Music / Parties Are for Losers

"I like Akira and I like tracksuits that's about it"

Parties Are for Losers is an English VOCALOID series created by Ferry, who is also being responsible for making the art and videos. The first song (for which the series was named), "Parties Are for Losers", was released in January of 2019, with two more songs in the series being released in the following months and several more planned for the future. Ferry also provides a lot of the lore behind the series and background information about the characters on her tumblr blog.

The story, which borrows a lot from the movie Stalker (1979), takes place in an Eastern European city that borders an an anomalous Zone that appeared after a catastrophic incident 50 years before. The Zone itself is tightly bordered and a research facility was founded to study both it and captured mutants—humans that were born with unusual powers or appearances as a result of their parents being exposed to the Zone. At the same time, individuals called "stalkers" help people enter and exit the zone illegally.

"Parties Are for Losers" introduces a group of troubled teens living in this city: Yura, his friend Sanya, her older brother Sergei, and Katya (or KT,) a young girl who allegedly ran away from home and meets Yura and Sanya at a party one night. Yura and Sanya quickly bond with KT over the next two weeks, only for their friendship to be cut short when it's revealed that she's a runaway mutant. The subsequent videos both continue the story and further develop the main cast while also introducing new characters into the mix, like Yura's little sister Anya and her new "runaway" friend Dmitry...

All songs in the series are available on Youtube:

• "Parties Are For Losers" - The first video establishing the main cast as Sanya and Yura meet Katya and then are separated from her.
• "False Disposition" - A mostly flashback video depicting Sanya and Yura's past with each other and introducing Sanya's hatred of Sergei.
• "Punch It, Punk!" - A video taking place over the same time as PAFL, focusing on Yura's sister Anya and Sergei's enigmatic girlfriend Olya, who discover another child who claims to have run away from home, Dmitry.
• "KT's Official Guide to Coolness" - A song depicting PAFL from Katya's perspective.
• "The Mill" - A song continuing on from where the end of "False Disposition" left off, while providing cryptic flashbacks for some of the characters.
• "Strike 3" - A song from Sergei's perspective about the events immediately following The Mill.
• "Occam's Razor" - A song from Yura's perspective following the events of Strike 3, wherein he discovers what may be a new lead to saving Katya.
• "message lost" - A song from Nikita's perspective about his past relationship and regrets.
• "COMFORT ZONE" - A song from Dmitry's perspective, a flashback on his time in the laboratories, leading up to the events of "Punch It, Punk!"
• "LIKE A DOG" - A song from Dr. Temnova's perspective, dropping several hints about both her and the Zone's origins and true nature.
• "Convergence - A song from Anya's and later Yura's perspective, detailing his conversation with her and Dmitry to get help saving KT from the facility.
• "100 Epitaphs" - A song from Sanya's perspective showing her trying to connect more with Dmitry after the events of Convergence.

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This song series contains examples of:

