Grand Fashion Matchy Maven, thank you for indulging my Yeosang in Jakarta look follow-up ask. Oo Tom Ford was an excellent choice. I think Yeosang recently said the "mafia" suit look was his favorite from the Adrenaline CB. I could be wrong as it was a lot of content in a short amount of time to keep up with.
I don't have a brand or two in mind for Yeosang as my knowledge in this area is very limited. I'm more of a "I like pretty things, but I need someone to hold my hand and tell me which brand can provide me that pretty look."
You told me, "Feel free to stop by anytime," so I have one more ask before I go back to hibernation.
Your response to the last Anon regarding San being a dangerous contender in the Ateez One Up Game inspired this ask. I humbly ask if you could please do a series on what makes each member a contender in this game (I know not all members play, but for the sake of this ask they do)
I'm asking because your breakdown on San was great, and I'm greedy. I enjoy your writing. However, there is no pressure, and only if you feel inspired to do so.
Anon Yeodoongie 🌻
Ask Received 27 Feb 2028
I think the only time Yeosang would delight in being called Pretty Boy, would be if it was one of those mob nicknames that celebrated the fact that he’s beautiful but also ironically the most deadly of the crew.
For some reason I have this web like brain that matches things up fairly easily. It works well for me, until I log onto this site, and feel like this when I look at photos and read meta:
So, I am happy to take questions and kind of direct my energy, haha.
(No need to go into hibernation!)
Okay, back on track to the premise.
My belief is that Ateez is a group of 8 men who care about each other deeply, but they are highly competitive and they treat everything, including skills needed to elevate their careers as a competition amongst each other.
I have a grid with a list of skills, and next to the skill we’ll have the members who are actually competing in this “field”.
Onto the infograph!
As you can see, I don’t believe everyone competes in the same category. And not everyone feels the need to jump in and compete in all these auxiliary categories that are in addition to the singing and dancing they need to master for their career.
This is an incomplete list of items I believe the members compete against each other in. There are other “fronts” they go up against each other in, but for the sake of not being overwhelmed, and because I enjoyed the thought of 8 men and 8 categories - here we are!
First:
On the Language front, we have Hongjoong, Yunho and San in the competition.
Hongjoong was the first foreign language master of Ateez. As Captain, he can often be heard leading English language interviews, and making an effort to speak in other languages depending on the market they are in. He will hold a complete conversation to the best of his ability in English, not just reading a script off a paper. That’s what puts him in this category. (The others that did not make this part of the list are great at speaking phrases in other languages, but will revert back to speaking Korean while having conversational interviews. Language is not their battleground.) San and Yunho quickly followed suit. San applying himself quickly and diligently to learning English. Yunho took the same approach, but was learning Japanese, another major market for the group. In a major battle plot twist this past fall in their Japanese reality series, it turns out San also was studying Japanese and speaks it relatively well. WHOA! Well, Yunho will not be outdone. In the recent Vogue Singapore interview on YouTube, Yunho was one of the English speaking trio, along with Hongjoong and San. He will conduct the entire conversation in English, and will not be outdone by Choi San.
An emcee gig is a great side gig for an idol in between promotions, and to elevate your personal brand.
Hongjoong, Yunho, and Yeosang have all had the opportunity to hold long term emcee positions on Idol Radio and The Show. It’s a way to learn to tell personal stories, connect with guests, and make an impression on fans that involves a more subdued type of performance.
Yunho seems to clearly enjoy this space, and even created ANews on the Ateez YouTube channel as a way to continue to work with this persona.
We have the most and new competitors on the board in the Networking category.
Jongho and Wooyoung probably have the largest in K-Pop networks amongst the group. Then Wooyoung will suddenly be hanging out with a pro baseball player. He is the guy who knows a guy for everything. San and Seonghwa have forged some great contacts in the fashion world beyond their industry, allowing them to make waves. Hongjoong and Mingi have made similar contacts, but they also are agents of chaos. What I mean by that is, you never know who you’re going to see on a Mingi side project, or who you’ll see Hongjoong appear as a guest rapper for (sometimes providing a headline making diss track).
