oct '24 wrap + notes on the elections
Some notes from October + thoughts on the November elections
Hey there! I’m probably as stunned and exhausted as most of you, given the results of the recently concluded US Elections. I’ve been meaning to piece together my thoughts on it, so I figured I should do it alongside my recollections about our last trip to Korea—para balanse, di ba? Haha. Thanks in advance for indulging. -K
‘Home9round’: Some notes on TWICE’s 9th anniversary fanmeeting
First things first: We were in Korea (my first and only Korea trip this year, actually!) in time for TWICE’s 9th anniversary last Oct 20th, and it did not disappoint.
For me, it was a brief fly-in, fly-out affair—again—because I have unfortunately run out of leaves haha. Took the red-eye to Seoul, landed morning of Saturday, took a peek into the anniversary activation at Lotte World Mall around lunch time1 , had lunch and coffee while waiting before officially giving up (haha) to have dinner at one of our Hongdae faves, before gearing up for next morning’s fanmeet at Olympic Hall2.
We started Sunday early—brunch at our hotel before riding the train from Hongdae to Olympic Park. It was all pretty straightforward—wow transport infra! Sigh. The weather was also very very pleasant—lovely jacket weather at noontime (insert dig re Japan summer here lol). We had enough time to go around, meet up with fansites for freebies (always a favorite part), and check out re: what else is happening around the grounds (less activations this year compared to last year—lots of people shooting content though! and by shooting we mean with crew) before heading in for the 1pm show.
They gave out exclusive fanmeeting PCs at the entrance alongside the usual banners and this giant ass fan that is apparently a staple at baseball games (which is this year’s theme)3
This year’s setlist is a fantastic mix of old and new. I love going to fanmeets because they’re pretty much the only way I could watch stages for old songs—what do you mean they opened with Ponytail! From Twicecoaster: Lane 1! It was amazing. Of course as it is sports-themed you can’t not have Cheer Up right there, and this year we also got to watch Heartshaker’s full choreo!
For the sub-units they went for the ‘III’ concert sub-units — Push & Pull (Sana, Jihyo, Dahyun); 1,3,2 (Jeongyeon, Mina, Tzuyu); and Hello4 (Nayeon, Momo, Chaeyoung). I’ve always wanted to watch those! ‘III’, which marked TWICE’s post-pandemic return to concerts and live events, did not have a Manila stop, so I’m glad to have gotten these sub-units this year at the fanmeet.
They also did Here I Am and DIVE!!! Which is a Big Deal, because Japan Stages outside of Japan!! They also did One Spark!! Which means I finally have a recording of these songs haha because I wasn’t able to record them at Nissan.
For audience interaction, the girls threw/shot baseball stress balls into the crowd! C got hers handed to her by Momo herself (lucky!).
But my hands down most favorite moment of this year’s fanmeeting is finally hearing One in a Million—including Jeongyeon’s legendary high note—live.
The fanmeet finished around 3 hours later, I think? Afterwards, we tried getting into the onground merch booth before heading immediately back to our hotel to catch the 7pm show on Beyond Live. Subtitles, finally! Haha. It was an opportunity to catch up on performance nuances we missed in the earlier show, and it was going as expected… until TWICE played another song after One in a Million, which was the 1pm show’s last song.
It was called ‘Sweetest Obsession’5 — it’s a new song and they used it to announce their comeback in December sksksk I SWEAR TO GOD rest is for the weak in this fandom we have never known peace—TWICE’s next mini-album STRATEGY, OUT DEC 6TH!
Anyway, they uploaded the track on their official YouTube and even edited it so that it explicitly shows Nayeon and Sana and whatever mess that was it’s so funny please watch it. Also it’s a really good song! I’m looking forward to the other tracks of their comeback!
Anyway—here’s Spotify’s official fanmeeting playlist, complete with the ments!
So now we come to…
Some notes on the US Elections
It’s been days since Americans trooped to their polling stations to re-elect former President Donald Trump. I’m equal parts unsurprised and devastated, exhausted and afraid. He’s exactly what is said on the tin and yet. And yet.
People like questioning why people from other countries are so invested in American politics—I say we’re the same amount of invested as the US is in our country? The amount of influence the US has on governance and policies in countries like the Philippines cannot be emphasized enough. They’re so influential that I think it’s probably commensurate if they let people in countries they have interests in vote in their elections (after all, doesn’t the US have a say in other countries’ elections as well??? oops.)
In any case—Vice President Kamala Harris is definitely among the most qualified to have possibly served the post. Had she been an old, white man, we’d probably talking about different results entirely.
Anyway—sharing some reads:
Via TIME: How Donald Trump won
Some on-ground observations in Hawaii—long insightful thread featuring conversations on-the ground, worth the read but tldr, failures of the Democratic Party under Biden paved the way to Trump’s comeback
Rebecca Solnit’s powerful post-script: You are not giving up, and neither am I.
Vienna Teng’s sober thread: ‘Unfriend me now if’ is not a way forward. (To me, like logic-wise, this really makes sense, but it’s too close to the disaster to disregard feelings, I think. Feeling like you want to cut-off family members is valid. A part of me still burns with Rage from 2022—two years ago! And these guys, they’re not even a week hence. But in the long run, the Consequences of Bad Governments affect everyone and at some point—yeah. We are still stronger together.)
Speaking of stronger together: I wrote this on priv, because I see this take a lot on my For You algorithm, that it’s time to put to rest the illusion that Gen Z is about to be better than all of us, citing statistics (which I have yet to verify) that a big chunk of them voted for Trump. I would like to remind everyone, as a geriatric Millennial, that the youngest of the voters were 14 years old when the pandemic hit in 2020. The members of the 18-24 voting cohort were between the ages of 14 to 20. Further back, around Sandy Hook in 2012, they were between the ages of 6 to 12. Which probably means they have lived in eternal fear of school shootings all their school-going life. They are coming of age in absolutely different circumstances, only now they are much much more prone to being taken advantage of by propaganda hyperboosted by algorithms run by billionaires who are of course only monitoring their own interests. Which includes threads like the ones all over my feed. I just think it’s unhelpful to be piling onto these ‘Millennials are the greatest generation they know how to spot misinformation etc etc’ threads because we’ll only push younger citizens on the Internet away—and deeper into the arms of podcasters and youtubers who will pander to them on behalf of billionaire interests. Just saying.
Anyway, that’s just me. I hadn’t meant for the election notes to go as long as they had—apologies!
If you’ve gone this far—thanks for reading as always. See you in the next one.
XO,
K
The merch line was SO LONG because international fans like me have arrived, so I wasn’t really able to shop, but thankfully C had already procured most of our priority merch earlier
Of course I flew in on a SATURDAY for a SUNDAY event, because YOLO lmao oh god I’m too old for this actually???
Photo for reference. Also — this is a view from Olympic Hall D2, Row 6
Holy shit, the Hello stage is otherworldly. Excuse you, Hirai Momo??
The Beyond Live show was not able to capture Nayeon and Sana’s kiss immediately—I think we were alerted to it because there was a ruckus + Sana was laughing during her portion + Momo was already in the background trying to clear herself or something haha. Then the Onces at the 7pm show started uploading hi-res photos and skskksksk Nayeon and Sana always at the scene of the crime.