User blog:Angel Emfrbl/Why I don't automatically Love Miku

Okay so when your a Vocaloid fan, you get this impression at first you have to love Miku. Everyone who thinks you a Vocaloid fan that isn't thinks that you do. When you defend Miku people think your doing it because you love her.

But I don't love Miku and the 8 years in the fandom I've spent saying I don't, its true though.

Basically the issue is Miku is at her core something I'd have loved in 2000-3 when I was just getting into Anime via the internet. I saw anime in the 90s creep in more and more and there was a huge buzz in the early 2000s over it on the internet especially when combined with the amount of shows on TV. To the point wherein by 2006, I was sick of anime. Well, not anime itself, but of the fans and the attitude towards anime the internet had. Its kinda like this, when westerners used to scream "I am an Otaku" I would cringe and saw "you don't want to call yourself that!" because they used it as interchangeable with Geek or Nerd. Only Otaku's in Japan especially at the time had a much worst reputation and it was a term that undermined yourself and made you look silly to say, especially as a westerner. The people who shouted "I like Yuri" also had the same problem, they just didn't understand enough of the culture behind it. Its like the people who think all anime porn was hentai and hentai is all anime porn... Its not. But none the less, the impacts was I just didn't want to be part of that all.

So in 2004 I picked up Lola for the soul purpose to put to lyrics a song I had learnt as a child my teacher wrote so I've not forget it. But Lola was hard to use. There was little on her and it was not easy to get good results with V1. As I said recently, V1's masters weren't really much around in 2004 and V1 had trouble sounding human. It felt a slight step up from the Atari STE's synth I'd grown up with, as in it actually sounded like it was trying to be human. But it was still robotic. I knew Miriam was on the way or had been released, but I knew little on Meiko. Thats it, Vocaloid was a niche market and did have fans but not a fandom. And it was specialised, not really much to talk about. The people using it used it like any other software, there was nothing else to it. It was *just* another piece of software and one that took up a lot of computer resources and took too long to work with to master. Even I threw it off as a waste of my money and boxed her (I threatened to get her down, but I left without her because my brother refused to get my things out of the loft the week I left, so I consider her lost now and I'll have to wait until my dad dies to get her back).

So basically, because of this and the fact I stopped being an anime fan, I stopped paying attention until about mid 2009. This is when the west was generally catching up with the Vocaloid craze as a big time thing, it took that long for momentum to form to spread out into non-anime fandoms where I was hanging out. One day someone said "Vocaloid" and put the character of Miku together and I was kinda confused. I didn't really know Miku's name but I had seen her image before and ignored it. It was just another anime character to me. And this is the start of the problem with Miku. Her design was so cliched that I just shrugged her off as another anime character. It never stood out because I'd "seen this sort of thing before". It took her image being paired up with the word "Vocaloid" which I knew of to literally connect there. I would have been in the fandom perhaps a few months sooner had I heard more.

So when I found out more about her the first thing I did was type in "Vocaloid wiki" because from experience, thats where you begin. And what I got was... Not helpful and confusing. This wiki was a mess and Wikipedia didn't explain what Vocaloid was correctly when I knew from 2004 what it was. But it did give me enough to lurk at VO forums and I arrived in time to see Big Al's stuff. Big Al is my first introduction pre-2004 to Vocaloid. Which is why I have a connection to him.

Back then the fandom was just getting over the 2007-9 period of hyperactive teen western anime nut stage and Vocaloid was treated as "a Japanese thing" even as far as I'm concerned at VO forums. Having a bit more experience and a few years I did know one or two things over many people at VO forums. This is why I never bought the whole "English Vocaloids are inferior" - I grew up with a synth that couldn't smoothly say words without breaking up "vehicle", and the early 200s were full of Microsoft Sam mockery. So I listened to Big Al and basically went, "I hear nothing wrong with this, heck, its even better then Lola". From a outsider's POV at this point looking into the VO forums, I saw from my own eyes a different world to everyone present. I eventually entered the forum because I wanted to be part of the community.

