& i can see us lost in the memory
hey friend, merry christmas! practice lang. haha. the ber months are finally upon us—ridiculous, i know! where did that year go! it's been a rather busy august, hasn't it? anyway this is hugely a drive-by post because we're not yet done being in a hurry, but here we go. hope you find useful things here! -k
August has been all over the place, but I guess I enjoyed a lot of things?
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Girls Generation's comeback single Forever1 -- such a bop. OG slayerssss. Happy to inform I can now identify them, thanks to a random ramen-making video we happened to watch as part of the promotions. Also I can't believe I managed to develop an SNSD bias this late in the game--it's Sooyoung, even if you didn't ask. Why? It's the hair.
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Speaking of bops: IVE's After Like!!!!! That I Will Survive sample is such a good hook.
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You probably have heard this being hummed one way or another, so yeah: It's New Jeans - Attention or Hype Boy. True, I am terrified that they are debuting so young, but damn they sound so good T_____T
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MAMAMOO's Solar and Moonbyul sub-unit? Oh hell YES.
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ANYWAY: We bought sticky tack so we could do this with our magical photocard-holding Psyduck
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PS. We got the last of the Im Nayeon x Pop behind the scenes at her music show promos, and oh my GOD Jeongyeon. As in grabe.
Dispatches from the absolute batshit realm that is TWICELAND
So yeah, August has been BUSY, here-wise, because clearly the Korean comeback is big as heck. Comms started as early as the first week of August (see also: this opening trailer that dropped 8/8), and for a time the drops were spread out few and far between. By the time we got to the week of the comeback, we were already maxed out in excitement. Looking back, I had no idea how we actually survived the strip tease drops.
ANYWAY: The title track Talk That Talk is a BOP. I loved it. From the first note. Just like I did "Celebrate" and "Pop" (which were released in July and June, respectively--can I just note that it has been a crazy last few months?? Can I??)
The video, which has the TWICE members in some sort of spy agency in various devastating costumes, deserves its own embed below, so enjoy:
Please stream Talk That Talk - parang awa niyo na lmao
A dampener in this comeback perhaps: Jihyo got COVID a few days before their comeback shows, so she was unable to join the first few music show guestings :((( Kind of sad opening weekend for Jihyo stans like this household, but still it was a great first weekend! We may not have had Jihyo, but that week gave us this very deadly Mina. Upon completing her quarantine, Jihyo was able to join the next round of shows, and man the energy level is crazy. I think this is my favorite one.
Oh, and one more thing: Happy to say we have a video that is not for the title track, and it's a 90's themed girl rock band performance of Queen of Hearts.
Also deserves its own embed because THE VISUALS
That said: The entire mini-album Between 1&2 is a no-skip album! Aside from the tracks above, I also like the tracks written by TWICE members: flirty ditties "Basics" by Chaeyoung and "Trouble" by Jihyo, and Dahyun's tracks "Gone" (who hurt u girlie?!) and "When We Were Kids" (a personal fond favorite). The other remaining track, "Brave" is also deserving of a "live clip", if you ask me! You can stream on Spotify!
https://open.spotify.com/album/3NZ94nQbqimcu2i71qhc4f?si=20CQleHKRvC6DfvKLgLVQg
Anyway—it's been such a fun comeback! Can't wait to see what's next (pero baka naman pwedeng huminga muna).
Reads
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Long read: Archive of Our Own (AO3)'s 15-year journey from blogpost to fanfiction powerhouse via The Verge -- always proud to say that I was raised on fanfiction. Such a good, nostalgic piece.
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August and everything after via Griefbacon
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'Quiet quitting' is about bad bosses, not bad employees via HBR - I was so annoyed about how careless the term 'quiet quitting' has been defined, like—having strong work boundaries and delivering within SLAs is definitely not QUITTING! It's called working, actually. It should be encouraged.
https://twitter.com/LinkedIn/status/1560379027109679105
Memes & other things
This Im Nayeon edit cannot be explained. Just like this Chaeyoung clip.
These Taylor Swift - August edits to TWICE Sana and Jeongyeon are so dreamy wtf. Also: Girls don't want boyfriends, they want Jeongyeon and Jihyo (accurate)
When people ask me about my favorite ship dynamic, it's always "in every universe, a you & me"
The perfect Sunday meme does not exi-
ANYWAY. I hope that makes up for the late-ness—here's to wrapping up Q3 and bracing ourselves for Q4 (GRABE??)
Thank you for getting this far, as always. :)
XO,
K