in case some of y'all missed it, i've always listened to bts/bangtan/every other name they have
however, i do not consider myself a bts fan. i am no longer a part of the bts army. i am ex-kpop-military in general. an ex-stan, exile of both stans and antis.
some kpop fans will call me a "hag"—i refuse this title. i am transmasculine. he/him/his pronouns. i am a wizard, if anything. never a hag.
but also, i still listen to bts and keep up with the creative output of the members, though i don't enjoy some of it. that's okay. not all of it has to be for me.
same goes for other kpop bands and musicians and even producers. same goes for korean literature, animation, and performance art.
i no longer need any of these to be translated, explained, analyzed, reviewed, or hyped. i already love korean art enough + i already understand enough of the korean language.
because. once again. i am scottish-jewish, yamato-japanese, spanish-meztizo, filipino-tagalog. 1995. wood pig. libra/gemini. empress/world. etc.
i JUST DO love + respect korean art more than you ever will, unless you are actually korean in any way.
i JUST DO understand all forms of japanese art from any era for any audience better than you ever will. because i am ethnically japanese. my paternal great-grandmother was a japanese woman who grew up in a rural fishing village in nagasaki, but settled down in the philippines due to you-know-what.
am i fluent in japanese? fluent enough. i can translate doujins or manga, depending on the dialect and number of dense chinese terms. novels are a little much; too tedious. i trust other jpn language appreciators to handle that.
do i watch anime in sub or dub? it depends on the show. some anime are better when dubbed into a different language, especially if the characters therein are not 100% japanese (e.g. code geass, death note, fullmetal alchemist, jujutsu kaisen, chainsaw man). however, other anime make no damn sense in any other language (i.e. monogatari, jojo's). others still need multiple languages simultaneously to work well (e.g. great pretender) or illegal fandubs to fill in the gaps (salute to all arabic, russian, brazilian portugese, and tagalog weeb warriors especially).
how about chinese? absolutely hell torture to learn the writing system, but i love the poetry and opera and rap and pop and people having fun with it in general. i'll never have the patience to sit through high-brow chinese literature. it has to be zoomer or zillennial media for me to appreciate chinese.
and finally, why do i never speak tagalog on here? because y'all are too fucking stupid to appreciate my tagalog. wrote a brilliant tagalog poem and posted it on here; zero notes. complete and total flop. sorry not sorry. i am just as smart and well-read when it comes to tagalog, but nobody ever fucking believes me because i look too wasian💀 + they are scared by my english/japanese/latinate/romance/germanic/whatever else. sigh.
gimme a fucking break ðŸ«
