Wiki Wednesday #95 - 旅猫ラキア / Rakia Tabineko

Happy New Year! Or maybe not! There's a chance that I messed up the dates on some articles and this gets shifted around. But, if I didn't mess anything up, this is the first Wiki Wednesday of 2021! And I'm writing it on May 17th! I'm not exactly sure why I've just written so much in such a short time. I set up a silly game that got twenty articles done in a week, but I'm still doing it. Well, I do know. I want to take care of the beginning of my spreadsheet that I keep forgetting about. Rakia here is #2 on the spreadsheet, and I haven't touched them until issue #95. If I didn't take this attitude, this NB fella would just get ignored forever. 

Wiki Wednesday #95 - 旅猫ラキア / Rakia Tabineko

I edited the Wiki page to have Rakia's voice provider's BowlRoll as the link as opposed to the original VCV link. Instead of clicking VCV, clicking the uploader's icon, and then downloading the banks, I removed two steps! I also added the link for another UTAU's latest act onto their page. I thought I was going to take care of them first, but they're #14 and this is #2. Also, that article will be really political. I mean, I try not to be, but I'll spend half of it clapping at the progressive actions taken by the voice provider. But ya know what they say! There are two genders. Male and political. And speaking of political!

Who is Tabineko Rakia?

Official Art Packaged with Bank

Forgotten Friday #105 - 蕃茄音尋 / Tomatone Hiro

 Merry Christmas!

Forgotten Friday #105 - 蕃茄音尋 / Tomatone Hiro

I seriously underestimated how much families would throw a wrench in my plans. Which sounds a little weird! What I mean is that my plan was to write out all the articles in the spreadsheet, and then post them in the order in the spreadsheet. But, I have a rule to not spam families. Especially if someone is bingeing the archive (of my blog, not the Japanese wiki). It would be like "oh. Shirushine. Oh. Shirushine. Another Shirushine." And they would just walk away, because that's boring.

Trying to avoid people just walking away without clicking "read more"!

Who is Hiro Tomatone?

official icon from bank

Wiki Wednesday #94 - サマラ / GraySlate's Samara

Ya know, I don't know why I included this bank in the first place. There's no Japanese bank, only an English bank using an icky list. But, it was in my spreadsheet, so I gotta do it. That's how life be some times - you make a weird judgment that you wouldn't normally make, and then you gotta follow through. That's life, ya know.

Wiki Wednesday #94 - サマラ / GraySlate's Samara

Alright! The GreySlate UTAUs do have a working website, but Samara's download link on the website is 404, and GraySlate edited the Wiki page two-hundred and forty-five days ago which has the correct link. Or.. I could have said 245. It's a nice looking number.

The collective is named zephyrutau, and I believe there are around twenty-five UTAUs belonging to it. However, I ain't making a testing UST for Italian or Korean, so some UTAUs that only have Korean or Italian banks will never be touched by me. I believe that instead of Samara - Italian append, there is an UTAU for each language, and then that UTAU's genderbend, which is recorded as a separate character. I bookmarked the page for the future, because... Well, I have a problem with collecting UTAUs. Just going through the Wiki isn't fast enough sometimes.

Who is Samara?

official icon packaged with bank

Forgotten Friday #104 - 維音アオ / Yuine Ao

 So! I will be processing these really out of order, but for a good reason. I wrote them all in order of the visual archive, barring ones that I was having computer issues to download. I can't spam families, so I'll be breaking up all of the families, but there are a lot.

Forgotten Friday #103 - 維音アオ / Yuine Ao

So, there's always been a desync issue between Wiki Wednesday and Forgotten Friday. I just enjoy Wiki Wednesday more, so I write more for it.

Well, uh, it got rediculous and it was about to get worse if it weren't for the rubber part of my right earbud just flying into the nether.

I was doing poorly and I set a goal. I was going to finish all the Wiki Wednesday articles I had the banks for. I started writing the bulk of the articles on my phone. I wrote fifty-thousand words on my phone and pushed the articles out to August 2021. While it was August 2020. I was faltering processing the samples, but pushing forward. I had a goal!

Well, uh… a small problem causing a small meltdown (mania problems) led me to redirect and find out… there were about one hundred and fifty Wiki Wednesday articles I would need to do to reach my goal. If you round fifty-two weeks in a year down to fifty, I would have Wiki Wednesday hanging out in 2024 while I'm still living in 2020. 

