#atzmeta

Okay, so, the lyrics in question that stuck to me are ‘We could make money, dancing with somebody’ and ‘I said “No,” it said “Dinero”’.

To me the core of the song’s meaning is, at least in a way, about how under all the glitter of the kpop freaky friday party there’s more and that the more is the tiredness coming from the grind and the hustle, to the point that stopping or resting doesn’t even feel like an option anymore (‘Turn down for what. The time is now.’ and ‘Sin descanso’ which translates to ‘without rest’ and ‘쉬는 법 잊어버렸지’ which translates to something like ‘I forgot how to rest’).

Mulling over the lyrics I realised that Mingi isn’t really rapping about wanting dinero (so money, fame and so on), but about how, in a way, he’s being owned by it, by the machine he’s part of, to the point that it’s like the system has its own personality, its own volitions and its own voice (the ‘I said “No,” it said “Dinero”’ in question). Inside this metaphor, then, the dance floor at the start of YOUHA’s lyrics isn’t fun escapism anymore, it becomes one of the many other stages where the grind and the cycle continue (and this brings us to the ‘We could make money, dancing with somebody’ as in 'gotta work' and of course it's a work made also of networking).

The whole song, then, feels a lot more like a really personal confession than like a boasting celebration of what fame and wealth one has reached and that’s why the other layer of meaning I was talking about suddenly popped up in my brain.

Now, in her video Jang Hyogyeong says stuff like ‘Are K-pop sugar daddies actually real? Honestly, yeah.’ and ‘I think this kind of stuff easily comes to non-famous idols or trainees because they know that we aren't making any money. They all know.’.

So what if there’s also another meaning to those two lines? We all know how often dancing with somebody on the dancefloor of a club can imply something else (sex), sometimes to the point of mimicking it, so stating ‘We could make money, dancing with somebody’ in my speculation could also translate to ‘we could make money having sex with somebody’ and that’s why it had me recall the video I was talking about.

Have Mingi and/or YOUHA experienced something like that? Has someone proposed that kind of exchange to them or to someone they know? Of course we will never know, as I said in the disclaimer this is pure speculation, but it really fits within the themes of the song and the exchange ‘I said “No,” it said “Dinero”’, if you’re going to change the it with a he/she/they, I’m pretty sure it’s something a lot of us experienced more or less directly in our lives in front of unwanted sexual advances. You don’t have to take the ‘dinero’ literally for it to work, sure you can and it could be, but it could also be a metaphor for a lot more kinds of propositions.

And, on a side note, I love how the last bar in his rap leaves us with an open question, because sure, he built his paradise inside the machine, he did it by himself, with his sweat and his constant grind and networking, but is he actually living in it or is he too busy hustling for that? It’s a really bittersweet end if you ask me and it makes Dinero so damn interesting.

Let's start with my experience. I think Mingi is utterly right. Most of the music I listen to with continuity over the years and most of the music I enjoy the most is from artists I don't really care about as people, meaning that I'm there for their art, not for their ‘personas’ nor their selves.

This is what makes my relationship with kpop a strange one because ofc idoldom is rooted in parasocial attachment and this inevitably has repercussions on how one perceives music coming from idols. To be quite frank, when kpop is involved in my listening I don't think I would have ended up liking a whole lot of songs I actually like if it wasn't for who was singing them. Is it a bad thing? No, it's not, but it's a thing, meaning that if you want to outlast your idol career you need to think about it. 

And that's what brings me to Ateez and Mingi in particular. Saying that they need that kind of ‘casual listener’ music to last as a group feels not really disingenuous, because Mingi is really too transparent for his own good, but at least extremely curated, because they're in a variety show that will be watched by fans, so ofc he cannot exactly disclose what he really thinks or say that no one really thinks that Ateez will go on forever as they are now for real. However. 

Small pause. Disclaimer time. Here we are entering the realm of rpf, because I don't personally know Mingi, I don't know what he really thinks or feels, so what's next it's purely personal speculation and it doesn't pretend to state some kind of truth about anything. I don't have data or intel, I'm just going with the vibes. Keep that in mind. 

Now back to it. 

