#bts first love short film analysis

[gentlebeardsbarngrill]

06/14/2024 Daily OFMD Recap

TLDR; David Jenkins; Rhys Darby; Samba Schutte BTS; Vico Ortiz; Ruibo Qian; Flag Day/3yr Anniversary of OFMD Filming; AOC: Raffle Updates; Tell Tale TV Voting; WBD Stocks Status; Fan Spotlight: Cast Cards; OFMD Colouring Pages; Love Notes; Daily Darby/Tonight's Taika;

Happy Friday all! I hope the weekend is long and restful for you.

== David Jenkins ==

Chaos Dad posted on Instagram today with the hashtag #RelaxMax #WhosAGoodBoy. Sure seems to be a hint in there somewhere, but what does it mean? Whatever it means, it's definitely directed at MAX.

Source: David Jenkins Instagram

== Rhys Darby ==

Rhys is out and about with his family!

Source: Rosie's Instagram

Source: Finn's Instagram

== Samba Schutte ==

Samba was kind enough to drop a LOT of BTS today, specifically to help folks who want to see more of Roach's outfits.

For all the images/videos you can visit:

Samba Schutte Roach S2 Reference Part 1

Samba Schutte Roach S2 Reference Part 2

== Vico Ortiz ==

"Some Sag Rising curly hair chaos ❤️‍🔥 Catch me…. If you can 😏 ✨LAX-NYC-SJU-PHX✨"

Source: Vico Ortiz' Instagram

== Ruibo Qian ==

No Idea the context on this one! But Ruibo is featured!

Source: KayBrooZayZay's Instagram Stories

== S1 Filming Anniversary / Flag Day ==

Today is Flag Day! @adoptourcrew reminded us that 3 years ago today, OFMD Started filming! They also asked folks to show off their flags! Feel free to hit them up on the various platforms!

Source: Adopt Our Crew's Tumblr

For those of you who are elders in the fandom, you'll probably recognise this from June 14, 2021

Source: David Jenkin's Twitter

== AOC: Raffle Update ==

Great job everyone! The Charity Raffle for #OurFlagMeansPride is doing fantastic! 67 charities and already $2,617 already raised!

Wanna enter the raffle? All you need to do is donate to an LGBTQ+ Charity to qualify and submit to them on their google form! Visit @adoptourcrew on Tumblr, Instagram, or Twitter for charity examples as well as how to sign up!

Source: Adopt Our Crew's Instagram

== Tell Tale TV Reminders ==

Are you tired of reminders yet? Well, there's only a couple more days -- and you can vote every day so please do! Remember, there's OurFlagMeansDeath, and Rhys and Ruibo up for award! Tell Tale TV Awards Voting

Source: Tell Tale TV Twitter

== WB Related Articles ==

Warner Bros stock analysis: WBD could tank to $5 soon

Source: Seven_Sugars Twitter

== WBD Stocks Status ==

Source: WBD NASDAQ

== Fan Spotlight ==

= Cast Cards =

Back tonight is more cast cards by our darling @melvisik! First up is John Mahone, one of our lovely writers! and next is Ma Christina C. one of our lovely members of the Red Flag Crew!

== OFMD Colouring Pages ==

More Colouring Pages --this time for Flag Day from our talented crewmate @patchworkpiratebear and presented by @adoptourcrew!

Source: AdoptOurCrew Twitter

== Love Notes ==

Hey there lovelies. Happy start to the weekend! Work has been throwing me through a loop this week, and with my girl Zoey still sick I've been completely out of it, so I'm gonna try to go to bed early tonight if I can, so love notes will be short tonight. I know the past many months have been rough without our show. Since the cancellation we've had ebbs and flows, and sometimes it's hard to remember just how long it's been. (I literally caught myself saying, man this cancellation has been going on for a year!-- wow no, not that long but damn!) The good news is, so many of you have taken that grief and turned it into something beautiful. Whether that's friendships, or artwork, or fibre work, or writing, podcasts, podfics, songs, gifs or image edits-- or even just kind words you give to friends or strangers. You really are wonderful, lovelies, don't forget that. Remember that your kindness is a strength, and it makes all our lives better. Thank you for being kind to me, and all your fellow crew since the cancellation.

With WBD struggling a bit, and BINGE streaming OFMD S1 and S2, I'm really starting to feel hope again. I know everyone's weary of that kind of hope right now, so feel it when/if you can. But I feel like things are looking up <3 Rest well crew, see you tomorrow.

== Daily Darby / Tonight's Taika ==

I don't know about yall, but tonight's theme reflects my need for a nap, anyone else?

Gifs courtesy of @ ofmd-ann and @ gattonswood

[andy-wm]

Hello💜

I absolutely loved your SGMB analysis, & your pointers—they were brilliantly explained. I was especially impressed with how you broke down all of Jimin’s love interests in the “pantomime” being male…wow, how true! 🤯👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏻🤩

A Twitter army @ renkinger_ talked about the overall aesthetics of the track video may be linked to the Wizard of Oz because Smeraldo flower originated in “La Città di smeraldo (Emerald City)” according to BH circa summer 2017. https://twitter.com/renkiger_/status/1806690417095942626?s=46&t=H01H2IYxpN8-BH-REKQ-hA Does the Wizard of Oz have any 🌈 lgbtq connotations I wonder…🤔

I also wanted to share two little things I’m speculating about SGMB:

• The song opens with marching band drums 🥁🥁 with “boop beep” like articulations—Do you think the “boop beep” may have been inspired by the Jimin meme where he is going “boop beep”? (I hope I’m explaining this sufficiently enough; there were two occasions JM did this 1️⃣ He made 🫶 and throws a kiss with 🤲 both hands at camera he had light hair, not exactly blonde. 2️⃣ In a Run BTS Hangul Day special episode whilst mocking/bickering at Yoongi, sounding vowels.)

• At the chorus 🎶mmm…I love you babe🎵 he goes 🎙️🐤 “Yesss I dooo~” in tiny. Do you think that could be another Jimin meme reference of that famous “Yes Aeey Dooo~👀” while seated with a guitar in green room during his FACE promo schedule?

Bangtan knows what we talk about them very well (“let’s talk about us”) on social media and beyond. Is it any wonder he might have incorporated some memes we adore?!

🌻🌻🌻🪻🥁🫧🐤🫧🥁🪻🌻🌻🌻

🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️Oh hell yes!🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈

The Wizard of Oz absolutely has links to queerness. The film has cult status among LGBT Folks.

The first thing that comes to mind is Friends of Dorothy, a euphemism for being gay.

The next thing is the fact that her friends - scarecrow, tin man, and cowardly lion - are all social outcasts.

You can read more on Wikipedia its very comprehensive

As for the memes (good spotting!) i think its highly likely he's seen them all. Considering what a playful MV this is and how many other references hes packed in (Serendipity bubble, butterfly, 👉 👈 etc) i dont see why it wouldn't be ... more tongue in cheekiness from our favourite Mochi 😁

(Apologies for the short answer, I am super tired!)

[iloveschiaparelli]

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes: My Love Letter Part 1

Okay okay okay SO Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes longpost time just my whole opinion/analysis/love letter for the whole film beginning with my Wes Ball backstory so skip to the Ruin screencap if you want to skim past all that.

I haven't talked about it on tumblr yet but I'm actually like a huge fat fan of the Maze Runner cinematic series directed by Wes Ball. Really I'm just a fan of Wes Ball. It not only singlehandedly got me through my first year of high school but also became the reason I ended up entering the film industry. I've watched all 3 movies at least 4-5 times each. Probably like 20-30 for Scorch Trials at this point because it's my favorite. I can quote probably at least half of it from memory. I've watched all of the BTS content that was on the DVDs + the bloopers on youtube like i was obsessed ok.

2019 was like the second worst year of my life so imagine my distress in january 2019 when I found out about Wes Ball's next movie, Mouse Guard, got Super Hyped Up for the multimillion dollar mice-with-swords movie (I eventually read some of the comics btw it's insanely good) And then within the same week found out Disney pulled the plug on the project after acquiring 20th Century Fox. TWO weeks before production was scheduled to begin. I was livid. I'm still bitter about it. Wes Ball then released the demo reel for the film to the public which iirc also had temp music.

So anyway yeah that was awful but then! I think it was later in 2020 that it was announced that Wes Ball was going to be directing the 4th POTA movie. This kicked off me seeing the original 1968 film and then the trilogy and wow did doing so increase my excitement. In my opinion Rupert Wyatt/Matt Reeves' directing styles and Wes Ball's were/are very compatible. I also took the time to get caught up on as much of Wes Ball's old projects as I could get my hands on at the time, including his animated short Ruin (screencap below). Which is fantastic BTW and apparently was purchased by Fox for a feature film that was never made (???) I swear, filmmakers have their past works splattered all over the internet like body parts after a landmine explosion: Good luck finding everything.

Now, Finally Finally FINALLY!!!!!!!! Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is out. I meant to see it on the premier night but my boyfriend broke up with me 2 days before so I forgot. I saw it tonight instead! So now with the backstory out of the way I can finally talk about the actual movie.

First of all, the beginning of the film absolutely WOWed me!!!! It honestly feels like a callback to Ruin, the way that the buildings are overgrown and the post-apocalyptic setting is super evident and feels so delightfully reclaimed by nature. It's also really neat to see how far VFX has come since Ruin was released if you compare the opening shots of the movie with the wide shots in Ruin. Wes Ball himself is also a VFX artist, so it's really neat to see how that affects his work especially since Planet of the Apes is by nature a very vfx-heavy franchise. This movie absoutely popped off in that area but we'll get to that.

Secondly, I forgot how much I missed Ball's directing! Oh my goodness, the performances he gets out of the actors are always so authentic. I still have yet to see a performance by Dylan O'Brien that was as raw and believable as in the Maze Runner movies, and I'm like halfway through Teen Wolf already. In the action scenes especially, I love how characters in Ball's movies, you can really feel their pain. Since pain and physical discomfort aren't communicated directly through film, we often forget just how hard it is to get back up again after getting kicked down, but with Wes Ball you never forget. Ugh, when Noa was getting beat up on top of the bunker at the end of the movie, I caught myself catching my own breath when he coughed up blood. Like, yeowch!

Additionally, everything this man makes is just, like, a masterpiece? On a technical level at least. That's really the mark of a good director, whose job is not only to evoke a performance from the actors, but also to tie together the whole crew. And KOTPOTA really showed off how well the team worked together. Just the establishing shots alone in a lot of these scenes! Oh. My. Word. You can clearly see the fruits of labor of not only the concept artists, but also the VFX artists and production designers, and how they worked with the DP and actors to get the shot. Here are some examples of what I'm talking about:

There are more that I'm thinking of, but unfortunately without a digital release available yet there's a limit to the screencaps that I'm able to obtain. The shot where Noa is walking up the escalator following Raka and you see the plane in the background indicating that Raka lives in an airport is one of them. There's also one or two establishing shots in nature that just show off the setting. The opening shots, of course. And then the shot where it pans up and you see Eagle Village for the first time. There's also an aerial of Proximus Caesar's camp, but I'm unable to find that one as well. The main one I want to look at is the telescope.

Just, like, Hello???? It looks like an art piece. This screencap is a little closer in than I'd like, but in the full frame you can see the absolute mastery of composition that it is, you can totally imagine it as a painting. Which in my experiences usually means there's a painting behind it somewhere in the process, lol. Let's go concept artists!!! But then you see how the colors are just, perfectly balanced, the plant growth is realistic and accentuating the set, and so on and so forth. It was just absolutely breathtaking to see for the first time. I'm pretty sure I audibly gasped. I did a lot of stimming during this movie just to stay quiet and not start babbling about the film pipeline to my father in theater auditorium.

Even more magic happens when Noa steps onto the set, and starts messing with the telescope. Suddenly it's real, it's tangible, it's touchable. Transforming what was likely a matte painting at one point into a set that the actors can interact with, and then into a shot where almost everything is overlaid with VFX, and having it look so real like that is truly magic.

The ship also had me dumbstruck, but slightly less so because we saw a similar setting in The Maze Runner: The Death Cure in 2018. Although it was slightly different for sure. What had me going even more in this movie was how much the characters interacted with the ship, moving in and around it, and trading glances with one another from on the ground and up inside. In TMR:DTC, you really only see the decrepit ships in the background, and one is referenced as a plot point but the characters never actually physically interact with any of them. So it's much easier for our brains to categorize the ships as gimmicks to help us believe the scene.

It's when props like these are woven into the scene as tangible objects that our brains start to shut up about the CGI and really start to believe what's happening onscreen! and KOTPOTA did an amazing job at this. Please bear in mind like, I literally have zero specialization in VFX, it's not my field and although I draw, I've never done concept art for film. I honestly believe that I'm simply in an appropriate level of awe for what this film accomplished.

The other thing that amazed me was how stylized the setting was. The greenery was so green, the ocean felt like a painting, the ship was red, the telescope shot is very, very blue. Several of the shapes used in the ape's costume design are simplified. And yet, despite the stylization, it never feels cartoony or polygonal, it still feels completely grounded in reality, and I could really believe I'd see it in real life. I think this owes partly to the fact that we rarely inspect any of these simplified items at a close distance, aside from Raka's necklace which appears to be made of either bone or whittled wood. It also owes to absolute geniuses in color grading that kept the stylized colors realistic enough for our brains to believe. Overall I'd take the visual style of the film to be Impressionist. I love impressionism.

My main interest in filmmaking is writing/directing. However, most of my experience lies in costume design (Student films rarely need costume "design" so its usually coordination) and production design. As a result I spent a good deal of my time watching KOTPOTA zeroed in on the production design.

I love post-apocalyptic science-fiction/fantasy worlds like this partly precisely because of how much you can learn from the production design alone. When Mae enters Trevathan's room for the first time I swear I was eating it up. Every single prop in this movie was carefully thought out by the PD, which is why his room absolutely stood out from the rest of the setting that we had seen up to that point. It was distinctly "human-centric" as opposed to the rest of the movie. I remember seeing it in the theater earlier today, laying eyes first on the bed by the door, thinking that it must be something they set up for Mae, but then wondering why or how the apes would know or want to set up a human-style bed for Mae when we're so many generations removed from human-dominated society.

Next it was on many miscellaneous table objects, thinking to myself "That looks like how a human would treat a space. Apes are generally too big to decorate at that scale." and then my eyes roved on to the furniture, seeing a human-sized table, human-sized chair, human-sized junk everywhere! Slowly, by observing the room, I gained a stronger and stronger sense of "there is another human here," which upon observing the rows and rows of books became "a smart human like Mae, who unlike her can read" (Remember at this point we still believed that Mae and her mother were the only smart humans that Mae had known growing up, and that she had been pursuing the opportunity to meet other smart humans and join them).

