In the same way that Seonghwa has an Idol Voice that he uses, so does Yunho. But the thing is, as per usual, from just being really, really likable and really, really nice to people (except when he's not) nobody mocks Yunho for it.
He uses his 'real' voice on the other members (but not on the Atiny). Yunho has admitted as much - that his actual voice is much lower than the Geisha Boy one he uses talking to the Atiny. He attributed this to his being just so excited and happy to be talking to the Atiny, rather than, you know, he's acting out a persona.
Oh and this post is for @thirstkanaphan
Oh you are asking for it. I even found a Talking-to-Mingi sample, just for you.
Mingi has a perfomance voice when he's rapping or singing but most of the time he's just being... himself. I don't know if he knows how not to be that. Out of context, I would not have known that this was Yunho speaking to Mingi other than from the way Mingi reacts to the speaker.
The back and forth is as follows:
M: I'm going to put you on speaker. How- how did you know? [Does Mingi get nervous when he talks to Yunho? Because he stutters a lot.]
Y: Yeah. Turn it on.
M: Tu-turn it on?! [Confused, looks to staff for help. Nobody can help him.] Oh, ah, you want me to sing?
Y: No. Me. Speakerphone.
M: I have!
Y: You have? [he sounds like he's lying down??]
M: [stutters, but doesn't get words out.]
Y: Do you have to do that dalli-dalli thing?*
M: [noise of affirmation]
Y: Hurry up and do it. Don't chew on it like you usually do.**
M: [smiles] No- just wait a little bit.
Y: [talks over him] When are you going to do it?
M: [Smiles bigger, starts swaying] I'm going to do the hip hop version.
Y: [impatient] Ayyy but right now I'm holding off on washing up so I can see you. [mention of nakedness because of course he does]
M: Ah ok. Just a moment.
.
*and ** - I don't know what the dalli dalli thing is, and it's hard to hear what yunho says in the second one. 맨날 씹어 먹지 말고 is what I heard, but I'm not sure.
Yunho wanted us to know this Yunho, this other, more often hidden Yunho. The one with the much lower register, the growl, the abrupt short sentences, speaking almost entirely in imperative conjugation, and in a much slower cadence than his 'Yunho The Idol Doing Fanservice On a Live tone. And like, Mingi's tail feathers wagging? I can see all the other 99z reacting in exactly this way. And honestly? All respect to HongJoong, like all of it, my clever little wordsmith stress squirrel will never see the sharp side of my tongue, but - I kind of want to see Yunho take over in the absence of the two hyungs and use this voice more.
alarming recent developments in the field of thirst tweets
recently i have been reading discussions in replies to asks at @storkmuffin's blog about idols being made to read thirst tweets and what makes that uncomfortable. i've been thinking about why it crosses a line for me personally. thoughts below.
when i was an exo-l on twitter a decade ago, thirst tweets were not written for idols to see. fans censored or scrambled idols' names in thirst tweets before posting them, so that they didn't show up in searches for the idols' name and only their followers/mutuals would see the tweets. fans also had side accounts to avoid being 'horny on main'. across k-pop fandom fans have etiquette re: what stays in fandom spaces, and what's appropriate behaviour towards idols, for example, flirting with idols respectfully on fancalls.
fans thirst tweet for other fans to respond with enthusiastic noises of agreement and additional notes. if i say 'yunho's hands could engulf my entire being' and another hotteok sees it and adds 'and take me out like a candle', our hotteokism has been amplified by resonance, everyone's happy, and yunho's none the wiser. or so we think until he updates instagram with the umpteenth photo of his hands
if yunho saw me tweet this, i would be mortified, and if he was made to see this, i would be gnashing my teeth with the financially irresponsible urge to sue the content farm responsible. i believe i'm the majority in this, that fans do not thirst tweet with the possibility of the idol seeing it in mind, especially the more unhinged the tweet. i don't know the intention behind every tweet but if anyone is composing their drafts specifically trying to be extreme enough to be featured on a content farm for their idol to see, that content farm made it happen.
farming fanmade stuff for content to profit off of is gross. this is a relatively recent development in the field of thirst tweets and it's unfortunate. making idols read thirst tweets is on par with making them read smutty fanfiction: neither was written for idols to read in the first place. it's crossing boundaries that should never have been crossed.
tl:dr; what's by the fans for the fans needs to stay by the fans for the fans
Sugar Rush Ride MV as a possible metaphor for predatory relationships (Meta)
I posted this piece on TXT’s subreddit, but they removed it because they said my subject matter is too triggering. Screw them. Reposting here because I’d like to share it nonetheless.
Thematically, Sugar Rush Ride is about the loss of innocence, about youth and temptation (as per the name of the chapter), and also about that niche intersection between trickery and seduction.
