![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
![[sticky entry]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/sticky_entry.png){kind=small}
Hello! Welcome to my journal!
( About the Poster )
( About the Journal )
( General Purpose Trigger Warnings )
( BYF )
( And Now For A Non-Exclusive List Of The Shit I'm Obsessed With (in no particular order) )
( Where Can You Find Me On Other Social Media Sites )
![[sticky entry]](//www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/entry/sticky_entry.png)
Sticky: Underrated Anime (According To M Stardustrifle) Masterpost
Aug. 4th, 2023 05:28 pmHere's a list of anime that I think are underrated. This list is based around my own tastes and preferences. I might add to this list at any time.
(The Weeb Ass Shit scale ranks anime on three criteria. A high W, or "Weeb" score means that the show incorporates a lot of anime tropes or elements of Japanese culture that might be confusing to someone not familiar with them. A high A, or "Ass" score means that the show is high in fanservice or other sexual content. And a high S, or "Shit" means that I think that the show is high quality.)
Title: Shiki
Genre: Horror/Suspense/Supernatural
Episode Count: 22
W/A/S Score: W4, A3, S9.5
Elevator Pitch: In a small Japanese town, a mysterious plague starts sweeping the village, killing its inhabitants at alarming rates not long after a mysterious new family moves into the Western castle up on the mountain.
Unsurprisingly, it’s vampires.
This anime uses its large cast of characters and isolated setting to the fullest, showing us a variety of reactions to the supernatural menace, which really creates a sense of horror, showing how every possible response one could think of having is for naught, as the horror builds and builds before a crescendo of violence at the end where no one is innocent and no one is safe.
This is my current favorite anime.
( Read more... )
(The Weeb Ass Shit scale ranks anime on three criteria. A high W, or "Weeb" score means that the show incorporates a lot of anime tropes or elements of Japanese culture that might be confusing to someone not familiar with them. A high A, or "Ass" score means that the show is high in fanservice or other sexual content. And a high S, or "Shit" means that I think that the show is high quality.)
Title: Shiki
Genre: Horror/Suspense/Supernatural
Episode Count: 22
W/A/S Score: W4, A3, S9.5
Elevator Pitch: In a small Japanese town, a mysterious plague starts sweeping the village, killing its inhabitants at alarming rates not long after a mysterious new family moves into the Western castle up on the mountain.
Unsurprisingly, it’s vampires.
This anime uses its large cast of characters and isolated setting to the fullest, showing us a variety of reactions to the supernatural menace, which really creates a sense of horror, showing how every possible response one could think of having is for naught, as the horror builds and builds before a crescendo of violence at the end where no one is innocent and no one is safe.
This is my current favorite anime.
( Read more... )
Once, I was in a car on a road trip with my father and paternal grandparents. Out of nowhere, my grandmother begins rambling about how much she loves McDonalds. How delicious and convenient it is. I am mentally half-tuning her out because she loves to ramble about bullshit out of nowhere, and my grandfather is doing the same. However, after about five minutes of this, something clicked in my father’s head. He may be a turbo-autist who once uttered the phrase “I did not become an engineer to talk to people,” but he’s known this woman his entire life and he is capable of pattern-matching.
“Do you want to stop and get lunch at McDonalds?”
“Not particularly.”
My father was skeptical. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” My grandmother said, indignantly.
My father just said “suit yourself, and resumed concentrating on the road.
Of course, later that night in the hotel, it turned out that she absolutely did want McDonalds, and she was very angry at her husband for not “standing up for her”, and very mad at my father for ignoring what was in her mind perfectly clear communication about her desires.
“Do you want to stop and get lunch at McDonalds?”
“Not particularly.”
My father was skeptical. “Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure!” My grandmother said, indignantly.
My father just said “suit yourself, and resumed concentrating on the road.
Of course, later that night in the hotel, it turned out that she absolutely did want McDonalds, and she was very angry at her husband for not “standing up for her”, and very mad at my father for ignoring what was in her mind perfectly clear communication about her desires.
i think we need to kill everyone who's ever posted an mal review
Dear Yuletide 2026 Creator
Oct. 9th, 2026 06:14 pmHello! I'm M, or akechi_goro_love_machine on Ao3. This is my first Yuletide, and I’m super excited! If you’re pinch-hitting for me, one of the Muromaki illustrations is probably the best choice. Totally open to treats.
