Musings of the Obsessive Kind

Exactly. I think I am ~~amused~~ scarred for life. I don't even have any appropriate icons for the crack. :P

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lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com

I don't even have words to express what the hell is going on in those videos. Um, as a friend of mine once said after seeing the popularity of Daniel O'Donnell (an Irish 'star'),* there are some cultural boundaries I am happy to leave uncrossed.

*Do not youtube him. For the love of god, leave my country some respect!

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Now I simply must youtube him :)

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lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com

As they say in Ireland 'the mammies love him' but the dirty secret is that it isn't just the mothers who buy his stuff. Or throw their knickers at him. Seriously.

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Haha, this is what I love!

It's a whole new world. :)

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Heeee. A word of shiny pants :) OMG. The fact that they can do this with a straight face seriously justifies their paycheck :P

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The fact that they can do this with a straight face seriously justifies their paycheck :P

Of course they do - and they make a lot money doing it. There is a whole wink wink relationship with fans and it's all in good fun. Besides the boys don't do this of themselves - they are run by an enormous corporation (JE) that has spent 30 years perfecting this and dominating the male idol industry in Japan.

Anyway, as I said when I posted this link, it's the sex+dork phenomenon. Their femininity isn't out of place, culturally speaking, in Japan and Asia - they are considered to be enormously sexually attractive, and their dorkiness makes them more endearing.

It's a fascinating cultural study.

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meganbmoore.livejournal.com

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Were it not for the shirtless pics, I'd be wondering if they were really all guys

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Maybe the shirtless pics are CGI? :P

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meganbmoore.livejournal.com

stop trying to scare me

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Japanese entertainment follows VERY different conventions and rules than we're used to in the west. Cross-dressing is pretty common and so is the femininity - it's quite normal culturally.

I wrote these posts when I first came out about this fandom to sort of understand and come to terms with it all. When I first starting listening to them, my eyes popped out and I wondered WTF I'd landed in, but now *shrug* it's all very par for the course.

We can't really judge it by the standards that we're used to - and these guys and many others like them are far more popular than many western artists will ever be.

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Thank you for the link to your posts! When you posted those initially, I skipped past them, but it was really illuminating to read now. And unlike the post I linked to up top, which amused me to no end but also scared me out of any desire to check out Kat-Tun, it made me mildly curious to check them out.

In conclusion, maybe I am being influenced by your Sapuri caps, but OMG. When not in skirts or glitter, Kame=HOT.

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When you read them in conjunction with a little research on yaoi, and shounen ai, things make a lot more sense.

Also, if you read the comments of the article I posted yesterday,

riccichan explains a little about the cultural history and significance behind yaoi and basically this popularity is what JE exploits. It's enormously popular.

Keep in mind - this is MAINSTREAM entertainment in Japan and Asia. This is what is plastered all over Tokyo RIGHT NOW. It sells.

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Yeah, I know. It's just not really my cup of tea.

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Never, never, never in a million years did I EVER think it would be mine. I'm still surprised to find myself here and wondering what hit me (and so is everyone who knows me, except for

catdecember who understands JE-love perfectly, and

koalathebear who just understands. Hee!).

No one really takes it seriously though - not the bands and not the fans. Fanservice is all for fun. And there is so much more to them than merely fanservice and femininity. After all, they provide me with hours of hilarity.

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Which Arashi song is the opening tune for HYD?

And you have to at least try to watch some of the Arashi videos I uploaded for you. Do not render my efforts futile, or else I shall be very grrr.

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Which Arashi song is the opening tune for HYD?

"Wish"

I have it on right now. :)

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I don't remember but it's so freaking catchy. And it makes me smile. If you type in 'arashi' and 'hana yori dango' into youtube, I am sure you'll come up with tons.

I have them saved and plan to watch them pronto :)

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You DO know that Arashi is part of JE also - they are ALL like this, to varying degrees. Fanservice is par for the course. Just FYI.

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Yeah, I know. That's why I prefer either doramas or just listening to the music sound. The fanservice is really not my thing. I don't mind my men looking girly, but feathers, skirts, and boy-on-boy are not really the look I like.

I did watch some Arashi PVs on youtube and they didn't bother me though. Are they less extreme than Kat-Tun or did I just luck out in the vids I saw? Shiny pleather? Yeah, I am fine with that (Bollywood). Dreadful outfits? Ditto. Cool dancing, I am there.

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From what I've seen, Arashi is a lot less in-your-face than Kat-tun seems to be. The sexy ratio is a bit lower, and the dorky ratio is much higher. They act silly more often than sexy and it kills me, they're so cute. Then again, dorky is a lot more attractive to me than in-your-face, look-how-out-I-am, objectify-me sexy is, so maybe it's just me >.>

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winterspel beat you to the punch. "Wish" is one of the PVs I sent you, it's a very cute song where the boys have very bad hair (and pretty horrible red suits).

Will offer you mp3 if you can tell me how the FRACK to get Megaupload downloads to work for me.

I like this whoring out of fandomy stuff. Should do it more often.

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I don't know how to upload for MU, just how to download. But I really do have the downloads saved and will check them out. Would have done so earlier but the Korean dorama Full House proceeded to eat my brain.

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The uploading's not a problem, it's the downloading I can't do. I am strongly reminded why I prefer yousendit.

... if I really want to be watching doramas, I should probably start before the semester starts up, eh?

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Downloading on MU is simple. If you don't have a paid account, what you do is: you click on the link. It will tel you to type in three random letters (guess to make sure you are not a 'bot). You type them into the window. Click 'download' Wait 45 seconds. Click on the 'x' to close any ad windows that annoyingly pop up. Once it's ready, right click to save. once it's done, find it where it's saved and play it. Voila.

(Doramas might often be split into more than one part because of length, in which case, once you dl all the part, you use HJSplit (ask me if you need links to dling it) to join.

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