#labyrinth better write a banger for this one

[actnatural-ly]

Euphoria is full of sex scenes. But how would you like a s3 fexi sex scene to be shot?

i think most people have answered this better than i can at this point but what i would like to see are just little details in a dreamy montage:

soft lighting, stuttering breaths, close ups of hands scrunching up clothes, lexi's head tilting back, her eyelashes fluttering and her mouth dropping open, either slow and sweet or urgent i missed you so much i need to touch every inch of you right now or one melting into the other, lexi's naked back arching, fez's hands tangled in her hair

[demigodsanswer]

1, 12, 19

the character everyone gets wrong

God. most of them? A huge pet peeve is when people write a fic post-TLO, but they make Clarisse the bully she was in TLT. That's always annoying.

I do think Percy and Annabeth as individuals and as a pair are the ones I'm a) pickiest about and 2) most often done poorly. Often one of them will be okay, but the other will me ... not it. Or their dynamic is just all wrong (usually Annabeth is too mean to him). They are immensely hard to write (imo), like I'm not even satisfied with how I've done it. I've found a few writers who I think write them very well (you are one of them), and I just cleave to their AO3 pages.

Nico is another one, but I hesitate to say people get him wrong, because I think a lot of Nico-centric fics are written by queer, emotionally dis-regulated teens, and it's their right to do whatever they need to do to Nico, to put him through what ever they need to put him through to feel better. I did it as a teen. It's a right of passage. You gotta get through high school somehow. So keep writing that Nico angst! I support you!

the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

I mean! C'mon! It's Clarisse. I have been captain of her fan club since I was on DeviantArt! You should like her because despite being a secondary character, she has incredible development and emotional complexity. She's a character who is very obviously putting on a front to protect herself, but is shown to be deeply compassionate over and over again. Also her songs in the musical are such bangers.

Also Drew Tanaka. Drew is one of the characters where I simply reject canon and create my own reality.

you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

I'm not ashamed, but I do fear people will judge ... a Percy/Clarisse ship compels me. I don't think they'd be endgame. And I don't even they'd emotionally fulfill each other in any way. But I do think they should maybe hook up (either when they are single or with the consent of their partners. Neither is a cheater). Go read Stolen Chariot and their conversation in Battle of the Labyrinth again and tell me you can't see it.

[billyhasbrainworms]

Rating HypMic songs based on how much I remember them

So I was originally going to group them only by how memorable each song was to me, but after listening to a few of the tracks to try and jog my memory I decided to add in how much of a bop they are as well.

So, here's my 100% biased ratings of the 1st DRB songs.

1/5: I listened to these songs again while writing this and still can't remember how a single one goes. Overall, pretty low energy from memory.

Scenario Liar (シナリオライアー)

Labyrinth Wall (迷宮壁)

Tigridia (チグリジア)

T.D.D LEGEND

2/5 : Yeah, I remember maybe one or two lines but they just don't stick with me for long.

New Star

ベイサイド・スモーキングブルース (Bayside Smoking Blues)

Drops

IKEBUKURO WEST GATE PARK

The Champion

3/5: Average, very much remember just enough to enjoy them but not to bop to.

G-Anthem of Y City

Yokohama Walker

Shibuya Marble Texture -PCCS-

パピヨン (Papillon)

4/5 : Great, wanna boogie everytime but not enough to do so in public. Also, all the battle songs are absolute bops and you can fight me on that.

センセンフコク (This Means War)

WAR WAR WAR

BATTLE BATTLE BATTLE

DEATH RESPECT

5/5 : Bangers. Have them stuck in my head 25/7.

俺が一郎 (I am Ichiro)

What's My Name?

3$EVEN

Champagne Gold (シャンパン ゴールド)

Shinjuku Style ～笑わすな~ (Shinjuku Style ~Don't Make Us Laugh~)

Hoodstar

おはようイケブクロ (Good Morning, Ikebukuro)

シノギ (Dead Pools)

Stella

Don’t have a rating because they have multiple versions/The plus versions are better because of BAT and Sasara.

Division Rap Battle

Division Battle Anthem

[jandjsalmon]

rules: tag 9 people who you want to know better / catch up with and answer these questions

tagged by the ever wonderful and talented @thepointoftheneedle and my dear friend @daphnesvieira - both of whom I adore to itty bitty bits.

