Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
Honest to god, I tried to stay out of #DanceGate when it started. No matter how many articles were written about it or how much fandom mess was involved, I didn’t cover it. Why? Because I honestly didn’t think it should be a big deal and believed it would blow over no matter how many people asked me about it.
Basically it all started with the ‘Star Golden Bell‘ special of ‘Happy Together 3‘, where Yerin said she struggled with the choreography of “Love Whisper” and showed off the choreography.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBMsiVwCriA
Everybody gives comments after Yerin does her choreo, and the controversy comes from Kai‘s comments about boy group and girl group choreography.
anything to defend your oppas ass huh kfans are mad means the words kai said is indeed hurtful we dont even need translator to understand pic.twitter.com/YaY511gkht
— onionducker (@GYERINTEA) August 31, 2017
People flipped out at Kai for being a misogynist or just an asshole, basically.
EXO stans internationally then tried to defend him by claiming it was a mistranslation or something, but every non-EXO stan English translation paints the same picture about what he said. More to the point, girl group stans and G-Friend stans in Korea were upset about it, and there is no “mistranslation” issue there, so just stop with that ridiculous bullshit.
Still, I didn’t write about it cause it’s a variety show and they all give each other shit on them, so I figured it was typical stuff. Maybe he was a bit of a dick in the context of the situation, but so is everybody on these types of shows. Honestly, I believe if it came from Heechul or somebody like that, nobody would even bat an eyelash, and I didn’t get the impression that Kai was being a malicious fuckhead to her or anything. Just my read on the situation.
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So anyway, fandoms continued to fight over this issue, but things started to get truly messy again when translations of Pann posts came out that tried to frame Yerin as the real dickhead in this situation, with Lizzy supposedly laying the smackdown on her (1/2).
The Pann posts claim that Yerin was the actual asshole in this situation, and because of her comments on other girl group choreography, Lizzy put her in her place. After that, international fandom mess kicked into overdrive, with girl group stans and EXO stans turning the hate to Yerin for her remarks.
Again though, like with Kai’s comments, I just didn’t find any of it to be that big of a deal. Okay, so Yerin thinks G-Friend’s choreography is harder than other girl groups, who fucking cares, really? It’s a point that they want to define their group, so it makes sense to reinforce that narrative, and reading the room it definitely didn’t come off as insulting. Like seriously. Anyway, Lizzy got a good burn in, but it still didn’t seem like anything to get so damn worked up about.
Most importantly then, all of this drama seemed to stem from fandom wars more than any actual action by the idols themselves. This was especially true after Pann got involved and immediately tried to redirect the hate for EXO elsewhere, which put up red flags for me. Add to that the fact that international netizens were freaking out solely based on a Pann post with screencaps, and it was just a recipe for disaster. Cause god knows nothing Pann has ever done with that format has been misleading, right?
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Anyway, so the problem with Lizzy giving Yerin the smackdown? It didn’t actually happen.
There is a Subs so everyone can understand right? The photo on Pann that they said Lizzy directed it to Yerin was fake! WATCH THIS. pic.twitter.com/jGl4p9C9rw
— 제이비오빠 (@jvoppa) September 4, 2017
After Yerin made the comment Lizzy supposedly snapped at her for … uh, nothing happened. Yerin then got up and did the “Love Whisper” choreography as they probably scripted, and the panel gave their thoughts. Kai made his controversial comment as a part of that, and Yerin said she understood what he was saying because it’s a common opinion people have about the “Love Whisper” choreo and G-Friend thought so too initially.
Then, about two minutes after Yerin made her controversial comment, Lizzy chimes in and basically talks about the difficulty of After School‘s choreography since, you know, that was the topic on hand now. That totally coincidentally and not scripted transitions into a segment where Yerin, Dayoung of WJSN, and Mina of Gugudan dance to Orange Caramel‘s “Catallena“. Lizzy, who Pann would have you believe was mortally offended by Yerin literally seconds ago, gets overwhelmed with emotion while watching them and is close to crying on the show.
Sure seems like there’s a ton of animosity between everybody!
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So what’s the truth of the situation?
Nobody took offense to anything that anybody said because there was basically nothing to get mad about since it was typical variety show jokes and/or scripted segments. All of this hand-wringing appears to have been an incredibly stupid waste of time by fandoms that were looking for a fight. Also, Pann continues to peddle bullshit, so either be sure to check the source to make sure they aren’t fabricating a story or take what they say with a grain of salt if you can’t check.
And here I thought I would be covering some juicy drama after all this noise.
