in my 20s. i tag things #kiss.word to keep them out of the main tag/make it easy to block. i like talking to myself. u are welcome to join. ⚠️WARNING⚠️ i bite
Two years ago, Kang Yeosang made his position very clear on Atiny attending the concerts of other Idol groups. He considered it infidelity. Jongho agreed with him, that this was the final step of the Atiny relinquishing her identity.
Wellllll Forgive Me, y'all, For I have Sinned. I went to a Tomorrow x Together concert and had a really good time, not least because their concert experience made me suffer NONE OF THE PROBLEMS of being a K-Atiny. The concert itself was a bittersweet experience, because it made me realize afresh that Ateez really isn't just not mainstream Kpop- it's really weird, out there Kpop. And some of it has to do with their priorities and capacity. There are high watermark Kpop things that Ateez simply doesn't prioritize or can't do that TxT has down pat, which means other groups, maybe like, Riize, also have well in hand. Plus, TxT music has mainstream appeal and sophistication of a type that Ateez's music and performances, which I still find to be more appealing, hasn't achieved to date.
Details below.
The experience: Hybe v KQ
First, the communication notices sent by Hybe on where to go and how to enter and so on were SO MUCH CLEARER than the two separate sets of notices I've gotten from KQ. So already, I was able to go in a more relaxed mood.
Second, Hybe actually wants to do commerce in Korea. They had an entire separate shopping area set up separate and apart from the whole ticketing and fanclub areas. They did not force the Moas (the TxT fandom name) to stand unprotected in direct sunlight while in line to buy merch. They had the tents set up. They had enough workers. THEY HAD ENOUGH MERCHANDIZE. I arrived 45 minutes before booth closure and NOT A SINGLE THING ON THE MERCH LIST WAS SOLD OUT. There was so much merch available - light sticks obviously, and flags and fans you can wave in the concert, the dollies that everyone in kpop has to sell, but also bags and clothes too! All in stock for the concert and doing brisk business!
I wanted to yell DO YOU KNOW HOW GOOD YOU HAVE IT at all the Korean Moas in line getting their lightsticks mere minutes from the start of the concert, and experiencing zero stress about not being able to. Anything you wanted to get from the official merch for the concert, you could buy, because Hybe wants my business. Plus, all the workers looked proud and happy to be there. They were immensely helpful. I forgot to bring new batteries, and when I told the Hybe employee helping everyone sync their light sticks about this problem, she took my card, ran over to the concession to purchase batteries for me and then bring them back to me. This is the level of customer service I usually expect and get in Korea, but not at an Ateez concert, because KQ employees always look like they're about to deck the Atiny, istg.
You know my theory about how my special darling Ateez guys are actually just roses in a field, and they're special to me because they're mine? It keeps getting proven true in a way that's a teensy bit disturbing.
Like. Yunho, why are you here? EXCEPT THAT'S NOT YUNHO. And that's not even the one that has the most Yunho vibe.
Also, by the way, the seat that I thought was a 'bad' one? My seat was in a pretty goddamn central section! When I sat my butt down I could not believe I just nabbed these the way I did. The Virgin and my Guardian Angel both really want me to get into Kpop this year, because I cannot believe I got central view seats literally the day before the performance at this completely sold out thing lol.
This group, by the way, values their Korean fans because they not only provide soundcheck access for those able to get those seats in the competition to the death at ticketing, they also offered something called "Meet N Greet' which is an opportunity to meet with the artists for about 20 minutes after the conclusion of the concert. A Korean version of the 'send off's that Ateez offers only abroad. I don't know that I actually want to go to a send-off, but I am nevertheless pissed that KQ doesn't offer this to K-Atiny.
So, I say again, Hongjoong is right to be worried about K-Atiny wandering off to other oppa. Daddy Hitman treats me nicer than Father KQ, at minimum.
The Show
TxT's show was so beautiful. They were dancing inside Hermes scarves for so much of it, and it was just fantastic to look at.
Just so LOVELY.
I also liked this design a LOT. They're all sitting on those stairs, and their real-time individual camera footage is projected enormously behind them. Brilliant.
There were pyrotechnics and fireworks and confetti explosions and a very pretty series of laser lightshows and just generally a whole lot of show, but I think this may happen at every kpop event.
