August 2024 Media Recap

[tullycat]

Stop saying summer is over 😭


Books

• Where Are Your Boys Tonight?: The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008, by Chris Payne
  • I read this as an outsider to the emo scene (I literally did not know Mikey Way existed lol) so a lot of the specifics of bands were lost on me. Instead, I read it more holistically and just appreciated the overarching trends as a whole. I would say it's pretty accessible to people not into emo/bandom and I knocked out the majority of the book on two flights. My complaint was that the introduction of each speaker happens at the beginning of the section, so by the time I was halfway through the first chapter of the section, I had already forgotten who nearly everyone was. So I wish the intros had happened the first time they spoke in each chapter.

Just one book this month! Pretty slow.

Music

• Artists
  • Ateez (111)
  • ARTMS (84)
  • The Boyz (74)
  • Billlie (58)
  • Zerobaseone (55)
• Tracks
  • Virtual Angel, ARTMS (11)
  • Symphony, Clean Bandit feat Zara Larsson (11)
  • Sparkle, ARTMS; Beat Beat, NMIXX; Red Light Sign, But We Go, NMIXX; See That?, NMIXX (all tied at 9)
• Albums
  • <DALL>, ARTMS (84)
  • Fe304: STICK OUT, NMIXX (50)
  • Gibberish, The Boyz (41)
  • Cinema Paradise, Zerobaseone (39)
  • Golden Hour : Part.1, Ateez (32)

Golden Hour has not left my top 5 albums since it came out on the last day of May hahahaha oops. Really enjoyed the new NMIXX and the ARTMS album?? I was not into Loona so that one was a surprise to me.

Concerts

• Ateez, x2
  • These were suchhhh a production in a way that I feel like not many Kpop concerts are. They had a whole storyline in the concert. I was pretty unspoiled going into the concert which meant that when Seonghwa half took his jacket off during his solo performance I had no idea that wasn't common during the other stops and he did it both nights....NAKED! Woosan also attempted to unbutton Jongho, which felt about as naked as Seonghwa. My favorite unit song is Youth and it did make me a little emotional the first night...they just look like they're having so much fun together on stage :( playing together!! And I maintain Matz is peak romance.....Seonghwa wanted to be a rapper and Hongjoong said you got it babe. I had a lot of fun and they're probably one of my top concerts of the year but I have forgotten anything I wanted to say about them haha. They did give me covid though :(
• ONF
  • Really happy I got to see them. It was such a nice day too, which I had been worried about since I knew I'd be spending a lot of time outdoors since I had the Platinum package. They were all very sweet; during the group photo Wyatt saw the banner I was holding and asked if I made it (I did not) but it was nice of him to try to interact. I had a fan chat with Yuto that was only a minute long. I never know how much English they'll understand + I don't know Korean/Japanese rip but I told him I've been a fan for ~5 years and became one after Go Live and I cheered for them on RTK. He asked my favorite song and I said Complete. For the actual concert I was in the front row which meant I had a lot of random eye contact with Wyatt, who was in front of me lmao. Having Seungjun and Wyatt in front of me most of the night did mean that the rest of Off team did soft-bias wreck me. One of the coolest performances was probably The We Must Love because Hyojin conducted everyone, like he did on RTK. And I am now willing to give people in the pit in concerts some more slack because even when I didn't have my phone up, we were so squished that I really could not move much to dance. But it was still a good time. To compare it to ACE - they had sliiiiightly more production even on their tiny stage. They had VCRs and did leave a couple times for outfit changes.

Fic

• I did actually post a tiny fic in August: San/Seonghwa/Mingi (I also posted fic in July and March but forgot to add those to my wrap-ups oops). And somehow, having covid jump started my writing again after about 6 months, so hopefully I'll post more before the year is up.