It’s time for QRIMOLE! Let’s take a look at this month’s questions for Kpopalypse!
Hi oppar! I have two questions:
1. The pandemic has made me even more of an antisocial cunt than I was before, and I’ve isolated myself from most people. Recently I’ve found myself missing the good times I had talking with online friends in the past, and then I realized I completely forgot about a friend’s birthday earlier this month. That was a wake-up call to reality. However, talking to people has turned into a chore or something that feels overwhelming for the most part. How do I ease myself into becoming more sociable again and getting back in touch with my old friends?
2. You have discussed in a previous QRIMOLE your process for writing and how it starts with breaking down an idea. Do you have other tips? I want to tell my own stories but I always find myself without ways to structure vague ideas into stories, and I’ve always had a problem where I spend too much time on the details and not enough on the actual story (partially because I’ve always been a perfectionist that doesn’t know how to deal with conflict – as a kid I wanted to make all of my characters perfect and happy all the time). Have you ever had a problem like that, or with something like lack of ideas?
Thanks in advance!
- I was already very antisocial anyway and so COVID just fit right into my lifestyle, now I had a valid excuse to do all the neglecting of friendships that just comes to me naturally. So what I’m trying to say here is that I could be the wrong person to ask about this topic. Good luck with it, but remember that you can use COVID as an excuse for not catching up and use that as your ice-breaker, it’ll make it less awkward perhaps.
- I do know a lot about this, however! Look forward to a post probably early next year, or maybe later this year if you’re very lucky, specifically about fiction writing.
Between 1994 and 2005 or so I used to listen to fair amount of R&B, but I was struggling through a recent k-pop album that was pretty much all R&B and realized that after reading your blog for 7 years I’m mostly convinced that R&B, or at least the current version of it, mostly does suck. Does this mean that with your help I can now see the truth, or does it instead mean that I let you influence my musical opinions too much and I should strive more to think for myself? Or maybe both somehow? (I guess this is a sideways way of asking if you really believe that musical taste is subjective).
Musical taste is definitely subjective. I mean there are people growing up right now who probably think the current R&B is great. Of course we should pity them anyway. Of course there was a few small fragments of R&B that I consider good back in the day but that doesn’t sound anything like the R&B of now, so how much they really are “R&B” could be questioned. Remember that R&B as a genre label had little to do with music genre and was actually a racial segregation dogwhistle that only existed and still exists because the music industry was and is racist, so all sorts of different music used to get thrown into “R&B” just because black people were doing it.
I sent in a question some days ago about companies and artists getting scammed by promoters abroad. At the time I had no idea the CEO and top manager of Omega X were a couple of psychopaths which puts this mess into a new perspective. The company even stated “The first company that we contracted for the American tour went bankrupt, and the company that took on the tour afterward was much worse scammers than we’d heard.” So they heard about the previous kpop acts that they scammed and still went ahead??
Guess so. There are tons of scammers in the music business at all types of levels. A lot of touring management companies like to skim the cream off the top of touring costs while providing next to nothing in return, this is sadly common practice and takes pretty savvy artist management to negotiate. I imagine that language and distance barriers faced by k-pop agencies trying to float western touring activity would make it even easier for such scammers to operate.
