![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stardust_riflebecause the vkei yaoi hyperfixation is doing awful things to my brain, i've been prowling the ao3 tags. i subjectively notice both an increase in malice mizer fics, and offhandedly wonder "hey, is it because of the tiktok kids? and does the increase i sense actually play out when i look at the data?"
so i decided to Do A Stats.
two things that jump out immediately. the massive spike in 2015 appears to be caused entirely by two authors mass-reuploading their old fics without backdating them. one of those authors is also largely responsible for the 2018 spike. (for posterity's sake, this person used to be my mutual. god i love how small this fandom is sometimes)
after 2018 and the subsequent crash back down to earth, we start to see a steady increase starting in 2020, which could very well be attributed to young people discovering the band on tiktok during the pandemic and starting to write fic.
now, the question popping in my brain is "why malice mizer?" when i look at other vkei bands that got really big amongst young people recently, like jiluka (53 works) and gulu gulu (4 works), there's not really this massive upswelling of fanfic writing on ao3 for them. i think this is largely due to two reasons.
firstly, the members of malice mizer have very obvious capital S capital P Stage Personas, a very clearly defined "aristocratic vampire fantasy" aesthetic, which creates more of a sense of separation from the Real People which might make it easier to write fic.
secondly, malice mizer has Lore. "why did gackt leave malice mizer?" is like the second-most speculated-about-topic on the vkei fan internet, things like kami's death, the fraying nature of the professional relationships in the band, all of that is just kind of fuel for people to mold and reshape into Narrative, and Narrative is a fundamental component of good RPF, in my opinion.
i have literally no idea how to conclude this other than that m was kind of right and now they feel vindicated. yipee.
so i decided to Do A Stats.
two things that jump out immediately. the massive spike in 2015 appears to be caused entirely by two authors mass-reuploading their old fics without backdating them. one of those authors is also largely responsible for the 2018 spike. (for posterity's sake, this person used to be my mutual. god i love how small this fandom is sometimes)
after 2018 and the subsequent crash back down to earth, we start to see a steady increase starting in 2020, which could very well be attributed to young people discovering the band on tiktok during the pandemic and starting to write fic.
now, the question popping in my brain is "why malice mizer?" when i look at other vkei bands that got really big amongst young people recently, like jiluka (53 works) and gulu gulu (4 works), there's not really this massive upswelling of fanfic writing on ao3 for them. i think this is largely due to two reasons.
firstly, the members of malice mizer have very obvious capital S capital P Stage Personas, a very clearly defined "aristocratic vampire fantasy" aesthetic, which creates more of a sense of separation from the Real People which might make it easier to write fic.
secondly, malice mizer has Lore. "why did gackt leave malice mizer?" is like the second-most speculated-about-topic on the vkei fan internet, things like kami's death, the fraying nature of the professional relationships in the band, all of that is just kind of fuel for people to mold and reshape into Narrative, and Narrative is a fundamental component of good RPF, in my opinion.
i have literally no idea how to conclude this other than that m was kind of right and now they feel vindicated. yipee.
I evidently do not go here! (yet)
Date: 2026-04-24 07:55 pm (UTC)Sure, I'll go watch Malice Mizer music videos, might be good homework for reading your future posts, lol.
Okay, so, I can both totally see why there would be fandom like this, and I'm also surprised! Because yeah, great aesthetic, tons of character (omg, BDSM on stage, aaaaaaaa), a crossdresser, and music that kind of 'lives up' to the aesthetic, from a younger western perspective. It's edgy, more metal and electronic, but also all the vampireful orchestral etc. stuff, not slow 80s power ballads.
But also, it's the late 90s in a 'foreign' country, what isn't lost media is only available as super low quality uploads on youtube with no official account, it feels like it'd be difficult to find stuff, the kind of fandom with either a high barrier to entry or for the groundwork to be already done (like, clearly the fandom existed on livejournal, but the kids aren't going there, right? How relevant even is tumblr fandom, because I'm largely just seeing photoshoots posted. etc.).
All of which is to say that the relevance of TikTok seems likely to be massive in the 2020s and I'm always going to completely fail to grasp the whole picture by ignoring it.
Anyway, I'm so unused to seeing a sea of English (and Spanish, ofc) comments on jp music videos. The global appeal of goth to [former] teenagers of taste everywhere. V. cool.
Re: I evidently do not go here! (yet)
Date: 2026-04-24 08:46 pm (UTC)And for the young people (said like i'm not a young person lol) who are into that sort of nostalgia for an alternative culture they never experienced, they're way more likely to be the kind of people who like tracking down old magazine scans or dead fansites on the Wayback Machine, so it isn't as much of a barrier to entry as it would be for Median Young Fandom Person.
(also yess come to the vkei side we have crossdressers and stagegay and DRAMA)