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kim-lexie · 3 years

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october & november favorites.

another month late rewind. oh well...2020 is what it is...

music.

'shine together' by SF9. y'all the nostalgia for some reason, rings so strong in this track. as soon as i listened i was like, oh my goodness it takes me back to easier times. i just love their vocals and the progression of the song.

nct 2020. y’all. this comeback was NO JOKE. it was brilliantly executed. i loved every moment. i loved the album. the various types of genres they tackled. BRILLIANTLY. i am excited to get the pt.2 soon in the mail. this has it’s own review because there were too many feelings to be had. and when they release the final video i’ll have an updated one with the new tracks. --and updated ‘make a wish’ is a bop, and it owns the replay button.

ost tracks from 'record of youth', ‘do do sol sol la la sol’ and 'more than friends'. i must say ost tracks tend to rule my life, especially when i find a gem in a beloved drama. some of these include: ‘go’ by seungkwan, ‘what if’ by kim jae-hwan, ‘so hard for me’ by jeebanoff, ‘falling in love’ by april, ‘late regret’ by ong seong wu, ‘serendipity’ by ha sung-woon, and ‘highlight’ by ra.L

'energetic' by wannaone. this one always manages to come back and DOMINATE my playlists.

'love killa' by monstax. seriously, can they not. their concepts and songs always go so hard. i love it and this is no exception.

'breath' by got7. this ONE. THIS FREAKING SONG. is soooooo good. 10 out of 10 would recommend. it's great, the mv is great, the vocals, the choreo. i love this comeback.

minisode1 by TXT. my children are talented precious beans, and this ep was beautiful. i love these tracks, the vibes of each song are incredible. and they are seriously the most previous children in the mv for ‘blue hour’. seriously every comeback they slay.

'i can't stop me' by twice. okay i must say that i can not make an opinion on a twice song because it never gets me in the first listen. however, it always manages to creep up and own the replay button. it’s a bop and i love it!

'your light' by TXT. this is an ost track from ‘live on’, a currently airing drama. and as soon as i heard this track i added it to my playlist. it’s great.

dramas & movies. *spoiler alert*

count your lucky stars. c-drama. this was a decent one. as always, well at least the chinese dramas i have seen all have a similar progression and this one didn't deter from that mold. i enjoyed this concept. and i love the lead actress, the reason i was drawn to this one. but i wish she was more confident like she was at the start of the drama. there were cute moments, and i loved their relationship. but he was mean. and i know he had the tragic back story but still no need to be rude to those around you, especially someone you care for deeply. i rate this is a 7 out of 10.

when i was most beautiful. k-drama. this one. i hyped up. like this was meant to be ji-soo's time to SHINE. boy, i thought my man was going to be the main lead. going to show up and finally get the girl. oh man was i in for some tragic nonsense. it was all a mess. because if only they had waited a few more years. both grew some more, maybe then it would have been perfect timing, but their timing was soooo wrong. and his brother was sooooo wrong. i still don't understand his logic, and complete disregard for his brother. i was an interesting one. and if you're looking for tragedy, and soapy drama this is one for you. i give it a 6 out of 10

romance, talk. webdrama. this was another webdrama from my main leading man, choi kyung-hoon. as i write this after a month and a half, i recall enjoying it and kind of predicting the ending, of it being the one kid in class.

school nurse files. miniseries. this was an interesting watch. unexpected and i enjoyed it, for how weird it was. definitely not something i would typically watch, but thank you to nam joo-hyuk. it follows a new school nurse eun-young who has the ability to see jelly monsters that stem from human desires. she has the power to eradicate them because sometimes they can overwhelm people/places. nam joo-hyuk's character, in-pyo, has a special power that protects him from the influence of these jellies. they have to work together to protect the school. and it's really good. the animation was great, and i loved the characters we got to see. i rate it a 8.5 out of 10.

a-teen. webdrama. this was a cute one. i loved the characters, and i finally understand the context of the instagram snippets i see. it was cute, and fun. i loved the little cameos. and i especially loved the seventeen ost tracks.

record of youth. k-drama. bro. this drama was top tier, as to be expected from my park bo-gummy. i rate it a 10 out of 10, and this one already has a review, because it was too much to contain in one rewind.

do do sol sol la la sol. k-drama. this one will have it's own review. it follows the story of our tragic ra-ra who is currently in a mess, when her fiance runs from the alter and her father unexpectedly passes away, she is scammed out of her money and finds herself in eunpo, a town full of lovely characters who come to surround her. as well as our man jun, who is ra-ra's knight in shining armor. i love it. it's great. their story funny and lighthearted. i would rate it a 10 out of 10; however, that finale had me balling my eyes out and then i felt oh so betrayed, sooooo i am still processing.

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belizedeservesbetter · 4 years

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The Worst Kind of After School Special

The hand on the playbill is choking all life out of Jagged Little Pill

There’s a lot going on in this musical so trying to figure out where to start with this is going to be as messy as this show.

You know what? We’ll start with what I liked. Get those small bits and pieces out of the way.

Alanis Morrissette is an absolutely incredible singer/songwriter and has written albums worth of amazing music that is highly specific to her life and yet feels highly specific to our own. Her songs are infused with a beautiful brand of theatricality that made me surprised she hasn’t lent them to the medium before now. That being said, of course the songs in the show are great. They’re from Jagged Little Pill! The orchestrations as well were super solid. I really trust Tom Kitt with these kinds of things, especially after the master orchestration he did with American Idiot.

Lauren Patten is just as good as everyone says she is. While I had some issues with her character (will discuss this later) I loved seeing Patten get a chance to shine. I really enjoyed her performance in last year’s Days of Rage and thought she was even better in this. Her performance felt so full and rich and completely vulnerable. Of course her rendition of “You Oughta Know” is completely awesome, and the way she started off the song completely calm and composed while already belting out the notes was really lovely to see.

There was only one characters I really truly loved and that was Mary Jane Healy, as played spectacularly by Elizabeth Stanley. Everything MJ did was far more interesting than literally anything else on that stage. Her story was interesting, fresh and unique. It felt the most honest of the plot lines by far. I was so interested in everything that happened to her and her husband Steve (an underutilized Sean Allan Krill) and yet the show quickly glossed by all of their most uncomfortable moments in favor the far less interesting high school aged characters. Stanley was truly incredible and I loved every second she was onstage. Her “Smiling” and “Unforgiven” were truly the highlights of the show.

Occasionally there was some interesting staging, one of them being this cool spinning in chairs moment during “Ironic,” which should have involved main characters Frankie and Phoenix but was instead used with an unnamed teacher character who was in exactly one (1) scene. The spinning swing set for “Head Over Feet” was also cute, if not a little precarious. I was worried Antonio Cipriano was going to topple off of it the whole time. (Side Note: He’s listed on the website as Ensemble but he definitely had a named character) The staging of “Smiling” was super cool and was the one moment in the show where I thought Diane Paulus was going to do something really incredible. I don’t want to spoil it, but it’s a really cool moment.

Alas.

Diane Paulus really can’t stage new musicals. All of her revivals are divine but there’s something about new material that just doesn’t work quite right. She throws a lot at the wall, and only some of it sticks. It felt very haphazardly directed, with a bunch of different stylistic things happening that didn’t go together. She had time to see what worked/didn’t at the out of town tryout and still chose not to make the show cohesive, which is disappointing.

However, my biggest problem with the show is the show itself. It’s messy, introduces a million different plots and characters and resolves very little. Because of this, characters were paper thin and I didn’t feel like I knew any of them besides one or two little facts. This led to me honestly not caring that much about 90% of those characters.

The primary example of this is the brother character played by Derek Klena. His name is Nick, but I had to look that up to make sure because for the life of me I had no idea who his character was. I knew he was Derek Klena, so whenever he was on stage my brain went “Oh there’s Derek Klena.” He’s perfectly fine in the show, but not only is he barely in it, he has absolutely nothing to do. I don’t really know much about his character besides “Harvard” and he very, very easily could have been taken out. Nothing about the plot would have changed. Actually, this would have given us a better opportunity to dive deeper into the other characters, who, even though we still didn’t know, affected the plot in a more prominent way.

Jo is an interesting character in that she’s one of the best performances in the show and has some of the best lines, but altogether only affects one plot point and is forced into doing so. Let me explain. “You Oughta Know” is the third best moment in the show, but it is entirely dependent on Jo previously breaking and entering into Frankie’s house, finding something out she shouldn’t have, and then ending up in NYC because the plot said she had to. The song should’ve been moved up to either the beginning of Act Two or the very end of Act One, because as of now it kind of comes out of nowhere. Anyways, I feel like if Lauren Patten wasn’t as good as she is, Jo would’ve ended up on the cutting room floor somewhere.

I had this problem with a lot of the characters, actually, just about all of them. Everyone was extremely half-baked.

