It’s time for QRIMOLE, the series where readers ask Kpopalypse questions! Let’s take a look at the first mailbag for 2025!
How do i stop being jealous of celebs?? Idk being famous and having tons of fans seems so fun, and every little thing u do mattering… sounds like an easy (but unobtainable for the average person) solution to existential dread a la “what even matters in life”
The best way is to actually get to know a few celebrities personally and find out first-hand how much their life actually sucks! People tend to think that fame would make them feel more connected and fulfilled, the opposite is always true. Fame is hugely isolating because you can no longer just go anywhere or do anything carefree, and you can’t trust anybody’s intentions – are they talking to you because they really like you, or they just want something out of you? This is why famous people tend to only ever hook up with other famous people or people in their inner circle, they simply can’t trust anyone else. It’s also why famous people tend to dump their friends from before they were famous, they simply have no choice in the matter. People who had issues with depression and isolation before they got famous tend to find that those issues get worse after they hit fame, not better. The bubble that you were unhealthily living in before, now becomes an essential part of your job. Even the money isn’t always great depending on what you do with it – fame rarely equals money, and even when it does, the more stuff you have, the more money you need to spend just to keep the stuff you’ve got. For every advantage that you get as a famous person there’s something else you have to deny yourself. It’s nothing to be jealous of. This is why I prefer to be a nameless contracted musician and not a permanent touring member of a band, something I could easily do…
What kind of genre is lalalark’s “self”, and do u know other artists / songs like it? I’m obsessed with the screechy noise at the start of the song.
Rock. Just sounds like any female-fronted light j-rock. There’s tons of stuff like this. You should ask Jpopalypse about it. I agree that the noise at the very start is by far the most interesting thing about the song.
Ello kpopalypse, happy new years! Hope you, your gf and Stiglitz have a nice 2025
I saw you mention playing InfinityNikki, so cue a couple of questions! Are you enjoying InfinityNikki, and what are your first impressions of the game? How did you get into IN, and what games do you typically like to play? How do you feel about gacha games generally, and have you ever whaled?
I’ve been enjoying InfinityNikki as a f2p so far, I’m under the impression that the devs are generally not that predatory. I’m not opposed to spending money on a game, as long as it isn’t a requirement to make a game playable.
Lastly, have you ever streamed gameplay on twitch, or considered it? Not that I would watch, we live in opposite timezones and your schedule is fundamentally incompatible with mine.
First and by FAR the most important thing first: Infinity Nikki doesn’t have mouse Y axis invert yet, so everyone playing it, each time you do their regular surveys please do Kpopalypse a solid and ask the devs to add it. For now I’m using a combination of RawAccel mouse driver and oleg-st’s InvertMouse.exe to get around the problem. The workaround is annoying because there’s a second of delay before the inversion kicks in when switching between menus and character control, but it at least makes the game playable for me.
I love the game, a reader suggested it to me via Neospring, as a cosier version of Genshin Impact, which describes the game perfectly. I found the constant fighting in GI really boring, IN fixes that problem by making the fights relatively rare and relatively easy, the game is more about exploring which was also GI’s main strength so a game which doubles down on that and has lots of cutesy touches is great. I only miss the wall-climbing in GI, and Nikki herself isn’t an appealing a main character as some of the better GI characters. However the clothing choices are better and I love how boss fights are actually all about dressing nicer than your opponent and nothing else. Also after about an hour of playing the main quest you unlock the animal grooming outfit and then you can go around petting all the dozens of wild animals in the game with a grooming brush, it’s the greatest game mechanic I’ve ever seen. For those wanting to know, cats are in the starting city, bunnies are randomly around the countryside, for horses and ponies you ned to go south from the starting location to the plains of Breezy Meadow, you’re welcome.
I haven’t spent any money on it. Honestly the game has so many confusing-ass digital currencies in it, which is a deliberate tactic that all games with in-game transactions employ now to obfuscate the amount of actual money you’re pouring into the game and its usefulness, but it also has the interesting side-effect of making me really uncertain about spending anything at all just because it’s so unobvious how to spend money and what I’m exactly getting for that money. The complexity of the game’s multiple tiers of rewards and blah blah all sort of scares me into not spending, and there’s such a huge amount of content in the game that I doubt I’ll ever have time to even get through, that I really don’t even have any temptation to spend on even more content at this point. I’m not against the in-game transactions model though, if I get a lot of time into any one of these games I don’t mind spending something every once in a while as a thank you to the devs for all the fun I had, although I’ve never whaled in one of these games, people with mortgages don’t have the means for that in this economy. The most I’ve ever spent on any one game with digital purchases is probably about the same as I would spend on outright buying a B-tier game on Steam. I don’t like “random roll” type purchases though, I refuse to spend money on the chance of getting something, but I will buy in-game purchases that are just simply “spend x amount of currency, get item y”. If Infinity Nikki ever releases a line of purchasable gothic-themed outfits I’d consider them.