3 ships: Bughead (Riverdale), Fiveya (TUA), and Hallie (The Society) - I have more, these are just the last three I read fics for this morning. Ask me later in the day and I'll have three more.

last song: I'm sorry guys - I can't get into the TSwizzle album. I know, I know. I'm like the only one here who just can’t get into it. You can kick me out of the friendgroup. I wouldn't blame you. lol. BUT SERIOUSLY - my latest songs have a different sound. The one that keeps coming to mind is 'Someone Else' by Rezz and Grabbitz - it's a banger and on the radio a lot here - but I see that it’s Canadian content because Rezz is an DJ from Niagara. I hope you non Canadians have been hearing it as well but one never knows when it comes to the CRTC (they mandate a certain ratio of music played on our radio stations be Canadian content) - It's definitely one of my "songs of the summer" - and I admit that while I’ve had severe writer’s block since April - this song is helping bring me out of it a bit (only a bit - and it’s encouraging me to write angsty stuff, stuff I would never choose to read myself - so don’t get too excited. lol). 

But Seriously - LISTEN. SO good. Angsty but good.

last movie: The Martian. My son just finished the book so we watched it for him.

currently reading: All the fics, dude. Um. Though I guess that's not true since I've not read as many as I usually do. It’s been a busy week and I’ve had the migraine from hell for three days. But generally - ALL the fics. I’ve been searching for lost fics all week so I’ve been doing a lot of skimming. The things I do for y’all. ;)

currently watching: We're doing a Scrubs rewatch that we’re just about done, I just finished The Umbrella Academy in preparation for tomorrow, and Norsemen came out with a new season and that was delightful. OOH and Indian Matchmaking was great - I binged it in a day. Um. I tried to rewatch The Society last week - and I realized I like the fanfiction more than the show (is that weird?). 

currently craving: I would really love a Cornetto right now. (um - a Drumstick - if you’re unsure what a Cornetto is... funny story, I asked for a Cornetto at the movies on Saturday (this theatre in Edmonton was showing Labyrinth and let me just say, it was SUPER trippy to watch it on the big screen just like I did when I was six years old and it was brand new) - but anyway, I asked for a Cornetto at the theatre and she thought I was asking for alcohol. Maybe it was because I was asking from behind a mask and I was unclear - but apparently we don’t call Drumsticks Cornettos in Canada. Shaun of the Dead has ruined me for all other ice cream. Alas.). 

ANYWAY - my headache is gone and I’ve eaten far too many chocolate chip cookies this morning -  as you can tell from my answers here. lol. Sorry.

tagging: @writeradamanteve @dresupi @smugheadjonesthethird @stillhidden @sullypants @lurker-no-more @likemereckless @secretsofthesky @crepuscolo-writes <3

[evilisk]

Thoughts on Labyrinth of Touhou 2 (Main Game)

tl;dr it’s a shorter, easier and rather different game, but it’s still a worthy sequel to Labyrinth of Touhou 1

I had a bigger post planned but I’m just too busy with uni crap at the moment. Here are my unorganized thoughts about the game in bullet points:

Gameplay

The more open-ended approach to party building is just the best. For all but the hardest story fights, there are lots of different ways to approach the bosses. If you’re really willing to sub-class and customize, you can probably even get away with just running a party of your favorite characters.

With all that said, I do think that the focus on party building definitely came at the expense of the bosses. LOT1 had many amazing boss fights (Youmu, Eientei, Alice, Yukari, Rinnosuke etc.) while I felt LOT2 had way fewer interesting boss fights overall. To put it in a sentence, LOT1 is where the bosses shine whereas LOT2 is where the parties do. Note that I am referring only to the main story. Maybe the Post-Game is different

Most of the new characters are just amazing. Satori in particular is just so much fun to play with her “Spellcard Recollection” passive

Not sure how to feel about the Workshop function. For the first few hours of the game where it’s required to unlock characters, it’s annoying. After those early hours, however, I found it pretty easy to ignore

Despite not thinking much of it at first, the Achievements system (which provides you with in-game rewards) was a good idea

The Bestiary isn’t as useful as I would have liked. I was hoping you could use it to figure out boss weaknesses while still learning to fight them, but entries only get filled *after* the fight, so it’s use is really limited. I also dislike the symbols they use for affinities and ailments

Aside from the addition of FOEs, dungeons aren’t as gimmicky as LOT1. I would call this a negative, but after suffering through LOT1′s teleporter maze or the 9-12F switch puzzle again on my recent replay, THANK GOD they restrained themselves here

