i want to jump over the Border LINE→→→♡

If you’ve ever looked into Japanese idol culture, you’d know about the romance ban.

It might seem kind of strange to people who aren’t in the culture, and even for those who are, yeah, it’s kind of weird. You see, as an idol, you’re selling not only your music, but an image. The image of being pure, untainted, and for everyone. You can’t pick favorites. That includes having a romantic partner. How would your fans feel? Aren’t all fans created equal? Don’t they all deserve your attention? A lot of idols will often hide their relationships, if they have one, even if they aren’t contractually obligated to. It’s for your career, and it’s for the safety and protection of both you and your partner. You’re everyone’s idol. You can’t just “belong” to one person. You “belong” to everyone. That’s the agreement. Despite “belonging to everyone”, there’s also the illusion to it. If you don’t have a partner, then maybe… you could even end up with one of your fans? You could end up with them? This leads into the concept of unicorns. If you’re a female idol, for example, there are countless men that are fully convinced that you are their pure, innocent angel that’ll be their wife one day. That’s the fantasy you’re meant to provide them. So… why are you talking to a man? Just a friend? You’re still betraying their trust. In fictional idol series, I’ve seen some developers discuss not even wanting to include characters who are brothers. If you’re playing a non-co-ed idol game, a lot of the time the only character that is of the “opposite gender” of the cast is a character that players are meant to project on. (Aside from, for example, the games in which transfem characters are used as a “safe” option. She can be a woman, but she can’t be “like you”. None of the men here want her like that. Because she’s not a “real woman” like you are. Remember, she’s a guy! She’s just a [slur]! But she’s still romantically available to you. As a man. …But as much as I want to talk about transphobia and transmisogyny, especially in the idol sphere, that’s not for today.) The player is the only character that the idols can have feelings for. You put in the effort to make them shine, so why wouldn’t they reward you for your hard work? This isn’t to say that the intent behind producer characters is romance and only romance, but you only have to look at fanwork, the concept of “PCrush Idols”, etc. to see how far it goes. Oftentimes, men in female idol series are represented by faceless characters, the most generic everyman to put yourself in the shoes of, or children. ("There's no problem with male characters appearing, as long as they're a father or a little brother whose penis can't get hard yet." -Takaaki Kidani, the creator of Bang Dream! Girls Band Party.)

So, why am I talking about this? On this website, we mostly talk about alterhumanity and mental illness, right? Well, we’re an idol. If you took a look at our collective kinlist, you’d find yourself drowning in idols. Love Live!, Ensemble Stars!, iDOLiSH7, The Idolm@ster, even fully dead games like I-Chu, or obscure series like Miss Monochrome. Not an idol? Well, you likely have some kind of draw towards becoming one, or your faceclaim character is one (One of our alters based her preferred appearance on a mixture of Coney/Nicole from Tokyo 7th Sisters, for example.) So… yes, we’re familiar with the romance ban. We’re familiar with selfshippers who act like they own you. We’re familiar with sneaking and hiding being in love. And… we are very familiar with love as a concept. We have BPD, and that’s where it concentrates. Love.

A fear that people hate you, needing to be everything people want you to be so they don’t leave, clinging to one person in specific and relying on them for validation, mood swings and anxiety so bad that it ruins anything you touch, sobbing in your room because you’re so lonely, even though you’re surrounded by people who care, because people don’t care in the way that you need. What is the way that you need? Who fucking knows. Whatever makes you feel whole. Needed. Safe. You spend ages working on getting better, knowing the emotions you feel are hurting you. They’re wrong. You go on medication, you finally start to feel better, you become your own person…! And then you crash. You’ve been off your meds for months due to insurance issues. You want to curl up in a ball and die every time you think of just the concept of people. You need people to love you. You need someone to love you. You know the loneliness shouldn’t feel this intense, you know it’s because you’ve been off your meds, that you’re having some sort of relapse. But that knowledge doesn’t change the feelings. You’re alone, and you want someone to love you. You want it so desperately, to not be alone. But you can’t do anything. You’re an idol for the people.

You’ve always been a hopeless romantic, you place high value on romantic love. You spend your free time, even when you’re doing relatively well, daydreaming about romance. Reading romantic fiction, even shitty Wattpad-level reader inserts about characters you aren’t really invested in, because you’re curious about how different individuals behave in a romantic context. Playing romantic games, and if a game isn’t romantic? You will frame it to be romantic. After all, you love love. Sure, it hurts sometimes, thinking of the people from your previous lives that you’ve lost, and how much you wish they were here with you. Partners that meant the world to you. But, overall, indulging in content is a good thing. You have fun, you keep them in your memories and in your heart, it keeps you sane and stable and happy. But, sometimes, that fun isn’t enough. It doesn’t help. It doesn’t fill the void.

I’ll be fully honest, while today is a bad day for our BPD, we’ve had it worse. We’ve done some shitty things to fill the void. If you’ve ever seen our discord account go fully pink, cutesy anime girl, with the pronoun field completely blank…? Yeah, for about a month or so we would hop into normie chat servers on Disboard just to get DMs from guys who see us as “woman.” Any dysphoria we felt was nothing compared to the bliss of people giving us attention. We were willing to hide ourselves for the shittiest, cringiest DMs imaginable. We didn’t even care what was being said. We just cared that the DM request button would light up. Someone wanted to give us attention. It didn’t fill the void, but we kept doing it, more and more. When would it be enough? When would we finally hit satisfaction? I don’t think we ever would have. We don’t do that anymore, thank god, but I think it’s a good example of our desperation. We didn’t even really do anything, or say anything. We posted an intro, they saw pink, and DMed us. Talking to people under a persona, hiding and sneaking. It’s not us, it’s a character we’re playing. We belong to the fans. We’d never break that trust.

So, what now? Well, writing this shit out has helped a lot, I guess. Technically, there never has been a ban. It’s in the past. As much as we’d like to be the person we were, we’re not some popular idol who has fans cyber-stalking their every move. But, because of our BPD, it feels like there is. It’s not fun, constantly worrying about hurting people, or being too much. Being so desperate for a connection that you probably would kindate, even if you keep talking about how unhealthy that is (we’re largely demi, but sourcemates seem to pass that wall easily due to familiarity, even if we didn’t know them specifically.) We don’t want to hurt other people, we don’t want ourselves to get hurt, so we put the ban on ourselves. As much as it sucks, and bottling things up leads to painful days like this, as long as we think of love as something that stays purely in fantasy, it’s okay. If you’re an idol for the people, romance should be the last thing on your mind. You have more important things to worry about. Plus, saying you feel alone when you’re surrounded by people would be rude to them! Just like prioritizing a romantic relationship breaks your fans' trust. Your fans put in so much work supporting you, your friends are so kind to you, so you shouldn’t care about romance. It would hurt everyone in the end. Your fans. Your partner, who gets caught up in something they were never prepared for, and leaves to get away from it. And you, who loses everything you worked hard for, and all of your dreams. So, as depressing as it sounds, the romance ban stays in effect.