My Experience Modding Vosim
Publish date: 3-Nov-2024
TW: reference to drug overdose
If you're a member of the Chipspeech fandom, chances are you've heard of the Twitter roleplay accounts that were created for the characters – usually nicknamed "chiptwt." While no longer active, these accounts created a lot of the character lore and influenced the fandom greatly. For me specifically, these accounts are an important part of my fandom experience because I ran one of these accounts for a significant amount of time. From about 2015 to 2020, I ran Vosim's Twitter account, and I want to share my experiences running his account. Quick disclaimer: some people I mention are public individuals who are still active today in some form so uh. Be normal about it okay?
Let's start from the beginning. I got into the Chipspeech fandom a bit before Plogue released Vosim in May 2015, where I fell in from the greater vocal synth community, specifically UTAU. I was about 15-16 years old then. Like the other characters, he got a Twitter account for roleplay, and on his first day of being live, he was a hit with the fandom. People liked his soft, weird, and vaguely autistic personality, and I liked him too.
After the first day of him being live, I get a DM from one of the Twitter mods on Skype. For context, most of the core fandom gathered in a Skype group called Chipchat, and this group actually contained one of the mods playing in character as Dandy 704. Which in hindsight is VERY weird, considering the atmosphere of Skype groups being significantly more intimate than a Discord server. Dandy's mod reached out to me asking if I would like to be Vosim's mod, feeling I was a good fit for his personality. Which of course, I was super excited about and accepted, and then I got his login and got to work.
Being Vosim was an exciting experience back in the beginning. Most of the rp back then was improvised, so it led to a lot of good bits. One of my favorites is that infamous incident where Vosim beats up Dandy by stealing his arm – With the various account purges it's hard to tell the context, but I believe he beat him up because he was being misogynistic towards Daisy? Early Dandy was weird. Chipspeech was at its most well- known in the greater vocal synth community, so I got so much direct feedback and validation from fans reacting to what the chips would do. You know, stuff that is insanely validating to a teenager. And Vosim is popular! We were instructed to follow for follow, so that certainly helped our reach as well.
Behind the scenes is where things get a little more complicated with my feelings towards the mod experience. One of the first frustrating details that started to stress me out was the specific flavor of secrecy expected of us under this Dandy mod. We were not allowed to reveal our identities as mods, and it was discouraged to even do so with other mods. While the secrecy can be a little fun for a bit, it starts to get stressful when you find yourself playing in mod mode versus fandom member mode. I really had to prevent my wires from being crossed, which led to some interesting moments like reblogging my Tumblr callout posted as Wendy…as Vosim. Actually even further, it would lead to playing as Vosim's mod, an anonymous mod known as Cinnamon. The fandom had enough awareness that there were people behind these accounts, and thus began to discuss the mods as their own people, giving them special nicknames. Dandy's mod was Soda, I was Cinnamon, and Dee was Madden, to name a few nicknames. Which I have spoken as Cinnamon on Vosim’s blog and not as Wendy. It gets complicated.
This secrecy extended to some extent among the mods. It was…very inconsistent how this played out and I suspect some mods got more leeway than others in this regard. We didn't have a mod group chat, which led to some disjointed story content in the early days; The mods after Soda would notably make efforts to coordinate in Discord servers collaboratively, raising the quality of story writing. I had two mods I communicated with: Dandy’s mod (and by extension Daisy’s mod - more on that in a bit) and Dee’s mod…separately.
"Soda," Dandy's mod…I guess I should start with an open secret. Dandy’s original mod was Crusher-P, who I’ll refer to as Cien for the most part here. Cien was heavily involved with Plogue during the early days of Chipspeech, doing a lot for the marketing of the software by virtue of fandom star power. Thus, she had a very public presence within the fandom, but was a bit more untouchable due to her fame. Among other things, this led to a dynamic forming between me and Cien. Initially, she did not reveal her identity to me. There were some things that I think made her more interested in me though. Notably, I publicly defended her in some Plogue streams when fans would get weird about Daisy. She often said I was nice, and knowing that I was friends with Crusher-P really boosted my teenaged ego. I remember spending my 16 th birthday at midnight talking to her. I don't remember what we talked about exactly but I do recall it being a bittersweet discussion. I think fandom drama was starting to hit Chipspeech more and my home life was worsening, so it made my 16 th less than sweet. She even offered me her personal Skype.
I think in September 2015, however, she OD'd and ended up in the hospital. I'm okay with saying this, it was a public situation. After that I think was the beginning of the end of her involvement with Plogue. After her hospitalization, she ghosted me and made no effort to give me any new Skype contacts to her. Daisy's short-lived Twitter got wiped. So did Dandy's. Soon it became apparent that her relationship with Plogue was starting to deteriorate as well. I’ve had a lot of mixed feelings about her over the years due to how she ghosted me. Upon reflection, I think there were some red flags. She basically made me act as a middle man between her and Dee's mod after some point, which I think really strained my friendship with Dee’s mod.
Dee's mod I had communicated only through Vosim's account until we revealed ourselves to each other, and it turned out that we were friends already – we were closer friends and had an established history of chatting so the process was fairly smooth. Doing canon Vosidee was really fun, but we also struggled with it because we were both young and had difficulties with trust and relationships at the time. One of the mods expressed disdain for Vosidee being canon and we had to create a canon breakup. If I was doing it today, I would make it canon and I’d probably have somewhat of an easier time writing their relationship. I think the chipmodding really had a strain on our friendship unfortunately, especially since I don’t think Cien liked Dee's mod that much. After Cien, my memories of modding become a little fuzzier. We started to shift gears after Daisy was retconned, and shift Dandy’s story away from the toxic yaoi vibes of being with Otto. Around this time I started to build out Vosim’s life a bit more: having a home, his backstory in the wastelands, stuff like that. I think any mod drama that happened around this time I barely remember, to be honest. It happened for sure, but I don't think it affected me as much. In 2020, I passed on the torch to a new mod and gave them my notes for Vosim.
In today's Chipspeech fandom, despite the chiptwt no longer being active and having no plans of continuing, I still see the fandom's love and appreciation for Vosim. It tickles me to see this character I grew starting as a teenager has grown on so many people, the fanart, the office AUs and such. Vosim I styled after me in certain ways, taking inspiration from that confused neurodivergent child and implanting that energy onto a robot who wants to be treated with the same respect as a human. Seeing other people connect to him is like connecting to me as well.
To all the people who love Vosim, thank you. And many thanks to Plogue for letting me have the opportunity to shape him.
Image credit: pixoshiru