Networking is crucial for longitivtiy in most businesses, but especially in media. Yes, it is about talent. But more often than not, before you can prove your talent, you need to get in the right rooms. You do that by knowing the right people.
These are the Four Horsemen of Thot Shit in Ateez:
Seonghwa, Yunho, Mingi, Wooyoung. They will be seen terrorizing the fan base by engaging in various behaviors up to and including (this is not a complete list of their sins) thirst traps, body rolls, shirts off, grey sweats.
If any of those four menu items interest you, look at the four men mentioned.
You might get a little extra “flavor” with each of the member you choose. Seonghwa is master of the tongue motion. Yunho puts Hotteoks into Victorian era vapors with his hands, Mingi goes into FixOn mode and grabs his crotch, and Wooyoung will show off his abs like a cat looking for a belly scratch.
(I’m so glad these pictures look like mug shots for their horny crimes.)
Fan Focus means these are the guys who know what their particular subfandoms like. They work to deliver it. They are leading the parasocial relationships.
Yeosang is the king of this. He always reflects things back to Atiny. He knows how to play idol and with his fans.
Yunho knows how to do market research on his fandom. Through chats and (let’s hope this is Siren talking out her ass and he doesn’t do this) lurking the comment sections he figured out the Hotteok Hand Agenda. I’m not saying he’s read DomYunho stories, but I’m saying you don’t take belt/low slung pants photos that evoke 50 Shades of Grey otherwise.
Wooyoung is a menace who has lurked fan spaces. Told us about it, by finding a fan’s twitter, then showing it to her face on a fan call. He will fight his fans on lives, then brag about how much he loves his wives to Risabae.
Mingi knows there are multiple sides his fans like to play with and he provides. But just when you think, oh, I don’t want to get too parasocial with Mingi, he’s not like that… watch the fan call where he got friend zoned.
You can’t avoid being heavily involved in Social Media and being in a K-Pop group. But these guys embrace the challenge.
Seonghwa and Yunho are the shorts team. Coming up with ideas for challenges and skits and making sure they get shot.
San decided to make his own short v-logs for each day he had something special going on. A way to improve skills and the fan relationships via social media.
The whole group has creativity, but the guys in the Creative category are the types to have an image of a project in their brain and want to see it move forward bit by bit from start to finish… having a part in each portion of the project.
I think Hongjoong and Mingi are the most obvious in this category. Hongjoong has mentioned before that he’s had to learn to trust in the costume team because he had visions of how he would do it himself. For the Roar MV, Mingi was seen making changes to the costumes himself. He painted pieces for the set. It is more difficult for these guys to give up control than it is for them to micromanage their vision.
Somewhere in between are Seonghwa and Jongho they have visions for their projects. They know how they want them executed. They also know where they are experts, and where they need to call in the people that know what they’re doing and get their know-how to make the best looking outcome.
I think Wooyoung has a sense of an idea of what he wants to do, but needs guidance. But, I put him in this category, because his pushing for Sagittarius was most likely a large part of what led to the solos we got for In Your Fantasy.
Side Quests are unexpected kind of idol related tasks that these guys complete.
Hongjoong wins this category in my opinion because you never know what my favorite squirrel is up to next. Designing a fashion show from scratch. Learning to DJ (He wants to spin the tunes on TikTok live at midnight, haha), Making Cover MV’s just because. He creates to create.
Seonghwa is special because he wanted to model so he did. Not just act as a fashion brand ambassador, which is pretty typical these days for K-Pop. He wanted to walk the runway. By the way, he’s not the typical height for a model. He still made his dream come true.
Like I said earlier, there are many other fields of competition, many I probably haven’t even thought of.
This was just the way of organizing the ask that made sense in my Jjongrami-controlled brain.
My asks are open - How would you match up Ateez vs Ateez? What events would you put the contenders in?