I have streamed games in the past and sometimes still do it, but very rarely. Due to having very low vocal stamina (throat operation + introversion) I find the long hours of streaming that game streamers tend to do to be a bit beyond me. I just don’t like talking to people for such extended periods all that much, it just gets beyond both my mental and physical stamina for conversations, and I suppose I could stream silently but honestly how boring, if I want to stream I want to be good at it and let’s be real, all the good streamers all talk a lot (and have voice-changers and female anime avatars, I need to work out how to do that so Kpopalypse can become a full-time cash-making Infinity Nikki style anime girl, beats being a broke bald Australian cunt any day).
i asked this on neospring but you said the length of your answer would probably break the site so im just gonna copy and paste my question here
“so why is it that you dislike survival shows so much? i’m not disagreeing i just don’t quite understand”
Firstly, the voting for them is usually an outright scam. Most of these shows have paid voting, but then the staff just pick who they want to win anyway. That’s how some of these shows in the past have gotten into legal trouble, by selling votes that weren’t actually worth anything. Of course most people don’t vote, but it doesn’t change the fact that the business model for these shows is a scam targetted at those who do.
Secondly, there’s the “evil editing”. You know how T-ara’s old clips from variety shows were selectively edited to make it look like they were bullying Hwayoung when it wasn’t true? Also how Jeewon’s clips were selectively edited more recently to make it look like she blatantly disapproved of herself being sexualised, by editing together two different pieces of footage that actually happened at different times? Well, the same thing happens in those survival shows all the time. I keep linking this video every few QRIMOLEs and most of you have already seen it, but if you haven’t it’s a mandatory watch. It explains perfectly how the editor has absolute control over how an audience perceives the meaning of a scene:
If nothing much happened during shooting and there was no drama… well it’s pretty easy to manufacture some drama with a little editing. You can tell any story you want to tell… and the producers of these shows certainly do. You don’t need fancy CGI or AI tricks to fool an audience – simple editing will suffice.
Then there’s the incredibly shit living conditions, the very young people being dragged into awful concepts that don’t suit them, the dieting and all the other things that are just wrong with the idol scene in general.
However even if all of those negative elements were absent, the shows still suck because music is not sport, and shouldn’t be treated as such.
Is Sunmi the [most] consistent soloist in K-Pop? It certainly feels like she hits way more often than she misses, and when she gets it truly right, she’s phenomenal.
Well there aren’t that many soloists in k-pop, but she does really well. Another solist who tends to almost always do at least above average for me is Hong Jin Young. Also Chuu! There’s probably a few others too. I try not to worry too much about what tier different people are on for quality but maybe I should start doing k-pop tier lists each year because I get these kinds of questions all the time…
What do you think of vocal synths and especially the use of AI in vocal synths? I know AI in the creative world is very much a hot topic right now, though it’s predominantly in art right now. Music seems to be far harder for AI to do right now (though an unfortunately large number of pop songs make me think AI could probably do a better job than those songwriters). I think the AI used for vocal synths seems relatively more ethical than most. The voice provider still gets paid for the rights of their voice. The AI is there purely to enhance the software synthesizing the person’s voice. There’s no stealing involved except in the general sense of using a lot of people’s voices to train the AI, but the AI isn’t used to create a new voice. But, it does seem like it could quickly head in the direction of synthesizing new people’s voices and taking away singers’ jobs.
As for the songs I linked, it’s a weird detail, but I was just finding the breathing impressive. I’m not sure if the breathing pattern sounds like a real person breathing during a song, but the breaths themselves sound so realistic.
I just included one song (the one with clearer vocals) because I think it’s sufficient to make the point. Even without AI synth, vocals these days can be easily replaced by machines, so I don’t actually think the new technology changes anything much at all. Singers have already been having their jobs stolen from under them for the better part of a century by various forms of replacement, like a lot of AI this new stuff doesn’t really feel like the game-changer it’s being hyped as, for better or worse.
I think music is a relatively easy thing for AI to do as music tends to follow specific patterns a lot. While there are infinite potential patterns in music, there’s really only a small finite number of patterns that the majority of people gravitate to, which is what makes up the bulk of pop music, and pop music evolves fairly slowly as a form so there’s a lot of consistency there. So I can imagine that applying machine-learning to those patterns wouldn’t be too challenging.
Not kpop related but which ship is better?
DOTA x Counterstrike or DOTA x League of Legends?
I ship non humans with each other, like Xboxes and Playstations
I’m not familiar enough with the characters of DOTA to provide a well-informed answer to this. However does Counter Strike even have characters worth shipping, and isn’t everyone in CS a human? I would have thought that a DOTA x LoL ship would have a lot more potential for creativity anyway. Unless you want to ship the bomb which could be kinda boring (after all isn’t it the same bomb code every time, can’t see the bomb being that exciting in bed) or the CS chickens, which… let’s not go there for the good of humanity. At least they’re free-range, I guess.
I hate the people who clog this column every month with their stupid relationship issues that nobody care about but this time I’ve turned into what I hate the most as I too come with my own relationship question. I’d appreciate if you omit everything between brackets
[very interesting and saucy details omitted at reader request, also deleted some of the slang in the question to make it more bland and less easy to identify the reader from the writing style, because I think their reasons for wanting this edited out are quite valid!]