However, if we look past the format of Ateez+ and past the obvious needs it brings with it, I'm pretty convinced that Mingi wasn't really talking about Ateez, or at least not only, but also about himself as a solo artist. 

I say this prompted by the fact that at the start of the same episode he brings up the importance of creating an individual brand identity. He talks about how each member needs to know what they want out of their professional life and he frames it with the intention of making the group last for a long time. 

He knows they're getting older. He knows their bodies will never sustain the stress of performing and the fast paced rhythm of their work the way they do now, not indefinitely. He explicitly states it, once again, in the same episode (if I recall it correctly) and that at the time he had me just agree with him, but now a really small thing happened that had me wondering. 

The small thing is that he liked Dpr Ian's Instagram post announcing the release of the mv for The Show (along with Seonghwa, ofc, and Hongjoong). It could be nothing. It could be him just supporting one of Hwa's favourite artists, but he did something that not even Hwa did (up to this date), he commented on it. It's just a silly gif but…

…but it made me wonder. Because sure, it might be one of his usual gimmicks, but Mingi usually uses socmeds in a really clever way and he’s usually very intentional in how he operates on them, so. So it made me wonder if Seonghwa's fascination with Dpr Ian might have had Mingi dig into it and into the whole DPR thing. It made me wonder if the way he sees Ateez to outlast an industry where being young and cute and marketable to preteens is almost everything is by changing the concept of Ateez itself. Not a kpop bgroup anymore but a collective of people with multiple skills, sometimes overlapping in joint projects, most of the time working as solo artists, each of them with their particular individual brand. A collective of multimedia artists that could spread over creating and combining not only music, but also writing, visual arts (painting, acting, dancing, performing and so on), fashion, even DJing live music events. I can see him discussing it with Hongjoong. It doesn’t seem so far fetched with them already creating their own logo. I can see him fighting for it during contract renewal (not for the whole collective idea, but for the one about giving a huge prominence to the single individualities of the members).

By now, as a fandom we associate Mingi to two signature sounds / phrases (well, three if you count the barking, but let’s not go there for now), it’s ingrained in our brains, we could say it’s trained, but there’s a difference: while “Fix on” was there from the beginning, “The time is now” exists only since ROAR, but starting from there it has become another constant. The exact same ‘The time is now’ present in ROAR has, in fact, been sampled by Mingi and used for the beginning of NOVA and then we have Dinero, with its new growled one version, meaning that since ROAR each and every song Mingi wrote and produced has it.

Mingi himself had us pay attention to the fact [ 260511 Fromm messages ]:

🐥: (in Eng) THE TIME IS NOW !!  🐥: ??  🐥: (in Eng) yessssssssssssssssss  🐥: (in Eng) fixon  🐥: A new signature sound ㅎ  🐥: Means it’s cool  🐥: From now on  🐥: when I say ‘The time is now!!’  🐥: you have to say ‘Fix on!’  🐥: Can you do that?

So this made me think. If at the beginning “Fix on” was meant to signify “Focus on me” (I’m thinking i.e. of Lemon drop, where it’s made explicit in his verse), I feel like with the use of “The time is now” as an introduction to it something changed.

To me now “Fix on” sounds a lot more like “Stay focused on the goal” / “Stay on track”, meaning that it has become more and more a message to himself than a message to whoever is listening or watching.

I mean, if you think about Dinero’s lyrics it’s somehow explicit: 

Turn down for what / The time is now / Fix on.

What am I trying to say with this? I’m still unsure, I’m mostly going with the vibes, but we all know how much Mingi grew up as a person and it’s interesting seeing how his view about his own music has changed as well.

Think about the last interview he released for Singles Magazine, there he said:

The genre I want to explore is EDM. I realized this at Coachella, but at DJ festivals, people don't look at the stage; they look at the person next to them. So, it's just me and that person having fun. Since I'm always the player, I perform while saying, "Look at me, look at my stage." But I found the concept of "You do the stage! I'm going to have fun with the kids" really cool. So, I became interested in creating music where people look at me when they want to, and where I can play along with the audience. (source)

Seems to fit really well with the new possible meaning of “Fix on”, doesn’t it?

