I still can't wrap my head around the fact that NCT's Lee Jeno and Na Jaemin are of the same height and build. To me, Jeno is a tall, imposing, muscular youth; and Jaemin is an impish little wood sprite.
Jeno and Jaemin.
Actually Jeno and Jaemin.
Jaemin in particular fascinates me. His fans call him Nana and associate him with pink and ballet shoe emojis. He is wide-mouthed and pink-lipped and his eyes are large and bright. His mien is emphatic but inscrutable, and he insists on bringing a strange chewy sound to every NCT Dream song. His official plushy is this rabbit.
Kkyuping.
The earlier model Jaeminbun is perhaps a more accurate representation of him.
Jaeminbun.
Jaemin and Jeno share the role of Guy Who Raps in NCT Dream - in fact it is often difficult to tell their voices apart. Slowly they will begin to distinguish themselves in a listener's mind once it becomes clear that Jaemin is the one who is always being weird, while Jeno in comparison keeps on the straight and narrow. Here is a famous (infamous?) excerpt of Jaemin's line in NCT U's best song, "Birthday Party".
A favorite tweet of mine.
So Jeno and Jaemin have done a little album together as the unit NCT JNJM. The title track of the mini album is called "Both Sides". I don't have very much to say about it - it is, surprisingly, okay, with an interesting beat and a pretty fun concept: Jeno and Jaemin do not have a "good side" because both sides of their faces are their good sides. Jaemin himself tells us this in the English intro to the song.
Like okay man.
To say that I didn't expect the song to be good is not wholly an insult to Jeno and Jaemin's talents - I just meant that the general shirtlessness and queerbaiting of the teasers made me think there was some overcompensation going on. I guess they were just taking advantage of the marvelous looks of these young men.
Another, longer teaser, with a plot and everything, has Jaemin as a malevolent trickster and Jeno as his Bond-like saboteur. This is, of course, extremely sexually charged. I believe in the wonderful queerbaiting abilities of these two men. They show a lot of promise. I'm not so sure about the acting because I don't speak Korean.
Not a wasteland as in empty. A wasteland as in full of waste. And not waste as in low-effort content. I mean waste as in full of plastic.
I am a slime enthusiast. I'm a big slime enthusiast. I don't play with it often, but I have been watching slime videos for around nine years now, and have grown dependent on these sorts of sensory videos. I know it's shameful. I know it's antithetical to the little rant I'm about to go on about Instagram Crafts and Craft Products. I only say this to introduce how I got onto this side of Instagram.
Crafts and products that have been pissing me off lately:
Makeup products with gimmicky branding
Slime shops (I saw a slime shop video with the caption somewhere along the lines of "I made this, not AI." That's good. But you are also making a living off of something bad for the environment. Kind of sick of seeing this kind of posturing everywhere.)
Taba squishy shops
Ok this is really specific but paint shops that just mix together a random amount of pigment with a random amount of oil/gum arabic to make the Thickest, Grainiest paint ever. And the paint is often in a metallic color, which is fun to LOOK at - but who is actually using THAT much of a metallic color in their paintings?
Resin jewelry shops and the sequins they throw in that goop
Anything involving epoxy - especially those furniture makers who fill in gaps in wood with epoxy
Literally anything with glitter
I know these opinions seem a little extreme. Why can't a gal have some slime? Or some blush? Or some cheap jewelry? But I don't know, I've been feeling a little sensitive about the environment and about capitalism lately. There are just so many bright and gaudy things being pushed at me on Instagram, none of which I actually need. I also hate how these things are marketed, half the time. Besides the low-quality or manipulative strategies used by these videos, I truly believe that just because something is fun to make and to watch being made, doesn't mean it should be made.
Sorry for the long break between posts. Not been feeling my best this week, and my screentime has not helped this slump.
So I'm a manhwa reader, right. When I first started reading manhwa, I sought out good ones. Now I mostly read shitty ones on purpose - formulaic bullshit with brooding male leads and silly plot points and such. It's fun for like five seconds and then the novelty wears off.