I think just be completely straight up. It’s going to suck, but I don’t see any other way around it and it’s the most respectful way to go. I mean, you can’t force yourself to change your preferences any more than I can force myself to like the Japanese girls in Twice more than Jeongyeon. Just tell it to them more or less how you told it to me, I think that’s the way to go. No, it won’t be pleasant, but if they’re a good person they will at least understand where you’re coming from. Nobody likes rejection, so they won’t like it, but if they are smart and you are tactful they’ll get it. It sounds to me like this might go better than you think given that it seems like they’ve already sussed that something’s not quite right. They may actually be expecting you to come forward with something like this, and it you don’t, they may resent the lack of honesty in holding something back, so I think coming clean as soon as you can and not stringing them along is actually just doing the right thing by both of you. Good luck. Oh, and avoid the F-word like the plague (you know the one) unless they say it first, it just rubs salt into the wound.
hello, it’s 5:41 AM as I type this first sentence and i have been bingereading your blog for the past 4 hours.
i guess if i had to ask a question it’d be “how do i stop my sleep time constantly inching later and later whenever i have no obligations the next day” but i really just wanted to thank you for the incredible, thoughtful works you’ve made here.
for context, i’m pretty young in the grand scheme of things, have only gotten into kpop as a focus in the past week or two, and simultaneously i have been very disgusted by what tidbits i’ve learned about the industry itself over the past couple years of following western music charts, and also way more positive on pop music in general compared to anyone else i’ve ever met (i describe my taste with the phrase “i am able to enjoy songs i don’t like”)
in my sleep-deprived, delirious state my feelings of disdain towards the kpop industry as a concept and how it functions have reached new highs and my disillusionment towards it have never been higher. i listened to any song by zico like 15 times in a row around 1am (is it a 9/10???) so that didnt help. but i also feel a sense of gratitude that a blog so obviously kindhearted and genuine in its sentiments can exist for such a long time.
(and that might seem like a strange opinion and maybe my eyes being tired isn’t helping but just cuz someone swears a lot while referring to people doesn’t mean they can’t espouse ideals and principles that arent in those same people’s best interests, y’know?)
it’s a bit strange to come away from reading with a pessimistic and optimistic perspective both wrapped into one. too contradictory for my energyless brain tbh
so uh. yeah. im going to sleep now ok thanks bye
I have the same issue as my natural rhythm is to go to sleep at 4am and wake up at midday, but that’s not actually very practical for getting shit done as the morning is optimal for certain tasks, plus a really late pattern puts me way out of sync with my partner. My solution is to fix a time to go to sleep and try to stick to it and not push it back. It usually works!
I think a balanced view of how things are is better than “toxic positivity” where we pretend we love everything all the time, which is what most other k-pop sites and communities do when it suits them. I also think that swearing is better than holding it in and then the frustration builds up and emerges in other more toxic ways instead…
i feel like this song is an example of jpop inspired music actually sounding good but i don’t have the music theory knowledge to explain why. can you explain why you do or do not find this to be true?
I don’t really like the song at all personally but I think what you’re gravitating towards is the keyboard stabs and how they’re quite fast and also have zero ambience – they completely cut to silence between each stab with no reverb etc. Because that’s the only thing here that really makes it “sound j-pop” to me, take those keys away and this is just a pop song like any other.
What level of perfect pitch is this? Does something like this replication require a perfect pitch at all (im not even sure if I’m using the term right)
OMG so much Japanese content this month, there really is a hole in the marketplace for a Jpopalypse isn’t there.
You don’t need perfect pitch to do something like this. Obviously the guitarist isn’t doing this on the fly but has worked out all the vocal pitches beforehand, that’s something that you can do with just relative pitch alone. Relative pitch is actually a far more useful skill than perfect pitch, which is mainly just good for impressing people at parties.
To understand the difference between relative pitch and perfect pitch, and why perfect pitch actually isn’t very desirable, Adam Neely’s video on this is excellent:
Does the synths in la bouche’s Be My Lover Sounds a lot like the ones in Tears by So Chan-Whee or im just crazy?.. cuz i know both songs for like 7 years and just recently i started thinking they sound pretty similar in that aspect
Well yeah it’s the same style that’s being copied. K-pop had a major hard-on for this type of style for about a year or two at around 1999-2000, and then completely forgot about it shortly therafter.
