daymyday

[daymyday]

K-Pop Spotlight: DAY6

Come one, come all to a K-Pop Spotlight that is sure to dazzle and delight ’til the final curtain. This week, all eyes are on DAY6 following the release of their eighth mini-album, Fourever, and brand new title track, "Welcome to the Show." We caught up with the band to discuss their goals as they approach their 10th anniversary and their ever-growing connection to their fans through their music. Check out our full interview below!

Tracks like “Welcome to the Show,” “The Power of Love,” and “Get the Hell Out” seem to have very different themes. Can you tell us a little about how these songs relate to each other and what aspects make this album cohesive?

SUNGJIN: As we pursue the idea of being a 'band that sings every moment,' it seems like our albums, including the recent one, prioritize diversity in songs and situations rather than unity. Consequently, our albums contain various genres and narratives. However, there seems to be a commonality in most songs, depicting situations that everyone has either gone through or might experience.

Young K: First and foremost, I would say this album is a compilation of the best songs we could create. There's definitely a theme of love running through it. "Welcome to the Show," "The Power of Love," and "Get The Hell Out" all talk about the concept of love.

What goes into creating titles for DAY6 songs and albums, especially those that don’t come directly from your lyrics? Do you find it hard to condense the intentions and themes of a song into a title?

Young K: While there have been cases like that, all the songs on this album came from the lyrics. Sometimes, when choosing a title, we select the one that best describes the song—other times, we choose to give it a twist or make it more intriguing.

WONPIL: Naming songs involves a lot of deliberation. We often contemplate which title will catch the eye and capture the song's essence. Usually, we try to take it from a verse in the chorus. This can be a challenging part of the songwriting process.

Is there a creative project you’ve always wanted to work on but haven’t gotten the chance/found the time?

SUNGJIN: I'm very curious, and have a principle of "trying to experience as much as possible." There are so many things I want to try musically and personally, especially among the things I know but haven't tried yet.

DOWOON: I hope we can have a song that we can collaborate on with My Day, like a choir.

What does your work/studio setup look like? Where do you feel the most creatively inspired?

DOWOON: We try to keep the studio as tidy as possible and make it comfortable for practice sessions.

WONPIL: When working on songs, we talk a lot. We get inspiration from little conversations, joking around, sharing stories, and listening to music from various eras regardless of genre while giving opinions. We also try to build emotional connections with the songs. There’s a lot of communication going on. The songwriting process takes place in the studio of our long-time collaborator, composer Hong Jisang, with whom we've been working together since our debut.

How do you want to evolve as a musician/producer?

Young K: I want to be eagerly anticipated and awaited as an artist. Without those who wait for us, we wouldn't release or even step onto the stage. So I’m always thankful for My Day.

WONPIL: My biggest goal is to make good music for My Day and the public, so I think I'll continue to ponder. When working on songs, I pour my sincerity into them. I constantly strive to express this sincerity musically, fully capturing the emotions I want to convey. I hope to create songs that can still be listened to even after 10 or 20 years.

Design your own Tumblr blog: choose an aesthetic, a blog name, and would you be a frequent poster or lurker?

SUNGJIN: I think I’ll use it to catch up on friends' updates. For the blog name, THUMB BLUR sounds good to me. I might end up being a lurker who never posts.

DOWOON: Maybe a blog for plants? I think I'll post it like a diary.

Want more DAY6? Check out their new mini album Fourever and the music video for the title track “Welcome to the Show,” both out now!

[daymyday]

I cannot

[daymyday]

I HATE THE AM⏰💥I HATE THE PM🇬🇧💥

.

🎸 PRINTS 🎸

[daymyday]

💥SPIDER-PUNK💥

prints

[daymyday]

A school project: book cover redesign for Heroes of Olympus

Basically is just me trying to make fanarts for pjo during classes

[daymyday]

Badass #pjo

"She told me Gabe had left mysteriously—disappeared off the face of the planet, in fact. She'd reported him missing to the police, but she had a funny feeling they would never find him." (drawn while recording the first episode of the monster donut podcast!)