Um. So I have a bias and a wrecker in this group now, at the end of this experience.
Bias & Wrecker
Yeonjun, my TxT bias, is what you get when you combine Mingi's I have a cute face and a scary face and can switch at will bold versatility with Wooyoung's I know I'm sexy swagger. He is tall like Mingi and physically sharp like Wooyoung, even. He also makes other people choke him.
The other people in this would be my TxT wrecker, Soobin.
He's Yunho-as-leader, and he's also Yunho with a really great haircut that works for his face. He's a Yunho who can convey facial expressions in a Seonghwa-like way. Soobin can project melancholy, despair, and also be genuinely dark, and also be so very cute you want to pop him in your mouth wholesale like a piece of hard candy. In matter of fact, he's the embodiment of my controversial concept of Yunho - Yunho liberated from Mingi.
The Songs & Dances
I'm very accustomed to and love the very shouty, heavy handed style of Ateez music, so during the first run throughs of their songs I found TxT too insubstantial - too much 'refreshing' whispering, not clear enough melodic lines. But having experienced the songs with the choreo and light shows within the concert, I'm very taken with their songs.
TxT are actually really versatile. Generally they do very classic Kpop boyband (almost whispery, light, bright pop songs that are often two or three notes, tops), but the intro video that got to me was not lying. They have several heavy-metal-leaning songs, with dark delivery that's convincing. Other genres: A song that has an acoustic-guitar folk-song kind of feeling, early 2000s pop music that doesn't overdo the saccharine, snarly rap, something that leans very close to 90s grunge alternative rock.
There also seemed to be a very good balance between how many 'lines' or parts any particular member got on any song.
Their choreography is just so refined. When they need to be in sync, TxT are absolutely, perfectly, pinpoint precision in sync. In my Ateez journey I'd forgotten how impressive and pleasurable that is, to watch perfectly synchronized Kpop dancing by people trained with care and precision in the exact same style. These guys are a moreover the same physical type, too - very similar (extremely tall) height, same body proportions.
TxT's show definitely had 'chapters' and 'concepts' - they start out with boy next door freshness, then there's a lighting change and we're in dark sexy redness, then we go into a melancholy grungy era, and come out the other side with an optimistic, more grown up than act 1 nice boys in jeans, and so on - but all of it is delivered with a light touch that makes it accessible even if you have no idea what the lore actually is (like me).
The advantages conferred by money
TxT's English pronunciations are the result of careful teaching for the ones that aren't actually American. I don't think they had to teach themselves the way San clearly is.
TxT just have had more money invested in them than Ateez and it shows. None of the 5 of them needed a script or a teleprompter to deliver the interim talking points to their audience. Each had a very natural yet polished way of speaking to fans from the stage - a sort of baby version of Taemin's very high level mastery of this skill. They were at ease. After Taemin and TxT, it's being highlighted for me how extremely keyed up Ateez have been at all their performances, and how they still seem awkward and uncertain when they have to talk on stage.
Closing Thoughts.
I didn't like the venue. Gocheok does really have not great sound quality, and the stage is SOOO FAR. So I will have second thoughts about going to any performance by anyone at this venue, but if TxT perform literally anywhere else, I am going to participate in the fight for good seats from here on out. I need to see Yeonjun do his thing up close.
On my commute home (separate post on S. Korea crowd management) I searched for and found the gif and other posts that captured why I adore Ateez so much, and reblogged those, to come back 'home' as it were, warts and all. It was still a blessing to get into the weirder 'noise music' sound that Stray Kids make, because it got me into Ateez's theatrical sound and concept, and having had those experiences is what allows me to appreciate, afresh, the more mainstream Kpop that TxT makes, which had never on its own captured my attention before.
If you were feeling normal about Yungi today allow me to fix that.
Yunho just posted on Fromm, from a plane thousands of feet in the air, to complain that San and Mingi were asleep facing each other and ‘probably talking in their dreams without me’.
And then he took a photo of his sleeping friends to demonstrate.
Remember this conversation next time Yunho is pretending to be annoyed by Mingi’s clinginess 😂
for @iriswashername who asked me ages ago to do a write up of this live
Mingi Pop 20250811 Toktoq Live
This is my first Mingi live I'm watching since my very important, Mingi is Cute Actually conversion in Los Angeles.