It was only upon the instant of realizing that this was a smart human that Trevathan spoke and appeared on the stairs. It was absolutely perfect timing. THIS, guys, is exceptional production design. It was honestly my absolute favorite piece of production design in the entire film, especially because of how much it contrasted what we've become used to seeing in the series as humans have diminished in population and apes and nature have taken over the space instead.

That exact sense of change or "otherness", that noticeability of contrast upon seeing what is honestly a pretty "normal" human space if you look at it in the context of our existing society, is only present because of how well PD treats the rest of the movie. In order to make a completely normal space feel strange, you have to change literally every other space to something alien but consistent with itself. And KOTPOTA does just that. The job was begun in the original trilogy, with the decline of humanity depicted across decades, nature taking over the gas station and the dam and even the city. But this movie had the biggest challenge because of simply how many years had passed before the story even began. Society as we know it today is completely and totally obliviated in KOTPOTA's setting. In every set that the characters interacted with in any way, PD had to fabricate a space where humans had been but the virus, decades of decay and post-apocalyptic living, and ape encroachment had transformed it.

This also brings me into the subject of the rich culture we see emerging in the world of the apes through this movie. The original trilogy, especially the first and second film, was all about the ape's identity. In the first film Caesar wonders whether he is human or ape, and whether apes are pets or equals to humans. He eventually comes to the realization that humans are never going to look out for apes the way that apes will and decides to become that person. In the second film, Caesar and the other characters involved have to figure out what being an ape means. Does it mean strength is power? That humans are always an enemy to defeated? Or a similar species to live alongside? It's about establishing what the ape race's relationship is to the human race. The third film I didn't get to rewatch before seeing KOTPOTA, but iirc it was about whether humans and apes could ever coexist, which is a theme we see continued in this movie, albeit in a slightly different way. Either that or more likely it was about whether apes will repeat the same mistakes as humans.

Anyway, I digress. In the script we already see a rich culture emerging in hints, right from the start of the movie. It's in the hunt for the eagle eggs at the beginning with mentions of some kind of coming-of-age ceremony, followed by Noa reminding Anaya and Soona that they must "leave one egg always. It is the law." Already in the first five minutes we've established that this particular ape civilization not only has cultural traditions surrounding youth and coming-of-age, but also rituals and laws surrounding their relationship with and the conservation of nature. And through dialogue we extrapolate that these apes have bonded animals (eagles). It honestly felt like a crossover between Native American Indian hunting practices and How To Train Your Dragon, which is wild I know. (Also can we talk about how the eagles in this movie actually made eagle sounds???? And not falcon sounds! Finally we're breaking the bad habit of making up animal noises to sound cooler when the original already sounded super cool by itself.)

So in just a few minutes guys!! We already have so much. Then the trio heads back to the village and has their first encounter with the Echoes (Ekos? If anyone could get spelling on that for me that would be fantastic) but are too afraid (or law-bound) to get too close to or cross through the tunnel "into the valley below". So through these we establish that there is a taboo around not just humans but also around leaving the village. The clan has taken an isolationist approach wherein they not only forbid their young clan members from leaving but also withhold information about the outsiders from them until they've come of age. Guys the cultural system arising here is absolutely wild. Like sorry not sorry but I eat this stuff up. (Screenwriters-- this is prime example material of "show don't tell")

There's also all of the ape social communication rules that we've already gotten used to, mainly a variation of the palm-up/palm-down gesture as a means of showing respect (submission) and asking for permission/approval.

In this movie however the hands are mostly closed and the palms are down for the sub as well as the ape they're seeking approval from, as opposed to the trilogy in which the submitting ape always had their palm up. At first I chalked this up to cultural differences among clans since we learned that this clan is not the clan descended from Caesar's apes in the trilogy, but then Caesar's descendants were doing it this way too? So I don't really know what to make of it but I'm going to decide that it's just global cultural evolution (at least, as global as the real-world evolution of Old English into modern English).

Through the production design of the beginning sequence in Eagle Village, we see that the eagles catch fish and then the vast quantities of fish and the smokehouse indicate that fish caught by the eagles are the main source of food for the Eagle Clan. We also see feathers as a motif throughout, worn especially by the parents and the elders as a sign of social status (we know it's social status bc Sylva rips it off of one of the elders as an intimidation tactic and everyone audibly gasps, indicating it worked). That last bit is honestly more costume design, they popped off too but one thing at a time or I'm going to become incomprehensible. I will repeat myself. It is inevitable.

Then throughout the film we learn that not only do they adhere strictly to the "law", but that that law is set by the elders alone. We also learn that they primarily relate to their eagles by singing to them which!!! is just!!!! so!!! metal!!! I love it. The way it plays into the end scene with Proximus just AGHRGHJHRHGR GROWL BARK BARK FERAL NOISES>

ahem

Also we see them building nests at home for their eagles and they've figured out falconry tools for the aerie and everything on their own like??

Then in contrast we see what's left of Caesar's clan, it's descendants. Proximus Caesar, we learn later from Trevathan, has gone completely fangirl over the ancient roman empire and decided to emulate it because "he likes it" and it makes him "feel good" (yeah he's probably the most textbook tyrant I've ever seen in media), choosing to morph Caesar's teachings into his own new worldview rather than adhering to them properly.

So the culture of Caesar's clan is very heavily roman-influenced, often copying practices outright such as the insitution of slavery, a lot of the fashion choices and even the way that banners are put up around the camp and the way that Proximus dines at a low-set table filled with an overabundance of food. And he has a throne and crown, and there are roman numerals inscribed on both his and Sylva's necklaces. But we still see influences of Caesar's original society, most noticeably the persistence of the window symbol and the architecture of the dam. The architecture wouldn't be significant at all, instead being noted as a stylistic choice for the whole series, if it weren't for the fact that it's different from Eagle Clan's architecture.

If Eagle Village resembles those spaghetti bridges that engineers build for class, with thatched roofs, then the dam at Caesar Clan's camp is much more brutalist by comparison. Eagle Clan was very spindly and focused on height and lightness of building materials: many of the logs were thinner and longer, more spaced out, and sometimes rounded at the ends. By contrast, Caesar Clan's dam is built with stumpier logs, closer together, and spiked at the top. The dam is also shored up with soil and other materials. Which yeah, is typical of beaver dams but is also typical of the structures in the original Caesar's village in the trilogy.

Unfortunately, there's only one image currently available of Eagle Village and it's after it was burned down. But you can still see how it differs from Caesar's village, instead of being chaotic it's more organized, allowing for a more lightweight structure.

This (below) is the closest I could get to having a picture of the dam's architecture, but you can still tell how it's more similar to OG Caesar's architecture than it is to Eagle Clan's, even though it's using a completely different building material (scrap metal instead of hewn trees).

Eagle Clan's architecture is also a further effect of how their society revolves around making a life bond with eagles, which are flying creatures. So of course they would be inclined to taller structures, especially ones that are more lightweight and have structural patterns, imitating the way that birds are built (see above).

I'll continue in part 2 as a reblog because it's 1 am and I'm running out of steam but YALL I need you to understand: It's been 6 years since the last time I had a Wes Ball film to overanalyze and rave about. I have SO MUCH to say about this film.

[leelee120000]

#MCRXX – An Analysis of My Chemical Romance’s “A summoning…”

February 17, 2020

My Chemical Romance (MCR) has decided to light my emo heart on fire once again by releasing “A summoning…” The short film is 13 minutes and 19 seconds long and cryptic in the same insane manner as Twenty One Pilots’ and BTS’ videos, creating a mystery for the fans to solve.

The video starts with a zoomed-in shot of black Converse being laced up. The person gulps and stands, walking past a white guitar. It’s Pansy, a clone of the guitar that was burned during the Life on the Murder Scene era. The camera pans over a desk covered with vinyl and a quill pen well. The camera pans to a corkboard with some of Gerard Way’s sketches, Mikey Way’s photographs, and some other paper scraps; the centerpiece being a spooky eye.

The young man* wearing the shoes walks into the kitchen, grabbing a coffee mug labeled “NJ Dept. Of Corrections.” (MCR is from New Jersey.) He brews the pot and then looks through some clothes. The first is the jacket Gerard wore during the band’s “Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys” album era, the next is a black jacket with golden buttons, looking like a shirt from the bands “The Black Parade” album era.

The man grabs a black hooded cape and tares duct tape with his teeth. He tapes off the windows with black trash bags. The camera pans over a gas mask which is a symbol with triple meaning for fans, as it is the same one used in all three of Gerard’s comics. The man puts on the vinyl of MCR’s debut album, “I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love.” He then proceeds to light candles around photographs of the band member’s families.

He walks with another candle and sits it on the floor. There is a pentagram in tape with an MCR album in each corner with an ouija board in front of him. The camera focuses on his obscured face as his hands move the placet, blocking the question from the camera’s view. The TV erupts with static, rapidly flashing five tarot symbols:

The candle

The sun

The hand with a match

The blood drop

And a never before seen logo. Which I assume is this new album’s logo. Correction, members of the witchcraft community in the comments have said that it’s actually a sigle symbolizing MCR. I’m still trying to verify this.

The camera drops to the ouija board. Moving from around the O area over to spell out “R-U-N” as the front door is hit with loud knocking. The man looks through the peephole and sees three Draculoids from Danger Days.

The camera pans over a key ring labeled “Hotel Bella Muerte Room 512”. Which is a reference to the song “The Jetset Life Is Gonna Kill You” off their album, “Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge.” The 512, however, is new. The only thing I could think of is that 5-8-12 was the last day they performed live. Or maybe it’s the release date of this new album, May 12 2020?

The man sprints into a red door with the candle on it. He runs into a bar with green and purple lights, the helmet from “The Ghost of You” music video sits above the bar, it is clear that this bar is representing the album, “I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love”. First room, first album, and all the references are from this era. (The song lyrics in the graphey, the posters, etc.) The patrons are drunk and watching the “The Ghost of You” music video.

Suddenly, a woman is sucking the arm of another woman and the camera flashes a man’s vampire fangs. 

The three Draculoids reappear, the man runs through another red door. This one with the blood drop. The music is a slowed-down version of “Helena,” and the church this man has entered looks identical to the one from the “Helena” music video. He picks up a flyer for  Helena’s funeral. We see the blood-splattered couple for the album cover of “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge” being married. They look back at the door, Helena stands, doing her dance.

The three Draculoids reappear, the man runs behind a curtain. He lights a match. (The matchbox is another song reference, labeled “Fire at Will.”) He steps out of a coffin, and into the hospital from “The Black Parade” where we see The Patient’s bed from the music video. Something is under the sheets. The man pulls them and the heart monitor stops. Showing 5-18-12. This is the events of TBP being shown from the other side. The three Draculoids burst through a red door with the hand and match. Our man hides and then sprints away as they follow.

A red door with the sun appears he runs through. Suddenly he falls out of the passenger side of the “Danger Days” Trans A.M. [I screamed.] It speeds off while blaring Dr. Death-Defying’s iconic radio transmission. The car circles back, almost running the man over. He walks past the mallets from the “I’m Not Okay” music video. The Draculoids march forward, the man runs into a red door with the moon symbol. A nuke explodes like the beginning of the Danger Days comics.

The man is lying in the middle of a circle of candles as five cloaked figures stand around him. It fades to black and the music becomes hopeful as he walks into the gymnasium from “Teenagers,” the door is black with the new logo. He follows a path of candles as he’s suddenly in a stadium. The pentagram and ouija board is back, it says “Yes”. The man looks up and smiles, the lights turn on to reveal, “FORUM” the symbol appears and city names fade in and out.

At the very end, we see the skeleton with the ex band member Bob’s TBP jacket and the dead Draculoids.

*I assume he, the nameless character, is a man. However Gerard Way is genderfluid and if this character is a representation of them, then it is reasonable to assume the character is he/them. In a 2014 Reddit thread when asked about gender Gerard had said, “I have always been extremely sensitive to those that have gender identity issues as I feel like I have gone through it as well, if even on a smaller scale. I have always identified a fair amount with the female gender, and began at a certain point in MCR to express this through my look and performance style. So it’s no surprise that all of my inspirations and style influences were pushing gender boundaries. Freddy [sic] Mercury, Bowie, Iggy, early glam, T-Rex. Masculinity to me has always made me feel like it wasn’t right for me.” 

LeAnne McPherson

[potteresque-ire]

I’d like to talk a little about Gg Assistant fic… (Trigger warning: "Me Too” situation; obscene language)

This fic, understandably, has generated quite a bit of excitement among i-turtles because of certain scenes, because of its closeness in POV to what we call fake rumours today. This fic is also, admittedly, a legend among many c-turtles; believed to be first posted before the airing of The Untamed in one of the earliest BJYX forum thread that has since collapsed, the amount of truth hidden within its fanfic status has always been a point of curiosity—largely because the context of the posting was gone. “Fake rumours” (假料), as a genre, didn’t exist yet at the time of its publication, and so it has been referred to as one of the two legendary 助手文s — with 助手 meaning “assistant” and 文 meaning “essay” and likely referring to 同人文, or fan fiction.

For a long time, these 助手文s have largely been kept-in-the-dark candies, similar to certain BTS clips—discussions about them were forbidden on the BYJX supertopic. Moreover, they were candies so old that few new turtles knew about them … until last week, when the opening of the “Candy Analysis” board in the BJYX supertopic led to their “excavation”.

I’d like to talk about this fic because it is an example of a candy that can, or perhaps, has already hurt Gg seriously in subtle ways, though unlikely the intention of the fic’s writer and its propagators. As an example of a candy that we, as i-turtles, may want to think about what makes responsible candy consumption.

I shall not talk about the certain scenes; they’re not what compelled me to write this post —whatever they are, they fall well within the kind of things people outside Gd and Dd’s fandom expect CPFs to be interested in, to daydream about. Those scenes can be ten times wilder and no outsiders would bet an eye.

What I’d like to talk about is one verb that was mis-translated in the English version. That said, please do not take this post as an accusation against anyone—it’s difficult to incorporate full definitions within a translated story, and readers who didn’t pick up the nuance because of the mis-translation are, of course, not at fault in any way.

The verb in question is this one: …among the higher-ups someone wanted to provide for XZ…

In the original Chinese version, “to provide for” is 包養.

