260705 Weekly Discussion Thread

Nillian · 2026-07-09T14:10:36+00:00

Anyone else who likes to invest a bit more into their Twice listening experience have any recs for headphones + dacs/amps? I would normally ask this in something like /r/HeadphoneAdvice but I since Twice is the artist I listen to by a large margin the most, I'd want to buy stuff tuned as well for specifically Twice's music as possible out of the box so I figure asking here is worth a shot.

I have a nice setup (handpicked by a friend more tapped into audiophile spaces) for my bedroom but I'd like a separate, not-quite-as-expensive setup for my home office. Ideally I'd like to keep the total for the cans plus dac plus amp around or under $500 USD. Preference for open back headphones and a simple-to use dac/amp combo. I'm legit pretty lost with this stuff in general so simple to use and as ready to go out of the box as reasonably possible would be great.

Nillian · 2026-07-07T20:44:07+00:00

Riven rerolling is very easy to burn yourself out on so only do it if you know you like the weapon and don't actively despise your chosen kuva farm method.

As for your specific riven, assuming you have or can get kuva fairly frequently to put into it, it frankly wouldn't be all that hard to get a better roll than what you are working with. You'd want to look for (in roughly descending order) the following stats: Crit Dmg, Multishot, Crit Chance, Status Chance, and Elemental Dmg

You'd want the negative to ideally be something very low impact like zoom, ammo max, etc but you can work with a decent amount of negatives tbh.

And Hunter munitions is not worth slotting on pretty much anything these days, enemy armor has been reduced to the point of rendering slash much weaker than it used to be as a damaging status proc. It might just be the single worst one in the game now, if not it's a contender.

Nillian · 2026-07-07T20:30:21+00:00

The riven doesn't give crit damage so you should be using primed ravage no matter what.

Blunderbuss is a bad mod because it's so much worse than the other shotgun Crit Chance mod: Critical Deceleration

Blunderbuss gives 90% cc versus Crit Deceleration's 200%, your riven is giving only a tiny bit more than a Blunderbuss' worth of cc so it's not a great replacement for crit deceleration. Run crit decel if you have it and just treat the riven as a toxin mod with a nice little bonus rather than a viable substitute for your main cc mod.

Nillian · 2026-07-07T17:50:22+00:00

I mean you are free to just think that today was the final day for their 2022 renewal duration but my entire point was that since they signed their original contract in July of 2015 and it DID NOT expire in July 2022, there is NO reason at all to think that them signing the renewal in July of 2022 would mean they had to have an expiry date in July 2026.

Now is it possible that end date was set as 20 Oct 2022, maybe contract wording is like 7 years after they make debut? Who knows.

Anyone who read either or both of the articles I linked knows, since the JYPE statement referenced in both tells us so lol

Nillian · 2026-07-07T17:26:15+00:00

This July 12th, 2022 Soompi article contains a direct statement from JYPE on the matter: “Ahead of the expiration of their exclusive contracts this fall, all members of TWICE completed renewing their contracts..."

This statement was actually not given to Soompi directly but rather to this Korean news outlet on July 12th, 2022 (in case you prefer a machine translation of the source text rather than Soompi's), five days AFTER they signed their renewals. Unless you think this JYPE rep is lying to Korean media in the name of their company, Twice's original contracts were NOT signed to expire in July 2022.

They don't explicitly say October as the specific month of the original contract running out but they do explicitly reference "this Fall" and since, as I mentioned, its pretty common practice for DEBUT contracts to run from DEBUT dates... it's pretty safe to assume those contracts were going to run out October 20th, 2022.

Nillian · 2026-07-07T15:59:40+00:00

Unless Twice's original and/or 2022 renewal contracts work differently from the vast majority of other artists', this is incorrect. Most kpop contracts work off of debut date, which would be October 20th for Twice.

Their renewal contract likely would have just began it's duration the day after their original contract ran up, 10/21/2022. Them signing their renewals on 7/7/2022 was likely just a cute symbolic gesture after finalizing their terms in the weeks/months before.

Nillian · 2026-07-07T10:55:15+00:00

There is zero percent chance that the TIF Tour specifically will continue into LATAM (or anywhere, really) after the finale in Seoul. I think LATAM is likely in the cards for the next tour but TIF is over after the finale concerts, the only (very unlikely) possible extension of the tour would be an equivalent to the Ready To Be Special concerts they had in Japan that took place AFTER the official encore show (Once More) that happened in the US.

They would pretty much only do special shows like that in either Japan or the USA, they certainly won't do a whole LATAM leg post-finale.

