late to my own show

est 08.20. A lot older than 18. Fandoms: Ateez, Tomorrow x Together, Taemin, Stray Kids, Enhypen, Shinee, Monsta X (Itzy sideblog @storkmidzy)

[storkmuffin]

You can find the master list of YEAR ONE of my kpop musings here.

It got too long, so I began a Year Two Masterlist because that is a totally sane and normal way to live in fandom.

Please block #storkhousekeeping so as to not have my updates clog your Tumblr scroll

[hyunpic]

hyunjin is so sweet 💘 i remember how he talked about wanting to do this if he meets stays somewhere and they are respectful and don’t take pictures of him

[awoooooooooooyoung]

@storkmuffin more input for your hyunjin thesis

[storkmuffin]

I really want this to be true.

[storkmuffin]

Thank you, anon, for bringing those @style photos to Stork's attention. Wooyoung looked like a sad Victorian child who hadn't slept in 10 years in the full group photo. I do agree that Yunho should have been put in another group just because I feel like just with their sharp angles, San and Mingi tend to look better with Seonghwa and/or Wooyoung who also have sharper and more angular faces. It makes Yunho not look unattractive but imo it does make him look 10 years younger and not quite as interesting to look at.

I feel like I heard somewhere that Mingi also has his own stylist/mua (if this is true I wonder if he pays for them or if in the contract negotiations he was able to get KQ to cough up money??). Regardless, he does look great and I think his mua or his willingness to continue to try things with his make-up is REALLY working for him. It makes him look like he is smizing lol.

This is a complaint that puddings often have about San's styling and make-up, which they tend to blame on the staff, since it is often much more natural and pared down and "bland." It is quite obviously a preference thing specifically coming from San imo. I go back and forth on whether I'd like him to be styled in different ways because there is just something about him and his gorgeous face that makes classic and natural (I know it's not really natural since he probably has 10 layers of foundation on) looks very appealing.

What a fun anon post!! :D

Yunho not being as photogenic as he is beautiful in person is one of the proofs that you can't have everything. This also accounts for why Hotteoks are usually created in concerts - something about the way he looks both in person (the face and the physique) as well as the accuracy to life that the projection screen gives us makes people go, Wait, that's what Yunho looks like?? and then they are wrecked or convert to Hotteokism and other disasters.

I am tickled that someone else either has the same headcanon as me OR that my headcanon is true - that Mingi went with actually looking at the end workproduct effectiveness of makeup artists and said, I want someone better. I hope he got KQ to pay for it.

I find it validating that the two Ateez members who have had the most experience with high end make up / fashion teams on photoshoots aimed at mass appeal refused, in however way they did it, the unfortunate make up.

As for San - I don't know how to explain this other than to say - Korean women are experts at telling what is 'real' good skin quality and what isn't, and I can tell you, that velvety clarity of his skin is real. That's him. I think Korean women can tell when skin texture is real probably because very effective, sometimes medically violent plastic surgery and dermatological interventions, and most women not leaving the house without some sort of foundation are the norms here. Suffice it to say - I am very confident that San really does have actually beautiful skin for real. This is not fiction. He has wonderful skin texture and tone. You can't achieve how his skin looks even with expert make up and expensive brushes and our best foundations.

Mingi and his way of 'taking to 'make up is part and parcel of his talent for modeling, I think. He always figures out a way to wear the make up, but now we have the benefit of make up done by someone who clearly appreciates his beauty.

San is famous as just being a beautiful man to anyone who cares about entertainers - like my kpop dance teacher, who is in her 20s and has never been to a kpop concert (bc she's a good girl and only insane 빠순이 try to get tickets, so she was quadruple shocked that I actually go all the time) - who isn't sure what band Choi San is part of, but knew of his beauty enough to smile the Thinking about Delicious Cake smile when I mentioned that my first Kpop concert was Ateez, to which Choi San belongs. So at this point, I think having really bold eye make up on him or whatever might be a strategic error, and I don't think San makes those.

[storkmuffin]

The Guardian's 100 Best Novels

I've read 51 out of 100 on the list. How many have you read?

https://www.theguardian.com/p/x4f9v5

The 100 best novels of all time

The top 100 novels of all time published in English, as voted for by authors, critics and academics worldwide. How many have you read?