包養 is more than “to provide for”. It’s “to provide for” in exchange for exclusive sex service — the person providing the sponsorship would pay a monthly fee, and/or offer gifts of housing and transportation and other necessities, in exchange for exclusive rights to the sponsored ’s bed. It’s considered one of the better options within the “unspoken rule” (潛規則) that I briefly talked about in a previous post, in which (young and beautiful) entertainers are expected to sleep with those with commercial / political power to get opportunities and survive in the industry. It’s “Me too”, except those with power in the country in question have far more power than even the most powerful Hollywood executives do.

And here’s the thing I refrained from saying in the last post, that I’ve considered over the past day whether I should say anything about it at all. But I think i-turtles should know because as real person CPFs, we are often playing closer to the 4th wall than we think. I think i-turtles should know even if what I’ll say may be very upsetting, very difficult for some to hear, and I’d like to apologize ahead for the pain, the unease I may cause.

This is not the first time I read about the rumour that Gg was given the option to be “provided for” between the filming and airing of The Untamed—the assumed background being that his company was unwilling to invest any more in him, and so whether he’d get the resources he’d need would depend on how much of himself he was willing to trade.

And in some versions of these rumours I’ve read—those propagated by Anti’s after 227—Gg didn’t say no. Have any of you heard about WWYXSZD? It’s a play on, a mockery of BJYZSZD, with BJ substituted by the nickname of one of the owners of Gg’s management company, the man Gg supposedly said yes to. Antis are still spreading rumours about WWYXSZD today. I typed in the phrase on Weibo just now, and here’s a screenshot of the latest post I found (from only a few hours ago) under the WWYXSZD tag:

Translation: #WWYXSZD# WWYZ girls never admit failure. Today, did Aunt Zhan’s anus get thrust by WW again to the point of flowing pus? 😍😍

Please don’t ask why this kind of language is allowed on Weibo; it just is—I suppose it doesn’t contest the power of the ruling class in any way.

(Sorry if I sound a little short: this is upsetting.)

I don’t know where Antis got this idea about WWYXSZD. To be fair, Antis probably didn’t need anyone to give them this idea because the “unspoken rule” is very well-known and commonly believed to be rampant in c-ent, but I still wonder, I still think … is it possible that that one sentence in that Gg Assistant fic had given them the idea, or served as proof at some point that even some of Gg’s fans—the turtles—believe Gg was once given the option to be “provided for”?

“And a lot of people know...”, right? Isn’t that what the fic said? Look, on the week of spring equinox, 2021, some c- and i-turtles were rejoicing when they read the story. Doesn’t that confirm the fic is a candy?

And aren’t turtles the ones who both love Gg AND believe candies contain truths?

I suppose this is the question I wish for every turtle, myself included, to ponder a little more. This fic is now in our hands—how should we engage with it? It’s already got a halo—it’s a prized antique in turtledom; it’s legendary. From the language standpoint, it’s fairly well-written, which makes it especially convincing to those who’re not accustomed to fanfics.

As i-turtles, we don’t have supertopic rules; we’re each our own decision maker as to how we’d like to consume our candies. In some ways, our decisions also matter little, and so this is mostly a question of what we feel like is the right thing to do.

What if there’s no truth in the fic at all—then, are we giving Anti’s ammunition? They’re roaming in i-fandom too. We know that.

What if there’s some truth—which part of the fic has the truth, exactly? Is it where we want it to be? Is it worth it to want it to be there, simply for a sugar high in our imagination? Do we have control over which part is perceived as the truth by those outside the fandom?

What if there are real people behind this fic? What if this fic does allude to real events—events that, no matter who they happen to, are bound to be associated with humiliating, horrifying memories?

What answers to these questions do we want?

[thoughts-on-bangtan]

Let’s talk: Film Out - lyric and MV analysis (+ BU theories) - Part 1

by Admin 1

From infinitetab: Hi Admins! Were you able to see the MV for Film Out?

Mostly to Admin 1 (though both can chime in!) who posted the related post and talked about BU theories — how did you feel about the MV? Do you think it ties to the BU picture? Since it was a Japanese song of theirs I didn’t really connect dots just yet, but now I feel like I need to re-watch this with my conspiracy hat on, as well as their other Japanese MVs to see if there is a connection haha — did I miss it or were there some shots from the teaser that weren’t in the final version?

(Admittedly, I don’t know much about the BU and all its theories/plots/interconnectedness — I’ve been interested to look into it but didn’t know where to start haha — do you have any resources/posts you’d direct a newbie to?)

Thank you for all your lovely thoughts via your posts. Have a good day! ☀️😁

We were indeed able to see it, I even watched it a bunch of time to take note of different details and so I’d be able to try and figure out how to even begin writing a proper reply to this since there is a lot to discuss. The funny thing is, I said to myself hey, let’s try to keep this brief, okay? But it’s me so who am I even trying to fool with that one.

I’d like to preface this by saying that, looking at the lyrics and the meaning of Film Out, the MV, which fits it beautifully, doesn’t have to necessarily connect to the BU but there are many parallels and things that fit a little too well to just be a coincidence. So, while it doesn’t have to connect, and therefore I don’t have to be right with literally any of my thoughts, interpretations and theories, there is a chance that both is true at the same time. Unless they’d tell us, we’ll never know, but isn’t this truly the fun of it all? Finding clues and piecing together the BU? After all that’s what we used to do for a long time until BH decided we were too “stupid” to get it, so they helped us with additional content in hopes of it making things clearer. It did, but it also made it all even more complex and hard to grasp.

This analysis will be split up into two posts:

Part 1 – the meaning of the song/lyrics – in short it could be summarized by a sense of longing/yearning for something that once was, or even never really was at all, like a phantom pain or Schrödinger’s memories. It’s the beauty of how ephemeral everything in life is and how memories are sometimes all we have left or can hold on to, even if they aren’t necessarily real at all.

Part 2 – Film Out MV and the BU – a brief explanation of what the BU is, an introduction into the plot and where to start if you want to get into the BU, and how the MV fits in with it and what the different scenes could mean and be interpreted as, as well as a few additional overarching theories for the entire MV instead of particular scenes.

Part 1 – the meaning of the song and a (very) brief analysis of the lyrics:

According to articles and some of our Japanese translators who are able to grasp the deeper nuance of Japanese that does not perfectly translate into English, the song is about this feeling of longing for someone/something that was once there but is no longer, or even the longing for something that was never even there in the first place.

You, in my imagination

Are so vivid

As if you are right there

But I reach out my hand

And you suddenly disappear

(here our translators, specifically kookceptional, noted how disappear, or rather vanished, in this instance describes a sadness from the inability to control the disappearance of someone who was never actually there.)

It’s this idea that you’ve honed in so deeply on your memories that they’ve become vivid, almost real, making it only so much harder to accept that they are just memories, or even just figments of your imagination. The lyrics also talk about projecting those memories across a room, like a movie or pictures, captured memories, two glasses that have been left untouched, these sounds and smells that bring you back to those memories over and over again and make you only cling to them so much more desperately. It causes you bursts of pain, as the lyrics suggest.

There’s also mention of how when you reach out, you/that something disappears, it’s like when you observe something beautiful, like cherry blossom petals falling from a tree and drifting through the wind, but once you decide to take a picture of it, by the time you have your camera/phone in hand, the moment is gone. It can’t be repeated in that exact same way once again, and instead of existing forever in a picture, it’s now only part of your memory. But over time, no matter how hard you’ll try, that memory will fade, too.

Of course, like with many BTS songs, there are many ways of interpreting the lyrics and meanings, of how you associate them with different feelings and even your own experiences, the fact that the same words resonate with us in different ways.

It’s also worth noting that Film Out is part of an OST for the Japanese remake of Signal, therefore the lyrics might have connection to the movie. Fun fact: Signal is the remake of a K-Drama with the same title from 2014 but there’s also a Japanese TV show that, too, is a remake of that K-Drama from 2018 and its opening theme was BTS’ Don’t Leave Me. The premise of the show/movie is that a walkie talkie allows two detectives, one from 2015 (cold case profiler) and the other from 1989 to solve crimes together and even try to prevent them.

Personally I’ve never seen the K-Drama nor the Japanese version so I can’t really speak on the connection between the plot of the show and the song, but if they truly manage to prevent cases from ever happening, that would mean knowing of something that was never even there, like the memories of someone who was never even there in the first place like in Film Out, though even as I type it, it sounds like quite a stretch.

If some of you have seen either, please do comment if there’s a connection to be made here or not.

A thought I had while thinking about Film Out and its meaning/lyrics was that there could be a connection loosely drawn between Let Go (here though I feel it’s important to know how deeply meaningful and weighted of a song Let Go is, seeing as it was written and released in a time where Bangtan considered disbandment and this song would’ve, in a way, acted as a sort of farewell, so again take these thoughts of mine with a grain of salt since even I’m a little iffy on if they’d connect such a deeply meaningful song to another one written for an OST), the thought that you are ready to let go of that person/thing, to say goodbye and move on, but then in Film Out you realize that you can’t, that you’re still holding on to them and trying to piece together this thing you had, this person, but that is now gone, vanished like smoke never to return again.

Example:

If my fate is to disappear like this, then this is my last letter

Penned words, written then erased (therefore words that never were/never came to be)

Feelings for you, so many to let go

Unpuzzle my lego

At a level where it can’t return to its original shape

(…)

Before we say goodbye, let go

But I’m lost in the maze of my heart (FO: From all the memories stored in my heart)

From stereo to mono

That’s how the path splits

The lyrics for Film Out are translated in the actual MV, but I also thought I’ll add the translation done by kookceptional as well as ttokminnie since they add a lot of valuable language context and nuance:

These concepts are also shown in the MV with Seokjin as the narrator watching the scene inside the room (note how all seven are inside it) but they are frozen, like this picture of how times were once so happy and they were all together but as the MV progresses, the members vanish as Seokjin watches on, the room quite literally explodes as though his memories are obliterated (by the realization that they were never real in the first place? That their time ran out?) and thus can’t be pieced together again, or maybe it was all just an illusion all along. It feels like Seokjin is watching those memories being projected, a film from inside of him being played outward, so seemingly close and real yet he can’t reach it, can’t be part of it again, can only feel the pain these memories have left behind.

[wearentafraidanymore]

Wings

The links to different posts for each of the songs in the album Wings.

My notes on this album:

Full-length album, released October 2016, with title track ‘Blood Sweat & Tears’.

This thing is ridiculous levels of legendary, cultural reset, and complex storyline. It was the first BTS album in which each member had a solo song, which they were involved in writing, and each of these solo songs had some kind of performance video/MV.

Each of the videos were connected, to each other, to BST, and to the storyline. It had layers and layers of inspiration and mystery. It was Gothic, it was powerful, it had one of the hardest kpop dances of all time, it was perfectly written and executed, and released at just the right time. It put out a ridiculous amount of content, and all of it was perfect. And, of course, it had some extremely impressive and iconic performances.

It is truly a beautiful thing.

As you may be able to tell, this is my absolute favourite BTS album of all time. There is literally nothing it does not have. It was ground-breaking, iconic, legendary, complex, a complete cultural reset for kpop, music, and BTS. It is so legendary that we still don’t know entirely what was going on with it. What does it all mean? My guess is as good as yours.

Actually, the only thing it didn’t have was a really good physical album, but they were passable. And that in no way reduces the sheer legendary nature of the album. I honestly can’t see BTS doing anything that will ever be better than Wings, no matter how good they are/get.

Tracks:

Intro: Boy Meets Evil

Lyric analysis

Stage/choreography analysis + significance

Blood Sweat & Tears

Lyric analysis

Choreography analysis

MV analysis

Styling + physical album

Symbols, inspiration and importance

Begin (Jungkook)

Lyric analysis

Choreography analysis

MV/Short film analysis + symbols

Lie (Jimin)

Lyric analysis

Choreography analysis

MV/Short film analysis + symbols

Stigma (V)

Lyric analysis

Stage performance + symbols

MV/Short film analysis

First Love (SUGA)

Lyric analysis

Stage performance + symbols

MV/Short film analysis

Reflection (RM)

Lyric analysis

Stage performance + symbols

MV/Short film analysis

MAMA (J-Hope)

Lyric analysis

Choreography analysis

MV/Short film analysis + symbols

Awake (Jin)

Lyric analysis

Stage performance + symbols

MV/Short film analysis

Lost

Lyric analysis

BTS Cypher Pt 4

Lyric analysis

Am I Wrong

Lyric analysis

21st Century Girl

Lyric analysis

Choreography analysis

2! 3!

Lyric analysis, importance, symbols

Interlude: Wings

Lyric analysis

Live stage/choreo/symbols + importance

[aion-rsa]

BTS TV and Web Series: Where to Begin Watching

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If you’re anything like the rest of the planet, then you’ve fallen hard for BTS. And, like any ARMY who hasn’t been with the band since the early days, you have a lot of content to catch up on. It’s an awesome task—and a potentially overwhelming one. While much of BTS’ content is, of course, music videos and performances, the Korean band has also produced a plethora of additional content in the form of web series and TV shows.

While BTS has appeared on dozens if not hundreds of TV shows both in Korea and abroad since their debut eight years ago, we’re solely focusing on the BTS-centric series rather than the ongoing shows in which BTS has appeared as featured guests. Whether you’re a new ARMY looking to learn more about the K-pop band or simply can’t get “Butter” and/or “Permission to Dance” out of your head and are curious about the seven members behind the summer hits, check out one of the following series to learn more about Jin, Suga, J-Hope, RM, Jimin, V, and Jungkook.

Rookie King (2013)

How many episodes: 8 Where to watch: Viki

BTS debuted in 2013, and Rookie King was their first proper series. The variety show format is super popular in Korea, and many of BTS’ series use it. Rookie King is a variety show that features the members attempting different Korean TV program formats. In the show, BTS takes on different roles, including news anchors, bowlers, and basketball players. Early variety show BTS is truly a place where anything can happen. Rookie King would also give us our first proper example of BTS taking on cooking challenges, which continues to be a running (and hilarious) theme in BTS’ variety show presence today.

American Hustle Life (2014)

How many episodes: 8

This BTS reality show that sees the members traveling to L.A. for two weeks to learn from hip-hop tutors like Coolio and Warren G, can be tough to watch, as the series is nowhere near prepared to engage with K-pop’s history and present of Black American cultural appropriation. But discomfort is not always a bad thing, and American Hustle Life can be a good jumping off point for non-Black BTS fans in particular to engage with the difficult topic of cultural appropriation in K-pop ourselves. I recommend watching this in conjunction with analysis from Black BTS/K-pop critics, such as Stitch of Stitch’s Media Mix, who has written extensively not only about BTS, but about cultural appropriation in the age of K-pop.