hi oppar! i’ve recently started doing a show on community radio and am having a bit of trouble with what exactly i should be doing. i thought i was doing OK, if a bit awkward, but a friend of mine actually has been listening to it (i think mostly because he’s trying to sleep with me but i’ll take a win where i can get it) and says i need to talk more. but how much talking should i really be doing? i speak after every 3 to 4 songs, add small tidbits when i find something interesting enough to comment on, and move on, and i’m not quite sure what else i should be doing. maybe i’m a bit dry, but it’s hard to find the balance between doing nothing but playing shit for an hour or making the show about me and my personality. i also am having a bit of trouble curating and i’m afraid the concept i have for the show is a bit too all over the place – which is a little bit on purpose, but i feel the theme is more vague than i would like. The concept for the show is basically just fast and loud, regardless of genre, because i really liked the idea of putting a lot of fast, danceable songs under one show, and putting hardcore back to back with electronic or pop to showcase a wide range of music i find exciting. i find my execution, though, may be off putting and too disjointed to work. i mean, i like doing the show anyway, but i feel it just needs something more to it and i want it to be enjoyable to people who are not my friends (and if a guy trying to get in my pants has something bad to say about it god knows what people who aren’t think) and feel there should be something more uniting about it, and i feel like i’m not enough of a personality for that uniting factor to be me. should i rework it? should i have more comments and facts and tidbits? should i magically become more charming overnight? i know it’s been a few years since you’ve done radio, but i would really appreciate some insight. as always, thank you much!
I think “high energy” is a great unifying concept for a radio show so I think you’re on the right path. Given a choice, I think talking a little more is better than talking a little less. That doesn’t mean talk forever or ramble irrelevant stuff, but you should try not to string together big blocks of songs either because it’s boring. People can play songs to themselves without the help of a DJ, so by adding yourself in there you’re giving people an extra reason to listen. The show ultimately is about you and your music picks. When I did the k-pop show I’d talk between every single song, and I think the best radio shows are like that. People want to know what they just heard, also they want to know what they’re about to hear, and they also just want to know there’s a human behind the wheel with thoughts and opinions. Just make sure that you keep your talking high-energy like the music, I don’t mean do a “fake voice”, but just talk fast and make it fairly snappy, don’t waste time. Don’t be too self-conscious about personality to begin with, just practice going through the motions quickly, and as you get better your style will improve and you’ll feel more confident throwing other tidbits in there etc. The best music DJs are the ones who fit their delivery somewhat to the music that they play.
How on earth do k-pop idols and even trainees survive the long working hours? Are stimulants common, and if so, what do they use? Asking for a friend…
Addition to the former question regarding stimulants–do they just use fillers to hide bags under their eyes/avoid looking like a skeleton due to lack of sleep? In the Hana books you have the scene where the stylist nonchalantly offers fillers, would idols have any choice about a small cosmetic procedure like that?
Well they often don’t survive that well, hence why everyone in the Hana books is always passing out…
I’ve been told both anecdotally and with (unfortuantely undisclosable – which is why there isn’t a Kpopalypse Interview about this) receipts that stimulants are common, but of course it depends on the agency and who/what they have access to. There are various types who make a living from “prescribing” both legal and illegal drugs in these scenarios. Han Seo Hee was one of these people for a period of time.
Fillers are exceptionally common and used very, very often by idols, temporary procedures applied before live stages and TV apperances is the norm, not the exception. Idols have to maintain ridiculous weight standards but this also can make their faces look gaunt, a bit of botox can give a temporary puffier appearance that fixes the issue. Often it’s a “choice” but realistically most idols will say yes because… well, they want to look good, right? The idol industry is a looks-based game, why play at a disadvantage…
Do you believe that the kpop idol industry will fade in a few decades due to changes in worker rights? I think kpop won’t fade but the idol factory would.
I think this is a question of culture, I think the way the idol industry is currently set up is cultural and that the entire Korean culture would need to change. It could happen but I don’t see it happening soon. If it does I think it might be due to greater foreign influence.
I’m curious as to why some men are scared of women. It’s pretty obvious why women might be scared of men, and my head definitely plays a highlight reel of ‘horrible ways women have died when taking a short walk’ every time I’m on a dark street, especially if some asshole man starts walking quickly behind me. However a lot of men seem oblivious to these kind of safety concerns. Are men scared bc they know we’re (usually) smarter and fear that we’re going to show them up? Or is there something else going on? Oppar please impart your wisdom.
Male insecurity. Women are generally speaking more socially advanced than men, and I think a lot of men are aware of this and scared of women for that reason, they worry about being manipulated or “outplayed”. If you’re a man and you meet a woman who is more articulate, smarter, better at social situations, and so on (which let’s face it, is probably all going to be the case the majority of the time) then if you’re not a man who is secure in yourself, then you might find that a bit personally threatening. It might cause you to second-guess your actions, or you might be worried about looking like a fool or being transparent or whatever. Obviously being afraid of social awkwardness isn’t on the same gravity level as being afraid of getting stabbed or raped, but that also doesn’t mean it’s not a real thing that people experience.
The funniest thing about this is that men should be more afraid of the “stabbed or raped” stuff than they are. An interesting statistic on men, women and violence, is that men are statistically much more likely to be victims of violence when walking alone at night, and the majority of violent crimes commited against people at night are male-on-male. This is precisely because of what you pointed out – men are either oblivious, or they “think they can hande it” so they end up walking into trouble a lot more, whereas women’s paranoia and spider-sense that certain things “don’t feel right” is more attuned and so they’re more likely to avoid danger.