So yeah, what I’m trying to say is that possibly, maybe, who knows, Mingi has realised he doesn’t really need anymore to ask for people to focus on him, they do it naturally thanks to the persona he developed (and that he himself calls Fixon, just if you needed another layer of connections and meaning), to the point that entire crowds bark at him even before he asks them to. He doesn’t need to beg for the spotlight anymore, he has our attention. What he needs now is not to lose himself, hence the new “Fix on” meaning. 

I’m going to try and not talk too much about how great Halazia’s mv narrative is, how it’s like watching a whole movie in less than 5 mins, because it’s already been said tons of times. It is true tho, and the fact that it's a cinematic masterpiece really counts for something, and not only as a starting point for my rant.

I'm also not going to talk about how they opened a whole lot of new lore discourses with it, because others already said it way better than I ever could. Again, still relevant tho.

I’m going instead to start rambling a little bit about the religious imaginary, cause, yeah, I know, it’s already been said tons of times, but it’s so well done and it ties so well into the mv storytelling (and i’m not even touching atz’s lore here, I’m talking about the storytelling accessible to whoever simply watches the video, even without knowing shit about ATEEZ).

While you watch the mv it seems like they're creating a whole new cult? A whole new theology? Whatever, idek how to express it, but consider these:

- the bell and organ sounds and the ritual drums;

- the opening setting with the religious-like effigy procession;

- the hooded figures that reminds me of medieval monks;

- the prayer-like chanting of the chorus; 

- the whole neon pink installation behind Hongjoong while he’s rapping resembling a votive candle stand;

- Seonghwa’s iconic shamanic possession (or whatever that is) that has his eyes rolling back inside his head;

- Yunho crossing himself (you can only see half of it in the video, but if you've watched the choreo’s practice you know);

- both Seonghwa and Hongjoong (and the scarecrow obviously) standing at some point with their arms spread like they're on a cross;

- the last dance break, that seems more like religious rapture than anything else, since it’s like they’ve been seized up by a higher power and convulsing because of it…

I mean, I could go on, but I suppose you already understand what I mean.

And I purposefully said that it seems like they’re creating a whole new cult or whatever, because in the end the message is about the exact opposite, is about abandoning the higher powers to take control back and focus on the self, so the mv is such an exercise in dichotomy, it lures you in with a false premise, the religious like procession, the bell ringing like calling you to Mass, but then it brings you towards its opposite, towards the burning of the effigy first and the taking down of the sphere in the end.

It’s just masterful. It’s peak narrative through metaphors use. It’s extremely poetic. (And tbh to me, born in a hyper-chatolic country and hating how religion and religious morality inform not only my country’s culture and society, but also its politics, is so damn satisfying.)

Leaving this aside, let's also talk about scenery, imaginary and cinematography, so the more visual components of the video.

First thing first, you can screenshot a whole bunch of frames and you’ll have some beautiful painting-like shots that perfectly set the scene and the themes of the narrative.

^

I know, my bias is showing, but listen to me: in most of the shooting for the mv there are actually lots of brilliant colors, yet all those colors are purposefully washed out in post production to represent a bleak world devoid of them, so devoid of emotions. It sets the mood from the beginning, hence this particular screenshot. 

^

Moreover if you still didn't catch up with the narrative plan, the mv gives you the perfect dystopian vibes with the city landscape and the storms raging between the rundown skyscrapers. It obviously speaks of dystopia, but it also hints at turmoil (the storms), giving you a key point toward meaning and interpretation. Plus, see the green of the rail? Should be green, but as I said...

^

Then you got chains and with them the whole symbolic system of meanings associated with them: oppression, captivity, despair and - in this context - no passion, no emotion (see the no colors above). But, since the setting is atop of a building caught in the storm, also turmoil, so a desire to escape, a yearning for freedom. (Damn, I love how much symbolism is present in this mv, it's delightful.)

^

(maybe not the best screenshot possible for this, but anyway)

Add to this the gorgeous low-angle shots from inside the mall we get through the whole mv to give it scale, showing how all of the themes the narrative is building on are so much bigger than the single individuals. Yeah, sure, the struggle starts from them, but it’s a struggle that actually invests the whole humanity. 

