes along with the personal edges. There was some scuff, yeah, especially considering how these covers are among my more impulse productions, but I think I’ve been learning from that as well, though I also wish for more audience feedback to support that even further. And I’ve grown more of an appreciation for the soda-loving neph girl next door named IRyS, especially as a singer. I’d also like to reiterate my interest in hearing her sing full English originals, and I’d also like to note that while I’d love to write lyrics for at least one of those, I’ve come to realize that it would probably be harder for me to whip up lyrics from scratch than from what’s already there. Though I think I’d prefer writing original lyrics than translyrics, because while I like to think that there’s some improvement in my translation skills, I still don’t feel that confident in them, hahaha… X”D

With all that said, here’s the mp3, and here’s the lyrics sheet. Of course, please remember to credit and link me if you’re gonna use my stuff, and again, I’d like to ask for some honest constructive feedback!

Lisa the Tearer is on a Whole New Level of Scary Right Now

Lisa the Tearer is on a Whole New Level of Scary Right Now

some commentary on Lisa the Tearer by his manager, The Overlord Bear/Jem De Ocampo

I’m sorry, I pretended that this sort of stuff isn’t inevitable.

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Previous Part: “Another Day, Another Posing”

First Part: “Introducing Lisa the Tearer”

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