GO! BTS (2014)

How many episodes: 1

It’s a bit of a stretch to call this one a series, as there is only one episode, but if you’re looking for more content from BTS’ early years, then Go! BTS is a good option. The 45-minute episode follows BTS on their trip to L.A. for KCON 2014. In addition to including some performance footage, the special gives us some of that variety program energy by sending the members on three missions around Laguna Beach.

BTS Gayo (2015-2017)

How many episodes: 15 Where to watch: VLive

BTS Gayo is another BTS variety show, in which the members play games that are specifically related to K-pop. For example, in the first episode, they have to guess iconic K-pop girl group songs based solely on dance clues from other members. BTS hasn’t released an episode of Gayo in a while, probably because the wider umbrella of Run BTS (see the next entry on the list) covers the sorts of K-pop-centric challenges BTS Gayo centers. Basically, Run BTS swallowed BTS Gayo.

Run BTS! (2015-today)

How many episodes: 143 (and counting) Where to watch: VLive

The ultimate BTS variety show, Run BTS has been, um, running since 2015. The show features the members competing in a variety of games, from zombie escape the room challenges to foot volleyball to your classic game of mafia. If they win, they get a reward. If they lose, they get a punishment. Variety show games like this are only as effective as the degree to which the competitors take them seriously, and let me tell you: BTS is all in. These global pop stars may be millionaires, but they will throw down for a coupon like their lives depend on it. Early episodes of Run BTS include the members visiting many an amusement park, while later episodes have gotten both more contained and creative in the challenges. Rest assured, there is something here for everyone—just beware the spies and plot twists.

Bon Voyage (2016-today)

How many episodes: 32 episodes, across 4 seasons Where to watch: VLive (Seasons 1-3), Weverse* (Season 4)

Bon Voyage is a travel reality show that follows BTS on various trips around the world, including northern Europe in Season 1, Hawaii in Season 2, Malta in Season 3, and New Zealand in Season 4. It’s interesting to see the members out and about in the world, having fun together and on a relative break. (This is still work, but they are not actively promoting or touring.) Over the course of Bon Voyage‘s four seasons, you will see many a camper van adventure; many a games of rock, paper, scissors; and realize just how central Yoon-gi is to keeping these members fed when they are left on their own. Especially in a time when travel has been largely impossible, bopping around the world with BTS can be a nice escape.

*For Weverse content, purchase via the “media” section in the Weverse Shop app, then watch via Weverse via the app or online

Burn the Stage (2018)

How many episodes: 8 Where to watch: YouTube Premium

Burn the Stage is an eight-part series that tells the story of BTS’ massive 300-day The Wings Tour, which took up most of 2017 for the members. Including interviews and show footage, Burn the Stage follows a pretty standard concert film format, giving insight into BTS’ first major world tour. The series would later be turned into a movie, also called Burn the Stage, which was released later in 2018.

Bring the Soul (2019)

How many episodes: 6 Where to watch: Weverse

Similar to Burn the Stage, Bring the Soul is another glimpse into what BTS’ tour life is like. This six-part series follows the seven members of BTS during the Love Yourself World Tour, through the end of the tour’s third, European leg, which concluded in October 2019. It was also released in a more condensed movie format in Bring the Soul: The Movie.

BT21 (2019-today)

How many episodes: 17 main story shorts, plus additional mini-stories Where to watch: YouTube

If you’re looking for some animated BTS content, check out the universe of BT21, a collaboration between Line Friends and BTS that you can see chronicled here. The members helped create the concepts for the BT21 characters, who are all adorable. From there, the animators began telling the story of Prince Tata, who hails from Planet BT, as he dreams about spreading love across the galaxy. Tata and guardian robot Van travel to Earth to begin the mission, where they meet Koya, RJ, Shooky, Mang, Chimmy, and Cooky, who band together with the ambition to become the most influential pop culture sensation in the galaxy. You can check out the members’ reaction to the initial storyline of shorts here.

Break the Silence (2020)

How many episodes: 7 Where to watch: Weverse

You didn’t think BTS was going to leave you hanging on the final leg of their Love Yourself World Tour, did you? The Break the Silence docu-series picks up where Bring the Soul leaves off, bringing fans on the final, Asian leg of the Love Yourself World Tour and into the Love Yourself: Speak Yourself extension of the tour, which extended the tour through October 2019. As you may have guessed, there is also a movie format version of Break the Silence.

In the Soop (2020)

How many episodes: 8 Where to watch: Weverse

BTS has given us many gifts during the COVID-19 pandemic, but In the Soop may be the greatest. The series follows the seven members as they take a break from their work schedules to pursue hobbies, hang out, and watch Jin kill fish. Unlike BTS’ variety series, In the Soop has a much looser structure, allowing the members to relax a bit more. Each member made a list of activities they would like to try out while in the titular “soop” (“forest,” in Korean), but there is no reward or punishment for completing or not. Instead, the members can choose to spend their time as they wish, whether that be building Lego or racing remote control boats. In the Soop is honestly the gift that keeps on giving, and ARMY is crossing our fingers for a second season. (If you like In the Soop, don’t forget to check out the eight, shorter behind-the-scenes episodes, also available to watch via Weverse.)

What is your favorite BTS series? Let us know in the comments below.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3C3a96i

[btsandvmin]

Do you think the songs lie and stigma are related ? If we read the lyrics translation wow it seems like that to me like they have so many similarities! it seems like jimin is talking about him being hurt by someone and stigma is about v talking about someone he's hurting but he's hurt too at the same time. They both wrote their own song. Also it could be about their sexuality. Jimin said on the vlive comeback show it's about conflicts dues to lies and temptation and pt1

pt2 v didn't said what he was about but the title and the lyrics are quite something. Also in that period they were very close he could be about jimin cheering up v because of his lost but something else too at the same time. Can you do a analysis about those songs and what you think of if you want and have the time?

I mean I suspect they could be connected in some form, especially since so many of their other songs seem to be. And as you say the lyrics seem to match and almost be responses to each other even. The two songs were one of the first things I noticed in regards to Vmin that went beyond just shipping them and finding them cute. Both of them also seemed quite private when talking about the songs and I definitely think there is a lot hidden underneath the lyrics they haven’t explained. It’s just difficult to know what, even if we can speculate.

Maybe you’ve missed it, but I have actually written about Stigma and Lie two times before. In my very first (and quite outdated) song analysis Vmin - The Sun, the Moon & The whole universe back in 2017 I talked about the songs briefly. Both how they could possibly match and also how they seemed to fit with possibly being about the struggle of being LGBT+. This was way before we learned about the Jungian theories that BTS are using and even their concept of Fake Love and Love Yourself. Both themes also fit well for Stigma and Lie and the songs could be interpreted as how the boys felt showing their personas were like lying.

Then I talked about it again later and more properly in my post Vmin - Scenery, Promise and song connections. In it I go through all Vmin songs up until Scenery and Promise and how they could possibly show several types of connections between Vmin’s songs. Spoiler, but there are a lot!

Even back in 2017 I felt it was possible that Vmin’s songs were about each other in different ways. And since then it just seems to get more and more likely for every song they make. Especially for Tae, and this time for “Friends” I was even able to predict a few of the themes in the song because they love to use them so much.

But while we have a lot now, we did not back then, and I am still not sure Lie and Stigma are related. But here is a little piece about Lie and Stigma specifically from my first post about it:

First, there is “Lie” in which Jimin begs for someone to save him.

Whatever it takes, save me, meSave the me who’s being punished

Then there is Stigma, which has possibly matching lyrics. Where Taehyung speaks of another person being punished in his stead, or because of him.

Deeper, it’s just the heart that hurts every day(You) who was punished in my stead,You who were only delicate and fragile

There is also this line:

Even if (I try to) hide it, or conceal it, it can’t be erased.

Which of course also matches Jimin being caught in a lie, as they both have to pretend and hide what they really feel. Here they both hate the situation they are in, and Taehyung goes as far as to apologize for it. He also mentions being called a sinner. Both of the songs can easily be seen as reflecting the hardships of not being straight. Especially considering that Taehyung’s song is called “Stigma”.

So yes, even then I saw it as a possibility and of course I still do now, even more so now becuse it’s not just two songs anymore.

Because then it just kept on coming, and when Singularity and Serendipity seemed to match I also wrote Taehyung and Jimin - Yin and Yang which focused on their portrayals in the HER and TEAR albums.

And of course with Scenary and Promise I kind of made a more updated full version where I went through all their songs and other relevant connections between Vmin’s song up until then.

After that because the connections have (in my opinion) gotten bigger and more obvious I have added on posts about Winter Bear and Friends specifically as well. So you can probably tell that song analysis is basically one of the things I have written the most about on this blog, and for good reason. There are a lot of interesting things to find about Vmin in regards to their songs.

I am considering making an updated version with the main points for all the songs, but maybe long posts isn’t that good? I’m feeling people don’t like it when there is too much text... So maybe it’s better if I make one analysis per song? But then people kind of miss the scale of it all, because to me it’s the amount of connections between all songs that makes them being on purpose more likely.

I could also go into analysing BTS songs and concepts in general because a lot of them fit together with stuff from Vmin’s songs as well, like the theme of temptation. For example with Jimin basically showing the “Fall of man” as he sings about “smooth like a snake” in Lie and has been shown giving in to temptation and eating the apple of knowledge in both the short film for Lie as well as in Blood Sweat and Tears Japanese version.

Yoongi literally tries to protect and blind Jimin to shield him from temptation, but Jimin is stuck and tied to the door through which Tae went, which indicates Tae could be a form of temptation in the form of the fallen angel or Icarus wings.

We even have a small hint that the temptation could be the love of a man, as seen in Jin kissing the statue that represents Tae. But of course these things aren’t limited to only Vmin.

Anyways, this is getting out of hand.... So I’ll stop here.

There are many speculations I could make and maybe I should do a post specifically about Lie and Stigma, but for now since there are so many topics to cover I’ll probably focus on other things first.

I hope you enjoyed reading and sorry for not making more of an analysis now even though it is an interesting topic. I am saving your second ask to remind myself I didn’t answer all of it... Sorry!

Thanks for the ask! And if any of you are curious about my analysis you can always check out my BTSandVMIN: Masterpost to see if there is something that sounds interesting. 

[taekooktimeline]

November 2019

Filmed in November. Jk and Tae both were very affectionate to each other. Jk was attentive in his gift to Tae.

Jk worked really hard on his snow globe, keeping quiet, which the other members teased him for.

Tae’s expression when he found out the snow globe was for him:

The letter Jk wrote to Tae, the winter bear:

Jk says the letter is short because “the closer you are, the shorter the letters.” he also agrees minimalism is done for those you love.

(see Ship Queen “Jungkook and Taehyung Moments Winter Package 2020”, see also Vkookism “Winter package – Taekook”)

BTS read letters to ARMY. When it’s Jk’s turn to read his letter to ARMY, he tears up.

The members ask Jk about an acronym he created.

Jimin and Tae both create acronyms to cheer Jk up.

All the members comfort Jk. Hobi and Jimin even get up to give Jk a hug, while Joon leans in for it.

Tae waits for the shoot to end and then goes to Jk, proceeding to rub his cheeks and tousle his hair.

(http://kweendeoks.com/wp20, timestamp 40:36)

While in the car heading to a shoot, Tae suggests the members play a word play game.

Jk shouts “V!”

And the members - joining Jk’s habit - begin to sing Tae’s part in “Jump” while Tae smiles shyly.

  (http://kweendeoks.com/wp20, timestamp 49:43)

Once there, Jk was shooting Jm but left and ran, almost slipping, to take photos of Tae. The following includes the maknae line being playful. Do not view negatively.

Jk is filming members for his GCF. In this scene Jimin is the subject:

Tae’s official shoot begins:

Jk realizes and arrives in a rush saying he needs to get Tae’s shots from this picturesque location:

Jimin calls out for Jk since they were in the middle of shooting. The subtitles in brackets are comments from the official dvd and are not meant to be serious.

Jk can be seen taking pictures of Tae  (black pants and light brown jacket):

Jimin continues to be playful:

Throughout the unit shoot Jimin kept getting close to Jk - who was not engaging - and Tae can be seen eyeing them. At one point Jk stops him and turns him around:

Tae approaches Jimin and appears to be putting on an “are you challenging me?” façade: hands in pockets as he sniffs and holds a silent hard stare - in a joking manner, of course. Both Jungkook and Jimin look at Tae who locks eyes with the latter:

Jk audibly chuckles:

Jk’s smile grows as Tae keeps his stance:

Jimin compliments him as a peace offer:

(https://kweendeoks.com/wp20, time stamp 55:40)(In case original gets taken down: https://youtu.be/VHdLvjlMgFE, and Hollywood movie by NK - https://youtu.be/5a5uZQODUt0)

Please understand this is how they joke around and they are comfortable enough to do so. They have a strong bond and big trust. Jimin has always been playful and flirty and he does it to other members as well. 

  A shot of Tae through Jk’s GCF just because - 

The next day Jk smells Tae’s hair during a photo shoot with him and Joon.

Jk tries to put his arm on Tae but it doesn’t work. They laugh.

(http://kweendeoks.com/wp20, timestamp 56:58)

Bonus photos in the winter package photo book -

(see more winter package photos at taekook_rainbow insta - https://www.instagram.com/p/CAdn6qrp0HY/?igshid=4ffwa4y1o7p9) 

sweet moments captured in winter package: (note for the first pic of the series, Joon was cropped out by whoever is the original owner. Since it’s still a sweet photo showing Taekook, it was included). 

(http://kweendeoks.com/wp20, timestamp 59:21)

That night - while writing in their diaries - Tae playfully rolls over Jk.

(Timestamp 2:35)

Tae then sits behind Jk.

Jimin laughs and nudges Jk to turn around. They both then laugh at Tae.

(Timestamp 2:32)

Jk also asks Tae to say the word “suwon-menjinna”.

When Tae repeats it, Jk turns around with a big smile and scrunches his nose.

(All diary moments above from https://youtu.be/rPe1Rwi4tx0, final moment is at Timestamp 1:35)

Please note for the diary entries, we chose to use an analysis video because it zoomed in on the actual interactions between Tae, Jungkook and Jimin, whereas in the raw footage, it’s a small footnote in the corner of the diary entry. Example of how it looks in the raw footage: 

A soft moment in the winter package included Jk running his hand through Tae’s hair and calling Tae “innocent” when Tae enjoyed playing with a doll. Jk says this in his deep voice that people jokingly say is reserved for Tae. Tae gets shy. 