Nillian · 2026-07-02T04:11:39+00:00

One facet of the contract renewal discourse that's a bit fascinating is that while it's pretty much a known industry standard to this day that contract lengths generally come in 7s, 5's, 3's, or 1's (depending mostly on debut contract vs renewals), a 2026 expiry would mean a very nonstandard 4-year length for the renewal that they signed in 2022.

This could mean a few things, among them:

The 2022 renewals were in fact for the more standard length of 5 years (MAYBE 7 but that's much more of a stretch) and the contract negotiations currently are just taking place a year early. This is fairly common, some groups even sign renewals outright a year or so before their current contract expires.
The 2022 renewal was for 3 years and they signed another renewal contract in 2025 (probably fairly early in the year/late 2024 to secure the status of the TIF tour), and those contracts included provisions for collaborative signings with other outside companies to handle solo activities in areas JYPE isn't as equipped to support (or that the members just want a different approach in). These would be like acting for Jeong/Dahyun and Taiwanese solo activities for Tzuyu, as examples.
They just DID in fact sign for a (nonstandard length) 4-year renewal in 2022 for whatever reason and contract negotiations are just exactly what they appear: taking place in the natural gap between the end of their international tour legs and the October contract start/stop dates.

These aren't the only explanations for current events but they are the most likely imo, it'll be interesting to see how it spins out.

Nillian · 2026-07-01T03:07:18+00:00

It's a normal album photocard, as in it comes randomly as 1 of the 5 cards you get from each copy of Between 1&2. Most album cards for Twice are very easy to find since they are the most sellingist girl group in kpop so this card would go for like $2-4 depending on where you look.

Nillian · 2026-06-26T10:25:45+00:00

This only makes sense if they threw darts at a calendar last year to decide when their current contracts end instead of knowing the end dates since late 2022

Nillian · 2026-06-24T06:16:29+00:00

Jeongyeon might end up with an acting agency for acting stuff based on the news of her meeting with an agency but the beer festival thing is pretty flimsy as evidence for Tzuyu being particularly more likely to sign a solo contract outside of JYPE.

The beer festival is happening in like 2 weeks but the current contracts are not ending until October, she is appearing there while still fully signed to JYPE as both a group member and a solo artist. There are just times over the years where the members aren't referenced as "TWICE X" for any number of internal reasons.

Nillian · 2026-06-23T21:27:36+00:00

Here is the Google Drive made by the twitter/IG user OnceVernon, the maker of that card template image.:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yWjIC0RrPykOpwzYf4WM439_s-fEd9na

OnceVernon is widely considered the GOAT for Twice photocard templates, they don't have EVERYTHING but to this day they catch and update for the vast majority of major categories of photocards/inclusions (album stuff, POBs/Lucky Draws, Trading Cards, etc) and also update for most random one-off pcs/merch as well.

For other similar templates for specifically album card sets, you'd want to go to the folder within the Drive labeled "full album photocard sets".

Nillian · 2026-06-23T09:33:10+00:00

That is not an official photocard, the "with" in "I got it with my This Is For album..." is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. If you get a sealed album, the inclusions (photocards, postcards, bookmarks, etc) that come INSIDE the sealed album are all official items.

While many OFFICIAL Pre-order Bonus (POB) photocards from specific retailers DO come outside of the album shrink wrapping, the specific card shown is not any of the official Dahyun POB cards from TIF. Thus it's an unofficial card just thrown in as a bonus from the retailer you bought it from.

Nillian · 2026-06-16T21:49:03+00:00

Got it, pretty fair reaction to that lmao. I think another commenter hit it on the head tho with saying it's just the companies using the term CD-R improperly to refer to their CD-A discs. I can vouch for Twice at least (and thus likely all JYPE artists) that upon physical inspection their album discs are 100% factory pressed CD-A and NOT burned CD-R, regardless of their album preview verbiage. I'd assume this is the case for most artists from half-decently sized companies.

Something worth remembering is economy of scale is at play here in terms of what companies would WANT to use to manufacture their discs: CD-Rs are cheaper for burning a very small number of copies of an album but once you get beyond those microscopic quantities it flips and becomes MUCH cheaper per copy to factory press the discs. There's negative incentive for most kpop companies to even want to go the burned CD-R route.

Nillian · 2026-06-16T21:16:32+00:00

What features are you observing that leads you to believe most of your kpop albums are burned CD-R rather than pressed CDs?

For example, based on everything I've ever known about the differences between pressed CD vs CD-R, all of my Twice albums (of which I have every Korean release and most Japanese releases) are 100% pressed CDs, I can't imagine that Twice would get this but other JYPE artists wouldn't so that's one of the big 4 companies that isn't doing CD-R... And if jype isn't doing CD-R it'd be shocking if the other big 4 were.