^

Then there's the fact that often you can see them near light sources, but almost always facing the darkness (see the direction in which their shadows touch the ground?), so confronting it face to face. Again, if you were in doubt about where the story is going, just the visual symbolism is guiding you towards the understanding, you don't even need the subtitles for the lyrics tbh. They're going to fight the darkness, they're going to free themselves, but since they're going to free themselves from the illusory freedom coming from entrusting oneself to a higher power (of whatever kind) while forgetting about the self in doing so, of course they're not only facing the darkness, but also almost always giving their back to the light… it's so damn poetic and it manages to hold a killer double meaning with such visual simplicity. 

^

So yeah, fire. Fire is charged with so much symbolism that I’m not going to go deep with this, it’ll take too much time. That said, here’s the summary of what’s in my mind rn: fire it's not just about sacrifice, not just about rebellion, not just about change, for it also represents persistence (since it's still burning at their back) and rebirth from destruction. This is such a complex shot in its simplicity and could be read in so many ways… and still is also just beautiful to look at. 

^

Then you have the people finally taking things in their hands and bringing down the sphere. Again, a masterpiece of symbolism. I have not the words to express how much I love this mv and why but I’m gonna try anyway. I already said it in my Day 7 entry: imho the whole The World series narrative arc message is about how our biggest enemy is not really the system and/or the higher powers (the sphere), but our own self every time it pushes us to repress or alienate our selves one way or another, so we don’t really need someone to save us (i.e. the Black Pirates, represented here by the scarecrow effigy), because, in the end, we have to be the ones saving ourselves (so the burning of the scarecrow first and the taking down of the sphere then). And it’s done by the people. Sure, the focus is on San because in the end it’s still a kpop mv, but he’s not doing it alone. I already said before that it’s a struggle that actually invests the whole humanity, but here they are taking it up a notch: not only is about everyone, but we can overcome it only by working together, it’s about the power of the collective (damn if it doesn’t sound like something akin to marxism and/or anarchism, gods I love them).

^

The power of this image, istg. San standing there at the end, simply watching up to the sky, the water getting still. Where did the sphere go? Did San sacrifice himself for the cause, hence the toll of the death bell as the end of the song? Is the bell’s toll for the death of "god" instead and has San become the light, so "god" itself? I personally prefer this second interpretation, especially because of what I just wrote here and also (I already said it somewhere else) because I see a lot of Nietzsche's philosophy alluded to in their works. In this particular case I'm thinking about Nietzsche's Übermensch, which is strongly tied to the themes of god’s death and of returning to the self and living freely not only one's life, but also one's emotions. Anyway, this ending scene leaves you with a sense of openness, of possibility and, tbh, also of persistent dread, cause the sphere hovering above them is no more, but you still don’t know for sure where it went. 

(And I'm going to talk a bit more about this pervasive sense of impending doom next, because to me it’s one of the foundational themes of the whole mv and maybe even of their lore, but who knows…)

^

So, another thing I love is the massive use of oblique camera angles (idk what the technical term is so please make do with this), to convey to the viewers a sense of unbalance and precarity and I mean, understandable if some of the themes are turmoil, rebellion and change. (I screenshotted only a bunch of them but they’re really everywhere.)

To me, tho, they also set an undercurrent sense of danger, like they're maybe doing something they're not supposed to, like they're maybe toying with something they'd best not to (and this opens a whole rabbit hole about the interpretation of their lore, about foreshadowing - if I think about IYF diaries - and about the meaning and consequences of the creation of Sopro, like trading a "god" and external power of coercion for another one, but I'm not going to delve into that, cause it's really too much to tackle rn). Anyway, this kind of cinematography instills a really unsettling set of feelings in who’s watching and it’s beautifully done. 

^

Then, speaking of oblique angles, wanna talk about Yunho and the hourglass? I love this transition so much I HAD to clip it specifically for this prompt. The matching cut on the rolling tilt of Wooyoung’s hand and Yunho’s scene inside the broken hourglass is top tier and the use of motion to convey meaning is awesome, because it enhances the message of the narrative, combining the persistent sense of unbalance present in the whole video with the concept of change (the turning of the hourglass), setting also a pivotal point in the storytelling, both visually and metaphorically. Again, masterful. I’d really like to talk with the director and the screenwriter of this mv, cause they really did a phenomenal job and I’d love to know their insight about it.