The music video conjures images of Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, but, of course, with a darker, and a more sexual twist. When I say this concept is sexual, I want to emphasize that I do NOT think that the MV and choreography are designed to sexualize the boys in the eyes of the audience at all. Rather, I see the choreography as an illustration or as a performance of sexuality, in as much as sexuality is typically a part of boyhood, and I see the MV as a depiction of sexuality in its adolescent or its "blooming phase" (note the vivid colours in the MV, the numerous vines and flowers, the clothes falling off their bodies; gardens and flowers are inherently symbolic of growth and sexuality). This MV is about eroticism and the relationship between the Ego and the Body. It's about the self-discovery aspect of sexuality and, by consequence, about the temptation and internal conflicts that arise during one's sexual awakening (especially if there are taboo undertones to it). We see multiple instances of the boys gasping, repeatedly touching their own necks and bodies, performing gestures that are explicitly reminiscent of being in the all-consuming throes of pleasure. Through this blissful awakening, the "devil" starts tempting the subject to give up even more of themselves, with the promise of a sugar rush (an emotional or sexual high) as a reward for further compliance. I find it hard to believe the devil isn’t a categorically older figure based on the lyrics, and based on how trust and deception form part of the narrative.
The boys are swept off their feet into a world of magic, of passion and fruitfulness, of wonder and pleasure, which all bring to mind the explosion of feeling and sensation that adolescence and self-discovery can evoke. I want to reiterate, the orgasmic motifs in the MV and choreography are not for the pleasure of the audience - it's more of a storytelling element in the context of the choreo than it exists for the purpose of sexualizing anyone. It aims to represent pleasure and sensation than to seeks to please or to seduce. The subject, in this case, the boys, is leaving childhood and entering a new world, now transcendant as they move away from childhood innocence into adulthood. Likewise, the sugar motif is quite obviously deliberate - it evokes images of hyperactive children, but also of Lolita's red lollipop. But this beautiful world of desire, symbolized by the Bali landscape in the MV, didn't come at no cost. We know they were brought there by the "devil", with his pretty words and with his promises. The boys have been tempted and they've been tricked. The devil beckoning the boys with literal, actual sugar speaks to the age old warning we give to childen: don't take candy from strangers. In this way, I believe devil is not another child or another adolescent. The devil, someone they've come to trust and believe in, is manipulating them with the “sugar”, with the candy, with the high of the sugar rush. Likewise, I think the outro where they directly call the devil who is their seducer "sugar" speaks to elements of fondness and of betrayal.
All highs have a comedown. The once wonderful butterflies (Nabokov himself was a butterfly scientist, by the way) are now pests and beasts. This world they've crash landed to like castaways is no longer a paradise or a welcome escape from reality; it’s actually turning against them. The subject, that is, the boys, has been precocious, and it's only the new pleasure of erotic tempation and sexual satisfaction that's keeping this charade going. Childhood is over by virtue of the sexual awakening and by the evident corruption of their innocence by the devil, and there's no deserting what they've experienced. What's also over is the sugar rush from the “sugar” they were tempted to swallow, and now is time for the crash, which is likely why they're leaving the island at the end of the MV. For this reason, I think the story of the Sugar Rush Ride music video speaks to having one's innocence lost and also simultaneously having a precocious sexual awakening by someone who's manipulative, and also likely much older.
I saw a post about how fandom just completely makes up the characterization of a character a lot of the time and then gets mad when it isn't canon, and I realized that it applies for kpop fandom, too—a lot of the time fans will see the barest surface-level details of an idol and not only make it their entire personality in fanfic and loads of other fanmade content, but also add on traits that the real person has never even displayed, basically turning them into a whole other character instead of it being an irl idol they're writing about. I'll admit that I fall victim to this quite a lot myself, and it's probably why I feel comfortable reading fanfic when I'm normally against actually imagining myself with the idols in question or (in the case of shipping fics) portraying two idols as being in a romantic relationship with each other—because in fic, it feels like I'm reading characters someone created based off of the real people, with the same names as the real people, not the real people themselves. But it's definitely a lot less healthy when you do it with idols than when you do it with fictional characters, because these are real people you're talking about, and it can be easy to forget that.
YUTO BEING THE LEADERZ FAVE PRECIOUS CHILD MAKES ONF EVEN MORE PRECIOUS
Ok gonna go meta here
Writing it down as a note for me for further characters chemistry
I have special feelings for groups that sees their maknaes and foreign members as precious being. Example, Seventeen towards China line. And Pentagon towards Yanan and tall Yuto.
For ONF, everytime I see all of them doting and respect and care for Yuto, every interaction makes me go awwww. And its also fun to watch Yuto having different chemistry with each of his hyungs.
Mind you I am not saying they did not dote him during early debut days. ONF already does that for Minseok and Yuto ever since they debut. I do also think maybe that time Yuto hasn't fully open up much? (But Halloween Mafia game and Heyo mafia game proved me wrong just a slight bit. Maybe due to camera he is more shy and aware that he is a foreigner hence better be quiet to be careful)
Two of the best examples of Hyojin letting Yuto to get away with it were
1. The vlive prior RTK finale and Yuto just straight up gets himself hyper jamming to New World and ignoring Seungjun lol while Hyojin just watch his teammates and laughs how helpless Seungjun was.
