QRIMOLE – May 2026

It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the mailbag for the last month!

It’s April 3rd where I am and I’m about 1/4 of the way through Girls909. It’s really reeling me in! So consider this an endorsement. I feel like every time I take a break from kpop I’m like “ahhh, so relaxed,” then you drop Qrimole or surveys or crazy high-effort posts/books and my life gets taken over by kpop again for like, a week. (Usually the posts make me check out songs, which then make me learn dance/singing/instruments again, put together playlists, listen to other musical influences, etc.) Not sure if this boom-bust hobby is the best one I could have, since I literally have a client saying their mental health would be improved if they could take a break from kpop…

Regardless, I was wondering parasocially if you ever share crazy news stories or in-jokes from the kpop world with your girlfriend. I know she’s not interested in the music, but do you show her things like “the fucking dick goes in the pussy” or explain caonima or force-rolling? I feel like there’s such a dense tapestry of in-jokes that it would wind up popping up in your head in daily life. Or do you have your own collection of in-jokes about other topics with people you know in real life? (PS: I got only one bonus question wrong on the Kpopalypse trivia quiz, I will be contacting you for product placement shortly)

I don’t really meme about k-pop with people I know, because each meme would require about ten minutes of explaining and backstory. Just the “how the hell did you even get into k-pop” questions I get alone are exhausting enough (which is why I made a video response that I could link to anyone asking me about that) so then adding on to that explaining of the origins of “caonima” etc is just too-hard-basket.

Rather than a constant cycle of boom/bust maybe you should just trying being a casual but distant fan. That’s pretty much what I do. I don’t spend every second of my life immersed in k-pop, there isn’t the time and I have my fingers in many other pies. I just interact with it to the extent that it enhances my life and creativity and that’s about where it ends.

As might know, Zara Larsson is the pop sensation of the year so far. What you may not know, since you’re not Zaralarssoncalypse, is that this success came after 10 years since her debut. She’s had multiple hits in her career, especially in Europe, but she was what Western pop fans call a “faceless singer”: people know the songs, but have no idea/don’t care about who’s singing.

Zara never denied she wanted to be a huge star, but she lacked vision (something she herself admits now): she always described all her albums as a “collection of good pop songs” and would just follow the trends to chase a hit. After a while people just stopped paying attention, so for this new album she had to work on a lower budget, so she worked only with a team of roughly five people. The album wasn’t perfect or anything, but it was more cohesive and even explored personal themes like aging and failing to achieve your dreams. The music videos were also more connected conceptually, you can even tell all the three singles belong to the one same album, which can’t be said about any of her previous albums.

Even though it did lower numbers initially, Zara claimed she was more proud of this album than the previous ones because she had a vision this time and turned it real. The fans’ reaction was also more positive and she started to go viral frequently online until the songs eventually became hits.

How all of this relates to k-pop, you may ask. Well, Zara is a living proof that pop fans now want some sort of consistency from their favorite artists. They might like you and listen to your songs, but they won’t grow attached to you if your music is all over place. Yet, and I don’t know if you’ll agree with me on this one, I have the impression that K-pop groups have been jumping from one sound to another too frequently now, more than ever before.

And yeah, I know that concept changes are nothing new in k-pop, but up until a few years ago, most K-Pop groups had a “core concept” of sorts, like, you knew more or less what to expect from an Orange Caramel comeback, from a 2NE1 comeback, from an AOA comeback, from a GFriend comeback, from a Twice comeback and so on… The one big concept switch-up used to come years later into their career after the fandom was already attached enough to just embrace whatever.

Nowadays you can barely guess what your favorite group will release next. Like, what can I even expect from Le Sserafim at this point? They already went from hip-hop to afrobeats to house to whatever the fuck “Spaghetti” was supposed to be. The same can be said about TXT, or Babymonster, or Izna, or even Young Posse or pretty much anyone who’s not tripleS and Illit. I know you might say “they’re looking for a hit”, but I think it’s not only that. For example, aespa had two huge hits with “Supernova” and “Whiplash” in 2024, but in 2025 they went for a completely different sound. Why is that so? Is there something I’m missing here? I mean, if you got everyone liking that one electropop, why not release more electropop songs?

In k-pop, the music is not the product. When sonic consistency therefore happens, it tend to happen accidentally for the most part, just by circumstance. It’s usually because the same songwriters are being used repeatedly, and they just happen to write similar songs. 2NE1 used the same in-house writers for most songs, and they came out similar just because songwriter/producers tend to develop a certain style. But it probably wasn’t a case of “we are aiming this group to have signature sound x” but more likely “just write the best, trendiest hit you can and keep doing that tysm” so they keep trying to replicate their success. That’s why late 2NE1 and early Blackpink sound similar, as YG himself said at the time Blackpink debuted “it’s not Blackpink’s sound, it’s YG’s sound”. It’s highly unlikely that anyone sat down with AOA songwriters in a planning meeting and said “right, let’s define a signature sound for this group”. It’s far more likely that Bravesound became hot in the marketplace and AOA’s company thought to themselves “gosh we want hits, so we can make our group big and then get the REAL money from endorsements and sponsorships, these Bravesound guys are proven to be able to write hits, let’s hire them and then we’ve got the reliable platform we need to then do the other stuff”.

That’s not to say there aren’t also conceptual elements at play with some groups. Orange Caramel were deliberately positioned as kind of a female girl-pop answer to Norazo, for instance. But those conceptual elements are always secondary to the main game, and companies will just reach for whatever they think works. Part of what I hope that my writing acheives is that it points out to people at these agencies (who do read this site, see below) that sonic consistency and quality is something listeners appreciate and would like to see more of, even if it’s not their main game.

The Jimin live singing videos amaze me, because while he certainly can’t hold a note, there’s a clear style that’s almost pleasant to listen to if you imagine the notes in. Is that modulation of accessing different parts of the larynx…? Is it dynamics control…? Can you have good control of these things and just not care about hitting the notes, or are the skills intertwined or even prerequisites of each other (like with instruments, how learning the bare-bone notes come before learning dynamics control)?

I think you just like the tone of his voice. That’s totally fine. I highly doubt Jimin is doing anything in particular consciously to create that tone, other than singing what he’s told to sing, the way he’s told to sing it.

Is having 2 monitors directly to the left and right of the drummer, at shoulder level, a normal monitor setup? I feel like I’ve never seen it before.
Also, can stage monitors play things like clicks and stage manager cues the way IEMs can (without the audience hearing), or are they usually similar to PA with some levels tweaked?

It’s unusual – if a drummer is choosing to use wedges instead of in-ears, usually only one wedge monitor would be used. They might have done two because they had a spare, or it may have been a requirement in the tech sheet for this particular act. It could be that he has two different mixes in the two different monitors, to mirror the stereo field of the stage (guitar on his left, bass on his right), just because that’s the way he prefers it. Personally I’d rather not have to check the extra wedge into load-in but whatever.

While it’s absolutely possible to play clicks or stage monitor cues through wedges like that, it wouldn’t be done simply because to play them loud enough for those things to be heard by the actual drummer while he’s smacking his kit, they would also be loud enough to be picked up by the microphones on that drum kit, and therefore would work their way into the front of house mix, which is definitely not what you want! A little bit of bleed-through is fine if it’s just an instrument or vocal coming through the wedges, but not if it’s click or some instructions from a running sheet, something that’s obviously not supposed to be anywhere in the final mix. Click tracks and stage cues are generally played through in-ears only.

the iu good day high note are ascending semitones but to are there any >2 step high notes that have kinda wide intervals (ignoring that this is musically a little absurd)? i can only think of the berrygood angel one, but thirds are obviously not very wide.

The closest thing I can think of is the chorus of “Golden” from the Kpop Dmon Hunters soundtrack.

But even here the wide intervals are tempered by various passing notes and smoother sections, it’s not a constant oscillation. Constant wide-interval singing for high-notes generally isn’t done, because it just doesn’t sound all that musical in most contexts. There is one 80s pop song example that springs to mind but I can’t remember the name of the song so you’ll just have to take my word for it that this generally almost never happens.

is he in denial over his identity? [link about someone swooning over anthropomorphic animals in the Super Mario Galaxy movie] do you think he’s in the furry closet and actually wants to fuck the fox guy?

Sounds to me like if he wasn’t a furry before he watched that film, he certainly was afterward.

do you find his arguments [more of the same] to be compelling at all?

I couldn’t even read. Someone should give this writer a private booth, a copy of this film and a tissue box and leave the rest of us out of it.

Ayo cunt i wanna give you some insight on why the millionaires are lumped in with the crunkcore groups. I know about this because my sister was scene/emo when I was little and I’m interested in the scene/emo revival.