FOEs were a great addition. They make grinding less boring, they make certain floors interesting (like the underwater floors) and they help make the game’s straightforward dungeon design more interesting

Other Stuff

The music isn’t bad but LOT1 and it’s soundtrack (with its different battle themes and unique boss themes) makes it look so much worse. Still, LOT2′s boss theme is absolutely a banger

The story is definitely better than LOT1. LOT2′s story does a good job of giving you long term motivation via the guest character battles and the recurring main boss. The writing still has that absurdist, LOT1 flavor, but it’s way more restrained. The adherence to elements of Touhou canon is also quite nice

The art is nice, though what is going on with some of these portraits. In the first game, they made every portrait a uniform size. Now you get ridiculous stuff like this:

(This is one of the tamer examples too. Try winning a battle with Utsuho, Aya and Komachi and just look at the results screen)

And I think that’s it. In general, I expected to have so much more to say, since I can go on and on about Labyrinth of Touhou 1. I believe there are a whole bunch of reasons for this (e.g. you no longer have to commit to builds like in LOT1) but the main one is just that LOT2 isn’t as hard as LOT1. I wouldn’t necessarily trade LOT2′s QoL changes just so I could blog about it more, but it just feels weird to not have much to say

Anyway, I’m hoping to continue playing this in June (aka when I’m on break and not worrying about assignments every other week)

[smokeybrand]

Refused

I’m not a fan of Black cinema. As a black person when i say that out loud, among my ethnic peers, i am almost always assailed by disapproval. I understand why. Roles for us are few and far in between. We have to get out there and tell our own stores. I get all that. I understand all of that. I don’t agree with these stories we keep telling, though. I don’t like those stories. I can only see so may gangster or gang banger narratives before i want to puke. I don’t revere that time in my life. I don’t want t glorify the horrible sh*t i had to live through and i don’t want people who don’t look like me, who haven’t had my life experience, f*cking rubbernecking that part of my life for entertainment. I don’t need to see Juice, i lived it. I don’t need to see Boyz in the Hood, i was a boy in the hood. I want, more than anything, to see Us on screen but i hate to have to see us like THAT onscreen and, more of then than not, that’s all we ever see and it’s f*cking exhausting.

Those two films i just mentioned, they’re f*cking excellent. I’m not taking anything away from these movies. You should check them out. They’re important and they do show a world that most of the US may not know about. Friday and Dope are two more excellent films about the black experience but they are about that one experience. As much as i love these films, they’re telling the same stories we’ve been telling since the early nineties, since the seventies where they were known as Blaxploitation. New Jack City is basically Black Caesar revisited, two decades later. Nino Brown is the same motherf*cker as Tommy Gibbs. It’s the same story, two decades apart. you’re telling me that, we as black people can only conjure ghetto ass, crime-laden, hood escapist, fantasy? Is our creative vision so goddamn pedestrian? Is our aspiration so mundane? Do we asks so little of ourselves that this is the best of what we create. what we submit to the annals of cinematic history?

I mean, there are other great, black, filmmakers out there. Ryan Coogler and Jordan Peele immediately come to mind. The way they approach blackness in their films is fresh, it’s poignant, it’s organic. There is a semblance of fantasy in those films. Look what Coogler was able to do with Black Panther, with the Creed duology? I’m not a huge fan of US but it was unapologetically black. More to the point, Get Out was a brilliant horror film, saturated in social commentary. Why don’t we have more films lie that? Why don’t we have more creatives like that? We need more black creators in the vein of Aaron McGruder and Kasi Lemmons and Michael Alyn Pondsmith. You probably don’t even know who  Pondsmith is. Michael Pondsmith is the guy who created the Cyberpunk tabletop franchise. That’s right, this new game everyone has a hard-on for? Cyberpunk 2077? That’s based on the world and characters created by a black man, way back in the 80s. That’s what I'm talking about. That’s the level of broad creativity I'm talking about.