Mingi is playing with his hair, looking pouty and pretty. He starts out with his big bass voice, all YOoooo but as soon as someone asks him why he's not asleep he gets all - what we call 웅앵. Sort of like mumbling, but the real meaning is closer to like, warbling his words like a baby. He says he can't sleep. He keeps playing with his hair, then he sits up and does this face. The thing is, I also have a big forehead, and dimples, and monolidded eyes. I feel like I can recreate this photo and look like Mingi, except I'm not this pale.
Mingi talks about a rapper, Palo Alto, who named himself after a location which Mingi in junior high thought was the coolest thing ever. So he looked up every single city in the US, and upon discovering that there was a city called PHOENIX, decided that his rap name would be PHOENIX. In English. In Korean the word is either 봉황 or 불사조 (bong-hwang - no good. bul-sa-jo - equally no good lol, as a rap name)
I wish I'd seen this as it was happening, because I want to go back to the past and text at Mingi: DID YOU KNOW THERE'S A REALLY GREAT ACTOR NAMED RIVER PHOENIX? because that's the person I associate with Phoenix.
The TONE that the present day Mingi attributes to junior high Mingi is really cute - 피닉스로 해야징~~~ in a little singsong - Phoenix is gonna be my na~~~me.
The fans ask about the upcoming pop up, and he says, Just wait. It'll be posted. Then he tests the Mingti - "You have a general sense of what it will be, right?" They do. They ask him if he's going to be selling alcohol. He says, I'm not selling it, I'm buying it. Then he goes, Should I sell it??
Do we know if Mingi invests in stocks? His whole demeanor sharpens when he talks about making money.
He sits up to announce, very soberly, like he's at a press conference and not in his very prim little black pajama set in a fluffy bed with fluffy hair, that he will ONLY be drinking Jaeger and Cass beer from now on, so he seeks the understanding of all other liquor makers. He apologizes, but restates his favorite whisky is Jaeger, his favorite beer is Cass.
Boy knows how to deliver an endorsement message, that much is clear.
He says he's never even had any brand of drink. He even makes lemon drop cocktails out of just those two drinks, Jaegermeister and Cass beer. ... Dot Dot ..Dot. That turns out to be too much for even him, so Mingi turns his face away for a second. Mingtis don't let it go. They're like, "You're shameless!" and he's like, WHAT DO YOU MEAN? IN WHAT WAY?
Then he sits up saying Oh everything is so uncomfortable. My hair is uncomfortable too! He flops on his stomach, talking about how if he cuts his hair again, he won't grow it out again. (The topic of shameless liquor endorsement has been successfully defeated.).
"Why are your lips so chubby?" is the next jab launched by the Mingti. "No it's not. My lips are sharp," is basically his answer, then he does this:
"I look really dumb when I do that?" he reads. He does it again, hmm-ing to himself thoughtfully.
A slightly older(??) Mingti suddenly catches his attention. "No cap - you look just like my husband did when he was younger." Suddenly he's so shy and pleased. This is so cute. Like, he has no reaction to being told he looks stupid when he makes a face (coming here from Yunho lives is like a whole different planet - I haven't recovered but Mingi and the Mingtis all went 'heh' and moved on apparently???), but he's told he looks like someone's 우리 신랑 and he's like, all formal and shy:
"I'm not quite at the age where I could be married," he says, like a shy little bride. lol. (Recently there was a survey that said like 90something percent of people in their 20s in Korea are unmarried, which is a big change from previous decades.)
The fans tell him his birthday Photoism photo set was difficult to pose with. He is stressed, immediately.
I'm cracking up. Mingi has the most transparent body language and facial expressions of anyone on Ateez. He says he tried to be really thoughtful about which poses to take in those 4 photo sets (there's probably 2).
He recalls the April Fool's day content from before, where they were supposed to do a photoism set of poses, and KQ dropped bugs and stuff into the booth to scare the members. Mingi says, Do you remember I didn't get that scared? He explains why. He was so tired that day, and feeling poorly He tried to beg off but was denied, because they had to make the content. "What I felt that day was this - when you're in pain (or, when you're sick) you don't have the strength to be surprised." He goes on, "Maybe when you go to a haunted house, you should be sick." He says this eagerly, like he discovered a really useful life tip, and is now sharing.
... How. What? How is that a- What? @_@?? Hahahah. WHAT?