So, my brain quieted by playing plenty of modded Stardew Valley, I figured out the best plan of action. 

Forgotten Friday using my original method is tedious. There's one link on Ruto.yu, and there's no telling if it's even the correct one. The project was abandoned in 2013, and is completely controlled by…. I call the person Ruto.yu in my head. I should know who ran it by now. 

I originally wanted to switch to the Visual Archive for Wiki Wednesday just because it felt more polished than the Wiki, but I found out that out of three-thousand entries, two-thousand chronologically belonged in the Forgotten Friday category. I didn't want to "double dip", so I pulled all of Ruto.yu into a text file along with all of the titles of articles on my blog. I put the kanji names of all the Wiki Wednesday UTAUs left in that text file, and started searching through the Visual Archive.

This means two main things. 

The first is that we're taking a break from nostalgic UTAUs from 2010. Everything from this batch of articles is from 2013 at the earliest. We'll jump back to 2010 eventually, so don't worry!

The second is that these articles are going to be insanely Japanese centric for a while. Ironically, though, that was kind of the plan. I didn't realize how many overseas UTAUs were created prior to 2013. I thought it would mostly be Japanese UTAUs in Forgotten Friday somehow. And, it it weren't for cool chaps like The Elemental Griffin porting Visual Archive articles to the Wiki, Wiki Wednesday would have been mostly overseas. 

So yeah, just a heads up on why Forgotten Friday is suddenly different!

Who is Ao Yuine?

Official Art from Bank

Wiki Wednesday #93 - アックア・行夫 / Yukio Acqua

I'm in a not too awful place with my memories at this very moment. I contacted Idoltrash, the voice provider, about this UTAU previously. I knew that, but I forgot entirely what they said because... well, I'm halfway there. I tried to find the tweet or DM where we talked, but I legit couldn't find it despite cutting back my tweets significantly. I think the conversation went "Hey, Yukio only has one bank?" "Yeah, the CV was bad." "Okay, I can write my article then." If that wasn't how it went, well, whoops. Yukio got cheated out of more samples being rendered. 

Wiki Wednesday #93 -  アックア・行夫 / Yukio Acqua

This is the second time recently to stop and try to figure out Asian name ordering. It's Family name, Given name. So, Acqua is the family name, and Yukio is the given name, and it is mirrored by the romanized name being Given name, Yukio; Family name, Acqua. And thank goodness. My fingers would be tied from typing Acqua after a while. (I think words and then I type them. I have no idea where the keys are. So I have to type something I don't have memorized (i.e. Acqua) and I have to pause and think "okay but... where is the 'c'?! I don't know!") Somehow, Japanese escapes that issue and I can copy it no problem... half the time. Then it's my dyslexia making me say "Is it Fuyuyu or Fufuyu?!"

So, anyway!

Who is Acqua Yukio?

official art by irunabara

Forgotten Friday #103 - 音波多キク / Owata Kiku

Oh look! A Japanese UTAU! It's been a while, hasn't it? 

Forgotten Friday #103 - 音波多キク / Owata Kiku

Okay so, this UTAU was made in 2009 in Japan. It took like five years after that point for RuPaul's Drag Race to stop using a transphobic slur every episode, and that was in America. I was sure that this UTAU was a drag queen (hence the term 'okama'), full stop, until the person who made it listed that her heart was female, also. 

I think that we can put this in the "well-meaning enough to not be overtly problematic" pile. It's just a father who does her best to raise her kids after their mother died. I think she passes well enough that no one really realizes it (i.e., she is stealth). The lips and stuff, I think the art style was just wonky. I believe her makeup is described as "perfect", and she's constantly trying to seem younger than she is... And lip fillers are all the rage for doing that.

It's really difficult to touch on trans issues with vocal synths, and can go really, really bad really fast. But, given everything, I think Kiku gets a pass.

Who is Kiku Owata?

Image from Visual Archive

Wiki Wednesday #92 - Lumina Silaeta

No fraction starting off this article. I technically started it in time to get one last article in and actually beat the dice, but that's kind of silly after I did a write-up on how I did! I'm planning on just going to the top of the list and continuing onward. Lumina was #7 in the spreadsheet. She only has two before her who haven't been done. Those two actually have a lot of banks to look at, so I just was like "okay, short and simple. This is only one bank. I can get down to serious in a day or two."

