Three

A couple of days ago, I saw in the news about Onew’s enlistment date being set for next month. Initially, I was just sad that SHINee would be losing him for two years, but then I thought about seeing them promote with three members, and I’m not going to lie, it broke my heart a little. I cried when I saw Super Junior reduced to just four people on stage, but there is something so very much more heartbreaking about SHINee missing members.

Because that’s what it’s going to be like from now on. Assuming Taemin doesn’t enlist until he has to, it’ll be another 5 or 6 years until they can promote together again. It wouldn’t be ridiculous that at some point they’ll all be in the military except Taemin, or Onew after he’s back.

No doubt they’ll all keep busy in their personal careers. Hopefully Onew will go back to acting, and I’m sure Minho will before and after. Key has just launched his solo career so no doubt he’ll do more of that, and Taemin is already a well established solo artist. They all have back up plans.

To be honest, with the new laws in place, they have less time now, and less freedom. For Super Junior, they could defer until 30, and it didn’t really affect them before, but now, they’ve knocked two years off and added travel limitations. Onew may be cutting it fine enlisting 4 days before his 29th birthday, but Key only has 10 months until he is 28, and just over a year for Minho.

I’m assuming the 28 is in international age, because if it’s Korean age then they should all pretty much enlist right now. Except Taemin. Because he’s the baby.

They SHOULD all enlist together and then SHINee could just go on hiatus for as little as 21 months until they all come back ...

With SuJu, they could cope without pretty much everyone except Donghae and Eunhyuk - apparently - seeing as they didn’t do anything while they were away but revamped everything for their return. There were so many of them. With SHINee, its not so simple. I guess technically any combination of Onew or Taemin and Key or Minho would work, but that doesn’t mean I want to see it that way. I think I would rather wait for them to return together.

There’s already a massive empty space in SHINee, I don’t think I can handle another one.

Our Page

At the beginning of July, my plan was to blog every day again. Yeah I failed at that. Today, I figured out why.

I only blog on my iPad. I’ve not been using my iPad lately, as I haven’t been watching any drama. I haven’t been watching any drama because I’ve been reading. Also because Six Flying Dragons is bloody long. I mean, I’m on episode 20 and still struggle to watch it at night for more than 15 mins without falling asleep.

So, if I want to blog more, I need to either get back into the habit of watching drama again, or set myself some form of reminder. I’ll probably go with the drama option.

A fair few new ones have come out lately that I want to wat h, so they should have built up a good number of episodes now so I don’t have to wait. Plus I still really want to rewatch DotS.

One more week of school until we break up for the summer. I quite like the end of the school year - it’s always quite chill and we have a party day on the last day where we all just eat party food and play games and then say bye to the leavers. I think I’ll probably cry this year. For the rest of the week we have two trips planned so I doubt much will get done on the remaining two days, meaning the whole week is a bit of a write off really. Which is fine, but it’s not like I get to diss around as much as the kids do. Still, the end is in sight and that is always good.

I’m just going to leave this here.

Paint and Belts

SHINee has always had slightly confusing teaser photos.

I even posted about it before - once in 2012 for Sherlock and again in 2013 for Dream Girl. I’m sure their teasers for every release since then have been as equally weird, but I didn’t post about them.

SHINee are currently gearing up for their comeback, which coincides with their 10th anniversary. A few teasers have already been released, and I already talked about that a little bit in my post complaining about Onew’s hair. SHINee’s fashion choices have also always been a little out there, although I think Key is in charge of that.

Anyway, back to the reason for this post.





These boys crack me up.

Light

SHINee announced their comeback today.

They released a video of the four members, and while Minho and Taemin were looking their normal, idoly selves, Onew and Key were sporting new hair cuts and colours which I hope will make sense during their promotions.

Key is fairly active on social media, so I was already familiar with his hair style change, started by a rather startling video of him shaving it all off (leading to the fear that they were all going to enter the military). I’d seen a photo of Onew at a concert where he was covered up head to toe, suggesting that he’d done something drastic. To be honest, they look quite similar - I know Key shaved his own head, and it looks like Onew cut his own hair.

I liked Onew with red hair when he’s had it in the past, I think it’s just the style that looks a little odd, and to be honest, it just makes me worry about him more.

Hairstyles aside, it was mostly just lovely to see them all smiling so confidently and naturally.