Don't be sick!! someone wails in the chat. I know how Yeosang and Yunho would react to something like that, but Mingi does this instead: I'm not saying I am sick now. I'm saying I was sick then. That that's why I wasn't that scared. [total deadpan].
When asked why he changed the FixOn logo for the hat, Mingi tries to explain his concept behind the design. He wants it to be a square, the logo he designed. So he made several samples. He wanted there not to be a doubling up of the "i" in the logo, when he made it a square and then 'twisted' it. He had several of these samples made to wear around. "Do not have samples made everyone!" he says, very sincerely. "It's very expensive to do that!"
Business Tips by Mingi, I assume like, #1,004. I don't know. I'm sure a Mingti will tell me.
Someone else says she's waiting for the FixOn hoodie. Mingi likes this, and makes happy smirky faces about it, without saying words, then says, "Just wait for it. I'll make it happen for you."
Though they keep asking him what is going to happen at the pop up, he gives the correct answer and only the correct answer: The notice will be made. Just wait.
Mingi is such a strict person, it's so funny. "I might asphyxiate waiting for it!" someone says. No dice. "You'll be fine. Humans are built to inevitably breathe."
HAHAHAHAHAHA. OMG staring in Hotteok. Like, while Mingi just moves on from the dying Mingti, being like eh, at some point your diaphragm will kick in as it is designed to do, I can hear in my head the entire indulgent soothing speech that Yeosang and Yunho would give in response a comment like that and the contrast is irreconcilable.
Someone else says they want to hear his thoughts in a podcast. Mingi asks, "How do you do a podcast?" They explain, and he says, in a pout, "I'd like to do something like that too, but I mean, someone has to invite me to do it." A beat. "Did I speak too realistically?"
.... Just now? Only now about this you're worried about your hardnosed pragmatism?
He gladly accepts a supplemental comment provided by a Mingti - "I'm sure there might be opportunities in the future."
At 14:54, someone who I think fed their statement into a google translate or papago or something, says in the most robotic and formal Korean sentence: I have had a bad day today. Could you say words of encouragement to me?
Mingi, says, FIGHTING. CHEER UP. WHY ARE YOU IN A BAD MOOD? EH? DON'T BE IN PAI- OH. DON'T HAVE A ROUGH TIME in a really aggressive monotone, with a blank face. Then he blinks a bit like a sleepy cat, and then goes, with slightly more animation, FIGHTING! CHEER UP! [nose crinkle] Then he does a lip smack with his really enormous, like Angelina Jolie enormous, orange lips and goes Okay, next.
....
I had to pause to laugh. I can't tell if that was sincere or sarcastic. It seemed so unvenomous, but at the same time, like, who the hell is going to be comforted by that? But this is how he talks to everyone. I had a flashback to that footage of Yunho coming off stage after doing his Wizard of Oz solo dance, and saying to Mingi, the first one to greet him when he got off stage, "I could have done better!" and Mingi going, "It's over." Not, you know, You did great! or Everyone feels like that immediately afterwards but you'll see later you were great! or you know, anything like that. Just a flat, It's over.
Someone says, "I am studying." Mingi, suddenly animated, goes, "I study too! All the time!" And he's off and running, about the recent series of content he's seen on Youtube. Whenever Mingi says "study" and when someone else who is Korean says "study" I feel like there's a collective, affectionately appalled sigh from the audience side of this, because Mingi really really really doesn't know what we mean when we say "study." Watching Youtube is not included in the definition of the word 공부 (study).
He starts by providing context. He got into some sort of historic drama with the actor Jang Hyuk, from about 2 years ago, about the founder of the Chosun Dynasty. He went from watching clips of this show on youtube, then went to Netflix to watch the drama, so then he got interested in the actual background, so he looked up history content on youtube about the transition from Goryeo to Chosun, and somehow there was a skip over to content about Egyptian geology. (FYI, the transition between Goryeo to Chosun was 14th Century). He's trying hard to explain, and even accounting for the fact that it's 3 a.m. and he spent the day traveling from California to Arizona, this is very hard to follow.
I have friends like this, who get into this verbal spiral where they interrupt as many of their own sentences as they start, and then they make this face to try to pause themselves.
Among us, we say that her brain is moving faster than her mouth can keep up.