First of all, there’s The Frankie Problem. Frankie is an activist and adopted and bisexual. That’s all we know about her. Does she like anything? What cause specifically motivates her? She’s an activist in the most generic term. Helen Shaw from Vulture wrote something really good about Frankie’s character, which, to sum it up, basically said Frankie is super self-important and annoying but she’s not supposed to be. We’re supposed to love Frankie, but I really didn’t like her at all. Also, nothing she does makes sense. She picks a fight with literally everyone over every single thing. Likewise, SPOILER, she cheats on her girlfriend/friend/it’s-complicated-because-it’s-never-explained relationship with Jo and fights with her mother MJ and just runs away to New York and makes a situation about a character named Bella allllll about her because she can. I wanted to know what Frankie cared about. You can say “activism!” but what specifically. Most activists have a very specific cause they especially champion, but I didn’t know what that was for Frankie. She seemingly cared about everything, but she mostly cared about herself.

This leads to the The Frankie and Phoenix Problem. This is also SPOILERS but Frankie falls very in love with Phoenix very fast and as soon as she sleeps with him for the first time she tells him she loves him, and, then, when he can’t say it back, she says this whole self-important thing about being impossible to love. However! Right before he was telling her how he was busy because he was trying to help with his sick sister! We also know extraordinarily little about Phoenix, and he kind of comes out of nowhere, so it’s tough to root for him when we’ve already had “Hand in my Pocket” to establish the Frankie and Jo connection.

On the plus side, Celia Rose Gooding, who plays Frankie, is wonderful and I look forward to seeing what she does in the future.

I really don’t know how to approach Bella’s character, because the show clearly didn’t either. This is a big spoiler, but she is raped at a party and one of the many plots of the show is about this. However, she isn’t really in the show all that much. We have no idea who she is. She’s friends with Nick, but not very. She eerily appears in the light sometimes around MJ and she has one scene with MJ, but how much they try to tie these two characters doesn’t work. I wish Bella was a character we knew more. I almost wish she was Jo, or even Frankie. If we look at the characters as tiers, with MJ and Frankie being Tier 1, Jo, Nick and Steve being Tier 2, she would be on Tier 3, along with Andrew (???) and Phoenix. She is The Girl Who Was Raped, which was actually kind of offensive.

As for the rape scene itself, they do show it in flashback. That is something you should know going into the show. It was not handled well. Also, the person who raped her (I think his name was Andrew??) is in the show for exactly two minutes. I actually thought a different character had raped her because we have no idea who anyone is.

So that’s all my story qualms.

The show utilizes this dance chorus that is absolutely obnoxious and distracting and takes away from literally every scene. They come in out of nowhere and make every single song (literally!!) a big song and dance production number, which greatly took away from the story. Every time I saw them start to dance into the scene I internally was like “wait no! stay away!”

I mean it when I say

every

single

song

was a huge production number. And we didn’t need it! It actually took away from the emotional impact they were supposed to have! Likewise, there was only one solo in the entire show! Every single other song was shared between multiple characters. I think they did this because they had too many characters and had to give everyone something to do but every time it happened, the main character singing it lost some of their needed emotional impact.

If I had my way, I would cut the ensemble in half and only use them in half the songs. The dancing was far too much and it made the story messy and it made the stage far too busy. It wasn’t even that good either. There were some nice moments, but overall it didn’t work. It was distracting and dare I say it bad.

At the end of the day, the show was “woke” for the sake of being woke. It wanted so badly to say something that it ended up saying nothing. To be honest, the amount of “wokeness” felt performative and not genuine in the slightest. It felt like an after school special in the worst kind of way. The teens weren’t people but caricatures of teenagers.

I really wanted to like Jagged Little Pill. I love writer Diablo Cody and I love Alanis Morrissette. This should have been amazing, but instead it fell flat. A show that should have been filled with life felt like a well structured after school television special. And All I Really Want(ed) was something with more grit

#jagged little pill #i really wanted to like this show and yet #lauren patten #broadway #review

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eunahfmdarchive · 4 years

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idol headcanon / not accepting!

tw: eating disorders under the cut.

send ◙ for an audition headcanon. ( wc: 215 ) eunah auditioned for dimensions entertainment online, with a video of herself singing ‘home’ from the musical version of disney’s beauty and the beast. she sent it in on a dare from a friend, who was a big fan of dimensions soloist one and a casual fan of gal.actic. it wasn’t supposed to be serious, and eunah really didn’t expect anything to come from it, so she didn’t dance for the tape at all, but her being pretty, small, and with a serious set of pipes was enough to pique dimensions’ interests. when they expressed their interest in meeting her in person, eunah was torn, but ultimately decided it couldn’t hurt to try. by that time, she already had quite a bit of experience performing on stage in musicals, and there was a big part of eunah that was already looking for something more than school and community produced amateur theatre. she was due to perform as the lead in her high school’s production of thoroughly modern millie when she received the invitation for the in person audition, and actually used her school’s choreography for the titular song for the dance portion of her audition. the fact that she actually passed, while auditioning in such a discombobulated and theatrical way remains beyond her to this day.

send ○ for a training headcanon. ( wc: 200 ) eunah trained for just under two years before debuting as 7rophy’s lead vocal. she struggled a lot during that time, and she had to spend a lot of time for the first few months there working on her korean, as she didn’t know as much as she thought she did before she moved. she was babied and heavily sheltered back at home by her parents and older sisters ever since she was born, on account of being born a month premature, so adjusting to the much tougher world of being a trainee. her struggles with weight began during this time, when her trainers encouraged her to lose weight and her fellow trainees also started to comment on it - much more maliciously than even the trainers did. eunah was never the strongest dancer, but she had the very basics of musical theatre dance and movement down, so she had to work really hard on her dancing to get it up to scratch, and unfortunately, that fact was something she used to her eating disorder’s advantage, using it to justify her weight loss to her concerned family back in seattle who were starting to ask questions whenever they video called her.

send ♥ for a headcanon about something my muse likes about being an idol. ( wc: 218 ) despite it being one of the first things 7rophy is always criticized for by anti fans and the general public, eunah really appreciates having so much experience in so many different concepts. she’s an actor by heart, and enjoyed shifting into different versions of herself. granted, it’s a bittersweet kind of appreciation, since eunah wishes that their concept changes had been better received by the public, similarly to how fuse’s were. though, she does recognize that fuse were actually marketed by gold star as a concept changing group. whereas 7rophy, on the other hand, just so happened to fall into constant concept flux by ways of dimensions entertainment’s poor management. nonetheless, eunah is glad that they got to try out lots of different styles of music, and at least the constant reinvention managed to save them from disbandment if nothing else, until dimensions allowed lux to have a heavier hand in their songs. and after all of those changes in concept, eunah is also really enthusiastic about the more “self produced” image 7rophy are being marketed with now, what with lux writing the vast majority of their group releases, eunah’s participation here or there, and what she likes most of all, as most people would expect is the control eunah has been given over her own solo music.

send ♫ for a performance headcanon. ( wc: 210 ) eunah is a very clean and polished performer. there’s always room for change and error when you’re doing any kind of live show, so it’s extra important, in her opinion, to make sure you’re as consistent as you possibly could be before it’s time to present it to the public. she has been praised for her precise way of performing by fans, who understand it’s part of the effort she’s making to execute 7rophy’s choreography as best as she can. even if she isn’t anywhere close to being the best dancer in the group, she always makes sure that she’s doing her best to try to match them. as a lead vocal, singing is where she really shines. eunah grew up doing musicals, and that particular flare for the dramatic is something she’s never lost. she doesn’t get to do it very often as a member of 7rophy, but she loves performing ballads and emotional solos. eunah is very expressive while she sings, and can easily fall into the character of a song, and usually she’s performing from that point of view, rather than from her own. even when performing her self written music, there’s a certain level of detachment there that allows her to give a fully developed performance.

send ☀ for a variety headcanon. ( wc: 204 ) eunah is pretty poor on a lot of variety shows. at a lot of hosted shows, she finds it difficult to just relax and get on with what they’re there to do or to play along with any stupid jokes. her personality really does err more on the serious side, and she does end up get teased for that a lot on shows too. she’s known for being kind of difficult to get good responses out of, which means that a lot of her good variety show moments during her career have actually been very, very much scripted. she usually does any english speaking segments in shows, too. overall, she just comes across a little bit awkwardly. eunah ends up faring a lot better on 7rophy’s own reality shows - not that they’ve had more than one or two of them over the course of the last five years - such as to. pepe, that they filmed and produced themselves last year in partnership with kaja beauty while in san francisco. things of that ilk, short segments that are more casual, and hosting are things she’s fine with, but she wouldn’t be able to survive on a show like we got married or roommate.