• Arc Words: The phrases "Helpless spite" and "X ones like (me/you/us) Y when there is nothing to Z" appear in multiple songs, highlighting the series's themes of disaffected youth lacking direction or the ability to control their lives.
• Alliterative Name: Olga Orlova.
• All There in the Manual: Ferry has compiled a comprehensive explanation of the story, as well as several basic details about the characters (like name, age, height, etc.) on a google documented linked to in the description of each video. The document also includes clarification on what's happening in each video, for those who may be confused about them.
• Animal Motifs: Dmitry, with dogs. Very prominently in "LIKE A DOG." Yura calls him "like a cornered dog." in "Convergence" and Anya promises to "feed him, [and] walk him" to convince Olga to let him stay in "Punch it, Punk!"
• Annoying Younger Sibling: Anya and Sanya towards their respective brothers. Anya has no respect for Yura and calls him a loser, while Sanya resents Sergei's strict caregiving and actively rebels against his authority.
• Batman Gambit: In "Convergence," Yura coerces Dmitri into agreeing to help save Katya, under threat of outing him as a mutant and pointing out how terrible the consequences would be for Olga. This counts on him to have grown to care about her for taking care of him, and not just killing him and skipping town. It works.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: Dima grows fond of Anya and Olya after the latter agrees to house him because the former vouched for him since he rescued her.
• Big Brother Instinct: As her older brother, Sergei is determined to protect Sanya from harm, which unfortunately includes calling the police on her new mutant friend.
• Bilingual Bonus:
  • In "Punch It, Punk!" Olya's text conversation with Sergei (which reveals that, rather than telling Sergei about Dmitry's powers or calling the police on him, she's just asking if she can take a picture of KT's jacket) is all in Russian.
  • Several lines in "The Mill" are in Russian, and near the end of the video a single word appears on the screen as being said by a border guard. It's "Orlova?", Olga's last name.
  • "Comfort Zone" has a few instances of Russian text; one is Dr. Temnova's note to Dmitry to read his next assignment in the bathroom, and another is a document detailing the board's decision to terminate Dmitry for financial and safety reasons.
• Body Horror: KT's mutant powers turn her into a pile of excess flesh under distress.
• Call-Back:
  • At the climax of "KT's Official Guide to Coolness", as Katya is being captured, the lyrics go "This isn't okay" as the video pans over Yura, where the chorus of "Parties Are for Losers" had "it's okay, it's okay".
  • "The Mill" has a lyrical callback to False Disposition's chorus near the end.
• Chekhov's Gun: In The Mill, Yura finds a small glowing cube which he takes as a memento from his first trip into the zone it is later revealed that it only glows around anomalies, allowing him to prove Dmitry is a mutant so that he can blackmail him and Anya in Convergence.
• Cold Equation: Yura is more than willing to let Dmitry die in order to save KT, even blackmailing him so he knows what happens if he refuses is even worse.
• Crapsack World: As expressed by Anya in "Punch It, Punk!", the town near the Zone isn't the most comfortable place to live in. Ferry has even described the setting of PAFL as a kick to the face.
• Despair Event Horizon: "KT's Official Guide to Coolness" depicts Katya seemingly going through one after being recaptured in the end, being told an awful truth about her powers (which the video doesn't reveal) and resigning herself to the idea that she simply has to be contained rather than live a normal life.
• Disappeared Dad:
  • According to Ferry, Sergei and Sanya's dad was a "stalker" who died during his work. This means Sergei had to raise Sanya himself.
  • Also applies to Anya and Yura, who also have different fathers.
• Downer Ending: The first song ends on KT being captured by the police and taken back to the facility.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • "KT's Official Guide to Coolness" reveals that Yura knew that Katya was a mutant all along. He tells Katya that he won't tell anyone, and then suggests that they could get Sergei to help her if he "eased him into it". Unfortunately Sergei ends up being the opposite of helpful, as viewers already know.
  • "The Mill" starts with Sergei giving Yura a bunch of advice, including to not shoot the guards, and ends with Yura doing exactly that.
• Foil: In "Parties Are for Losers" and "Punch It, Punk!" respectively, Katya and Dmitry's stories are intentionally played off each other to demonstrate the differences between them, and the differences between their respective friend groups:
  • Katya and Dmitry both run into their allies through a rescue, but while Katya is rescued from a rival gang leader by Sanya (who proceeds to beat her potential attacker with a baseball bat,) Dmitry attempts to defend Anya from some thugs and is beaten to a pulp because he's a wimp though that is due to him being exhausted after escaping the facility with his powers.
  • PAFL shows Katya having a montage of fun times with her new friends, as does PIP for Dmitry and Anya—though Dmitry is shown as going along with a lot of what Anya wants (including going out with her) because he's dazed and it's convenient.
  • Katya primarily befriends Yura Beletsky, a cooler laid-back ne'er-do-well, and Sanya Kazarina, Sergei's rebellious little sister. Dmitry starts dating the bombastic and rebel-wannabe Anya Beletskaya, Yura's younger sister, and stays with Olya, Sergei's mysterious girlfriend. Katya and Dmitry even have important conversations with their respective Beletsky—while Katya comforts Yura not to "escape" the future, Dmitry tempts Anya to run away from her home with him.
  • When both mutants are exposed, Katya is turned in and briefly demonstrates her power to horrible effect, freaking even Yura out, while Dmitry is quickly assured that he won't be turned in and is met with Anya's immediate acceptance in the face of his ability.
