Posts by thelightoftruth

Quote from Yama-Chan

Quote from icyruios

Remember how everyone was saying how aespa declined after Girls?

such an underrated song too

We love to see it!

Hope it's as good as 2024 was and hope Aespa has an even bigger year!!

I think they are coming back with another maximalist track so not sure if they will hit the same heights as Supernova or Whiplash but I'm looking forward to it regardless.

Quote from OopsEncoreMoi

"Loving them" is an exaggeration.

They simply receive the hate that every BIG 4 received when they debuted.

And to be fair, Aespa's debut didn't receive as much backlash as Nmixx and Baemon's debuts.

eh wrong... go have a look at chounim's post above yours.

At least with Nmixx and Baemon it was restricted mostly to the group's music and concepts.

Aespa got absolutely personally slandered in addition to what Chounim posted. Karina pre-debut bullying, Winter plastic, Giselle Racist, Ning2 Chinese snake like the Exo C-line minus Lay

Nah do what you want.

Unless it's Aespa you're talking about, then you're in it for life or you're a traitor.

You aren't allowed to leave them for H2H

Quote from bbgc

They may start like how they did with English.

A phrase or two, in the hook or intro.. there have been few cases in the past

They aren't going to ignore a huge market as China, but it will be slow going.

Yeah, still think it may take some time though, due to history. The current political situation may help to bridge some of that relationship though.

I think it would take some time before there was a major shift, if any, towards China.

Lots of groups will head there to promote, but a major shift would need to start from pre-debut with language training and a focus on C-speaking idols.

Outside of versions and special tracks/collabs, can't see C-lyrics going in to songs (at least in the next 5 years).

Groups with existing Chinese members will probably be the first to move, I'm thinking tours obviously, and there may be a few who go on to promote on TV, cameo in movies etc more so depending on where they are in a group's contract lifetime.

Groups that I immediately see making some move to promote there are Gidle, Aespa, Seventeen, some NCT variant, not sure who else has Chinese idols.

Personally I hope groups don't go down the path of J-releases by releasing separate Japan-ified singles because they often don't follow the usual concept of the group.

Just release their normal stuff that fits within their group concepts and then either do a C-version or just have some sections done in Chinese in their performances or concerts.

I do think we will see more C-idols again, but there aren't many who are well loved in Korea unfortunately.

Army/Once and Army/Fearnot

Blink/Midzy

Mys/Tokkis

After reading through the previous few pages of New Jeans discourse, it's clear that they were on a trajectory to be the biggest girl group ever but I think the most interesting question to ask is how much of their early on success was due to Hybe and Hybe fans which has now been lost. It certainly puts an asterisk on the numbers they were racking up.

I think we can all agree that their 2024 releases had an astronomical fall off in terms of success compared to their previous stuff, and one could argue that this was after the fandom had been cleansed and the real bunnies had been galvanised behind the group.

Moving forwards then, does their core fandom grow or continue to shrink? Assuming they can get out of the dungeon. How do things change if their production team and quality is compromised?

This is why I threw Lesserafim in to the mix. Even though they've gone through a lengthy hate train, one of the worst we've seen, it looks like they will come out of it soon for the stronger. Internationally they are the biggest right now still, and they seem to be recovering in Korea as well based on Hot.

It's not too late for them, Ive or Aespa to stake a claim as a top 5 group in history. What if China opens back up to the K-wave as expected at the end of the year? A huge market that could put some of these earlier metrics of success to shame.

Aespa

Aespa, Ive, Lesserafim

Quote from ThePhantomThief

So it was a gradual thing, it's hard to pinpoint an EXACT moment, more my dislike softening and once that wall was down the rest was easy.

Going to spoiler because its a wall of text

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I'll talk about why I disliked aespa first. When they first debuted, I was new to kpop and they were the first "big" group to debut after I was into it. So I was bemused, confused and annoyed seeing the whole very kpop thing of not just getting excited for a new group but hardcore stans suddenly appearing and bignoteing the group before they even debuted. It's still a concept that doesn't still doesn't sit well with to this day, but at the time it made me feel that their success and hype was "artificial".

I also just flat didn't like Black Mamba, Next Level and Savage. I felt they were a bit gimmicky and too much into the whole "machine sounds" trappings of the time. Also wasn't a big fan of the whole mix up in style midway through a song like Next Level. They still aren't near my favourite songs from aespa, but I've warmed to Savage alot (the other two a little less so, but I don't dislike them anymore).