It’s because you’re thinking about it backwards. The millionaires aren’t crunkcore, crunkcore is scene and the millionaires are scene. It’s like goth right? 45 grave and dead can dance are both goth bands but they’re not musically that similar. That’s because of their deathrock and etherealwave respectively. Which are both under the goth umbrella.

I don’t blame you for not getting this because what qualifies as “scene” is even more nebulous than most subcultures. Especially with all the overlap with emo. It’s one of those “you had to be there” things and I was only tangentially there. Crunkcore is a mashup of metal and the electropop/hiphop styles of the time right? The thing that the kids are calling ‘recession pop” now? (stupid name but music journos are gonna music journo) The Millionaires are just a grimier underground version of like Kesha or something. That’s how it connects.

You can look at the subgenres on this page

Thanks for this explanation, it was surprisingly helpful and this actually makes total sense to me!

I’ve noticed that can’t seem to get over having bias against who delivers the news to you. If a source gives the matter of fact of a current affair, what difference does it make? Eg a place like Daily Mail, Sky News AU, might get a scope on an event. If they’re the source then they’re the source.

Like the Pirat_Nation Twitter account, it’s just a news aggregate. So what if occasionally they post non-gaming, tech, entertainment news with a USA right wing slant? Popbase Twitter account occasionally post non-pop music or entertainment news with a USA left wing slant, would you keep the same energy and call them out?

Oh I absolutely would not trust PopBase as far as I could throw them. I also don’t wildly trust, for example, The Guardian. But that’s generally not what I’m getting linked. For some reason I always get linked the accounts that also have a hard-on for boosting extreme-right culture-war talking points, so that’s what I notice. I hate culture war bullshit, it’s all so fucking boring and it rots people’s brains because it gets them thinking inside dumb boxes that don’t exist in reality. That’s not to say people can’t follow these accounts, just be aware of the bias that exists when you read their content, because often these outlets frame what they’re talking about in very dishonest ways that pander to those biases, or that are designed to get you thinking along certain lines that benefit their own culture-war agenda.

i noticed that when Rolling Quartz drop MV there’s usually lots of long, lingering shots on their drummer. why do you think this is?

is she seen as the “face of the group”, so they focus on her? are they trying to attract gooners to become fans?

It’s because she is attractive. But it’s also because of something else.

Rolling Quartz straddle a line between an “idol group” and a “rock group”, they do this by having a rock band sound but a presentation standard that is more akin to what idol groups do. The standard visual editing for a rock group music video is majority focus on the singer when singing, majority focus on the instrumentalists during non-singing sections. The standard for idol groups is a little different – effort is made to focus on each member more or less equally, in order to make sure fans of each specific member aren’t disappointed with lack of camera time (granted, there are exceptions, but that’s how it goes most of the time). Rolling Quartz follows this idol-style format with their video editing, so that’s why it’s noticed when instrumentalists get more shine. Also not only does the drummer get a lot of screen time of just herself, but she’s in the background when the camera focuses on other members, just due to being at the back of the stage. So it does feel like the drummer gets the majority of the screentime but actually it’s about even. Unusual for a rock group but if Rolling Quartz were i-dle or IVE or something you would barely notice this.

I don’t think groups care whether fans are gooners or not. Bands/groups of performers just want fans in general, any way they can get them, and will get them any way that works. Same goes for anybody in any creative realm. As long as you’re not exhibiting genuine stalker-type tendencies that go beyond mere fapping, it’s fine. The desire to share your creative output in a way that is sustainable far outweighs any concerns about consumption. I personally couldn’t give a shit if people goon to my livestreams or my writing in general as long as they’re happy readers who keep reading my stuff. I’m just grateful for the support. You have my permission to goon.

Can you explain why this happens? Ancient songs seemingly randomly get uploaded to big kpop Youtube channels one day.

I think Genie Music is some sort of publisher or distributor. Is it a case of somebody buying an old music catalogue of some defunct agency or whatever and then trying to monetise it?

Things like this happen for exactly the reasons you might think: because a rights agreement expired and/or an agency sold the rights to another company.

[link about Dayoung not wanting to do physical albums because of it potentially not being popular]

having all the physical albums made would’ve just been added to her debt by the agency?

good business sense. the solo comeback couldn’t have been cheap and would’ve been entirely a gamble by the agency, considering that she had been “in the dungeon” and thus out of the public eye for years at the point.

There are a lot of nightmares with physical product and yes it does cost more to manufacture. Not that artists tend to make a high quantity of physicals anyway unless they are huge, they tend to be ‘collectors’ items with limited production runs aimed at the superfans. But it’s a lot of headfucks. These days Amazon handles my physical book manufacture and that’s a pretty seamless process but it does cost more, hence why the paperbacks are much higher priced than the ebooks. But back in the days when I was releasing music on CD before the days of online distribution and directing every step of the process myself, just the amount of pain in the ass that goes into a simple CD and accompanying jewel case foldout was huge. It would be tripled for these companies making collectors box sets with fancy packaging and all trying to stand out from each other. An expense and hassle artists taking a risk could do without.

If you were a hardcore Korean weeb, would you opt to play/watch Korean made games/animated TV+film with an anime art style with using the Japanese dub?

I read this question to myself about ten times and I’m still not sure if I understand it. I think you’re asking “would I watch Korean content with Japanese audio if I was a Japan fetishist” and if so I guess the answer might be “maybe, if I wanted to practice my language skills”? Beyond that, I don’t know. It feels like asking “if you were a bird, would you find worms tasty” and the answer is “I’m not a bird, so how would I know”.

Hey, oppa! I wanted to ask you a few questions. I know you’ve been producing K-pop content for a LONG time and have never run out of ideas (I think), because you have some specific types of posts that you can reuse as many times as you want (nugu alert, roundup, positive posts, qrimole, etc.) Did these ideas come about throughout the blog? Because I also produce K-pop content, but I have absolutely no idea what to talk about. I love writing, giving my opinion, etc., but I want to make posts that don’t fall into the same old routine that other people do (album reviews that I find a drag to read and write, talking about K-pop news, etc.) In short, where did the ideas for your posts come from?

Origin of Nugu Alert explained here.

Origin of roundup explained here.

Origin of QRIMOLE explained here.

Origin of POSITIVE posts explained here.

As you can see a lot of these ideas evolved “organically”, I didn’t exactly have a master plan or anything, I just wrote what seemed to make sense for the time. There’s similar origin stories for my computer games, books, various other posts etc. I think the common thread is that I’m the one doing it and I have a very specific point of view that I want to get across that unifies all the content types, they’re all different ways of exploring the same ideas and concepts. So if you want to write on a website (don’t do it, by the way, websites are dead in 2026, but if you must pursue this pointless soul-crushing path anyway) then start with the idea. What do you actually want to get across. The idea is king, the content flows from the idea.

do you think he just plays up the “mythos” surrounding him for branding and/or advertising? eg rarely cleaning his room or hiring a maid.

Yes. I think it’s much the same as how I play up to the idea that I’m basically a perverted asshole with no morals. I don’t actually spend all that much time gooning to your faves, but it’s much more interesting to have something like “he’s a slob” or “he’s a pervert” as your brand as opposed to some high-pedestal stuff that is boring plus impossible to actually live up to. Everyone loves their villains. “The immoral rights of the author have been asserted”!

i think it’s been years since i last saw one of his songs in round-up. did you stop covering him or he has just not released any music in years?

Just haven’t seen anything of his in a while. Given that he’s writing a memoir, that makes me feel maybe he’s at least semi-retired from music now? If I start writing a fucking memoir that means I’ve got one foot in the grave probably. Not that I would foist my life story onto people, what a boring-ass read that would be, I’m much better off with the “fiction” stories.

why can’t you identify australian regional dialects?

No idea. Undiagnosed autism/ADD perhaps? Or maybe I just never gave enough of a fuck to even notice them? I didn’t even know Australians had regional dialects until I started writing for this website and people told me about it (class dialects yes, regional no). I mean, everywhere else in the world does so of course Australia would have them too, I just never really thought about it. Too busy thinking about your bias’ boob size I guess.

Would any K-Pop group’s song actually reflect well against an Oldboy-inspired backdrop? That movie is defined by a level of rawness that the hyper-manufactured perfectionist corporatism of K-Pop could and would never match.

As a theme it’s been done long before BTS did it. IU paved the way.

Mind you I don’t think anyone is really trying to copy Oldboy right down to the film’s themes and messaging. It’s surface dressing only. It’s used just because Oldboy is an iconic Korean film and by referencing it, performers can hopefully position themselves as similarly iconic. But nobody is trying to recapture the “spirit” of Oldboy in any meaningful way. It’s just cosplay.

When is a remix better than the original, and what elements are relatively common in successful remixes?

