better off alone: kasane teto as a metaphor for loneliness

no one likes to admit it, but there is a definite cost of energy and time when fostering relationships with others. this is a universal constant. for as long as we have been able to communicate with one another, there's always been vectors for miscommunication, compacted further by pesky emotional response.

you may have heard of the hedgehog's dilemma, popularized among my peers and age group by neon genesis evangelion but also present in many other pieces of media. the idea is this: a hedgehog craves warmth and physical contact, but holding another hedgehog is difficult due to the spikes on their backs, creating a barrier to comfort from family or friends.

unexpectedly, there has been a recent trend in vocaloid spaces - you know, those singing robots, like hatsune miku - that encapsulates this dilemma in two distinct ways: frantic and melancholic. i can't think of any better pair of songs featuring the same vocaloid singer than birdbrain and honeycrisp.

birdbrain is a song by jamie paige (and OK Glass), who i recognized as hrmnzr from the tumblr days. she's the mastermind behind machine love, some amount of butcher vanity, and constant companions. she's quite talented, please give her a listen if you haven't yet, but i have a feeling that birdbrain will be recognizable, because it's become something of a hit.

birdbrain centers around kasane teto. she's an utauloid, which is distinct from a vocaloid; she was one of the first "discount mikus" to become popular. in this song, she portrays a girl who is eccentric, anxious, flighty, and chaotic, furthered by the song's overall "bird" motif. her outfit consists of a white shirt with a knot on one side (representative of a chicken's tail) and striped yellow shorts and stockings (and crocs? i love the crocs). the choreographed dance routine she performs incorporates a one-legged hop and hands atop her head, creating a bent-armed "wing flapping" motion, in addition to a motion of - and i am quoting the lyrics, of course - a chicken with its head being chopped off.

the editing style featured real photos as a backdrop, lighting her as though she's in the scene proper, with matching ambient light, rim lighting, and shadow casting. she's often been depicted as near-human, but this, i think, is one of the most 'real' teto iterations. she's basically just a normal girl. as an utauloid, she's "actually" a robot girl, but different songs humanize her differently.

birdbrain's core message is very human, too. a clear pattern is established from the get go: she's flawed, and she keeps "messing up", causing her to become outcast from her immediate circle, then she attempts to try again with a new group of friends. this repetition is wearing on her, obviously, and increasing her chaos to a fever pitch, as she obsessively tries to figure out what she did wrong.

it brings to mind reckless abandon by decoyman100, a song that has a similar unpredictable and manic energy to it, spinning teto around like a beyblade as she gets stuck in loops. in this one, at least, we see miku as her rock, the constant in her life, the one person who still seems concerned about where she's going and what she's doing. i would go so far as to say that this video shares a timeline with birdbrain, as though teto has so much trouble moderating her emotions and separating them from reality that everyone slowly ghosts from her life. as she burns away, i'd like to switch gears to another song that embodies the same message, but with opposite energy.

honeycrisp is a song by jam2go, where teto takes up the role of a crash test dummy. apples are a recurring theme, tied to a famous story about isaac newton and his theory of gravity. the apples and the apple tree embody a naive trust in the world, but the vast open inorganic space around feels at-odds with this natural aspect of the song.

one of the recurring lines in the song is "i'm better off alone", a clear callback to alice deejay's better off alone, considering jam2go's other projects like kitten burst, which focus on the y2k aesthetic and surrounding contemporary media. jam2go does an excellent job utilizing the imagery associated with things like frutiger aero to evoke nostalgia and melancholy, and they definitely do so in honeycrisp, though to a lesser extent than kitten burst.

this melancholic memory of innocence rings hollow with this 'crash test dummy' teto, altogether synthetic and detached from jam2go's own appearance next to ... an animated deer? this makes her a far cry from the organic nature of birdbrain teto. the crash test dummy imagery hits precisely, as 'dummy' could be interpreted as her (self-interpreted) foolishness for pursuing relationships, even when she thinks she knows what will happen, and the 'crash test' part acting as a self-descriptor for what she considers her friendships to her. this distrust and personal distance causes her to hesitate and lack close bonds with others.

another song that feels equally distant, but distinctly more human, is decoyman100's whatchacallitsname, whose flannel-wearing, ginger-haired teto peruses geocities-era web pages as she tells the tale of a forgotten trinket she never returned to a friend she doesn't talk to. she wanders down memory lane, talking about all the little knick-knacks she's accumulated (to her detriment). she can't help but hope that one day she can find the confidence to face her friend again and return the thing she's been holding.

all the tetos described above are ultimately lonely and afraid to be hurt. who isn't, with our current climate? it's hard to reach out when you're already being exhausted by everything else. it would hurt to be rejected again, after you've tried so hard to regain confidence. even the frantic tetos can agree on this. but there is a difference in the two varieties that i feel is important to take away from this: you need to build up momentum to break through.

being alone is detrimental to any person over long periods of time. it's well-documented that being isolated makes people go a little odd. we are social at our core. we have an innate inclination to create community where there is none. our support networks are life-saving, even when they aren't providing food or shelter.

something that birdbrain teto has over the other three tetos mentioned in this post is that she is *aware* of her need for connection and continues to seek it out, even if it's to her detriment. she's heard of the hedgehog's dilemma and decided it was stupid. she continues. she reaches out. she makes connections. she's ousted for unstated reasons. but what reasons? are these things *she* has control over, or are they external?

i think oftentimes, when a friend group goes through change prompted by conflict, it's hard to "pick a side". who's right and who's wrong? but it's not that binary. and i think the key part in keeping friends is accommodating each other. if someone's upset, they need to both be heard *and* taken care of. defensiveness has, historically, never fostered better relations, creating this adversarial nature between people that make things worse for everyone involved.

i guess what i'm getting at here is that friendship is worth the trouble. being willing to connect again after hardship is a sign of maturity. you must be able to not take things personally, or your friends won't tell you if something bothered them next time. you have to chill out, and if that's not easy, you need to find ways to moderate those emotions, and you need to find ways to forgive people for messing up, and that includes *yourself*.

you are stuck with yourself, and you get to decide what you will do about it.