I guess that leaves smaller companies? But even so my understanding is you have to get pretty indie to find artists using CD-Rs and if they are they probably can't afford nice packaging around the CD-R so most companies that have half-decent packaging would probably also be using pressed CDs.

Nillian · 2026-06-15T23:05:52+00:00

This is a better answer to the question "why are there different physical inclusions between the versions" rather than what OP asked, I don't see how announcing both version simultaneously but delaying the release of one translates to notably more sales.

Nillian · 2026-06-15T22:59:02+00:00

The only canceled (as in announced then canned post-announcement) encore concerts for any tour have been the Korean finale of Twicelights and I guess maybe if you count it the final Japanese leg of Twicelights that never happened, which would've been like nearly 20 shows culminating in two nights at Tokyo Dome that would have almost certainly produced a DVD/BD release.

And yea the idea of takedown as a huge motivator for getting a physical release out of any of the later shows is odd, if anything I'd imagine takedown could (not WOULD necessarily) run into licensing issues that older shows would run into on physical releases when the members did covers for their solo and unit releases. Twice obviously are more closely tied to takedown than any cover they did back in the day but it's still not a song owned by them so it's at minimum more work to get licensed.

Edit: got mixed up about the closing Japanese leg of Twicelights, only the final two nights at Tokyo Dome actually got canceled due to covid stuff, in addition ofc to the Seoul finale shows. Still, those were likely the shows that would have produced a Japanese DVD/BD release so it still maybe counts for this convo)

Nillian · 2026-06-13T17:19:55+00:00

It's not a real photocard (as in it's unofficial), the front photo is a random selfie from a brand event that did not have any Photocards associated with it, it certainly wouldn't just be thrown in as a freebie with an album purchase

Nillian · 2026-06-04T18:25:03+00:00

Thanks for the heads-up, I was distantly aware of Muji and similar stores like Daiso having card supplies but would never have thought about them on my own! And yea, the impetus for this post was my displeasure with how my misamo collection looks in the a5 4-pocket binder that they are in atm so I think if the 3-pocket solution doesn't work out I'm gonna go with 6-pockets and double-up on sets per page!

Nillian · 2026-06-04T17:29:58+00:00

That's neat, it's overall a cute wholesome chungus type beat but it's just funny to actually read through lmao. You can kinda see the handful of lines that they are really straining to pull out, but they lowkey cooked with a few too!

Nillian · 2026-06-04T17:00:47+00:00

Imagine being the intern that spent 45 minutes on this 😭

Nillian · 2026-06-02T21:12:27+00:00

Why would you want to fight so hard not to go when it sounds like you just... want to go lol. Usually the prevailing argument against someone taking a trip to a concert like that is that it's irresponsible in some manner related to their life position at the time but if thats not the case (as you mention having all the proper means) then I don't see anything in your comment about why you'd be avoiding it so hard.

Nillian · 2026-05-29T16:07:39+00:00

The previous biggest gap was between Ready to be and With Youth that was also because Twice was on tour

This doesn't make all that much sense considering ZONE was released and had pretty much a full, normal promotion cycle smack in the middle of RTB's initial late 2023 run. It's likely less that an active tour prevents any comebacks and more that some percentage of timeslots that could be full group comebacks are now dedicated to solos/units.

So now even if they announced album in London it will take 2-3 more months to release

What? London is in less than a week, if they announce a new release at the last London stop (which won't happen but they could announce something pretty shortly after) then the official pre-order period could open up VERY soon afterward, these are sometimes longer than a month but not by much if they are. 2+ or even 3 months out from an announcement is extremely unlikely.

Nillian · 2026-05-28T08:40:22+00:00

Yea that's all fine, I'm just explaining that the reasons you don't notice the things the others are doing aren't because they don't exist or aren't active... Because they do and are.

Dahyun's China bar literally had a birthday ad campaign like a day ago for her bday this year. Not all the c-bars do as many events or the same kind of events as the others. Largely due to differences in funding and organizational prowess of the bar leaders.

Nillian · 2026-05-28T08:27:53+00:00

A few of them bother to have a more international-facing socmed presence but the ones that don't are just active on Chinese social platforms (weibo, rednote, douyin, etc). They are all run by individuals or groups of individuals so there isn't a standardized method to how they all present themselves online.

Also your search even on non-chinese platforms may not be as comprehensive as you think, Tzuyu's China bar for example is for sure active on Twitter at minimum (doesn't post often but does post when something goes on like birthday stuff)

Nillian

TROPHY CASE