So I had a fight with one of the sprite artists at Dragoncave and had a small heart break because I'd worshipped them and admired their artwork. They were not the artist I thought they were and basically were a tantrum. For those who don't know, I'm pretty much the one who got the Thrilled Dragons banned. I stood up to the Artist after she used a post I made in a negative way and strawman me. I simply said the honest truth that they were not exactly the prettiest sprites, they were green with a bit of yellow. Compared to the rare Gold or Silver dragons and some of the more prettier dragons, its true. At the time they were filling up the abandon page due to a bug in the system of the site, which wasn't a break in its logic but rather a failure of the users. The system said for every 1 gold dragon there needed to be 100 of this, 1000 of that, etc. The thrilled dragons being recently released got it worst. Suddenly Dragon cave needed some 100,000 sprites to make up numbers. For every 1 gold dragon bred, another 1,000 needed, or something like that we weren't told the numbers. My comment wasn't meant to put them down and I explained that, it simply was pointing out the lack of incentive to get people to raise more. The bug was fixed, but the artist broke my heart by the time we were done talking. She created a topic that was suppose to get everyone to have their say, and when we did it turned out it was a topic to cause sucking up to the artist. And everyone who said the slightest thing bad was witch hunted. I finally spoke up against this witch hunt and was told the thrilled dragons would be banned because of my word. This should never have been allowed to happen. They were reinstated in 2013, but I still to this day think the whole event was BS because it was just the artist throwing a tantrum and forcing site owner TJ09 to do something because he wouldn't give her what SHE wanted. (she was constantly rewriting and added to what was published... It really was getting silly in those days).

So I was looking for a new fandom and one that was far away from the dragon cave trope. I also had begn to get doubts about myself. This is incidentally why I caved under pressure and gave up being a bureaucrat back when people used to attack me as a way to attack this wiki. I'd had enough of the internet and all that drama. I almost quit Vocaloid for this reason.

But the reason I bought it up was to certify why I eventually signed up to the Otaku forum - I speak up when I feel there is something truly wrong ad I express my points. I am not always right despite what some think and I'm still learning, but I knew something was up. It was like when I first heard the 4Kids One Piece anime dub and I felt... "This feels like a good show but its not... I want to hear the Japanese version"... And then I became a One Piece fan, its the same thing, I had a suspicions something was wrong. In this case, I was tired of hearing about the English Vocaloids and was ready to just join a fandom that would be my last, still is. In the case of Bgi Al, there were praises pre-release and loathing post release purely because he was a English Vocaloid and tossed off as nothing special. At the time though, I just wanted something to do for 3-4 years because I knew that was the typical lifecycle of the fandom, most fandoms die after their 4th year and Vocaloid was already in its 3rd by the time I joined technically. I started calling out some fans on their claims, but I lacked information to back me up.

So I kept turning to the wikis, but they had little progress. The fandom kept pushing Miku as this big deal all this meanwhile and saying nonsense, even though the fans were over her at VO forums, there was a lot of issues lingering and the fandom was trapped in 2009. It was because no one bothered to update things to move along. I noticed that Miku was claimed to be more realistic then Sweet Ann, which is why I often quote this. But the thing is... When I joined the fandom, after Al I'd listened to the voice of Miku... And I hated it. It was the sort of thing that even I as a anime fan in 2000-2006 didn't like, that high pitch cutesy style of singing. so Miku's voice and design... Just never took off. I liked the Dark Append, but I stood by that you can't call yourself a true fan if you don't like everything about it. *le sigh*

As some of you know there was a point at VO I just got sick of everyone pointing at noobs and mocking them so I asked someone openingly, why don't they edit the wikis and improve them? It was good old Crossfrowne… The same person I had to tell Lola and Leon were Soul singers because they couldn't read a box and their response before I brought up atheir box saying it, was to threaten if we ever met to kick me... Same crossfrowne who said Luka Japanese was better at English then Luka English (repeating a lie that was quoted as fact at times at VO forums). Yeah, I did this pointing out stuff twice more but I can't remember what it was. But none the less Crossy was uninterested, as was everyone else to improve the way things were. So... I edited Wikipedia, breaking my 8 year oath to never touch the site after leaving it in 2002 over the way they harshly enforced rules on the anime/manga pages causing the wikia revolution in the first place.

Basically, not everyone liked my editing of the vocaloid Wikipedia page because it took attention and focus from Miku and co and evened everything out so both English and Japanese vocaloids got the same attention the best I could do. Because while everyone else worshipped the Japanese vocaloids, I didn't at the time have much impressions of them. In 2010 I didn't really like any of them much. The more I studied Vocaloid, the less impressive Miku became though in all of this. I found out things that made her look bad like her original releases LQ results. Some of this contradicted months of listening to VO'ers praising Japanese vocalodi particularly over English ones, when in reality I came to one conclusion.

The conclusion was the western fandom didn't know what the fudge cake it was talking about.

A thing I can often stand by even today because ignorance and bias can be strong, though things have improved greatly since 2014 our end.

Now I mean this as no insult, its a generalisation and some fans were better then others. And even the most incorrect fan got some things right. But certain things just kept on being repeated that were incorrect and there was the basic signs of cherry picking going on. So Miku, along with all the early Japanese Vocaloid were being put out as these amazing things that at the time of V2 were in reality actually really bad. And some worst then the English Vocaloids. I noticed there was a habit to example Sonika as the prime proof English Vocaloid was bad and yet I could example that same thing at times with Miku. This, however, didn't help me love Miku at all as it was falsification of information, Miku was good because people simply said she was.

