Contrails: Mar '26, Week 4

Ah, where do I even start? I realized on Sunday night that I had nothing much to share for the week. 🤔 But I'll try my best to dig up as much as I can in the spirit of wrapping up the first quarter of 2026. ✨

🎞️ Projects 🎞️

Practicing for the next (solo) cover was quite the struggle bus, so much so that I decided to just pray for the best during my last practice session before recording day. 💀 But to my surprise the practice seemed to have paid off. 🥺 It turned out to be a pretty smooth session! Credit goes to Yuraia for his patience, help with the recording, and vocal direction feedback. 🥹 He's the true MVP!

This cover might be the last one for a while though, because I think I'm finally done mulling over my activities as Minerva Murasaki, the VSinger primarily on YouTube (I vibrate my vocal cords and recite song lyrics🤣).

Over the years I've reviewed my covers many times, reflecting on how I sound, how I felt singing each song, the process of making and publishing the video, and how I want to improve for the next. Frankly, it was rare that I was satisfied with the end product. So now that I have enough data points, I think I am ready to move on from what I've grown comfortable doing. Knowing me, I might just backtrack on this once the going gets REALLY tough (it's going to), but I want to give it a shot.

What's changing? I'll try to answer with action rather than words. I'm not THAT confident of my plan either, so we'll just have to see how it goes. 🥺 The gist of it is:

• No more chasing monthly uploads. I'm not sure if my karaoke set last year having too many copyright claims has caused my channel visibility to drop, because my videos now have abnormally low view counts. It's even lower than when I only had about 300 subscribers, and I don't think it's because of my choice of songs? But then again who knows... I haven't done songs from popular artists since Neo-Aspect. I really don't do it for the views, so why am I attempting to chase a schedule when I no longer have a long backlog of songs I want to cover?

• Lyrics are still important, but it no longer needs to be about me. After almost half a decade of covers, I feel satisfied with the parts of me that I've put out into the world through the songs I've covered. I no longer feel the strong need to scream my heart out to mourn myself. So if a song stirs something in me, I think that's good enough a reason to sing -- I'll sing for me, and less for my shadow.

• I'm tired of comparing myself to others who look like me. I am satisfied with the way I present myself online and offline, but I think I've spent way too long trying to sound good singing songs that other "faceless singers" or "Asian girls my age" sang. I wanted to feel like I could be a part of something. It has always felt like a crime that my comfortable vocal tone is on the darker side, and no amount of compliments about my voice felt insightful. However, not to sound defeatist, I've come to recognize that most of the songs I've covered from the Utattemita/ Japanese Internet Culture scene weren't written for voices like mine. So now that I've grown comfortable in my skin (Minerva), I should learn to be comfortable with my voice -- I've learned to control it better thanks to pushing myself, but I want to lean into what I might be naturally better at.

But I wonder: What will I leave behind?

I want to stick to my goal of focusing on what I want to do and not what I think others want to see from me this year. Stay focused, Mimi! 🥺

🎮 Gaming 🎮

Nothing eventful this week! But here are some highlights

1. I did a hand-cam recording of how I play FFXIV and showed it to my static. It feels natural to me, but apparently everyone who saw my recording said I was insane. 🤔🤔🤔 I can't remember exactly how the topic of my play-style came up, but I think someone was talking about game controls and my partner mentioned that I don't use my mouse most of the time (I only use it to move the camera if I need to see something). Honestly I was expecting everyone to say that my way of playing was "pretty normal" but... it turned out to be an interesting experience. 🤔🤣 One of them recommended I get the Azeron Cyborg II gaming controller so that I don't even need my mouse. 🤣🤣🤣

2. Played the Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds Megaman festival. Didn't enjoy it, wanted to abandon the event, but my partner (who was suffering more than I was) was committed to collecting all the event specials. So we pushed through. 🙃🙃 The thing I hate the most about Karting games is the ability to shoot other players (I think placing road hazards is fine), and this was the highlight of the event. 💀 Pukes blood

3. Played more Green Hell. It's a little tiring because I can't relax while playing, but my partner really enjoys the game and has invited more friends to play together, so I just try to be useful.

4. Been watching a friend play Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc and Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair. I'm familiar with the series, but it was refreshing going through the story once more and listening to their thoughts on the story. In fact, I've cosplayed 3 characters from the franchise! So it was a nice chill activity when I wasn't actively gaming.

Really old photos. Hahaha. Feeling cute might delete later. 🤔

🐰 IRL 🐰

Besides keeping up with cleaning my living space, I met a friend for a meal on Friday! And it's Ari's birthday today! \o/ I spent some time drawing a card for her early in the week and sent it to her at the stroke of midnight. It was so ugly, but I'm glad she appreciates the thought and effort. 🤣🤣🤣

Happy Birthday, dear friend! 💜

~💜~

Hopes for this week

♪ Work on a vocal tune & time commission.

♪ Find time to start working on the next cover (while I wait for updates on the solo cover)

☆ Week 13 of 7.4 Savage Raids: It's finally the last session! Something tells me I'm going to look back fondly on this tier even though I didn't do that well this time.

☆ Touch some grass

Thank you for reading! 🌙🐰