Ik y’all are serious nugustans. You should let me work for y’all bc i’m a fucking hardcore nugustan.
do you know bistar?
if enough?
no, right?
I couldn’t find anything on Bistar (searching didn’t help and just brought up a lot of very non-Korean looking stuff, maybe you meant Brave Entertainment group Bigstar?) but If Enough were actually in Episode 51 of Kpopalypse Nugu Alert, which just goes to show that Kpopalypse Nugu Alert is so unpopular that even hardcore nugu stans don’t read it.
Am I way higher than I thought right now or does JYP’s Who’s Your Mama sound a lot like Bjork’s Big Time Sensuality
High as shit. Higher than Caitlin on Iseul’s delivery day.
Trivia: I was watching Bjork’s “Big Time Sensuality” video with my mother, many years ago. She said to me, unprompted: “that’s the kind of girls you like, isn’t it, weird girls who have their own style which isn’t like anyone else”. I said simply “yes”. I knew at that point, that my mother understood me.
Hi Kpopalypse, it’s me the one who bashes Riize for dogwhistling on their Memories MV, turn their stan.
I just wanna get this off my chest cause next year marks the 15th anniversary of me knowing kpop (wow) and my big 30 birthday as well.
Some disclaimer : yes I do feel kinda iffy admitting I’m gonna be 30 and still stanning these kids whose the youngest just turn 20. But I don’t care now, I have my own reasons for stanning them anyway.
[can you omit this below part, pls? I’m still unsure if I want to air this part to the world]
[stuff omitted at reader request]
[thanks!]
Anyway, stanning Riize is better because I probably don’t have to pretend to get interested in other kpop stuffs to get me distracted, like I don’t have to doomscroll reddit kpop news anymore. Like it’s okay to not know much about NewJeans and MHJ stuffs, like kpop is fun. I could just focus on things that keeps the fun.
So just want to know your opinion about the disparity of taste(?) between Korean/Asian and International viewer. As a person who never stan a boygroup before and didn’t listen much to variety of kpop tracks (cause yes, I listen to kpop for vibes, and been relying on your round-ups for new music), I’ve been digging back to few kpop communities, I felt the disconnect, particularly in reddit. The popularity that Riize have in Korea didn’t translate very well to the international market. Idk if it’s because of the Seunghan fiasco, or their music is just meh (I admit some of them are, but I like it anyway), or because of them having no personality (I could argue about this, but it’s not the place to do so) or everyone has this warped point of view that the new groups have to blew up internationally right after debut? Or these kpop fans are now just younger? It does feel weird because at one side (international) thought that their momentum is halted, while the other side (korean/asian) side sees that they are getting more popular now. And since getting hit by the fact that I don’t know international taste at all, would love to know some of your POV.
Happy new year!
Some of you people are entirely too paranoid about airing your things on here, it is anonymous you know. I promise I probably don’t have your IP address, date of birth, mother’s maiden name, brand of the first car you drove, name of your first childhood pet, etc.
Parasocial connection blah blah – it’s totally fine, just accept it for what it is. The point of me highlighting that stuff isn’t to say “parasocial connections are bad” (arguably all of you who drop questions in here for me are also engaging with me parasocially) but just to say “it is what it is, be realistic about it and adjust your expectations accordingly for the sake of your own mental health”. Just have a plan for emotional maintenance if your faves break up or retire as it will happen eventually. I’m still getting over Yua Mikami and Moko Sakura. It’s tough but every day is another day that I survive without Honey Popcorn in k-pop. Just take it one day at a time.
Popularity metrics by country – I have no idea. I don’t really follow the popularity of anything because popularity has so little to do with what I like or dislike. Sure, I hope that groups that I think have good music do get popular for their sake, but it’s not something that I track or are invested in for my own personal benefit. But my view seems to be really different to that of people who follow k-pop from outside Korea. I feel like you might be better off asking this question on a k-pop forum where international fans gather, you could get a better consensus there.
How would you rank the following genres of music (with explanations if you like): Classical, Pop, Country, Electronic, Folk, Hip Hop, Rap, Jazz, RnB, Rock
Well I have problems with the genre classifications for a start. Hip-hop and rap are semi-interchangeable here, as rap is a music genre/vocal style, whereas hip-hop is a cultural movement that encompasses rap music/vocals as well as quite a few other things, more info here. Electronic also isn’t really a genre, because there’s many different forms of music made with electronic instruments, and electronic instruments are also in all the other genres you’ve mentioned (yes, including classical). Maybe you meant “dance” music or something.
Anyway it doesn’t matter because whatever the genre list is, country, jazz and R&B will always be at the bottom, and that’s all that matters.
Despite being partly face-blind (my dad is like 3/4,) I can identify all of Red Velvet now yay! It only took 5 years.
**Red Velvet Quiz Identification**
Wendy and Irene are shorter than Joy (tallest) and Seulgi. Yeri idk.
Question 3: Joy, Irene, Seulgi, Wendy
Question 4: Joy, Irene, Seulgi, Wendy (ig the same order implies a company-suggested order. Also Irene and Seulgi are friends, plus Seulgi and Wendy.)
