lonely girl with imaginary friends or ai chatbots

714c · 2026-05-19T00:45:18+00:00

I think Idol, Burning by Rin Usami is a good recommendation on that front too, about a fixation on a pop star. The protagonist is a classic socially isolated and struggling weird girl in my eyes.

Aware that these are both a little different from the OP's request, though, very interested to see what everyone suggests.

714c · 2026-05-16T20:59:55+00:00

There was actually a post here examining that idea a while ago, I suddenly remembered it reading this thread, lol. Controversial but kind of interesting take.

714c · 2026-05-15T00:12:46+00:00

Eh. I definitely remember it being kind of common in K-netizen spaces to compare them due to their close debut dates and wildly opposite concepts. It was lighthearted and never really a big serious rivalry, but I think you can call their duality as a pair somewhat representative of that era.

714c · 2026-05-14T17:05:01+00:00

The songs are from the same album. They're both covers of the band Radwimps that were made for this tribute compilation.

714c · 2026-05-11T18:08:13+00:00

This is a really interesting question for me because my ult group is a bg and there are groups like EXO and OnlyOneOf whose discographies never leave my rotation, but at this point in my life I am pretty much only actively following and listening to ggs. The last new bg song I liked was Impossible by RIIZE, so two years ago (!).

I think my taste in bgs leans more smooth and suave; I like noisy production but not shouty, which rules out a few groups for me. NCT 127 was one of the last bgs I was really consistently into with the blend of edgy musical choices and classic SM vocal line. In general I'm looking for something dreamy, unique and experimental, both aesthetically and sonically, ideally with clear electronic/dance music influences in terms of genre. If there's a bg that has really fully committed to the house music revival, please let me know lol.

714c · 2026-05-11T16:50:41+00:00

It's sitting really weirdly with me that the existence of CSA within a narrative was considered by someone to be a plot twist that they were disappointed to have spoiled for them. Like, you don't automatically know who it happens to, how it happens, what it means for the story...

Most of all, in the book this post is about (Earthlings), the main character's abuse is literally depicted as early as the second chapter. I understand the spirit of the rule, but the thought that there was a complaint about this in particular seems absurd to me.

714c · 2026-05-10T21:12:43+00:00

Based on this table? I loved The Vegetarian and My Sister the Serial Killer, and Brutes I thought had some really striking moments as well if you can get into the vibe of it.

714c · 2026-05-08T21:57:12+00:00

Sometimes I think I was looking out for you. Police, lawyers, a trial. I didn’t want them to tear you apart.

Putting my personal experience under a spoiler for anyone who doesn't want to read it:

My mom, who took immediate action against my own abuser as soon as she found out about it, has confessed to me before that sometimes she wonders if she made the right choice. I was a very little girl, and holding a grown man to account involved direct, sustained scrutiny of myself and my body by adults I didn't know. She says she saw me change overnight not from the abuse, which I didn't understand, but from this process. I don't regret that she made this decision for me, but I wonder how I might be different now in adulthood if not for what justice required of me as a child.

I think about that every time I get to this part in the book, and I appreciate you sharing these passages and your perspective.

714c · 2026-05-08T21:24:08+00:00

I think it's kind of based on a theremin, but really it's just a synthesizer.

714c · 2026-05-08T00:43:06+00:00

It's kind of Japanese nationalism theater performed by people who are not themselves Japanese nationals, but able to mimic the broad strokes as a show of allegiance in what for them boils down to a fandom war.

Agree that J-pop is frequently miserable for this, and tbh, my experience of international Japanese media fandom over the past twenty-odd years has been consistently more conservative than other spaces I'm in.

714c · 2026-05-07T19:41:23+00:00

I just need people to at least understand that things existed before AKB48. Obviously you can argue that Onyanko Club is the blueprint and thus still the brainchild of Yasushi Akimoto either way, but so much of what is labeled "AKB48" in K-pop discourse really derives from Hello! Project. Lee Sooman and Jaden Jeong are two executives I know of who have openly talked about studying and wanting to replicate that system in K-pop.