2. HYOJIN AND YUTO TEAM UP TO ANNOY SEUNGJUN BY REPLAYING THE REAL TIME VLIVE WITH SPEAKERS ON, IN FRONT OF SEUNGJUN (because they are heading else where but Seungjun is still doing vlive and they are actually trying to remind him)
Of course I do think its Hyojin's prankster mode kicking in so he enjoying seeing others annoying his best friend. But also I think he enjoys it because that is how comfortable they are.
(I will need to remind you that LEADERZ chemistry has a bit of love hate in there. But does not mean they bully each other being their "love language" its more towards a chemistry during off stage)
Its not just the leaders. Each hyung have their own way to dote him. And if you pay attention you can find it. But 1 scene i really liked was during RTK finale, Yuto just bumped towards Jaeyoung with his chair and Jaeyoung just let him had fun. And then even joins him trolling Seungjun along with Changyoon by circling Seungjun while sitting and moving with chairs.
Also I do think they give him mental freedom so that he is more comfortable and more capable to express himself more. Its also a kind of mental security, especially WM only Yuto being the foreigner.
And it is this mental security, made Yuto suddenly bloomed and gets more active. He should tho imo cos he speaks really fluent korean. It will be a waste of talent should he did not get to speak more. Well he did it well himself during vlive so I am not gonna complain much
I am just making speculation not sure if there are foreigner trainees.
But I could not help feeling they escalated it to one step further during RTK. And I do notice the whole team's bond got deeper thanks to RTK
Like when i go back to watch their vlive, the doting level if you compare on early debut vs recent vlives (vlives that are after RTK) their chemistry gotten much more natural and frequent? Like the whole vibe portrayed seems like they are just a bunch of university student knowing each other for damn long but still not yet get tired of each other.
Of course i do feel it is due to unconscious reaction towards Minseok departure. I am not saying Yuto is Minseok's substitute. I am saying the hyungs felt the importance and the need to express their love and bond towards each other even more now.
Sorry for the messy rant. Was writing this note first thing i woke up.
In short, ONF hyungs, please dote and care for Yuto more 🙏
Interesting book I've read this weekend: It's called Kpop Lightstick Girls (케이팝 응원봉 걸스) . It came out December 3, 2025. The authors conducted a series of in depth interviews with participants in the protests to impeach former S. Korean President Yoon who declared martial law (this is link to a wikipedia article that I neither endorse nor disavow). There were many, many nighttime vigils and protests to impeach Yoon, and one of the interesting phenomenon was that all these women in their 20s and 30s brought out their kpop fandom lightsticks, sometimes to find each other, other times to have something to hold. They also played a lot of kpop songs at these vigils and protests.
One of the writers is Lee Heejoo who writes novels with kpop fandom as a theme - and she has a book deal (I just googled her) with a book in translation, so check her out! I read her first novel, called Phantom Limb, about being a true-blue Kpop fan and it was very informative and a good read, besides.
This book was really interesting to read, but I must say that the below are the things that were interesting to me in particular and not some sort of thorough summary of the contents.
Personal note: December 2024 was before I was willing to participate in Kpop fandom as anything other than a consumer of the official content.
The positive power of Kpop
In December 2024, there was a famous hashtag that said: "Haechan, I'll make this a good country for you to live in!" as a motivation for why these Kpop fan-women were taking their lightsticks to the protests.
Haechan is an NCT member, and one of the fans interviewed said, "I wondered, does Haechan actually have a difficult life?!? But I understood it in context to say, I will protect those that I love [by participating in the protests]."
Another person also chimed in with this: "If anyone can influence the world in any sort of direction it's going to be a famous kpop Idol, and not me."
"Fans always want to give the best of what they have to their bias. Usually that's money and love and time, but this time, if you're doing this in the name of your bias, it's proof that freedom, expression and human rights have become difficult to safekeep."
"Kpop Lightsticks became an icon of the protests [against the attempted self-coup d'etat through the declaration of martial law]."
Repeated over and over is the sense that these women had of being longstanding Kpop fans and being shat on for this hobby, being called airheads and such, and that's why they brought out their lightsticks to the protest, to say, quote "I am a citizen with a healthy sense of her civic role. That's what I wanted to show people. i wanted to say, you mock us for being otaku but that isn't all I am!"
One woman said that she brought out the kpop light stick and also felt less afraid to attend these political protests when lighsticks were present because "I always feel that Kpop is a safe place. ... When I go to a concert, there are many different types of women there, but I feel like inside that space, i will be safe. I don't need to worry about someone being physically violent to me. I always love women-only spaces- they're fragrant to me. And because the rights of fans have become better recognized of late, security at venues can't be as brutal as they used to be to attendees as before.
