#vocaloid rambles

[platinum-horizons]

ahem- hello, stoopy/pos./lh

feel free to ramble about meh(haiyi)(/hj/j). if ya don’t know HaiYi- then- i’d like to hear Alia, as in IA. or Piko. :P well..i don’t even know what name to think of- so..this is pretty much what ya get. :D

~ kind regards, modless.

OOH!!!! I GOT PIKO RELATED STUFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! no haiyi hcs yet tho :(

BUT FOR PIKO - He's quite shy around new people, and is often seen with Vflower, who he views as a sibling. He's aroace and genderfluid. 15 years old, 6'2".

He LOVES strawberries. Just a lil fun fact :)

He has a lot of anxiety issues that Flower helps him get through. Flower also often tries to boost his ego, as it's practically non-existent.

More on his relationship with Flower - Piko and Miki(his sister :) ) have known Flower for about 10 years, and since then Flower has acted almost as his older sibling (despite her being a year younger than him). They are comfortable with being physically affectionate with eachother, which is rare for the both of them. Piko is somewhat afraid of contact with other people, while Flower has a bit of trauma surrounding it due to her past(which i may get into in another post if someone asks about it! Though, its darker.) Despite this, the two have grown close enough to trust eachother. Piko trusts Flower with his life. Speaking of that, Flower often protects him from possible physical fights due to Piko being quite frail on his own.

Piko enjoys reading and drawing, as well as painting and solving puzzles.

[ratpoizonz]

yk how it is, reblog for a larger sample size pls!!!!! ^_^

[dailyhatsune]

miku celebrating new years a little too late

sorry but it’s actually early! happy eve of lunar new year everyone

[batmecha]

NO WAY

also extra v1 v2 vocaloid cosplay doodle under the cut :3

how

[jibunbosh]

Mesmerizer is a satire of TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and the rest of the modern short-form vertical video format

A brief thematic analysis.

I'm sure there are countless people already interpreting the imagery and details in this wonderful song & MV, like here and here, so I won't spend too much time retreading that ground. Miku and Teto are dancing. Miku gets hypnotized. Teto signals for help, but gets hypnotized at the end as well.

That part is obvious enough, but that's still pretty surface-level. What is this seemingly hyperspatial horror scenario supposed to mean to us?

While checking to see if anyone before me's already come to the same conclusions as I did and if I should bother not writing this text post at all (lol), I came across udin's great analysis video. She comes to the conclusion that the song tackles themes of disillusionment with reality and the ways we indulge in escapism to relieve ourselves of the pains of the world.

I agree with that reading! From practically the very beginning, we have Miku call to us - the viewer - to push away our true feelings. Teto comes in to peddle a solution, inviting us to surrender and empty our minds - in her words, "pretending to know nothing."

You, the viewer, are a critical character in this masquerade. For nearly the entire video, Miku and Teto's eyes are unfailingly trained on you. Or, well... perhaps they can't actually see you, but they can see a camera, or whatever other aperture the point of view is supposed to be from. And they know they're being watched. (Who else would Teto be sending distress signals to?)

Let's put a pin on that for later.

udin notes very early on that Miku and Teto are, conspicuously, kept in vertical frames - very similar to the video formats of TikTok (and Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts, and whatever other clones of the format exist.) You know, just like the animator Caststation's Rabbit Hole fan MV that went viral some months ago.

Hey wouldn't it be crazy if the song's producer, 32ki, released Mesmerizer shorts too haha. Wouldn't that be crazy.

Wow, wild.

These short-term vertical videos are captivating & alluring. If you're reading this, it's more likely than not that you've also found yourself caught up in them at least once, scrolling through the infinite algorithmic slurry and forgetting about the real-life issues you have at hand. Would you say, then, that you felt hypnotized? Mesmerized, even?

And so these two invite us to join their world and focus on the... uh... rectangle.

Their dances are repetitive, following the same loop. Their outfits are distinct, but their choreography isn't. They're copying the same formula, repeating it ad nauseam to the best of their ability.

They're doing a fucking TikTok dance.

Back to the pin I told you about earlier, with Miku and Teto looking at a camera.