Also... the early concept. Kwangya, the AI avatars. It just wasn't well done and just seemed a little juvenile to me. This wasn't the groups fault, they were just going with the concept given to them, but I just felt it was silly. Especially when they tried incorporating it in live performances. There was one particularly disastrous one where the Avatars looked downright awful while the members looked lost on a big empty stage.

There were also the issues with the groups earlier live performances being... less than great. The lip syncing accusation, choreo difficulties, stage presence etc. But that, in hindsight, really reeks more of corporate forcing them into various stages without enough preparation or experience. They have DEFINITELY grown into their live performances and stage presence.

And yeah... My's. There were bad eggs there. I missed the early days of Twice v Blackpink so it was my first real experience with fandoms of different groups just absolutely obsessing about other groups. Unfortunately, I was big in ITZY at the time and perceived some My's constant targeting and obsession with ITZY as gross, and I'm big enough to admit that the behavior of a fandom (or elements thereof) can sour me on my perception of a group.

So where did I start to turn and why?

First it was the members. I kept coming across clips and videos of particularly Karina and Winter just being absolute goofy goobers and silly and fun, which softened my opinion of the group. The occasional Itzy-aespa crumbs and knowing how close the members of both groups are helped.

Girls was their last TT drop that I wasn't a fan of, but even in the Bop or Flop thread I hinted more that I felt it was just boring rather than outright dislike.

Realising not ally My's were dicks and that my antics were just ass bad as what I was perceiving My's as doing... I actually recall one or two replies to my nonsense from either you or foreveraespaaa back then that I had no good answer too because they made me actually think about what I was saying.

But it was a song from that album, Lifes Too Short, that got me. It popped a few times on some Spotify random playlists and I found myself enjoying it without realizing WHO it was from. Then I found it was from aespa and I was like "Wait, their songs aren't all just noisy and messy?"

Hold on Tight and Welcome to my World were the game changers for me though. By then, it was just like Megatron said in the 1986 Transformers Movie... "Their defenses are down, let the slaughter begin". My defenses were down and those two songs crashed through the walls and hooked me instantly. Like they weren't just good songs, they were easily in my best songs for 2023. And Better Things as well.

Come to think of it, the whole pre-LSM/post-LSM thing is probably a big player here. That and the shedding of the avatars.

From there on it was a pretty smooth transition. Consume more content. Listen to their stuff with a more open mind. Realising I was actually getting excited or looking forward to a comeback. Feeling FOMO when aespa toured Australia and I didn't realise I wanted to go until too late. Realising I was going to be in Japan for their Tokyo Dome encore and thinking "why the hell not, it might be fun". Lining up in the AWFUL Tokyo heat to buy merch (that had sold out anyway).

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Nice, and thanks for sharing.

Can we all imagine how nice Kpop would be without the fandom toxicity.

Back in the Next Level era there were definitely loads of toxic Mys who mostly got filtered out during the Girls era.

I'm similar tbh, there are groups that I haven't liked because the fans are toxic, and of course there are times where I will give it back as well and ultimately behave the same. I try not to but there are slips.

I think I've rarely said anything nice about 2NE1 ever for example due to being a SNSD fan formerly haha.

Cool.

I want a cover of Rude Love of Beautiful Stranger by someone.

Also an Aespafied Red Light but adapting the bridge to be the majority of the song and cutting down on the talk rap parts

Group of the year !

Aespa at 1 makes sense

Holy fk the way I was flabbergasted. Then I was like it's April 1st, but I'm in Australia so it ended hours ago so I was like WTFFF again

Quote from ThePhantomThief

What you really need to get some context here is to find someone that used to be a big aespa hater who turned into a stan.

Get their perspective on things.

Not sure where you'd find one though.

What changed for you?

I know it was more Mys you hated, but I remember some back and forth back in the days before you started to like them.

IMO, I think it's a combination of success and the release of easier listening music.

People love to success stan and easy listening has been the trend last few years.

Just look at charting for Armageddon vs Supernova/Whiplash.

Quote from icyruios

I'm so confused

They are the 3rd group to win Group of the year?

Isn't this award.....supposed to be won by group?

That's literally...what the award is?

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It's the third time this has been awarded in the last 10 years. It's not an award given out each year.

Nice, we love to see it!

Group of the Year indeed