Smut Likes
It’s the other visual kei band that I’m an RPF weirdo about! BUCK-TICK has been around since the 80s with the same lineup of 5 guys (before lead vocalist Sakurai Atsushi died in 2023) and have been making kickass rock for the whole time. If you’re looking for info and interview translations, I’d check out nopperabou, jrockarchiv.es, and This Is Not Greatest Site, and all their music is on Spotify/YouTube.
Prompts:
- AUs! Same as X JAPAN, I like RPF AUs a lot. For this fandom, I’d be really interested in both AUs which draw on both the gothic energy of most of their music (not just vampire AUs, but historical tragedy, gothic horror AUs, that sort of thing), as well as more cyberpunk/sci-fi stuff that draws on their “cyberpunk” era from 1993-2004.
- If you want to write something shippy, then a tip for Atsushi/Imai- the main version of their dynamic that compels me is the idea of the tormented gothic genius and the One Guy who can handle them just by virtue of being chill and kind of distant from human relationships/human behavior, that whole dynamic is like crack to me and I love it.
- If you want to get smutty, I personally think Atsushi’s thighs are really hot, so if you were to get really thigh-worshippy about them, that would be great… <3
Fandom-Specific DNWs:
- References to Atsushi’s IRL death, or him dying in the fic.
- Inclusion of non-famous relatives or any real-life romantic partners.
Senketsu A-ko-chan
かぐや姫と5人の彼女（＋1）| Princess Kaguya and The 5 Girlfriends (+1)
バブル期百合 | Bubble-era Yuri
This illustration is so great and so cute. I’m sure we all know a couple like this, or we’ve been part of a couple like this, and that was really what made me fall in love with this illustration, the relatability of sharing your nerdy interests with someone you love who also gets it in the same way.
Prompts:
- How did this couple meet? Was it over the internet? At an in-person doujin event? Were they the only two otaku at their school or workplace and so they naturally bonded? Whatever story you come up with, I’d love to see it.
- I’d love to see the two of them go to Comiket or a similar doujin event together as a Couple Thing which rapidly spirals into chaos, because, well, they’re not going to be buying the same kinds of things now, are they?
General Likes
- Trans!fic. I love stories that show off all the complicated different ways that identity can manifest, reflected through the society/culture a character is raised in, as well as their personal issues/personality. The more specific and personal, the better. I’m also very into genderplay/crossdressing, genderqueer/genderweird/intersex characters, and Fantasy Trans Identities (like an omega to alpha trans character in A/B/O-verse)
- Omegaverse. I’m really into the whole eroticized bioessentialism aspect of it, as well as the inherent power dynamics/sex pollen/BDSM aspects. Plus the pregnancy/breeding kink and divergent genital setups (men with vaginas, women with penises) are also very hot to me.
- Vampires/Vampire AUs. Blood drinking is really hot, of course, but I’m kind of obsessed with how characters react to the pressures of vampirism- needing to harm people to live, living forever, being inherently isolated from other people, it’s all super interesting to me.
- Angst/Whump. This is just a big idbrain like. I like physical pain (characters being tortured, physically injured, etc) and mental pain/suffering just as equally, and I love angst with happy and sad endings also about equally. My absolute favorite angst trope is Not Actually Unrequited Love, especially when it’s both-sides. Great, wonderful, love it so much.
- Outsider POV. I really like the opportunity to get an outsider’s opinion (and misunderstandings) on what is going on in canon/between the two main characters. I think it has great potential for both humor and an interesting new perspective on canon, and I’m really appreciative of when the outsider has their own personality that colors how they see the main characters/setting, but it doesn’t completely overwhelm the story and make it their story.
- Unusual Formats/Epistolary Fic. These are great and I can’t read enough of them. My Ao3 bookmarks include fics in the formats of forum threads, Buzzfeed articles, YouTube episode scripts, and walkthroughs for fake video games. If this is something you’re inclined towards, feel free to go nuts!
