AH.. VOCALOID.
i've been into vocaloid for at least 13 years at this point, so i have many a thing to say. you don't even know how long it took for me to try and categorize everything i wanna say bc theres so many LAYERS to vocaloid and the vocaloud community and ive pretty much been there for it all since miku's release, but i did fall off sometime during vocaloid4.
SPEAKING OF I SHOULD PROLLY EXPLAIN VOCALOID AND WHY THEY GOT NUMBERS!!
for thsoe who don't know, vocaloid is a vocal synthesizer program! it released their first set voicebanks in 2004, but didn't see huge success until they released miku, a vocaloid2 voicebank, in 2007! you basically use them to sing songs if you can't sing yourself, and tune and edit them kinda like you would an electronic instrument, yk? if you've ever seen a DAW, like fruity loops, vocaloid's interface looks similar to that!
miku like... CHANGED MY LIFE NGL. i remember being in 5th grade and drawing her all the time (baby's first hyperfixation) and no one knew who she was. i always remember someone asking me, "who's that blue girl youre always drawing?" and it was so hard to explain, bc she wasnt from an anime. (back then ppl knew what anime was at least, the original naruto was airing on toonami back then!)
now miku is so big and you can find her merch in stores and it makes me cry a li'l ngl. back then the only merch i could find was on ebay, all the way from japan. i remember my mom buying me a miku necklace and a li'l cheap drawstring backpack omg)
i'd spend hours and hours downloading mmd models, making them dance on our family xp computer. finding miku songs that only had 1k views. burning them on cds. making my own models in pmdeditor. i remember making my own miku cosplay at 11 at halloween, and no one knowing who i was. but i was so happy! so many outfits i put together so id look like miku. i wore boys ties with my school uniform to look like her. bought knee high converses. i also got to cosplay as miku when i was 16, and it made me the happiest girl in the world!! (i'll be cosplaying as her again this year, dont @ me haha.)
even though i'm not as active in the vocaloid community anymore (it's changed as all things do, there's less focus on vocaloid as characters like it was in the early days, most recent vocaloid mvs dont have the characters in them at all, and miku becoming a 'meme character' annoys me im ngl #gatekeeper) i still love miku and vocaloid w my whole heart and she is my liddle daughter forever. hope you enjoy my more indepth pages whenever they get finished!