So, 10 years ago today I discovered Vocaloid. December 24th 2009 was a big day. I was excited to get Drawn To Life: The next chapter and for christmas the next day. I decided to count down the time by looking at what memes had existed until now and discovered the knowyourmeme page for Vocaloid. I thought it was funny at first and laughed at the engrish covers of songs. However, I knew in my heart that I had been searching for this for years. Suddenly what I wanted for christmas had changed last minute and I spent the entire of christmas day searching for and listening to vocaloid songs. I eventually decided to give anime another chance and found myself on that part of the internet. The next year I would start watching anime and I would discover Touhou which resulted in a new era of my life.
Each era of my life has changed me in many ways. The red dwarf era changed my vocabulary, the Newgrounds era is responsible for my morals and values. The anime era is responsible for my religion and outlook on life. I had years before seen a man predict the lottery numbers through a method he called "wisdom of the crowds" in which he had multiple people make an educated guess. It convinced me that there was some inherent divinity to humanity. Later I would have this belief shown to me by Haruhi - an anime about a school girl who doesn't realise she's god. My beliefs were further solidified by Touhou years later (also years after I discovered it somehow) but by then they were more or less in the state they are now. Thing is that my outlook on life was somewhat pessimistic. Just before the era started I had realised I was content with life. Not because life was good but because I believed it would never get better. Life was terrible, high school was terrible, people were terrible - but I just thought that it was just the ways things were. I was brought out of it briefly by vocaloid but reached what I consider enlightenment through Touhou again. Buddhist characters were able to spread there word and I researched the religion. While I am not a buddhist (more like panthiestic, I believe that humans create/maintain gods through faith and that people's generally beliefs are always somewhat true) I did adopt the buddhist philosphy to guide me through the rough patches.
This era was host to the 2nd peak of my life. During my time as an anime fan the anime "Sword Art Online" came out. People in general seem to hate the anime but over the years I've come to realise that I may never enjoy any anime as much as I enjoyed SAO. I was playing Runescape back then. Persona 3 had convinced me to come back to RS and I finally had the patience and intelligence to grind properly. When SAO came out I didn't just watch it - I lived it - as cringy as that sounds. I lived each day waiting for the next episode of SAO and I would be grinding in the stronghold of security each day waiting. Life was great. Unfortunately it had to end. Jagex had announced the EOC update and would proceed to ruin Runescape permanently. I would find my community on 2006scape and eventually ProjectRS06. The times I spent on the 2006scape fourms will never be forgotten. SAO was winding down now. The rather disliked 2nd half was causing people to hate the show but I always saw it as simply bringing us back down from the huge adventure that was the 1st half. 2006scape would die after a cease and desist order and ProjectRS06 would last until OSRS was announced. SAO kept on giving as the years went by but OSRS failed to reignite Clan Wars and therefor my main reason for playing was gone. I'm still the main target audience for SAO. Ordinal Scale showed me that for sure. It's not a show for everybody but it is certainly the show for me. I love and will always love Sword Art Online.
The era can be summed up as somewhat delusional but it at least helped with the suicidal thoughts. I used to wish for death every day I woke up and every time I went to sleep. After I got into Touhou I stopped wishing for death. I started wishing to be gapped away to Gensokyo. I wanted a simpler life - a freer one. One thing that also helped was falling in love. I met her in 2012 and was in a relationship with her all the way up till this month. I still love her but she ended up dumping me. I'm not angry or bitter, if anything I understand. This kind of long distance relationship is hard to keep up - it's a miracle it even lasted as long as it did. Still, nothing lasts forever. That being said, I'm concerned what may happen in my next depressive bout. Nonetheless life is more interesting if you let your delusions take you for a ride. Just keep a good moral outlook and hide your power level from the world around you.
The era had to come to an end nonetheless. I had to leave high school and enter university. My pessimistic outlook would be ruined the first week I stepped through those doors. No longer could I say life would never get better - as it just did. I had to think forward and that meant going back to what I had wanted to do since I was at least 4 years old - making games.
Here is a flash from both the Clock Crew of the Newgrounds era and Vocaloid from the anime era
It's been no real secret that I've been trying to expand my retinue of creative abilities in the last few years. You may have seen some of my art that I've been posting to Newgrounds and I'm making ok progress on that. With one of my skills developing, I have decided to open up to next stage in my journey which is streaming.