Why is everything always so grounded, so normal? Why are our creators always wallowing in the horrors of being black and not uplifting ourselves in other genres of film? The stories we tell, Our stories, don’t have to be droned out in sepia tones and powerful declarations. Not everything has to be Ray or Twelve Years a Slave. Why couldn’t we have a black Hobbit or a Labyrinth starring Kiersy Clemons and Idris Elba in the leads? Why can’t we write our own Bond or Bourne? Where the f*ck is our version of Christopher Nolan and why don’t we support their vision? Why do we stifle those who court whimsy and demand the same, played out, narratives we’ve seen since the f*cking seventies? It’s so frustrating seeing someone like Ava DuVernay, who has the vision to craft epics like Legend or Clash of the Titans, pigeonholed to making historical black dramas or catering to the perceived black audience. The fact that she got New Gods for DC is incredibly exciting to me. That level of high fantasy in the hands of someone with the cinematic vision we only got a glimpse of in A Wrinkle in Time? We need more of that. We need more of our flavor on genres that we, historically, defer from. What we don’t need is more f*cking Madea. I can only tolerate so much color bias before i want to burn everything to the ground.

I’m a black dude who swims in geek culture. A cursory glance at this blog, specifically, will tell you that. I love comic books. I love video games. I love cinema. My favorite genre is cyberpunk. My personal writing skews retro-futuristic fantasy. I eat up sh*t like Evangelion, Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and Final Fantasy. My favorite film franchises are star Wars, Godzilla, and the MCU. I have a penchant for exceptional horror like Alien or The VVitch and salivate over religious fiction like Hereditary and The DaVinci Code. I stay marveling at the scope of Christopher Nolan’s intricate detail and expansive creativity. I adore David Fincher’s quiet cruelty and the way he captures that malice, be it completely over the tip like in Se7en, or distinctly, coldly, focused in Gone Girl. I love asking those big questions and exploring all of that existential and very human sh*t but i am a minority in my culture for relishing that type of stuff. More often than not, i am shunned or ridiculed for wanting something grand from those who create our narratives, who craft our art. I’m not saying there isn’t merit in films like Moonlight or worth in telling stories like Selma. We definitely need those. I’m just saying we can be more than that. We can do better than that. We can create more than just that because we, as a people, ARE more than just that.

[vskpop]

August 2017 ⋅ Enerzetic

Gashina - Sunmi

It’s true across most big companies that we will never get to see what their artists actually want to do until they either have enough power to make their own decisions, or they leave the company entirely. While Yeeun has always been the clear breakout act within Wonder Girls, and the only one with some space to do her thing, I have been waiting for Sunmi to have a decent solo career ever since 24 Hours.

Sunmi had a bunch of writing and composing credits in the last two Wonder Girls album, so it’s not a surprise that she knew exactly what she wanted to do and how to do it as soon as she moved away from JYP. If Gashina is anything to go by, full creative control for Sunmi is everything I didn’t know I wanted. It’s catchy and sexy, which we knew she could pull off, but also incredibly weird and out of the box. I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Following - Hyuna

Last year, Hyuna’s comeback was an exaggeration of all her defining elements, and not in a good way. It came out in the first moments of a very very bad phase for Cube Entertainment, a phase they haven’t left behind yet. After the excellent Triple H project, it’s nice to see Hyuna build on her past work rather than staying exactly where she was thematically and musically.

While the central idea of title song Babe is kind of weird - she feels younger and younger because of her love interest, to the point that she feels like a baby - I like that for once Hyuna didn’t have to put  all her effort into being sexy, and looks happy and carefree in the music video and in the live performances.

Babe has catchy parts, but doesn’t shy away from its weirder, more meandering parts. It’s definitely a dance song, but there is more to it: even if the song is about feeling younger, Hyuna is growing up as an artist and can do more than straightforward party tracks.

While A’wesome sounded like a collection of random leftovers from other projects, Following sounds like a cohesive piece of work that shows all different aspects of Hyuna, now a grown-up with control over her releases; after years of collaborating on her songs’ lyrics, she has composition credits as well this time.

Party and Purple mix the party atmosphere of older Hyuna classics with the voices of Cube’s newest acquisitions, Pentagon’s Wooseok and E’Dawn. Dart and Mirror might be trendier, but they are the real gem of this album: both songs are performed by Hyuna in her actual singing voice rather than her high-pitched tough lady voice.

It’s really special that Hyuna and Sunmi are promoting at the same time: the two Wonder Girls alumnae (even though Hyuna’s experience as a WG was quite short) show that there is a life on the other side of a girl group, and that women idols can find their own voice in an industry that doesn’t particularly want them to.

  White Night - Taeyang

There is a fringe of k-pop fans that is absolutely obsessed with establishing scientifically that their favourite is the best singer in terms of technique. I have never seen this kind of morbid obsession in Western pop music, but it does make me laugh to see people spending so much energy on letting everyone know that Taeyang is a bad singer.