Question 5: Joy, Seulgi, Irene, Wendy (same as kpopalypse, yay)
Question 6: Wendy, Yeri, Irene, Joy, Seulgi
Question 7: Joy, Yeri, Irene, Seulgi, Wendy
Question 8: Seulgi, Irene (face blocked by gesture, hard to tell), Yeri, Wendy (hood, hard to tell,) Joy
Question 9: They’re looking sideways, this sucks. Wendy, Yeri, Irene, Seulgi, Joy. Wendy has the harsh jaw shave, Yeri has slightly more orange hair and her face is… idk… Irene looks tense, seulgi’s monoids and more square face, Joy is tallest
Question 10: not sure any of them are, but if I had to pick, the upper right looks most like Irene. Not a fan of the aegyo-sal + mascara choices here btw.
Also the bottom right looks a bit like Nayeon.
I only wrote it a decade ago and after all this time, someone has finally figured out the Red Velvet quiz answers – you might be the first! Of course since nobody else alive also knows the answers, nobody has any way of verifying if you got all the questions right. We’ll just have to trust you on this one.
Would you date a skinny girl if she looked like Eunha / have you dated thin girls before?
Yes and yes. If you were to put me in a room with a CGI modeller and ask me to draw my perfect girlfriend, she wouldn’t be skinny if I had a choice. However, while my general preference is towards plus-size, and most of my girlfriends have fallen into that category, honestly for me it’s just all about who I click with the most, and that’s not something you can predict. Sometimes you just hit it off really well with a person and it’s not who you might expect, it’s happened to me before where it’s someone who didn’t tick all the body type boxes but it didn’t matter because it just worked out. Some girls have just “got it” and it just doesn’t matter.
Hi oppar! I have a problem with Supernova by aespa. I think the song is fantastic but I cannot think of a single other thing that sounds like it. Kpop is usually so obvious about what decades/sounds/artists/trends it’s pulling from but I cannot think of anything that would have been a strong influence on this song and I’m hoping you can help. As always, thank you!
Yeah I dunno. The main riff and tonic to minor second movement that goes through the whole thing is actually very heavy metal, it’s also very “Jaws” theme. However the beat is more of a dance beat, so that kind of combination, it’s almost like industrial dance, but a more ‘poppy’ version thereof, like if Front Line Assembly made a girl group. Nothing sounds exactly like this though, a rare example of SM’s results actually matching the “neo culture tech” hype.
Hello kpopalypse sir! Thank you for following me on Bluesky, that was a pleasant surprise.
It seems that GFriend has announced a comeback for January 2025! Are you excited? I’m so glad that they’ve decided/are able to continue making music together, even if it might turn out to be just one comeback. The cynical part of me thinks they’re only doing this because solo careers haven’t exactly taken off, so I hope this puts a little more coin in the bag for all of them.
Unrelated kpop question: should I feel bad for not letting my cat sleep in the bed with me at night? The few times I’ve tried she is wild as fuck, and it takes hours for her to settle down. I have to be up at 6:45 every morning so I need all the sleep I can get. But I feel badly because at first she yowls her damn head off when I go to bed, and then she ends up sleeping outside of my door. I don’t want to be a bad childless cat lady
I honestly doubt a Gfriend reunion would be a big money-spinner, but who can say for sure. I’m sure there’s not no money in it. However I think it’s probably true that the girls just… want to? Reunions like this that are directed by the companies are rare, usually when a veteran group gets back together it’s almost in spite of their company who has usually long since discarded them.
I tried locking my cats out at first when I got cats, but they would just scratch the door a lot and be upset instead. It wasn’t a good idea. Let your cat sleep with you, it’ll increase the bond between you and your cat. It might help to spend a few hours in bed doing other stuff before you actually try to sleep. If you spend the last part of your evening there with your cat, by the time it’s sleep time your cat might have already gotten over the novelty phase and might be more willing to settle down.
do u have an all time favourite song?
( ͡° ͡°) r u tasty?
Tasty were a Chinese boy group duo that were on Woollim from 2012 to 2014.
As Tasty are Chinese, I can see why rumours may be spreading that I was in this group. However I was never a member of this group. I deny all allegations that I am Tasty.
you mentioned someone licking dried smegma from under your foreskin in your prediction post. Was this physical description of you accurate? If so, may I view your manhood? Gratifications for the consideration, good sir.
This is actually not an accurate description but more a turn of phrase inserted for “narrative colour” (the colour being in this case kind of an off-white). Readers would be amazed to know how popular requests to view the Kpopalypsedong are, but I think there’s already enough horror in the world. Let’s think about nicer things.
Happy New Year, oppar! One of my resolutions for this year is to get paid better (or to get a job that pays better), so I’m considering asking for a raise. I have no idea how to go at it, though.
I think I do a good job, and my boss has praised me for it before, so I don’t think my performance would be an issue; I just don’t know how to be tactful about it. I work in a small-ish company, and word travels fast, which makes me a bit nervous too.