send ♞ for a non-performance talent headcanon. ( wc: 203 ) eunah’s main talent off stage and off screen that’s actually beneficial to her music career is writing lyrics. it’s definitely a more recent development, and isn’t ever something that she thought dimensions would ever let her follow up with. she only got the bravery to after seeing the success that lux’s lyrics and music brought 7rophy. it isn’t a skill that she’s intentionally been honing for a particularly long time, but she has kept a diary for almost her entire life, ever since she can remember, so she has become really quite adept at expressing herself through the written word. a lot of the lyrics in her first mini album, mezzanine, are directly lifted from either her diary or from her recurring late night thoughts. it’s therapeutic and cathartic for her to do something productive with what are mostly negative and self disparaging thoughts, so it’s a talent that she plans to continue honing. where eunah fails to communicate well aloud, she makes up for it in her diary, in her poetry and in her song lyrics. she’s proud of herself for learning to express herself one way or another, especially since it’s apparently a profitable method for her and her company too.

send ‼ for a career goal headcanon. ( wc: 205 ) eunah would really, really like to act more. her number one priority is getting back on the boards in a theatrical sense, whether that be in a play or in a musical. her number two priority would be to make a television acting debut. that being said, after seeing the success of a-teen, she definitely wouldn’t turn down another role in a web drama either. the bottom line is that she wants to act, and she wants to be taken at least relatively seriously as an actor too. she knows that that isn’t exactly easy for an idol actor to do, but she genuinely loves the craft, so eunah is willing to keep on trying to prove herself. other than acting, eunah is currently preparing for eunah mini album number two quietly in the background of all of her other activities, so she just wants to make sure that the songs on the album are the best that they can be, and that she shows another new side to herself, or at least a shift in herself in the songs. she’s also interested in potentially writing more for 7rophy, whether that be a throwaway lyric here or there or in collaboration with lux or not.

send ♡ for a social media headcanon. ( wc: 208 ) eunah is surprisingly active on social media for someone who’s as reserved as she seemingly is. she only really actively uses instagram, and doesn’t have a twitter, private or otherwise. she posts fairly regularly, at least three or four times a week, and they’re usually selfies or otherwise pictures of herself, sometimes alone, sometimes with crys, her and lux’s cat, sometimes with other 7rophy members. occasionally she also posts part of her creative process - nothing that could be considered a spoiler, just a picture of herself at work and a few sentences about how she’s feeling about whatever she’s working on. eunah finds it easier to be sincere and talkative with fans when she can think things through and write them out. therefore, her use of instagram has been extremely beneficial in clearing up any qualms over eunah being cold or ungrateful to her fans and to the opportunities she’s been given. she kind of also uses it as a public visual companion of sorts to her private written journal. she doesn’t have the patience for scrapbooking or instant photographs or anything like that, but she does enjoy the idea of it, so she uses her instagram has an outlet for that side of her artistic interests.

send ∞ for a future (post-idol life) headcanon. ( wc: 224 ) after idol life ends for eunah, i imagine that she would continue to be active in the entertainment industry as an actor, a soloist and a songwriter. her acting career would be her primary focus, and she would like to finally establish herself as a “serious” actor, and would likely work mostly in theatre, though not exclusively. eunah would really, really have an interest in making a broadway debut one day, potentially moving between seoul and new york regularly. it’s been her dream ever since she was a little girl to be on a broadway stage, and with the experience she’s wracking up under her belt and her american citizenship, she’s pretty sure that she can make it happen. her solo music would come second to acting. i don’t think that she’d necessarily be doing the music show circuit anymore, but that she’d mostly release digital singles and albums, promoting them minimally but ... enough to see success. the goal would be that by this time, her name would precede her to an extent, so that she could really do her music stuff on her own terms. she would love to still be at least collaborating with the other members of 7rophy, and she would rather die than be separated from milk, but she doesn’t expect the group to last forever by any means.

send ✈ for an airport fashion headcanon. ( wc: 202 ) eunah’s taste in fashion is actually rather colourful. she likes most colours, but pink and orange shades are her favourites. she’s also a big fan of clothes that can hide her body relatively well while not being too baggy. she saves the extra baggy stuff for when she’s at home. in airports though, fans are likely to see eunah wearing comfortable, tailored cotton dresses, usually still worn slightly loose fitting on purpose, oftentimes paired with an oversized corduroy or denim jacket. other times she wears cuddly cardigans, usually in white, cream and beige shades, usually paired with high waisted pants. her preferred styles of pants are slightly ill fitting, straight leg jeans and loose, wide legged cotton pants. eunah’s airport outfits, and her outfits in general, are usually affordable. she has one or two expensive statement pieces, but she uses them to death. one example would be her marc jacobs crossbody bag. she’s had it for over three years, and it’s definitely not the height of fashion anymore, but it does the job, and has consistently shown up as part of every airport outfit eunah’s been seen in since she first bought it. eunah also often wears her glasses to the airport.

send ☛ for a public image headcanon. ( wc: 220 ) at the moment, eunah’s public image is mostly favourable, though some people do see her as being too cold and too quiet for her own good. since embarking on her solo career over the last year, the number of people with that impression of her have dropped significantly. the idea that dimensions currently have for her is a shy, girl next door from the us, who can really turn it out on stage, someone who genuinely loves and cares about her craft and art. it’s easy enough for eunah to play into, since it’s not that far from the truth, even if she would never admit to naturally falling a little bit into the typical girl next door role. during the early days of 7rophy’s career, when they were almost nonexistent in the eyes of the public, eunah was really only known for her extremely low weight. she wasn’t even known much by name, she was just a photo and a number on a list of “skinny idols”. this, combined with the weight loss narrative that was spun around her after predebut photos and videos were uploaded to the internet, was very harmful to eunah’s body image and emotional well being, and is something she still struggles with having as part of her history as an idol to this day.

send ❂ for a voice-related (singing or rapping) headcanon. ( wc: 210 ) eunah is a comfortable mezzo soprano, and she has very good control over her head, chest and mixed voice. aside from her vocal training under dimensions, eunah was also coached in singing for musical theatre as a child. she takes care of her vocal chords as well as she can. she keeps drinking to a minimum, keeps dairy to a minimum and always warms up very, very thoroughly. she likes how her voice sounds the most when she sings in her upper range. eunah is also very comfortable experimenting with her voice, trying out pop sounds, jazz sounds and theatrical ballad sounds depending on the mood that she’s in. she never, ever likes to sacrifice technique though. keeping her voice safe is paramount to her. she’s been lucky that the lines she’s been assigned over the years in 7rophy’s songs have suited her voice well, and that she hasn’t had to strain and damage her vocal chords. when she was still just a kid, she heard about the dreaded legally blonde high notes that had to be lowered because of the damage that they supposedly did to the original elle woods’ voice, and it’s the main reason that she’s so careful with her voice. that story made her extremely paranoid.

#fmdmeme003 #eating disorder tw #oh m yGod ... they are all done #it is midnight #i will now sleep #thank you everyone who sent some in!!!#i just powered them out and my brain is BUZZING

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lonelier-version-of-you · 4 years

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Finally listening to Folklore. I did a ‘thoughts on...’ post for Lover, so I suppose it’s only fair I do one for this album too. So, here we go.

I’ll give my thoughts, list favourite lyrics, and rate each track as I did before. Also - because if you’re the type of person who follows me, then we all know this is probably the information you’re REALLY looking for - I’m gonna rate each song based on how Johnrik it is.

the 1:

A gorgeous opening track. It has a lovely, wistful tone to it.

Favourite lyrics: “Persist and resist the temptation to ask you / if one thing had been different / would everything be different today?” “But we were something, don’t you think so? Roaring 20s, tossing pennies in the pool / and if my wishes came true, it would’ve been you / in my defense, I have none / for never leaving well enough alone”.

7/10. Johnrik rating: 9/10.

Rest of the album under the cut ‘cause this is LONG.

cardigan:

Oh, I LOVE this song. It starts out tender and beautiful and slowly turns into sad and equally beautiful.

Favourite lyrics: “You drew stars around my scars / but now I’m bleeding” “But I knew you’d linger like a tattoo kiss / I knew you’d haunt all of my what-ifs / the smell of smoke would hang around this long / ‘cause I knew everything when I was young”

8/10. Johnrik rating: 8/10.

the last great american dynasty:

PERFECTION. Taylor really shows her gift for not just songwriting, but storytelling here. This is already one of my favourite songs from the album.

Favourite lyrics: “They say she was seen on occasion / pacing the rocks staring out at the midnight sea / and in a feud with her neighbor / she stole his dog and dyed it key lime green / fifty years is a long time / Holiday House sat quietly on that beach / free of women with madness / their men and bad habits, and then it was bought by me”

10/10. Johnrik rating: N/A, because it’s very specific but it’s also a fantastic song so I felt guilty giving 0/10.

exile (ft. Bon Iver):

I wasn’t that into this song but then Taylor started singing and WOW. It’s really good.

Favourite lyrics: “I never learned to read your mind | Never learned to read my mind / I couldn’t turn things around | You never turned things around / ‘cause you never gave a warning sign | I gave so many signs”

9/10. Johnrik rating: 10/10.

my tears richochet:

FUCK FUCK FUCK THIS IS LITERALLY SO JOHN @ HENRIK VIBES I’M GOING TO CRY.