Miku sways with the camera, eyes looking directly at it like a swinging pocket watch. She's been looking at it the entire time, after all. We've been seeing her via our screen this entire time, but, again, she doesn't necessarily see us. She's beholden to the camera, which she dances for day after day, caught up in its spell. She's hypnotized by it. Eventually, she breaks.

Teto, on the other hand, resists. For a while, anyway.

Despite her being the one jumping to us with the "solution" at the beginning of the MV, there's very quickly good reason to question how much agency she has in this. She dances for the camera as well, but she doesn't want to. She's signalling for help. She wants out.

Many content creators (as much as I personally loathe the non-specificity and soullessness of the term) have struggled with the adaptation to the short-form video format, and the preference the algorithm has had for these captivating, bite-sized videos. They're catchy, and easily drive up metrics. Practically anyone who's publishing their work via video format online needs to learn to adapt or fall behind, even if that means whittling their content down to fit the frame, the time, and people's shortening attention spans. Sometimes, that means compromising on specificity and completeness... or, in other words, the true representation of a full work.

The song's writer, 32ki, has been releasing songs on YouTube for several years. Their first YouTube Short, however, was posted only a year ago: a short, whittled-down segment of their previous song, CIRCUS PANIC!!!, hoping for it to win the ProsekaNEXT song contest. It was their first song to achieve widespread popularity and hit a million views.

The shorts, however, aren't the "true" versions of the song. The full song just won't fit.

We're being mesmerized as consumers of this endless stream of content, rather than appreciators of music and art. However, that relationship isn't completely symmetrical across the plane that is the 4th wall. Miku and Teto are trapped not by their attention spans, but by a compulsion to project their "truthful acting" and peddle that window into a colorful, problem-free world.

We, as the collective audience, need not dwell on any one thing for too long - we need only swipe, and move on to the next video. However, Miku and Teto are trapped behind the screen for eternity, day after day.

They're the only characters we get to see, of course. There's no evil 3rd voice synth character that's plotting to keep them trapped in there. We can't put a face to whatever force is hypnotizing them and trapping them behind the screen. It's faceless - like the inscrutable algorithms of YouTube recommendations or the TikTok For You page, or the impersonal corporations that develop & maintain those aforementioned apps. Miku and Teto's likenesses, on the other hand, are being exploited and extracted from for their entertainment value, being strung along by that metaphorical hypnotizing force like puppets on a string.

Many people, represented by Miku, enjoy their success on such platforms. It's freeing and liberating to throw oneself wholeheartedly into such an endeavor, of course! Others, represented by Teto, harbor their doubts of the emotional veracity of such a medium, but know they have little choice lest they face destruction... perhaps not literally as a person, but as an idea.

Wouldn't it be easier just to let oneself be swept away by it and give in?

[mspaint-flower]

1.5k

[ivo-moved]

ministry of joy said hatsune miku fits their propaganda

[marokra]

[sutekiniichan]

MEIKO oversaw WonderlandsxShowtime signing their official wedding documents, and Miku oversaw them exchanging wedding vows at the public ceremony.

[mushroomjar]

Do you know this post?

[Image Description: A screenshot of a Tumblr post by the user clubpenguinkiller. It reads: prog rock fans are always like "lol..you think rabid listening to billie eilish and grimes makes you a rabid feral sewer queen? if you listened to king crimson your head would melt" As if they would last one day in the mind of a vocaloid fan. End Image Description]

I think about this post all the time so I made a playlist based on the concept

Content warning for the songs in the playlist: flashing lights and bright images, loud sounds and jumpscares, disturbing imagery and lyrics, photos and videos of real bugs and insects

I organized the songs from what I think is most palatable to the average listener to least palatable, but you can also listen to it on shuffle and I think it'd give a similar feeling. Let me know if you do end up checking out the playlist! I'm curious to hear reactions to some of these songs

[cadaverkeys]

i really wanted to have a vocaloid version of this w/out miku

[xenon-cant-read]

reblog to scare a vocaloid fan

[socks-wizard-money-gang]

The fact that I just removed a shit ton of things from my wall just to hang a single comically small image of vflower says a lot about me

[thatrandombystander]

16 years later and it must be said that Akuno-p's Daughter of Evil feat. Kagamine Rin does still slap

[realroastedeel]

"artblock ! artblock ! artblock !" i chant as all i have to offer is vflower vocaloid

[chiricat]

somehow i always end up making matching pfps