tl;dr, sorry
So I still haven't made a reply in that thread over on Jrev. This mostly due to the amount of time it's taken me just to comprehend maria's reply to my first reply. She contradicts herself, repeats herself, and obviously has no idea what the fuck I was talking about in general. She obviously did not read what she wrote before hitting "post" as the multitude of grammar and spelling errors show. She makes accusations, is far more defensive than what the situation calls for, and generally takes the entire thing as a personal insult. I'm still baffled by the "OMG RUDE" comment. I can come to no other conclusion than that I am rude simply for being the only person with enough balls to call her on the massive, glaring mistakes in her article.
Which reminds me, I found another one. She got the year of BOOWY's formation wrong. Granted, none of the information she had about them was remotely new or even had a personal twist to it- I'm not even sure if she actually listened to their music, since there was no real description of it or it's influence given. But the year they formed? I've never seen anything other than 1980 in any other source, ever. I really don't know why I didn't get her on that one before- perhaps it in my effort not to nitpick, which she accused me of doing anyways.
Oh, and I also noticed she gave MALICE MIZER full credit for elaborate costuming. Lol, no, Mana is just a closet 米米CLUB fan (like fucking everybody else in Japan). I realize his Jrock fans have no fucking idea about that band, but they're definitely the ones that brought the idea of WTF IS THAT costuming to the mainstream. Like a decade before Mana ever properly dressed in drag. OMG SECRET IDEA.
But the biggest hoot I've had is, after going through her reply to me, finding this lovely series of statements concerning what "visual" is:
"...eyeliner and some mesh doesn't make a band VK."
"VK when it started was basically a spin-off and hybrid of glam and hair bands. We know it best now as the kind of crazy stuff Malice Mizer pulled, but that was one extreme in the spectrum that made the VK "look." Again, there are no hard-and-fast rules on any of this..."
"When I see a VK band, I know what it is by a basic set of criteria -- there's a distinctive look and a very general sound to VK, otherwise it wouldn't considered a movement."
"Visual was born out of a dark gothic mentality, so the music is GENERALLY dark. No, there's no "rule" for anything, but I'm not going to list every exception."
Have I made myself clear about the contradictions? Either there are rules, or there aren't. You can't have it both ways. I don't believe there are rules, and I think the history of the scene is enough to show that to be a self-evident truth. Speaking of history, she fell spectacularly well into my trap concerning the existence of "visual" in the early 1990's. She also did not comprehend what I meant about the article being focus almost exclusively on visual bands. (Eveidently, GLAY and L'Arc~en~Ciel have absolutely nothing to do with the visual scene despite one being openly a visual band and the other accepting (sans tetsu) their role in its history.)
If I ever finish this post, it's going to be epic. Well, at least in length.
Which reminds me, I found another one. She got the year of BOOWY's formation wrong. Granted, none of the information she had about them was remotely new or even had a personal twist to it- I'm not even sure if she actually listened to their music, since there was no real description of it or it's influence given. But the year they formed? I've never seen anything other than 1980 in any other source, ever. I really don't know why I didn't get her on that one before- perhaps it in my effort not to nitpick, which she accused me of doing anyways.
Oh, and I also noticed she gave MALICE MIZER full credit for elaborate costuming. Lol, no, Mana is just a closet 米米CLUB fan (like fucking everybody else in Japan). I realize his Jrock fans have no fucking idea about that band, but they're definitely the ones that brought the idea of WTF IS THAT costuming to the mainstream. Like a decade before Mana ever properly dressed in drag. OMG SECRET IDEA.
But the biggest hoot I've had is, after going through her reply to me, finding this lovely series of statements concerning what "visual" is:
"...eyeliner and some mesh doesn't make a band VK."
"VK when it started was basically a spin-off and hybrid of glam and hair bands. We know it best now as the kind of crazy stuff Malice Mizer pulled, but that was one extreme in the spectrum that made the VK "look." Again, there are no hard-and-fast rules on any of this..."
"When I see a VK band, I know what it is by a basic set of criteria -- there's a distinctive look and a very general sound to VK, otherwise it wouldn't considered a movement."
"Visual was born out of a dark gothic mentality, so the music is GENERALLY dark. No, there's no "rule" for anything, but I'm not going to list every exception."
Have I made myself clear about the contradictions? Either there are rules, or there aren't. You can't have it both ways. I don't believe there are rules, and I think the history of the scene is enough to show that to be a self-evident truth. Speaking of history, she fell spectacularly well into my trap concerning the existence of "visual" in the early 1990's. She also did not comprehend what I meant about the article being focus almost exclusively on visual bands. (Eveidently, GLAY and L'Arc~en~Ciel have absolutely nothing to do with the visual scene despite one being openly a visual band and the other accepting (sans tetsu) their role in its history.)
If I ever finish this post, it's going to be epic. Well, at least in length.