I mean, yall told me to do it, so... https://twitter.com/PeppermintGlow/status/1032274166697865217

1. Seventeen was made for longevity. They are an investment group. Seventeen never had a sudden, scalding hot explosion of popularity, and they probably will continue not to have one (sudden viral hits exempt, of course... I'm hopeful lmao)

This means that, popularity wise, Seventeen has a rare trait in the K-Pop world: endurance. They gain their popularity slowly, and hold it, slowly inching towards goalposts. That means fans take substantial time to decide to like Seventeen and to get to know the members.

That makes it also less likely that fans will lose interest slowly (given the right amount of stimulation ofc, lookin at you,, plsdie ent). Meaning most of the fans they garner, they keep. That's an impressive feat nowadays, when the market is so oversaturated.

2. They are a general public group. That means that it's not just a single niche group of fans who are searching the song, searching for the members, reading news clips. Random members of the public are doing it too, without being hyper-infatuated young adults.

It means they are requested on the radio, and there is a general input and interest in them beyond the fanatic. Anybody can be tiddy-deep in DK's smile and know everything about him, it's not even that hard, but it requires a certain amount of energy most ppl dont have.

And many if not most idol groups rely on that fanaticism to spur their popularity further and to keep their position. But when you gain interest with the general public it's a whole other creature, because they go, hey, I'm not obsessed, but I love these songs and will play them!

This adds such a wonderful thing to SVTs portfolio: EXPOSURE. "Hey, what's that song that's playing?" "You don't know them? That's Seventeen." Word-of-mouth advertisement is still advertisement! And that brings me to--

3. Sound! Now we can talk (and have done!) about how fabulous it is that Seventeen make their own music, and others can complain (as they have done!) that that's not "special" for idol groups anymore, but beside that, let's talk about the #1 benefit to making their own songs.

When you have the same team creating song after song after song, pumping out track after track after track, a certain atmosphere, feeling, emotion and sound will prevail through most of the songs. How many times have you heard ppl knew a SVT song, cause it "sounded like svt"?

It's a glory and joy to be recognisable, and nearly all of SVT's title tracks have something in common: they are joyful, upbeat songs! You can get up and dance to them! They energize! They make you wanna sing along! They are positive and kinda! Make you happy!

You can say "making ur own songs isnt uncommon in kpop anymore" and we can argue it, but you have to admit it is a FACT that "knowing a certain track is by a certain group based on the feeling it gives you" is, still, a rarity.

I would know an Ailee song, or a Heyne song, or a DBSK song, by their voices, but in Kpop, somebody can comeback with 10 title tracks produced by 10 different teams and they have no cohesion, and you don't know who they are from just by listening to them. SVT is recognisable.

And if you wanna argue that that makes SVT songs indistiguishable and that they all sound the same well first of all, you're wrong, but second of all, when it comes to public recognition, that doesn't ACTUALLY matter that much. Some poor office drone isn't gonna be playing-

-twenty Seventeen songs back-to-back in their office cubicle, are they? Unless they're a fan, and then it doesn't matter.

4. Lions, Tigers and Management, oh my! Everybody knows Pledis' ability to manage and promote their artists has been a lost case since the dawn of time. Nobody is trying to pretend that is not the case. BUT, I have to admit, I have seen a change when it comes to SVT promotions.

A lot of how popular a group is going to be boils down to management. A company with a good name (ie one of the big3) doesn't have to really promote much outside of sending their idols to music shows & the odd variety. Their management name will carry promotion FOR them.

Not to say the idols don't work skin to bone - they do, all of them (most of them. lol). But SME, JYP and YGE all have certain status connected to their names. They are a brand. They have reputation. They can, and do, but do not NEED to hand flyers out on the streets lmao.

The smaller the company, the more work that has to be poured into promotions. And by that, I mean money. And when money is scarce, promotions suffer. Who is going to pay for that poster? The stickers on the bus? The flyers? The stickers? The ads?

Pledis has been notoriously bad in this dept, and have allowed a lot of the work to be boiled down to the idols themselves: a tragic failing in a management company, to be sure, but one that almost certainly saved the careers of Nu'est (though it should never have come to that).

In the beginning, Seventeen had 2 hours of unedited, only lightly supervised screentime with fans, once or twice a week. Before debut. They promoted themselves. They talked to fans on their website, on twitter, and via the camera. That was groundwork for a sturdy fanbase.

