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Wooyoung Pop Live / August 17, 2025

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hey I saw you mention in that bighit abuse post that you think yeosang looks more traumatized than ND. I can't find where you first talked about it, so sorry if you already explained in more detail, but can you tell me more about this?

(sidenote: I've been going through your meta to look for this and now I have other questions/comments too so sorry in advance for the other asks I'm about to send lol)

Well so I said back in January 2025 in a post about neurodivergence and Ateez members the following about Yeosang:

I just haven't paid enough attention to Yeosang to form an opinion, so this might have to be on hold for him, but I tend to disagree, as of now. I read a lot of Yeosang's behavior as 연습생 PTSD, rather than neurodivergence. He is so careful, and is often checked out. This seems like an injured person, rather than a divergent one. My way of being autistic is to be hyperfuckingsuper anxiously aware of every single minute microexpression on other people's faces, in case I get attacked (again) for being 'off' in ways I can't mitigate.

I got sent hate mail by some asshole lol about my observation which - I can't recall if I blocked them or not, but I am making this post now just in case I didn't block them, and so I can say - See, I was right.

I was asked to elaborate on this point, so I did, in this longer series of posts I ended up writing about Yeosang in March 2025:

I said in passing that I thought Yeosang wasn't so much neurodivergent as traumatized, and an anon asked about this, but I hadn't had time to get to any asks about Yeosang, so I am going to answer that ask here. Yeosang may be naturally diffident and even keeled as a person, in the same way that San is actually quite stern and not as soft as he seems when he's just being himself interacting with his fans. But - for a boy to be so extremely fucking political and cautious reeks of overreaction, of engaging in excess caution now because a moment of candor blew up so badly one too many times before. If he's being coached, he's being coached by someone who wants him to be very, very cautious. He didn't vouch for Wooyoung with enthusiasm and he didn't make big promises ("Who cares what these fuckers they collected at KQ think? You'll have me!!" for example) to Wooyoung because he had learned over time to be extremely cautious, non-committal, and neutral.

And since you might be interested, below should be the full set of things I've written to date about Yeosang.

Yeosang: The Yeosang Tragedy Series Part 1: Why are people fans of anything & What is it like to grow up a trainee , Part 2: How Yeosang Was PC but Lost Wooyoung. Part 3: What Can the Ateez Lore Reveal about Yeosang.San and Yeosang Yeosang and Beautiful People Problems. Yunho's Way of the Live #5 - Ekangmo with Yeosang Would Yeosang win in a Seonghwa Lego Build Yunho Way of the Live #6: Yeosang Influence Part 2 Yunho Way of the Live #7: He absorbs Yeosang wholesale Yeondoogie Kick his Ass on a Video game I get prompted to answer The Many Charms of Yeosang Yeosang Going from Maltese to Doberman Yeodoongie Humor Across Cultures

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I see someone has asked you about your favourite songs but I was wondering what is your favourite mv (and why)?

ask sent 25.8.16

I took this question as an opportunity to watch all the music videos again just in case my answer was different from what I thought as soon as I got this question. It did not.

Favorite Music Video: The Real/ 멋

Reason: That song, first of all, is the first time I'd ever heard a Kpop song use my family's regional dialect in what was supposed to be a dance song and not to mock the accent but to just use it as a cool, 'authenticating' element, so I was well disposed to it anyway, but it's also because that song and the video are understandable even if you don't know the band or the lore. The humor is accessible and funny. It uses Korean elements in a really witty way. WooSan reach a high peak of chemistry between them, and Seonghwa with the pink hair is DELICIOUS. Yeosang being an angel in his mother's Chanel jacket looks amazing. This is the video I would recommend people watch to get the flavor of the band, even now, even though it came out in 2021 and they've evolved a lot since then. (They are evidently working with bigger budgets and better stylists, on top of the guys just getting better and better at on-camera work).

Runner up favorites for top 5.