[storkmuffin]

Friday Night Watercolor Practice

OK so those no-sketch-only-watercolor drawings aren't as impossible as I thought they would be to imitate.

All art copied from Pinterest artists.

[hitku]

by David Hockney

[chantssecrets]

‘My Parents’, 1977, 🎨 by David Hockney.

[chantssecrets]

in honor of 88-year-old David Hockney, who passed away today.

[huariqueje]

David Hockney , R.I.P.

British , 1938- 11 - 06 - 2026

Het iPad-schilderij ‘No. 316’, 2020

[beammeupplease]

David Hockney.

[nobrashfestivity]

David Hockney Rain, from The Weather Series (NGA/Gemini 23.4), 1973 Color lithograph and screenprint on Arches watermarked paper; signed 'David Hockney 73' in green pencil along the lower edge

[nobrashfestivity]

RIP David Hockney

[generalknot]

A master who created art and lived in his own very personal way. He will be missed.

[storkmuffin]

This week in Storkmuffin's lunch break quick n dirty art practice

From left to right, top to bottom.

All of these were done in about 20 or 30 minute sessions, usually just the one day but sometimes broken up into two days) at lunch time. The first was the scene outside my cafe window on Saturday that I colored in on monday. Sketch 2 and 3 are from my photoroll. I drew my first bike and it wasn't bad! Sketch 4 is from a photo a friend put up on instagram. Sketch 5 is also from my photo roll, of a photo I took at Shinee's concert.

My small sketch book is 200 g watercolor paper and I realized that the 100 g difference between this paper and the one the urban sketch class teacher gave us actually is important, so I bought myself a 300g fancier large sketch book, because my original one from the class is almost filled.

Things I would do differently:

Picture 1: i would do this vertical, not horizontal, and I should've added some sort of framing to give context for the fact that I was looking at this building through a window.

Picture 2: I would put the bicycle in the actual center of the drawing, and be less specific about the background. I made this much more true to the details in the photos than necessary, I think, but that's because I was nervous about how the bike would turn out.

Picture 3: I should've had the shadows not be brown but some darker shade of blue or purple OR consider doing the shadows only in actual hatching with pen marks.

Picture 4: I should've made the truck bigger. i did like that by deliberately choosing only four colors (green, one shade for the buildings, blue for the sky and the shadow shade) the result looks a bit more coherent. I also decided that for this smaller sketchbook I needed to use the thinner pigment liner (0.3 rather than the 0.5)

Picture 5: Still trying to keep to a limited palate, which I think makes making decisions a bit easier. I would make the lamp/flag post longer and take more of the page, maybe. I do like how the building in the back turned out.

[storkmuffin]

hellooooo,

I know you are busy and this is long, so you might not be interested in doing this and that‘s perfectly fine, but might I humbly request a commentary/summary for Mingi‘s latest live?

Your Mingi live summaries are my favourite, they make me laugh so much and this one was a longer one in which he became more contemplative towards the end, which I always find interesting.

Here is the link: https://youtu.be/MYXapZe2jT0?is=mnHew_QI_UhYMH9v

Thank you either way and have a great weekend!

sent May 30, 2026

Wow that is quite the watch you've got there, Mingi. No wonder you called your song Dinero. LOL.

Also, after looking at the actually very cute, very cherubic faces on a lot of boy Idols, including some that are about the same age as Mingi, I am laughing at the degree to which I genuinely find this image cute when he is, objectively and no matter what he says, still scary-looking as fuck. Handsome, of course, and high fashion, even, and obviously, very curated (the skincare, the brows, the facial massages), but this is not a cute phenotype of a face. And yet it's cute to me.

He starts with Wassup, which I think is the most fluent he sounds in any language, which makes it very funny that he sounds like that in English for this one greeting when he really doesn't bother to try to sound American when speaking English otherwise. His Korean enunciation is chewed up, as per usual.

He looks so fed up when he does that with his mouth. He's just smashing his keyboard with his gigantic fingers.