Do you have any advice? Thank you!
My advice here, especially with a smaller company (where there’s less money to go around), is look at it from your boss’ point of view. I mean, I know we all don’t like doing that BUT realistically if you want more money that’s the most sensible way to look at it. So if he’s going to give more money he’s going to want something in return. So when you pitch your raise to him, pitch it so it’s clear that you’re doing it to help him, that he also gets something out of the deal. Instead of saying “I’d like a raise” I’d avoid the R-word completely, instead sit down with him and say something like “I’m keen to get more money in because of [reasons x y z] and I’m feeling like I’m pretty capable at my current position, I know my performance is good, so I was wondering if you had anything extra that I could help you out with to get some extra money in”. Word it the right way and you might end up with a raise AND a promotion. Or he might just say no, but at least if you phrase it like this he’s not going to think you’re being selfish about it but are putting the business first, which is the kind of thing bosses like.
QUESTIONS THAT AREN’T
I just watched 3 songs performed by Twice at Amazon Live, posted on Twice’s YouTube channel. In the first two, “Moonlight Sunrise” and “The Feels”, Jeongyeon never smiles, and looks positively miserable throughout. In the third, “One Spark”, she only never smiles and looks miserable about 75% of the time.
I’ve been pulling hard for her since her health issues, and the target that’s been on her back since she started struggling with her weight. It’s also nice to learn about how the other members have had her back and supported her.
I don’t know why she looked so disengaged, but “keep smiling” is basically Rule #1 of both show choir and idol stages. You gotta make the audience think you’re enjoying it up there. As a member of plus-sized nation myself*, I’d especially like to keep the illusion that Jeongyeon is enjoying herself, so it bums me out when it looks so much like she’s not.
Jeongyeon’s been at this for a decade now, and has likely had the most taxing journey of all of them, so no one can blame her if she’s had it up to here with performing on stage as a member of Twice. And no one would give it a second thought if she retired from performing, and only recorded and wrote songs. I’d be willing to bet that Twice would keep supporting her and stayed at 9 for MVs and music shows, and 8 for live concerts, or whatever. If she made a surprise appearance at a show at Yankee Stadium or something, the crowd would lose their shit. But ffs girl, try to smile.
* I don’t know if, like me, Jeongyeon is actually “plus sized” in real life; just in the population of girl idols.
(Caveat: those are the 3 songs posted on Twice’s YouTube channel; they performed several more songs, and I guess it’s possible Jeongyeon is shining like the sun in all of them, in which case disregard this.)
There’s no question here but I’ll answer your implied one and say that I think all idols probably have their off-days, I remember towards the end of T-ara’s live stage run in China there were so many shows where the girls were obviously doing the absolute bare minimum both physically and emotionally, they were just phoning it in for the China bucks. Kinda sucks to watch a show like that as an audience member but it’s also very relatable as a performer. Everyone has days when you don’t want to come to work, regardless of what your job is. I think Jeongyeon knows that Twice is her launching pad into various other things (like variety TV) so she’s sticking with it because she knows that’s the smart thing to do, not because she has a burning passion to be in an idol group at this point. I mean I’m sure the routine has probably gotten old for all of them by now. Breaking off from the group is obviously a risk for any of them and they wouldn’t want to do it too soon and have it become a problem. Since this wasn’t really a question though, plus-size JAV of the Month is JUQ-410.
I just watched Whiplash. Holy fuck, that kind of confidence is hot as fuck. Obviously, the style is amazing, and the austere video definitely matches the style so well, but the girls look really suited to the concept, as if this is what they’ve always wanted to do.
It definitely reminds me of Untie, which sounds similar and is also super sexy, but Whiplash is even better in that department. I’m more biased to Viviz, but this is the first time I’ve been blown away by Aespa.
Adding on, also, Whiplash definitely needed more Winter. It’s literally in her name. This stoic coldness fits her so well.
This isn’t a question, so JAV of the Month is also DASS-487, which ticks a couple of boxes for readers. Firstly it’s starring Ichika Matsumoto, she’s quite skinny and definitely one of the best ever JAV stars according to Kpopalypse even though she doesn’t meet my preferred body type so that might be helpful for the person asking about if I also like skinny girls. The answer being – usually not, but some people just “have got it” and Ichika is definitely one of those. Also this video is quite high on the LGBT content as all the scenes are with Ichika and a guy in women’s clothes (unsure of his/her state of transition) and later on, both of them plus a non-crossdressing male. This leads to some interesting bisexual combinations of scenes and bodily insertions that defintiely mrs – you’re welcome, thirsty bi readers.
BONUS KPOPALYPSE’S GIRLFRIEND THROWDOWN SECTION
Same person as the last Wonho games question.
You might be interested to know that some games generate quite a lot of money with minimal artwork.
Henteria Chronicles from N_Taii comes to mind with €3,977/month on Patreon. It’s an RPG Maker game with only some face pictures and pixel art animation. So if your writing is good enough or if you cater to specific kinks, you can get by without a lot of art.