Almost never happens. I guess when it does happen, it’s because the remixer thought up some bizarre angle that didn’t exist in the original song that expands it somehow. But usually (as in over 99.9% of the time) that’s not the case and the remix is just blandly throwing over the top of the original song whatever the latest crappy bullshit trending sound is this week. I can’t think of even a single decent example of a good remix off the top of my head.

Is BTS 2.0 them testing how far they can push their fanbase after years of hiatus from military service? It seems like the perfect loyalty test: if they’ll accept this trash, they’ll give money to HYBE for literally anything released with the BTS stamp on it.

Music is not the product. It’s especially not the product for a group like BTS. They could release anything, it really wouldn’t matter.

Thoughts? Does music industry do similar schemes and scams? (maybe “payola”? IDK.)

How companies try to trick investors by fudging the numbers:

Book publishers know how to game the New York Times Bestsellers list.

When you sub to Twitter premium you are really paying for Grok AI advanced features and the expanded Twitter perks are just a bonus. (Twitter was positioned as a subsidiary of X AI company, last I checked.)

When you’re subbing to MS Office 365 you’re really paying for Copilot AI advanced features and the Office 365 is just a bonus.

Disney sold dirt cheap subs to TV streaming service Hot Star in India. These were counted towards to global Disney Plus sub numbers.

TV streaming and game publishing companies don’t reveal actual viewing figures or sales figures. Eg Netflix will count person who saw even 1 min as a viewer. Prob MS Xbox Game Pass does the same. They’ll boast about “numbers of players” (or some other horseshit metrics like no or matches played, no of enemies killed), not actual game sales. Ppl playing on Game Pass are counted towards the figure.

Yeah sure. Happens in all sorts of fields. Statistics are always prone to manipulation through shifting golaposts and context and this is true in any industry or field from sales to warfare to politics to sport. None of this has anything in common with “payola” though, which is actually something completely different and not at all what most k-pop fans think it is.

“The older the fiddler, the sweeter the tune.”
Pope Paul VI
Head of the Roman Catholic Church 1963–1978

This is a fallacy, right?
Eg “wisdom comes with age”. the amount of retarded elderly politicians who don’t know WTF they’re talking about regarding Internet and technology, eg when they try to ban encryption and VPNs.

Both things are a generalisation. There are some incredibly tech-savvy old people out there, I know people older than me who have coding knowledge that terrifies me. There are also lots of old people “left behind” by tech, because old brains not accustomed to the pace of change find it harder to learn new things, especially if they didn’t gradually introduce themselves to tech back when it first came in and are now playing catch-up. A lot of young people are really smart, and way smarter than today’s older people in power. A lot of young people are also REALLY fucking dumb, look how young men are being hoodwinked into supporting extreme right-wing political parties at the moment, parties that our parents (for whom overt fascism in the west is a less distant memory) would never have been fooled by. In general I’d suggest completely avoid paying attention to any generalisations about anything. Whether it’s true or false isn’t important, what’s more important is that you live your best life and make sure that decisions that affect yourself and those around you are well-informed and free of confirmation bias.

I don’t care much about Blackpink, but is it the first major group that dropped all pretenses K-Pop normally makes about music upon hitting it big and went straight into modeling? It is what people actually care about, how the idols look rather than the music. Do you think we’d see more groups like them, or is Blackpink unique in just how big they got so rapidly?

Blackpink were designed from the ground up to be “influencers” which was smart marketing on YG’s part, they realised what other big labels have also realised, that the music isn’t the product and what you’re really selling is the people, so that’s what they invested in and it paid off. I wouldn’t say the role of music vs image in Blackpink is drastically different to any other big k-pop group from the 2000s onward, just that they were better than others in leveraging image and social media to make the most of the formula.

How the fuck are you still here? This may be my ADHD talking, but I can’t imagine maintaining interest and effort in a niche pop genre for 14 goddamn years of content creation. Maybe that’s while I’ll never amount to anything. Food for thought. Anyway, the question stands: how the fuck are you still here?

I just take it one day, one week at a time. I think to myself “what would be cool to do, that’s in the scope of what I’m capable of/interested in” and then I go and do that. And then I do it again. Week after week. Eventually I look back and holy fuck I’ve been doing this for nearly a decade and a half. I don’t think about the big picture much though. It’s more important to just do what’s directly in front of me, at that moment.

Part of the reason why I’ve diversified my content into things like writing computer games, writing books, doing interviews I never thought I’d do, doing some videos recently etc is to keep things interesting for myself. Everything gets boring eventually, but if you have a lot of strings to your bow you can skip between them when one gets old. Who knows what will happen next?

What is your opinion / your or others’ lived experience of 50 / 50 relationships or marriages? Some women think it is fair if finances, but also housework, childcare, mental exertion etc are handled equally. Some say it just shows that the partner is a stingy ungenerous man who merely wants a convenient roommate or housesharing type arrangement. Some women say that if guys in general are into you, really care about you and have a large heart for you they’ll never make you feel like you have to go 50 – 50 and that it’s a major red flag. And that one should never settle for a 50 – 50 guy, that it’s better to be single in that case. Thoughts?

I do think relationships should be fair for both parties or one feels unduly exploited and will become resentful over time, but I don’t like “50/50” as a description either because it’s deceptive, it implies everything is divided exactly down the middle, whereas I think the best scenario is a bit more nuanced than that. When I moved in together with my partner (about a decade ago), we just had open and honest discussions about things we liked and hated the most, and we divided things in that manner in just a common sense way. In a healthy relationship you don’t go 50/50, instead you work out what’s your best case scenario and what the other person’s best case scenario is, and you look for a way to work it that suits both parties the best. That may mean at times you adopt traditional gender roles. Or perhaps it doesn’t and it works the non-traditional way better sometimes. Sometimes it may be unbalanced, but if it is and you care about the other person then you work out how to rebalance it. But don’t worry about that “society” shit, that’s just other people’s baggage – if you love your partner and also have self-respect you try to do what works best for you both, regardless of outside factors or what your friends/family some Internet rando thinks (including randos like me, btw).

I’ve been wondering for a while, but how did BTS succeed? Their dance routines are nothing special, and while song quality doesn’t matter, they’re nothing special there too. How did BTS come out on top among a sea of other proficient dancer but otherwise mediocre boy groups from no-name companies?

This question was put to AustralianSana (who was an actual OG BTS fan) in one of our podcasts and I think she nailed it (can’t find which one now but a caonmia who remembers feel free to comment below). But the short answer is – marketing that acknowledges the parasocial.

Hi Kpopalypse,

I want to ask about the production in this song

I heard this song few times and can’t shake the feeling that her singing style is too “breathy” I can’t hear the lyrics properly. Mixing (?)-wise, I find the instrumentals sounds too loud. My question, do you think the production here is fit to the singing style/voice, or do you think the song will be more listenable if we do something in the production?

Thank you!

Boring ass song for sure but nothing wrong with it from a production standpoint. It’s supposed to be a smooth kind of vibe so the vocals are sung that way to match. One of the true downsides of k-pop (and rap and R&B as well) is it makes listeners used to VERY “forward” vocals that are right up front and in your face but a lot of other styles aren’t really like that at all. Check out this great performance where the vocals, when they appear, are barely more than a whisper:

Here’s another group where the guitars are like a shadow under the drums, and the vocals another shadow under the guitar:

I generally like it when vocals take a back seat. There’s far too much focus on them in modern music.

Based on an ask from the last April QRIMOLE edition (?), can you explain more on the “If a guy believes that thinking of someone sexually is equivalent to “disrepect”, and that “true love” is somehow an opposite of sexuality, that is like the biggest red flag I can possibly imagine though, that’s literally training yourself to be a rapist.” thing. My stupid brain can only think of “so to disrespect a girl because she happened to upset him, he would… force himself onto her?”, but such thing felt… absurd, but then people are different so maybe such thinking did in fact may exist?

Sexuality is a normal part of a loving relationship. So if someone is separating the sexuality and the love, and treating them as completely different opposite things, that’s actually kind of psychotic. Religion sadly fuels a lot of that psychosis by equating sex with shame and calling pleasure sinful. Religion really is the number one thing that fucks up people’s attitudes to sexuality, nothing else comes close.

first of all why did i have ‘great sounds no song though’ in my head while listening to this does every caonima eventually get kpopalypse brain or what? second of all i was going to complain about the disclaimer at the end for being cowardly but then i found out that she did and is still getting shit for calling the song kgb because she’s ‘making light of the soviet union’ when the song clearly is drawing an uncomfortable parallels between how the kgb and pop starlet machine makes the people who want to be in it. so now the question is why do people consider any form of pop music that tackles any subject automatically making light of it or being frivolous about it just because it’s a pop song.