Mingi says he's been up since 11 and doing this and that, and he feels very out of it. A Mingti asks him why he looks so tired, which he laughs about, before he answers that he has been busy. When asked about the merch for his upcoming birthday, he warbles something like, I don't want to be too formal about it, I want to offer something that's more accessible.

Someone says something about Hongjoong getting Mingi a birthday present, apparently, but Mingi's eyes are bothering him too much to cope right away. He rubs at his eyes.

Immediately, the chat tells him that "given that hands are a breeding site for germs, putting them to your eyes may increase feelings of discomfort." Mingi smiles ruefully before he apologizes. Then it's suggested to him that the effects of Lasik eye surgery may have worn off. He agrees at first, then he genuinely wonders about it - Is that what it is??

Mingi decides he has to go wash his face.

He is just such a gigantic person. He's a pile of tents, walking. Also, his tendency to just black out the screen or otherwise leave the chat altogether without turning it off is so odd to me, because the other members who do TokToqs regularly constantly turn things off and then start up again, you know? Yeosang, Jongho, San and Yunho have all had 2 part- chats like this. But Mingi can't be bothered.

So now we're all inadvertent stalkers of his work studio - there's a sitting room or something beyond, but there's apparently no bathroom immediately accessible, so he has to undo a keycode operated door lock to go to the bathroom. There's a further metal door, with another door lock. I kind of wish I'd watched this live, because the chat must have been very funny.

Korean Mingtis are so used to their star just leaving so when he turns off the screen or can't operate it or whatever, they just start talking among themselves, and they're usually really funny. I saw someone announce that she'd just gotten engaged once, on a Mingi Live Sans Mingi, and everyone congratulated her, and then they discussed the difficulty of booking a wedding venue these days, and speculated about when the next Ateez concert would be and how she could schedule her wedding so she wouldn't have to miss it, and then someone else was like, Do we even need Mingi here, ever? This is so fun.

I bet they were discussing Lasik surgery while he's gone opening and closing those doors and - oop now he's back in view, making ... noises. Mouth noises, yeah, but also like, squig-squig-squig. What the heck?

And now Mingi is back.

He explains that he spritzed face mist on himself. Oh so that's the weird noise. Ah OK. And now he's rubbing in hand cream onto the back of his hands. The chat says he looks like he just woke up, and he retorts that he's been up since 11 a.m. as though he expects that to be super relatable.

There's an aspect to Mingi where he is just such an ajumma, you know? The whole thing of like, once he's washed his face, he compulsively has to spritz face mist for the moisturization even though he has, I don't know, 38,000 people waiting for him on chat, and the way he talks as he's applying hand cream - just so middle aged fussy Korean woman vibes. He cracks me up.

Mingi, the 11 a.m. riser, insists that he is "living very diligently, more than anybody." The handcream rubbing is taking forever. You know what- the skin on his hands looks really well cared for. Exemplary, even. Hmm.

Actually, I am going to put on handcream now too. Hang on.

OK I'm back.

So I expected him to say more about what's been keeping him so busy, but he goes off into a non sequitur about how every morning for a series of days the Korean stock market keeps rising way too much, to the extent that he is wondering, "Is this right??"

I get a corporate membership that's subsidized at a really nice gym in a wealthy neighborhood (the underground parking lot of this place looks like a luxury vehicle showroom and it makes me absolutely paranoid every time I have to park my car), and this "Is this right?" in this exact same tone that Mingi says it? I heard a rich old lady say it to her friend while they were having a gossip session in the Swedish sauna the other day. HAHAAHAH.

A Mingti eagerly tells him that she bought Hynix stock, and someone else mentions Samsung Electronics stock and - Mingi really is full of surprises. This completely doesn't fit the stereotype of either what Idols nor Idol Stans are like. So anyway, someone else says, I'm belly-aching because I do US Stocks (meaning she hasn't experienced the meteoric rise in value of the semiconductor stocks). Mingi says he himself also invests in the US market, but that market has also been on fire.

Wow he really likes talking about finance. This is the most interested I've ever seen him be, in a positive way, in the chat.