Mingi is trying to explain that while he wants to tell the audience exactly what the video was, because he knows they'll ask, he has a real difficulty recalling the actual titles of the things he's seen. He can't remember song names, even though he listens to the music a lot, for example. "I think I tend to perceive writing as a visual image more than anything else," he says. "What's that called?"
"That's OK," is the soothing response from the chat.
"Why are you saying that?" he counters, immediately. Then he says, "I recall album cover images. I can't recall the title of the songs."
"Do you recall human faces well?"
"Honestly? No. Because - because my personality .... is not one that allows me to focus on a lot of things at the same time."
So after this struggle to explain himself and the way his brain works, Mingi drops everything and goes, Anyway so I went from watching stuff about Egypt to now space. And with great fluency and enthusiasm he's explaining what he learned about the expansion theory of space. I stopped listening because I find all things to do with space deathly boring.
Apparently the Mingtis felt the same, because someone asked, "Can you do a live of you shaving yourself?" or something, since Mingi goes, "Why would I do a shaving live???" He says he can't shave every day because he just isn't that hirsuite. There's nothing to shave if he does it too often. He just doesn't have a lot of body hair.
I wish - I WISH - i had seen the chat digest this in real time.
Back to Youtube content. He watches stuff about space, and also things about interior design and furniture, because he finds furniture design very interesting. He calls himself a 몽상가 (dreamer) which seems like such a BIG WORD to use describing just wondering about random shit, but okay. So he describes a typical Korean apartment layout - living rooms are in the center of the apartment, usually, and the anticipation is that one wall will have the sofa lined up against it, facing the TV on the other wall. "If you flip it or defy that set pattern," he asks, "it might look artistic and cool, and you'll get to feel like you're different from other people, but would that actually be comfortable?" He thinks about things like that. He likes looking out floor layouts and architectural plans, and seeing, if you just get rid of all the walls, what would it be like to live in that space? That sort of thing.
"In other words, I'm just wondering about a lot of useless stuff," he says, cheerfully, suddenly quite loud. "Doing meaningless things."
When a question like that lodges itself in his head, like, "What's the floor layout look like for a structure like that?" Mingi says, he can't sleep until he looks it up.
When he was younger, he liked One Piece, and drew the layout of the ship (I have no idea what One Piece is) and would fall asleep imagining his life in the ship, but if he couldn't fully recall (in his drowsiness) what exactly the layout of the ship was for that portion he was imagining, he'd have to get out of bed and take out his notebook to check it against the floor plan. He says that this is because he's an extreme N - iNtuition.
Someone must've said he could be an architect, with all this talk of floor plans. "It's not just anybody that can become an architect," Mingi says.
"Why don't you finish your thoughts?" someone asks. Mingi says that he needs to be careful what he says. Is he impulsive? He used to be impulsive, but as time has gone on, he has changed. "You'll find that you change too, as you live in the adult world. It's not easy."
Mingi is really disorienting. We went from Goryeo to Egypt (what about Egypt though??) to space (??) and then apartment layouts in Korea (!?!?!) to whatever One Piece is and suddenly he goes, "I am not wearing make up right now, so I just look really... kind." But Nice Mingi doesn't last more than 0.1 seconds because someone calls him an 오골계 which offends him. Um.
An 오골계 is a specific type of chicken, whose entire flesh is black. The id of the person who called him that is - of all things - Mingi's Wife. So he's like "Mingi's Wife! What do you mean an 오골계?" in a very stern, big voice. I bet she fainted. I think he knows she fainted, because Mingi does a very satisfied staredown of the screen for a good bit. LOL.
He's asked for life advice, so Mingi says, "I'm not in a position to give life advice, but ummm" as a start. He says he was listening to a lecture, then he says but everything he listens to comes in one ear and goes out the other (??), because he just does things according to his own beliefs, and anyway there are a lot of people like this in today's world, in the 21st century, people who have their own firm values and stuff.
WHAT? There's so much interesting stuff in there that he's discarding as he goes, that I want to stop him and pick him up, turn him upside down, then shake him so all the sentences fall out of his head and I can put them together like a jigsaw puzzle. I have no lifting capacity whatsoever, so I am going to ask the actually strong Atiny that I know exist to help me.