Because people are stupid. The film “Life Is Beautiful” got criticism for “making light” of the Holocaust, because it’s a comedy, but the truth is that adopting a lighter approach allows you to deal with heavier scenes. I put humour deliberately into the most intense scenes in my books for the same reason, I’m not “making light” of the events, I’m trying to sprinkle some light in so you can cope with the darkness. People are getting worse at reading subtext and dramatic intent these days… or maybe they’re not getting worse overall but those who are have a louder voice now, so these things get misconstrued easily. I’m sure the cancel culture will come for Girls909 at some point, read it while you can I guess!

this {a bunch of scientists in America dying suspiciously} reminds me of the stories of ppl who would invent alternative energy sources (i.e. not fossil fuels based) and meet mysterious accidents. your thoughts? just coincidences?

I wouldn’t know. I don’t like conspiracy bullshit because it leads to nonsense like Pizzagate which sounds more stupid the more you read about it but is actually shit that tons of dumb fucks around the world still believe. Back when I was young conspiracy theories were fun but these days they are not, it’s a toxic pipeline. It’s such a shame too because when stuff that really IS conspirational and messed up happens, it now gets written off, thrown into the same bucket as Alex Jones’ lizardmen and fake moon landings. Who knows, maybe there is something to it. Or maybe being a scientist is just really that fucking depressing, which would actually make sense in today’s age where people think it’s “enlightening” or “funny” or “cool” to deny science.

Hello Cunt

FIrst timer here for qrimole, and since in two qrimoles the fact that there are male idols that could very well be gay was mentioned I decided to share some information as well on that topic (and yes there will be a question at the end of this I promise)

So, a little background on how I came to know these things. Dor over ten years now I’ve been in contact with two people who work in the Kpop industry. I initially became internet friends with them because I met them playing games and we played well together so we stayed in contact and would play together from time to time (we had lag problems ofc but nothing to bad). I found out about their job over time and talked shop with them occasionally (and yes one of them confirmed to me with proof that he is who he says he is and he is really in that profession with actual proof, and as far as I’m concerned, I have no reason to doubt him). To be frank much of what they told me was already public knowledge (and they we mostly talked about what a manager’s job is) but i did find out some things that aren’t known or talked about much in the Kpop sphere.

On a little side note since you occasionally mention outside forces, I once told one of them about your blog, and joked about doing a Kpopalypse interview. Now why I am mentioning this, because apparently agencies are doing market research, in fact they put quite a lot of money into it and have been for some time. Companies either have inhouse teams for this or they outsource it but have been doing it for over 10 years now (think Hybe papers but professional, if that even is the correct term to use here, and yes these are openly available to agency employes, for the most part). Now initially they did this to see where they can expand Kpop to, checking if there is big enough interest to warrant the investment, and later to see who they can engage with for promotional purposes, you know who will give them that nice sanitized, scripted interview or fluff piece. So, when I was joking about doing a kpopalypse he pulled up a list of foreign blogs and sites and checked whether your blog is on it. Now i thought there is no way that is possible, but apparently, I was wrong.
You were on it, hell even AKF’s blog was on it (as of 5 years ago) and they clearly did not want to be associated with you guys in any way.

Now about male idols, I was very much of the same opinion that yes, this profession attracts gay men, but so are the agencies because they do screen for this when selecting trainees, JYP and SM I know for a fact do. Now granted they do this quietly because while SKorea isn’t LGBT friendly to put it mildly, there are anti-discrimination laws in place even there, if for nothing else optics reasons, and if it got out that say Kpop agencies are rejecting trainees because of their sexuality, well it would be bad optics. Now mind you how they do this (they have people paying attention to “certain behaviors”) and how effective it is, is another story (not very effective in my opinion) but as far as their concerned, having a gay member in a boy group is too much of a liability because as it turns out the target demo for boy groups, teenage girls see a gay guy as a massive turnoff. And yes, we are talking about those very same teenage girls that make very explicit gay fanfics about members, ship them and get all giddy when they kiss each other on stage, but heaven forbid they find out oppa is actually into other guys.

As for my question, one thing i wanted to get your take on is the following, from what i know Kpop is still a niche in Korea, and very much so in the west. Yes, some songs break out of this niche and achieve widespread popularity, but other than that I don’t see it growing into this global phenomenon that the industry wants to make it into. (I know why they want to, mostly because they want to keep their share prices high to not annoy the national pension fund, but that’s a different discussion). So, the question is even with trying to appeal to western markets, especially with all the songs fully or mostly in English, even if they succeed in conquering the western market won’t they industry just end up making more western pop with a Korean veneer, and loose it’s entire unique identity, that set it apart from the western pop it tried to emulate? I guess what I’m asking Will it still be Kpop at that point? Because I got into Kpop BECAUSE it was different then the western slop, and honestly these days I find it hard like it because everything is in English and frankly getting more and more boring.

Sorry for the long text, and any errors regarding expressing myself (English is not my first language), if you’ve been asked this question many times before I am sorry to annoy you with it again and if you don’t wish to answer it that’s fine too, hope the other things I mentioned you found amusing/informative.

I know that the publicity machine tracks me because people employed by it (generally outsourced employees working as publicists etc) reach out to me sometimes. I get on their mailing lists for intereviews and things like that, I sometimes reply with “sure – if you dare” for some fun and then I have an honest conversation with them about what it is that I do and we usually have a good laugh about it and both acknowledge that there’s no way their gutless employers will ever go for it. The people doing this work are good people just doing their job, they generally know what’s up, and some of them would like to see more interviews done in the way that I do them… but yeah. Ain’t gonna happen. Only the bravest apply.

LGBT idols, there are plenty of them and yes some bigger companies don’t want it made public because it interferes with the parasocial relationship and blah blah so it’s logical that they try to vet at the source to save the bother. A lot still get through. Sexuality is pretty easy to hide in an environment where you’re often not allowed to be publicly sexual anyway.

There’s always arguments that k-pop is losing its Korean identity and perhaps that’s true for the very top artists, but to even get to that AAA-tier level in the first place most groups need to pander to what the Korean audience wants on the way up. Western songwriters have been writing for the Korean audience for decades and they actually write slightly differently.

You can hear these producers talking about writing for k-pop, where they were given very specific instructions and specifically asked to focus more on melody than what they normally would for a western song, that’s a very Korean music trait. So while Korean pop sensibilities are arguably being diluted by the west, the opposite is also true… western production teams are being influenced by Korean tastes.

curious to hear your thoughts on itzy’s “8-bit heart”

So am I. Maybe I’ll do an Itzy album review one day.

did you know this? that 4/20 is the anniversary of Columbine shooting + Hitler’s birthday.

i thought it was just a weed smoking day.

Me too. Racists make it all about them and ruin everything, as usual. Maybe if Hitler smoked more cones maybe he would have produced better art and wouldn’t have felt the need to change careers into dictatorship-wrangling.

What do you think about album intros? Sometimes, they’re incorporated into the main song’s MV. The Chaser has it before the song, while Rough has it after the song. Do you think this should be a more common choice?

Often the album intros are excellent and really should just be full-length songs in their own right. However that line is starting to blur a little with songs becoming shorter recently. It always depresses me when an album has a banger of a one-minute intro that’s way heavier, harder and cooler than any of the album’s actual songs.

Everyone yaks on about the state of the middle class and how the hollowing out of the benefits of the middle class to further enrich the 1% is part of the reason why everything is all shit and wrong in the world. They’re all taking about economy probably but I wonder if it applies to less important things like kpop groups. As one of the premier big tent kpop experts in the world probably have you noticed anything different about the so called mid tier of kpop groups and their success rate/shelf life today as opposed to five or ten years ago?

It certainly does apply. There really is no “middle class” of k-pop groups. You are either the 0.01% who are raking it in hugely, or you are the other 99.99% not earning enough to even live. There’s pretty much nobody in the middle ground, earning just a comfortable regular modest low-stress income. This isn’t just k-pop either, this is actually an issue music industry wide, and it’s a common predicament for any “glamour industry” where supply of people wanting to work in the industry far exceeds demand.

why they have multiple guitarist but only one bassist?

Two guitar players and one bass player is a very common configuration for rock groups. It exists because if you have only one guitarist, when that guitarist does a guitar solo, you lose your rhythm guitar track at that time because the guitarrist usually can’t do the rhythm and the lead at once, so a second guitarist to hold down the rhythms while the first one solos is helpful. It also opens up other options such as twin-harmony guitar leads where guitarists harmonise like vocalists (seen here at 0:11) trading call-and-response phrases (0:17) and having two different flavours of rhythm at once. Whereas one bass player is more common than two because bass players tend to solo less and also having multiple instruments in the very low register can just sound muddy and indistinct.

i see they don’t have touring musician contractors. what might they do if they want to play a song where they want to play a song that uses guitar, bass and keyboard? rely on samples?

here’s another song from the same set where they’re performing a ballad. one girl is playing the keyboard, the other is only doing vocals.