[daymyday]

Moon Knight sketch dump

🔪🔪🔪 В ВК НЕ РЕПОСТИТЬ🔪🔪🔪

[daymyday]

Also, that Rhaenys and Alicent scene was fucking terrible lmao. Who on earth is RHAENYS of all people to judge Alicent for following the wishes of men? What exactly has Rhaenys been doing this entire series if not acting out the wishes of her husband and getting told what to do by men? Go get your throne then, if you're bad.

This woman thinks Rhaenyra had her son murdered, she knows she passed off Harwin's bastards as Laenor's heirs, she knows she married Daemon before her daughter's bones finished charring, she knows that Daemon is a dog shit father to her granddaughters, she knows she wanted Driftmark to go to Baela directly. Her life is nothing but Ls. And yet here she is handing out lectures and projecting about dreaming about the Iron Throne, while her house/family firms the most humiliating disrespect by Rhaenyra and Daemon weekly, and her dumbass husband barks orders from wherever he is now. Let's have a little introspection, please.

[daymyday]

[daymyday]

thinking about the sweetest boy in the world again <3

[daymyday]

Aside from "I plan to make a gift of it to my mother" just being a great line, I love how it calls back to the fact that the only one who grieved Aemond's eye being gouged out was Alicent. The only one who fought for him, for some kind of justice, to the point she was driven to take it herself in a moment of madness. The only one who loved him enough to say or do anything. That as much she wouldn't still want this done a decade later, Aemond remembers Luke taking his eye as an injustice done to him and pain caused to his mother. Mommy's little war criminal indeed.

[daymyday]

something that isn’t talked about enough when discussing criston’s character (lol, let’s be real, his character has been reduced to tOxIc mAn iNcEL so completely that there’s barely any actual analysis of his character) is his status as a lowborn dornish man living in this particular time period.

the first layer to this is that he’s dornish. i am operating on assumption here, but given that dorne is unconquered and targaryen loyalists may have some ill will towards dorne for thwarting targaryen expansion, i do wonder if criston faced hostility at court. from the nobles, sure, but also his fellow kingsguard.

the second layer to this is that he’s lowborn - a son of a steward from an unknown house with no glory, lands or titles to his name. this is a man who clawed his way up from nothing. in a society where status and birth dictates your entire life trajectory, he defied odds and became a member of the kingsguard through nothing but merit. the grit that would take, the ambition, the determination, the skill. and he says this to aemond in episode 9, that he knows what it’s like to toil for things that others are so freely given. he probably had to work four times as hard to get to his position, harder than any other character on this show. and having ended up at his post of honor, he is not met with respect but is mocked. undermined.

the first instance of this is when daemon calls him crispin. it’s not that deep at first glance, but in criston’s shoes, he was the one who came from nothing and beat the targaryen prince, only to be openly made fun of. perhaps against his better judgment, he lashes out and is rude to the prince. the second instance is when harwin talks to lyonel, and speaks about criston’s lowborn birth in a derogatory manner. “son of a steward,” he spits in contempt while lyonel reminds him that criston is a knight of the kingsguard. criston isn’t present for this, but it makes you wonder if he’s been subjected to this contempt before. his position - the one he worked tirelessly for and earned fair and square - questioned, simply because of his status. that would breed anger and resentment in the best of us.

and this also puts his relationship with rhaenyra into perspective. he fell in love with the princess, and he gave up the only thing he had - his honor, his vow - to be with her. despite refusing several times, despite hesitating for a long while. only to realize that the princess had used him for her own ends (her pleasure), not deeming him worthy to run away with him, only deeming him worthy to be her whore. he is reminded once again, quite sharply, that despite the fact that she gave him his position, he is ultimately nobody to her. a tool to be used and discarded. and replaceable to boot, when she turns instead to another knight to be her paramour but this time, one who is highborn.

which is why when alicent spares him and grants him some mercy when he comes clean about his oath breaking, it means something to him. when she saves this lowborn knight with no friends and no honor, he devotes himself to her. she trusts him with her children, who grow up to respect him, looking to him as a friend and a father figure. he crowns aegon, aemond confides in him and helaena holds onto him and alicent speaks intimately to him. when they see him, they do not see a lowborn knight, an impostor at court. they see him as part of their family unit. someone to trust and respect.

criston is a deeply flawed, angry character but it is not hard to understand why that is. and it is very telling to me that he is as hated as he is, despite being the only prominent “lowborn” character on the show, simply because of his complicated relationship with rhaenyra, a relationship fraught with power dynamics and class tension.