And they worked it more and more until eventually, they no longer needed to - by the time Pretty U promotions were underway, they had a reasonably-sized fanbase, sponsors, CFs and grew steadily. And now that Pledis has learned which traits gave them that edge, they are working it

Since DWC era we've seen more and more involvement from Pledis entertainment, giving more members credit on the works they create, utilising variety shows, holding concerts & tours, etc and since the CJEM/StoneMusic takeover, we've seen an even more fervent hike in promos. Olé!

5. Concept. Many have been the idol groups with a very large number of members, and few have been many-member-idol-groups with success, outside of SME (looking at SuJu and Exo - doesn't matter if you like it, they ARE successful in their own rights)

There are two main problems with stuffing a dozen people into one group. The first is that remembering faces and names of members is vital to somebody remembering the group itself. And the second is that nobody gets enough screentime.

And I'm ngl, I think the Pledis response to this was pretty genius and a stroke of luck. The common tropes and characteristics of kpop groups are to have a leader, some singers, some rappers, and some amazing dancers. Pledis simply... took the concept a step further.

Let's take homework as an example. If your teacher gives you 4 days to read, say, 600 pages of a book, you kind of want to die. But if you hack it into smaller chunks - 150 pages a day, 50 pages after a meal - it's WAY more easy to digest than trying to read all 600 at once.

You wanna learn 13 members? Well, take it easy - what do you like a lot? Dancers? Here, learn our dancers first, we have four. You like Hoshi? His two best friends are in Vocal Unit, try that next. So the learning becomes an easy flow from one thing to another.

And the same goes with screentime (although that was iffy in the start welp) - in an interview you can section time for each specific group, meaning a more equal distribution, and ultimately, more attention for the quality of each skill and talent.

When you divide the members like this, it means you have a very precise target if you want to talk about rap, vocals or dance techniques. This is a more guided approach to introducing many members to the public - they are not alone, and have been given help to remember them all.

6. Personalization. Now I know we can go on tangents forever about how all idols love their fans, all idols do sweet things for their fans, all idols have personal interests, so many idols are self-made, hurr durr Seventeen are not special at all! I disagree.

Seventeen are surprisingly personalized. We can argue about lyrics and musical production for hours if we need to, but I'm lazy. Mingyu is the first that comes to mind: the creator of stickers for fans and the father of our mascot BongBongie, he is super creative.

China line created a dance during which at no part but the last second are they not attached. Vernon's entire instagram page is an artsy-fartsy collage. As the members start to branch out into various activities like modelling, acting and musicals, we will see more of this.

But the fact is, Seventeen love their independent creativity. In fact, they thrive off working on a creative project outside of Pledis' interference. Be it fashion, art, or something else, we cal already see it peeking through the trees. We know they like to give.

7. Progression. 2013 me would slap 2018 me for saying this, but nowadays when I look bad... their vocals were not as amazing as I once thought they were. The differences between '13 Jeonghan & '15 Jeonghan are large, and compared to '18 Jeonghan? He has improved SO MUCH.

And we're seeing the improvement in other areas, such as lyrics and member involvement in the creation of tracks. We're seeing it in more memorable choreographies and even in the BSS subunit. Seventeen have improved. They continue to do so even now. Am slightly terrified.

8. To finish off this thread, a word regarding military enlistment. I've seen it come up more and more lately, esp in regards to Seventeen. There is a lot of confusion and bad information floating around regarding the military duty rules. Now, I'm no expert (i promise) -

- but I can near guarantee you that S.Coups, Jeonghan & Shua are not gonna be dragged off next year and forced into the navy or some shit lmao. that would be wild. But even if they were - that is the beauty of the three-subunits-in-one-group system. And it really is a beauty.

Because when a member is ill or enlisted in a stable, whole group, there are only two options: continue to create and promote without the member, relearning dynamics and old songs to compensate, or stay inactive until their return, a highly unpopular mode of operation.

Having your group delegated into small units opens other options. S.Coups enlisted? Cool, we'll just debut our subunits, VocalTeen and PerfoTeen. The other HHU members? They'll do individ activities like modelling or acting or set member of a reality show panel.

'95 line gone? Cool - WonNon are now a hiphop duo, BSS have a comeback and Jun &T8 invade and take over China. You can slice it a million different ways. There will always be several other activities available, and they won't be odd, because Pledis created the group this way.

Okay so TLDR stan Seventeen because they are a solid quality group here to stay. And before any of yall monsters come for me: THIS THREAD IS NOT MEANT TO DISS OR REFER TO ANY OTHER GROUPS, EVER, ANYWHERE, FROM ANY AGENCY. This is ONLY a hype thread for SVT.