Have you heard about an issue between youtubers and musicians Twosetviolin and blinks? Sorry about the Koreaboo article but I’ve mostly heard about this on reddit/twt and I don’t want to link all individual posts about the issue: [link removed for reasons]
I do feel like kpop fans can’t have their idols be criticized/made fun of, even when it’s harmless. During this whole thing, I was also attacked by a blink on twitter because I said I didn’t enjoy Pink Venom that much. I have like 200 followers on twitter, never @ blackpink themselves, just made a stupid comment on my account. My best friend and another one of my friends were also dragged into this because they agreed with me. We ignored them and privated our accounts for a bit, just to get some peace, but what do you feel like it’s the best way to act when it comes to stuff like this? I feel like ignoring it and just moving on is the safest thing but I’m not really sure because I rarely have to deal with this shit
We don’t need to see the Koreaboo article, TwoSetViolin’s parody is fairly self-evident to anyone with a brain and nobody needs to read Koreaboo’s clickbait trash or the inflated ‘drama’ from k-pop fans to be able to guess the general reaction. TwoSetViolin are just acting ‘in character’ as if Paganini was alive today and imagining how he would react if he incorrectly interpreted the song “Shut Down” as a diss against him and felt like making a reply. They even spell this out directly after the song finishes, when Paganini is told “you know it’s not about you, right?” and then he feels really stupid that he made the song at all, TwoSetViolin probably added this because they knew some k-pop fans would be too dim to understand the joke if it wasn’t made super obvious. Of course k-pop fans still didn’t get it because they really are that fucking dumb, OR they’re so invested in the toxic “music as sport” mentality that they DID get it but are playing dumb anyway so as to be seen as more “team Blackpink”. It’s pretty clear from some of the very sharp k-pop references in the song that TwoSetViolin are k-pop fans themselves to at least some degree, they didn’t miss a beat with the various k-pop references and even hint in the lyrics at the amount of unfair control that Blackpink and other k-pop artists have to endure, which they probably wouldn’t bother to do if they didn’t have some empathy for k-pop’s stars. You don’t have to go very far to find k-pop friendly content on their channel either.
So as usual it’s all just a fuss about nothing. As for what to do about crazy fans, blocking and going on private for a while is a good decision, wait a couple weeks and it’ll blow over. If things get really extreme click here for advice.
Hello oppar! I went to my first metal concert, it was crazy. I have never really listened to metal other than briefly but the event was super fun! The atmosphere was pretty good and it was my first time seeing people crowdsurfing (kinda crazy to see people just being tossed around on the crowd). I am confused that a lot of people were just standing around on the floor? It seems like in the US post-COVID a lot of people don’t know how to have a good time at a concert. For me this is jumping around, singing along, and bopping. For others it was standing with their phone up. Seemed weak for metal fans. Have you noticed this being more prevalent post-COVID?
I saw Sabaton and Epica, and it was interesting even if a lot of it felt like war propaganda. The Epica keyboardist used a curved keyboard and it looked really awesome. Also he was spinning his regular keyboard around like a top? Could you please explain this because it’s hard to imagine the curved keyboard is good for anything other than looking cool (it did look really cool!).
Also I tried listening to metal afterwards but it was too grating through my earbuds. But I’d definitely attend a concert again! What’s the best way to find out which acts are worth seeing? I have limited money as a student so I’d like to maximize crowd engagement. I find that if music is live, I tend to really enjoy it so genre doesn’t really matter.
Thanksss oppar! Let’s hope for more good music this fall.
I’ll let the Epica keyboardist explain his own keyboard rig, watch here from 4:17 and he will take you through it all. But yes the curved keyboard mainly just looks cool!
While there are fans who like to get active at the front of metal shows, most fans just want to see the band and hear the music. Also keep in mind that a lot of fans of the power metal style that bands like Sabaton and Epica perform are older and when you get older that moshing shit gets really old because being in a moshpit hurts! Best way to find out which bands are good live is just to search up people talking about past shows on forums, YouTube is also good for this, most high profile bands have plenty of footage on YouTube that you can check out which will give you a feel of what to expect.
In the last roundup you said it isn’t the 4th generation yet. I thought it was just another way of saying that a group debuted during a certain time period, and that it sounded kind of silly and made up. Do the “generations” of Kpop have an actual meaning? How do you know when it’s a new generation?
I didn’t take that comment too seriously when I was writing it, but for a rough guide to what I think is the meaning (which is obviously subjective):
1st gen: k-pop emergence, lagging behind pop from other countries in sound, fashion and technically, few people care outside Korea. Era of Seo Taiji & The Boys, H.O.T, s.e.s, BabyVOX, TVXQ, CSJH etc
2nd gen: k-pop catches up, emergence of “golden age” artists gaining cult status in the west. Era of SNSD, T-ara, EXO, Super Junior, 2NE1, Wonder Girls, miss A, BigBang, f(x), 4minute, KARA etc
3rd gen: k-pop as a major player on the world stage, realistically competing on global pop charts, now starting to set music fashion trends. Era of BTS, NCT, Blackpink, Twice, aespa, Itzy, Loona etc
I think the fourth generation will start when Blackpink get inevitably put out to pasture like 2NE1 were… or maybe it’ll be some other event. Don’t worry I’ll let you know when it’s time.