Bad technique or not, I think Taeyang is one of the most charismatic, emotional singers in k-pop. This comeback is quintessential Taeyang for me: both Darling and Wake Me Up are sweeping, emotional songs that sucker punch the listener with the insane expressiveness of Taeyang’s voice.

I think this is the first time that instead of pairing a dance song and a ballad, Taeyang chose to go with two slower songs. I’m not huge on very samey comebacks, but the pairing of Wake Me Up and Darling really allowed him to show all of his strengths, and probably to save all his choreo energy for the huge tour he’s embarking on.

It’s also interesting to consider that both Taeyang and G-Dragon, who are celebrated for their danceable or more hard-hitting songs, went with ballads for their comeback. It’s obvious that G-Dragon’s circumstances were forced (and that his original plan was different), but I like seeing that they have reached a point in their career where they can do something that feels close to their heart rather than something that is easier to sell.

I think it will be hard for Taeyang (or anyone) to ever put out an album that’s better than Rise, but White Night is as good as I expected to be. The only song that’s an obvious dance single is Naked, which would have never ever been picked because it would have never been aired on Korean TV with the lyric “I want you naked”. As usual, his intros should be whole songs and he knows it - so much that this time he made a music video for the intro to White Night this time around.  

Since this might be Taeyang’s last comeback before his enlistment (although I secretly think and hope we will get one more GD x Taeyang), I was terrified of how it would turn  out, and I was honestly just relieved that he managed to go through an entire album without any gross cultural appropriation. Even though I still don’t want him to go on a two-year hiatus, I think I can be happy (and by happy I mean rolling in my own tears listening to White Night) with how he closed this chapter in his career.

Our Twenty For - Winner

It will take me some time to get used to Winner having regular comebacks instead of disappearing for 18 months at a time. I’m glad to see that their new four-member incarnation is finding success shedding their mid-tempo image and throwing themselves into the latest trends.

Winner used the obvious title song (the one that sounded like Really Really) as the b-side of their comeback. Island has the staples of every other tropical track, but is made a bit less predictable by avoiding the drop and going with a chorus that’s a bit less formulaic than Really Really’s. I have to admit that it’s my favourite song between the two; the video is so gorgeous and romantic, and the song is the perfect halfway point between hype and chill.

The actual song that was promoted, Love Me Love Me continues the tradition of Winner singles with a repeated title (after Really Really and Baby Baby) but switches things up again in terms of sound. When everyone else is stuck in a labyrinth of EDM trends, they looked in a different direction and put out a disco-inspired song. It’s similar enough to Really Really in structure, but it’s a signal that new Winner is ready to experiment and maybe is not so set on a new identity yet.

If there’s something that I appreciate about Winner, it’s that their lyrics aren’t made up of the same three sentences of the average love song; they actually express feelings that people in their twenties would have, like the apparently very controversial line “I want to mix it up with you on the sofa”. They are corny enough to sell, but not so much that thinking about what they’re actually saying makes me cringe.

Winner have always focused on ballads; it’s interesting to see how they still clung onto a slower song in their first new-formation comeback, but they’ve entirely let go of it this time.

In a way, we are still looking what ‘color’ suits us best. ... I’d say right now, we are in round four (of 12 rounds in boxing).”  - 04/08/2017

For me, none of their songs has reached the levels of EXIT: E, but I appreciate seeing that they aren’t afraid to branch out and that YG is letting them.

Bonus: Island and Love Me Love Me acoustic version

1X1=1 (To Be One) - Wanna One

I am positive that the eleven weeks I spent sweating and crying over Produce 101 will be the last time I follow a Korean survival show (until the YG ones come around, that is). I was bound to be attached to Wanna One even after my favourite Samuel didn’t make it through just for the sheer amount of time I spent watching the show and following the drama and controversies around it.

The rumours that Produce 101 was rigged are unsurprising and, to be fair to Mnet, I do think that the final 11 members really create a fantastic team . After countless hours of performances and variety shows (you might sense that I’m a bit obsessed) I think they are one of the most well-balanced groups I’ve ever seen in terms of actual talent and personas/personalities.

While at this point I have my doubts that debut track Energetic was actually picked by the public and not by the managers of Wanna One, I think it’s the perfect debut song for them.