All places where people can form any sort of community have been destroyed, according to one interviewee. "Local community and school are no longer sites of providing care and comfort. The only easily approached spaces to form community are fandom and religion. " Someone else said, "When you go to a concert, total strangers exchange gifts, without condition. " Another said, "I've learned everything about connecting to other people through fandom. In society I learned about how to compete with others and building my career and things like that. ... Fans voluntarily create fanfic and fan art, and even though there are negative views about this sort of 'unpaid' labor inside fandom itself, I don't see it as entirely negative. There's so few opportunities to do work without thought to pay, and on a voluntary basis."
A lot of the interviewees considered themselves "old hands" at Kpop fandom.
There was an over-representation of NCT lightsticks, and one of the NCT-fans had this theory: The assumption is that everyone who brought out a lightstick was a die hard fan of a particular group or of kpop but it may just have been that they brought it out because it was at home. NCT is a four-group alliance, and NCT was the 1st tier of the 3rd Gen.
Necrosis theory of Kpop Gen 4: This old school NCT fan thought that in the course of coming over to Gen 4, Kpop was suffering necrosis (she actually used this word, 괴사 - as in, premature cell death). This was her analysis: "The abusive business tactics of entertainment companies, services became 'premium focused' (프리미엄화) [which I take to mean - they became very expensive, very commitment intensive, and accordingly, high barrier to entry], which meant that casual fans all left for baseball or manga or other similar hobbies. This means that the remaining fandom has to be really hardcore about everything, meaning you enter into a negative feedback loop cycle, and so there are a lot of people who were committed Kpop fans only until the end of 3rd Gen, of which NCT was tops, and stopped engagement with Kpop altogether. " The interviewer agreed, saying that recently Idol fan culture became excessively consumerist, and as a result, only those who will stay until the bitter end have remained. This is a period of a lot of extraneous noise."
Another fan added that financial elites gained a chokehold over Korean entertainment - the most visible one being Hybe - and she saw a need for a sea change where the point of an entertainment company wasn't purely just about making money.
But then the way apparently that K-fans make friends is to exchange X-account information and I don't do X because it's ugly on there.
These old school -and I would venture, to their minds, 'proper' - Kpop fans think that the influx of scalpers and ticket-obtainer services that make you pay 2-3x the original ticket price means it's not even worth going to the concerts, and would rather watch a live broadcast together with friends.
But I have no local kpop friends so... ticketing attempts will continue to be a part of Storkmuffin's life, I guess.
There's a worry that these fans who politicized their fandom have, that if their heretofore silent Idols spoke up, "a high earning 20 something straight man would make a different [political] choice than me, and I feel nervous about this." One of the interviewees confessed a strong desire that her bias not vote in a particular way, and her friend criticized her, saying that wanting her bias to be 'politically correct' in this very literal sense was a way to destroy his right to free speech.
2026 and the disruptions in Kpop
The NCT fan ended her interview with a statement of well wishing for Mark, and I wondered briefly if she was doing OK a year and a half later.
A fan of The Boys said that the boys had just left to move to a company run by MC Mong and Cha Gawon, and "fans were not happy about this move. I too am not very pleased with the way this company is treating them, but they do seem to be making an effort with the new album, so I'm watchful." The explanatory note said: OneHundred was a label founded by MC Mong and Cha Gawon in 2023, and The Boys entered into an exclusive agreement in November 2024. (OH DEAR)
Wanting your Idols to do less: Airport photolines were apparently at one point a topic of lively debate in K-fandom, that it would be unfairly or abusively extending the Idol's labor time.
The emotional difference between gg v. bg stanning: One woman in the book says that she finds herself unwilling or resistant to buying fully into 'fandom' of a girl group, because she would be unable to maintain what she feels is the necessary emotional distance with girl groups the way she can with boy groups. She might find herself going, "I am of a piece with that girl group," and yet someone else disagrees. She doesn't feel any sort of identification at all, she just likes them as Idols.
I learned from this book that Posttype is what A03 is in Korean.
The abuses of Kpop At Idol concerts there's excessive amounts of personal ID checking that they do not do at any other concert type [CAN ATTEST THAT THIS IS TRUE]. And if staff determines that you are not the original buyer of the tickets, they can stop you from entering the venue even when you possess the ticket, and in the worst cases will destroy your ticket. They used to also be very strict about cameras being brought into the venue [this must be from very long ago??] and in the name of preventing such equipment will do physical and possession searches to excess [i've never experienced this] and sometimes there is unwanted touching. [??]
The reason that this happens is due to scalper and black market ticketing, but instead of doing anything about that, they will just oppress and insult the Kpop fans. The interviewees talk about how they wish this was just lottery like they do in Japan.
Much of what happens to the fans, at the music show recordings, the open broadcasts, and fan sign meetings are all political to these politically active Kpop fans.
When you go to a music show recording, you have to pack hotpacks, cushions and blankets. "When you go to a music show recording session, fangirls are treated as the lowest of the low. We're treated like servants. We were sitting on the bare ground during the protests, but I'm accustomed to that [from attending the music show recordings]." Even more appalling: "Actually the treatment we received as protesters was more respectful than the treatment we get as fans attending a music show recording." .... yeah more confirmation. LOL. The fangirls are treated like shit, and because they endured a physically difficult and emotionally humiliating thing while they also got to see their favorite beautiful boy up close, they become addicted to that abuse cycle of feeling like the difficulty made it worth it. [Hard disagree from me personally - being treated badly cancels everything else out.]