Hello oppar!
I’m that dude from the giant post in QRIMOLE January 2021. The one who asked about how to study well in third-degree level when your professors sucks ass, about a sus dude that sparked my interest and about finfing job in sundays-only.
I kinda gave up the job thing. I really don’t think I got the time for it. And that’s because I am still struggling a bit with the adult life.
Nowadays, I eat well. Since I am studying Medicine, I actually learnt a bit about how my diet back home was fucked and how it prejudiced my body and mental health. Since I am still poor (got no job), I learned how to make nutritious meals for myself, and it has been wonderful to be honest! Eating what I prepared limited the chance to get diarrhea and other mishaps that were usual when I went out to eat, which also let me be more productive.Which leads me to the study part. The professors are still a pain in the ass (even more so in some subjects) but I am doing your tactic of sharing the work with other responsible colleagues. It is working, since to this day I still haven’t failed any subjects! My scores are kinda low, I admit, but that’s more because of the reduced vacations (thanks covid) that the university is imposing to remediate the delay in 2020. We got less than a month of it between the semesters now. Everybody is quite tired of it, but most of us are managing, somehow.
About the guy that I had a crush on… Found out that he is really gay, which made me really hopeful, but then found out that he’s also married (to a man, just to be clear). LOL. We are friends now.
This friend is really fit, and this fact stimulated me to start working out, but I still have to step up my game in my training frequency. I am slowly stopping being a lazy ass, caonima.
In the university I am having more contact with Psychiatry and I am currently in a process of self-understanding about my mental state. There’s a diagnostic, which I prefer to not reveal, that explains a lot of my characteristics, but it’s validity is quite a big discussion in the medical field. It really explains a lot of things that I do, how I process some events and the conflicting feelings that I have. Current in search of an adequate professional that can help me in this journey.
In short, even with all the hardships, I am living a good life. Could be more exciting, more happy or with more money? Yes, definitely. But considering the path for self-destruction I was before, I like the way that I’ve chosen, for now.
Thanks for helping me oppar. You are the best cunt.
Thanks for checking in and letting us know about your progress! Onwards and upwards!
Hi Oppa! As a struggling musician I thought I would plug my first album I just did – mainly since I transcribed Savage for piano and featured it. I, like you, was conflicted on the song especially with how empty the chorus felt but was still sort of intrigued by the weird rhythms running around in the background. Reminded me of the Rite of Spring so I tried incorporated harmonies from that to give Savage a bit more beef. What do you think?
It’s a better chorus than the original! Not sure about the rest of it though, as an innately rhythmic song it doesn’t really go that well with extended harmony, to really make this work I think you’d have to change it to the point where it didn’t actually sound like the original song at all anymore, which is actually not such a bad idea – that’s how a lot of original songs get written, by the composer starting off with something unrelated as the base and then twisting it beyond recognition to the point where it’s essentially their own. So I’d encourage you to get even wilder with what you’ve got and discard the link to “Savage” completely. Yes you lose a little marketability that comes with doing a cover song, but you potentially get royalties that you otherwise wouldn’t…
So Mr. Kpopalypse-oppar, I recently heard the OST of one of my favourite games ever, Knights in the Nightmare. This is a extremely obscure JRPG, even in Japan (the only youtuber I ever found talking about it in english was this one). Probably I wouldn’t like this game so much if it hasn’t such good music in it and it has at least 2 different OSTs, since the game was released do the NintendoDS and the PSP in the late 2000’s – early 2010’s but it was re-released for Android and IOs in Japan this year, which I don’t really know anything else about.
1. While I personally have a big distaste for the sound capacity of the NDS, I found it to be more enjoyable than the PSP one.