Continuing with Tae’s innocent doll play, here is an example of Tae and Jimin getting along perfectly fine and being playful:

(http://kweendeoks.com/wp20, Timestamp for when Jimin and Jungkook join Tae starts at 1:07:51). 

Notable mention about Tae’s travel notebook - Jimin and Jk both wrote in it (captured on film). It’s speculated Jk was the one to write the lyrics “when I say I love you” with a music note. The song is by Kim Dong Ryul and the title is “like a child”. See below for English lyrics. (photos from Vkookism)

Jk’s doodle is seen in the first pic circled in red.

another shot showing what Jk wrote, circled in red.

Tae’s travel notebook:

Confirmation its Jk’s handwriting:

Another screenshot showing Jk’s writing in Tae’s notebook:

Lyrics:

Also worth nothing - The smiley faces

(Screengrabs taekook_rainbow insta)

Funny moment - close to the beginning of the DVD, when Tae said his team name with Yoongi would be “team holding hands”, Jk’s expression was interesting. We believe that this moment is dramatized since Tae and Yoongi have always been a bit awkward together (that’s the reason they had the idea to hold hands in the first place) and they all have trust but a writer still gets a laugh out of it:

(Hollywood movie by NK - https://youtu.be/5a5uZQODUt0)

[fresh-outta-jams]

Signed, Sealed, Delivered - Part 12

Namjoon x Reader Author: Admin Mo Summary: You’re in college when your soulmate tattoo shows up, an address. You figure it couldn’t hurt to send a letter, right? Note: I’m so excitedddddddd oof here we go, y’all. Warnings: Some swears, soulmate fluff. Word Count: 3.5k

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, Epilogue

Nervous didn’t even begin to cover the emotions coursing through Namjoon’s body. He was terrified, excited, elated to be getting on the plane, and as soon as he sat down, it all sank in. The next time he got out of this plane, he would be in your state, and then soon after, in a car on the way to your school, and then even sooner after that, he’d have you in his arms, smothering you with kisses and affection. God, it was almost enough to make him pass out.

It had been a while since he’d flown somewhere alone, Namjoon reminisced. He missed the chatter and laughter of his brothers, filling the plane. Instead, sitting in First Class alone, he had to turn to his phone and computer for entertainment. He’d told you a few hours ago that he’d broken his phone, another lie, and that he wouldn’t have it for the rest of the day until it got fixed, so the two of you wouldn’t be able to FaceTime. And, if the problem arose, he’d lie to you about his webcam being dysfunctional too. It was a fourteen-hour flight and you couldn’t have any idea he was on the way, if he wanted the surprise to pay off.

Lily and Grace had offered to keep an eye on you, making sure you stayed at the library, which was where he planned to meet up with them, and therefore, you, when the time came. God, thinking about it made his heart race.

After this flight, he’d be with you. After this flight...He’d. Be. With. You. It was going to drive him mad. Figuring his best bet to pass the time was sleeping, Namjoon lowered his seat and pulled his Koya sleeping mask down over his eyes, his headphones playing something soft and romantic. He had no idea how he would ever be able to sleep when something so exciting was waiting on the other end of that dreamy tunnel for him, but he figured he’d have to if he didn’t want the minutes to crawl by.

So, he let his breaths slow, and he let the music carry him off to a happy place filled with coffee shops and a girl with pink hair and a camera.

***

You were decidedly itchy. No, maybe itchy wasn’t quite the right word. You were antsy, more like it. It was seven. You’d just woken up from a very odd dream about an airplane, which you’d written off as anxiety about your upcoming first flight.

Today was Monday, the first day of exam week, which certainly contributed to your itchiness. And once you unlocked your phone to scroll through the night’s notifications, you got some more answers as to exactly why something felt off.

Unknown Number: Hey jagiya! It’s Namjoon! Your clumsy boyfriend dropped his phone, so I won’t be able to text or call you today. I’m sending this from Hobi’s phone. I just wanted to let you know that I love you so much and I’ll talk to you tomorrow! Have a good day studying for your exams. I know you’ll do well! Fighting!

It was sweet, very sweet. How thoughtful of him, to send you a message instead of leaving you to wonder if your amazing wonderful boyfriend was ignoring you. But that was what Namjoon was: thoughtful. And yet, something still felt off about it, yet you couldn’t put your finger on it.

So, you sat up, stretched, hung your sleeping mask on its designated Command hook, and started down your ladder to begin one very uneventful day of studying.

***

You were a strong believer in study breaks. Cramming without stop always made you more frustrated than anything else. So, every couple of hours, you took a thirty-minute break to talk to the other two friends who had come to cram with you. Well, at the moment, it was one. Lily was taking her Psychology exam, so that left you with Grace, who had her nose in her American History book, jotting notes down in her red, white, and blue notebook.

When she looked up, and caught your gaze, she set down her textbook and smiled, stretching. “Break time already?”

“Yeah, it’s like three.”

“Holy shit that went by fast.” She checked the time on her phone only to find that what you’d told her was accurate. And also, she’d received a DM from your soulmate, the one person you could not know she was messaging. She snatched up her phone as quickly as she could.

Your eyes narrowed suspiciously, that sinking feeling you’d been harboring since this morning returning in full force. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing!” She blurted too quickly, clearing out her notifications, and with them, any remains of Namjoon’s message. “No, I just, uh, my professor emailed me a study guide and I really needed it.”

“Oh, that’s good…” You nodded, attempting to take a sip from your now-empty glass of tea. Luckily for you, you’d been saving up your meal dollars, so you had enough money for all the tea you could ever drink...and then some. And, in addition, you had to spend all of them before the school year ended, so you figured you may as well use them.

Standing up from the table, you grabbed your empty cup and tossed it in the trash, walking up the stairs to get another one from the tea place on the second floor. While you were gone, Grace unlocked her phone and opened Twitter. It was Namjoon, of course, messaging in the group chat he’d started with Grace and Lily.

RM_fan_94: Around five or six hours left on my flight. How are things going? Is she okay?

GracieGirl: She’s fine, Namjoon. She has consumed around six cups of tea since we’ve been here, tho. Your girl has a problem…

RM_fan_94: She sounds like me with coffee haha

RM_fan_94: Do either of you have tips for when I get there?

GracieGirl: I’m going to send you navigation from the entrance of the school to the library, but besides that, it should be fine. We’re sitting in this little area on the bottom floor.

GracieGirl: It’s her favorite spot, so there’s no way we’re moving.

GracieGirl: Plus, this place is full bc of exams, so we couldn’t really move if we tried.

GracieGirl: Once you get here, go through the door on the front of the building (facing the giant bird statue) and go down the stairs. It’s basically impossible to miss her. She has hot pink hair.

GracieGirl: Also, she’s wearing a BTS shirt.

RM_fan_94: Awwwwww that’s my girl.

Lilyyyy: Exam is FINISHED!! Operation Babysit (Y/N) Commences!

RM_fan_94: I hope you did well!

Lilyyyy: Omg where did she find you? You’re so perfect?? And sweet?? Did she make you in a lab??

RM_fan_94: Probably haha omg. But no, after many debates over the topic, I’ve concluded that she is the perfect one in this relationship. I’m just her hype man.

GracieGirl: Oooookay, Mr. Superstar, whatever you say.

Lilyyyy: Y’all are cute as fuck. I can’t wait for tonight!!!

Namjoon paused for a while before he typed out his next message, sighing to himself as he laid his head back against the seat again.

RM_fan_94: Me either…

***

You sat at the table, drilling film terms until your head started buzzing.You had watched your project so many times, you couldn’t stare at the editing program for another second, or you were sure you would go insane. So, instead, you were studying for your Film Analysis class, reteaching yourself about motifs and mise-en-scene and all of the other terms from the beginning of the semester that had been buried by all of the new things you’d learned thus far.

You still felt itchy. Maybe moreso now than when you had woken up, but itchy nonetheless. It was an odd feeling, like something was hanging over your head, something real and heavy and dropping fast. And yet, the more you thought about it, the less it made sense. Nothing was happening. You were fine. Everything was fine. It was just stress. Yes, of course, that’s what it was. Stress. Logical.

The only thing hanging over your head was your exams and the upcoming flight to Korea. That’s all it was, and it made perfect sense.

You sighed and checked the time on your phone. It was six, and you were hungry. You’d had a muffin for brunch and nothing since then. Time for a break, then. You got up and both Grace and Lily looked, wide-eyed.

“Where are you going?” Lily blurted when she saw you grab your keys.

“I’m hungry.”

“Oh. Gotcha. I’ll come with.” Lily offered, picking up her keys too. “If we take the tunnels, we don’t even have to go outside.”

“That is a good point.” You agreed, waving to Grace, the appointed guardian of your things for the time-being, seeing as she had grabbed food thirty minutes ago while you and Lily were busy working.

The two of you walked through the library and through the tunnels that connected the learning center to the building next to it, where there was a selection of fast food places. You got in line at the sandwich place and scrolled through Twitter, your thumb moving to send something funny to Namjoon until you remembered, stopping in place, that Namjoon’s phone was broken.

Your heart sank a little, but you saved the link so you could send it to him later.

“You okay?” Lily nudged your arm and you nodded. “Something wrong?”

“Namjoon broke his phone, so I can’t talk to him…” You sighed. “But I’m glad he told me. Is it weird I miss him? Also, I’m itchy.”

“You’re...itchy?” Lily giggled. “You might want to get a cream for that, sweetie, I don’t know what else to tell you.”

“I know, it’s weird.” You agreed, laughing with her. “I don’t know. I guess it’s just nerves from...everything, you know?”

“Yeah, I think I kind of get that.” Lily nodded. It was a good thing you were busy with your phone or you definitely would have noticed the knowing smile blooming across her features. If only you knew what was in store for you in two short hours…

***

When Namjoon got off the plane, he was shaking. Every part of him, trembling in anticipation. He fumbled with his suitcase, struggling to get it out of the luggage check without dropping it. His heart raced. He was here, like twenty minutes from your school, and as soon as his Uber texted him, he’d be on his way.

Namjoon reached into his pocket to check the time. It was around eight, so according to your friends, you’d still be in the library by now, but he figured he’d better send a heads-up just in case. His fingers were shaking almost too much to punch in the message, but somehow, he managed, pressing send after reading over it once or twice.

RM_fan_94: Just landed. Uber should be here soon. I’ll be there twenty minutes after that. Keep her busy.

His face was flushed, heart pounding, banging against his ribcage in hopes to escape and run down the street to find you. God, you were so close. You two had never been this close. There had almost always been an ocean between you, at least, since you’d started communicating. And now, all that was standing in his way was a car ride. Namjoon almost couldn’t stand it.

So, nervous as all hell, Namjoon started pacing in the lobby of the airport until he finally got the notification and went sprinting for the front doors and into the van of his Uber driver.

Every atom in his body was buzzing, buzzing, buzzing and burning as he got closer and closer to the gates of your college. He read the signs on the side of the road. Twenty miles turned to ten, which turned to five. Namjoon felt dizzy, suffocated by his rapidly-approaching destiny. He was sprinting towards it, now, a handful of miles standing between him and the love of his life.

In the passing streetlights, Namjoon could make out the lettering on his wrist. The tattoo that had started this all. He remembered his excitement the moment his fingers brushed against your first letter and the words tingled into existence on his skin. He remembered when all he had to go on was a name and the fact that you were from the States. He remembered the overwhelming joy that washed over him when you sent him the first picture of you, dressed up as Wonder Woman and smiling like you didn’t have a care in the world. He remembered your first phone call, the way his veins pulsed when he finally heard your voice.

All of it was coming to a peak, now. The precipice. This was the beginning of something very new, something uncharted for himself and the rest of the members in BTS.

Without warning, his Uber driver reached the traffic light to turn onto campus. It flicked from red to green, and he drove across the halted lanes of opposite traffic, under the giant arch that marked the beginning of your school. This was it. There was no going back now.

***

Something was wrong with Lily and Grace. They were acting weird. Both of them had gotten a notification from some mysterious group chat, and now neither of them could look you in the eye. It was odd, to say the very least.

“Everything okay?”

“Yep! Just peachy!” Grace lied through her teeth, beaming at you innocently. Something very, very strange was afoot, but you were too burned-out to attempt to get to the bottom of it.

So, seeing as your drink was empty once again, you stood up and began the trek to the tea store up the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Lily asked, almost shooting up out of her seat.

“I need more tea.” You shrugged, looking from Lily to Grace. “I’ll be back in like five minutes tops.”

“Okay.” Lily nodded, walking to the bathroom to cover up the fact that she’d shot up so fast to attempt to stop you.

Shaking your head at the strange behavior, you finished walking up the steps and stood in line at the tea store, ordering yet another iced drink. By this time, the barista didn’t even need to ask. It only took him a few minutes to get your drink to you and then you were on your way back down the stairs to the table. You were sitting down when your phone rang with a call...from Namjoon. Your eyebrows furrowed until you realized it was like ten in the morning in Korea, so his phone must have gotten fixed.

Brightening immediately, you picked up.

“Hey babe! Did you get your phone fixed?”

“I did…” His voice sounded weird. You could hear his tone and his breath shaking with each word. “Good thing, too…”

“Joon, is everything okay?”

“Great, baby, everything is great. Super, super great. I just...God…” And then he hung up, his connection cutting out, assumably. Your eyebrows furrowed, waiting for him to call back, like he usually did when your Skype calls cut out, but he didn’t.

“Something wrong?” Lily asked, almost unable to hide the grin on her face. Grace subtly held her phone, obviously recording. She had been since you got back with your tea. And yet, your head was buzzing too much for you to notice.

“I think his phone cut out.” You said softly, staring at the screen as you contemplated calling him back. You waited for a few more seconds before you noticed someone standing at the bottom of the steps. He was tall, his long frame dressed in an oversized black shirt and ripped jeans, tufts of pink hair sticking down out of his black baseball cap.

Maybe it was the pink hair that caused you to look back down at your work for a split second before your heart lurched and you did a double-take. You studied him, frozen and wide-eyed. You urged your legs to get up so you could get a closer look, but they weren’t listening.

You put your hands on the table, pushing yourself to a standing position as Lily and Grace giggled. Your legs wobbled with each slow step over to him. He was frozen, too, an amused grin on his face as he watched the wheels turn in your head, dimples on full display.

“N-Namjoon?” You whispered, tears fogging up your vision. You covered your mouth with your hands, taking a step forward and then a little step back, still unsure if this was actually happening or if it was some cruel hallucination, cooked up by twelve hours of staring at a book and taking notes.