"There is a basic assumption by the Idol industry that female fans, as a whole, are incapable of actually critically engaging with the production, performance or musical quality of their output, and instead denigrate them as out-of-touch types who simply give unconditional love."
FANS MUST NEVER BECOME ENTITIES THAT BELIEVE EVERYTHING AN ARTIST SAYS NOR ALWAYS BUYS EVERYTHING A COMPANY PUTS OUT. [putting this in all caps especially for the children in the international fandom who don't know how to do this correctly and send me hatemail about critiques].
"One of the worst things about the Idol and Kpop industry is that it teaches its fans learned helplessness. Fans continually demand change and yet are also continually ignored. This learned helplessness/ sense of futility affects many other aspects of life."
Shawols: The book states that the most impressive and unified fandom are the Shawols of Shinee, in that they will decide as a fandom to sit in a particular section far from the stage so that they can signal to Key where they all are, in an SM Town concert event. Apparently this level of identification and unified movement bled over into political activism like the protests against Yoon and the martial law attempt, where Shawols marched together.
KEY: There was a lot of praise of Key in this set of interviews, for being really diligent and hardworking and someone who continually grows. The Shawol interviewed said that the amount of effort that Key puts into his work makes it possible for any Key-fan to be really proud of her identity when she speaks about him in public. (And apparently Onew by contrast was the subject of controversy??) Another interviewee, who wasn't even a Shawol, said "I really like Key. He seems wise, and knows how to treat people well. I like people like that, who try hard not to cause harm to others, and are sensitive enough to understand other people."
Jonghyun, Sully, Hara: There's a scattered discussion in this book about 'unionizing' idols which... unfortunately were a bit idiotic to my sensibilities, but someone did say, if such an organization had existed, we wouldn't have had the tragedies that were these three suicides, so I am making note of that here. But someone else said, very validly, "The big company Idols that I like are treated in a way that makes modern capitalist concepts like a union simply not apply to them, and live something closer to the lives of Medieval princes and princesses. I would much rather there was recognition of the fact that the fantasy of the Idol cannot actually exist as the creation of a single person, so I want there to be respect and support for the entire team [of actual laborers, natch] that created the fantasy."
EXO: The Korean fandom was so strict and conservative that mentioning any sort of personal information (like, Hey I've been to that city where the member is traveling for holiday!) would get critiques like "Why are you talking about YOURSELF."
The lost promise of Kpop activism?
GOD: Way wayyyy back in prehistory, apparently, 2001, a GOD member called Joonhyung was boycotted because he was outed as having a straight relationship, and his company was going to kick him out of GOD so fans protested and boycotted and managed to prevent that from happening.
By the time EXO were big stars, however, Kpop focus had narrowed to being 'about my bias' and the 'enemy' changed from being "the company" to "the company and fans who aren't fans of my bias." As a result the authors write that they thought the whole 'bias' based culture ruined the unity and positive development of fandom culture by instead creating stalker fandoms and hater-solo fans.
There was a minor course correction with some of the political activism by BTS's ARMY
Though Kpop Fangirls have always moved in political, and politically organized ways inside and sometimes outside fandom, any time they are visible in public the media reports it as a surprising event rather than as part of a herstory.
10 years ago, there was NOT this demand that Kpop remain entirely apolitical.
Queerness: There was consensus among these women anyway that the Idol industry uses queerness purely as a marketing strategy. "Shinee for many years post debut emphasized the charm of their boyishness, and Key and Taemin have demonstrated 'genderless' concepts. Since these are sometimes people who express the things that actually queer people themselves want to express in society in a way that is acceptable to the masses, they probably have a lot of queer fans."
Reinterpreting and forcing queer interpretation on the relationships between the members is a form of play and not a meaningful engagement with queerness in the political sense, according to one Korean queer interviewee.
NCT x Queerness: At one point there was a theory that in order to meet queer Korean Kpop fans you had to stan NCT. One NCT fan talked about an actually queer youth support network, of friends made within NCT fandom providing housing and financial support for each other when they were going through rough times at home. "Sometimes we headcanon in a hardcore way that this or that member might be actually queer like us, but in one corner of my mind I think, I'm just making this up, and give up hoping. We can't ever know unless a member actually comes out." This NCT stan talks about successfully raising funds for the Queer pride event in Seoul and taking an NCT themed banner, and getting cyberbullied.
The one Multifan: Mentions of some of my faves: One woman described being a fan of Monsta X until Wonho left, and then liked Ateez but it was impossible to see Ateez at debut because of Covid and then they just weren't active in Korea, and went through P1Harmony, NCT 127, Eplex, CIX, TNX, TxT, &Team, Boynextdoor. She paid to enter the fan clubs, went to concerts and such. Then she joined the DarkB fandom, which apparently is a small group.
