Contrails: Jan '26, Week 4

Minerva Murasaki
Feb 2
6 min read

Oh boy. Let's start with the highlight of the week?

✨ New Cover -- Uploaded by cover of Sing My Pleasure from Vivy - Fluorite Eye's Song-, the anime!

I even managed to complete it by the end of January, as I had hoped! 🥹 But where's the cover? Why were there no updates on my channel and socials? 🤔

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k497pmxuXa8

If Sony Music Entertainment Japan is kind, the video will be visible.

It was bound to happen eventually: My video was completely blocked by a copyright claim. 🙃 Initially I had used the original instrumental, so I thought that was the problem. So I found a fanmade instrumental that could be used for covers, swapped it out with Yuraia's help, and it was STILL blocked. 🙃 So there was nothing left to do but to file a dispute and pray that the overlords are feeling generous.

If the copyright dispute is rejected, I'll try to upload the <1 minute clips onto my socials. If that gets stopped for some reason, then I'll probably try to find a way to share the version of the cover with the original instrumental somehow with the Gems on Discord for a few days. Via this blog? I'm not sure yet. There is also a chance that the video will be unblocked in a few hours as there is a 48 hour window for SME to respond before the video will proceed to go public. We'll see how that goes.

Regardless, I'm happy to have covered this song. I watched Vivy several years back, and although I felt that the "androids can't feel emotion and struggle to be more human" trope was rather cliche (like Nier Automata and Violet Evergarden), there was something about Vivy's story that resonated with me, although I didn't give it as much thought until I looked into the lyrics of the opening theme song.

Vivy's duty was to make people happy through her singing, and her eventual realization after lifetimes of contemplation was that singing from her heart meant singing along with her memories. That "the heart" is equivalent to "one's memories". I won't go into more detail to avoid spoilers, but my takeaway from the story is that at the end of the day, she was still an outsider (non-human) who tried to fulfill her commitment to the people she would never truly understand all the way till the very end -- in a way that made sense to her.

I wasn't happy to hear a story about someone having the "honor" to answer their calling. I was envious of her plot armor: her immortality and lowered risk of becoming someone else's tragic memory. She had a whole lifetime and then some to eventually reach her "happy" ending. Maybe my destiny is to eventually see my "happy" ending too, but I'm at the mercy of mortality and biochemical processes.

Each and every word I sang, I thought of my loved ones who want nothing but for me to be happy... and the pain as I try to fulfill my duty till the very end.

I try my best to be happy for my loved ones because... frankly, I'm not sure what being happy means. Phrases like "my heart soared" and "it warms my heart" doesn't resonate with me. When people say "I love you", I take it as a request for exchange, and I get stressed -- I used to think that it is what "doki doki" means, but realized in hindsight that every time I felt "doki doki", I would respond with the 5 F Responses to trauma (fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flop). The more encounters I had, the further down the list I went. I hate it when people say that I'm normal because if I am, why do I feel so different? 🙃

But back to the song. I'm blessed to have a support system that I believe truly just wants me to smile. But like I've told them across several letters over the years:

Sometimes being happy feels like a full time job, but I try my best because I know you love me.

Statistically speaking, I'll outlive all of you. So I hope to enjoy my time with you while I still have life to live.

I'll try my best to take care of myself and be healthy enough so that I can keep smiling for you.

Story goes that I was never meant to be. My mother wanted many children but married a man who didn't want any. They had a son, and agreed that would be the middle ground. But that son, no matter how many toys he was given, didn't want to play them by himself. He'd toss the toys out of the house towards other children in hopes that they would want to play with him. But being a slow learner meant that most kids weren't interested. So I came to be. I think I was perfect in many ways -- quiet and intelligent enough for my father to dote on, playful and clingy enough to follow my brother until we were no longer minors in as many ways as possible despite the age gap, darling but rebellious enough for my mother to have a soft spot for.

But I struggled to understand what I was to do with myself, for myself -- my life. When they told me to "do what I want to do" it felt almost cruel, especially when what I REALLY wanted to do was usually something they didn't allow me to due to some fair reason -- I was never stopped from doing what I was allowed to do. As I grew up, it felt like they didn't need me anymore, so they were imposing the need to "grow up and start my own life". Eventually in my late teens it clicked: They never had suggestions what to do with my life because that is not why I was brought into this world -- I came to be because they all wanted someone to smile for them (I assume that my father didn't want to be the main reason for his son's misery). This applies to my partner too, who I met later in my life!

So despite all the painful memories I've made along the way, it feels right to keep trying to live my truth, so that hopefully someday they'll see in me a kind of radiance of someone who has taken to heart all the experiences in their life, and beyond, and is still able to smile sincerely. 🥺💖 A tall ask, but I'm working on it!

Now, on to the rest of the week!

✨ Gaming -- Finished The Room 4: Old Sins, played Disco Elysium, Sonic Racing, and saw the enrage sequence of M12S phase 1 (FFXIV)

No screenshots from FFXIV this week because we didn't clear M12S phase 1, but I'm feeling hopeful that we will very soon! 💖

Finally finished The Room 4! I enjoy the The Room series very much. It's immersive, and has not too complicated puzzles. Not sure how I feel about the overarching story about the Null element, but hey, if it inspires new games who am I to complain? 🤣

Got to play quite a lot of Disco Elysium this week because the FFXIV static stuck to having 3 sessions this week. I'm not sure if I'm progressing the game really slowly because I've clocked 21.1 hours, but only 2.5 in-game days have passed. 🤔 Am still enjoying the game though, so I'm looking forward to playing it again later today.(Maybe? 🥺)

I can't survive a week without some Sonic Racing, so I made some progress with collecting Donpa Tickets for completing my Stream achievements. I learned that I could progress my Donpa Ticket collection faster if I had more friends playing with me. 🤔🤔🤔 What if I bought the game for my friends?! But here I am, using Steam family sharing to play this game because I can't even bear to buy the game for myself. 🥹🥹🥹 Oh well. 🤣