And we're now talking about the MCM exhibit. Mingi is working hard on it, decorating, he says. And he's also going to go to Singapore. He's answering questions - he hasn't eaten dinner and he'll probably have chicken breast "or something like that." His next hair color will be to go back to black. He fusses a bit with his hair, wondering if it looks 'off'. He explains that it wasn't only Jongho who wanted MCM gear - Seonghwa also asked for it. "There have to be people who want it if I want to give it out," Mingi says.

About the MCM collab, Mingi says that he tried his best and made a big effort to lower the retail price as much as possible, because he was concerned that the price point would be a burden. With much lip biting and inability to meet the 'gaze' of the viewer, Mingi goes on to say:

On the one hand - there's just so much stuff pouring out. The new album is coming. Aniteez and Myteez - things like that. It weighed on me. There's a part of me that feels apologetic. The timing on this - is a little - ... Uhhh. But I will work a little harder and try to create good output.

What an interesting thing to say. He must be getting interesting responses, because he says, "Good good." Or is he reading this comment? Because this next one is him reading someone's comment: "I want it to go well for you."

What Mingi says next about some detail to do with a... box? or something with the MCM collaboration is incomprehensible to me because I have no idea what was put out or whatever. Sorry. Skipping.

Mingi says again, he's working hard.

Then he goes off on another little speechlet:

The thing I thought of as the most important was this - my fans and other people who like me, could wear it during daily life. That was my most important goal. I paid a lot of attention to that during the design phase. And just - to make it so that it would look stylish even if you just threw it on. You know? Like when you're going on a picnic (??) or - because it's summer, you could just be wearing a t shirt, or something you wear to the convenience store, or when you're going on a trip. A really comfortable item that can dress up your routine day. So to do that I changed designs like six or seven times. This is all spoilers. Probably - well - so - So if you go to my exhibit you'll see my creation process and you'll see why I wanted to participate in this culture. You'll know when you see it. I kind of hope you go and see it. I mean, I'll probably talk about it on Pop once it's out but -- And you know I paint? There will be my unrevealed-to-date paintings there. I wanted to put my story into my paintings - the way my grunginess (your what?) comes out through my handwriting - I did things like that. I drew with paint and then placed my symbol over it.

He starts miming making paintings by the end of this speech which I've been trying to be faithful in translation about but like, WHAT DOES HE MEAN his grungy-ness?? With MCM? EH??

So actually this - well, more and more things will be revealed bit by bit but - in January and February, when we were promoting Adrenaline - no wait before that - Solo album, MCM, etc, more things are prepped so then things were a little bit difficult - well not difficult, just very chaotic...

I can't follow. He talks really slowly but I can't follow.

Mingi says he's very confident that fans will find the upcoming "Bad" comeback really "Good Good."

A Mingti asks him how to write good lyrics. Mingi really really likes getting this question. He says these days he isn't sure how to write good lyrics. "You just do it," he says. "You should just throw it out."

The most important thing is this. This is my method: Am I going to put philosophy into the lyrics or am I going to put my heart - my present emotions into the lyrics? Am I just going to just throw it out straight? Or if not - will I pay a lot of attention to the connotations and meanings? I need to decide the direction first and then start writing. If you suddenly just - just start writing line by line and one line has Meaning built into it but the next line doesn't? This way of doing things is not my style. So if I'm trying to deliver my philosophy, then I use that as the starting point of the writing. And if I'm going to be straightforward, then I try to make it fun to listen to. I try to spit it out in an attractive way.

Oh Mother Mary, he is so cute when he's being so sincere about having his girlies understand his 'process.'

He doesn't look up things in the dictionary when he's coming up with rhymes. He's been doing this for nine or ten years, so at this point, it just 'comes naturally,' he says.

And if it doesn't work - then I have to rewrite it.

HAHAHA. OK maybe he really is ND, feeling the need to explain it to this level of granularity.

On Dinero, he says the instrumental portions are really good. He paid more attention to that. He's been studying EDM artists, so he's tried to understand them as much as possible. More than making the music, the real difficulty lay in trying to understand the culture of EDM. Mingi calls himself a "player" and he needed to figure out a way to put his particular energy into the 'lines' (the lyrics?) and not jut the beat of the EDM song, and that was a challenge. I think he means performer.