Nowadays I read things from scan websites with no comment sections, which is very nice. I like forming my own opinions. Back when I did read comics with comment sections, the peanut gallery below every episode was the bane of my existence. Most comment sections on good manhwa discuss primarily the healthiness of the main relationship, which will fluctuate over the course of the story. Flags abound: "This was such a green flag move from the ML!" or "Uhm, ladies, just so you know, that level of jealousy is a RED FLAG." Naturally as I have uncovered my taste in romance I have grown annoyed by the constant evaluation of the wholesomeness of a fictional relationship. My annoyance is doubled, though, by the fact that webtoon commenters are often both annoying and wrong about what they're reading.
Obviously there is misogyny. There is misogyny toward women who supposedly "get in the way" of the main romance, even if they are not written to be actively malicious or "slutty". "Bitch" is thrown around a lot. Like a lot. I have also seen excess judgement toward female leads who behave outside of the norm - which, like everything I'm about to talk about, is a valid opinion, but many female leads who I have liked for their emotional depth and/or neurodivergence are ripped to shreds in comment sections. These judgements are also often made way too soon, and without context. I get that it's hard to focus on the whole story when reading a serialized comic (which is why I prefer to read manhwa all the way though), but like. It's episode three. You're reading a story which will eventually recontextualize this action or make it seem trivial in the grand scheme of things.
Speaking of that, I also see male leads judged similarly, albeit more rarely. Misunderstandings and other problems caused by natural lack of emotional intelligence as plot devices remain foreign to manhwa readers. I do get it. Sometimes those conflicts are thrown carelessly into a story because the story is stupidly written. But it seems that some readers are turned off by any misunderstanding at all, even if it will soon - again - be recontextualized or given deeper meaning.
We are all bound to use the goomba fallacy at some point.
And this is all ironic because I have read comments on darker comics, ones structured entirely around a male lead's cruelty, which praise said man for his supposed green flags. I would understand it better if people acknowledged the shittiness of the romance they were reading, but they don't. They think the male lead's rough treatment of other women is justified (which is a whole other can of worms) and that consent requested halfway through a sex act is healthy. And it's like, maybe I'm falling victim to the goomba fallacy (see the photo), but where was this grace when a better male lead in a better manhwa made a mistake? Shit, dude, I don't judge you for being here - I'm also at the devil's sacrament! - but at least don't be annoying about the whole thing.
Now I want to talk about the second male lead. Romance aficionados have distinguished a phenomenon called "second male lead syndrome" in which readers of a love story end up rooting for a relationship between the female lead and the romantic rival of the male lead. I got vaxxed against this deadly disease as soon as I opened "True Beauty" in 2020. Fucking hate that webtoon.
Anyway. I have never rooted for a second male lead and a female lead to get together for two reasons.
Most of the time, second male leads in manhwa are either a) actively evil and/or obsessive people, whether that is acknowledged in the story or not; or b) just kind and friendly toward the female lead. Either way I have never seen a second male lead have actual chemistry with a female lead, even if they would be a healthier couple than the female and male lead together. I came here to feel things, and I feel nothing for this man. No matter how handsome he is supposed to be, to me, he is Just Lines.
To put it bluntly, I want to read the love story between the two people on the cover. I want to see the two people whose perspectives are predominantly featured in this comic fall in love. Even if the author subverted expectations in such an ingenious manner as to make the second male lead and female lead both a) have chemistry and b) be "endgame", I'd probably still be a smidge disappointed. I don't wanna go so far as to claim that every character is a "tool" for a story; this isn't a creation myth or a fable. I do think that no matter how much interiority a second male lead has, he will always be in some way a plot device by way of being a second male lead. He is here to cause conflict in the main love story. Sometimes shipping a female lead with a second male lead feels the same to me as shipping her with a set piece, if the manhwa is bad enough.
