Once upon a time the fandom was...
Like I said I was in the fandom before… I get in this fandom in the middle of the storm of the 15th anniversary. I was younger than now and a little naive, people grow and I did.
I think even if they reached the peak of fame really late for an Idol (Ochan had 29 at that time) I think now is a good time to take a break if they need it.
I'm recalling the memories of the older in this fandom.
By 2011 there were more than 15 active subbing communities for the regular shows. There were subber for English, Español, Indo, vietnamese, Italian, Phillipino, french, korean, chinese. The subbing were about regular shows, dorama, movies, concerts, PV, interviews and even radio shows.
How much of them are active now? I think only 4 TOS, sekaini, AnoM, and eng trans.
For fanfic the most active community here in livejournal have a rate for 5 or 6 posts a day now there’s day without post at all. Now is more common AO3 but even there the fanfic posting in english decreased to 1 a day or 1 week.
In the fanart the same, some artists left in twitter.
What about images? In livejournal we had almost 3 or 4 scans communities. Today we mostly live from the photos on weibo. I adore chinese fans but I can’t reach weibo by Chinese foreign policy who only accept US and Canada, (weird chinese huh?.)
The sns were livejournal, dreamwidth, facebook, twitter, tumblr, blogspot and some olders like angelfire. Now the fandom mostly reunites in facebook (some east asian, taiwanese and spanish speakers),instagram (mainly asian and japanese) twitter (japanese, korean, spanish speakers, US and canada, french, italian, east asian, well… everyone but chinese),weibo, blogspot (some spanish speakers), livejournal and dreamwidth and lastly tumblr.
The sns are many now compared with the ones existed back in 2011. But is not only about quantity but about quality.
Here in livejournal on dreamwidth things got a little more lonely. The fans here dramatically decreased in 2015. And the most important thing we have lost is the sense of community.
Now we are professional leechers waiting for download the last material in raw without giving a “thank you” at least.
There were place for giving opinions to everything they do good or bad. There are so many wonderful examples in some old LJ about sharing thoughts. The last single commented here was Sakura.
I arrive at the part I wanted to say…. Once upon a time in this fandom was a place of freedom of speech.
I saw many wonderful and unique contributors who left the fandom or entered in hiatus because of intolerance. Intolerance make a fandom.a dictatorship, made it painful and sad. In one word imposing a way of thinking hurt deadly arashi fandom base. I said many times I was afraid to express myself in something normal like “I don't like that song”. People here in and other SNS told me “they put their best effort to do this single, be respectful”... and I was what?....Seriously not even think people bashing me because I said Ohno didn't want to continue with Arashi…
People discriminating someone because of their nationality, language at even religion (for the one who don't know Latin Americans for many people are for definition Christians so we can’t say a thing about BL).
WHAT ….WHAT ...WHAT?
I understand the people who left the fandom and these put distance to Arashi. Just before the hiatus announcement I did a request to join a subber community but I got rejected and I don't know why because I really did everything they ask for. After that I received many commentaries about the managers being harsh because they didn't want latin Americans because they think us are prone to break rules. I don't know what to believe but I got rejected without explanation.
When I started this place I didn't want to said something stupid that can expel me from a community…. I was terrified because if I said something about my personal taste about their music could lead to haven’t access to subs or raws.
Imagine if I said some rumour, political view or criticize their management… would be terrible.
But we are here now, many of the biggest Arashi fandom.contributors are gone or in hiatus due this type of conduct. I'm trapped between the rule breakers and the strictest fans. I decided from now onwards to let be myself, not to hide my opinions behind the forced polite only way of thinking. Instead I'll let my opinions flow in the most polite way, but be aware I'll say 'I don't like this song' or 'the dance steps here are boring', I'll express my way of feeling.
Because, once upon a time in fandom was a place to express yourself, have fun and share it with others... and I want to get back to those times.
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I was so anxious about the new style. This week eploded online the new haircut of DoTo in the new mag. Some peple recognized in the street when he do a location fo BBB, and taked various pics and shared in various places (honestly, I would do the same). As I read, the episode climb in to news every, and the Jimusho do an statement telling the style was official and in effect the man in the photo was Tsuyoshi. 