Someone then asks him an interesting question: Mingi, what's the way to overcome perfectionism?

This is his answer: I am not a perfectionist. Perfectionist? But just- this is difficult to express - Just do it. Why are you trying to make things perfect?

But then, because Mingi actually is a perfectionist, he reveals the perfectionist Tell: Even if you try, you can't achieve perfection anyway. You can count on that. Just do it today, and if it's not perfect, then you give it another try tomorrow. If you keep at it, you get somewhere. Me - I have just improved from just doing it.

Mingtis are quite sincere and serious today. Another one asks him, How should one deal with having the aspiration but not the motivation? His answer: "I can't help you with that one. " Full stop. "Should you just abandon the act of aspiring?"

I think that Mingti explains further that having high expectations makes things difficult. He answers, "Well if you have high expectations you're also like to be greatly disappointed - but that disappointment and that sense of emptiness that comes with it, you have to just fill that void as best you can. I'm the same. When I first put an album together, and release it, I say, I will make it to No 1 no matter what! but reality isn't like that so, so what can you do? So there needs to be a step where you empty out those expectations. You tell yourself that this too is part of the process, this task of emptying out expectations. I try to think about this as the way to live the rest of my life.

Q: What to do if you suffer a great disappointment?

A: Eat something delicious.

Then Mingi tries to switch up the pace. "I don't like talking about serious things but I've just been so busy - my life is full of serious things right now." Mingi regroups to continue, "It's not feasible for work to always go well. That's how work is. So there's going to be a sense of loss, emptiness and hollowness that comes with that, but everyone has this. Anyone. Someone who doesn't... have that is exceptional. But most people experience that, I believe. So the task is - how do you endure those feelings and keep going? Thankfully, these days, the formula is that those who last longer are the winners. And reaching success fast? That's of course great, but everyone has different standards for what counts as success, and I really think that if you succeed too early in life, there's less fun in that. I've seen a lot of people succeed early in life - but even so, I think of myself as becoming more successful, step by step and I think I learn a lot in that process. "

And here he is, talking about money, which is a perennial concern and favorite Mingi topic:

"If I had made a lot of money early on, I wouldn't know the value of money. Because it would be easy - if it's easy, how would you ever be able to establish a sense of values about money? But if you start work and make 100 -200-300 step by step, as you spend it, you learn about money. If you make 100 - I'm sure you envy those who make 200. And you learn discipline. So as you go, that's how you put a life together. I think any sort of motivation is great - I want to make more than that person, or in my life, I have to beat that particular person - anything like that is great. But, saying, comparisons are meaningless - an attitude where you say "because of this guy I can only get to this level'? I mean, you can have thoughts like that but - even the ones you pick as the comparison - that guy? Thinks like that looking at other people."

............

I think I get what he's saying but omg he's so discursive.

"What I want to say is- work hard, and focus when you're working. Even if it's 10 minutes. And if you can't focus, then you just take a comfortable rest. That's how I live. Even though these days - I'm concentrating all the time."

And this is the part of this TokToq where I kind of wish ... that he was talking about this with someone who would take him seriously and help him organize his thoughts a bit better, because the Mingtis that are speaking up make it clear they aren't here for this philosophical bull session about the nature of work, envy, and achievement.

"You talked a lot, so drink some water."

They're lucky that Mingi has a sense of humor about himself:

Immediately, he answers a question about whether he ate dinner, and what song is on repeat on his playlist (he says an artist who sounds Japanese that I don't know). Mingi goes on to talk about this person's philosophy or something that's unacceptable for some reason, but he likes the way that artist puts his lyrics together. He says he has no intentions to go into acting.

They don't like that so someone snipes, "You'll probably be bad at it."

.........Why are Mingtis coming here to yell at me for their misreading of my text and not in the chat yelling at the other Mingti?

