I have a new resolution this SHINee comeback/festival season. I really want to write at least a little on my blog about every SHINee event I go to. Too often I've started writing these long involved blog posts about SHINee events and then never had the time to finish them so now they're super late and I can't remember all the fine details. Not this time! So in the spirit of getting straight into it, I though I'd write briefly about SHINee's appearance at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic....Festival? In Korean it was called a concert for 성공기원 which means hoping for success or something like that. Of course in English the 2018 Olympic Hope for Success concert sounds really strange so I guess it's kind of like a K-pop concert pep rally?
Honestly it was terribly boring. I know it's exceptionally rude of me, but k-pop in general is not my thing. I don't want to be one of these assholes that climbs up on their high horse and says that K-pop isn't real music and all that rubbish, because I don't believe that for a second. I'm just an exceptionally old bitter fangirl hag. I've been into k-pop for almost 10 years at this point. So when I first got into it, I loved everything. I come from the era of DBSK, Super Junior, SHINee, Beast, MBLAQ, 2ne1, Brown Eyed Girls, 4minute, 2PM/AM etc. Lately I admit to having a little affection for Seventeen cause I watched a few practice videos and thought they were cute little sprites, but they reminded me of the kids I used to teach in middle school so....not attracted to them at all. I love the kind of music SHINee does and old-school MBLAQ and Beast and even Big Bang. The new stuff is not my style and that's cool. I also don't know anyone's names or songs so big festivals where tonnes of different artists appear are kind of painful, especially after a long day at work. The event was also running super late and they kept bringing out random people affiliated with the Olympics which is fair since it was an event for the Olympics but...for SHINee fans who always have to wait for SHINee to come out at the end it was painful to the max. SHINee are the biggest name at nearly every festival they ever attend so they're always at the end. Meanwhile Beast came out first and all the Beast fans got to leave a decent 2 hours before we did.
Sometime I wish I could let a little 16 year old super K-pop fan posses my body for a few hours so I could take a nap and then just take my body back when SHINee come out aha. That way some little chickadee who would appreciate the event could enjoy it and grumpy old me could be spared.
Anyway the special thing about this festival is that shawols debuted the new and improved Shabat 2.0. I was also extremely fortunate because I got a foreigner ticket and my seat was just incidentally placed in the shawol section. Extremely pleased to have been sitting in that beautiful glowy sea of SHINee color.
The story with the shabat is that they debuted them for Dream Concert a few years back for View I believe? Timing is a little skewy in my head. Point is: a SHINee fan cafe/site went to a manufacturer and had a filter specially made for the shabat since these light bat things usually only came in colors like orange, red and white. Shawols pre-ordered the bats and they were ready to go in time for Dream Concert 2015 I think. However there was an E*O fan cafe/site that saw what shawols were doing and went to the same manufacturer and got the same items. Since their fan color is white, it was very easy for them. Shawols who had been working on the shabats for months were understandably very pissed and I guess the SHABAT 2.0 was born from that. SHABAT 2.0 is completely gorgeous. It has a white handle with mint accents and a white diamond on the end in raised plastic. The lights are an insanely bright strip of SHINee colored LEDs and it's just the brightest, sparkly-est, most joyful glowy little fan object I have ever owned. I bought 2 when they went up for pre-order and 1 is going to live in my SHRINee in a place of honor. I feel like a shawol warrior princess with the shabat in hand. Basically though it's shawols saying a big fuck you to all the other fandoms in the fan pissing wars. Aha I think there's always a little rivalry between the fandoms. I always want to scream and carry on like a crazy person as loudly as possible because I want SHINee to feel like we love and appreciate them just as much if not more than any other fandom. So for that reason the shabats are a big source of pride. They're also not official merch so we can't use them at official events such as recordings and concerts. Their main function is at big festival concerts that have multiple artists performing at the same time. They're extremely fun though and when SHINee FINALLY came out the shawol section literally glowed. We cast off a SHINee minty pearl aqua green glimmer over the stadium.
Anyway the concert was very behind and a bit of a mess. There were tonnes of foreigners and the MCs kept going into the crowd and interviewing girls about their favorite idols and asking them to sing and dance bits of song and dance. Awkward. It was awkward. Honestly as a foreigner I hate getting singled out at events so we just cringed the whole time and begged the MCs to get on with it.
When SHINee did come out I like to imagine they were equally as annoyed as we were. The sound guys stuffed up and played Monster X's song and then realized it was wrong and stopped it and then played the same somg again so SHINee were left standing ready to go and waiting for them to get their shit together and play the right track. Jonghyun probably had to get out of there and get to Blue Night so the delay was probably completely unwanted. But SHINee's little faces looked so happy and content when they saw the gleam and glow of our SHABAT 2.0s so I consider the evening a success. Key briefly mentioned that Onew was injured but healing and they were all preparing for the comeback and asked everyone to give it a lot of attention and love when it drops. Other than that it was a very in and out kind of performance. Minho's look of joy and wonder when he looked at the SHINee World ocean was spectacular though.
They performed View and Sherlock and then had a back up dancer in black come out to fill in for Onew in Everybody. Honestly speaking when SHINee are performing I'm more concentrated on having fun and fanchanting my lungs out so I missed a lot of fine details of the evening since I was also too far away to see their facial expressions very well ^.^ Oh well. I saw them and felt happy and alive and fanchanted like a boss so mission success.
Even if I did slip over in the rain outside afterwards huhuhu~ Luff you SHINee~~ Rest up before comeback guys <3
Always enjoy your fanaccounts!
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