- Worldbuilding. The kinds of worldbuilding I’m most interested in is stuff related to laws, as well as Internet culture-related worldbuilding (I devour those fake posts on Tumblr that are imitating a Tumblr thread, but with some speculative element to them). I like worldbuilding that’s just the result of an author dropping one thing into a world that’s otherwise like our own and then going “Okay, but how would this have changed stuff?”
Smut Likes
- MIND CONTROL!!!
- Dirty talk
- Dom/sub dynamics, whether the characters are intentionally Doing Kink or not
- Dubious consent
- Genderplay/crossdressing/misgendering/anything to do with gender and getting fucky with gender in a horny way
General DNWs
- Detailed scenes of characters giving birth
- Choking/asphyxiation in any context, at all.
- Scat/detailed descriptions of feces/feces involved in sex
- Diapers
- Farts/farting
- Detailed descriptions of vomiting
- Age play/age regression
- Location- or time-period atypical terms used to describe queerness/gender/neurodivergence/mental illness
- On-screen kink or safeword negotiation
- Extreme underage sex (10 and under) (Backstory references are fine, I’d just prefer that it not happen “on-screen”.)
- Harm to/death of cats or catlike beings (not including catboys/catgirls)
- First-person POV
X JAPAN
These guys are my heart and soul visual kei band, honestly. I am obsessed with them and their history to a degree that’s probably a little concerning but who cares. Cringe is dead and if I can recognize X members from closeups of their tattoos that’s not a crime. The main thing that makes me kind of insane about this band from an RPF standpoint is the history and the tragedy and the tangled webs of relationships and all the big characters (read more about them at my promo post here!).
Prompts:
- AUs! When I’m into RPF fandoms, most of what I read is AU, so let your heart go wild and make whatever kind of AU you want. Bonus points if it's not a complete setting change AU, and the story has elements of dealing with how the AU Elements affect the band and their careers.
- Shenanigans (Possibly Aided By Alcohol). During their heyday, this band got into a lot of drunken shenanigans, from Yoshiki chasing fellow rock musician Hotei through a hotel with a katana to hide pulling all of the fire alarms in his apartment building before passing out in one of his bandmate’s beds. These stories are all so fun to read about, and a fic that tells a fictional story along those same lines would be really interesting to read.
- What If Nothing Bad Ever Happened And Everyone Was Happy And Alive And Friends. Relatively self-explanatory, I feel. Two members of this band died relatively young, and right now everyone’s relationships are kind of tense. But what if that didn’t happen? What if they were all alive and happy and making music (and possibly gay and in love)?
- Shipping! I’m a total shipping weirdo for this band. While hide/Yoshiki is my absolute heart and soul RPF OTP, I would be totally happy with any combination of my requested characters, so feel free to go nuts and have fun!
Fandom-Specific DNWs:
- Detailed involvement of Home of the Heart in the plot, including focusing on the trauma that resulted from it (offhand mentions/references are fine)
- References to hide’s or Taiji’s IRL deaths, or these people dying in the fic.
Incorporation/mentions of information about Taiji’s mental/physicial health/illnesses that was first revealed in the book TAIJI (by Akatsuka Tomomi).
- Inclusion of non-famous relatives or any real-life romantic partners.
BUCK-TICK
It’s the other visual kei band that I’m an RPF weirdo about! BUCK-TICK has been around since the 80s with the same lineup of 5 guys (before lead vocalist Sakurai Atsushi died in 2023) and have been making kickass rock for the whole time. If you’re looking for info and interview translations, I’d check out nopperabou, jrockarchiv.es, and This Is Not Greatest Site, and all their music is on Spotify/YouTube.
Prompts:
- AUs! Same as X JAPAN, I like RPF AUs a lot. For this fandom, I’d be really interested in both AUs which draw on both the gothic energy of most of their music (not just vampire AUs, but historical tragedy, gothic horror AUs, that sort of thing), as well as more cyberpunk/sci-fi stuff that draws on their “cyberpunk” era from 1993-2004.
- If you want to write something shippy, then a tip for Atsushi/Imai- the main version of their dynamic that compels me is the idea of the tormented gothic genius and the One Guy who can handle them just by virtue of being chill and kind of distant from human relationships/human behavior, that whole dynamic is like crack to me and I love it.