Groups like this just use backing tracks for whatever they can’t play themselves live. Tiny groups like this are not in a position to afford contractors. You can hear quite clearly in the video that the vocals are double-tracked – she’s singing live over the top of her own voice on the recording, which is the same recording that’s providing the drums etc. It’s probably just all being played back from the keyboard workstation.

hullo, since you’re an australia could you plz give the context for this clip? thx. {clip where an Acknowledgement of Country for ANZAC Day was met with booing}

The Australian Acknowledgement of Country is where Australians do a speech or write a statement to acknowledge the existence of the country and people that existed here before whitey rocked up on boats and started killing people. (This is different to a “Welcome to Country” which is actually more of a full-blown ceremony, but media outlets, especially conservative ones, often confuse the two when talking about this.) Usually these speeches are quite short, but some, like the one you’ve linked, are longer and have more context. The Acknowledgement of Country has gradually become more and more prevalent over the years in the government and corporate world, at sporting and other public events. There are a lot of varied opinions on when, where and how it should be done, if it’s good, bad or whatever else. I recommend reading this Reddit thread, especially the responses by indigenous Australians, to understand the wide diversity of views on it, although as a few people in the thread state, if someone is getting really very upset about it like those yelling at the ANZAC ceremony are, they’re probably just racist.

Nu’est is famous for Face and then never reaching those heights again. What are other examples of groups that peaked with their debut and completely failed to make anything remotely as good for the rest of their careers?
Of course, Loona gets a special mention for having peaked before their debut, which is probably unique.

N.Flying, Year 7 Class 1, CSR and AtHeart are all groups that spring to mind as ones who haven’t been able to top their first ever song.

Do you think IVE can topple T-ara as your favorite Kpop group of all time?

Anything is possible.

how would one go about rearranging a song intended for one singer to be one for multiple singers?

Depends on the song, and who the singers are (their vocal ranges and so forth). Too many factors to consider to give a blanket answer to this question.

Hello! I was that guy asking about BINI a few years ago. As of this April, they have now performed at Coachella and are considered the breakout stars of the festival, with their most viewed song being the closer, Pantropiko

My question now is less about their set and stuff (but thoughts are still welcome), but once again about impact. It’s surprising how much BINI’s Coachella performance is bringing attention to Southeast Asian music as a whole, not just music from Filipinos. I’m curious about your thoughts on this overall diversification of music tastes and how easy access to music makes it easier to get into different countries’ music scenes compared to others.

The only thoughts I have about BINI specifically are A. I don’t like their music and B. generally speaking I find SEA people more attractive than EA people.

Generally – one of the reasons why Metallica’s “shut down Napster” crusade was the wrong move is that file-sharing allowed a lot of people around the world to access Metallica’s music for the first time who were prevented from doing so before via normal channels due to either poverty or just lack of distribution. (This is something Lars eventually realised.) Eventually it works the other way too, those people start groups and use the same networks in the other direction so you get to hear it. Despite many flaws the Internet is definitely a net positive for music fans, it sucked back in the days before it when you’d hear about something but had no way to access it.

I’m not sure if I just live in a bubble far away from the BTS phenomenon, but I really don’t understand all the charting that is happening with their album. It seems like they are hitting records in terms of popularity but I don’t actually see them part of cultural discourse. It feels so uncanny in a way. Something very odd about their whole existence. Blackpink which is a comparable contemporary group in terms of popularity, reach and audience, I see quite a bit in the zietgiest. And I’m not even seeking them out. I don’t doubt that BTS has a lot of fans…. But why does it feel so odd? If they are hitting so many records, how are their songs not omnipresent like APT or Gangnam Style etc? It doesn’t feel like they’re trying to be mysterious, it just reads as odd.

It’s because the numbers are being pumped by fan campaigning. It’s non-organic charting. BTS don’t have a hit like “Dynamite” on their new album, at this point they only mean something inside their fan bubble. But that bubble is quite large and quite active, so they can break records easily just with a bit of coordinated activity. What you are witnessing is the death of traditional music industry metrics as a sign of popularity among the general population, as these metrics are now so easily “gamed” by fan campaigns. That’s why we’re also starting to see things like the music industry weighting streaming less in chart positions.

She seem mad about it to you? {some girl talking about Christians not being Christian enough or whatever, giving an analogy of a “dancer who doesn’t dance, but follows dancing”} There’s other Christians in the comments educating her over her broken analogy.

Religious people, across the board, need to be less extremist and less bug-up-the-ass, not more. If people regardless of religion could just love their god and chill the fuck out everything would be fine, but in the quest to be “more devout than the next person” and “prove their loyalty” people always take it to bullshit extremes, and that’s why you have religious wackos trying to destroy everything. A lot of these people seriously believe that they need to fuck up the world in order for God to then come down and save everything, that’s what’s in their books, so they over-perform and do way too much because they think that somehow makes them a better person instead of a worse person. It’s like the k-pop fan who buys every single photobook and streams their faves 24/7 and shits on anyone who doesn’t and cyberbullies people who don’t like their faves, just to prove they’re a true fan, when what they’re really doing is turning everyone else off their favourite artist. Encouraging extremism = bad, whatever the stripe. This woman is an idiot.

Your thoughts?

This news is very interesting. {Uspeer leaving WM only to join MW, a new company run by the same CEO}. Sounds like what might’ve happened to NewJeans in a parallel universe.

RBW seems like a pretty lazy ass but diplomatic company. I get the impression that they’re happy to let you rot in the dungeon but if one wants do your own with your own money, they’re happy to cut you a deal, likely skimming off the top. See hard they parted pretty amicably with this boy group. {Artice about OneUs leaving RBW}

Probably a case of the CEO wanting to cut loose certain elements of his old company but keep everything else. He probably did it this way because he might’ve been prevented legally from doing it more forcefully, or perhaps he’s just trying not to ruffle feathers. Many years ago I had a group that I was in rebrand themselves and perform under a new name with all the members except me because the group leader was too gutless to tell me to my face that he didn’t want me in the group! He could have just said he wanted me out directly, I would have respected him more for that.

do you have bias against expressive, enthusiastic people or just expressive, enthusiastic people WITH american accents? i understand finding ppl like this annoying, but maybe that’s just how they are + ppl can’t control the circumstances of where they were born. you shouldn’t immediately just shut off the video.

People can’t control where they were born but they certainly can control how they behave in a YouTube video. I certainly can also control whether I watch that video or not. People have the right to make the content that they want. You and I also have the right to consume it, or not, for whatever reason. Having said all that, I have no idea what video you’re referring to specifically as you haven’t stated this, and I don’t ever recall switching off a video purely because someone was “expressive” or “enthusiastic”. I’ve probably switched off a lot of videos because I felt like someone was faking expressiveness or enthusiasm for the camera in very cheesy, over-the-top, annoying ways, but that’s not the same thing. Country of origin has nothing to do with it, “fake and annoying” sounds different depending on country but is still “fake and annoying” in any accent. Maybe North American accents are more annoying than others on average due to overexposure in media but there’s also quite a lot of content creators that I like who have these accents, so it’s certainly not as simple as country of origin.

Hi, I know you probably don’t care nearly as much about this as I do

Probably correct, but go on

and that I should just ignore this for inner peace.

Also correct, but I know you’re going to tell me all about this nonsense anyway so go your hardest I guess LOL

but I really desperately need an opinion about this outside of the cesspool that LOONA fan spaces are especially from someone honest.