Some universalities: Hating the company - "Regardless of size, everyone hates the company. When I was a Monsta X fan I talked shit about the CEO. But... after getting into DarkB, I'm seeing that the Monsta X CEO was at least bold about investing in the group."
Some universalities: All fans assume they're at the forefront.
Nugu groups: When a group is small, the "Core" fandom becomes very powerful. She considers herself a 'core' member and spends about 30% of her monthly income on this group. (This is the point at which I was like NO DON'T DO THAT STAWWWWWPPP)
In order to become a "named" fan of a big company group you need about 2-30,000 followers, but to be a "named" fan of a small company group it's about 3-400.
If you follow a truly small group, you'll sometimes go to fan sign meetings and the members will ask, "Why are there so few people here?"
Why not in Korea? The book explains that things like fan sign meetings, 'hi-touch' meetings, and polaroid-meetings only happen abroad (without explaining why, though I really actually want to know) and as a consequence you often have Korean fans who follow a group to at least on location on tour in order to have these experiences.
I've learned that if I'm going to get any sort of concert write up done, I need to start drafting something right away, no matter how long it actually takes to finish and post, because otherwise life will just overtake me and I can't get it done at all. (This happened with the TXT Moacon of February/ March 2026).
OH and I left before the end on night 3 because I just couldn't hold on any longer, having been at the venue six hours in the summer heat, so I don't know how night 3 ended.
Before the concert, I was a light fan of Taemin but not a fan of Shinee, per se. After spending three consecutive days at the annual Shinee festival that was this concert, I am still not a Shawol, I don't think, but Shinee are powerful enough as performers, and this show is so exceptionally well put together, that I had a blast anyway. (I'm also totally a fan of Taemin - just seeing him had me grinning till my face hurt. He's so beautiful.) (Oh - and I want Key to adopt me and be my big sister who tells me what to do, but this is not a fandom feeling - everyone feels like this about Key. This is normal.) (OH and I want to keep Onew in my pocket and feed him chocolate almonds by hand and make sure he's safe.) (OH and OH - I want Minho to push me really hard into a pool. I think that would be really good for my health.) (....Uh oh).
Conclusion first: Shinee are, among all the teams I've seen live in concert so far, the classiest: the most elegant, the most refined, the most aspirational and at the same time, the funniest. They hit a LOT of high watermarks and murdered literally everyone else. I feel like I experienced how it's supposed to be.
Perfection in Arena Use & Show Design
The Shinee show's design was by a team who clearly knows this stadium inside and out, and takes the Kpop fan obsession with fairness and equal treatment very, very seriously.
First, Shinee did not do this really stupid thing that I have come to despise - the 토롯코(トロッコ) which is an imported Japanese word I've never heard pronounced but have read a lot. This is the Pope-mobile thing where they singers climb on board a hand-pushed cart after the first 'encore' to do a drive-by of the audience, waving at the back of the 1st floor and front of the 2nd floor. In smaller venues, where there just isn't space, the singers will split up and do a walk-by instead, escorted by security.
This is always so boring, takes forever to begin because the band have to get around from backstage to the entrance to the seats, the walk-through is very slow, and sometimes, doing this results in total loss of crowd control depending on where they take it and how the audience chooses to behave. After so many Kpop concerts, I dread it every time it happens now. It has zero entertainment value whatsoever, and I'm reminded very forcibly that Kpop is seen as tawdry and cheap by my peers because it does shit like this.
Second, the 'moving stage' or 'magic carpet' concept the 'main' performance space was BRILLIANTLY done.
I took this from the floor seat (Sorry Onew for the unflattering shot, but I didn't have a lot of time).
It's a semi-transparent stage that goes up and down. It starts out being an extrusion from the 'main' stage. Performance from this spot would be for the people in the closer-to-main-stage standing seats. Then the thing travels over the heads of the central front 'standing' pen, then settles down to connect to the projection stages that are built in the middle of the stadium. This is so the performance is directed at the people in the 'middle of stadium floor' floor seats as well as the people on either side of the performance space. Everyone skipped down the short walkway to this either-side projection stage, showing their side profiles to the people in the 'back' of the arena, who are physically furthest from the 'main' stage with the big set. And finally, the magic carpet stage travels all the way to the 'back' of the house, where everyone in Standing is looking at the back of Shinee and the majority of the 2nd and 3rd floor get their close up time with the guys.
No one section was favored over another. There was no section of the theater that was neglected. There was no anxiety or heartbreak of feeling like you lost a random luck of the draw because the members were allowed to run around to whatever section they in particular felt like on any particular night. Whatever the disappointing part of the night might be for you (like me being short in Standing) was not Shinee's fault, because they did their absolute best to 'visit' every section of the theater, in a measured, equal, purposeful way.