2. Crazy Form: The cinematic storytelling elements are very well done. Wooyoung looks unbelievably hot in the glasses and headband. Yunho gets close ups when he dances center, whereas they usually almost always pull away from him in other videos. Hongjoong with his truly obnoxious little hip thrusts on top of that car is indelible.

3. Bouncy: Mingi's make up and close ups are fantastic in this. The WooSan boxing sequence has the two of them do really fun acting. I love the insane hairdo that Seonghwa has on the motorcycle. THE PEPPER SNIFFING YEOSANG CLOSE UP.

4. Halazia. This is when they finally got a grip on how to make the lore enticing and inviting to the casual viewer, and of course, platinum-blond Seonghwa and his convulsions of religious ecstasy really needs to go down in kpop history as a major event.

5. Guerilla This and Turbulence are when Ateez music videos finally became watchable for me. The Guerilla sets are terrific, and again, like Halazia, they presented the lore in a way that made it intriguing. It's also got two really terrific set pieces - the one with the cubist red buildings, and the all-white background slow-mo smoky flag wave bit. It matches the energy of the live performances

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woosang performing wave 230428 x

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i think it's fine if women have an inflated view of their own intelligence bc the average man with slightly more brain function than a jellyfish thinks of himself as a tortured genius

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Middle class Korean women. Me included.

You Could Go Anywhere but You Won’t, 2023 Photographed by Brooke DiDonato.

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I don't know who this guy is but wow his facial expressions are also telling a whole story too, aren't they.

Yeosang & Wooyoung thoughts below

I said months ago when I first got into writing meta that I thought Yeosang behaved like a traumatized, rather than neurodivergent, person, and now learning this is making me feel very ... complicated. And his story about why he chose the nugu company like KQ suddenly pops back out at me - He looked at Hongjoong and Yunho and that they looked happy and that's what he went with. The unspoken part was that he was coming from the scared kids at BigHit, who were told to teach themselves professional choreo and then corporally punished when they couldn't perform at a professional level with no instruction, and in a system apparently where you were graded on a curve about how much violence you were going to be dealt. Holy shit.

And Wooyoung becoming more and more frightened of the monthly tests, the camera phobia he developed, and generally becoming mentally fragile gains a different, darker patina. It wasn't just young artistic ambition and competition, potentially. Oh, gosh and that story he told about coming home to collapse on the floor wailing! Oh man.

Hey hey ! What did you learn about trainee treatment at BigHit?? I just saw your tags on the SMB post and I am very intrigued!

I'm going to put my answer under the cut bc it may be sensitive for folks -

Soobin from TXT did a five-hour live today and during that live he talked about his trainee years under BigHit. I'll post the video below along with the translation I read:

I was really saddened to hear this. Not surprised, just saddened.

Wooyoung and Yeosang signed as a trainees under BigHit in 2014, and Soobin joined in early 2016, just a year or so before Yeosang left and Wooyoung followed. They are still friends to this day, so when Soobin talks about the hyungs who took more of the abuse, I can't help but think of them. It's just awful.

Anyway, hence my post about SMB. I think there are plenty of reasons for Hongjoong to write a diss track about Bang PD, and this must be one of them.

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i have argued about yungi being the same/same but different for years!! like, they go about it in different ways, and because they are broken/strong and weird in different ways, but its like.. they are so.. similar.

like mingi is a little weirdo that doesn't wanna play YOUR ball but wants to invent his OWN ball and have everyone praise the new and better way of playing ball and yunho is a little weirdo that wants to play ball the best anyones ever played ball, you know?

just love your blog, as always

ask sent 25.8.16

SHAKING HANDS WITH YOU UNTIL OUR TEETH ARE CHATTERING.

your weirdos-playing-a-game-they-disapprove-of analogy is perfect. just perfect. YES. mingi fights the game, wants to explode the game, avoids the game. yunho wants to beat the game to death, to defeat it all the way & so completely it there's no point to its existence anymore. neither of these approaches to the game are actually friendly or in the spirit in which the game was intended! it's both so aggressive and self-willed. and the thing is, the thing that i find very very interesting about their dynamic, is that even though their methods are diametrically opposed such that they can sometimes be at cross purposes, neither seems to disapprove of the other one's approach. there is no agreement nor disagreement, but just acceptance that that's the way the other one does it.