[daymyday]

[daymyday]

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[daymyday]

Time for a Feels Trip

Nico, Age 10:

Bianca sat with [the Hunters], leaving her little brother to hang out in the front with us, which seemed cold to me, but Nico didn’t seem to mind.

“This is so cool!” Nico said, jumping up and down in the driver’s seat. “Is this really the sun? I thought Helios and Selene were the sun and moon gods. How come sometimes it’s them and sometimes it’s you and Artemis?”

-Rick Riordan, The Titan’s Curse

…

Nico, Age 11:

“I am the son of Hades,” Nico insisted. “Be gone!”

Minos laughed. “You have no power over me. I am the lord of spirits! The ghost king!”

“No.” Nico drew his sword. “I am.”

He stabbed his black blade into the floor, and it cleaved through the stone like butter.

“Never!” Minos’s form rippled. “I will not—” The ground rumbled. The windows cracked and shattered to pieces, letting in a blast of fresh air. A fissure opened in the stone floor of the workshop, and Minos and all his spirits were sucked into the void with a horrible wail.

-Rick Riordan, The Battle of the Labyrinth

…

Nico, Age 12:

“Son of Hades.” Kronos spit on the ground. “Do you love death so much you wish to experience it?”

“Your death,” Nico said, “would be great for me.”

“I’m immortal, you fool! I have escaped Tartarus. You have no business here, and no chance to live.”

Nico drew his sword—three feet of wicked sharp Stygian iron, black as a nightmare. “I don’t agree.”

The ground rumbled. Cracks appeared in the road, the sidewalks, the sides of the buildings. Skeletal hands grasped the air as the dead clawed their way into the world of the living. There were thousands of them, and as they emerged, the Titan’s monsters got jumpy and started to back up.

-Rick Riordan, The Last Olympian

…

Nico, Age 13:

Hazel felt like she’d just introduced two nuclear bombs. Now she was waiting to see which one exploded first.

Until that morning, her brother Nico had been the most powerful demigod she knew. The others at Camp Jupiter saw him as a traveling oddball, about as harmless as the fauns. Hazel knew better. She hadn’t grown up with Nico, hadn’t even known him very long. But she knew Nico was more dangerous than Reyna, or Octavian, or maybe even Jason.

-Rick Riordan, The Son of Neptune

…

Nico, Age 14:

Nico wasn’t exactly a sunshine person, but for once he welcomed the warmth. It made him feel more substantial – anchored to the mortal world. With every shadow-jump, coming back got harder and harder. Even in broad daylight his hand passed through solid objects. His belt and sword kept falling around his ankles for no apparent reason. Once, when he wasn’t looking where he was going, he walked straight through a tree.

Nico remembered something Jason Grace had told him in the palace of Notus: Maybe it’s time you come out of the shadows.

If only I could, he thought. For the first time in his life, he had begun to fear the dark, because he might melt into it permanently.

-Rick Riordan, The Blood of Olympus

…

Nico, Age 15:

“Nico,” I said at last, “shouldn’t you be sitting at the Hades table?”

He shrugged. “Technically, yes. But if I sit alone at my table, strange things happen. Cracks open in the floor. Zombies crawl out and start roaming around. It’s a mood disorder. I can’t control it. That’s what I told Chiron.”

“And is it true?” I asked.

Nico smiled thinly. “I have a note from my doctor.”

Will raised his hand. “I’m his doctor.”

“Chiron decided it wasn’t worth arguing about,” Nico said. “As long as I sit at a table with other people, like…oh, these guys for instance…the zombies stay away. Everybody’s happier.”

Will nodded serenely. “It’s the strangest thing. Not that Nico would ever misuse his powers to get what he wants.”

“Of course not,” Nico agreed.

-Rick Riordan, The Hidden Oracle

[daymyday]

My sister walked up to me the other day and asked,

“What’s Will Solace’s drug of choice?”

I just looked at her.

“Nicotine.”