I had three really very different seats - Friday: Extreme left, earlier row of 2nd floor. Saturday: Near almost the very back of 2nd floor, but very central. Sunday: Left side, standing, closer to the main stage. I was impressed with the thought that went into giving my section 'interaction' time on each day.
I had this feeling at Taemin's fan meeting concert last year too, when I first encountered him - I felt really well taken care of, by someone who was an expert at taking care of female audiences. It was wonderful then and it was wonderful x 4 now. Fan.Tas.Tic.
The show designers were also extremely considerate of everyone's time. There were always going to be two encores - the official encore and then the expected one, so they made sure to give people something to do while waiting for the official encore, which was to do a sing-along to a Shinee song (different each night) karaoke style with the lyrics going by on the big screens, and then the band played something fun and upbeat during the much shorter wait for the second encore. On Day 2, I measured the time, and Shinee were not gone for the two 'encore' breaks for longer than 7 minutes altogether. The wait time for the first or second encores can feel INTERMINABLE, but that wasn't the case with Shinee. (One notable failure of alerting the fandom what was going to happen was Ateez's first In Your Fantasy tour performance, where the show gave us all the impression there wouldn't be a second encore and people left in error before Jongho spoke into the arena. Another notable failure I experienced was the Stray Kids fan meeting concert, where they just resolutely didn't do ANY sort of encore for the performance I went to, but then did lengthy encores for every other performance, which made the single-night ticket holders feel shortchanged.)
Accomplished Performers
This whole plan of implementing a moving stage, that goes forwards and backwards and up and down while also having the stage be semi-transparent is only possible if you're absolutely sure that your very valuable performers will never slip, trip, fall off balance or drop shit off the edge of the stage onto people's heads. Nobody can have a fear of heights or much physical fear in general, either.
I mean, obviously, when the thing was in active motion it's not like Shinee were doing backflips - half the time while in motion the four of them each took a 'side' of the rectangular stage and waved at the audience and stuff, but they DID keep dancing from their spot throughout, and they actually were actively dancing and doing walking formation changes on the moving stage for a significant amount of time, because they were singing THE WHOLE TIME.
Shinee have, each of them, chemistry with the audience and with each other that felt wondrous to me. I saw the prompter monitors installed on the floor as the moving stage sailed by, and the monitors for the main stage visible from Standing, but all of the comments and banter, including song introduction, discussion of the upcoming album, and what I've understood to be a tradition in Shinee World - Taemin giving a nickname or a baptismal name to the tour itself - all seemed entirely extemporaneous. They literally only seemed to have an outline that determined that during ment 1, such and such would happen, and then in ment 2 they would mention the new album and so on, but not what they were going to say or who was going to speak, even. And yet it was fun and funny and lovable the entire time. No dead air, no awkwardness. Also, because of this commitment to improvising all of the commentary, the script was entirely different all three nights. Just as an example: On night 1, they all made a joke of how none of them can say Trilogy in English. They did not reference or repeat this joke, to my memory on Day 2, but on Day 3 they celebrated, very briefly, that they could all say Trilogy very easily.
The overall impression that Shinee leaves is one of sophistication and elegance. This is very elevated Kpop theater. It's actively soothing to watch Shinee perform. (I mean, if you're like, deeply parasocial about Minho where he's the husband of your heart and you only see him for one weekend a year, which is a very valid way to do fandom, then I don't expect it to be a relaxing experience to see him, but I don't feel like this about anybody, so I'm just evaluating the show). The choreography is a well balanced mix of fast, difficult moves and adagio extensions, tied directly to what's happening in the song, so you're not left wondering how it is the choreographer thought they could even pretend to be singing while doing those steps.
They do all the standard kpop costume changes - the 'concept'-reliant opener that looks vaguely like a spacesuit in an adventure movie, the 'casual' baggy hip hop type clothing, the anime prince style Napoleonic-ish costume, the dramatic outfit, and so on - but each of these costumes were lovely. Each member gave off the impression, all three nights, that he really liked each of his costumes and enjoyed playing with it in choreography.
Special Mentions
And Taemin and Key, who are the two I am familiar with in any capacity, were REALLY DIFFERENT in this concert from how I thought of them before!
Taemin, during this solo fan meeting concert, had been so in charge of the audience, and gentle but firm, amused yet sweet, you know, a man, but when he's with his big brothers of Shinee he turns into a baby. Like an actual little kid. 1000% maknae energy and, kind of like what Shinee did for me on all three nights, a demonstration of what that role is supposed to be in its purest, ideal form. He was impish and playful, lighthearted and so sweet, but at the same time, stubborn and unstoppable from years of being coddled - he knows he's adored and adorable, so he'll do whatever the fuck he wants.