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I stumbled across your account while looking for atinys on tumblr who are as interested in analyzing ateez as I am! I’ve been a fan of ateez for a few years, but only recently started being more invested in them beyond just their songs (thanks to attending their concert for the first time last month!) There’s a lot of people eager to write about the members in more of a fanfic style, but I’m personally far more interested in discussion of their storyline lore and also of their persona performances as idols. So to find your essays on individual members, the korean idol industry, neurodivergence, and the experience of women in fandom was the perfect discovery!!

I’ve only read thru a few of ur ateez essays so far, but I hope to have more thoughts of my own to contribute once I’ve read a bit more (if I’m brave enough to add to the discussion, that is). For now, I just wanna thank you for sharing your writing here!!! I’m truly so inspired by your writing style and your perspectives on all the subjects you cover in your short essays. Wishing u all the best! :D

Thank you!! What a great note to receive. I'm so happy whenever someone reaches out to tell me they're going to write their own meta and analysis because they saw me play around on tumblr.

It's been really fun and yielded rewards far, far beyond what I ever imagined - I made IRL friends, that I met, in person!! I've had intriguing conversations with people whom I would otherwise never get to meet! Deciding to give due respect to a thing that isn't necessarily 'prestigious' or 'serious' in the received schema of my life but gives me a lot of joy and pleasure purely because it makes me happy has helped make my experience of being myself so much better!

If you care to, please ping me when you publish!! I love that there's this like, coterie of Ateez essayists on Tumblr, coming at it from all angles. I'd like to know your thoughts, and I assure you that I won't be the only one.

Have fun!

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this was my reaction in real time at the venue. lol

WHY IS WOOYOUNG NAKED

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hi! this is not really relevant to the point of your posts about queer idols but just wanted to let you know there's a couple of fully openly out queer idols, not just one! they're just not from well known groups and tend to fly under the radar (which no doubt is why they could come out at all). but holland of course is gay, bain from just b has come out as gay, ryujin (/cherry) from jwiiver has come out as trans, and I don't remember who but there's a girl idol who is bi and has a girlfriend. again, not really any well known people but still people in the industry! also I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on queerness in the idol industry and korea in general!

Thank you for updating me! I didn't know this at all.

I appreciate the interest in my thoughts but I don't think I have anything worthwhile to say about queerness in Korea as a general topic. I live in an entirely heterosexual world. There are literally no people who are queer and out in my social, professional, or personal circles here. Plus? Korean heterosexuals are not marrying and not having babies such that we have the lowest birthrate on the planet, and that topic tends to eat up all the attention lol.

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I think what you’re saying about not wanting to trust the english translation is fair, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that someone essentially saying “i like boys” isn’t enough to be queer. Even outside of this specific context that just doesn’t seem fair.

Hi - are you the original anon that asked about Hongjoong? Anons get confusing to deal with sometimes so if you're responding to an anon answer it helps a lot to say if you're op or if you're not

If all someone wanted for me to say was that Hongjoong is definitely bi bc he came out in 2020 in that clip, I might end up disappointing or offending them, so I feel very cautious. I've written about the silence on this topic that is imposed on the professional Korean commentators of Kpop (even feminist academics) bc it's defamatory under Korean precedent to state categorically that a person who hasn't said, in exactly these words, I Am Definitely Not Heterosexual And Instead Am Bisexual, is in fact not heterosexual. I feel the same recalcitrance - presently, I am at ease saying The Net Effect of This Content is Queer or This Content is Outside Heteronormativity for this or that reason, and that's about as far as I think I want to go. This is made even more complicated by the fact that ALL of Idol sexuality is closeted - the straight guys with pregnant girlfriends tend to be as much closeted (until they suddenly announce their wedding) as the probably queer ones. And so far there is only one actually LGBTQ Idol in all of Kpop and that's because he unequivocally came out. Also, in kpop fanservice it is not true that "There is no heterosexual explanation for this" - yes there is. The explanation is $$$.