This is also an absolutely stunning song with a brilliant concept behind it, and definitely a favourite. BUT FUCK THE LYRICS ARE SO JOHN’S GHOST HAUNTING HENRIK ARRRGHHHH.

Favourite lyrics: “And if I’m dead to you / why are you at the wake?” “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace / and so the battleships will sink beneath the waves / you had to kill me, but it killed you just the same”

10/10. Johnrik rating: 10000/10.

mirrorball:

Another beautiful song and probably one I’ll have on repeat for a while yet. I could see this one being a really successful single.

Favourite lyrics: “Hush / when no one is around, my dear / you’ll find me on my tallest tiptoes / spinnin’ in my highest heels, love / shining just for you” “I’m still a believer but I don’t know why / I’ve never been a natural, all I do is try, try, try / I’m still on that trapeze, I’m still tryin’ everything / to keep you looking at me”

10/10. Johnrik rating: 8/10.

seven:

This song is lovely, but I’m not gonna lie, any song that uses childhood stuff as a metaphor always puts me off because it just makes my traumatised ass feel alienated.

Favourite lyrics: “And I’ve been meaning to tell you / I think your house is haunted / your dad is always mad and that must be why / and I think you should come live with me / and we can be pirates / then you won’t have to cry / or hide in the closet”.

I’ll give this a, fittingly, 7/10. Johnrik rating: 4/10.

august:

I like songs where Taylor does that breathy thing with her voice, so I automatically love this one. The lyrics are great too.

Favourite lyrics: “But I can see us lost in the memory / August slipped away into a moment in time / ‘cause it was never mine / and I can see us twisted in bedsheets / August sipped away like a bottle of wine / ‘cause you were never mine”

8/10. Johnrik rating: 7/10.

this is me trying:

This song is very sonically interesting - it sounds quite unique. So I like that.

It also resonates with me, really hard. Definitely going on my ‘songs to listen to when I’m sad’ playlist.

Favourite lyrics: “They told me all my cages were mental / so I got wasted like all my potential / and my words shoot to kill when I’m mad / I have a lot of regrets about that / I was so ahead of the curve that the curve became a sphere / fell behind all my classmates and I ended up here”

10/10 because I can relate so much to it. Johnrik rating: 6/10, I could see John singing this to Henrik.

illicit affairs:

Oh, HERE it is! The Gay Song of the album! Wondered when we were gonna get around to that. Some of Taylor’s songs, you can just tell are about women, and this is one of them.

Favourite lyrics: “Leave the perfume on the shelf / that you picked out just for him / so you leave no trace behind / like you don’t even exist / take the words for what they are / a dwindling, mercurial high / a drug that only worked / the first few hundred times”

9/10. Johnrik rating: also 9/10.

invisible string:

This is cute. I like it. Reminds me a lot of Paper Rings.

Favourite lyrics: “Bold was the waitress on our three-year trip getting lunch down by the lakes / she said I looked like an American singer”

7/10. Johnrik rating: 3/10.

mad woman:

I knew from the title my crazy-and-proud self was gonna LOVE this song. Spoiler: I love it. It’s like a stripped-down version of an Emilie Autumn song, that’s the sort of vibe it has. Also Taylor said “fuck” and it was brilliant.

Favourite lyrics: “Every time you call me crazy / I get more crazy / what about that? / and when you say I seem angry / I get more angry”

“And there’s nothing like a mad woman / what a shame she went mad / no one likes a mad woman / you made her like that / and you poked that bear ‘til her claws come out / and you find something to wrap your noose around / and there’s nothing like a mad woman”

“The master of spin / has a couple side flings / good wives always know / she should be mad / should be scathing like me / but no one likes a mad woman”

10/10, again because it means a lot to me. Johnrik rating: N/A. (Though if you wanted to get a Holby connection in there, you could probably spin it into a Jac song...)

epiphany:

This is a beautiful ballad, and the meaning behind it is lovely.

Favourite lyrics: “And some things you just can’t speak about”

9/10. Johnrik rating: N/A again.

betty:

I said ‘illicit affairs’ was the Gay Song. Nevermind. TAYLOR IS LITERALLY PUTTING OUT LOVE SONGS TO WOMEN AND NONE OF YOU GUYS ARE NOTICING. I know it’s written from the perspective of a male character, but still??

Favourite lyrics: “If I showed up at your party / Would you have me? Would you want me? / Would you tell me to go fuck myself, or lead me to the garden?”

8/10. Johnrik rating: Another N/A I’m afraid. Though I kind of like to imagine young!Henrik and Maja to this song, in an AU where he 1. came back to her after running away and 2. wasn’t probably too mentally ill to be a parent or hold down a steady relationship.

peace:

This is such a lovely song. The theme reminds me a bit of ‘In Love But Not At Peace’ by Dar Williams - though that one’s a much sadder take, this one has some hope to it.

Favourite lyrics: “But I’m a fire and I’ll keep your brittle heart warm / if your cascade ocean blue waves come / all these people think love’s for show / but I would die for you in secret / the devil’s in the details / but you’ve got a friend in me / would it be enough, if I could never give you peace?”

8/10. Johnrik rating: 7/10.

hoax:

OH HEY SHE JUST GOES AND CLOSES OUT THE ALBUM WITH ANOTHER JOHNRIK SONG. THERE GOES MY HEART. “Don’t want no other shade of blue, but you / no other sadness in the world would do”... that’s them alright. Fuck, I’m emotional.

Favourite lyrics: “This has frozen my ground / stood on the cliffside screaming ‘give me a reason’ / your faithless love's the only hoax I believe in”

10/10. Johnrik rating: also 10/10.

Overall album rating: 9/10.

#Taylor Swift #long post

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cdyssey · 5 years

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Hadestown (7/14/19), Act I

Act II

This is largely just me rambling about how much I love Hadestown and how beautiful it was to see live, but I’m going to be heavy on spoilers, so please don’t read this if you want to go in blind!!!

*An overlay pic I did in, like, three seconds on my phone, lol.

Hadestown, a sweeping thesis statement: It was the most beautiful musical I’ve seen in my life, and it touched me profoundly.

Hadestown, a hieroglyphic summary of me during the entire show: 😭😭😭😭😭😭 (I’m srs. I was in tears every three minutes. I cried during the standing ovation.)

Hadestown, Act One:

“Road to Hell” —

What an opening number. My gods—so vivacious and vital and joyfully, deliriously alive.

The first noises you hear in the moments before “Road to Hell” are the sharp clacks of André’s shoes as he makes his way across the stage. Even in a handful of silent seconds, he makes his presence known. Right before he starts the song, he unbuttons his coat and shows his sparkly vest off. I love him???????

Like, I adore how he so perfectly inhabits the role of an omniscient, omnipresent narrator. He’s literally a god walking among men, and that’s such a beautiful take on Hermes.

The stage for “Road to Hell” is set up to be a kind of bar where Orpheus works as a busboy! Orpheus sweeps around cleaning off tables, and Eurydice (Jessie Shelton!!) comes in seeking shelter from the cold. When Hermes announces that it’s the beginning of Orpheus and Eurydice’s tale, they come face to face for the first time and simply stare at each other.

Also, you know how Hermes takes extra care to mention that Orpheus’s mother was a Muse and a friend of his?? I think that tidbit helps set up the friendly, mentor-like relationship Hermes and Orpheus have throughout the musical!!

“Any Way the Wind Blows” —

Okay, this is where I desperately wish that the entire OBC was out because I only remember a couple of things from this song, and that makes me sad. ;-;

But what I can tell y’all is that Jessie Shelton is a brilliant, nuanced Eurydice. Her youth and her scrappiness shine through; her hunger—for sustenance, for hope, for a better life—evidences itself in every note she sings!!

AND THE FATES. MY GODS, THE FATES. I LOVE THEM. Kay, Jewelle, and Yvette imbue them with such chaotic evil energy™. They’re quite sinister throughout the musical, tempting and teasing whomever they’re stalking in turns. I’d literally die for all of them!!

But anyway, in this song, Eurydice lights a candle to protect herself from the cold, and the Fates constantly lurk over her shoulder, pretty much dogging her. It’s here you begin to realize what weight Eurydice has on her shoulders. She knows what’s behind her back. She knows who’s trying to steal her light.

OH, OH, and up to around “Epic I,” keep an eye on Hades and Persephone in the balcony!! They’re playing dominoes together.

“Come Home With Me” —

ASFVDS. The intro to this one is so funny. Hermes tries to play wingman for Orpheus and advises him to be chill and not come on too strong. Immediately afterwards, Orpheus is, like, COME HOME WITH ME. MARRY ME.

(Reeve Carney is a national treasure and should b protected.)

But basically, this song is Orpheus’s proposal song!! Eurydice is skeptical, but she increasingly and incrementally warms up to him.

“Wedding Song” —

OOH, this one’s a jam!! It sounds like something str8 off of a country album.