On the 3d front, there are a lot of very popular options with varying degrees of uncanniness like Daz, Koikatsu or Honey Select 2. They all seem easy to use but might just not be your thing.
Anyway if you are looking for more information on development tools or recruiting artists, the F95 forums has tons of things you could find interesting.
Now time for the real question.
Aren’t you an hypocrite for posting or linking to nipslip while condemning Allkpop for posting nudes ? Sure they might not be exactly on the same level but both are pictures showing private parts to a not intended audience with a clear lack of consent from the subject. You always say your girlfriend is a big fan of your boobs post but you should try asking her what she thinks about posting creep shots of “wardrobe malfunction”
Thanks for the Wonho game stuff, interesting! Yeah I really hate the 3D art style, not my thing, but I love pixel art! I agree that if I went down that path, Hentai Chronicles is the sort of thing I’d aim for but it still has a ton of really good art, minimal as it is. It’ll still be a lot of work that would cut into k-pop writing time. But definitely something I’ll consider. Thanks for the forum link! I’ve been to those forums before but never thought of using them as a tool to explore game-making options.
I only have one nip-slip related post on this entire website which is now seven years old, and the point of that one post is very clearly and obviously more to parody the actual question posed in its title than provide a serious answer to it, but I’ll bite anyway. I did as you suggested and asked her this question directly. She only let me get the first sentence out and instantly she because extremely angry and launched into a verbal attack that I won’t repeat in full but I’ll summarise for you in this edited and somewhat cleaned-up version: “APPLES AND ORANGES, COMPLETELY DIFFERENT SITUATIONS, FUCK OFF! HOLY SHIT SOME PEOPLE ARE STUPID, WHAT A DUMB FUCKING QUESTION, I CAN’T BELIEVE SOME IDIOT EVEN ASKED YOU THIS, WHAT A FUCKING ASSHOLE!” After she calmed down enough for me to be able to actually read out the rest of your question to her, she continued: “The idols obviously know that this is going to happen, and that when it does people are going to see and comment and write things about it. Obviously they don’t want it to happen, but they would also know that that’s the reality of it, and it probably is going to happen sometimes if they’re not wearing ten metres of safety tape, and that’s just being realistic about it. I can’t believe some idiot even asked you this. What a fucking asshole, seriously. I love you and I hope you like my answer!” So take away from that what you will. No hard feelings (well, at least none from me, hahaha).
Hi hyung, first time asking a question in a while, and it’s a juicy one.
Well, to make a long story short, I’m a messy bitch, and over the past few months I’ve started cheating on my long-distance girlfriend (call her A) with her best friend (call her B). The twist is that her best friend is married (and long-distance with her husband).
Normally, I wouldn’t think this is much of a dilemma. Make sure nobody finds out, have a little fun, then back to normal once we’re together with our partners again. But B and I have managed to fall madly, stupidly in love with each other. Like, “rom-com cliché”-level, “I didn’t actually know what love felt like,” “Oh fuck, soulmates actually exist?” kind of stuff. We’re much more compatible in terms of sex, interests, lifestyle, and personalities than we are with our partners.
We do still really like both of our partners, and don’t want them to feel hurt. We think that B’s husband and A kind of depend on us for sort of “parental” support in addition to the relationships. I don’t know what to do.
What would you do? What do you recommend? Feel free to judge me/us lol, like I said I know it’s messy.
Oh wow, you’ve really fucked things haven’t you. Since my morals have decayed from years of looking at k-pop nipslips, I asked my far more morally upstanding girlfriend about this one. Her initial reaction before I even got to the second paragraph was (again paraphrased and edited) “OH MY GOD WHAT A CUNT, DOING IT WITH HER BEST FRIEND YOU DON’T DO THAT, HE’S A PIECE OF SHIT AND SO IS SHE… I ASSUME IT’S A HE [I remind her at this point I have a lot of lesbian and bisexual readers so am unsure] WELL WHATEVER WHAT A FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT, FUCK THIS DICKHEAD I FUCKING HATE SHIT LIKE THAT so I guess the first takeaway is that you should feel appropriately guilty and so should B. But you already knew that, right? As for what you should do, once she calmed down enough for me to tell her the rest of the story, she said there are two realistic options if you want to salvage anything here:
Make a pact with B to permanently forget about the affair, go back to your partners and never do anything like this again plus live in secret shame for the rest of your days
Make a pact with B to both come clean with your partners, who will of course break up with you if they have the slightest amount of common sense, and then start a new life together with B, plus live in not-so-secret shame for the rest of your days
Not the best options, but that’s what you’ve got. She is insistent that there is no other third “keep going with things as they are” option on the table here, and the longer you delay either option 1. or 2. the more of an asshole she thinks you are, and the worse things are going to blow up when they eventually do blow up. According to her, while you’re definitely an asshole, you can actively choose to be somewhat less of an asshole by picking one of the two options. Good luck, and kudos for at least allowing me to reproduce this in full. This is the kind of saucy stuff that I read but often am asked to edit out by the question-askers, so thanks for increasing the entertainment value of this post for the readers.
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!