There is nothing crazily original in this song, but it capitalizes on all the best parts of Wanna One: charismatic dancers, top-notch vocalists, expressive rappers. It was clearly written knowing that capable people would perform it (if not exactly who would perform it), and that their parts didn’t need to be easy or muddled to cover their lack of skills. Mnet also managed to pull through and get a track written by Hui of Pentagon, who was behind the most successful Produce 101 original track, Never, pretty much guaranteeing the success of Energetic.

I am very impressed that Mnet managed to put together a video balancing a more cheerful, colourful vision of Wanna One with the edgier, blue-and-pink neon trend that has swept up “aggressive” k-pop groups. It really shows each member in their best light, and how the group will be able to switch genres and styles without looking out of place.

Seeing the music video for their second possible debut song Burn It Up makes it clear that there wasn’t a chance in hell that it would be the title track. Terrible editing and post-production aside, Burn It Up is a perfectly good song, albeit on the more banger-y side of k-pop trends, a style that Produce 101 never seemed to be particularly inclined towards.

I still really like the rapped pre-pre-chorus, and the distortion in the chorus felt like an interesting way to switch up the k-pop chorus formula that has been everywhere in the past couple of years (screamed title of the song + dance break).

Apart from the fact that it’s a bit conventional, Burn It Up would have really penalized the vocalists in Wanna One since it’s almost entirely rap or rap-singing, so I’m even happier that they went with Energetic.

The more I listened to it, the more I realised that there was another group that disappointed me lately and would have suited this song: it’s perfect for iKON, and I do hope that after their recent debacle they take a page from the Wanna One book and go for something similar to Burn It Up.

Wanna One have a sea of advantages over IOI, starting from the fact that they are men, so they aren’t expected to adhere to a cute, innocent concept. They are also benefitting from all the experience that Mnet and YMC gained from IOI’s failures and successes. Their debut is a million times better than the terrible Dream Girls, so I want to believe that all the other problems IOI had will be avoided this time around. I am really looking forward to the next 18 months with Wanna One.

Holiday Night - SNSD (Girls’ Generation)

In a year of underwhelming comebacks for SM artists, SNSD just reached a whole new level of disappointment for me: I’m furious that this half-assed comeback was their tenth anniversary. They have been working incessantly for ten years and this is what they got.

Considering their team must have been preparing this comeback at least since the end of the You Think/Lion Heart promotions in 2015, it’s quite shocking to see how uninventive and cheaply made their new round of “promotions” (more on that later) was.

I think most people agree that Party was a terrible song, so I can’t imagine why SNSD would double down on it with Holiday. The song is a decent b-side at best, and the styling is atrociously childish for a group of adult women; if Taeyeon hated Gee, I can’t imagine how she felt about this. I can hardly get past Hyoyeon’s rap, which is literally “You know I’m hot, hot, hot, hot”; SM could have at least gotten someone to write her decent lyrics.

All Night is a fun song, and with a much more current sound than Holiday. It does a good job mixing the bouncy atmosphere you’d want for a celebration and a sound that matches a group of women in their late twenties.

The video feels a bit strange - as if they had had to cut out some elements that were key to the narration and we were only seeing the leftovers. If I had to put my money on something, it would be that they had to cut out 90% of the footage with drag queens.

There is everything to hate about this comeback, still - the videos have clearly been shot on the cheap, and some of the costumes are just horrendous. Seeing this comeback in the context of the larger situation with SNSD, however, makes the subpar quality of Holiday Night one of the least important problems that the group and fans should have.

I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that SM is using organized-crime-level intimidation tactics to make the members renew their contracts: cutting their promotions short, refusing to reprint the album, sending them to schedules with no security, throwing out random contradicting news for media play…

I’ve read as much as possible about the situation (as much as a non-Sone can) and I honestly can’t imagine how being treated like this would make anyone reconsider the choice of leaving SM. I really wish the best to each of them, especially after they’ve worked so hard for ten years for a company that showed yet again that doesn’t give a shit about them.

Free’sm - CLC

The first thing I thought of when the Seonho teaser for CLC’s comeback was dropped was Reality from La Boum (the French film, not the Korean girl group).

Where Are You? is yet another sharp turn for CLC, coming from a “fierce” concept in their previous comeback with Hobgoblin. I wasn’t persuaded by the song straight away, but I ended up falling in love with the 80’s inspired sound and the strange, dreamlike, artsy music video.