A male lead will make a mistake in episode two of a manhwa and the comments will be like "I'm already getting second ML syndrome..." GIRL BE PATIENT!! This shit will probably run between 50 and 250 episodes!! Give it some time!! Also, if you don't like this story - read something else!!!
So yeah. I understand that a lot of these commenters are probably children or young adults. Perhaps, though, we should normalize journals. Or telling your grievances to your friends. This is what I do. It's very helpful because people don't have to see your opinion when they're trying to read a goddamn story.
Art Academy: Lessons for Everyone! is an amazing game about being taught to paint by an old man named Vince while his beagle sleeps soundly and guitars sing from your 3DS speakers. This is why everyone with a DS console should hack it. I hacked my New 2DS XL and it was arduous because I am stupid. It was the best decision I have ever made.
The man himself.
My first painting from 2024.
In his lessons, Vince teaches you to sketch and paint in a variety of
different styles. I have not made it far in the game, so I've mostly
done still life lessons. The canvas and function of the media (paints,
pastels, pencils, etc.) replicates real life relatively accurately -
there's no undo button, for example. Paints streak and mix with one
another if you brush a certain way.
I love Vince dearly. I love his real passion for art. Sometimes I mistrust him - sometimes I try to make my painting look more realistic, more pleasing to my own eye. But his paintings almost always look better than mine in the end. Sometimes in the middle of a lesson he will lecture about color theory or Mexican folk art. When you see him put his glasses on and a "skip" button on the bottom screen, you know he's about to drop some wisdom. He's so fucking cool.
The GOAT.
The music of the game is so unimaginably touching to me. This piece is my absolute favorite:
Fuck. I love classical guitar so much. I could cry to this music. Just listen to this one:(By the way, I am going to bring K-pop into this. The bridge of "ASAP" by STAYC sounds very similar to an "Art Academy" piece:
It sort of has a similar soundfont.)
I probably should have been working today, but instead I was finishing up a painting of avocados.
My Superstar SMTOWN missions have taken me places I wouldn't go with a gun, including to the land of Super Junior. One day it took me to the song "California Love" by Donghae of Super Junior, featuring Jeno of NCT. Now, my bias against Super Junior is based primarily on hearsay, so I cannot authoritatively say they're a bad group, though I know some of them to be evil. I would be more open to them if I actually gave a fuck about any solo song of theirs I've heard.
I'll admit that watching their early performances makes me feel warm and nostalgic inside - especially this performance of "Full of Happiness" originally by H.O.T. Their voices really are lovely, their haircuts and outfits familiar. Then again, I also feel warm watching Seventeen's cover of the same song, so maybe I just like this song.
Well, fuck. Now I'm not mad enough to write about this goddamn song. And fuck Super Junior!!!
He looks so passionate in this music video. And pink.
"California Love" starts with a perfectly nice instrumental - nothing new for SM songs specifically, though. After 700 K-pop solo debuts in this style, it sounds like well-made and atmospheric stock music.
And then Donghae comes in and oh my God it's like. Who made this decision.
I don't think his voice sounds pleasant anyway - he's not a very musical performer, because I'm definitely not feeling that California Love right now. That is a statement many people might disagree with, having heard more of his work. I think most of us can agree, though, that the autotune is laughable.
And it does not cease, but remains constant throughout a droning rap. (Said rap only pauses after the words "California bit!" which is something so small but so fucking stupid and sudden it makes me want to laugh.) Donghae is not yet 40, and yet he manages to sound like an old man doing a cha-cha.
"Your pretty face is so small Your cotton candy-like tone excites me Your sexy tanned skin is Gree Gree I think we look good together Your body is like the California sunshine Like debt that follows reckless betting, I’ll bet my everything on you I picture you in my mind again today I’m imagining a song with you."
Whatever the fuck any of this means. This feels like misogyny 2010s-style, like a J.Y. Park song.