- If you want to get smutty, I personally think Atsushi’s thighs are really hot, so if you were to get really thigh-worshippy about them, that would be great… <3
Fandom-Specific DNWs:
- References to Atsushi’s IRL death, or him dying in the fic.
- Inclusion of non-famous relatives or any real-life romantic partners.
Senketsu A-ko-chan
Am I inviting snakes to manifest inside my house by requesting this? I don’t know and I don’t care. If for some ungodly reason you want to pinch hit for this, here’s a link to a translation of an interview with Hiro-kun, here’s a link to an interview in Japanese with the whole band, and under “links” on this page, all of their social medias are listed out. I’m not listing them out myself because Hiro-kun’s gotten himself banned from Twitter like four separate times and I don’t want to worry about keeping this up to date. Most of their music is on Spotify, but a few early songs are only available on YouTube.
Prompts:
- Part of the reason I’m attracted to this fandom is because I like mess and I like drama and I like fucked-up people, so anything that carries forward the energy of people being messy and dramatic and mentally ill and having terrible coping mechanisms at each other that I get every single time these guys open their mouths will be something I’m happy with.
- If you want to write shipfic/anything porny, these guys are all pretty big anime/galge otaku IRL, so I would be really interested in a story that plays off of that, for example, Hiro-kun and Asahi watching hentai or playing an eroge together and that leading to sex/smut.
Fandom-Specific DNWs:
- Involvement of non-famous relatives or any real-life romantic partners.
かぐや姫と5人の彼女（＋1）| Princess Kaguya and The 5 Girlfriends (+1)
The concept of The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter reinterpreted as a yuri harem comedy is so delightful and fun to me.
Prompts:
- How does the original story play out in this new setting? Is Kaguya really a magic princess from the moon here? What did she send her suitors to fetch? How does the whole business with the elixir of immortality work out here? Totally open to either urban fantasy or a mundane reinterpretation.
- Silly yuri harem hijinks. How do all of the suitors’ diverse personalities bounce off of each other? How do they differ in their attempts to seduce Kaguya?
バブル期百合 | Bubble-era Yuri
This illustration is just very sexy, and it depicts a time period that I don’t feel gets a lot of airplay in media that isn’t from that era- that of Japan’s extremely lavish bubble era from 1986-1991. The girl with the fan is specifically homaging the young female patrons of the Juliana’s Club in Tokyo, a disco club that has become a representative of bubble-era decadence.
Prompts:
- The whole energy this illustration gives off is very kind of sexy and fun and decadent, so smut that captures that energy would be very much appreciated. Fucking in a boardroom/office, sexy striptease from the club dancer, maybe a little bit of light dom/sub energy/dynamic, that kind of thing.
- How did this couple meet? A high-powered corporate lady with her shoulder pads and power suit and a disco-dancing Juliana’s girl don’t seem like the kind of people who would naturally cross paths, so I’m really interested in learning about how their story got started.
付き合う腐女子と百合女子 | Fujoshi and Yurijoshi Couple (dialogue is in Japanese, but translated in the comments)
This illustration is so great and so cute. I’m sure we all know a couple like this, or we’ve been part of a couple like this, and that was really what made me fall in love with this illustration, the relatability of sharing your nerdy interests with someone you love who also gets it in the same way.
Prompts:
- How did this couple meet? Was it over the internet? At an in-person doujin event? Were they the only two otaku at their school or workplace and so they naturally bonded? Whatever story you come up with, I’d love to see it.
- I’d love to see the two of them go to Comiket or a similar doujin event together as a Couple Thing which rapidly spirals into chaos, because, well, they’re not going to be buying the same kinds of things now, are they?
I Want To Be A Wall
I love this manga, and the main thing that compelled me about it is Yuriko. She just feels so intimately relatable as someone who’s been involved in fandom for a long while. The aroace hardcore fujoshi/shipper is an archetype we’ve all probably encountered, and seeing it on the page was oddly validating, in this strange way.
Prompts:
- My first request would be more stuff in line with canon, progressing along the timeline. Ideas for prompts would be Yuriko and Gaku possibly interacting with each other’s families or possibly considering having children in the future.
- I’m also really interested in pre-canon stuff, especially Yuriko discovering her sexuality through her interactions with other people and BL fandom.