Using one specific track for comparison, what version you think is objectively musically better, the NDS one or the PSP? And, concerning your personal opinion, does that choice change?2. This one might be a little bit more difficult to understand, since english isn’t my native language (one of the brazilian caonima [and fuck Bolsonaro, your time is near, bitch!]) but, 4 of these tracks have the same leitmotif in common. Each one of the tracks are heavily related to a different character, which shares a deep bond with themselves.
I highlighted the moment where this leitmotif happen in them down below. I believe that listening them in this order facillitates the perception of the similarity:
Maria:
Mellia:
Melissa:
Marietta: a more subtle on here() and other here
While the use of leitmotif in video games is obviously nothing unusual, the use of this one specifically seems to bridge a gap in the style chosen to tell the story in the game (totally fucking non-linear), highlighting the importance that these characters have to each other. Since the moment that I perceived this, I felt that it was a really creative and interesting detail in the production of such a product, even more once when it is made by a reasonably small development studio.
Have you ever played a game that managed to produce a similar felling in you, especially related to music like in the aforementioned exemple? I would love to feel that amazement again, if possible.3. Not really a question, but if others haven’t told you already, Brazil’s election that will happen next Sunday, October 30th are probably the most important that we had in decades, not only for the country but for the world as a whole. If Bolsonaro wins, the chances that he will seize the power from brazilian people and instititutions are extremely high. Australian cunts thejuicemedia even made videos about it (shame that they preferred the sociologist with that annoying voice, I love the usual one) here.
Even before the beginning of the electoral race in July, people that simpathized with the opposing candidate are being murdered by the president supporters.
One of the biggest Bolsonaro allies (who was his “minister” of Human Rights) is involved in criminal ways to prevent abortion in a 10-year-old child. Even with this, she easily just got elected as a senator at the start of this October. She is heavily associated with protestant christian churches in Brazil, and uses the religion to manipulate the faith of the voters.
3 years ago, the Supreme Court decided to criminalize homophobia in Brazil in the same way that the law treats racism (lightly, but still better than fucking nothing). Since then (and for other reasons), Bolsanaro’ allies decided to attack the Supreme Court, to the point of his followers started do literally demonize the Supreme Judges (most of them are not conservatives, obviously). Everybody in this country knows how much Bolsonaro hates the gays and don’t give a shit about the rights of minorities. So I guess I don’t even need to tell you what might happen to LGBT rights.
Talking about human rights, a lot of people here seemed to “forget” that 700,000 brazilians died of COVID since 2020. Google says that is 688,000, but I am quite close with the health work force and a lot of psysicians that are also Bolsonaro’s supporters defrauded death certificates of undoubtful cases of COVID to similar death causes like, SARS, which are NOT reported as COVID and therefore diminishes the death count. Bolsonaro actually made his best to stimulate the population to NOT do the social distancing during 2020, NOT wear masks (to this day) and delayed the purchase of the vaccines.
I didn’t focused in this part during the writing, but even in English, that’s a lot of content showing that to each one of these situations (and various others that i didn’t mentioned but are on thejuicemedia link), the current federal administration acted in various corrupt ways to actualize the president’s bidding.
Just to rub it in, a lot of brazilians are feeling shame of their own nationality (which I actually agree with you that shouldn’t be a reason to feel pride anyway), because Bolsonaro supporters also fanatically uses brazilian “symbols”, like the yellow&green soccer shirt and even the brazilian flag. The propaganda of the regime is quite brainwashing, exactly because of this (cultural?)appropriation.
Basically, if Bolsonaro gets reelected, just like the USA still flirts with and like how Russia is right now (there’s quite a lot of internal interest of the Brazilian Army to invade Venezuela and depose its far-left dictator, Nicolas Maduro, wouldn’t be that different from Ukraine, since both are full of oil reserves), Brazil will tread the path of a christian fascist nation so yeah, it is hard out here for a bitch.
I sincerely don’t know what to do if these bastards re-elect this excrement. I guess I gotta to leave the country if the situation keeps worsening like it has in these last 4 years?Sorry for the length and thanks for the platform to vent my frustrations. Wish you a wonderful month and a painful slow death to Rupert Murdoch.