Wiki Wednesday #92 - Lumina Silaeta

So, when I started this series, I contacted Lumia's voice provider... and I don't think I ever heard back. Now, I can't even find the voice provider at all. This is legit scorched-earth territory saying "Please do not associate me with UTAU in any way." But, the download is still up, so... That's that.

Watch someone comment telling me where Lumina-P is and how it was super obvious and how did I not know that?!! (I did it to myself. Lumina's character art isn't packaged with her bank, so I needed to get it from the Wiki. I dragged and dropped it into my folder and saw the username that uploaded the image to dA. I got really excited because she last posted in October of 2018, meaning she was definitely still active because it just became 2019! No, Mae. 2018 was two years ago. It is 2020. It is half way through 2020 at time of writing.)

Who is Lumina Silaeta? 

Official Art, Yoink'd from the UTAU Wiki

Forgotten Friday #102 - フルウト音真愛 / Mai Furuutone

I have "Kids Don't Play with Too Many Knives" stuck in my head. "How do you choose between Fresh and Fly? And believe me, there is a difference!" (Crash Stuntman going to save some lives!)

Forgotten Friday #102 - フルウト音真愛 / Mai Furuutone

I think I have been getting too deep recently, and I should be more uh... More straight to the point. Articles have been taking me longer because I get side tracked, and having fireside chats isn't the purpose of the articles. I really, really want to be able to download more UTAUs, and I have like a hundred articles to get through to do that. So, yeah! Picture, sample, links.

Who is Furuutone Mai?

Official Icon from Wikia

Hopefully this isn't Goodbye, Clyp.

Clyp isn't shutting down as far as I know, but there is writing on the wall.

Recently, Clyp announced that they were moving to a fully premium model. SoundCloud and Photobucket have already pulled that. SoundCloud backed down, but Photobucket just seemingly stopped existing aside from emails telling me my bucket was full.

There's virtually no reason to choose Clyp over SoundCloud, so I do not see a reason that Clyp will make enough money to keep the lights on indefinitely. (Especially seeing as people mention using Discord to share all files under eight megabytes.)

I downloaded everything from my middle school Photobucket and deleted enough to get them to stop yelling at me for having too much stuff, so my first instinct was to take all of my files off of Clyp and move them to Google Drive.

Well, there's no option to download everything at once on Clyp. Even if there was, I would need to go through every single one of my 145 Clyps and enable downloads for each one.

Even if I downloaded everything, there's another hitch. I just rendered off WAV files and dropped them onto Clyp. So, on top of downloading all 145 Clyps, I would need to convert 145 Clyps to MP3 files. And then, on top of all that, I would probably need to clip the sixteen second samples down to my normal six seconds for storage reasons. 

If enough people buy Clyp premium, then Clyp will keep their lights on and I won't have to do anything. I do hope that enough people buy it - not just for my laziness, but also because I don't want anyone to lose their job because their company folded. 

I will slowly download all of my content from Clyp so that if their site goes down suddenly, I will have all of the audio files. But, unless that happens or Clyp disables embeds, all of the articles with audio from Clyp will continue to have audio from Clyp. 

Here's to hoping that Clyp makes enough money to keep the lights on!

Wiki Wednesday #91 - あんとんこうた / Anton KoUta

3/2. I tied the dice! It may be tomorrow by the time I finish this, but I'll still count it as breaking even with the dice, because like, why not? So, I learned a lot through this experience. I have new rules for the next time I do it. Forgotten Friday, when dealing with abandoned, one pitch CV banks, it can make sense to use a six sided die. However, using a six sided die with Wiki Wednesday isn't good. I can hunt down as many one pitch abandoned banks as I can, but I'm tossing what I need to do to get my download folder under control out the window. Maybe, I think for Wiki Wednesday, the goal should be "how many voice samples" and not how many articles period. Either that or just three sided die. Furthermore, I think I've decided what I'll do for NaNoWriMo. Keep up with word counts and try to write 50k words worth of articles over the month. Fun? Maybe... maybe.

Wiki Wednesday #91 - あんとんこうた / Anton KoUta

Alright! I put off looking at this UTAU because I had the link to the CV bank that I never got around to downloading. I checked it, and the link was dead. So, as far as I know, there is only one available bank. The website is 404, and the Wiki page is run by the people who made Anton. I could go on a magical adventure to see if there were any bread crumbs that led to a bread house, but naw.

Anyway, let's go!

Who is KoUta Anton?

Official Art Packaged with Bank
But on the Wiki, it said is "created by app"
What app?