- Opting in to crossovers with Yuriko interacting with characters from other works who are BL fans or BL mangaka in canon. More specifically, I would find it really interesting to compare and contrast their approach to and reasons for liking BL with Yuriko’s, though silly shenanigans at a doujin event or online would also be fun, especially if the characters you pick have really contrasting/over-the-top personalities.
Fandom-Specific DNWs:
- Changing any of the character’s sexualities from how they’re established in canon. (I.E; Yuriko should stay aroace and Gaku should stay a gay man.)
- Relatedly, depicting Yuriko and Gaku as romantically and/or sexually attracted to each other.
Scare-ority
These videos are so fun and cute- here’s a link to a playlist of everything so far. I’m requesting the Ghost (who’s listed as “The Cheerleader” in the tag set for some reason?) and the Werewolf, just because I’m so enchanted by the dynamic that their creators laid out in the video.
Prompts:
- Like I said, I love the dynamic of the super-ultra-femme Type A cheerleader ghost girl and the kind of dumb absent-minded soccer jock werewolf girl, and especially how the creators describe them clashing over the ghost trying to micromanage the werewolf but eventually becoming friends (and maybe more). There’s not enough F/F animosity-to-lovers in the world IMO.
- In the second video, the creators make a room in the attic for the werewolf to go when she’s lost control of herself, and they mention that the ghost might sit outside the room and help try and calm her down. This is the absolute perfect opportunity for I Know You’re In There Somewhere scenes and hurt/comfort scenarios (she’s out of control, but the ghost is a ghost and she can’t be hurt, so she’s the only one who can calm her down, etc).
- Smut. Especially answering the main question- how do you have sex with your girlfriend when she’s a ghost? I am absolutely open to whatever answer you decide on for this question, whether it be ectoplasm shenanigans, consensual possession, or something even weirder.
(no subject)
Oct. 9th, 2026 03:51 pmboth vkei bands and kpop bands can have absolutely awful official fandom names, but when a kpop fandom name is awful it’s because it was focus-tested into nonsense by a boardroom full of corpo guys who have never talked to another human being outside of their tax bracket before, whereas when a vkei band has an awful fandom name it’s because it was created by (a) edgelord high school dropout(s) with (a) drinking problem(s) going “hey, you know what would be funny?”
(no subject)
Oct. 9th, 2026 10:51 amlove the oroboros of me (foreigner) listening to a Japanese-language video purporting to explain foreign vkei fandom to Japanese vkei fans and then going and telling my (foreigner) vkei fan friends what the video said
(no subject)
Oct. 7th, 2026 08:30 pmi keep getting youtube ads localized to california like girliepop wrong coast
(no subject)
Oct. 6th, 2026 11:37 pmWhen it comes to Somerton Takes, “American soldiers signed up to fight in WW2 because they were jealous of buff Nazis” is utterly detached from reality. “The only queer people who survived the AIDS crisis were the boring ones” is profoundly cruel. I understand why these stand out in discussions of his terrible opinions.
But, perhaps, we can spare a bit of mockery for “The reason F/F shipping isn’t as common as M/M shipping is because sapphic representation in mainstream media is simply too good, unlike the poor gay men, so there isn’t as much need for it?”
But, perhaps, we can spare a bit of mockery for “The reason F/F shipping isn’t as common as M/M shipping is because sapphic representation in mainstream media is simply too good, unlike the poor gay men, so there isn’t as much need for it?”
(no subject)
Oct. 4th, 2026 03:25 pmWatched Foodfight! (2012) last night with my boyfriend and it lived up to the hype. It has absolutely zero redeeming qualities except for the fact that I enjoyed every single minute of it. No matter how many reviews you have seen of this, it can not substitute for actually experiencing it yourself.
Got linked up to a group that's working to save LJ stuff more generally, and I'm working within their pipeline now, so that's why updates have been slow.
~*~
jrock_wank (a more specialized cousin of Fandom Wank) was an interesting read. There was a woman who was posting about how she thought Gackt was a right-winger in 2005, and while her evidence was shaky (no, liking one's country doesn't inherently make one right-wing), I bet she feels real smug now. She tried to warn us... (something something insert chick tracts "most people rejected his message" meme)
Someone also tried to transvestigate Hyde (can we not just let short kings live?) and the mods somehow let the "discussion" (aka everyone uniting to clown on them) go on for three pages worth of comments, which is three pages longer than they should have IMO.