A lot of it is Eurydice warming up to the idea of marrying Orpheus. She’s obviously at war with what she knows and what she wants—the world she dreams about and the world she lives in.

Sometime during the song, Orpheus sings the “la, la, la” melody to her and inexplicably procures a flower for her. So awed by it and him and the magic they create together with their love, Eurydice melts.

Also, holy heck!!! The staging is really amazing for this one. At some point, Orpheus walks on a bridge of tables to Eurydice. He finishes one table, and one of the company members moves another so that it’s right in front of him.

“Epic I” —

Just so y’all know, every time an “Epic” is sung, I just full on start crying. 😭

“Epic I” starts with Orpheus trying to figure out where the “la, la, la” melody came from, and Hermes tells him it used to be sung by Persephone and Hades. He urges our boy to recall their love story through song.

As he sings, attention is drawn to the balcony for the first time since “Road to Hell” as the gods react to their story being sung. Hades is largely uninterested, but Persephone leans over the balcony to listen to Orpheus, obviously moved.

“Livin’ It Up On Top” —

Is this a good time 2 declare my undying love for Amber Gray and everything she stands for?????????

BECAUSE GODS, SHE’S AMAZING. I saw her in Great Comet as Hélène, and even then, I was impressed by the nuance she brought to what could have been a one-note character in the wrong hands, but her Persephone?????????? Brilliant. Flawless. The love of my life. I’m forever a stan. With her loose (but graceful) limbs and brightly lit eyes, she makes sure you know that Persephone is one hell of a character without even singing so much as a word, but when she does sing?? The power and liveliness in her voice echoes all over Walter Kerr.

Amber 👏 Gray 👏 is 👏 a 👏 powerhouse.

OKAY, back to the song!! This might be a little before it starts or right as it begins, but before she leaves the balcony to usher in spring, she kisses Hades on the cheek. He doesn’t really react, and that broke my heart.

(ALSO, BASELESS CONJECTURE, but you know how Hermes mentions that Persephone is always late?? I’ve always wondered if that’s her parallel to Hades being early. Even though their relationship has stagnated, she doesn’t want to leave him. 😭😭😭😭)

Like “Road to Hell,” this song’s just full of life and fun. Persephone plays around with Eurydice and Orpheus a lot, and it’s honestly the first time we see Eurydice loosen up and let herself be happy.

“All I’ve Ever Known” —

Eurydice and Orpheus make me emo. ;-;

At some point, when she’s singing that all she’s ever known is how to hold her own, Orpheus reaches out for her. She flinches at first, but a couple of verses later, reaches out to him.

When Orpheus sings “I’m gonna hold you forever,” he hugs her from behind and crushes her tightly to his chest, and the relief on her face was just palpable. Oh, my godssssss.

All the while, Persephone is watching them, obviously in love with their love, and Hades is reading a newspaper on the balcony!

“Way Down Hadestown” —

LEGIT ONE OF MY FAVES. GOD, THE LYRICS, THE ENERGY, AND THE ACTING WAS AMAZING.

“Better go get your suitcase packed! Guess it’s time to go!” The Fates sing this mockingly at Persephone, and shortly after this, she slowly bends over in despair, her face hidden, her arms limp.

BUT THEN, and this almost made me SCREAM, she begins to tap her feet to the music EVEN AS SHE’S STILL BENT OVER. ASFCDSS. I love Amber Gray. It’s almost like, depressed though she may be, she can’t help but dance to the rhythm. She does this right up until her next verse.

Throughout the first half of the song, Orpheus and Eurydice are just, like, hella enjoying the music together. They’re snuggling and cuddling, and at one point, they’re lying down at the front of the stage spooning as they watch Hermes, Persephone, and co. dance.

In the second half of the song, though, when Hermes starts warning them about the dangers of Hadestown, there’s a subtle shift. Even though the music is still jaunty, he and Persephone and the company are clearly trying to drill it into the lovebirds’ brains that all that glitters isn’t gold. I used to dislike tht those lines were taken from Orpheus, but now I really appreciate the meaning the change conveys.

Hades shows up in his jacket and glasses and gets a big laugh with his “I missed ya” line. (SPOILER ALERT: PATRICK PAGE IS ALSO THE LOML.)

“Seems like he owns everything.” / “Kinda makes you wonder how it feels...” When Eurydice longingly sings this line, Hades lowers his glasses to appraise her, his interest caught. Orpheus, seeing the way he looks at her, jumps in front of Eurydice as though to shield her.

GOD, this song was good.

(OH, and question? Is the accordion a big part of Hades’s musical motif? I noticed that there’s a lot more of it being played whenever he shows up or is being talked about.)

“A Gathering Storm” —

I’ll talk about this more later, but the lighting work is incredible in Hadestown. Like, in this song, for instance, the blues and grays are sharp departures from how brightly lit the stage was when Persephone was down for spring.

This song is where the ideological divide between Eurydice and Orpheus really becomes apparent as Orpheus grapples with the tragedy that spring is gone, while Eurydice just accepts it. It’s just how it is. He runs to finish his song, while Eurydice runs to find them food and shelter. You can see the fear and and hunger and desperation begin to creep upon Eurydice’s face again. Gone now is the girl who laughed and dance during “Livin’ It Up On Top.”

“Epic II / “Chant” —

“Epic II” is Orpheus trying to finish his song as he continues to piece together why winter came so early! I think Eurydice is offstage for this one, presumably scavenging for food while he writes like he’s running out of time.

I don’t remember WHY it’s so awesome, but the transition from “Epic II” to “Chant” is incredible. (@WHOEVER IS RESPONSIBLE - RELEASE THE REST OF THE OBC, PLS.)

ALSO, “CHANT.” GOD. This has always been up there in my top five for its lyrics alone, but the staging is insane. If there’s a song in Hadestown that works like a well-oiled machine made up of so many moving parts, then it’s “Chant.”

When Persephone starts singing about how bright and hot it is, she calls attention to the fact that the lighting upon her is exceptionally, painfully bright. Throughout this entire song, her face is shattered with fear and horror as she looks around and takes in what Hades did to their kingdom. It’s heartwrenching, and I CRIED.

The company is absolutely incredible in every song, but I was especially struck by their movements here. Toiling away, they circled the raised pedestal that Hades and Persephone stood on. At one point, their movements were such that they resembled a gear moving.

And also, these acting choices makes me so damn emo: For “Chant” up to “Epic III,” Hades can’t hardly keep his eyes off of Persephone, both when she’s singing to him or he’s singing to her. However, after she’s done singing to him, she nigh refuses to look at him while he sings to her. Patrick and Amber r the best.

When Orpheus sings his first “la, las” in “Chant,” he’s still trying to write his song. In her conversation with Hermes, Eurydice grows increasingly frustrated, as in, How the hell is a song going to save us? She still has a little hope at this point, but it’s quickly waning. The red carnation in her hair, put there by Persephone in “Livin’ It Up On Top” is the brightest item on the stage. (It especially contrasts well with Eurydice’s monochromatic costume.)

ALSO, Jessie went HARD on Eurydice’s high notes. SHE’S SO GOOD, Y’ALL.

In the middle of “Chant” when Orpheus is still trying to figure out Hades and Persephone’s story, Hermes is trying to warn him about the storm ahead, about Eurydice, but he’s so caught up in what he’s doing, that he can’t hear or see anything beyond his lyre and the lyrics.

Towards the tail end of “Chant,” the Fates steal Eurydice’s backpack and coat, really sealing in the apparent hopelessness of her situation. The way Eurydice hugs her arms against the wind made me want to CRY.

“Hey, Little Songbird” / “When the Chips Are Down” / “Gone, I’m Gone” —

It’s either at the tail end of “Chant” or the beginning of “Songbird,” but Persephone is lowered into the ground through the in-stage elevator (that usually symbolizes the ascent and descent to Hadestown), while Hades remains above ground to croon at Eurydice. The entire time she’s lowered down, she stares angrily at Hades until she’s pulled from sight.

TIME TO TALK ABOUT PATRICK PAGE NOW!!! His voice is so unreal—it’s like a sinkhole, so deep and consuming and churning with gravel. I literally can’t imagine any other person doing what he does in the role of Hades.

“Songbird” largely consists of Eurydice trying her best to resist Hades’s temptation, but faltering as he starts to echo her own thoughts. I think he hits the biggest nerve when he guesses that Orpheus is a penniless poet.

“SONGBIRD VS. RATTLESNAKE.” OMG, I didn’t realize that the Fates are the rattlesnake until seeing this song live and watching them sashay across the stage like one. ASDFVDS, I’m so dumb. Anyway, again, and I cannot stress this enough, but the Fates are incredible. If Hades opened the wound, then the Fates drove in the nail, reemphasizing what Eurydice already half-believes.

“THE FIRST SHALL BE FIRST, AND THE LAST SHALL BE LAST. CAST YOUR EYES TO HEAVEN—YOU GET A KNIFE IN THE BACK.” Omg, first of all, these lines go hard, and secondly, with the knife line, Eurydice acts like she’s been stabbed, and her entire face just contorts with pain.

