Problematic material in the Vocaloids article

For starters, I'm not an expert on Vocaloids. I don't own any of the programs and I don't participate in any of the fandoms.

I have a couple of concerns about the article as it exists right now:

1. Most of the tropes are not related the the program itself, or the official content produced by any of the multiple companies that make this, but from fan-made videos made using the program. Its like having a Lord Of The Rings page that is mostly tropes from fanfics.
2. It makes no distinction between fanon and canon.
3. It documents some of the creepier elements of fandom that we probably could do without. See the sections for Shota Con, Twincest, etc.
4. It greatly abuses weblinks as examples.

I really don't know enough about this family of products to know the best way to approach troping this. Anyone have any suggestions?

edited 30th Apr '12 12:51:58 PM by Catbert

Better put up a notice on the article too.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

How?

Leave a note with a link over the examples.

"If you aren't him, then you apparently got your brain from the same discount retailer, so..." - Fighteer

It appears that Yamaha's official site for them (http://www.vocaloid.com/en/ ) gives info on the official characters. Though I don't know if what's provided there is all that there is, or if there's stuff "in the box."

Though based on some of the info that's on that page, given the "Hall of Fame" that the site mentions and how Yamaha apparently deals with that, I think a good chunk of even what's official counts as Ascended Fanon regardless.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

Part of it is that the tropes come from the songs. Other than appearance, most Vocaloids don't have anything tropeable.

That's why I'm not really sure how to approach this. I mean, most of our tropes really aren't geared toward voice synthesizers.

Yeah, the thing with Vocaloids is that outside the program itself*

, there's not really anything official except the Vocaloids' appearances and basic personalities. So there's not really anything to talk about except the songs made by people who bought it, and maybe other fan-made stuff.

Hi, Vocaloid fan here. I think I'm pretty well-versed in the world of Vocaloid, and I'd be glad to help work on the Vocaloid article and its subpages. First, my opinions on your concerns:

1. As people have said before, the Vocaloid fandom is essentially built around the music created by users of the program. Thus, the lines between canon and fanon are often blurred. If we stripped the page of all fan-created material, it would be bare-bones at best, and not focusing on why people enjoy Vocaloid. In my opinion, the canon and fanon examples should be segregated, but on the same page.
2. See above.
3. Sadly, fans of those things are quite prominent in the Vocaloid fandom, but pure fan reactions could probably be cut. Songs are more complicated (see below).
4. If it's okay, I could clean this up. It doesn't look too hard, considering that the required viewing is right there.

Now, there are a few other problems I would like to bring up:

The opening of the article spends most of its time talking about Crypton Future Media's accomplishments rather than actually talking about Vocaloid and its community. Several Vocaloid fans have expressed their disdain for this in the past.

There is also the issue of sexual songs. What do we do about them? Usually, it seems that sexual material in songs is tolerated a lot more than it would be otherwise, with stuff that would be considered tasteless PWP in another medium being played on mainstream radio. Vocaloid is no exception, and while this opens up some questions on its own (like, what do we do if we have a nine-year-old girl voicebank covering a sexual song?), there is something different about the Vocaloid community's songs:

Since most Vocaloid songs are distributed on the Internet, they are subject to a lot less censorship than usual. Thus, people are free to go in wild directions with their lyrics and still rack up enough views to be considered "mainstream". Are we to allow a song about a little boy being a victim of statutory rape played off as sexy? A song about a borderline-jailbait girl gleefully spewing absurd sexual euphemisms with an illustration of her face covered in nondescript white fluid? A song with a girl repeatedly chanting about her preference of shaved pubic regions? All of these are real examples, and at least one of them is already listed on a Vocaloid subpage.

Okay, that's it for my major concerns. While we're here, I have a really minor one I was wondering about, too: there is a song listed on the Vocaloid Nightmare Fuel page that is forty seconds of very quiet noise, and then twenty seconds of extremely loud noise. So, it's basically a glorified screamer. Is that allowed?