Mingi says that he has dreams he wants to achieve (that are not acting) so he wants to achieve those first. One of those dreams was this first collection was MCM. He says it's fine if everyone just looks on -meaning, they don't have to buy anything. He doesn't want to be a financial burden. He'd like for his fans to look at his interviews and learn about his values from the collection and photos and associated content. Mingi wants his fans to understand why he wanted to brand using the FixOn phrase, and how that interacts with his music and how his fashion interests motivates his music - the Atiny and Mingtis that are planning on going the distance with Mingi, he would like if they could identify with that, understand his intentions and share his perspective - that's why he opened the collection. There wasn't any other intention. One of the things that Atiny asked for repeatedly was an MD Hoodie, and so Atiny are the ones that inspired him to make this. He wants that to be really clear. The response to his very very first attempt at clothing design - the birthday MD with Fix On- got such a great response, for which he is grateful, and a lot of people said they wanted it. And he didn't think it was being of service to himself to put out the exact same items. And Mingi went through a period of time where he readjusted his values and thought through some things, and found that he wanted to do more and more diverse things, and he thought about what can I do more, to show people? He figured if he expanded the avenues of self expression by incorporating what he has previously shown people, he thought it would connect into a narrative about Mingi, from start to present to the end. The narrative matters, he says.

"There might be stumbles along the way," Mingi says, "but please consider that this too is a part of me. I think actually a lot of stumbles are necessary for improvement in the future, so I will examine one thing at a time as I move ahead."

Given the response he reads out next, I felt so sorry for Mingi. Mingtis sometimes really suck. LOL. Mingi was using a Korean onomatopoeia for "stumble" and kept saying it a little bit wrong each time, so in reaction to what I think is actually quite a complex statement of intention about why he made expensive branded fashion merch, he just got people correcting him for the mispronounciation.

Or maybe they all thought it was bullshit and believe Mingi did it because he wanted to make money.

Mingi starts to wrap up. When he's asked about whether there is upcoming behind the scenes content, he says neither yes nor no, then says that everyone is always surprised at how much he does by himself, and by doing things very hands on. "It's my music, so of course I should apply myself." He's also going to perform Dinero live, because it was requested by his fans. Something else fell through but I don't know what that was.

He looks absolutely worn out as he says, "Good bye."

[storkmuffin]

I’m so glad you consider Mingi as part of the demon line too :D Atiny will usually correct each other that the original demon line was Hongjoong, San and Seonghwa but clearly a lot feel this way! Surely we can just… change it? Isn’t that how fandom works haha (maybe I’m just new)

I've gotten yelled at by Mingtis about this before but fuck it we ball -

So there might be a demon LINE (HJ, San Seonghwa) and you can either say Mingi is in it OR you know, he's just King Demon and he isn't going to stand in some LINE.

Either works for me. 😈👺👹

[mingislildevil]

Dailyfashion News with MINGI at MCM Exhibition

[storkmuffin]

Whoever set up these unit photos held no sympathy for Yunho, who's getting absolutely outmogged on both ends.

They couldn't have put San, Seonghwa and Mingi (my favorite roommates!) together and then shuffled the others around accordingly? All beautiful men, obviously, but had no inclination to model that day.

(It's a very plain shoot, to be fair. I can't quite blame them.)

https://x.com/ATEEZUD/status/2065234614021730807

Shot 1: WHAT DID THEY DO TO WOOYOUNG'S FACE?? Risabae please help us pleaaaaaaaaaaaaase.

Shot 2: I mean. This may be hotteok goggles but like, I don't think Yunho looks terrible. Very few faces can actually survive being photographed at this angle, and there's also a specific subset of women who fetishize height, so I think that's what they're going for but actually? Mingi needs to share his make up artist with the other two because WOW????????

Shot 3: You know. There's a reason there's a demon line and a not demon line. You're absolutely right that Seonghwa and Yunho should've swapped places.

This gives off Displeased Society Mother, the Misbehaving Eldest Child and the Baby of the Family who came along because he's the family muscle, waiting outside the private school principal's office after an incident at the school dance.

Photo 4: Is it too much to ask that the face make up color somewhat, just a little bit, match the neck? Also they look like we interrupted them in the middle of a drug deal or something.

Final Boss winner, to me, is San, but I mean, it often is. But you know what - San cannot rest on those laurels because Mingi is breathing down his neck with whatever it is he's doing with this eyes.

