I'm one of those people who always turns graphical emoticons off wherever possible as well. It's one of the very, very first things I always do when I install (or re-install) an IM or chat client. Not being able to turn them off altogether is one surefire way to make me want to stop using the program. I don't want to see them on Dreamwidth, and I certainly don't want what I type to automatically turn into them.

As it is, one of the things I love about Dreamwidth is that the post and comment length limits are so high, that one can spare the extra words to indicate when they're not being serious, and don't need to resort to yellow smiley faces instead. And the lack of graphical smileys means less clashes with the nice layouts, less fruggery with picture-height being bigger than the text's line-height, and much faster, less troublesome display on simpler/older mobile devices.

I would suggest people look up something called emoji if they find the traditional text-based smileys to be too limiting. :) If emoji won't display on your screen, installing Japanese-language fonts/display tools on your system should solve that problem for you quite neatly.