Month: February 2023

Milestones, Turning Points, and Activity Updates – February 2023

I seem to have been really down this month. It seems composed of things like traveling around messing up my freaking rigid sense of routine, dolling up my impulsiveness about tuning into and creating for (mostly holo) VTubers and other peeps I look up to with my false sense of responsibility, thinking about rest and recreation as things to regularly binge, and being paranoid about my image and other people out here. And I’m pretty sure that none of them are problems I’ve faced for the first time here. Making them even more painful is how I’ve been mostly free of assignments from my day job. So far, I’m reading it as another call to expand my social circle, which I think I’ve been fumbling a lot especially by expecting stuff in return for my increased self-expression via my online stuff. Oh, and I’m reading it as another call to improve my sleep routine. Something about Lent also boosted my motivation for that one.

And I somehow managed to post three works on this blog this month, two of them being song covers. In order, they are:

  1. a fanfic on Mr. Dezmond Magni’s mascot, the Magmite
  2. an English cover of Kiara Takanashi’s Valentine’s song Heart Challenger
  3. an English cover of Rikka’s Archive, a heartrending song dedicated to his former colleagues

I even got to post two meme videos and three VTuber clips this month. And thinking back some more on all these content I managed to post this month, I guess the recent heaviness of my emotions showed there too. Yeah, even with how mostly planned in advance all these were. That sounds like it has some twisted implications, hahaha!

But seriously, not my first struggle, and I’ve overcome struggles before. And the challenges will get tougher and tougher as I follow His guidance better and better. And speaking of Him, talk about me feeling like this as Lent starts, huh? Thanks very much for the freaking wonderful reminder, then, God Almighty, and may You keep on challenging and guiding us all.

Now, plans for next month. I got a poem ready, and there’s one song cover in the works. Not sure if there’ll be a third post for this blog, but if there will be, then I’ll surprise you all with its existence. I’m also not sure about streaming, not after how I couldn’t muster up the strength to do so this month. VTuber clips, I have motivation for, though I feel pretty slow about it. Meme videos and vlogs, they’ll be as sudden as usual.

And again, I ask for honest constructive feedback from you all.

Rikka – Archive – TOB English Cover

Aside from being a step in my shallow quest to gather attention I’d struggle to handle, I guess this cover of this vulnerable HOLOSTARS solo original song is also an attempt of mine at connecting with the culture surrounding graduated VTubers, which often feels like a glorification of hyperreliance rather than an honoring of tenure to me. Still, much like most of the rest of my VTuber fanboy journey, I feel like I started off and stayed on the wrong foot for a long while there, especially with my lust for the girls, and with my hate for my fellow fans is my hate for myself. Now, with my renewed appreciation for VTubers especially thanks to HOLOSTARS, I find myself even gladder with my exploration of this reflectively honest song written by Rikka, the first VTuber I ever made a song cover of along with Calli.

What makes this exploration especially fun to me? I think one would be my attempts at writing subtly filtered expressions in English about graduated VTubers while keeping the translyrics in line with Rikka’s work as much as I can. I feel like I made something more unfiltered than the original, though, but trying to help make a humbly melancholic dedication to graduated VTubers is something I’m sure I’d love to do as part of my VTuber fanboying. Indeed, I hope this cover is something fellow Anglophone VTuber fans would turn to if they need something to help process their emotions about their graduated faves.

Another part of the fun here to me is getting my voice right. It was embarrassingly difficult, what with how I worked up the translyrics in the original key, only to find myself needing to lower it once I tried to sing it all in one go. But once I got myself on the lowered key, I found myself expressing the sadness I had to express more cleanly, which k. emphasized that very well with her audio engineering! And making it even better to me is how I feel like I managed to express such sadness with this lower voice of mine. Sure, all these key changes may mess up the instrumental audio quality, but as long as I can add variety that not just I but also others would enjoy, then I’d dare to learn and do my best for it. I feel like that’s kinda needless to say, especially after years doing this, but I also feel like it would be nice to put it into words like this from time to time. And again, thank you very much for your help, k.!

All that said, here are links: one for this cover’s mp3 and one for this cover’s lyrics sheet. Again, please credit and link me if you’d like to use my stuff, and I’d love to receive honest constructive feedback about me and my work from you peeps.

Kiara Takanashi – Heart Challenger – TOB English Cover

I’m pretty sure I wrote and sang these English translyrics for Kiara’s second solo original while trying to mask how I looked at her as a rival in love for Calli. You know those songs where the singers brag about treating their subjects better than the lover they have? You’ll find subtle marks of that here at least, especially with how I made the TakaMori shipping more obvious. And somewhere in my wait for the audio engineering to finish, I considered scrapping this production because it would be embarrassing, especially with how I was feeling the emptiness of my dumb desires and wanting to give up on those desires cold turkey. But after the holo boys renewed my interest in the girls and this work’s audio engineer yuri. sent me further progress on this cover, I decided to still release it, but now as a show of my progress, especially as a man and a fan, from very cringe and not so healthy to slightly less cringe and a bit healthier. And yeah, I released it today because it’s the closest Sunday to Valentine’s Day, the day when this song was released, and I like posting on this blog on Sundays. Really, I feel like this cover turned out better than I thought. Praise and thanks be to God Almighty very much again.

But hey, if you want more of an idea about why I still like this production, I’d say it would be how adorkable my singing is and how yuri. emphasized that well, so yeah, thank you so much for reminding me that I can do well and better as a person overall along with doing great work on my vocals here, yuri.! And even though I’m now looking at them without my way dumber original intent anymore, I like my attempt at putting more personality into the lyrics by adding some obviousness to the shipping. I mean, I like to think that I added a bit of bitter to make this sweet taste more beautiful, you know?

And I guess that’s all I have to say about this here. On the off-chance you wanna listen to this on the regular and maybe even sing it yourself in some way, here are a link to this cover’s mp3 and a link to this cover’s lyrics sheet. And of course, honest constructive feedback is highly encouraged and will be highly appreciated.