[UPDATE: I've looked up "gree gree" to see what it meant - and all I can find for a definition is "an African talisman or amulet". Is this racist? I hope it's like, a Korean expression or something, because that may be egregiously anti-Black. Holy shit.]
Even more old-mannish, though, is the prechorus:
Am I being pranked?
Anyway now we have to talk about Jeno. My opinions on his verse will perhaps be a little more contentious. I don't think Jeno can rap. Rather, Jeno's rapping style suits a particular style of song that I have not heard yet. And after Donghae's aggressive and grating vocals, I am not eager to hear Jeno yell at me.
This is ridiculous. If there is a purpose to this - to introduce such harshness into a song about, presumably, fucking on a beach - if there is a hidden motive, a hidden irony, a hidden place I am meant to discover in this song, I don't want to hear it, anyway. Is it narrow-minded to say this is poorly made? Am I missing something? Is this a hyperpop masterpiece?
Later on, the bridge toys with me, plays with my urge to be fair. There's no Jeno and not as much autotune. The instrumental seems to be building to something. And then the chorus starts again, business as usual.
So, like, whatever. Why was this song made? Was anyone under the impression this would be a hit? Did anyone working on this song have any romance or desire in their heart they just needed to express? (Donghae, at least, sounds into it. He is credited as a lyricist and composer, so we know his heart was in the project.)
Yeah, I'm mad again. And fuck Super Junior - fuck nostalgia - fuck SM Entertainment - fuck the whole state of California - fuck the concept of romantic love. None of it holds anything for me anymore.
Starting out withRed Velvet's official debut - that is, their debut with 5th member Yeri. This is a crazy fucking song about dessert. A bad dessert, too. I feel like ice cream is not meant to be enjoyed in the shape of a cake.
With the chromatic, music-box melody that opens it and the cheerleading chant that closes it, I feel one would easily expect this to be an ironic grown-up play on a nursery rhyme - a very "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Bitch" kind of thing. Weirdly, though, it kind of isn't - rather, it doesn't rely on that irony, instead choosing to weave it into a song that is, above all, hard-hitting.
The hi-hats scream at you. The key shifts suddenly into a major chorus melody that feels minor. Wendy's "Oh, vanilla chocolate honey with a cherry on top" glitches and disintegrates into Joy's gleeful, rapid rap on a flat 7. In lieu of a bridge we have probably my favorite Red Velvet rap of all time in which Irene, whose elegant appearance suits her name, hops on the beat so forcefully that it makes you think she's mad at you, and Joy follows her with as serious a proclamation of "I have no gwanshim in that bag" as her bright tone can offer.I swear to God the world stops turning every time I hear it.
So we have a "Switch" problem on our hands. How are we meant to interpret "Ice Cream Cake", which is constantly glitching, counting down to little 8-bit explosions, and melting away into a new things, in relation to its childlike "la la las"? Perhaps I'm simply avoiding the possibility of sexual irony, given that Yeri was sixteen in 2015. I do genuinely feel, though, that this song has too much substance to be a simple wink-wink-nudge-nudge.
Don't U Wait No More
This was the first K-pop song producer Dem Jointz ever worked on, you can kind of tell it's his - it's somehow both stripped-down and busy as some of his songs tend to be. When I first listened to this song after hearing a little clip of it that intrigued me, I was really not expecting it to sound the way it did. To someone who can't understand Korean, the frequent overlap of voices and constant repetition make no sense. Having read the lyrics, though, one can understand how that overlap represents two different trains of thought -
"Wanna come closer? Tell me everything
(I keep looking at the shape of your mouth)
You come but then you stop and make a circle with your arms
(Your shoulders are stretching)"
The silly bouncing synth in the background makes the whole thing sound a little off-kilter, but RV's signature harmonies, even if they get a little dissonant at points in the chorus, ground it a little. Even so, the weirdness of the whole is emphasized by their simplicity at times, moving in thirds and sticking mostly to the tonic outside of the chorus. The song ends, suddenly as it begins, with a little cymbal crescendo that cuts off.