~*~
Poked my head into the oharamatheydidnt posts about Gackt's sexual assault allegation* and saw a person going (paraphrased) "Jesus take the wheel, these comments are going to be fucking awful", and never before in my life have I felt such a profound spiritual connection to an Internet commenter before. Jesus take the wheel, indeed.
(*Off-topic, but it is quite frankly bizarre to me how extensively those allegations have been memory-holed in ENG-speaking fandom. I understand why his fans don't want to bring them up, but even amongst his haters, I can count the number of times I've seen them mentioned on one hand. There was a "why do people hate Gackt" Reddit thread where only one person brought up the allegations. I think it's the one-two-three punch of "he was investigated by the police and found innocent", "the best sources on the allegations are either in Japanese or confined to decades-old blogs on defunct platforms", and "his army of stans who will show up in your notifications on any platform the instant you say anything negative about him and try to argue with you about it".)
~*~
Fuck, don't want to end on a depressing note, so... uh... some funny quotes! I don't have the original source, it was an argument on jrock_wank, but the phrase "I am not a dirty whore, I am a virgin and shower regularly" is going to live rent-free in my head forever and ever. Also, I do agree with the person saying this quote (if I understand the context correctly), but "I also happen to adore him AND his tiny dick" is just such a funny phrase to me.
jrock_wank (a more specialized cousin of Fandom Wank) was an interesting read. There was a woman who was posting about how she thought Gackt was a right-winger in 2005, and while her evidence was shaky (no, liking one's country doesn't inherently make one right-wing), I bet she feels real smug now. She tried to warn us... (something something insert chick tracts "most people rejected his message" meme)
Someone also tried to transvestigate Hyde (can we not just let short kings live?) and the mods somehow let the "discussion" (aka everyone uniting to clown on them) go on for three pages worth of comments, which is three pages longer than they should have IMO.
Poked my head into the oharamatheydidnt posts about Gackt's sexual assault allegation* and saw a person going (paraphrased) "Jesus take the wheel, these comments are going to be fucking awful", and never before in my life have I felt such a profound spiritual connection to an Internet commenter before. Jesus take the wheel, indeed.
(*Off-topic, but it is quite frankly bizarre to me how extensively those allegations have been memory-holed in ENG-speaking fandom. I understand why his fans don't want to bring them up, but even amongst his haters, I can count the number of times I've seen them mentioned on one hand. There was a "why do people hate Gackt" Reddit thread where only one person brought up the allegations. I think it's the one-two-three punch of "he was investigated by the police and found innocent", "the best sources on the allegations are either in Japanese or confined to decades-old blogs on defunct platforms", and "his army of stans who will show up in your notifications on any platform the instant you say anything negative about him and try to argue with you about it".)
Fuck, don't want to end on a depressing note, so... uh... some funny quotes! I don't have the original source, it was an argument on jrock_wank, but the phrase "I am not a dirty whore, I am a virgin and shower regularly" is going to live rent-free in my head forever and ever. Also, I do agree with the person saying this quote (if I understand the context correctly), but "I also happen to adore him AND his tiny dick" is just such a funny phrase to me.
(no subject)
Sep. 26th, 2026 12:29 pmi love reddit because i was just venting about how thunderingly incompetent and evil literally every school i've ever been to was at dealing with my learning disabilities only to have someone who claims to work in special ed roll up and accuse me of lying because "what you are saying they did was literally against the law"
genuinely curious
Sep. 23rd, 2026 02:18 pmwhy are the people posting terrible claudeprose in the jrock tag on ao3 all the gazette fic writers
Reevaluating my "lol people complaining about kpop stans being into vkei like it's a New Thing are being ahistorical, back during the lj days the venn diagram between kpop stans and vkei stans was frequently a circle" take in light of further reading.