“It’s just me, baby.” He reassured softly. “I’m right here.”

That was all the reassurance you needed. He set down his duffle bag and opened his arms, waiting for your legs to finally get the message from your brain. Eventually, they did, and you broke into a run, closing the distance between you until you were jumping into his arms, legs wrapped tight around his hips. One of his large hands came to rest under your thigh, and the other fastened around your back, rubbing comforting circles as your floodgates finally opened, a cascade of tears following.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” He tried to hush your sobs, but he realized after a few seconds that he was crying too.

“How did you get here?” You croaked. “What are you doing here?”

“I wanted to come surprise my girl.” He chuckled softly, happy tears rolling down his cheeks. “I knew you’d need a little pick-me-up for exam week.”

“So you just came at the drop of a hat?”

“This has been planned for months, baby. It’s all worked out, I promise.” Namjoon was still holding you, your legs firmly gripping his waist, but he pulled away to look at you up close. You were the most beautiful person he’d ever seen, even with trails of black mascara running down your cheeks. “God, you’re so beautiful.”

“I look like a mess.” You shook your head, chuckling at how much of a disaster you probably looked on today of all days. Of course on the one day that mattered, you looked like you’d just been hit by the bus.

“Baby, you’re the most beautiful person on the planet.” Namjoon pressed a long kiss to your forehead, closing his eyes before murmuring, “You look perfect, always. I love you, jagiya.”

“I love you too.” You took a moment there to look at him, to really look at this man who held the other half of your soul in his heart. You raised your hands to his cheeks and gave his dimples a pinch, earning a laugh from him. “You’re real…”

“Weird, isn’t it?” He raised an eyebrow. He couldn’t count how many times he’d heard that from ARMYs all over the world. Although, it was never as tender or careful as this statement.

“Mmhmm.” You hummed, studying his features up close, squishing his dimpled cheeks together. “Joonie?”

“What?”

Your eyes lingered on the pillows of his plush lips. They were calling to you. “I want to kiss you.”

“Then kiss me.” He replied, leaning in slowly to meet you in the middle. It was electric, sparks flying the moment your lips melted against his larger, warmer ones. You almost forgot you were in public until you heard cheers from all of the other brain-dead students flooding the library currently. Blushing, you reluctantly pulled away from Namjoon, finally unwrapping your legs from his hips and settling yourself back on the floor.

“Was it worth the wait?” You whispered, taking his hand and leading him back over to where your grinning friends had pulled up a fourth chair.

“I would wait a hundred years for you if I had to.”

“You’re cheesy.” You scrunched your nose and looked up at him. You knew all along that he would tower over you, but up close it was entirely different. Namjoon seemed to notice too, as he looked down on you gingerly. He leaned forward and pressed another lingering kiss to your forehead, pulling you against his chest.

“So are you.”

“That’s fair.” You giggled into the fabric of his shirt before finally sitting down with him. He couldn’t keep his eyes off of you no matter how hard he tried. But eventually, he did turn to give his thanks to Lily and Grace.

“Thank you, ladies. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“Don’t mention it.” Grace smiled. Lily nodded in agreement.

You, however, looked between the three of them with wide eyes. “You knew???”

“Explains a lot, doesn’t it?” Lily chuckled, shrugging as she got back to her studying.

“Congratulations, you two.” Gace bidded before slipping her headphones back over her ears.

Namjoon took your hand in his own, scooching his chair closer to yours. He studied your little fingers with a smile before bringing your hand to his lips and kissing it. This, he imagined, was what the rest of your little forever looked like, and he wouldn’t have it any other way...

Tagged: @iie-wakarimasen , @ffantasylandd, @jooniefluff, @chimchimsauce, @mrs-saeyoung-choi, @theprinceoftheundead, @angyexoxo, @copenhagenspirit, @lovelylittlekittn, @lilgaga98, @iminlovewjjk, @feed-my-geek-soul, @loveandwitch, @recoveringflowerchild, @demonic-meatball, @maddieisaacs, @scissorsandtonfas, @carirosesg, @backtonormalthings, @local-mochi, @faliwi, @spoopyela, @nanie5, @ingenu--e, @undiscovered1personality, @andalos, @calspixie, @filtermono, @huhuehuey, @mikey-girl12, @lilliaflurr, @hypophrenium, @sitkafay, @spiicyari, @andeerwilson, @btswerewolfaus, @oyasumi7, @mycurrentusernameisalreadytaken, @gangstavixsta

[thedramafilesblog-blog]

We’re not a blog that is dedicated to reviewing music (including Kpop), but because we absolutely adore BTS and their music, we decided to do a memo-style review of the Music Video (MV) for their Japanese Version “Blood, Sweat & Tears” (血、汗、涙 -Japanese Ver.-).

***Note: If this is your first time browsing the Drama Files, please read The Rules on how our Memo-style reviews work.***

***Note: We really wanted to analyze the Blood, Sweat, Tears Korean MV before, but we missed out on the opportunity. We thought this MV was very interesting as well, so we were really eager to share our theories about what they could possibly signify. There are definitely many theories, so we thought we’d propose ours. Our views are simply theories and purely speculative.***

Memo

Dear Reader,

There have been some questions regarding the recent release of BTS’s 血、汗、涙 -Japanese Ver.- (“BST”), particularly:

(1) Who/What does each member represent?

(2) How is the ending clip that is reminiscient of the “I Need U” MV connected to BST?

Conclusion

(1.1) J-Hope acts as a guide. J-Hope is Archangel Michael and Frau Eva from Demian.

(1.2) V is Max Demian (“Demian”) from Demian and the Devil/Lucifer/the Fallen Angel (“the Devil”).

(1.3) Suga is Pistorius and the Old Wise Man (archetype).

(2) This will be answered in a subsequent Memo.

Background

Please read the first post to understand how this MV fits in with the other MVs and the different types of reality in this MV.

Please read the second post for a background on Demian and other important concepts.

Here is some background information about Pistorius. In Demian, Pistorius is an organist whom Sinclair meets after his rebellious phase in boarding school. Sinclair also meets Pistorius after discovering a note in one of his books and the note talks about Abraxas. During one of his walks, he hears some unorthodox organ music and then meets Pistorius. Pistorius is the son of a well-respected clergyman and is a theologian as well. Pistorius sees mythology and religion as being connected, which made him inappropriate to act as a clergyman. Pistorius ends up becoming Sinclair’s mentor and teaches him in his room, before a fireplace. Although Pistorius shares interests in Abraxas and teaches Sinclair many concepts, Pistorius still chooses to accept/stay with the traditional view of Christianity.

Analysis

(1.1) J-Hope acts as a guide. J-Hope is Archangel Michael and Frau Eva from Demian.

Please read the first post to see this analysis.

(1.2) V is Max Demian (“Demian”) from Demian and the Devil/Lucifer/the Fallen Angel (“the Devil”) .

Please read this post for more information on V.

(1.3) Suga is Pistorius and the Wise Old Man (archetype).

Jubiemon J: We will first look at Suga’s character based on an analysis of Pistorius in Demian and then we will see how he fits in with one of the Jungian archetypes.

(i) Suga is Pistorius due to his connection with the piano/organ, his pairings with Jungkook and Jimin, and his short clip “First Love”.

First, in both “BST” MVs, Suga is always associated with a piano or organ. (Side note: I know in the MVs, pianos are used instead, probably because of an ease of transportation. However, in the Korean “BST” MV, we hear Suga playing the organ during one of the MV breaks. That’s why I say “piano or organ”.) Likewise, Pistorius is . . . an organist!

Suga the pianist in the Korean “BST” MV!

Suga in “BST” with the piano behind him!

Secondly, Suga has a mentor/mentee relationship with two of the members, Jimin and Jungkook.

This relationship works because of a couple of assumptions:

(a) A character’s identity based on Demian changes depending on the member’s relationship to another and that at some point, everyone starts out as a Sinclair. The only character that is fixed is J-Hope’s (See Figure 1: Chart of Relationships below.)

Figure 1: Chart of Relationships

(b) For the Korean “BST”, ““I Need U”, “Run”, and BTS 화양연화 On Stage Prologue, there are different timelines going on.

There will be a memo giving a summary of all the relationships. For now, we will just focus on the Suga/Jungkook and Suga/Jimin pairings as this post is about Suga. The arrow means “influences”. The red line means “connects”. J-Hope connects to everyone. Suga influences Jimin. Jungkook influences Suga and Suga also influences Jungkook.

Suga/Jungkook pairing

In the MVs for “BST” and “Run” and the short clip/teaser for Jungkook’s “Begin”, we see Jungkook and Suga being grouped as a duo. Jungkook is Sinclair and Suga is Pistorius.

In Jungkook’s “Begin” clip, Jungkook holds a drawing of Suga and there is also a drawing of Suga on the wall. We then see a painting in front of Jungkook. It’s hard to tell who that painting is of; it could be Suga, V, or Jungkook. (This will be explained in detail in Jungkook’s post.) In the chapter, Jacob’s Fight with an Angel, which is where Pistorius is introduced, Sinclair also looks at a painting that is of a half-male/half-female. The painting then continues to change forms and Sinclair also claims he had burned it. That’s similar to the short clip.

Now that we see that Suga is connected to Jungkook. We will examine their relationship. Suga and Jungkook only interact with each other in the external reality. In “Run”, Suga is the one that seems to want to start something and Jungkook is restraining him. I think that’s more or less symbolic that Jungkook is somewhat resisting change. It’s analogous to the scene in Demian where Pistorius challenges some moral beliefs that Sinclair held. Sinclair believes that murdering someone you hate is still wrong. Pistorius says that if we want to murder someone we hate, it’s because that person possesses something that we hate within ourselves.

Suga is able to dominate Jungkook who is left on the ground, injured. By Suga throwing a chair at the mirror that shows blue roses in a vase, he is breaking what seems to be the “unattainable”/”mystery” and lets Jungkook see more of the truth.

Blue roses don’t exist in nature. Blue flowers are generally rare (See here for more explanation.) Blue roses can mean mystery, the unattainable/impossible, new opportunities, and new possibilities (See here).

Notice how it’s the mirror that’s broken and not the actual vase of roses; that’s an important distinction because mirrors tend to represent identity, self-consciousness, as well as the “oppositional themes of reality and illusion, candor and deception, logic and disorder, narcissism and self-loathing, symmetry and imbalance, and flattery and harsh indifference” (See here). On one hand, we see a better self and the world that we live in, yet we also see our subconscious self. In art, mirrors are associated with self-knowledge and vanity due to the Narcissus myth. Moreover, in Christian art, mirrors mean the purity of the Virgin Mary (Look here). Breaking that mirror is also breaking the traditional sense of “purity” and destroying what we know as ourselves (ie illusion).

      Mirror breaking…not the vase + flowers!

Pistorius also says in the beginning of the chapter to Sinclair: “[Y]ou accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that. Gaze into the fire [. . .] don’t ask whether it’s permitted or would you please your teachers or father, or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.” Pistorius is telling Sinclair that Sinclair must break free of what he once believed.

Sinclair eventually says a lot of harsh words to Pistorius like he is antiquated and Sinclair’s friendship with Pistorius comes to an end. Pistorius admits that he still chose to stick with the traditional view of Christianity. Pistorius explains:

I have the desire to become a priest, as you know. I wanted most of all to become the priest of the new religion that we have so many presentiments of. I’ll never be able to–I know that, and I’ve known it for a long time, though I never fully admitted to myself. […] But I must always be surrounded by I feel to be beautiful and holy, organ music and mystery cult, symbol and myth; I need it and I won’t give it up. –That’s my weakness. Because I know at times, Sinclair, I know sometimes that I shouldn’t have such desires, that they represent a luxury and weakness. […] But I can’t (p. 84, Jacob’s Fight with the Angel).

This is like in “BST” where Suga is the one trying to pull Jungkook away from the toilet.

Suga pulling Jungkook away 

Jungkook pushes Suga away.

Jungkook, in the Korean “BST” MV and in “BST”, ends up succumbing to Rapmonster’s temptation, the absinthe drink. This time it is Jungkook who ironically pushes Suga away and surpasses his mentor. Jungkook is Sinclair and Rapmonster is Demian here. Remember that in the external reality, Suga is still Pistorius to Jungkook, who is also Sinclair.

Suga/Jimin pairing

In the Korean “BST” MV, we only see Suga being paired with Jimin. Suga is the one that’s covering Jimin’s eyes or putting a blindfold on him. Suga is Pistorius and Jimin is Sinclair.

Jimin, as Sinclair, starts out having his eyes covered just by Suga’s hands. He is still not exposed to the harsh reality. Later we move from Rapmonster and Jungkook with the green smoke and up to Jimin and Suga, who are kneeling across from each other. Rapmonster, Demian here, and Jungkook, Sinclair here, are on a level lower than the other two. Pistorius never dives deeper and breaks free from traditional views of the world and Jimin, who is acting as Sinclair here, is at a point where he has just met Pistorius.

Also notice how Jimin is holding a red apple, while Suga is grasping a black blindfold.

Apple in Jimin’s hand vs black blindfold in Suga’s hands

Blindfolds are important symbols. In Law, Lady Justice wears a blindfold, meaning that a blindfold symbolizes objectivity and impartiality (See here). They can also represent resistance to clarity and mean the interplay between the conscious and the unconscious. Wearing a blindfold symbolises a lesser state of consciousnesses, while taking it off is like an awakening (Source).

The shade black is related to power, authority, death, mystery, evil, rebellion, and strength (Source). In art, the meaning of black changes throughout the periods: in the early Christian period, black was related to evilness, while in the medieval era, it symbolized royalty (Source).

In this case, I think that the black blindfold works to encompass nearly all of the meanings. Jimin is becoming more aware and objective as he wears the blindfold, meaning that he accepts Suga as his mentor. This is like how Sinclair starts to learn from Pistorius. However, by learning from Suga, Jimin is also in a lesser state of consciousness; like mentioned before, Pistorius is still attached to the traditional views of Christianity. There’s power through learning about oneself. There’s a sense of a rebellion from being different from others. There’s also death of one’s old self and mystery in the process of self-discovery. Others might view this change as being evil; hence, Jimin is holding onto that red apple. We know that red apples symbolize the apple from the Garden of Eden. Apples are temptation. Jimin is struggling with temptation here.

Okay, so the question that’s probably lingering in your mind would be this: How can we have two Sinclairs and two Pistoriuses? Remember that we’ve said that the scenes with Jimin, which are filmed in this blue-ish tint, represents the deeper self which is part of the psychical reality.

Blue tint!