To top it off, I have seen Miku's face every day I've logged onto the fandoms sites since day 1 of me looking her up and I was already seeing her regularly before that. So by the time it got to 2016, her design just... Bored me. Those cold blues shades of blue just make her look lacking warmth and grey/black accents and leg warmers kill the design for me. Its the artist in me speaking. Blue can be a bright and striking colour, but its cold and chilly also to me whle due to colour theories when I was studying up on art at university, I knew the black was too dominate and was killing the colours at times, especially in the V2 artwork. Thats without noting that Miku was in a pose that broken her back in the neck area.

So everything leads me to this, I simply cannot love Miku. Its not I've tried, believe me I've tried. All this experience on the net though and my previous love of anime, just makes her uninteresting to me. She just doesn't stand out and never did. As I said, it took her image and Vocaloid to be connected before I even took notice of her and that says it all to someone like me. To make matters worst, I associate her with that 2010 era when I first joined and how disappointed I was in Vocaloid fans back then. Maybe if people hadn't have tried to sell her like they did I'd have accepted her more, but... They didn't, they lied for Miku, they made up things for Miku, then shunned the things I loved for Miku. And Miku is now to me the problems with the fandom when its at its worst.

Yes, I can respectfully accept without her and admire how she props up Vocaloid, but thats it. I will defend nonsense spoken against her but only because I don't value lies and dishonesty. But the damage is done. To me Miku's ot worthy of being no.1 because her mundane design and typical Japanese voice, in reality would not mean much if not combined with "Vocaloid" and "vocal synth" and the numerous songs out then for her. I wouldn't be in the fandom at all because of her, just as much as I am because of her. Because if that word "Vocaloid" hadn't been linked to her, I'd not be here. I'd have no interest in her. It is only because I bought Lola in 2004 and knew "Vocaloid" had a meaning I bothered.

But the thing I hate most is that to be a Voclaoid fan means everyone presumes automatically outside, you must worship Miku. Inside they can't understand somethings why their fellow Vocaloid fan doesn't like Miku either.

I think I've explained all of this before but, this is the most detailed explaination including the Dragocave stuff that lead me to join the fandom. I have returned to Dragoncave, but I'm staying far away from the forums and don't wish to go back. Anyone who said VO was a toxic fandom, DC's fandom is pure atomic radiation. And this is coming from someone who has seen racism thrown at her constantly for 4 years by a Mortal Kombat fan because I was British and he thought lowly of the British as an American. And no one stopped him. Thats without the other drama over the years like a major screw up on my part in the Beyblade fandom. But those screw ups and incidents made me who I am and why I am who I am. And built up to the point I joined this fandom and why overall Miku means nothing to me in the process.

I still, btw stick around because of all the fandoms... This is the one I actually felt the most... I made a difference. The moment I edited Wikipedia's page, changed a lot of things. I see people still noting my stuff and... Well... Some of the love for general Vocaloids does come from my actions back in 2010. There is no use fighting Miku, but for everyone who says "I love Flower" or "I love Piko", I still smile because I feel I contributed a little to some of that love. I didn't contribute all of it, because I didn't write all of everything about it. But... I can say that I simply got the ball rolling and I proved that day to everyone that it only takes 1 person to impact an entire fandom. I am happy when I log onto this wiki and see every edit. I smile because this is how things should be. Its been 8 years and the wiki has grown a lot. ITs in the same place now the One Piece wiki was in 2009. In another 10 years it will be where One Piece's wiki is now too. IT will keep growing, its 10 years behind but its following the same path. ^_^

If everything was still just about Miku, allowing the bias towards her and other Japanese be as it was in 2009/2010, would be here? Perhaps not, it may have held the wiki back another 4 years. You know what, despite my hatred of her, Miku's actually benefitted out of all this here in the west. A side effect of making it easier for noobs is that its easier to get information on Miku too. But this is because of despite how much I hate Miku, I don't ignore her. If we want to cover all things Vocaloid, then yes, everything about her gets covered. And there is a lot to cover on her. But if you ignore her, your then bias against her. ITs a bit of a problem, but all you can do is make up for it by trying your best for the other Vocaloids to get them attention. The sad reality is, Miku is basically 60% of what Vocaloid is and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

So at the end of the day, despite all of my disliking toward her, I just tolerate her and get on with things. The same mentality I have that brought me here, still makes me add information on her despite I disliking her. Because I' bias, yes, but I don't let that rule me. Its very easy to forget...

Otherwise I'd just forget I'm only here because someone put "Vocaloid" next to her image.