While yes, the Venn diagram between these two groups was frequently a circle Back In The Day, the "venn diagram" that I describe was actually a larger group that basically doesn't exist today, that of Asian Media Fandom. This can be seen as a wider example of the "during the 2000s, if you were in to anime, you were in to every anime" phenomenon. Yeah, the netogya posting on LiveJournal were frequently K-pop enjoyers. But they were also pretty frequently into anime. And non-visual-kei "J-rock". And J-pop. And live-action East Asian dramas. And on and on and on.
What this means is that from my limited observations, English-speaking visual kei/"J-rock" fandom culture and English-speaking K-pop fandom culture were very similar because it was the same people. They were marinated in the same sauce, so to speak.
Now, as we enter the 2010s, paths diverge. K-pop takes over the world while English-speaking visual kei fandom nearly withers away, barely being kept alive by the diehards who didn't speciate into K-pop stans or anime otaku and a rare trickle-trickle of new blood, who could easily be enculturated into the norms of this specific fandom one at a time as they popped up. *waves*
Meanwhile, K-pop fandom goes insane. I Do Not K-pop so I'm relying on secondhand reports, most notably the Idolcast Substack, but it really does seem like a combination of the normie boom + Corpos Being Corpos + One Direction And Its Consequences creating something kind of uniquely terrible. And, look. I'm just a cat on the internet and I'm not immune to the Our Blessed X vs. Their Barbarous Y logical fallacy, but from my outsider vantage point, a lot of the norms of K-pop fandom in the year 2026 seem... very obviously bad ("metrics stans/mass streaming", fanwarring, etc). Newer, younger fans who get into K-pop first are thus enculturated into these awful, awful norms, which they will then take with them if/when they branch out into other fandoms.
Then, the pandemic hits. Visual kei blows the fuck up on TikTok and newbies flood existing English-speaking visual kei communities faster than they can be acculturated into them. Something something Eternal September. And, if these newgens were first enculturated into K-pop fandom norms and are showing up in large enough numbers to overwhelm English-speaking vkei fan spaces, those fan spaces could take on the awful, awful norms of K-pop spaces. It's a legitimate fear.
Thing is, though, I'm not entirely sure that this is happening. Taking a look at the Bad K-Pop Fandom Norms I've described above, I don't know if I've seen any mass streaming/"my faves are better than your faves because they have the bigger numbers" behavior. Fanwars between fans of different bands/artists are rare and when they do happen, they largely seem to follow preexisting beef between artists (And even then, this isn't always true. I've seen just as many people who love both Senketsu A-ko-chan/Kaneto Juusei and gulu gulu as I've seen people sign themselves up to serve as proxy soldiers in Ai's Latest And Greatest Quixotic Socmed Beef). Additionally, lot of the Bad/Stupid Behavior of Vkei Newgens that people talk about doesn't seem to come from K-pop directly. The weird babying is a thing that happens in K-pop, but I've been morbidly curious about enough Real Person Fandoms to know that this is a thing that happens in a lot of them. People saying objectively wrong shit because they're high on Dunning-Kreuger is just the nature of the beast [though I think a lot of the misconceptions we're seeing nowadays come from people who have experience with punk or goth subcultures (or at least the TikTok versions of those subcultures) and assume that visual kei functions the same way, when it really... doesn't.]
(as always i'm writing this with the caveat that i desperately avoid both tiktok and twitter like the plague, so if there are a bunch of vkei newgens getting metrics stanny about it on those platforms there's a good chance i haven't seen it)
While yes, the Venn diagram between these two groups was frequently a circle Back In The Day, the "venn diagram" that I describe was actually a larger group that basically doesn't exist today, that of Asian Media Fandom. This can be seen as a wider example of the "during the 2000s, if you were in to anime, you were in to every anime" phenomenon. Yeah, the netogya posting on LiveJournal were frequently K-pop enjoyers. But they were also pretty frequently into anime. And non-visual-kei "J-rock". And J-pop. And live-action East Asian dramas. And on and on and on.
What this means is that from my limited observations, English-speaking visual kei/"J-rock" fandom culture and English-speaking K-pop fandom culture were very similar because it was the same people. They were marinated in the same sauce, so to speak.