In fact, Jimin represents all the Sinclairs that are searching for one’s shadow, so you can say that Jimin is an extension of Jungkook, Jin, and Rapmonster.

(Side note: There will be detailed posts about these members later, but for clarity’s sake, a shadow is the unconscious part that we don’t identify with and often associate as the “dark side”.)

If the Pistorius – Sinclair relationship is shown by Suga and Jungkook in the external reality, then that relationship in the inner/psychical reality is depicted by Suga and Jimin.

Finally, Suga is Pistorius because of what’s seen in his short clip: “First Love”. Although it seems like he starts out as Sinclair, he ends up being Pistorius due to his return to his burnt piano. Suga’s MV is positioned at #4 out of the 7 clips. Rapmonster first narrates these lines from the chapter, Beatrice, in Demian.

There are numerous ways in which God can make us lonely and lead us back to ourselves. This is the way he dealt with me at the time.

Beatrice is the chapter that comes before Sinclair meets Pistorius; this is important because it shows that at this point, Suga is kind of like Sinclair. In many ways, Pistorius and Sinclair are quite similar: they are both eccentric and alone and share different views from others. That’s why Rapmonster says those sentences from that chapter where Sinclair has his rebellious stage during boarding school. He goes to bars and gets drunk often.

In the short clip, we see Suga breaking into a store to play the piano until he suddenly stops.

He hears this whistling that attracts him away to the streets that are filled with darkness. A car comes towards him, nearly hitting him. Instead, the car crashes right into the store with the piano. The piano ends up burning. Suga is seen going back to the burning store after he thinks to himself: “Would I have changed? If I had chosen a different path?” (See here. To be honest, I can’t read Korean, so I just have to assume that this translation is accurate. Translation, to me, is an art and you have to be careful about the word you choose to use. In some languages, some words just don’t have the exact meaning in the other language.) Then, Suga watches the burnt piano and stays there.

This whole scene proves that Suga ends up being Pistorius because although he is also attracted to Abraxas like how he follows the whistling and ends up being on that dark street, Suga goes back to the burning piano. We know that the piano/organ is connected to Pistorius. We also know that Pistorius admits that he is not “capable of standing so alone and naked” (Demian). He can’t let go of the past. Suga is running back to what he’s familiar with and what he can’t let go. However, he has already been introduced to the other side and so his piano is burning. He realizes that what he is familiar with isn’t exactly everything that’s meant out to be and that the “New had to be truly new and different”. He recognizes too that he is better served to lead people to self-discovery. The questions too that Suga asks reflect his curiosity about change.

A last point is that in the BTS MVs, Jin is often seen driving a truck, Jungkook is also supposedly hit by a truck in one of the MVs, or the truck carries another member elsewhere. The truck is like a symbol for transporting the members off to somewhere else, to the deeper end. In dreams, a truck is a journey towards one’s goal and is seen as a positive sign (See here). In this case, Suga avoids getting hit by the truck and he also doesn’t fall into a pool of water. The bathtub of water is overflowing, but Suga isn’t in it. Suga is still stuck where he was.

(Side note: In Demian, there’s a lot of symbolism with fire. Pistorius teaches Sinclair concepts in front of a fireplace. Sinclair burns his painting and more. Likewise in the BTS MVs, we will see a lot of symbols related to fire like the cigarette lighter and burning piano.) 

(ii) Suga is the Wise Old Man (Archetype).

Jubiemon J: Suga embodies the “knowledge, reflection, insight, wisdom, cleverness and intuition” of the Wise Old Man (Source). When Jimin meets Suga, Jimin learns more about himself. Moreover, Jimin seems to have come to Suga for help in the first place.

Think of the Wise Old Man like Merlin from the legends about King Arthur. In “the phenomenology of the spirit in fairytales”  by Carl G Jung, he clarifies that “[t]he figure of the wise old man is observed to appear where insight is needed that the conscious is unable to supply. He continues to explain that in fairytales, the Wise Old Man shows up when the hero is desperate for help and often ask questions to the Hero. Suga also challenges Jungkook in “Run”; we see them fighting with one another. Suga is there when Jungkook is struggling from throwing up in the washroom as seen in “BST”.

    (Side Note: The Wise Old Man and Pistorius are thoroughly connected, so this is why this section is shorter.)

(Side Note: I’ve been really enjoying how the short clips have tried their best to integrate not only the meaning of each member’s songs with Demian. Suga’s song, “First Love”, is all about his love for his piano. He raps about how he fell for his piano and then gave it up. Later he returned to loving his piano. I wouldn’t say that Pistorius’ situation is exactly the same as Suga with Pistorius’ feelings towards religion; however, their circumstances are similar.)

As always, feel free to suggest which member you’d like to be analyzed next or to leave comments about your thoughts! Personally, I’m leaning towards analyzing Jimin next as he has been connected to Suga.

Memo: BTS Blood Sweat & Tears (Japanese Version) Music Video Analysis Part 3 We're not a blog that is dedicated to reviewing music (including Kpop), but because we…

[babiemochie]

If you wanna share some about your project I'd love to read it 👀 I like hearing people talk about BTS in an academic setting but your not into that it no biggie

owO annonie asked about the project ???

Sorry this took so long!! I am officially finished with Undergrad, and that’s why I’m getting a chance to respond now.

I would love to share! It’s going to go under a Keep Reading so that I don’t ramble on and mess up everyone’s dash if they are not interested, because it’s rather lengthy.

So I conducted a content analysis on BTS’ lyrics and music videos, and some performance videos to try and look at how they have changed their presentation of masculinity over time. Last semester I had to go through a lot of literature trying to piece everything together, ranging from basic Gender Theory to articles about how western viewers perceive K-pop.

Interestingly enough, I found absolutely nothing in my lit review that was just. How different groups present masculinity or femininity. There were articles about how western fans saw Asian men in general, what they thought about men wearing makeup, and there were articles about the economic piece of k-pop. But there was nothing that was like, “these men are openly presenting their emotions” or “these men are openly addressing the complications of presenting multiple identities.”

That’s what I ended up doing with my research. I looked at 52 songs, and analyzed the lyrics of those songs. For the songs that had music videos or short films, or performance videos, I watched and took notes on their presentation in those.

Essentially my findings were pretty self-explanatory to an already invested ARMY: they started off presenting themselves in the western hegemonic ideal and now six years later they are presenting themselves in a transcultural masculinity, but with a softer Korean masculine frame.

(Western hegemonic meaning: quite aggressive, reluctant to show emotions, and unrelentingly heterosexual. Transcultural masculinity with softer Korean masculinity: pulling various elements from various cultures [like the western ideal] and combining it with their own form of masculinity which is softer and more open to showing a broad range of emotions to come up with a more mixed presentation.)

You can easily see this is you look at the differences in their debut concept photos, and the concept photos from Map of the Soul: Persona because the difference is so strikingly different.

But! This is where it got interesting! Even though their images and presentation have changed drastically, their main message has not. Their first song No More Dream was about finding your own path and discovering your own dreams. Paradise from Love Yourself : Tear is about realizing that a dream can be found in anything, even if it is just getting through the day, because happiness is what matters.

That’s what Bangtan is about. Giving their audience reassurance, motivation, and encouragement.

So. That’s the main idea of my research, except. My research paper ended up being 50 pages, even though I cut out entire sections for the sake of time. Basically, I managed to choose one of the few majors that would let me go off using my academic voice about BTS and then that major said “yeah sure. this one seems worthy of a degree.” Although my advisor was absolute garbage, my research was entertaining.

Another thing to thank Bangtan for if I ever got the chance.

[behind-the-screen-of-bangtan]

Details in '작은 것들을 위한 시 (Boy With Luv) feat. Halsey'

← Back to Map of the Soul Persona

Release date: 12 April 2019

Official content:

Teaser 1, Teaser 2

Episode of the shooting

MV Photo Sketch

Other versions: dance practice,  'ARMY With Luv' ver., dance practice (Eye contact ver.), Practice record for the 2023 Festa

Behind the scenes:

Dispatch’s article

Tweet with a picture of the set: x, x

Posts from MU:E the art directors (@nomaaaaaaaad and @bona._.b): #1, #2, #3, #4

Outfits and accessories: thread by @GetOnSwag, j-hope’s sweater, SUGA’s cap (cr. Bangtan Style)

Bangtan Bombs filmed on the set:

Jimin's Short and Sweet Impersonation

How to Stay Warm on the Set

BTS' Caretaker Jin

Cute and Adorable BTS

There's a Dog on the Set with BTS!

I Prayed That I Could Get to My Part

Translations and analysis:

Lyrics

Doolsetbangtan’s translation and notes

DKDKTV’s explanation

Muish’s rambling

Wisha’s translation and notes

Interview with professor Jiyoung Lee: part 1, part 2

The official description of the song is a funk-pop genre track, singing the delight of a small and simple love, about one’s interest and love of another. It not only expresses the enjoyment and fluttery feelings of love, it consists of a melody that is easy to listen to. (src)

The literal translation of the Korean title is “A Poem For The Small Things” (src). The English title is a reminder of “Boy In Luv”, the main track of Skool Luv Affair.

Singin in the Rain

Singin in the Rain is a 1952 musical movie where a crew makes one of the first talking movies. It was explained in official articles (trans) that the MV is a homage to the movie.

Several posters of the movie can be seen here and there in the background.

Note that in the top picture, some of the posters on the wall are for the 1951 movie I’ll See You in my Dreams. It’s visible on j-hope’s picture in the memory album for 2019.

And you can also see a reference to the infamous scene where the main character sings “Singin in the rain” in the street under the rain. j-hope even does the same move with the street lamp.

Another reference is during RM verse. In the movie, they describe a scenario about a young man coming to the city to become famous and eventually succeeding. The scene referenced in the MV is the moment when the man is famous and on top of the world.

RM also has an umbrella - that looks like it’s a fan gift - instead of a cane, keeping with the title of the movie.

@780613 on Twitter made a video listing those references as well as more subtle ones and tropicalilies drew parallels between the movie and the concept of Persona

Self-references

The theater is named after ”Boy With Luv”’s album, namely Map of the Soul Persona.

SUGA’s set is a piano, reminding of his strong connection with music:

he knows how to play the piano

his solo song in WINGS, “First Love” is about a brown piano from his childhood

pianos are also central for his BU character

The Singing in the rain remake is also the occasion to fit old albums names:

O!RUL8,2?

Dark & Wild

(Love Yourself 結) Answer

You Never Walk Alone 4.5 (Love Yourself 承) Her (behind the YNWA sign)

2 Cool 4 Skool

(花樣年華) Young forever

(Map of the Soul) Persona

Sha (for Shadow, which may have been the second part of the Map of the Soul series but ended up replaced by MAP OF THE SOUL 7)

Love Yourself

花樣年華

Skool Luv Affair

WINGS

The MV ends with the same pose as in “Boy In Luv”. Except that Jungkook changes his sign at the last moment to make it mean “I love you” in sign language. V_in_love_ made a compilation of all the moves similar to previous choreographies.

Details

jhatesnake noticed that the background in some scenes could have been inspired by Van Gogh’s style.

The menu of the diner can be seen on the window and there’s a promotional poster made by Ryan Stanikk for The Southampton Solent Union.

Here’s the menu from the diner (please note that the last price is a deduction as only the 3 was visible in Memories of 2019):

In the episode, Jung Kook pointed out that the wooden floor in the diner looked similar to the ARMY logo:

‘ARMY With Luv' ver.

This version is the occasion for Big Hit to show us more footage from the “Boy With Luv” MV. Thanks to it we also have the full handshake of Halsey and RM.

They also replaced the LOVE sign with a purple ARMY one.

[simplyselicia]

BTS Analysis Part 4: Fake Love

Hey! I’m so in love with the new album. Heavy rotation 24/7. As you can tell, this is the fourth installment of my analysis series. I’ve stated in the past to keep in mind I’m not much of a theorist, I’m just really talking about things I noticed and what certain symbolism might mean. I will link the Part 3 about Singularity post here since I’ll probably reference back to it: 

BTS Analysis Part 3: Singularity

This is my first comeback as an ARMY, so when I tell you I was so hype that it hurt I am telling the truth. I am so beyond blown away, I’m not sure if any of this is about to make sense. This gif explains what was going on in my mind while watching Fake Love. 

First, I’ll talk about Fake Love Teaser 1. In the teaser we got call backs to Wings and the Love Yourself Highlight Reels. The boys come in to exchange their fears for a positive so to say. If I had to take an educated guess, based on album notes I’d say Yoongi handed in a piano key. That would leave our intertwined characters. We don’t what Jin was given, if anything. We don’t know what V exchanged. Jungkook never gave over anything, but received a key in return.

When I went back to the highlight reels to research part of the narration really stuck out to me: “Looking back, I had known all along that underneath the glittering world before my eyes lay my deception, that everything was to collapse with a breath of wind. I turned away, I’d side stepped, simply closed my eyes. Afraid I was, afraid to be loved for who I am.”

Fake Love opens with our Smeraldo flower being protected. Very Beauty and the Beast. This is the untold truth that Jin has been asked about. Jin is alone in the room with this untold truth, looking through the window. We see him closing the curtain, and this is followed with doors being shut on Jungkook, leaving him in darkness. Could Jin trying to be shut him out of the truth? Is Jungkook sacrificing himself to be like the child of Omelas? I personally don’t think that Jin knows that Jungkook is looking into his window. 

I’m not sure what else we’ll see, but I think it’s safe to say that Jungkook has entered Jin and V’s tangled web. 

I love the background of this scene. It reflects the choreography, it brings me back to BS&T, AND kind of looks like a variant of “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil”. They consistently cover their eyes, mouth, or ears during the choreography in the music video. It’s a quick and easy way to convey the mental anguish and struggle within the song. There are a couple other choreography cues that I will refer to later. 

I’d like to get the color theory part of my explanation out of the way here. If you look at the scenes, they range from a plain almost sepia look to a psychedelic technicolor adjacent style. I think this is because we are passing the euphoric fated love of DNA and into the breaking point in Fake Love. The vibrant colors evoke a feeling of being in a dreamlike wonderland while the faded pastels/sepia tones give specific points of focus. We are being guided into their inner darkness. There is a lot to say for muted tones reflecting the mental state of the characters in a film. What comes to mind for me are films like: “Girl, Interrupted”, “Taxi Driver”, and “Fight Club”. Please note, all these examples have a plot that revolve around psychological themes.  

