Why KPop Demon Hunters pops

Jul. 15th, 2025 12:06 am
ljwrites: A close-up of Jinu in full demon mode from Kpop Demon Hunters (jinu)
[personal profile] ljwrites

KPop Demon Hunters was an experience for sure. It felt slightly weird to watch because it uses distinctly Korean materials but from an outside perspective. The girls' exaggerated comic acting was very Western animation-y, and the traditional Korean medical clinic scene bore no resemblance to real life, obviously.

Even with Korean dubbing it had the distinct feel of a foreign film, because it was! Korean-speaking actors and dubbing artists speak very differently, and the voice acting was obviously dubbing-style because the original was in English.

I also felt like the story had a lot of potential that it didn't quite reach, and foreshadowed things that didn't actually happen. But that's pretty deep in spoiler territory so maybe I'll go there in a different, spoiler-cut post.

Where the movie truly shone was its stylish, energetic representation of K-pop, including in no small part its earworm soundtrack. Fans have been pointing out all kinds of K-pop tropes like the tiny powerhouse rappers Zoey and Baby, the similarity of the two bands to legends like Blackpink and BTS, and the way the male band debuted with a catchy bop ("Soda Pop") before coming back with a darkly cynical, technique-heavy number ("Your Idol").

It wasn't just the stars who got the spotlight; so did the fandom and community, from the fans who filled stadiums for their faves to online challenges and breathless anticipation for new releases. The movie also went into some, though by no means all, of the darkness behind this adoration, and made a good case for the potential destructiveness of such massive franchises and fandoms.

The love of the genre and the fandom, backed up by extraordinary music and production, was what gave the movie its heart and turned what could have been a gimmicky throwaway into a snapshot of an era. The depiction in KPop Demon Hunters of the love and fragility, the beauty and hollowness at the heart of K-pop was arguably more powerful than its scripted story. That's not a knock on the story so much as a statement on the nature of the narrative: K-pop is an age to be experienced in all its glory and corruption, not a tale to be told from a comfortable distance. It is one's own story to live and not someone else's to watch, and that is arguably the true power of KPop Demon Hunters.

New desk, more tasks

Jul. 9th, 2025 12:27 am
ljwrites: Carefree whistling. (whistle)
[personal profile] ljwrites

A couple of days last week went by in housework to get my new desk set up and change the furniture arrangement. This was after an all-nighter to send in my Soul-Sucking Neverending Work Assignment of Doom From Hell in the morning followed by a nap to sleep it off, so that was certainly a choice I made.

In the afternoon I rose from the dead to clear out the old desk and brought in the assembled pole-mounted desk, wiping down the desks and floor in between. I also moved my secondary Dell monitor from the old desk-mounted monitor arm to the new pole-mounted one (after snapping a pic of the old setup so I can sell the old arm on the flea market app Danggeun), then moved my computer housing to serve as a side desk. More wiping because the inside of that housing had gathered some dust over the years. The monitor was plugged in on its brand-new arm, and I turned it on to check the power supply-

And nothing! The monitor wasn't turning on! I wasn't sure if the monitor itself had somehow met its demise while being moved to its new mount or something was wrong with the power supply. So I dragged our cable hoard out of storage to see if I could find a matching power cord, which there was. Two of them, actually. Changing the power cord got the monitor working again, whew. Maybe I'd kept the monitor power cord too tightly curved on the old mount, or maybe its time had simply come.

Anyway it was a good thing we had the extra cord on hand, but the cables had become a tangled mess in storage and I somehow had the energy to group them into different plastic bags and tag them by categories like "power cords" and "charging cables." It doesn't make an immediate difference right now, but future-me will thank past-me the next time a cable needs to be found.

The old, bigger desk wasn't being dumped; rather, it replaced the side table of the living room couch. The couch-side table had been hanging on in bad shape for years after a younger Tater had jumped up and down on it, tilting sadly and precariously from a missing wheel, so it was a mercy really. (Why are kids?) I dismantled the old couch table and replaced it with the one I'd been using in the office. Also wiped down the living room floor while I was at it. After putting away or tossing a bunch of stuff, the new setup was more or less complete. I even took a night to do a deep-clean of the keycaps and board, a process I live-tooted on fedi.

Before and after pics! )

I'm very satisfied with the new setup, despite all the work it took. The desk layout is more compact than before, the computer housing no longer gets between me and the monitor, and everything I need is within reach when I'm sitting at my desk (or desks, rather). The change was a while in coming and I'm relieved to have it over with.

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November 2012

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