I wasn’t so in love with the styling of the performance, which saw the still pretty young members wear outfits I wouldn’t wish to the last surviving second-generation girl group.

Free’sm sounds like a strange mix of bits that they had leftover from previous comebacks and from what they had in mind for them. There’s one tropical song, one hard hitting song, one cute song (that they ended up promoting), et cetera.

Lack of success has pretty much made CLC a directionless group since day one, but this comeback, especially with the promoted song switch in the middle of the promotion - from Where Are You? to cutesy Summer Kiss - really highlights how Cube Entertainment have literally no idea of what they should do with them.

I understand why they would want to try different things and see what sticks, but I don’t think that the constant flip-flopping between concepts will help them cement a fan base. Free’sm has sold about 1500 copies as I write, a pretty severe dip from the 4000-5000 of their previous albums - still an unsatisfactory number for Cube, but not as abysmal as what they did now.

After listening to the album over and over, I still wish that Cube had pushed through with the “tough” concept and had picked Call My Name or I Like It as the title track. Call My Name is trendy enough to be popular, and fierce enough to escape the cuteness. I would have picked I Like It as one of my favourite songs of the year if it wasn’t for the obnoxious chorus; Seunghee’s pre-chorus is just about perfect and I hope to see it live at some point.

With Pentagon hitting it big and Hui becoming a household name as a producer, as well as trainees Guanlin and Seonho making a splash on Produce 101, I can’t imagine that things will look up for CLC if they don’t turn their career around by mid-2018.

Sixteen - Samuel

It’s shocking to think that Samuel is at his nth debut and he’s only fifteen. He was supposed to debut in Seventeen (which is how I ended up following him), he was in the terrible 1Punch, he was on Produce 101 and narrowly missed being in the final group, and now he’s debuting again as a solo artist.

Despite how much I love him, I don’t think this was a very good idea. While it’s obvious that he’s talented and has been working hard for years, he’s still not the most well-rounded performer - which makes sense, since he has literally just turned 15.

The album is sort of neither here nor there for me; a lot of it felt really dated and I’m not sure if the autotune was meant to be a feature or just be covering up for Samuel’s vocal shortcomings. I didn’t mind the song with Chungha, but it’s still not something I would listen to again.

Being onstage by himself underlines Samuel’s limitations and I think he would give his best in a group, even just to share the pressure he seemed to be putting on himself during Produce 101. I hope that Brave manages to build a group around him in the coming months/years, because I can’t imagine this being sustainable for him.

Ever - Jeong Sewoon

I felt bad giving space to Samuel and not dedicating a single word to another of my very favourite Produce 101 contestants, Sewoon. Differently from Samuel, he always looked out of place in Produce 101, and like he didn’t really want to be there or be a idol.

I highly doubted Starship would be able to put together a group for him, but I was glad to see that at least for now he is getting a solo debut. The single Just U and the rest of the album exquisitely blend pop/trendy sounds and the more singer-songwriter identity that is Sewoon’s signature.

Ice Chu - Gugudan Ogu Ogu

While I was bound to watch everything this sub-unit would put out because of my eternal loyalty to Kang Mina, I wasn’t so sure I was going to like their debut concept. I don’t know if I would say I was “pleasantly” surprised, but the horrifying tortures they inflict on the ice-cream people in the video for Ice Chu really gave an edge to what I would struggle to define as a cute concept, at this point.

The hammering rhythm, the tiny voices, the cute-but-freaky concept really reminded me of the later songs of Orange Caramel (it’s more Catallena than Magic Girl). It was watered down just enough to be appropriate for Mina and Hyeyeon, who have just turned 18, but it’s all there. I love it.

MORE SONGS OF NOTE

Don’t Speak - Ali ft. Cheetah 

I’m OK - Cosmic Girl 

What Can I Do - DAY6 

Kiss Me - DIA 

Dumb Dumb (originally by Red Velvet) - Jang Jane, Giantpink, PERC%NT 

The Real - N.Flying

To Do List - Pentagon Kino and Hongseok

~42 - Primary ft. SAM KIM, eSNa

Love City - 9muses

STRAYS

Some more VCRs from Seventeen, always being totally perfect:

AKMU can make everything good/better:

WJSN covering BTS I Need You is EVERYTHING:

Queen Lee Hi sang 2ne1’s Come Back Home on JYP Party People:

Winner cover Wonder Girls’ Nobody on JYP Party People, what a time to be alive.