Going back to the first teaser, I’ll explain why I don’t think Jin is aware that Jungkook was watching him through one of his windows. When Jungkook got to the magic shop (styled as a confessional if you noticed) it wasn’t by his choice. He is the only member that really seems to be pushed in. He also doesn’t have anything to exchange on him, but he is given a key. Keys are a symbol of of opening and closing things of course. It can be used to lock something away or set something free. Keys also give us a feeling of security. 

However, looking past the keys for a second I wanted to pose the question of if this seems a little like a nod to Pandora’s box to anyone else? Pandora’s box is a Greek myth that essentially has grown to mean getting into a situation that involves big and unexpected troubles. Older more detailed texts explain it as Pandora opening a jar that released sickness, death, and many other evils into the world. Pandora tried to quickly close the jar, but when she did so the only thing she kept in the jar was a flicker of hope. It was meant to be a way to explain why bad things happen in the world.  Jungkook had no idea what troubles he is going to see moving forward. Is the key the last bit of hope to uncovering the truth and setting everyone free? Since he came empty handed will he be the traded object for everyone else to gain peace?

Alright, from here we start diving deeper into the member’s individual fears. We’ve seen Jin trying to change the outcome of member’s story lines in Euphoria by looking through windows. I think this scene reflects Jin’s fear that some of these things might remain out of his control. There is only so much tampering that can be done, and not only is it stressful to not know if what you’ve changed is right, it’s hard to predict if your moves will make everything fall apart. In the center of it all, is the untold truth. Would it have been easier to face this truth if it was going to come to this anyway?

RM’s scene contains rings and a mirror. The mirror comes from his song Reflection and writing “you need to survive” on the glass. The rings clearly resemble the hand grips that you would see passengers holding onto when standing on a bus. He is still caught between his old self, and the attraction to the girl on the bus in the Love Yourself Highlight Reel. It doesn’t matter how much he likes her. If he can’t accept himself, then it won’t last. The cinematography of Fake Love also flips between of nice parallel lines and then “dutch angles”. A dutch angle is a technique of tilting the camera so none of the angles in the scene are parallel with the bottom of the screen and is used to show psychological unrest/heavy tension in a scene. 

J-Hope is locked in a room full of childish carnival themed props. If you go back in his story line you will find that his mother abandoned him as a child, only leaving him with a Snickers bar. As the music video goes on, we see Snickers bars falling coming through around where the key hole would be and eventually filling up most of the room. That is a very traumatic experience and of course it would result in some type of fear of abandonment. I’ve seen most people saying that the fake love for J-Hope is from his mother, and I think that’s very interesting. Side note that doesn’t really have much to do with anything in particular, but we’ve really entered a time where carnival gear like this is really haunting. Part of that for me is because I always relate carnivals to “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe. Although maybe I actually have something there. As with Poe’s short story, there’s no way to know if Jungkook isn’t leading himself to his own doom. Our setting certainly is one of a type of madness after all. Okay, off this tangent, I’m just a Poe fan.

Jungkook has moved on from J-Hope’s scene to Jimin. We can see that he’s in the studio from the Love Yourself Highlight Reel. If you look even closer, the wall he’s in front of is his paradise picture of the trees. I also thought it was interesting that Jimin is interacting with a sink here. I looked up the symbolism for this one, and in dreams it is said that sinks show how our feelings are retained and turned on and off. A bathroom sink in particular signifies a personal desire to be more intimate and revealing of yourself. I spoke about the symbolism of water in Part 3 for Singularity. If we pair those ideas with the sink symbolism, essentially his emotions have been pent up for too long and will come rushing forward in an overwhelming way. I also recognize that this nods back to the time where Jimin was by himself in the bathtub or in the fish tank in the case of the Japanese version of songs. I also talked about in my Part 2 for Euphoria how he’s been left on his own in the hospital. Jimin has no feeling of freedom there, and the person he was closest to (J-Hope) has also left now. 

Jungkook rises from this scene, and once again he and Jin’s movements mirror each other like they did in Euphoria. We also get a glimpse of the object Jin was protecting that held the Smeraldo flower. The flower has turned to sand. Sand is often a symbol meaning the passage of time, but it can also mean eventual destruction or elude to moments that are easily wiped away. Have we already seen the untold truth? Does it mean that everything is already falling apart? Maybe it’s a reference to Jin’s ability to alter things and that this too is just a moment that will be wiped away and changed?

I’d also like to note that the closer Jungkook gets to his destination, the harder it is for him. This is a case of dutch angles being used to build tension in a scene. I also want to take a moment to note the pattern on the floor. This pattern is definitely from the DNA MV just based on the color choices and style. We see it in the hallway Jungkook runs down, and on the floor in Jimin and J-Hope’s sections of Fake Love.    

From there we are brought into V’s scene. He is in this sort of tunnel hallway that is full of phones and empty pictures frames on the walls, but the back wall says “save me”. I saw somewhere that black picture frames symbolize an obsession of being perfect or a fear of not being perfect. I just think that’s an interesting tidbit of info, not sure it really sways the story line in any direction nor gives us much we didn’t already expect. 

V is holding a phone, which calls back (pun intended, please insert a windshield wiper laugh here) to the moment that he was trying to get a hold of RM who couldn’t answer the phone. The hallway is then lit up by the phones twinkling all around him. I’m guessing this is just exaggerating his fear of the call not going through by showing all the phones malfunctioning. 

It might be a reach, but I want to point out that these types of archways remind me of trains, as does the railing to the sides. In Spring Day, V was shown first at the train station.

I want to bring up Jimin a little here as well. Since the boys are exchanging their fears for something positive in the magic shop, I didn’t quite understand why Jimin got the umbrella. I know it shows up in the Highlight Reels, but that didn’t feel to me like a hopeful moment. No matter what Jimin does, he is always getting wet, and the umbrella has never protected him from water/his emotions. I honestly expected him to get a phone because that’s what he used to record J-Hope and the other girl’s practices to recreate the dances. It’s even mentioned in his album notes. Does it mean that no matter the outcome, Jimin is always at a disadvantage? Let me know what you think. 

There is a moment where we cut back to RM, and Jungkook is on the other side of the mirror mimicking his movements. This isn’t the first time Jungkook acted as a mirror, in the choreography he also follows J-Hope’s movements during his segment.  This will eventually bring us to Suga. In his scene, he has a piano and a guitar in the room. The piano dates back through Wings, and the guitar has to do with the girl that gave him the lollipop. There is a lot about piano between Jungkook and Suga’s notes, and of course their story lines are intertwined throughout the music videos. There comes a point where Suga sets fire to his hotel room, but in Euphoria Jin sent Jungkook to save him. 

Fire is often linked to power and passion. Fire has the ability to cause both destruction and transformation. Much like water, it’s symbolism is pretty straight forward. 

Now we’re at the part I wanted to bring up the choreography again. I talked about this for the Singularity analysis, and I see it here as well. The movements they are making are very much like puppetry. The arm movements when they step out side to side with their hands down is certainly like they are being controlled by string. I think it’s interesting that Jin is in the center here and they move according to his hand movements on either side of him as well. 

Jungkook is almost at his destination now, this room is very peaceful despite the events that have been going on. I’ll bring up here that the only members that have had contact/reference with sand in this MV are Jin, V, and Jungkook. I’d like to expand the idea that sand is also a symbol that might mean the foundation you stand on is unstable. The basis of the way you think etc might not be set in reality, and something that you have buried in your subconscious is moving forward. The smeraldo has already turned to sand, but when Jungkook lets it spill from his hand there are remnants of the petals in the shadows on the wall. 

I call this part opening The Chamber of Secrets (I mean he probably knows parseltongue, he is the golden maknae). This is the point where everything begins to come foward: water, fire, snickers (lol). 

He enters the room with the hooded figure, who is standing in front of 6 coat racks (a nod to Singularity I’m sure). From there, we’re left unknowing what decisions will be made.

I think it’s clear enough to see that a tie of some kind has been broken. We’ve certainly gone from the members lacing all of their hands together in DNA to perform a wave to falling apart. I can’t wait to see what comes next. 

BTS Analysis Part 1: Spring Day

BTS Analysis Part 2: Euphoria

BTS Analysis Part 3: Singularity

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The Little Things Reminds Us Why We’re Drawn to Charismatic Serial Killers

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This The Little Things analysis contains spoilers. Read our spoiler-free review here.

The Little Things can be seen as a tainted police procedural with its murky ambiguity and troubling ending. But it’s also the story of a man for whom the allure of a charismatic serial killer goes too far. After all, serial killers make up less than one percent of homicides but they average a double-digit percentage of Hollywood crime films, and probably a majority of prison fan mail. What is it about these one-percenters we love so much?

Directed by John Lee Hancock, the supposed sociopath in The Little Things is Albert Sparma, a drifter who works as a repairman. Jared Leto is certainly magnetic in the part, serving Sparma up with a now-stereotypical “charismatic serial killer” vibe. But the Oscar-winning actor also brings an ambiguous energy to the part, suggesting he may merely be a serial killer groupie.

Albert Sparma is a self-identifying true crime afficionado and has taken his fanboy fancy so far as to actually confess to a murder he didn’t commit. That could be seen as some dangerous roleplay or surveying a battle ground for future maneuvers.

Sparma is perfectly thrilled when he’s pulled into the interrogation room to face off against Det. Jimmy Baxter (Rami Malek). He luxuriates in the tension, and loves the décor. He stands in vast contrast to Stan Peters (Frederick Koehler), quite possibly the actual murderer, who’d earlier responded to the room with an almost claustrophobic paranoid mania.

But Peters is not the charismatic type. Leto’s Albert, meanwhile, has a bad boy quality which is just irresistible. At least it is to Denzel Washington’s measured portrayal of Kern County Deputy Sheriff Joe “Deke” Deacon, who sees the makings of a young Ted Bundy in the suspect. Recall that in Joe Berlinger’s bloodless feature film, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile, Zac Efron plays Bundy with an abundance of charm. The film came out amid a glut of documentaries about one of the most well-known serial killers from the late 20th century, and Twitter exploded with posts about how attractive Bundy was. 

Albert Sparma could have been his biggest fan.

Leto doesn’t bring the clean-cut, all-American hunk to his serial killer. He’s the rebel. His hair hangs so long, he has to move it out the way when he cooks. Sparma goes to strip clubs before cruising the strip. He wins a drag race with Deke while still in park. He plays so many mind games with Baxter his head explodes.

Dennis Lynn Rader, aka the BTK Killer, taunted the police by sending letters describing the details of his crimes. That’s an old trick though, going all the way back to Jack the Ripper, who also wrote to Scotland Yard about his alleyway antics. Son of Sam, the Lipstick Killer, the Golden State Killer, even the Axeman of New Orleans dropped personal notes on current events to the authorities. The Zodiac Killer wrote his in code.

They also sent letters to the newspapers. Sparma collects clippings and is up on all the true crime literature. Some people are attracted to serial killers out of a necessity to understand their acts. It is outside their reality, and it is even a coping mechanism. News reports explain how, but they don’t explain why such unimaginable crimes can be committed. They want to know how someone can go so dark. If Sparma is truly just a “confessor,” as even Det. Baxter finally accepts, that confession shows one aspect of the depths of his kind of obsession.

Some serial killer followers might be drawn out of the curiosity of how it feels to take a human life.

The body count in The Little Things is only four when Deke first double parks at the station. It grows as the case draws attention. Real-life serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer became celebrity monsters because of the attention they got from law enforcement and the media, and a collective curiosity for the macabre makes them larger than life. John Wayne Gacy committed his atrocities in a Pogo the Clown suit. And Sparma’s repairman overalls are a little baggy.

While Bundy was on trial, representing himself, he proposed to a woman, who not only accepted but married the convicted murderer, and conceived a daughter with him. Even in prison, Bundy received marriage proposals and love letters, as did Dahmer, Richard Ramirez, Chris Watts, and Charles Manson. Some may be drawn to the serial killer hoping to spark some transformation in an irredeemable beast; others might be prone to Hybristophilia, otherwise known as “Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome;” and some are just drawn toward the bright light of fame in any shade.

In Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, Woody Harrelson’s Mickey Knox is a mass murderer, not a serial killer, by strict definition. Nonetheless, when he and his wife Mallory (Juliette Lewis) are walked up the stone steps to the courthouse, they are surrounded by adoring fans waving signs like “Kill Me Mickey.” Stone was making pointed social commentary in a fictional film, but his scenario was all too real.

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The Little Things is not based on a true story. It goes back to a screenplay Hancock wrote in 1993, which was too dark for Steven Spielberg. For inspiration, Hancock had to look no further than California serial killers in the 1980s like the Grim Sleeper and Randy Kraft.

Written before the glut of serial killer movies took hold in the 1990s, The Little Things is similar to Alfred Hitchcock��s Psycho (1960) and the then-recent Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs (1991) in that they are psychological thrillers, as opposed to the proto-slasher Leatherface in Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974). Yet all three of those films, from Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter, were inspired by Ed Gein, who confessed to killing two people as well as digging up corpses from local cemeteries in the 1950s. Gein became internationally famous after being profiled in the book Psycho by Robert Bloch.

It’s no wonder an anonymous drifter might find comfortable skin to wear while traversing a sad, sick world. Sparma certainly walked the walk, and was up on his psychopathic patter.

“They are so friendly and so kind and very solicitous at the beginning of our work together,” forensic psychiatrist Helen Morrison wrote in her 2004 book My Life Among the Serial Killers. “They’re charming, almost unbelievably so, charismatic like a Cary Grant or a George Clooney.”

Sparma does everything short of asking Baxter for an autograph during their first meeting. Serial killer fans have been known to spend hundreds of dollars for a lock of a murderer’s hair. John Schwenk, a true crime afficionado from Pennsburg, Pennsylvania, has gotten follicles, false teeth, and even dental floss from serial killers on death row. He is a collector of murderabilia, and his portfolio includes a sketch of a skull by Richard “The Night Stalker” Ramirez and a portrait by John Wayne “The Killer Clown” Gacy.

A Texas senator named John Cornyn began pushing a bill to ban the sale of crime-related materials in 2007. It must have sounded like a good idea to the federal government. They pulled in $232,246 auctioning off the Unabomber’s belongings in 2011. Rodney Alcala, who was sentenced to death in California for five murders, put himself up for a romantic racket bid on a September 1978 installment of The Dating Game.

The Little Things reaches a satisfyingly ambiguous conclusion. The best evidence in the case is a boxful of newspaper clippings. Are they forensically clean trophies of past dark victories, or are they a scrapbook from one of the biggest true crime fanatics on the planet?

Charismatic serial killers are a movie stereotype now. Leto helps twist this trope by letting his character buy so completely into it we don’t know if he’s become one or is merely a victim.

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