When Heejin + OEC left BBC and joined Modhaus there was absolute outrage on Twitter because jaden jeong bad and he makes nft photocards or whatever and immediately a side of the fandom that views Jaden and Modhaus more favorably comes to the defense of ARTMS, Jaden, and the NFT photocards. The majority of the fandom ultimately view Jaden negatively and so continue to spread the “bad things” he’s done, and the pro_Jaden minority continues to fight with them. This discourse which was already present in Orbit spaces before comes into full force with ARTMS signing to Modhaus and has continued to come back multiple times a month for the past 3 years or so as ARTMS continue their careers under Modhaus. Nowadays, the most prominent complaints are because of their comeback schedule (there was a year in between DALL and Club Icarus and this is likely the case with their next comeback too) and the frequent touring — they have been on four tours since 2023 and a fifth one is on the way this year. Additionally there are complaints that ARTMS aren’t “promoted properly”, that their music has no mass appeal, and especially in regards to the NFT photocards called objekts. They release these objekts pretty frequently and recently the blockchain for them has switched to Abstract which apparently has connections to Peter Thiel through investors and Orbits went on an outrage and said that their group now had Epstein connections. Throughout all of this, the fans insinuate that the girls are in a situation similar to when they were at BBC–company mismanagement, being trapped and having no blame for the misdoings of the company, etc. On the other hand the other pro-Jaden side constantly argues that their situation isn’t as bad/isn’t bad at all as Orbits make it seem and that the girls are aware of where they are and who they’re working with, citing the choice the girls made to return to Modhaus and the fact that they renewed their contracts before they even expired (?) in early 2025. The only consensus seems to be that they should release music more frequently and even then Orbits complain about this so frequently that the pro-Jaden crowd still fights with them over this. While I find both sides extremely annoying and extremely stupid given that they have been engaging in this never-ending fight for literally 3 years (even more if you include the fighting over Jaden leaving/getting fired from BBC) and there seems to be no end to it, I generally find myself more aligned with the pro-Jaden crowd. I’m not a big fan of the constant touring and NFTs but it seems like the girls know what they are doing and are OK with it. The girls were aware that they were coming back to management under Jaden and the NFT photocard thing had been established long before they joined so they were either aware of it or just ignored it which in that case it’s their fault for not looking but whatever. After multiple years of being abused under BBC they had the freedom to pick where they went and they went with Jaden. Orbits are constantly pushing for a boycott or trending tags or whatever but I don’t think Jaden or the girls will budge at all. The last time they cared about anything orbits had to say was in early 2024 when there was that whole controversy over the AI teasers which Modhaus apologized for. They just keep on complaining and engaging in discourse and making social media spaces related to Loona more obnoxious than they already are and it’s really exhausting to me. I think they should just let go if they disagree with this so much and I think it’s really weird for them to insinuate that the girls are being abused the same way they were under BBC or whatever.

Thoughts on the situation? Sorry for torturing you with raw sewage from the depths of Orbit twitter and tiktok.

It’s very difficult to make a k-pop group succeed, that’s why it happpens so rarely and why so few groups are at the top of the tree. So agencies and artists both scramble to try and make things happen. There’s a chance that doing things like other agencies do will work well, but if those other agencies are already doing bigger, more high-budget version of those things, how will you even get noticed? On the other hand you could try switching things up and attacking the market differently to try and carve out a niche, but that also carries a risk of it being ignored or being not what fans want. Of course fans always think they have all the answers but if you put any one of them in ARTMS or Jaden’s shoes I honestly doubt their ability to manage it any better. The truth is that it’s probably never going to really pop off for ARTMS at this point, and that’s the sad reality of the vast majority of groups. K-pop is a system that is always geared toward looking for the new, fresh (i.e younger) thing and a group that didn’t do big numbers back in their early days is probably not going to suddenly make a huge impact later. Yes Loona do have a strong fanbase but it’s a fragmented fanbase now and many fans have moved on, meanwhile not too many new fans are coming in because of the aforementioned push towards always debuting new young groups. Similar situation to Viviz actually – good group, some good songs, definitely a strong niche following but realistically not going to ever really get to that A-list level at this point. Sometimes a group can luck out with some viralty (see EXID, Crayon Pop) but such things are generally fleeting, not something that can sustain an entire career for a lifetime.

could you please translate this woman’s rambling about Doechii? Thank you.
Pt 1:
Pt 2, longer thread:
whut?:-
“She keeps her head down, is a willing canvas for americas hegemonic white gay male lgbtq vanguard, – which allows them to feel like theyre still in control of black womens culture.”

No, I won’t do it. How many times do I have to tell you folks: Azaelia Banks just says stuff to say stuff. She’s not much different to Donald Trump or Elon Musk in that regard. Just ignore the stuff she talks about and move on, there is no deeper meaning worth deconstructing.

photos i took at a show. for some songs the lady had a clamp thing on her guitar’s neck, for other songs she didn’t. why do you think this is?

The clamp thing is called a capo. (Kept for storage at the head of the guitar in the first picture, used on the third fret of the guitar in the second picture.) Explained here:

Singers who also play guitar but aren’t very advanced guitarists tend to use capos a lot because they can use one to easily change the key of their instrument to suit their voice without having to learn new guitar chords. Someone who is more of a guitar specialist wouldn’t use them that often because a more technical guitarist will often try to find other ways of doing things – sacrificing a certain amount of frets in exchange for a key transposition does restrict your options, which is the less-good option for more technical guitarists who can get that same result by more easily learning new shapes.

I am begging someone, anyone, even you, kpopalypse oppa (kpoppalypse?) to go to South Korea and *help* Park Bom. I recognize she’s gotten a raw deal in many ways, but her obsession with Minho is stalker level at this point. And all I’ve been seeing are people saying “lol oh that Park Bom, she’s at it again, bless her heart!” I also recognize that you can’t force someone to get help, and conservatorships are typically horrific, but watching her self-destruct over and over again is just sad

She’s no more obsessed than half of my readers hahaha

I’d go to South Korea and try to assist but from what I’m told about how the labels  think about me over there I’d be likely ushered into a waiting black van as soon as I stepped out of the airport.

Why is Roly Poly so good?

Answered here.

do you think this a branding mistake? chance of alienating her fanbase?

thai-british actress releases a MV featuring a male love interest character. the trouble is, she’s famous for appearing in lesbian dramas.

No idea. Don’t really care. Aren’t we all supposed to be open-minded and accepting and shit in the year of our lord 2026? People will cope.

is IU – Love Wins All a rip off of Christina Perri – A Thousand Years?

They’re similar to some extent. K-pop generally speaking, does not innovate. They look to what works in other markets and try to do really good versions of that.

does Illit – Not Me sample The Ting Tings – That’s Not My Name?

I hope not becase The Tings Tings are fucking shit but I’m not going to subject myself to their music in order to check. There are limits to which I am willing to debase myself to answer questions.

1. Which of these do you like the best and why? Korean trot, Japanese enka, American jazz.
2. Please rate them from best to worst.

Trot, Jazz, Enka. Enka is what I call true “restaurant-core”. Terrible stuff. Jazz sucks too but occasionally something can be good. Trot is also usually shit but there’s at least some commitment to making things go at over double-digit BPM, that sets it apart from the Japanese stuff, and it doesn’t have the tech-wankery of jazz.

how do guitar shapes affect the sound of the guitar? it makes sense that it would affect the sound of ones with cavities, but i don’t see what impact it would have on solid-body guitars. if not, then why might someone want to pick one guitar over another, just the general feel of it?

Your suspicions are correct. Solid body electric instruments are not affected by body shape whatsoever. Acoustic guitars are affected, but the difference in sound between shapes isn’t that drastic.

I tell my guitar students, when shopping for a guitar, shop for these things:

1. Comfort. Sit with it and see if you like the way it feels. It has to feel nice or you won’t enjoy playing it so you’ll never learn.

2. Looks. Because a guitar is not just an instrument but also a fashion item and you literally “wear” it onstage, you want to step out in something you’re proud to be holding rather than something fuckin’ ugly that you don’t want your friends seeing you holding.

This logic can apply to most kpop female artist controversies too, right?

Probably most things in life! Bucket Crab syndrome is just a mode of human existence. I wouldn’t even say it’s female-specific, just that women, being more socially advanced creatures, are generally better at deploying it. Men are mostly too dumb to deceive and backstab each other effectively.

Just how popular was Jessica when she got kicked out of SNSD? I know the whole problem the rest of the group had with her was her privileges, which must have been because she was bulletproof due to her popularity. Speaking of which, what other examples of privileges due to popularity do we know of?

She was fucking huge, truly the untouchable “it girl” of her day. It was a seismic shock back when she was kicked out of SNSD, a huge PR mistake that the group never recovered from.

BOOK QUESTIONS (SOME SPOILERS)

What is the difference between your new book and your previous series, is it just “the fucked up world of big survival shows” instead of “the fucked up world of nugu companies”

Quite a few differences, but from a plot standpoint, the Shin Hana books don’t cover any sort of training knockout/elimination process nor do they cover fame to any great degree because we’re dealing with a C/D tier agency in those books. I really wanted to write the new book to talk about going through a publicly visible A-list competitive Korean idol process, and a high-fame environment, and discuss the sort of effects that can have. It’s very much a book about the unhealthy idealisation of fame and the potential that an unhealthy/unrealistic perception of fame has to twist people’s perceptions and behaviours. In the book, fame twists the behaviours and expectations of both those experiencing the fame, and others viewing it from the outside. The book is very much all about that.

Hi Kpopalypse! I’ve been reading your site for a few years now and just recently binge-read all of your books. I really enjoyed the Shin Hana series and Girls909 and I have a few book-related questions.