I was just looking for a photo of the clip to put on this post (why is it so difficult to add photos to blogger these days) when I discovered that SHINee released a new Music Video a couple of weeks ago and it totally slipped under my radar. Mostly, this is because it’s Japanese, and SHINee are represented by a different agency for their promotions there, so I’ve always missed their Japanese stuff.

What’s important here though is that Jonghyun recorded this song.

SMTown

All of the SM artists are in Dubai at the moment for SMTown, and there has been a lot of activity on social media covering their visit. I saw Minho dancing, which was good, and Key has been posting a lot on his Instagram so I think that’s good too. Taemin always has that serene smile of his, so I’m hoping that he is doing okay too. I’m only really still worried about Onew.

His charges were dropped the other day, finally. Basically, months and months ago, he got really drunk one night, fell over and grabbed a girl on the way down. She went to the police but pretty much instantly dropped the charges, but the claim had been made and investigations had to be done. It was a huge scandal and prevented him from promoting with SHINee. This was upsetting at the time, but plain heartbreaking when Jonghyun died and we realised that was the last chance for the boys to perform  together. At the funeral, he didn’t look well, and at the airport the other day, he just looked ... small and sad. There’s been a lot of photos and videos from the top of the Burj Khalifa but I’ve yet to see Onew and that worries me a lot. I’m sure he must have been there, as it looks like everyone is (SMTown, more like SMCity) - I just want to see him messing around with his friends like he used to, with Key slightly off to the side looking all embarrassed.

Ok so I’ve just spent a L O N G time on instagram and have finally found proof that Onew was at the tower, and was smiling. Leeteuk did some form of backstage thing at the concert so I need to find a subbed version of that to get a better idea what they were saying, but they all seemed okay. I even watched some fancams of the show, and yes, I have tears streaming down my cheeks but at least they looked like they were having fun.

My heart is a little more at ease now.

Happy birthday Jonghyun 🌹

Forever Five

I haven’t done very well at blogging through February, have I?

It’s been a busy few days since I last posted. The end of the half term at school was dominated by trying to get my GCSE group to finish the planning pages of their controlled assessment, which they thankfully managed by the skin of their teeth, and then whizzing down South for Eleanor’s birthday weekend. Theno1moo today ....

Ok what the eff. I typed then today and for some reason, it autos to theno1moo?? WHAT.

Anyway. Then today I had to head home for a hospital appointment about my weird stripey eye that is so insignificant than future Heather reading this will have no idea what I’m talking about, before hearing back down south again.

Of course Agi has come down with me. She’s settled right in, but I don’t think she enjoyed the journey much. There was a lot of meowing. Two and a half hours of it, non-stop, in fact. But she’s happy now, and I’m happy, and I’m also pretty sure my parents are happy too.

I read an article today about Shinee’s concert. They had five microphones for the last stage, the centre one empty for Jonghyun. It must have been so hard for them, not only to have to rearrange all the songs, but to have to perform without him, to have the grief of their fans so evident. I can’t quite bring myself to find any fancams yet, the articles suggested it was quiet and somber. It’s a shame, because Shinee concerts always had a reputation for being fun and silly and lighthearted. I hope as their tour goes on, it becomes easier and the boys can enjoy themselves. I think he would have wanted that.

Haru

It's been very close to a month, but I still get caught unaware and find myself with tears in my eyes.

I was just watching the last episode of Degree of Love, and one of their songs came on. It wasn't even a particularly well known one, but I recognised those vocals straight away. The scene was supposed to be funny, but still, there were tears.

Sometimes, I'm watching funny clips of them and smiling, but still, somehow, there are tears.

My instagram feed was full of clips, photos, messages. Constant reminders. Slowly things have moved on and now it's only the odd post, but that almost makes it worse. Unprepared and my heart stops, randomly finding that there are tears.

I think I'm more upset about the boys. I can watch his solo music videos and feel sad and sorry, but it's the five of them together that really gets me. It was a hard year for them, with the scandal and the backlash that kept them from performing together, even the continued controversy just days before, and now the thought that the group will never be whole again is heartbreaking. Especially when they were the only SM original line up. I'm fairly certain they would have been celebrating 10 years this year.

I'm glad they've announced that they will go on, I just hope the boys look after themselves and each other.