“Gone, I’m Gone” is incredibly affecting. I don’t know if Eva does this live, but Jessie sounded like she was sobbing as she sung this.

When Eurydice decides to descend to Hadestown, the elevator goes down with her and returns with only her flower. I straight up lost it.

“Wait for Me” / “Why We Build the Wall”—

HELLO, AMERICAN THEATRE WING?? WHERE IS REEVE CARNEY’S TONY AND APOLOGY LETTER???? THANK YOU.

At the beginning of “Wait for Me,” Hermes picks up the carnation and twiddles it in his hand until the line “With all your heart?” Then, he places it on Orpheus’s, well, heart.

God, the lamps swinging through Walter Kerr made me weep. That’s such a beautiful staging choice. Rachel Chavkin, wherever you are, I love you.

“Wait For Me” received an extended applause. It most certainly went on for at least two minutes.

God, I love “Why We Build the Wall.” I could drown Patrick Page’s voice and be happy with that life decision. (On a side note, does the intro of this one remind anyone of Johnny Cash’s “Hurt”????)

This is the first song in which Persephone comes down in her Hadestown garb, a black dress, her hair restrained in a net(?). The difference between the bright green and the black is harrowing. All of the energy just seems to be vacuumed out of her. She, Hermes, and the company sycophantically sing when Hades asks them to.

After the instrumental portion of the song, Eurydice ascends on the elevator, arriving in Hadestown. She almost immediately makes eye contact with Persephone, quite obviously feeling the same shock that I did upon seeing the lively goddess clothed in black. Shock turns to horror as she realizes that this isn’t the rest she’d been hoping for. Persephone looks at her sadly as Hades calls her into the office to sign papers.

And oh, God, this musical absolutely ruined me in the best of possible ways. I’ll type up my thoughts on Act II tomorrow!!!

#hadestown #eurydice #orpheus #persephone #hades #p: hadestown #hadestown spoilers #i'm so emo #i just needed to catalog my thoughts #so i don't forget them

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miamory-hj · 5 years

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Hotel Del Luna

I started this drama because I liked the concept of ghost hotel showed in the trailers and of course i just love IU and i like Yeo Jin Goo. To be honest this drama didn't follow the concept I imagined after watching the trailer. But I still liked it a lot. This will definitely go to my favorites' list. I truly recommend this drama to everyone, because it is beautiful and I am sure you will love that. BUT people who don't like subplots might be bored. I watched many of the Hong Sisters' dramas, and the Director's dramas and well, none of them were out of ordinary, they all had a great start but failed to keep being great later for me. However this one I can say may be considered as an exception and a success. Maybe that is because of IU's character, but overall ot was great :) Shorter review at the end. Story: Tied destinies, tied fates. The red knot that is connecting all of them shows us a story of love friendship and atonement. This drama is about a Korean legend, that somewhere around there, there is a place a hotel of the moon where the people who passed away can stay for few days, can rest before they go on to the journey to the afterlife. The story centers around Man Wol (full moon) and the new manager at her hotel. It's a story that goes through time and space and is a really long one. However during this journey you also see a lot of others. Ghost's side stories that happen throughout a drama and take a lot of time. Well, I truly LOVE this kind of side stories. It's like the good old Japanese mystery dramas/animes I loved. Lots of sidestories all of them can be a story of their own but they still all connect the main story. There are people around there who don't enjoy these kind of things, so If you are so, you might not like the drama as much as I did, however I guarantee you will love the beauty of the drama and IU in it. So you might as well give it a try :) I loved how this drama focused on the afterlife. Usually the ghost stories don't interest me. But I loved that they showed how people can be taken over by their feelings, almost eaten up and have to wait until that clears, so they can go forward to the afterlife world and then be born again. They showed how sometimes Man Wol helped them not to lose themselves, keep the consciousness and wait till their grudge calms down or disappears. They showed how everything in people's life is not simple and yet it is not so complicated after death. The whole concept of the hotel where ghosts can stay and rest before going to the after life was amazing. I also liked how it changed with time and looked suitable to the era it was in. I liked how they showed that those ghosts can be super scary and at the same time they are still those humans wanting or willing something, it can be something terrible though. It also showed that the grudge even if fulfilled can't be so satisfying as it seemed to be. I really loved it. I loved the concept of feeling of guilt too and how it can make people do unimaginable things even after death. I totally liked all the special services the hotel provided. Anyway it's a complex story about fates that are tied together even after death. Characters: Oh IU is marvelous as Man Wol! lol I think everyone heard of her amazing wardrobe, hairstyles and makeup. Well She changed her outfit like 7-10 times during an episode and i LOVED it. haha sometimes it was ridiculous but sometimes it was amazing. Beautiful! But Man Wol was not only pretty she was very strong. a perfect woman. She was feminine yet very strong and at the same time fragile. I loved how she felt confident even while not understanding the economic stuff. I find it also cute how she lived so many years but didn't spent them for learning (which i would LOL) but rather she was all about eating and dressing. haha I loved her character a lot. And I think it will not be wrong to say that this drama hold on to this character and is build around her. Gu Chan Song was also nice. He was an average boy who studied well, in prestige places. He wasn't a special character BUT he was very kind and sweet and smart. I loved him. Thanks to that simple yet warm personality Man Wol could have been moved. <3 I just loved all the main side characters! The three employees of the hotel were such a nice and cute team. I love that we saw more of them at the end. Each of the characters had their own complicated past but each of them still became new people working there and i loved their different personalities. I loved Sanchez(<3) and Mi Ra and the Detective. Sanchez i loved the most out of them. He was a funny friend of the male lead and i think he added a lot of comedy to the show as well as grief. I totally Loved the gods!! <3 All their personalities were so different and they all did different things <3 I would have liked to talk about all the side characters, even minor ones and even cameos, but I will stop here. :) Cinematography: As I said this drama is beautiful! I am going to make a list of beautiful dramas. It's amazing! I really love the cinematography here. And I love the wardrobe of the characters. <3 Acting: Acting was a Top-Notch. Well I always wanted to say about acting in Characters as they go hand to hand but I saved it for here. IU is always great at acting, i love her in all of her dramas. After the Most amazing but dark and sad my mister role, here she was vivid, wonderful and outstanding. She made the outfit changing in the drama something to look forward to. Yeo Jin Goo is always great at acting but I think this is his BEST tole as a grown-up after Circle. I loved circle but all his other dramas were just meh after it. Finally he got a role where he could fully shine :) Other actors were also amazing! P.O did a great job!!! omg i never thought he will play so well lol xDDD I hope he gets more roles now :) And the Cameos were wonderful!!! So many people made cameos <3 And the last cameo was just soooo impressive!!!!!!!!! I want to separately say about the Ma Go God. That actress is amazing, truly!! I am so happy she played here lol. The most memorable role of her that I saw was in Good Thief Bad Thief. Oh my she was crazy there. I hated her character with all my heart at first and at the end of the drama I couldn't wait to see her lol. Here she was amazing playing so many <3 I became a fan. OST: Well Ost was great :) nice songs, nice artists. what was left in my memory was mostly IU's song that was played only once lol. I just love IU's singing and her Flower Bookmark albums. Also her in MUDO festival with Park Myung Soo XD haha IN SHORT!! : What i liked: -IU!! IU !! IU!! -Yeo Jin Goo -The three employees -Outfits -Beauty -cameos -some concepts -somewhat ending -ending super last scene!!!! What I didn't like: -some parts of the ending (well It was very logical and well done!! (minor Spoiler!!!!!!!!) - she had to leave and I agree with it yes, but overall they could have showed it much better) - ending outfits and slowness ( LOL well this one is just something to say if I have to really say something i didn't like, because overall i liked it a lot lol, but during the last episode everything felt super slow, and her outfits were not so amazing. I understand it was necessary though so this can't be considered as something bad about the drama. I just have nothing else to say lol) hmmmm i can't find anything else i didn't like lol. It was great! A bit not what I expected but It was great I loved it! <3 P.S. I don't usually re-watch dramas so the score i give there is random. I DESPERATELY NEED HOTEL BLUE MOON!!!! Omg!!! Kim Soo Hyun was amazing O_O lol that is like a host club ROFL

#hotel del luna #manwol #IU #kdrama #review

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cureforbedbugs · 7 years

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Moana

I need to take a break to tell everyone who doesn't already know how great Moana is.

First, you have to understand that I've listened to the Moana soundtrack in its entirety at least twice a day for the last month or two, because my son is obsessed with it. He's never seen the film.

Second, you have to understand that I had zero expectations for Moana. I've written a little about Frozen, a film whose ideas and cultural relevance I find fascinating but, as a movie, I can take or leave. (I mean, there are fucking trolls in it.) I think the music sounds too much like karaoke versions of better songs and the Broadway "we're singing but we're telling a story!" style leads me to forget a lot of the actual melodies and words, i.e., they don't function well enough as songs. Anyway, Frozen was my high bar for Disney movies not coming through Pixar, and Moana was so much better than Frozen that I almost couldn't believe it even came from Disney.