I fuck with this. This is quintessential red-concept (as opposed to velvet-concept, the other side of the Red Velvet coin). However, I don't think I would like it nearly as much if it weren't for this cute little performance. Look at Yeri and her silly pigtails!! Look at the hand choreography!! Simply adorable!!!!
Huff n Puff
Shit, if I was a fan of f(x) in 2015, I would be mad as fuck. For context, f(x) is a girl group under SM Entertainment that debuted in 2009. Their final album was released the year The Red, Red Velvet's first album, came out. This song sounds to me like it could have been on one of f(x)'s early-2010s albums, such as Pink Tape - but then, I do need to listen to more f(x). All I know is apparently their fans resented Red Velvet when they first debuted. I imagine this song pissed them off.
"On a sunny afternoon,
I was lazily flipping through a book
My hand stopped
On a pretty and strange picture
It softly beckoned to me to follow it,
So, without knowing,
I fell into it more and more"
Like other songs on The Red, including the title track "Dumb Dumb", "Huff n Puff" is toylike and silly, particularly in its prechoruses, which sound like buildups to a boss fight against a giant rocking horse. Even so, I expected the song to be about a love affair falling apart due to one party's frustration and childishness, or something like that. Instead, a quick read of the lyrics reveals that Red Velvet have entered Wonderland and have also been shrunk very small. Hell yeah, brother.
All of the members went crazy on this song, but especially Wendy, whose delivery of the actual phrase "huff 'n' puff" in the chorus stands out the most, and whose ad-libs are wildly impressive.Her high note on Don't make fun of me! is delivered perfectly. Whimsical Red Velvet songs such as these - called red-concept songs as opposed to velvet-concept - have a strength to them that sets them apart from other silly music of the time.
It seems like every girl group music video from the mid- to late-2010s onward has to include one scene of a girl opening a portal to another world. Even Red Velvet do it in their 2017 video for "Rookie". Only Red Velvet, though, and also f(x), can communicate innocence with such umph behind it. I am not sure what it means in the case of "Ice Cream Cake", but listening to "Huff n Puff" I can just see tiny Red Velvet scurrying around like flies, breathless and awestruck.
While Seulgi and Wendy own the song vocally, Joy's voice is just everything to me. You can hear that her rap at the end of the first prechorus about bunnies fighting was delivered with a smile.
Just look at this!!! The members perform this choreography so passionately - and it's gotta be so fun to do, if you have the knees for it.
With the exception of Boys Planet and its ensuing group ZEROBASEONE, K-pop survival shows do not interest me. Likewise I never watched the show Project 7 or cared about the debut of boy group Close Your Eyes (which I will here on out refer to as CYE) before hearing a brief clip of "All My Poetry". In fact, I was a little pessimistic about them. Judging from a clip of the show's last performances, none of them appeared to be able to really sing.
And, look - for a long while I believed that K-pop stans who railed on and on about how idols used to be able to sing were fundamentally misunderstanding the point of music. I still do believe in my heart of hearts that supposed skill should not be valued over actually good music, and that both of those metrics are subjective, anyway. In the 2000s and 2010s a lot of songs were built around vocal agility in a very specific style, and not all of those songs were actually enjoyable; on a similar note, not all technically skillful vocalists are to everyone's taste. I think that 2020s K-pop so far is good and original. If the music is composed well and the vocals are not grating, I have no qualm with a voice that suits the music, even if it is not too traditionally skilled.
I guess part of the problem is that Twitter has made me hateful. Or that music nowadays takes a lot of inspiration from the 2000s and 2010s, and in order for such pastiches to land, you have to have people who can sing them, in my opinion. Or maybe I've just been lying to myself about having nuance all along. Who knows! Either way, I was determined to ignore CYE.