Now, as we enter the 2010s, paths diverge. K-pop takes over the world while English-speaking visual kei fandom nearly withers away, barely being kept alive by the diehards who didn't speciate into K-pop stans or anime otaku and a rare trickle-trickle of new blood, who could easily be enculturated into the norms of this specific fandom one at a time as they popped up. *waves*
Meanwhile, K-pop fandom goes insane. I Do Not K-pop so I'm relying on secondhand reports, most notably the Idolcast Substack, but it really does seem like a combination of the normie boom + Corpos Being Corpos + One Direction And Its Consequences creating something kind of uniquely terrible. And, look. I'm just a cat on the internet and I'm not immune to the Our Blessed X vs. Their Barbarous Y logical fallacy, but from my outsider vantage point, a lot of the norms of K-pop fandom in the year 2026 seem... very obviously bad ("metrics stans/mass streaming", fanwarring, etc). Newer, younger fans who get into K-pop first are thus enculturated into these awful, awful norms, which they will then take with them if/when they branch out into other fandoms.
Then, the pandemic hits. Visual kei blows the fuck up on TikTok and newbies flood existing English-speaking visual kei communities faster than they can be acculturated into them. Something something Eternal September. And, if these newgens were first enculturated into K-pop fandom norms and are showing up in large enough numbers to overwhelm English-speaking vkei fan spaces, those fan spaces could take on the awful, awful norms of K-pop spaces. It's a legitimate fear.
Thing is, though, I'm not entirely sure that this is happening. Taking a look at the Bad K-Pop Fandom Norms I've described above, I don't know if I've seen any mass streaming/"my faves are better than your faves because they have the bigger numbers" behavior. Fanwars between fans of different bands/artists are rare and when they do happen, they largely seem to follow preexisting beef between artists (And even then, this isn't always true. I've seen just as many people who love both Senketsu A-ko-chan/Kaneto Juusei and gulu gulu as I've seen people sign themselves up to serve as proxy soldiers in Ai's Latest And Greatest Quixotic Socmed Beef). Additionally, lot of the Bad/Stupid Behavior of Vkei Newgens that people talk about doesn't seem to come from K-pop directly. The weird babying is a thing that happens in K-pop, but I've been morbidly curious about enough Real Person Fandoms to know that this is a thing that happens in a lot of them. People saying objectively wrong shit because they're high on Dunning-Kreuger is just the nature of the beast [though I think a lot of the misconceptions we're seeing nowadays come from people who have experience with punk or goth subcultures (or at least the TikTok versions of those subcultures) and assume that visual kei functions the same way, when it really... doesn't.]
(as always i'm writing this with the caveat that i desperately avoid both tiktok and twitter like the plague, so if there are a bunch of vkei newgens getting metrics stanny about it on those platforms there's a good chance i haven't seen it)
(no subject)
Sep. 17th, 2026 01:56 amPortal really is an expertly put together puzzle game, so good at introducing elements slowly, and then letting you figure out how to put them all together. So good at guiding the player without making it feel like it’s holding your hand. Very funny, too.
Unfortunately, I have the reaction time and hand-eye coordination of a brick, and so I frequently wound up in situations where I intellectually knew what to do, but I would spend 25-30 minutes repeatedly trying and failing to physically execute on an idea. Infuriating. (And to be clear, this is a Me Issue. This game is not particularly demanding on the reflexes, it was just being played by somebody who still struggles to button their shirt and tie their shoes.)
Unfortunately, I have the reaction time and hand-eye coordination of a brick, and so I frequently wound up in situations where I intellectually knew what to do, but I would spend 25-30 minutes repeatedly trying and failing to physically execute on an idea. Infuriating. (And to be clear, this is a Me Issue. This game is not particularly demanding on the reflexes, it was just being played by somebody who still struggles to button their shirt and tie their shoes.)
i realize that we’ve lost the battle over the meaning of the term “lost media”, and to some extent this was inevitable, there were never going to be enough silent film weirdos and old TV aficionados to outnumber the slavering hordes, but by god am i still pissy about it.
"you think that (insert xyz sex act) is morally okay just because everyone involved is a consenting adult?" yes. yes, actually. i do think that, and i am mildly weirded out that you don't.
yaoi vs yuri... the ultimate choice...
Sep. 11th, 2026 08:58 pmme trying to figure out whether i should nom Another Vkei Band or Another Muromaki Illustration for my very first yuletide
