#WAIT ALSO triangle halo denotes god the father in iconography (as opposed to circular for saints and square for humans)!!!

[sanstropfremir]

apologies if someone's already asked this but... favorite taemin stylings and sets/stages?

i've had fave songs but not fave styles and sets!!!! thank you anon this is great.

- ok my top stage is probably the advice inkigayo one take stage, because 1) the full loverboy styling and also the backup dancers have impeccable outfits too, 2) i loooooove the neoclassical set (the fact that main sculptures are laocoön and his sons, where the story in virgil is that he is punished by being attacked by snakes for attempting to expose the trojan horse as a ruse) and the THRONE!!! also the inverted triangle!! has a bunch of different meanings, including: the alchemical symbol for water (fluid and formless, also in the projections) and the symbol for femininity, the symbol of the father, son, and the holy ghost (christianity), and 3) the choreography of advice is the only choreo of taemin's that was conceived post covid and thus it's meant for specifically for the accompanying camerawork, which you can really see in the various ways that it gets filmed.

- my other all time fave styling is this outfit from the ngda beyond live:

which also included a burned jacket and an eyepatch, which he used to perform criminal, idea, guess who/sexuality, heaven, and door.

- another fave styling is the danger stage from shinee world 2014 at tokyo dome, with the giant blue fur coat and shirtless leather jacket and the giant cross and the revolver. peak solo taemin image change bullshit and i love it.

- tbh i love most of the styling from advice but the white cropped sweatsuit look really did make me lose braincells. like the chunky earrings and the harness and the bobby pins and mascara tear tracks and the pseudo sports bra it all lives rent free in my empty skull

- just. all the styling from criminal and ngda in general. obvs love the dark virgin mary getup and the chainmail and also the gucci suit with the chainsaw, but the lava suit and the hell set from the 2020 kbs song festival..........MWAH. and the royal blue satin hanbok from the king taemin mama 2020 stage....................with the cape.............. i also do like the set here as well, very inspired choice to go with this tron style hyper neon hanok/palace and pair it with more traditional fabrics and embroidery.

- i also find the original move styling ideologically very fascinating, partially because everyone kinda just....forgot about it? it's been eclipsed by all the newer versions that he's done where his general styling has shifted much more towards the 'feminine' end of the spectrum, but the original stages are a very interesting deconstruction of traditional western masculine silhouettes with emphasis on a particularly 'masculine' feature: muscular arms. most of the looks are sleeveless muscle shirts or graphic tshirts, but interestingly also a very skinny fit double breasted pinstripe suit, which is huge symbol of post-war and post-modern masculinity in western fashion. you can see this continuing deconstruction with other tracks on the move album; like with stone heart, where he's got this strange and kind of incredible sweatervest/suspenders/ultra high waisted trouser combo for the offsick concert, which is very clearly an appropriation of classic 'scholarly'/academic type fashion.

- as far as sets go, really all i want to talk about is how taemin puts sooo much thought into his stages (like the actual physical stages) for his tours. he's so interested in providing these very unique experiences in terms of stage technology which is not something a lot of artists think about. like for his first solo concert at nippon budokan he did a concert entirely in the round, which is pretty much unheard of for a stadium show. there's also the double hydraulic lifts from xtm, everything that was happening for t1001101 (the slanted stage, the lighting rigs), and then for the ngda beyond live, a redux of the slanted stage that also was separated into three different hydralic sections and drone camera integration (dream maker studios posted the dronecam version of heaven so you can see some of the stage in action). there's so much tech that goes into his performances that i really wanted to talk about that a bit, because i'm a nerd and stadium stage design is sometimes sooooooo boring. taemin really makes the effort to step up his game not only personally, but in everything around him as well.