#I DONT KNOW IF THIS MAKES SENSE AAAAHHH im getting emotional now

[chemicalbrew]

Give me a vocaloid take

Reverse Unpopular Opinion: instead of salt or hot takes, you MUST talk about something you like about it.

um this is probably going to get silly and long and overshare-y so under a cut it goes

you know what listening to vocaloid music is about, to me? friendship.

i'm pretty sure my first ever vocaloid song was senbonzakura sometime in middle school (lol), and it blew my seventh(?)-grade mind, but somewhere along the way, i decided looking up more info was the wrong thing to do. the reason for this, as you'll soon see, is stupid and awful and makes no sense.

since i was even more lonely back then than i am now and often derided for the sort of music i like (by my dad, at least - but i was often given shit for liking dubstep\edm and such, even though it was even more of a hot thing in the 10s than it is now), i thought getting into vocaloid seriously would give people more reason to point fingers at me. or something. (it sounds ridiculous to me now both because i grew up and also because i barely see people anyway #disabledsweep)

nevertheless, dad still mocks me occasionally. about half a year ago i was laughing my ass off at this song and he overheard and made fun of me for listening to 'japanese shit' which. can you believe that? he always brushes this sort of thing off incredibly quickly, but i get pissed every time i remember. he used to tell me i shouldn't play smash either because 'girls don't play fighting games' and i KNOW the only reason this doesn't happen any more is because i dropped the game. anyway that's not what this was supposed to be about oops-

where was i... so i admired vocaloid for the longest time, it feels like, but i forced myself to kinda stop and forget about it for the dumbest reason on earth. and so it would be even now, if it wasn't for a certain person becoming fast friends with me and sharing music he liked. which. GUESS WHAT A LOT OF IT WAS?

(guess why i still go insane for reincarnation apple two years and a broken friendship later?)

seeing him share songs with me so confidently and us agreeing on what they mean to us and getting to learn more about him through what he shared (this sort of thing always gets personal even if you don't mean it. that's half the fun!) was a special experience that makes my heart hurt (pleasantly though) even now, and the thing is? it just keeps happening! the only difference is the people it involves.

opening my vocal synth music folder, which has slowly ballooned to about 160 absolute bangers to be stored forever and ever, is always a picture-perfect blast to the past. i can easily remember how i found most songs (I was obsessed with PinocchioP's Fake meme instantly when it came out), or who exactly showed it to me (a certain mutual who might be reading this introduced me to Iyowa and GOD BLESS), if they told me anything about it (Nayutalien's Alien Alien makes me wanna scream for Reasons), or if it came to mean something specific to me down the line (don't talk to me about ATOLS' Tawashi Cleaner or Chimera omg). it's all vague and often hard to explain, and most times I wouldn't even want to, but this, this meaning you end up assigning to songs you find which in turn enriches your life...

i think this is what liking vocaloid is about :)

on a slightly less serious note: over time I realised that I go through phases with this... or, more accurately, vocaloid music to me is something between a portal to a different world and an endlessly renewable source of energy.

it probably has to do a lot with me tending to gravitate to faster and... bouncier songs, for lack of a better word, but most of my big favorites is stuff i tend to blast when i'm in dire need of an escape from my own emotional state and\or need to force myself to keep going on some tasks. it works like a charm every time, even though i normally don't like using any songs with lyrics for these purposes...

over time i came to a conclusion that... having fast lyrics that don't immediately make sense to me drown out the song actually helps me focus LOL. that's exactly why i owe dod3 music my life, after all :3

i think another thing i wanted to say is that... without my friends being there to show me stuff it would be so much harder to discover my own preferences... :') obviously i'm glad vocaloid is a phenomenon that encompasses almost everything under the sun, but it also makes it so damn scary to try and branch out. i wish there was some kind of tool or place where you could show stuff you already know you like and get better recommendations without embarrassing yourself LOL