*

Well, I think part of the point is that while we do catalog fan works, we don't put them under the original. Thus, if there was still to be a Vocaloid page (given that Hatsune Miku has toured and was used in ad campaigns in the US, I think we can have something), we'd need different pages for fan works.

Reminder: Offscreen Villainy does not count towards Complete Monster.

But in this case, fan works are an integral part of being a fan of the work. Also note that the official concerts and video games had a lot of fan artists and songwriters working on them, and even some OCs have been officially recognized.

Think of it this way: Vocaloid is an instrument. Let's say we had a page for another instrument, like guitars. Would we only have examples about the guitars themselves and guitarists that were hired to appear in commercials, and then shove everything else on a fanworks page?

edited 30th Apr '12 5:53:19 PM by Shortcake

Yes, yes we would shove everything else onto fan works pages. That's really where it belongs. We could make an index of vocaloid fan works and link to it from the main.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

That would just make things confusing, since 99% of all Vocaloid songs are fan works. Even if we just made pages for each producer instead of each song, we'd still be splitting all of the examples over literally dozens of pages.

We could make just one page for Vocaloid fan works, but they don't belong on the main page. I'm sorry, but they don't.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

I still think that songs created by people who use the Vocaloid program and are not affiliated with a Vocaloid-related company in any way (in other words, what an end user of the product is intended to do) are important enough to leave on the main page.

And then, even if we split the fanworks onto their new page, what would make a song "official"? Appearing in a concert or a video game? Being used in an advertisement or demo for a new product? Being included in a commercial album? Bear in mind that these uses are not necessarily endorsed by Yamaha themselves, so does it need validation from Yamaha, or will any voicebank-producing company do? Or are songs just not considered official at all?

The stuff on the website is official. The stuff in the official vocaloid concerts is official. The stuff on the boxes is official. The vocaloid ads that are made with the company's involvement are official.

Yes, that means the main page is going to be trope poor, but there really aren't many tropes for the program itself.

edited 30th Apr '12 7:34:30 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

So does this mean we have to have a fan works page for Auto-Tune as well? It is also a program that people use in their music, and Antares Audio Technologies certainly couldn't have acknowledged every song that has ever used it.

Auto-Tune is a trope page. Not as a work page. That's a big difference.

edited 30th Apr '12 7:44:24 PM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Well, that's fair enough I suppose.

I think I'll pull out of this discussion temporarily so other people can have a chance to speak.

Definitely needs cleanup. Would be willing to assist were I more familiar with Vocaloid. Shimaspawn's suggestions in 12, 14, 16 are probably the best option. Keep "canon" (ads, concerts, etc.) on main, link to index of fanworks (possibly soft-split by creator). Keep things clean on both. Beyond that, I can't really think of anything else that would work (besides the not-at-all-optimal solution of cutlisting).

"Polite life will fill you full of cancer." - Iggy Pop "I've seen the future, brother, it is murder." -Leonard Cohen

But then that only covers the 6 most advertised VOCALOIDS - Cryptonloids.

VOCALOID is the fanworks - there is no other canon. Every song in the concert, every song in Project DIVA, every song in every album is all fanmade. A group a fans created Vocatone who created Oliver. A Nico singer voiced Piko. Lapis Aoki was named by the fandom and voiced by a fan. Everything interesting about VOCALOID is fanmade.

Here's what most companies give us: concept art, a name, optimal range, and maybe an age. That's it.

Then that is what should be on the main page. The fanon needs to be in it's own place. There's always more fanon than canon in any work. That doesn't change the fact that we have a strict policy that fanon does not belong on the main page.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

So, what do you suggest we do exactly? Separate the tropes related to official stuff from the one related to songs and other fanon, and put the latter in a Fanon or Fan Works or whatever sub-page?

Yes, that is exactly what I suggest that we do.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Then I just went ahead and copied and separated the tropes in a couple files. Should we go make the page for the fan stuff now? I could quickly paste the tropes in the correct page right now if you want.