1. For the Shin Hana books, who were the easiest and most difficult characters to write? I feel like each member has such a distinct personality and voice (even if you are just seeing them from Hana’s perspective), and I was wondering who came most naturally to write and vice versa.

2. This is less of a question but I found Gyeongja’s character in the Shin Hana books really fascinating. She is such a strange person and puts on a very childish / bizzare face in front of people, but clearly she’s been through a lot. Would you ever want to revisit and further explore her character in a future book, or is her story complete?

3. When writing about Girls909 before it came out , you redacted a plot element that was a huge spoiler but said “we’ll know it when it happens.” Maybe I’m just an idiot, but what was the specific extreme in the book you were referencing? There was definitely a lot of explicit violence in Girls909, in a different way than the Shin Hana books. But what was the specific plot element / spoiler you talked about in the last QriMole?

Sorry if these questions are dumb oppar. This is my first time doing anything like this. Also I like your cat, very cute cat

Questions are good! Thank you for asking them!

1. Youngsook was the easiest because out of all the characters in all the books, she’s the closest to a self-insert. Probably the hardest was Shu. A very complex character, getting the right balance to make her feel realistic was tough and some scenes had quite a few editing passes before I settled on the right tone.

2. All the major supporting characters in all the books I write have a basic “story” that goes along with them. Sometimes parts of this are revealed to the reader, but a lot of the time it’s not necessary and it’s often more powerful just to imply those elements rather than put them directly on the page, or just have them in the background, informing events and decision-making. All characters that survive the stories have a non-zero chance of appearing in future books, although whether they will be the main characters in those future books – probably not. Who knows though, it just depends what I think will work best for the story I’m trying to tell.

3. I was referring specifically to how the main LGBT part of the story plays out.

What was your process/motivations in depicting victims of various kinds of abuse, with (Shin Hana books) and without (GP999…mostly) revenge? Do you relate your work to the “very gruesome women-centric revenge film directed by men” genre at all?

While I’m familiar with films such as “I Spit On Your Grave” etc, it never even occured to me to emulate those scenes or the themes/plot outlines in films like that. There are various reasons for the darker content in my books, but probably the main one is that various types of abuse, exploitation, bad behaviour etc are not unprecedented in the k-pop world. Situations similar to these do exist, but other “k-pop fiction” books that I see certainly don’t address any of that. At most they’ll admit that the training systems are too harsh and companies don’t always do a great job of respecting people’s human rights, and yes that’s worth covering too (and I do cover it as well, quite in-depth in the Shin Hana series) but the really dark stuff, nobody else is touching. On the other hand writers that do write about abuse and other very horrific stuff (and there are plenty of those, far more than thre are k-pop authors) don’t tend to cover the Korean music scene. So it’s a niche that I think is ripe for exploring and nobody else is really going there so I might as well. Girls909 is essentially a psychological horror book, and the world of k-pop feels to me like the perfect setting for that! The closest precedent I can think of is the film “White: Melody Of Death” but that’s more of a supernatural type horror, whereas the horror of Girls909 is less “supernatural” and more just “natural” hahaha

As a queer ace person who grew up in a sexually conservative place, I found the treatment the Girls909 (me completely butchering the title in another ask….apologies) characters gave to virginity so bizarre. Is the pedestal given to vaginal sex, as the only thing really considered sex, a religious thing? A broader straight people thing?
With conservatives, is it an internal cope where “this kind of sexual pleasure isn’t vaginal penetrative sex, so no big rules are being broken”, or is it a genuine robust rule, if just unspoken? Like I can’t imagine some parents gasping that their daughter is having sex and sighing in relief that it’s just oral or something, with how (incestuously…) purity culture is.

Eunice’s “arguing around the edges” of traditional Christian rules regarding sex is something that I’ve seen Christians do in real life very often. “It’s okay if it’s oral”, “it’s okay if it’s just touching”, and so on. They’re not codified rules, and that is what creates the gray area that allows Christians to still experience sexual activity. The Bible is quite vague about a lot of sexual matters and doesn’t specify anything about a broad range of sexual activites, so Christians do what most people do when they’re confronted with annoying rules that are also conveniently vague – they interpret them in the way that benefits them the most personally.

Well gosh and golly gee was that book ever upsetting.
If I hadn’t had Easter (chocolate+the eternal love and sacrifice of our lord and saviour) I might still be upset.
What is it with you and lesbians? Will you ever write about boys? Also is organised crime really that prominent? What the H did Shian say to the teacher? I’ve never been in crime but I have been a teacher and idk how the heck you’d handle a gangster strolling in (I’ve only ever attended schools with a gang problem as a student and people who weren’t enrolled still got sent out, mostly. I think. I really wasn’t involved.).
I honestly cheered when Youngsook showed up. I sent the review of Shin Hana that mentioned that they all got nice endings and I realize she wasn’t really mentioned. It was nice to see her come into her own. Also Shu was pretty awesome.
I guess it’s really about who you are when push comes to shove. I know there are situations that can make you act like that. One thing I really like about your writing is the number of stories on the periphery of the main story that get no focus but still aren’t mysterious dead ends. I know exactly what’s up with some of those other girls and you don’t really need to spell it out for me. I’d list specifics but I really don’t want to dive back into the events of that book just yet. It really is deeply unpleasant.
So glad it’s just a story you made up and nothing like that happens to real people.

(Also bless you for the “It’s not sexual so it’s ok” call out specifically.)

I plan to focus on boys more in the next book. There’s a real lack of k-pop books centered around boys so I will rise to the challenge.

Is organised crime prominent in k-pop gosh I would have no idea… move along nothing to see here folks.

Shian’s dialogue to the teacher, I’ll leave that to your imagination. I think the scene is a lot stronger if you don’t know. But it is certainly something that, when she said it, it made the teacher understand exactly the gravity of what she was dealing with.

Youngsook is the only Halcyon girl who doesn’t get a proper “ending” in the Shin Hana books simply because after a while her story moves out of Hana the narrator’s orbit, but it’s certainly implied in those books that she ends up with a clean slate and her options more or less open. So as a bit of an Easter egg for readers who read through the entire Shin Hana series and wondered, I wanted to show her next career move.

also about girls909: The math problem near the beginning has no solution. The quadratic you wind up with has a negative discriminant. Was this on purpose or am I just way to much of a dweeb?

Absolutely 100% on purpose – well picked! A deliberate bit of foreshadowing.

NERDY QUESTIONS

troll game or no? they have a demo available but i don’t have good computer to check.

I downloaded the demo and had a look! It’s basically a walking simulator with Bible-based puzzles. It has an engine similar to Skyrim, where you play as first-person Jesus and go through Bible stories. I didn’t mind it, it was a lot more well done than I expected, but I think you’d learn more about Christianity from reading Girls909.

Your thoughts on his thoughts? [VTubing (streaming with an animated avatar representing you instead of your actual face) is a female occupation for women who don’t cut it looks-wise to be successful livestreamers, whereas no point to men VTubing as nobody is assessing men on attractiveness anyway so they might as well just stream normally and show their ugly-ass faces]

It can also be used as a “lifehack” by “aging out” online models and sex workers to extend their careers.

It’s also an occupation for men with voice-changing software.

I don’t watch any VTubers and I think the whole thing is silly, I guess I just don’t need the fantasy. Massive assumption that sex workers aren’t old though or that sex work has a young age barrier, I’ve met some older sex workers and they clean up. That field of work is sustainable a hell of a lot longer than most people think.

do you think he learnt the wrong lessons? {Metal Gear Solid dev talking about Half Life}

I wouldn’t know, never having played MGS2. But the observations seem valid enough. The Half Life games definitely are very immersive and it’s partly thanks to the little details that he points out.

which version do you prefer? frankly they look barely any different to me.

I like the new one a lot better, I think it’s a good change. Not that I’d actually notice such small face details while playing the game, but just judging the art on its own, yes. Overwatch devs are honestly really very good at character design. Making a game I actually want to play or even give a fuck about, not so much.

I know you won’t play this, but I was wondering what you thought of the concept? It’s a GTA-like game where the combat is entirely melee focused or in a car. There’s car combat where you can total the enemy cars by ramming them. The story has the player doing missions to pay off a debt + accumulating interest. If he falls behind on payments then thugs will show up to beat him up.

It’s made by Swedish. The funny thing is if it’s set in an American city then it’s really weird that nobody has any guns. I’d be interested to find out if there’s an in-game lore reason for there being no guns.

(I remember a recent news piece where the former GTA head writer said that the games never returned to London cuz there’s a lack of guns.)

Are you talking about a hypothetical one, or a real one and forgot to give me the link? I really liked stuff like the original Carmageddon which doesn’t have any guns but does have tons of vehicular violence (and was quite controversial for it back in the day), so I think it could work in theory. Don’t care about lack of realism necessarily in this context, because no car game is realistic – in GTA games you can run red lights, speed as fast as you want and drive on the wrong side of the road and the cops ignore all of it as long as you’re not hitting anyone with your car.