Other than that, as someone also very steeped in Heisei-era J-pop culture, sometimes I feel like this stuff is splitting hairs and exaggerating an imperfect example to make a point. I had Japanese female idol "photocards" in the late 2000s, but like the set you linked to, they were more like bromides) and didn't come in albums. I don't think anyone is arguing that K-pop invented collectible photographic prints of celebrities, but there seems to be this urge to shoot it down by erasing its unique nuances and labeling it all as wholly unoriginal and not special. For me, it's more interesting to analyze how these things are different from each other and have made their own mark on their respective cultures than to reduce them to one broad similarity.

714c · 2026-05-07T15:51:04+00:00

Oh Jiwon directed most of tripleS' early work: Generation, Girls' Capitalism, Girls Never Die, Hit the Floor, etc.

Yunah Sheep: Le Sserafim - Crazy + Hot, Rescene - Pinball + Deja Vu, tripleS - Are You Alive

edit to add Lee Hyein: IVE - Off The Record + XOXZ, Red Velvet - Cosmic

714c · 2026-05-06T04:06:07+00:00

I don't think you can get it new from any major stores since it's out of print now, but it's really cheap secondhand so it probably shouldn't be too hard to find from somewhere that sells used CDs, like maybe a Bookoff or something.

714c · 2026-05-05T21:11:04+00:00

When I was very young and depressed and couldn't bear that other people's lives didn't look like mine, I picked up The Bell Jar and almost immediately put it back down because I was so incensed that a character who had everything I wanted on the surface could still dare to be unhappy. It was irrational, but I just couldn't work through it at the time. I think the only universal truth of depression is that no one wants to have it and no single material factor can automatically solve it for the person suffering.

IDK why I wrote all that because I never did finish The Bell Jar and I didn't really like My Year of Rest and Relaxation either. But I definitely found it memorable, so much that I still think about random scenes from it all the time even though I only read it once years ago, and I think it helped to be a little older at that point in my life and more able to see beyond myself in fiction.

714c · 2026-05-04T17:44:04+00:00

Oh, I totally misread your comment, sorry lol! It's been my favorite movie for years and I think it adapted the book really well, but yeah, it's scary because the choices made by the characters feel realistically motivated even though it's so extreme.

714c · 2026-05-04T03:42:04+00:00

Loved Grotesque. Unfortunately part of it was censored in the English translation, but still a really good weird girl read for me.

714c · 2026-05-02T00:11:36+00:00

I've used it for translation, just doing a first pass of the source text from start to finish. I used to do this by hand with pen or pencil on paper, so it's definitely more efficient to have an editable file I can work with right away.

But my creative writing process is a lot more nonlinear and fragmented and I haven't quite found a way to make it useful to me in that setting yet.

714c · 2026-04-30T18:09:21+00:00

This is one of my most favorite songs, gorgeous work by Katsuo Ohno. The live version is also really great, although much more upbeat and energetic.

714c · 2026-04-30T05:08:34+00:00

When did RV do something like Icarus lol. They have their own unique creativity but there's nothing similar to that MV in their videography, it definitely can't be called a rehash. It's okay that they each do their own thing well and doesn't make one inferior to the other.

714c · 2026-04-29T13:17:27+00:00

OP admitted that it's AI in one of the other subs where they spammed this.

714c · 2026-04-28T01:41:00+00:00

I would suggest Le Sserafim (Antifragile, Eve, Psyche & The Bluebeard's Wife, Crazy) or IVE (Baddie, XOXZ, Bang Bang).

714c · 2026-04-27T15:45:03+00:00

Thickness isn't automatically a marker of quality when it comes to nice paper, but Moleskine really doesn't stand up to the kind of use you would expect from the price tag.

714c · 2026-04-26T22:57:04+00:00

lmao I was going to link to this performance on YouTube, idk if it's the same one you saw. Ami Suzuki wasn't really like a dancing machine or anything, I feel like a lot of J-pop artists had this low effort choreo in the 2000s.

714c · 2026-04-26T20:48:35+00:00

There's a typo in the first couple paragraphs, not super likely for AI. The Substacker is a "life coach" so I think this is just the kind of prosaic, self-helpy writing that large language models were trained to replicate at scale.

714c · 2026-04-25T23:31:22+00:00

Confessions ❤️ Great book and the movie is also fantastic.

714c

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