all the world’s a stage!

Aaaah I missed so many days in a row... A lot happened this weekend and I haven't been able to work at all these past two days, so I didn't even think about posting here. I would be almost done with the challenge by now if I hadn't skipped any days... I feel a bit disappointed about that, but eh, it's my personal blog, so it's not that deep. I'm trying to learn how to care less about things in general, honestly. I feel like I'm too serious about too many things.

Anyway! Today's word was achiever, and I chose the song...

Alkali Underachiever!


I think I first heard about this song in 2019, but I believe I didn't start listening to it regularly until a few years later. This song was created as the character song for Lyrica, a character from NND Compass, which is... I'm not sure what it is even after all these years, but I'm pretty sure it's a game! I know there are at least another two characters whose character songs were also made by Vocaloid producers, though I have no idea if it's exclusive to a few characters or an everyone kind of thing. I would look it up, but I don't wanna go down that rabbit hole on a school night, lol.

Either way, this is one of the many Kairiki Bear songs I have on my playlist. While I wouldn't say it's my number one favourite, I will say this one is REALLY catchy. I remember it didn't really strike me as anything special the first time I listened to it, so I forgot about it only to revisit it a few years later. I like it a lot more now!

Also, while unrelated to the challenge, I wanted to write about some good Vocaloid-related news as well... Recently, I've been wondering if anything had happened to Naoto Fuuga, the voice provider for Kaito. He's always been very active on his social media, where he posts a lot about his cats and Kaito (whom he calls "his son"), and one day this summer, I noticed I hadn't seen any of his posts in a while. I checked his account a few times over the summer, but still no news... I checked again this weekend and saw that he had posted again! Looks like he'd been bedridden for a long time, but he seems to be slowly recovering. I really hope that's the case!

PHEW I made it for today's entry!! Just barely because it's almost midnight, but I made it!! I was so busy yesterday that I didn't even have a moment to spare.

Today's word was laugh, which is great, since I get to recommend...


LOL - lots of laugh-!



I keep thinking of older songs, huh. To be fair, my taste in Vocaloid songs is mostly older songs, but we've had a few from 2008-2009 lately. This one is a song I would dare consider a fave with how much I've listened to it. It's just so fun and cute. I really like the Project Diva PV, too; I'm glad it's in Megamix, because that way I get to play it whenever I want. Obviously I can still watch the video online, but it's not the same!

I never remember who's the producer of this one, so I went to look it up and... I only see three songs by them? Which is entirely possible, obviously, but I thought they'd have some more songs. Maybe I'll give them a listen one day. I also took a look at the recommended module in Project Diva for this song, since I always play it with a different module and now I associate that module with this song (Ribbon Girl. There's a figure based off it that I've wanted for YEARS...), and I saw that there was a model for it only available in Project Diva X which is this one. It's SO cute and I'm so mad it was never featured in later games!! The shoes are particularly adorable...

I seem to just have a bit of a runny nose, so thankfully I'm not sick sick. Yay!

Today's word was tax, and the song I chose is...

Delusion Tax!

(no embed for now, I'm on my phone and it's hard enough to just format entries. Sorry!)

Apparently, it was this song's 13 year anniversary just one week ago! I didn't realise it was that old. I don't listen to this song too often, even though I've listened to a fair share of old Deco stuff, but I have a lot of memories associated to this one because it was ALWAYS on my YouTube recommended when I was younger, lol. Around 2016-2017 it was almost always the first or second suggestion, which, to be fair, I did listen to a lot of Vocaloid (as I still do...), but this song in specific was there almost every day?? I really liked the illustration, so I eventually caved in and listened to it, but I remember not being the biggest fan. Nowadays I think it's a nice song, but it's true that there are many other Deco songs I listened to a lot more often. In fact, I'm pretty sure I hadn't listened to this one all year until today...

I have some stuff to do later, so I figured I'd write today's entry now! The word for today was wood, and my choice this time is...

China Yuanmu Girl!


This one's part of a series featuring Luo Tianyi, a Chinese Vocaloid (and one of my favourite Vocaloids overall), by producer ChunbaiP. I discovered these songs in 2019 so I don't remember the full story, but I do remember this one was about a widow yearning to meet her spouse once again (not sure it was clear if it was a man or a woman), except they died in the battlefield and she's not aware of it, so she waits for them forever. The series told the whole story, with one song per element (water, fire, earth, wood and metal. Although I think there were more songs after those five, I haven't listened to them) and there were lots of comments explaining the entire plotline and timeline. Which, honestly, are my favourite part of the Vocaloid community! Nowadays you don't see it as much as songs don't seem to tell stories anymore, but a few years ago even static PVs had people figuring things out in the comments. With this series in particular, I remember there was a song that had someone figuring out the origin of a poem at the very beginning, because it was in Mongolian instead of Chinese, and it also connected to a broken Greek poem or something? Very interesting stuff for sure.

This is the song corresponding to wood (I've heard Yuanmu translates to "Tree Climbing"), and while it's not my favourite song in the series, I do really like it. It's a shame I haven't listened to these songs in a while. But I have to say, if anyone's looking to discover more Tianyi/Chinese Vocaloid songs, I really recommend the channel I embed here, saberbutterfly. They uploaded many songs to YT from bilibili and subbed some of them, and while reprints and hardsubs are frowned upon in the Vocaloid community, this was an absolute lifesaver, especially considering I wasn't all that familiar with bilibili when I discovered these songs (I still can't do much with it since I can't read Chinese, but I've used it a few times now).

It always really shocks me how many things are taught to children as "wrong" only for adults to end up doing those same things with no consequences, lol. Children will get told off for being loud (which is understandable. A kid constantly yelling in public is objectively annoying) and then the same people who tell them off will converse through screams instead of talking at a normal volume. And you can't tell the adults to lower their voice, because they'll just get pissy about it and/or start talking even louder to piss you off. How does that make sense??

There are other occasions where the same happens, but this one was inspired by the last times I've gone out with my parents or my friends to have lunch or breakfast and there would almost always be a table with way too many people near us, so the noise was unavoidable, much to my dismay. I know it mostly bothers me because I hate loud noises (absolute sensory hell for me), but I don't know how people are okay with this in general, even if it's a public space. What's worse, me and my uni friends were told off last year at a cafeteria for being too loud, yet these kind of people are never told to keep it down. I guess it's different if it's a lot of people (we were a big group, though, I think there were twelve of us). Still, it's not fair at all. You either tell everybody to quiet down regardless of age or you don't tell anyone.

Meh, I mean, this happens even with people within my age range... During my first year of university I had a girl who lived next door who told me to quiet down "because my bed was too noisy" while I was literally just playing Genshin (I suspect she was hearing the keys clicking, not the actual bed lmao what?) during a regular Sunday evening... This same girl would shower with loud music on at almost midnight, and I'd have to knock on her door several times to get her to turn it down a bit.