Jaehyun and his Doyoung

Ah, Ok. I suppose the group consists of 5 people then for the joke to land.

It's a tradition for training assistants working closely together to design matching t-shirts. The shirts have ranks printed (Doyoung's shirt says "5th rank in looks (Private First Class)", he moved up one rank). It allows to demonstrate their occupation without wearing uniform (forbidden abroad, naturally).

It's not uncommon to go for a vacation abroad, but an Overseas Travel Request needs to be submitted way in advance. Assistants often get extra vacation days for good work. Such a trip normally happens during a "maintanence week" between batches of recruits to train.

Often an upper rank sergeant who is about to discharge takes with him the junior assistants who he trained. There was a "lone wolf" sergeant among the group, so, probably, such a trip is exactly what Doyoung was involved in.

Tempora mutantur, et nos mutamur in illis.

Less than a year left! For now focus on how the 2 year wait for another 127 album is finally over! Look, we've already got back both Jae and Tae.

I feel like Doyoung's absence will be felt the strongest in promotional content. He is not only the MC, a lot revolves around him. Be it jokes, teasing, the way he sets the pace, directs the conversation. In MVs and performances JaeTae will compensate.

I think Taeyong mentioned that neos recently had a meeting to choose the title. This made people speculate that there won't be DoWoo on the album. I don't think so.

DoWoo won't be on the title, they can't be to begin with, but an album has many b-sides, and the recording process often stretches over years. Remember the bts for DJJ. They even re-recorded "Ordinary" a year later, believing they improved and could do better. aespa or H2H talk about how their new hit was in the vault for years. NCT's "Beautiful" was considered as a debut track instead of "Without U". We know DoWoo recorded something before leaving. I expect them to be on a few songs.

Jaehyun's face won't change until he is like 50. He is growing out his hair, so it will be possible to do his old sleak hairdo soon. The volume is already back.

Isn't "just the other guy" similar to "the boy next door"? Less about the looks and more about familiarity, relatibility, from the same circle. The stars of old were gods, but now idols are your friends, family, proxy boyfriends. Or funny folks who do unboxing, try your local food, and read twits about themselves. Just like you. It's the cute sweet guy who pretends to be hot and dangerous. Not the other way around.

Doyoung represented, lol (guess how).

Now that there are 7... Neo centre can play with 12+7, 1, 2, 7 and such ideas for the next 2027 year when DoWoo comeback. It's good that they started the rebranding in advance. Fans will have time to be angry and then cool down. Away from the promotional cycle.

If not checkers, at least give him back his stripes!

I developed a new appreciation for "Storm" performance video after I got to know it was competing with WYLD for the title track and saw the bts for the MV. Basically, it made me "stop and look" properly. Indeed, there is such an avalanche of content, MVs, updates in k-pop, AI gimmicks, that even people like me, who appreciates art, creativity and well-done job, becomes somewhat numb and sometimes fails to "perceive" and "take in". Everything is consumed on the go instead of savoring and properly thoghtfully experiencing. You know, that "dialogue with the art" reflection.

Before I move to Doyoung (when?) I wanted to note the weakness and a kind of flaw of both Tae and Do as leaders. They are both too soft and prefer to not start a confrontation. They lack strictness towards others.

They are good at showing care, but sometimes people need a reprimand, an evaluation, a honest take to improve their conduct, attitude, see themselves from the side, etc.

For example, Doyoung will outright lie that another neo is good at singing or that he progressed noticeably (WinWin no less) just to coddle. Maybe in his eyes it's encouragement, but in many situations giving praise when it wasn't earned is not good for character development or motivation to develop one own's skills.

And Taeyong will now have a hard time because neos are not used to listening to him, and skatter around instead of following his lead during filming for content.

Once a group debuts, SM doesn't care much about idols developing their skills (many regress, it's well known). From a business point of view it's understandable. The majority of k-pop fans don't demand impecable skills from their biases (look at what is currently happening around newly renamed Enhypen ex-member now known as Evan) or are easily fooled (blindly believe what they hear/see is great, when it's not). However, for a group's longevity (to survive once the hype is over and new faces appear to snatch the attention of fans) and for a member's individual career and self-esteem it is better when everyone in the team progresses and pulls their weight, contributes to the success evenly.

Instead of giving other members roles, stimulating them to work on their weaknessess, putting more effort into the brand, TaeDo just take the lion share of the group's promotion. Taeyong as the face, the frontman that arrests attention, and the Neo incarnation; Doyoung as the MC and a content producer and goer (he participated in the most NCT content for YT and went in the past to many shows to represent the group).

In the end, others start to follow the good example. It is hard to stay in a group of workaholics and be OK with doing nothing, to not start to feel like you are lacking or not contributing enough. However, it takes time, additional soul-searching detours, wrong solutions on the way (like Johnny deciding to get naked and do striptease instead of taking vocal or rap lessons like Taemin, Kai, Ten did).

In this sense, 127 is lucky to have Jaehyun and Haechan who have a drive to improve on their own. They help to lessen this shortcoming in TaeDo's leadership type considerably. On another hand, Mark wasn't incorporated into the hierarchy of the group because of his resistance to guidance that didn't meet enough of counterstand (Doyoung gave up prematurely), which, in part, led to him leaving.