Third, you have to understand that since I'm having lots of thoughts about Kesha lately, the fact that the very first song in this movie sounds like the intro track to a Kesha album is meaningful. And its lyrics, loosely translated, are:

"Pardon us, Tagaloa [creator of the world, kinda] Look down upon the world The light (I stand before you) It is good and beautiful (My desire) Look down (The journey has begun) At how beautiful our lives are"

Or, in Kesha-speak, "Excuse me, God, sorry to bother you, but look at how fucking beautiful we are down here!"

Anyway, instead of telling you what Moana does really well, since you should see it, let me just give you a quick list of things that this movie does NOT do, to explain how miraculous it is that this movie exists. That means there are some sneak spoilers here, but I try not to talk too much about the plot.

(1) This movie does not make a big deal about how exceptional it is that Moana is a woman hero in this journey. No one remarks that she is a "female" future chieftan of her island. She's just the only daughter of the current leader, hence she is the new leader.

(2) This movie does not give Moana a complicated or fucked up relationship with her parents. They are lovely people who want their daughter to be safe and happy. Full stop. She has great parents. They understand her, and anything they do to prevent her from doing what she wants is genuinely out of concern for her safety. And her mom's still alive! Yay!

(3) No one dies in this movie for unnatural reasons. No one needs to die for the movie to be resolved. No one dies in collateral damage or in the service of plot.

(4) No one is desperate to leave their home. Moana leaves not because she needs "more" or because she's in exile or because she has to prove something to someone else. She feels responsible to go on a fated journey to save her people, because she is a good leader and knows that the most she can do is follow her inner voice into the ocean to SAVE THE WORLD.

(5) No authority figure is "put in their place" because the main character broke away from some kind of stifling authority. Moana's father understands exactly why she wants to journey beyond her island. He's afraid she will die as a result, and when she comes back they were both right. She was in grave danger! But it was also important that she do it! And there's no great hay made of their different perspectives. They're both right in the beginning, and they both stay right at the end. People learn things about themselves without having to have other people "unlearn" things about _them_selves.

(6) There is no romantic relationship, love interest, or even mention of the possibility of romantic partnership in this movie. Not once. Not ever. Not even a whisper of it. No one gives a shit. It's just not mentioned. NO ONE CARES. Like, maybe Moana will marry someone, sure, I guess, but literally never once -- NOT ONCE -- does anyone talk about anybody but Moana doing Moana.

(7) I'm sorry, I just have to say that again. There is not even a HINT of romantic partnership in this movie. Not a single line about it. Not a single word. Not a single thought given to it. None. Zero. Zilch. Just isn't part of the story. It's not even a question of whether it should be part of the story. It's not even a question of whether it COULD be part of the story. It couldn't be. It's not in the story. Anywhere. At all.

(8) There's no "villain." There's an imbalance that needs to be balanced, and there's a weird David Bowie crab that loves food and gold. And the crab lives in a realm of monsters where, like, if you're going to just break into his house and try to take this thing that literally just fell on his back, he has the right to defend himself, right? AND GUESS WHAT HE DOESN'T HAVE TO DIE TO GET OUT OF THAT SCRAPE SEE #3 ABOVE.

(9) There's no obvious show-stopper centerpiece song. This is a minor pleasure. But Lin Manuel-Miranda (and the others', I guess, but he really shines through) songs are cyclical, overlapping, relatively subtle, but still memorable. They become a kind of aural tapestry, which is what makes listening to the soundtrack on repeat less of a chore than other soundtracks. Interestingly, the other soundtrack my son is obsessed with is The Nightmare Before Christmas, which has a very similar kind of flow -- two or three relative peaks that the other songs shift and cycle around.

(10) The final point I'll leave here without really underlining it, re: cultural representation and what this film does not do. I don't have any authority to speak to this. From what I saw, it just feels like the cumulative impact of these other 9 things the movie doesn't do might charitably extend to its cultural depictions of an indigenous culture -- i.e., first do no harm, operate in good faith, keep it simple. That's one for future research; I just know that I didn't leave with any red flags set off or sour aftertaste given the opportunities for some seriosly sketchy representation. Maybe that's on me. But everything else about the movie suggests that it might not just be me.

#moana #music2017

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meleeavatarsokka · 6 years

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You know who is a REAL bad bitch? The Misconceptions of Us.

Buckle up kiddos, I am going to explain why.

The Misconceptions of Us is an album recorded by the contemporary band SHINee which was released in August, 2013. It is not just your regular repackage album. The album itself is a compilation album which consists of:

Dream Girl-The Misconceptions of You

Why So Serious-The Misconceptions of Me

with the former being released in February and latter in April of the same year the compilation album has 2 albums and yes, 2 CD’s. Which explains why even to this day this album stands to be one of, if not the, most expensive ones out there.

Along with the entire tracklist of those two albums mentioned above, there was an addition of 2 new songs; Better Off and the beautiful Selene 6.23. What makes them special is that both songs’ lyrics were written by Jonghyun.

While I love Better Off, in my opinion Selene 6.23 outshines it. Both are ballads with Better Off being more mid-tempo and Selene 6.23 being a more sentimental ballad, effectively showing the vocal colours of the members. You can find his handwritten notes online and I strongly suggest you do so. I’d write an entire post about his song-writing but that’s for another day.

What also makes Selene 6.23 special is that was actually composed by Yiruma, a legendary pianist, marking the song as SHINee’s and his first and last collaboration. Rarely did Yiruma collab with Korean artists and when he did, collabed with vocal-heavy groups/singers such as Baek Ji Young and 2 AM.

An interesting fact: Back in 2013 in a solo concert of his, Yiruma praised jjong’s lyrics and called them pretty also called him an expensive friend for not being able to bring him to the concert, lol.

Now, back to the album!

The album is a roller coaster you can’t get enough of. I won’t give my opinion on every song it includes but you can always ask me about them if you’re oh so curious yeah.

It starts with Spoiler, originally inside the Dream Girl CD. This song... is one of the most cherished memes within the fandom. To summarize the song; It is a 9 second long wait to hear Minho’s ‘’SHINee’s Back’’ but ending up bamboozled. What’s a lesser known fact is that the song namedrops every song within the misconception series, except the two repackage ones. Jonghyun is again, the lyricist. Funny how he literally spoiled the entire tracklist of Why So Serious-the Misconceptions of Me when promoting the first album, right?

Dream Girl is the title-track of CD 1. It’s a twist on pop-funk which can pretty tricky to pull off but god was Dream Girl just right! It is fun and colourful and so very them. But at the end of the day I think the song is either loved or hated by shawols. I personally started to accept and love it much later.

Hitchhiking HOWEVER!! is a different story. The moment I heard Key’s little laugh I was hooked. You know then and there that this song is going to be upbeat and will surely take you on the ride of a lifetime. It takes you up and down and then baaaack to the top. Overall they sound fierce throughout the song and I won’t even mention the transition to the rap and then on. Truly a masterpiece.

Not much can be said about Girls, Girls, Girls but y’all gotta watch the performance of it if you haven’t already.

Beautiful is all about that AREUMDAWOOO.

Dynamite is rough and tbh not my favorite within the album although I still cry thinking about that one SWC IV performance. I think Minho got featured by a magazine as one of the sexiest man alive, or something else after that performance. Pretty sure he got featured though.

About Nightmare, I enjoy the bridge ,or was it the chorus, which Jonghyun starts off, don’t know how it manages to sounds seducing even when I am 21 and done with my vampire phase.

What makes Why So Serious fun to listen to is the stage and choreography. Hated how Jonghyun missed out on a couple stages because of his car accident but wow the high-notes he pulled off when he came back to join the promotions, worth. The Zombie theme was actually fun and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

I can’t not mention Orgel and it’s twistedly dark yet beautiful lyrics along with the music box melody it has going on, the song itself sends shivers down your spine. Orgel has got to be one of my favorite songs in general, not just kpop. When you read the lyrics it kind of gives a creepypasta vibe. Orgel can’t be explained in words I think... You just have to listen to it. I still think it’d make a great title track hell I am still upset it didn’t get promoted.

Like a Fire immediately puts a smile on even the frowniest face. With its hushed pre-chorus followed with its loud and powerful chorus along with the addition of adlibs, this song has a special place in everyone’s heart and meme folder.

I don’t think I need to especially mention Excuse Me Miss as the song is treasured by every shawol out there and their moms. But how about I do it anyway? Excuse Me Miss is cheeky, sultry and suggestive. Setting aside the legendary solo of Jonghyun in their performance from SWC IV, I have to admit the one who stood out the most was, for me, Key with his vocals. ‘’Say SHINee! -SHINee!’’

Lastly, I MUST mention Evil. This song stands to be their most powerful song to this day. Including the general vibe and the according choreography to the equation the song is dark and when I listen to it I feel as if I am running through and barely escaping through a cloud of mist. It is exciting and impactful.