[storkmuffin]

An Ateez member once was in bed with a girl and he told her he wanted to feel like Christian Gray in bed. They didn’t see each other after that for a while and honestly if I was her I would have thrown up on him.

hands down, one of the best things i’ve found on weibo translate 😭💀 for shits and giggles, who do we think it is 🎤💀

THIS IS SO FUNNY.

First reaction: San. It was San. It has to be San. He literally said the words "50 Shades of Sannie" on a live when discussing his thought process for the Creep choreo. SAN. Plus San in person just seems like he gets pet a lot by women - he gets an awwww reaction all the time on Korean photoshoots but he likes the idea of being a whiskey drinking, super serious moody man with a past, and he's guileless enough to just say what he wants like that.

.

.

Oh wait - now I'm writing fanfic, and self-insert fanfic at that, aren't I? Oh... You got me.

But also - what is it that is generally understood when you 'want to feel like Christian Gray.' I wish I spoke Mandarin so I can understand this better - what do you mean FEEL LIKE? Not do the stuff that Gray does but feel like him?

Surely nobody wants to feel like Christian Gray as described, either in or out of bed? That guy hates himself and is miserable and is haunted by really terrible childhood trauma for like, 90% of the story. (FYI: I haven't read the book and only watched the first movie, but I've seen SO MUCH commentary about the books, the movies, and the transition from book to movie, so I feel comfy having an opinion.)

Second reaction: Yunho. This is not because I'm a hotteok - it's because he's a goofy boy who wants to be a top and likes to fiddle around with equipment (guns, ropes, etc). Evidence is that concert footage where he takes the blindfold from the choreo and does a hand binding demonstration before pretending nothing happened. Plus, Yunho doesn't read (storkmuffin fanfiction headcanon) and he also doesn't like to dwell on dark things, so he could just mean, I wanna spank you but he'd say it in that weird way, to relate to the girlie(s).

Third reaction: Seonghwa. Seonghwa doing this would actually make me throw up, not from revulsion but from anxiety. Because Seonghwa would understand the darkness and strangeness of wanting to feel like Christian Gray - and act it out, both the misery, the anger, the control and codependency issues, as well as the sexuality, and like, I don't think any one singular girl could survive all of that with her sense of reality in tact.

All this before my first cup of coffee. HEH.

I'm glad Ateez is coming back soon.

[storkmuffin]

Thank you for the post about atzshopping in Korea. I was wondering about this too, as I might be going to Korea early next year. 👉👈 I’m sorry KQ treats the domestic market like that, especially when they seem hell-bent on inducing so much spending.

LA does seem to have it all—multiple Kpop stores that stock Ateez merch, all of the Mighteez and Aniteez popups, Destiny’s Memories exhibition, some kind of GH5 launch dance party, etc. Living temptingly close but impractically far from LA is a constant trial for me ahaha.

Do you happen to know if there are any secondhand stores in Seoul that deal in Kpop merch?

I had a blast shopping those in Tokyo and have been chasing that high/longing to go back ever since. In particular, while I don’t collect photocards in any completionist sort of way, it was great for picking up some cute/funny ones to carry around.

(They are all Yunho because I set myself a price cap and, as befits my bias, I found all of his PCs enticing, whereas the enticing non-bias PCs tended to be out of my price range.)

Ooh!! I hope you get to come!! :D :D

I am going to have to open up the floor to people who actually know about secondhand poca stuff - if you @ atiny-queth on an anon on my blog I am happy to post, or you can send her an anon with the information directly too, if you want to stay anonymous!

I am not in the market for poca enough to go searching for them. Also - I hope this isn't TMI but like, I literally buy everything online - I really mean everything - and have it delivered. If there's a specific poca I want, actually, I would go on one of two second-hand market apps where Atiny are constantly selling and trading poca, and have it delivered.

Especially for Ateez stuff, where the estimate is that fully 90% of its fandom is foreigners and overseas, English language sources by Atiny on insta, X or tiktok (I don't use two of these but I assume such content does exist) for physical stores to visit for specific purposes like this are likely to be much better than asking me.

I like your collection!! I see you're into the more natural, less-made-up, cute-boyfriend Yunho stuff. Very sweet. (I'm getting cuteness aggression. My gums are itchy. Want to BITE.)