What life lessons can we learn from this clip?

Trust in your local law enforcement, I guess.

Are you able to do this style of play? I don’t think I could these days, maybe when I was in my 20s. I prefer using weapon wheel these days (if games have one), rather keyboard number keys or mouse scroll wheel for changing weapons.

I do know that this style of play would be impossible on gamepad.

Guess it depends on the interface but I wouldn’t bother. I find this type of fast action FPS incredibly boring. I’d sooner play the original Doom from the 1990s than this, and I even find that dull these days. There’s only so many times you can play the same game with a reskin and slight variations in weapon power before shit just gets old.

Your thoughts? {post from (ugh) Pirat_Nation, about game industry downsizing}
Sounds like they’re “right sizing” after the lockdowns boom, where execs stupidly thought that the player numbers would remain at that level, so they over-hired.

Yes prrobably. I’m not gamerpopalypse but it seems logical that now people have resurfaced there’s less appetite for games. Also a lot of modern games from big studios just suck now.

Thoughts on Game?

I don’t really like flight simulators. Back in the day I used to have Sublogic’s “Flight Simulator II” on the Commodore 64, thse high-end graphics blew my mind back in the day – but it was a boring game though. It also took a decade just to load.

Flight simulators haven’t gotten any more interesting to me since.

@0:41
thoughts on game mechanic? when you get caught stealthing, you can bluff your way past a group of guards.
(context: game is from the Hitman developer)

I think that’s a cool idea. I always like it when games give you other options besides violence. It’s often quite anti-immersion in games where you’re a police officer or detective or something and you have to gun down tons of people over and over like it’s no big deal and then you never really have to account for the fact you just slaughtered like 200 dudes. This game looks like a modern take on the ideas in Deus Ex Human Revolution which is one of my favourite games.

your thoughts? oh great, now PS4/5 digital games have DRM that needs to “phone home” if your console hasn’t been online for 30 days.

Gamers will complain about this but how many will stop buying? Gamers are as bad as k-pop stans and social media users, so addicted that the thought of not sucking the teat of the machine is unthinkable. Mind you I don’t think this is as bad as it’s being made out according to this clarification.

Hit game from Korea, Crimson Desert. Your thoughts?

They know what they’re doing.

informative for you?

Not really, I actually knew all of this. I recommend “dark patterns” as a YouTube search that everybody should do, whether interested in gaming or not.

thoughts on game concept?

Seems like something for people with a giantism fetish. That’s probably the next thing I’ll get bombarded with random questions about on livestreams and ask.oppar once the furry questions have run their course and gone the way of the endless sausage questions, despite me having indicated no interest in any of this stuff.

what’s your opinion of gamepad controllers? they’re definitely vastly inferior for skill-based shooters (i.e. inaccurate aiming + slower movement), but they’re superior for things for precision platformers, fighters and driving games (analogue stick is good for platforming and driving).

my disabled friend has difficulty using keyboard and mouse together in efficient manner, so has to play action games with gamepad.

I don’t use controllers ever. Back when I was console gaming in the 1980s the options back then were awful and all had durability or useability problems, I stopped console gaming long before the standard controller that we know of today appeared. I don’t really like them at all when I have used them, I prefer keyboard and mouse for absolutely everything. That said I generally dislike driving, fighting and platforming games, maybe if I played that stuff more I would see a benefit. But personally since I don’t really consider myself much of a “gamer” I wouldn’t spend money on kit that was just for gaming and that had no other purpose. I already have a mouse and keyboard so I’ll just use that rather than buying something separate. Obviously for someone more invested in certain types of games, or who might have accessiblity issues with keys and mouse, it’s a more justifiable option.

1. thoughts on game concept?
2. are they speaking in a kiwi accent?

Seems a bit pointless beyond mere novelty but I am mildly amused by the thought of having a bunch of hentai games as my allies and sending them to fight my Steam friends. Accent sounds Australian, I’m not hearing the usual New Zealand accent artifacts here.

NOT QUESTIONS

Hi, hope your well. ill say this in advance im a shit speller im sorry about the mistakes. the whole nct contract issue going on is kinda sad. like i think mark leaving nct is a major loose or kpop. you dont neeed to like nct to know he was important for the group. i think yuta will leave as well. who actually had a interesting solo work instead of something generic. ten leaving is not surprising. i imagine Wayv will spilt or somehting because of poor treatemnt. i hope ten gets to shine because hes a great dancer even if i dont like all his music.
this whole nct thing makes me think that they were sort of the last group to have a interesting concept at least in my knowledge. i dont think kpop will ever do somehting as good. i mean all kpop wants is bts bad soggy cardboard music.
also thanks for putting on the deeps wrong number is super good and up there for me as songs of the year.
i said this already but hope everything is good and that your doing well. thanks for taking the time to read this.

That’s okay, I also hope you’re doing well.

K-pop is what it is. Whatever it is that hooked you into NCT, someone will try that again if there’s enough money in it. JAV of the month is WAAA-642.

Hey its me the person from the survey who needed dick. I’m sure you’ll be happy to know I got some. He’s been weird for a while and he was lowkey scrolling on his phone while we were in bed together so I think I’m going to cut him off (he’s also chopped). Praying for better dick in the future.

Well I’m glad you got dick even though it was a bit substandard. I will cheer for you as you search for quality penis. There’s lots of quality penis in MKMP-718.

Blackpink Jump + didgeridoo (?)

I don’t mind this cover, the didge fits here quite well. This wasn’t really a question. Australian JAV of the month is MIFD-479.

BEST QUESTION

Hello Master of Cunt! How are you?

I kinda have a confession to make, lol. I secretly enjoy a questionable american drama.

(From this point on, please redact the content of this question so it doesn’t bring you any trouble, ok?)

I redacted your video link, but apart from that – no way, it’s too good a question to leave out!

 

For some reason that I don’t quite understand, the raciality of the offenses, in this specific video, made me really horny. I don’t agree with the political spectre this video emulates and in some ways reinforce, at all. Hell, I’m not even american to begin with. But still, my dick rises shamelessly to this bullshit.

Just so you can understand my point of view, in this drama, I mainly imagine myself being fucked by the guy (more than fucking the multiple girls). The fantasy of being filled by his cum usually makes me hit the spot with an unsettling easiness.

It seems that even the actresses themselves felt that the content in timestamp 5:44 was too demeaning and decided to hold down in the offenses in 6:00, lol. But the script continues and the content resume its verbal abuses.

It must be the fact that I am attracted to anyone who appears in the scene (specially the young black man, he’s perfect, lol), but I know this drama for years and still can cum with it. It simply never fails.

I was never interested in racialplay in my sex life, but still like the aforementioned erotica. Maybe I don’t have to tell it too, but I obviously don’t support any type of racial discrimination against people in real life.

I think I made it clear that it boogles me the fact that I can even get a erection to this revolting content. But, in your opinion:

1. Should I feel ashamed of liking this content?
2. Should I find professional help to understand why this happens?
3. Should I gladly continue in my secret vicarious perversion?
4. Do you think it could be harmful in the future to harbor this type of interests that go so against my moral values?
5. Do you know someone who enjoy controversial sexual fantasy shit that tests moral limits?

Thank you for using your precious time to read and answer this stupid caonima, lol.

No, no, yes, no, yes.

Race-play is fine and actually pretty common. It’s just another category of BDSM and people of all colours like it for similar reasons. As long as all parties are consenting and happy with what’s going down then there’s no issue, and there’s no issue with watching video of it either as long as you’re not letting it bleed into reality in unhealthy ways. Porn is fantasy and the way to deal with it sensibly is to realise that it’s play-acted fantasy designed only to tweak the nerve endings in your brain that get you off, not a moral guiding compass or life instructional video. The stuff at 5:44 where one of the girls self-consciously looks at the camera is probably just bad acting, I don’t think it’s her questioning whether she went too far because frankly she doesn’t go very far at all. For what is basically a femdom video I actually found this content rather tame, I expected the girls to be a lot more abusive toward the guy both physically and verbally, but it just ends up being a fairly vanilla (neapolitan?) foursome, I only kind of skim-watched it but I don’t think they even refer to him as a neighbour even once? Disappointed.

By the way I highly recommend “FetchV” as a Chrome extension. Make sure you set the video quality to 1080p before using. Thank me later.

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That’s all for this episode of QRIMOLE! This series will return next month!

Oh, and do you have a question that you’d like to see answered in the next episode of QRIMOLE? If so, use the question box below, or if no box appears, click the Qri on the sidebar to open the box as a separate webpage! Kpopalypse will return!