Dreamcatcher Wades Into New Instagram Waters As Quiet Preparations Continue

K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall

The middle of January 2022 was relatively quiet as far by Dreamcatcher’s standards, but new social media interactions allowed fans to keep up with them.

Even with a group like Dreamcatcher that delivers constant content to their fans, quiet weeks can and do happen — at least as far as public activities are concerned. Following 5th anniversary activities and celebrations, the seven-member K-Pop girl group appeared, at least for this past week, to drop back behind the scenes for the most part and continue work towards their next release. But that doesn’t mean they were completely idle, either. Armed with a new means of interacting with fans and sharing content through their personal Instagram accounts, Dreamcatcher members kept up with fans and began establishing their own personal styles for their individual posts.

Here’s what Dreamcatcher was up to this past week, as we headed into the latter half of January.

SuA, of course, dropped into work for her usual appearance at Wendy’s Young Street this past week, where SuA said she recently finished recording something (for what, she wouldn’t say), and the topic was something that certainly a lot of folks have been thinking about since March of 2020 — what to do once the COVID-19 pandemic is over. The choices included traveling overseas, hitting up an offline concert, or having a party overnight with friends, and SuA, Wendy, and Taehyun hearing about how friends are creatively simulating get-togethers these days (such as through video calling). Everyone is certainly ready to move on from what’s going on in the world, but idols perhaps moreso, as many of them draw their energy from performing in front of actual audiences. Here’s to hoping!

[embed]https://www.vlive.tv/video/275271[/embed]

Siyeon also dropped into vLive this week to share some conversations with fans while she had a quick meal while in the studio. As always with Siyeon vLives, there were a bunch of different topics she managed to touch on, from what she thinks of Gahyeon’s newly short hair (she thinks it looks great and makes her look mature but also cute), to what she should do with her own, to, of course, how it’s been getting onto and learning Instagram. Of all the members doing individual vLives, I feel Siyeon is the best at making it seem like a talk/catch-up between friends. All the members are good at this but between the small mistakes (rotating the camera the wrong way and spilling a bit of food among them), the casual/relaxed tone of voice, and her sometimes-meandering topic coverage, Siyeon excels at it. Even though this was brief, this was a nice, laid-back interaction to get to the end of the week.

With Dreamcatcher mostly radio silent about any future music or comeback news, however, the highlight of the week was watching the group head into Instagram and start sharing posts. Unlike Weverse, where the unified platform, though similar, is also a bit more of a general engagement platform, Instagram provides a place for each member to drop in photos and at the same time layer in a bit of a personal touch by doing so. Even though the group has only been on Instagram for a week, you can already see a couple trends emerging, from JiU’s selfie-a-day encouragement, to Gahyeon showing off her new hair proudly, to SuA spidering out confidently and getting a few new mutual followers (such as Wendy and Taehyun) for her network, and more. It’s been nice to see.

The other reason to keep an eye out on Dreamcatcher’s personal Instagram, aside from the obvious, is to see if subtle hints about what they’ve been working on might be dropped. Certainly, Dreamcatcher Company staff will no doubt be working with the members to minimize accidental spoilers, but with the break between comebacks likely stretching to the six-month mark, there’s certainly more curiosity about what exactly Dreamcatcher could be working on for any upcoming comeback/album release.

While there are visual changes, such as hair color and style (as Handong displayed this past week) along some other offhand comments, such as SuA telling fans she may not make it back to see her family during the Lunar New Year, that signal a comeback is fairly near, all of these are, in the end, assumptions. The lead-up to a comeback is typically started months in advance with recording, production time, and filming all done behind-the-scenes, and only occasional peeks give us a potential (but not confirmed) glimpse of those plans. I’ve seen a few comments from curious fans wondering when and where Dreamcatcher will be dropping their next album, but I prefer not to concern myself too much with the time between releases, so long as we’re seeing regular activity publicly from the group and company.

And of course, there’s the fact that depending on a variety of factors, the comeback scheduling can change. Here’s, for example, the number of days between the last performance stage (also known as the goodbye stage) of Dreamcatcher’s title song and the first mystery code post for the next comeback.

• Chase Me to GOOD NIGHT (31 days, no mystery code)
• GOOD NIGHT to Fly High (47 days)
• Fly High to You And I (227 days — album was delayed)
• You And I to What (78 days)
• What to PIRI (99 days)
• PIRI to Deja Vu (176 days)
• Deja Vu to Scream (106 days)
• Scream to BOCA (117 days, from last stage of Black or White)
• BOCA to Odd Eye (120 days)
• Odd Eye to BEcause (113 days)
• BEcause to ??? (159 days and counting)

Even discounting the 227 days between Fly High and You And I due to delays, we’re still well within a time period between comebacks for a little while longer. And even if it does take yet even longer than that, I think we can be fairly confident Dreamcatcher will eventually be back with something new.

Hopefully the above alleviates some concerns, but until then, we should, in my opinion, enjoy the still-regular content Dreamcatcher is giving to us and know that when news arrives about a comeback, we’ll be the first to hear of it. Of course, I’ll be here to recap and report back on all that news and more, so until next week at this time, be sure to clap, follow, and signal boost if you like what you’re reading!