The big surprise of the evening to me was Key. He's so powerful. I hadn't expected that he was an intense performer, but he so is! I think the song was Anti-Believer, which was one of their upcoming releases (to be released the Monday after the concert), and during this song Key dramatically took off the eye-patch he'd come on stage wearing and he blasted everyone with so much energy we all just screamed in surprise. And he's so funny! When Taemin was struggling to explain what "Invert," the concert's subtitle was, he began by mentioning DANTE, and then tried to explain Dante's Inferno. Key started to look REALLY worried, and as Taemin kept going he put his head in his hands and it somehow came off as so funny and affectionate, rather than mean. On night 2, Key and Minho imitated how much extra oomph Taemin puts into every dance move, then mimicked him perfectly as Taemin laughed, looking delighted. Then Key sighed and said something like, "Well if dancing like this makes you happy, how could I object?"
So I read a whole cultural anthropology Yeonsei U grad school thesis (submitted 2019.6.28) about 3rd Generation Idol Industry, with a focus on BTS (which given the year this came out, BTS was the hotness). (And now in 2026, they're back.)
Some interesting things, from my notes, for my own record keeping:
The resurgent (and then um, destroyed) feminist movement in Korea in 2016 directly influenced the way 3rd gen idols behaved.
The Idol genre was originally about spectacle and looks and then eventually became about the lyrics and musicality later.
In 2016, fans were actively discussing whether you could be a feminist and actively consume a genre which treated individual humans as products.
Being a fan no longer meant an temporary pastime of the youth and fandom participation lasted much longer.
Idol fandom, though 'low' culture' became the site where young women in particular learned how to join and then move as a community, and as this sense of community developed, the fandoms grew from being consumers to creators.
Exo's debut marked the start of 3rd Generation: They created a lore and they gave everyone a 'character. (BTS wasn't so much as representative but a high point).
In the past, the relationship between male idols and female fans used to be relatively free from the (Korean) social norms, but with 3rd gen it became about Idols as entities through which female desires could be satisfied.
In 2015 alone, there were 60 separate Idol groups active, and 324 post-debut Idols.
The concept that Idols have to be exemplary in their behavior is originally a Japanese concept that Korean pop music imported. The fan meeting where you shook hands or conducted other physical contact with the Idols was also a Japanese activity that we imported. It achieves the duality of allowing the Idol to keep up the appearance of sexual innocence and propriety while allowing the fan to indulge in partially satisfying their sexual desire in a covert way.
By contrast, the innovation of a 'fan sign' meeting will allow higher levels of physical touch as long as the Idol himself does not object. These encounters often last a minute or less, and recording become essential because they do not last in the memory. Idols themselves know how expensive these are to attend, and that they are being recorded from every angle for every second, so they cannot make a single error of protocol nor can they rigorously object to sexual harassment. Their role is to provide endless delight to the Fan. (Minhyuk of Monsta X is mentioned as being exceptionally good at this).
Things I learned about BTS: They were the first ones to call their plushie dolls their 'sons.' BTS invented the self-produced content structure and putting it all on youtube. They also were trailblazers in showing a human side and an enacted Idol role, and code switching between the two.
According to the author, while the relationship between fan and Idol can be one that looks like heterosexual romance, it's actually extremely strictly calculated, and must stay within the bounds of what is and is not 'allowed' depending on the structure of the type of contact that's being engaged in.
I received confirmation from this study that everything that everyone likes about Idol culture is basically a Korean woman invention lol. Creating lore both explicit (as a stand alone fiction) and implicit in presented group dynamics, such that nobody is supposed to take it seriously and instead uses it as fuel for fanfiction; exchanging fanmade goods and acknowledging each other as 'authors' of those goods; the development of very skilled photography and sharing of those photographs; Idols going from oppa that you crush on to being objects that you exchange and purchase in order to participate in the fandom; Idols addressing fandoms by a designated name.
The exchange between Fan and Idol operates on certain unspoken but known principles: Humility (treat the fan as being either equal to or superior than the Idol in status) and Diligence (appearance, performance quality and fanservice are all 'owed' to the fan). In short, the concept is that it's not someone's special talent that makes them successful; rather, success is the result of appeasing the fans that enable the star's success.
Certain Korean social mores are demanded of all Idols: straight laced off stage propriety; endless effort; patriotism; humility; critical historical consciousness.
The purpose of engaging in Idol Fandom is to gain energy to live one's actual life, so when an Idol causes one stress, it is right to abandon the Idol.
Fans will devote themselves to bringing about the Idol's success, but in return they want the Idol to behave in ways that are completely free of any dangerous element - danger in the instance of Idols dating someone is not anger about heterosexual romantic feelings being frustrated but rather because a highly involving personal life is understood to lead to an inevitable degradation of performance quality.
As this culture has developed, would be fans started to evaluate, as though buying a high cost consumer good, the various traits of an Idol or Idol group, before 'investing.' Criteria were: stage performance capacity, role within the group, whether they've misspoken or been questionable in the past, any problematic behaviors prior to debut, and whether the team was too small or niche to be widely successful.
BTS added the element of whether a group was 'authentic' or not, as they were leaders in pushing back against dismissal that kpop had no artistic value and were in fact harmful to maintaining a healthy diversity within popular music.
BTS fandom remained entirely uninterested in social issues that were unrelated to their consumption of their Idols, no matter what they said about themselves.