^

To conclude, cause this rant really has become huge as fuck, just another little notation. I really love (gods I’m abusing this word today…) how they chose to use an abandoned mall as that which becomes a sacred space, cause - if you put atz’s lore aside for a sec (and not even that much aside tbh) - it lets you have also another level of interpretation of the mv. I mean, you know what most people worship in these times, be it corporations and/or malls and shopping? Yeah… let’s take them down.

If we’re talking about the stuff I believe in and how it’s portrayed in atz’s art, I already talked about a bit of it in some of the previous prompts, especially in Day 7 (fav quote) and Day 21 (fav mv), so go check them out if you're curious, cause I’m not going to write about it in depth again.  

What I still have to fully tackle, instead, is the weight Seonghwa (as well as atz’s lore more in general) has for me on an emotional and personal level and in relation to my existential struggles. Then I could maybe add in the end a small final digression about some of their more “motivational” songs and how much I treasure their message and find it inspiring. 

So yeah, let's talk about Seonghwa and the lore first.

In Day 1, speaking about why he's my ult, I said that his lore persona feels to me like a big ass metaphor for Nietzsche's conflict between Apollonian and Dionysian and about how that could be also valid if used in analysing his idol persona too, so let's dive in a bit.

In Nietzsche, Apollonian basically represent the attempt (futile in N.’s opinion) humans enact trying to control what really life is (i.e irrational, chaotic, full of suffering and without any metaphysical or otherworldly meaning) by giving it rigid forms and both trying to hyper-rationalise it and giving themselves up to the care of an (artificial in N.’s opinion) higher power. 

On the other side, Dionysian is the approach of who's able to accept life for what it is, with its overwhelming irrationality (and so overwhelming emotions), with its pains and sufferings and absence of sense. It's basically the way of the ones being able to say ‘yes’ to life without putting conditions to it or refusing to accept part of it. 

Lore!Hwa imho is the perfect embodiment of this existential struggle, of the exertion of extreme control over oneself not to drown in what life is at its core, while still yearning for the freedom of the self at the same time. 

If you think about the pivotal encounter with the dancing girl, it becomes obvious why for him the message to be free and her spontaneous dance hit so hard, it's a cry for liberation, a plea about letting go of his self imposed inhibitions, a cry that resonates from his own internal self.

Everything around me froze for a moment. The only thing I could hear was the sound of music coming from her earphones. She was moving as if nothing mattered anymore.

Common sense, rules, and this tough world didn’t have power over her moves. Right this moment, my world broke along this snowy road. Something changed in me, but I stayed still and couldn’t say anything.

She dropped a bracelet that had ‘Be Free’ engraved on it. Ever since that day, I went to the same place at the same time.

But, she never came back. I didn’t know her name or address. Just like the ‘Be Free’ bracelet she wore, she freed herself away. Since then, music never sounded the same again. I can no longer distinguish the structure, code, or genre of the song. Only the lingering feeling of that day remains.

[Zero : Fever pt.1 diaries]

And yeah, music and dance have always symbolized freedom, rapture and giving free reign to emotions, just think about the bacchanalia (dedicated in Rome to the god Bacchus, who in ancient Greece is none other than - oh look - Dyonisius).   

Moreover, if you think about it, all of this ‘struggle between two extremes’ metaphor that is at the core of lore!Hwa could also be true for idol!Hwa, since I've rarely seen someone so controlled and in control but at the same time so unhinged and chaotic. 

Where am I going with this? I'm going back to my Day 7 entry. One of the core messages in atz’s music and lore is imho that to heal ourselves we have to accept our inner self first, especially our emotions, and that taking control means in truth to let go of it and let ourselves be free to feel (this barely scratches the surface, if you want a bit more of depth go check out that entry). Can’t you see the potential parallel with Nietzsche? As I already said, I’m obsessed with it.