Then suddenly he brings it all together. He says there are basically two paths - do I want to build up wealth in a steady way, or, setting money aside, do I want to pursue a dream, that's a harder path than other people but feels worth it? It's best if you can make money pursuing a dream, but that's hard to find. And anyway there are also people whose actual dream is to make a lot of money. Or you can choose to do the thing you'd be best at. So Mingi thinks that you can focus on one particular of these options, and go all in.
Changing tracks, Mingi says there's no reason to stay tied in with a 'dream' just because it grabbed you that one time. You can change it at any time. Oh Mingi. This is so earnest and sweet. His examples are between a trainee to be a kpop Idol and ... an accountant, so it was still funny as well. When someone says he seems enlightened, he admits that though he talks this very zen game, any time he makes a mistake, he suffers over it. Like so:
The point, he says, is to keep trying.
"You made a mistake yesterday" someone says. He reads it and then says, "Anyone who brings that up, I'm ejecting you from the chat." Then he adds, "Life is full of errors!" But he changes the story. "It wasn't a mistake!" It was an intentional emphasis. He had wanted the audience to know that he was in a little bit of pain from a slipped disk in his neck from the heavy necklaces. But of course, because they are Ateez, as soon as he came down from the stage all the members rushed over as one body to make fun of him about the 'error.' (I think I heard Wooyoung talk about this.)
"Nobody hears it when I do well, but this sort of thing, they hear really well." The permanent Mingi lament. He doesn't seem to realize that it's because he does everything so excellently that when he does make an error it's very attention garnering.
The question about life advice is repeated, and this time the answer is different. JUST LIVE AS IT FLOWS, he says. "I"m not mad" added later, because he sounded mad.
A mingti tells him that he seems like 한방백숙 - Korean chicken soup in which an entire small chicken, innards hollowed out, is boiled in a really rich broth. It's kind of comforting to see that Mingtis have the whole, same, tear him into pieces impulses that I get about my bias. Mingi doesn't understand what she means (thank GOD) and we all move on.
But it's a topic of food, and they all love talking about food, so Mingi talks about the last time he had 백숙.
The cannibals are back, but they're saying it TO him which is a bit ... iffy to me.
"What would Song Mingi taste like if we fried him?" is a sentence that Mingi the actual person reads out on a live chat. "What kind of ignorant & brutal thing is that to say?" he says, then he has to answer it because why??? but he answers, "It would probably just taste like meat. But I mean. Why would you fry me? I'm a person."
OK Mingtis, you guys have maybe need to do a little bit more self policing. Mingi is actually a much more accomodating Idol than I thought him to be, to put up with this.
Now we're back to more normal conversation topics, about what he ate while in Arizona. Then we talk about make up- his face is pale but his body is tanned, so he tries to tone down the face make up skin tone to closer match the body color. He says he tans only enough to show his muscles properly, because it's hard to show definition if your skin is very pale. He's clicking his heels together while lying on his stomach. His feet are very very far away because he's so long lol.
"Who do you want to date?"
"It's really hot here, so I want to stay in my room."
HAHAHAHAHA
The girlies are explaining what the difference is between BB and foundation, and he understands immediately. "It's to do with longevity after application!"
Mingi is wrapping up. He says that he doesn't really have hobbies. He watches animated movies, looking at floor plans and interiors, but the others manage to create collaborations and stuff, but "It's not like I can collaborate with houses." He makes a joke. "If I say I like a house do I get one? Heehee. No that would never happen. Life doesn't work like that." There's a brief discussion of video games, and Mingi says he has no gift for games. He doesn't spend money on things like that. Rather than spend money on fandom for a game, "I would buy stocks." He has no patience for any sort of game where you have to wait for things to be possible. I'm very lost. I have no idea about anything to do with games. Blah blah. Something something alternate universes blah
AND THEN HE SAYS:
Yeah! In the alternate universe I could be a part of a team called Atee-gi and I could be Ming-ee and in that world I could be the main vocal. In the parallel world. Yeah, just like Halateez in the parallel universe. You all should be really glad that you weren't born in the Halateez world.
I think he got maximum cringe from doing a reference to the Lore, so he yeeted himself out in the corniest way possible, saying, "I have to go rescue the Halateez!" and turning off the screen.
HAAAAAAAAAAAAA I knew he had main vocal ambitions :D:D:D:D and so does San. :D:D :D :D