Someone who wasn't the anon kindly found me the full clip of the Hongjoong content where the gifset about My Ideal Type Is About Vibes quote comes from, and I've put it on my list of content to watch to see if I want to talk about it. But if my looking at his utterance with any approach other than to seek factual confirmation that Kim Hongjoong the real live human man is queer is going to feel like I'm trying to shove straightness on him, I probably should not engage.

... Maybe I shouldn't have answered that ask after all.

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Artistry Of Tarot opens today!

"Force" is my homage to the Ace of Swords, my favourite card in the deck. Measuring 36" head to toe, it's my largest framed work to date.

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There is a video from a few years ago where Hongioong says he would date both boys and girls. What do you think about this?

I don't not believe you but I will need more than a 5 yr old Tumblr gif post with just the English translation augmented with a broken link to an inaccessible X post. I have just been subjected to too many completely inaccurate translations on here from Korean to English to not ask for the actual source.

I am being a humorless stickler about this because I've understood your question to be about Kim Hongjoong the person actually having come out as bi in 2020, potentially. Have I understood your intention correctly?

To me, and in Korea, it only counts as coming out if he says, Hello I am Kim Hongjoong and I am coming out as bisexual.

If Hongjoong never said anything like that again, that also seems meaningful, but I need the full context of the video and the original Korean to form an opinion or do an analysis.

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250811 fromm twitter update

𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟱 𝗧𝗔𝗘𝗠𝗜𝗡 𝗙𝗔𝗡𝗠𝗘𝗘𝗧𝗜𝗡𝗚 [𝗖𝗟𝗔𝗦𝗦-𝗠𝗔𝗧𝗘] 𝗟𝗜𝗩𝗘 𝗦𝗧𝗥𝗘𝗔𝗠𝗜𝗡𝗚 𝗢𝗣𝗘𝗡 🎉

🔗 https://bit.ly/4mdIQwY

📅 Live Schedule August 17, 2025 (Sun) 4 PM (KST)

🏫 Livestreaming pass for all purchasers 🏫 Photocard included for all purchasers 🏫 English subtitles available for global fans

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Enough about favorite books. What’s a book you read and absolutely hated? The book you’ve got a bone to pick with.

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not ateez but taemin

ok I'm at the taemin fan meeting concert which starts in 40 minutes. I only know his songs as in-car entertainment and haven't even watched the music videos.

I'm here kind of on a whim because I just lucked out with nabbing a ticket.

and yet? Just from 20 minutes or interaction with his concert pregame?

I'm completely in love with taemin for how well his company is treating me.

i am fucking SWOONING.

1. they had enough fucking lightsticks at the concession booth for the ticket buyers. the workers there SMILED and asked me if I had batteries. like. they acted like they care if i have a good time.

2. it's insanely hot today and HE GAVE EVERYONE A WELCOME GOODIE BAG WITH A HIGH END HANDHELD FAN. I almost cried. THIS IS SO THOUGHTFUL. you know? for a late summer concert!!

the goodie bag also contained a hs name tag with taemin's name on it so you could get pinned by taemin. makes my heart go pitter pat. atiny have to make these themselves.

3. Check in was so smooth it was CREAMY.

i am now wondering if like Riize and NCT and Seventeen and TxT also treat their fans so sweetly. Is this why Hongjoong just never wants us to go to any other concert??

4. as i said in my other post- the dress code was fun, easy to understand and flexible, leading to much greater adherence.