• Engineered Public Confession: In "Convergence," Yura gets Dmitri to admit he's a mutant, then reveals he's been in a recorded phone call with Sanya the entire time, and uses that to blackmail him.
• Genki Girl: Anya and KT.
• Heroic RRoD: Dmitry's powers weaken his body after overuse.
• Idiot Hair: Averted. Sanya has a prominent cowlick on the top of her head, but she's far from an idiot.
• Missing Mom: Sergei and Sanya's mom, who died when Sanya was a baby.
• Never Given a Name: KT was never given a name. She goes by Katya since it's derived from her denomination at the facility.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Once he realizes the truth about Dmitry, Yura muses in "Occam's Razor" that maybe he and Anya might not be "as different" as he'd thought.
  • In the beginning of "Comfort Zone", Dmitry insists that he also knows the struggles of being "atypical", comparing himself to the other children he helps experiment on in the facility. He's just, in his own words, "better" than them.
• Official Couple: Sergei and Olga. Anya and Dima.
  Anya: Anyways, you wanna go out with me?
  Dima: ...Okay.
• Once More, with Clarity: In "Punch It, Punk!", Dmitry randomly jumps to Anya's defense and swiftly gets the crap beaten out of him. In "Comfort Zone", it's revealed that he was weak due to overexertion of his powers, and jumped to save Anya out of guilt for ditching KT and mistaking her for his fellow mutant since she was, paraphrasing Ferry, "the closest KT-shaped thing".
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Downplayed, but most of the cast is almost never referred to by their actual names (Yuri, Alexandra, Anna, Olga).
• Only One Name: Katya and Dmitry.
• Parental Substitute: Sergei raised his little sister Sanya after their dad dies on the job, with their mom having passed away after having Sanya. Before Sergei became a legal adult, however, Nikita and his brother Kolya helped the Kazarin siblings out.
• Rescue Romance: Anya falls for Dmitry immediately when he leaps to protect her from some thugs (although he ends up getting the crap beaten out of him).
• Runaway Hideaway: Ferry explained on her blog that during the two weeks KT knew Yura and Sanya, they set up a little hideout for her in an abandoned swimming pool to sleep and hang out in, that becomes more comfortable as the gang brings more stuff to it, since it wouldn't be feasible for her to live with either of them.
• Sacrificial Lion: Nikita is introduced, given characterization, and killed in "The Mill".
• Shoot the Dangerous Minion: The end of "Comfort Zone" reveals that the Facility was planning to terminate Dima because his powers made him too much of a risk to keep contained, prompting his escape.
• Shout-Out:
  • To AKIRA in the first song, as KT's powers manifest in a very similar way to Tetsuo's Superpower Meltdown (i.e. spawning a bunch of excess flesh.)
  • According to the creator, Olya's surname, Orlova (which is a derivative of the Russian word for "eagle") is an obscure Shout-Out to Riza Hawkeye, another stoic blonde female character.
  • A segment in "Comfort Zone" briefly shows Dmitry arguing with two other mutants using some of the defense and prosecutor character animations from Ace Attorney. Later lines in the song call back to this with the lines "objection" and "overrule".
• Significant Wardrobe Shift: In "False Disposition" Sanya goes from a yellow and grey gym outfit to her white and black track suit, puts up her hair, and changes her glasses to contacts—all signifying her change into the baseball-bat-wielding girl we see in PAFL.
• Stalker without a Crush: Anya regularly stalks Olya on her way to work, finding her fascinating and curious about the fact that she takes a gun to work with her. Olya knows she does it and doesn't mind, though.
• Stepford Smiler: Yura as demonstrated in the first song. While going to a party with KT one night the lines say that he no longer has to "force a smile" and he breaks down in front of her.
• Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: Sanya's albinism is treated realistically: she can't be out in the sun for long, her eyesight is weak, and because albinism is considered a mutation, albeit minor, she's homeschooled by Sergei as a result.
• Taking the Heat: In "Strike 3" Olya claims that she's the one who shot the Zone border guard to get Yura off the hook. Sergei is not happy about this, but neither is Yura.
  Yura: No one asked her to be Mother-fucking-Teresa!
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Strike 3 in its entirety is about Sergei lashing out at Yura for shooting a Zone border guard and causing Olga to take the heat for him, potentially getting her into difficult legal trouble. and (to a lesser extent) expressing his frustations about Sanya continuously disobeying him and going along with Yura's shenanigans.
• Wham Shot:
  • At the end of "Punch It, Punk!" there's the shot of every sharp object in Olya's house floating, surrounded by blue light, and pointed right at Olya—showing the audience that Dmitry has telekinesis.
  • During the climax of "The Mill", a border guard stopping the characters is shot in the forehead. Then it's revealed that Yura is the one who fired the shot.
  • In "Comfort Zone" Dima learning that he's going to be terminated, as shown via a blink-and-you'll-miss-it document authorizing this.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: Dima twice in "Comfort Zone", once at the beginning and the other after learning that the Facility will kill him.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Most of "Strike 3" is Sergei giving one to Yura for what happened during The Mill and the fact that Olya took the blame for shooting the guard so Yura could get off easy, culminating in banning him from ever coming around again.
• Would Hurt a Child: The facility where Dima and KT come from experiments on mutants, most of which are underage, as shown in "Comfort Zone".
• You All Share My Story: All of the characters' stories revolve around KT and the facility, meeting in the aptly named Convergence.
• You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Poor Dima, who narrowly avoided that fate thanks to Dr. Temnova, and it is later revealed that Yura sees him as an acceptable casualty in KT's rescue.