- I have no opinion on it, they both do the job. The power of a particular computer’s music hardware isn’t as important as what people do with it. Some amazing music was written for the Commodore 64 back in the 80s and that thing only had three mono channels. The Commodore Amiga only had two 8-bit stereo channels (two left, two right) and people made whole albums with it.
- Linking me five songs in one question godddamn how much time do you think I have LOL – at least you timestamped the relevant sections! This type of repetition of the same melodic idea in different songs is borrowed from classical music and you’ll hear it in there all the time. It’s also heard a lot in tangenital styles like opera. For recent examples, “Repo: The Genetic Opera” continually uses the same melodic motifs throughout many different songs, as do a lot of concept albums like Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and others, it’s a very common technique used deliberately to tie different songs together into an overarching story, both narratively and emotionally (by hearing a previous theme again you’re brought back to the emotions from when that theme was heard before).
- If this political rant was an American one I probably would have edited it, but since it’s Brazil I’ll let it slide. Bolsonaro sucks, and he absolutely WILL lose the election and absolutely WILL do a Trump and falsely claim that he won it, because Trump is his idol and he has no original ideas. Brazilians however do love democracy, the question is how hard will they fight to keep it when someone like Bolsonaro threatens it. It’s really important that Bolsonaro loses, because if he wins the Amazon rainforest is toast and if the Amazon isn’t protected basically bye bye any hope of climate change leading to anything less than mass starvation and natural disaster for many people across the world (this will probably happen anyway but the question is one of severity). EDIT: I wrote this answer just before the result came out, Bolsonaro conceded defeat woo!
Hello Kpopalypse, I hope you’re fine.
After 5 years of entering and exiting 2 of the top 3 university of my country bcs I was stupid enough to react to my first major failure by losing any motivation to do anything other than playing my phone 24/7, I got accepted to University of Western Australia in Perth. Far from your hometown, but I plan to watch Blackpink in Melbourne, I hope we could cross paths IRL. In preparation so I don’t quit from college AGAIN, I had :
1. Went to a psychiatrist that couldn’t care less that I’m an atheist and I also have a good amount of antipathy towards marriage ( I LITERALLY coudn’t tell ANYONE about it before bcs my country is one of the most conservative country in the world. Not my family and friend, not my previous psychologist and psychiatrist)
2. Discovered that I was unintentionally blocking the fact that I was sexually assaulted when I was a kid, (I’ve FORGOTTEN about it until an incident that I won’t share here triggers the memory back in the beginning of 2022) Now I’m working towards my recovery with my physiciatrist from no. 1, and it goes extremely well.
3. Start running 1km/morning
4. Restarting my hobbies, baking and learning piano
5. Will take an University Preparation Class (how to write essay, scientific journal, etc.)
6. Taking a major from my number 2 interest (Biology-related), so I won’t be burned out bcs of taking my fav, politics-related major (Because you rec to not make money with something that you love, you said I will lose interest bcs I will see it as a chore)
7. Already have someone I know to look after me in Perth
8. Decreasing procrastination bit by bit. It’s working, I’d rather preparing to go study in Perth than playing my phone now. (FYI in the past, even when the final exams was happening I still online on my phone 24/7)What do you think I should add so I won’t have any relapse and quit uni for the 3rd time?
Do you know how much the living cost for students in Perth? (It’s okay if you don’t, I just want to make sure those youtubers aren’t lying)
I also have questions about Blackpink concert promotors in Australia :
1. Does the promotor love to keep a lot of tickets to themselves so they could ‘insader traded(?)’ the tickets in 2x – 3x pricier tag than the normal price?
2. Were they able to organize the concert timely and minimal fainting fans?I hope I can finish my degree this time and get a good job so my mom could enjoy her life to the point she doesn’t have to worry about money (My mom is a single mother, wealthy husband — my father — died at the end of last year so me and my mom got A LOT of money, that’s how I’m funding my study at UWA). Dear Kpopalypse and Caonimas, please send a prayer to me at your nearest Rainaism temple, Thank you