But holy fuck, man, their debut was so beautiful. "All My Poetry" is more than a title track. It's a song! The synths seem to sound with the same eager clarity and unique tone of the vocals, which blend together perfectly. Does any of that make sense? Almost every element comes together to form a dreamy and harmonious whole. Man, if I write it, does it matter? (I actually used to think the line was "If I'm right, it doesn't matter", which made the song seem more settled and calm rather than insecure and questioning.)
The more I listen to this song, the more I adore it. I listened to their whole first EP "ETERNALT", and found myself mostly struck by their song "To the Woods", which is almost as lovely. It even has a little ritard at the end of each jazzy chorus, which you really don't hear often in K-pop. Some parts of the mini album did feel a little old-fashioned (late-2010s), such as the weird muted-trumpet thing at the beginning of "To The Woods". Otherwise it's a good album for studying.
So, like I said, I love "All My Poetry" more and more with each listen - yet the deep chasm that bisects the song grows deeper and darker every time. That chasm is the rap.
I believe truly that, to borrow a phrase, we must shut down all K-pop rap until we figure out what is going on. I love rap as a genre and cannot in good conscience say that K-pop idols should be banned from taking part in it. But composers seem to believe fans are absolutely enamored with K-pop rap - that normal, tax-paying people are listening to a song awaiting with baited breath the moment when some guy interrupts the entire flow of the song to talk at you, not because he is skilled, but because he cannot sing.
Ma Jingxiang is probably a really nice and talented man. He can probably dance and sing really well, given that he placed first on Project 7 - he will need those skills when the revolution comes and I topple the despotic regime of K-pop rappers once and for all. I believe in Ma Jingxiang as much as I believe in the rest of the group. And also his deep-voiced rap after the first chorus very nearly ruined this song.
yeag
I heap the blame primarily on him and not Minwook, whose subsequent rap is also not good, because Jingxiang's part is the most egregious. I curse the people who okayed this. I curse the K-pop industry for enabling this. This is the worst rap I've ever heard. At least when Felix raps in a Stray Kids song he isn't ruining anything special. This song was special!!!!
And yet it remains special nonetheless! I would not argue with anyone who claims this is the best boy group release of 2025, even despite all this.
I want to also take a look at "X", which was not the next title track but the third, because I have heard good things about it from fans. I have to say that this part will not be equal to my review of "All My Poetry" simply because I haven't let "X" marinate, but I will try my best to be objective.
"X" aligns with what is becoming the CYE sound - synths, harmonies, and funky beat. There's even a trumpet in there sometime toward the end! I enjoy it. The first part that really got to me was the little call-and-response between Yeojun (?) and Kenshin, half because of the little halt in the instrumental, which happens again in the chorus. These stops are cute and they help propel the song forward.
I do also like the whispered "X, X, X" inserted in the chorus between fragments of sweet melody. As with "To the Woods", a synth-y post-chorus follows, and I like it a lot, even if "I got me in the mood" is a nonsensical lyric.
I have to say that I am just not as interested in the subject matter of this song as I was in that of "All My Poetry". This is probably because I watched the music video with captions - the aesthetics of said video are cool but not new, and the English translation is very janky. Besides the prechorus, which is in the simple style I detest, this song is quite original.
This transition from youthful concept to "dark" concept between songs is emblematic of the direction the 5th generation of K-pop seems to be going in. In 2023, with the rise of groups like BOYNEXTDOOR and ZEROBASEONE, I expected gentler visuals to be in vogue. Nowadays, though, as always, boy groups are oscillating between the cheesy and the gritty. I feel like darker songs either tend to follow a title-track formula or blatantly rip off hip-hop and R&B songs trending in the West - and although this is not to say brighter songs do not have similar problems, I hear more originality and more fun in them.
I want to see where CYE is going. Frankly, it isn't their musical trademark I want them to keep developing. I won't be interested if every song sounds like "All My Poetry"; I'd much rather them maintain the song's bravery, its commitment to being musical first. I want to hear good things from them, not trendy things or shocking things.
So that is my review. Be sure to send hate mail if you agree.
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