Happy that I got to mention some important points, I can happily say that The Misconceptions of Us stands superior in my eyes. This album is truly something else and like nothing done before with both its format and flow of songs. I sincerely hope you enjoyed my review.

Again, if you want to hear my opinions regarding songs I didn’t mention or if you have a point to add/an opinion to share, please don’t be shy and ask! `ㅂ´

#please give the misconceptions of us the love it deserves #god fuck how can one album be so perfect #how can one band be so perfect #shinee #lee jinki #onew #kim jonghyun #kim kibum #key #saeyoung choi #lee taemin

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taesthetes · 6 years

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(1/?) Travel-anon-hi! Sorry for the late reply, I've been feeling a bit under the weather D: But wow! That's so sweet of you for what you did for your mom! My family's not big on celebrating parent days, but we do go out for dinners - my mom's bday is a couple days before, so we merge the two ;u;~ Thank you! I'll probably come back with a pile of photos, and be super picky which to instagram, haha. Oh! Good idea with the perfume! I normally don't carry any, but this sounds like a good reason to.

(2/?) Aw, you had to give up your internship? I’m sorry D: but on the bright side, vacation? Would you be able to do the internship another time? In terms of expensiveness, I think HK topped it for me. The livelihood there is super high end and overpriced to me :/ And ikr! I wish it were like that here too, but North America’s just too big and spread out for that unless you lived downtown, but that’s expensive D: In December, one Japan night was 24 degrees celsius ouo;; that’s pretty much summer

(3/?) But it does depend where you’re at in Japan! That night I was in Tokyo! It’ll be colder if you’re farther north~ I don’t know if the magikarp promo is still going D: but if it is, you definitely have to try it! I actually like the “crispy sandwich caramel” haagen dazs! I can’t get it where I’m from ;u; so depriveeeed. Your convenience stores sound so much better than mine! All mine have are dollar store things and candy OTL? Usually super grungy looking too. Aw, that’s cute! Do you visit?

(4/?) For the cat, not your sister (well, I guess her too), haha. I don’t remember, did you say you’d try to get a pet in the future for yourself, maybe? Yep! Certain holidays or popular events cause tickets to be more expensive to those countries during those times~ It’s still modern art?! Why isn’t there any traditional ones D:?! I actually prefer modern art, haha; mostly the interactive type ones! I don’t particularly have a favourite artist; I appreciate based on how interesting their-

(5/?) concepts are and how well they executed it. I mean, we did drop a lot of cash on the machines (and won nothing a lot of times), so I’m pretty sure that’s why they took pity on us, haha! I hope you’re lucky enough to either win it yourself, or find someone to help you! I also wish for you to be good at those games ;D! Have you had any more ramen since I last spoke to you? You’re still making me crave for it, and I can’t have any right now ;u; Oo, barely any jet lag can be a good thing!

(6/?) I don’t jet lag much when I travel, but the bits that I do, I accounted for, and used it for long-term traveling within the country! Oo, I hope I get to try a vietnamese hot pot some time then :D! If we ever manage to meet up in another country, let’s hit up vietnamese hot pot, haha. Omg, both of those movies were so good!! Infinity war, I really hope you do get to see it soon D: There’s so many spoilers out already, and it would suck if you got completely ruined to it beforehand!

(7/?) I preordered all 4 albums when they first opened it :D;; If I was only getting 1 of them though, I’d have gotten O! What about you? Did you preorder, or are you going to hit up a store when it’s released where you are? Which is your favourite concept? And, omg, yes. Jimin’s pretty hardcore when it comes to going 0 to 100, so I tend to die fairly often, haha. How do you manage to keep up with Tae?! He’s just as bad, if not worse, than Jimin’s 0-100?! He’s too pretty and amazing as a person!

(8/8) I was going to end this at 7, but well, here’s 8, haha. I follow on yt, and when a notice pops up, I listen and fav the song if it matches my tastes :D NCT is going haaard right now, like wow, almost every other week or two OTL I’ve been into kpop for so long that I like a lot of groups, so it’s hard to recount all of them, haha. What about you? Who else do you listen to? How long have you been into kpop? How was the Tswift concert?! Did you have an amazing time?? How early did you lineup?

hello, m’love!! oh noo, i’m so sorry to hear that ): are you feeling better now? make sure to drink lots of fluids and rest up! and thank you :’) i hope you had a good dinner with your family!! and happy belated birthday to your mom 💕 oh gosh, my instagram is a mess, i just post sporadically and nothing matches. but i think i’ll start trying to make a nicer instagram page though haha. yeah, it’s pretty helpful with the perfume because you can’t bring pepper spray onto planes or anything for travel, so i just pack a small perfume bottle instead!

yeah, i’m excited for the vacation!! i won’t be able to do an internship until next summer then unfortunately. oooh, i heard kong kong is really nice! but i’ll make sure not to go there until i have money lmao. yeah, the only way walking is fine in north america is if i live in one of the big cities, like nyc. oh my god, in december??? it’s going to be even worse since i’m going in the summer D: i think overall it’s going to be very hot in japan because it’s summer when i’ll be there.

ahhh, even if there’s no magikarp, i’m still excited to eat taiyaki!! omg ok, i’ll make sure to get that ice cream flavor when i’m there :o and that really sucks ): hopefully, you’ll get to come back to japan soon and then you can get the ice cream :D ah yeah, there’s a lot of dollar store items and travel items too and candy. i think most convenience stores are pretty grungy tbh. i visited her last year! but that was before she got a cat sadly ):

and yes!! i want to get a dog and a cat in the future! i suppose there are a few traditional art pieces on display? but i think most people here enjoy modernized art more, like even the buildings and such in the usa are much more modern compared to europe. i guess it’s because the usa hasn’t been a country for as long as european countries, so everything is newer looking. oooh nice!! interactive art is always fun! :D modern art is really beautiful too, but sometimes, i see something like the entire canvas is painted one color with only one stripe down it and i’m like ??? how is this worth 91283472319 dollars???

asdfjkads that’s going to be me. i’m going to spend all my money on the crane machines and win nothing, so let’s hope someone will help me ahah and thank you!! fingers crossed! :’) and i haven’t had any ramen since ): ramen isn’t the healthiest, so i try not to eat it often. ajsdhfalks but you can’t have any right now? D: did you run out? oooh, and that’s smart! i really hope the jet lag won’t hit so hard because i want to explore everything, but there’s never enough time. and yes!! we’ll definitely get vietnamese hot pot, and then you’ll have to show me all your favorite food places too :D ahhh, i want to see both of them soon! i took my last midterm yesterday, but i still have papers and several projects to do ): and my weekends are packed since i have some things to go to for my friends’ birthdays and i think we might do a road trip for the upcoming memorial weekend since we get monday off.

and omg so lucky!! all four wow :o well, i didn’t preorder it, but i don’t know which album i want either. maybe R or O? because they all look good in denim, but tae had that lip ring.. and unfortunately, they don’t sell kpop merch in stores anywhere near me /: so i’ll have to order it from amazon if i do buy it! honestly all the concepts are pretty though. jimin’s stage presence vs real life is mind blowing with how he can switch so fast. askdlhfjaj i barely keep up with tae, he’s too perfect and he’s such a sweetheart pluS HIS DOGS AND CAT ARE SO CUTE I LOVE THEM SO MUCH

asdf,nasd oh my god i love nct so so so much, like nct dream is my ult boy group favorite, and i’m so sad mark is graduating from the dreamies after this year ): did you see their chain mv? who’s your bias? oh my gosh i’m so excited to hear you like nct alskdjfhalew i really, really, really love taeyeon, like she’s my ult bias, but i also love shinee and blackpink (when will they release a new song)!!! i follow up with those three and nct the most. but i also listen to red velvet, gfriend, twice, kard, day6, wanna one, monsta x, infinite, vixx, astro, and f(x) like when are they coming back ): oh and (g)i-dle!!! i pretty much listen to whatever group that currently makes a comeback, so i know the title songs of most of the kpop groups, but i don’t know each of the members’ names. and i’ve been into kpop since early 2014 :’)

ooooh my god, the taylor swift concert marks the best night of my life, likE I LOVE HER SO MUCH I’VE BEEN A FAN SINCE 2006 AND I CAN’T BELIEVE I FINALLY GOT TO GO TO HER CONCERT!!!! but i got there two hours early for the lineup, and when it started, i sang along for every single song, and when she sang a mashup with long live included, i was over the moon, plus before the concert, i was like oh hey what if she sings the best day because it’s mother’s day tomorrow anD SHE ACTUALLY DID AND I CRIED OMG I GOT SO EMO i was shaking like i tried to get good videos on my phone, but my phone also died and the video will show you how shaky i actually was and wow i just– best experience, i will definitely go to her concerts over and over again and i just loved it so much. so yeah i was pretty excited and super happy overall :’) and how is your week going? 💗

#replies #anonymous #travel anon

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