And yeah, to me Seonghwa really embodies all of this, and all this discourse about control and emotions is really dear to me because it's years by now that I'm struggling with them and working on finding a balance between those two extremes so… so yeah, I can say atz really are inspiring me in keeping it up. 

I could also open another huge parenthesis and talk about how and why Seonghwa (in particular, but also atz in general) is really inspiring to me in terms of gender and queerness and more in general of self acceptance, but both @thirstkanaphan and @nonon0pe have already covered those topics beautifully, so go read both of their posts instead (here and here) and give them some love. 

So… on to the second topic before this gets really too long. Still related to today’s prompt but not really Hwa-centric, I think ATEEZ have really inspiring “motivational” songs in relation to the ‘keep it up / don’t give up’ theme. And yeah, this is true also for their more lore heavy ones, but sometimes it's good not to have to interpret layers upon layers of metaphors and lore and just listen to the lyrics. 

I'm going to try and not be verbose here, let's just atz speak for themselves. Have a couple bites of my favorite inspiring “motivational” lyrics (in no particular order). 

“ Wait, stop this

Let it happen and flow like tears

Pain's nothing

We gon' get over like no fear ”

~ Still Here

“ (Grow up) It won't be easy but I can't stop, oh yeah

(Row up) Out of breathe, row up, row up, row up, go faster

No matter what I’m going my way

To the place I've dreamed of every night

Don’t worry we just going our way

Don't forget we can do everything

Don't be afraid

Dreams are everywhere

Just keep going as I always have, this is my way ”

~ My Way

“ No matter what some people say

No matter what some people hate

No matter what the things that make you sick

Just keep it up ”

~ Sunrise 

“ Sometimes, you gotta move forward

Just take it step by step

And then you'll notice

You've found your place

Hold on to your ground

Doesn't matter how

They don't even care

So then, why should you?

Don't stop believing how you got here

Hold on to that feelin'

Gonna make it far enough ”

~ Enough 

“ If you think you're trapped

You're in that box you built yourself

I'll help you break it

And I'm gon' catch you when you fall or when you're sinking

And when it gets too much don't over think it

Don't look back, let it go

Just keep calm and carry on ”

I don’t really vibe with the companies habit of assigning mascots to kpop idols, because it’s usually one of the many ways they use to infantilize them and that is something I cannot really stand, at all. I don’t particularly believe this is the case for atz (at least not for the most part), but, because of that, in the years I developed the habit to not interest myself in that kind of stuff and so I did the same with Aniteez and basically ignored them. So yeah, they're cute, but I don’t really have a favorite one because I don’t really know nor care about them. I can say that their recent grey versions from Aniteez in the calling pop-up is more up to my tastes than the others, but that’s it, about Aniteez I don’t really have anything else to say.

I have, though, a lot of thoughts about the new official merch from Ateez’s 8 rooms pop-up. I confess that when I saw the images I was flabbergasted, because I had no idea there was some kind of pre-Aniteez symbolic association for the members. Ofc the fact that I’m a really recent Atiny is to blame for it, but once I discovered it I did my homeworks and after some research I can say I’m utterly fascinated.

To my understanding some seems to be, with variable degrees, a creation by atz themselves, i.e. Yeosang’s Hehetmon and, maybe (?), Hongjoong’s tiger theme, while others seems to be something more similar to fandom assigned symbols/memes, i.e. Mingi’s squid/octopus imaginary or Wooyoung’s fox one (if I’m wrong please educate me, I yearn to know more about this topic and instead I found almost zero info about it).

If I have to be honest, in terms of concept and aesthetic I think I like them better than Aniteez, but what I find really fascinating is what’s behind the scenes (and yeah, I know we will never know it, but still).

I mean, when in 2024 they decided to create Aniteez why something lingered and something else not? What’s behind the choice of maintaining some of the symbolic associations and instead trying to rewrite some other ones after more than 5 years? Was it because of some possible negative or harmful impact on their idol image in relation to some of the symbolism that I don’t know about yet? Was it because KQ and the members wanted to take control of the narrative about their idol persona, about what’s being connected to it and possibly start a shift in it? Was something else entirely?

And even more, why go back now after just over a year from Aniteez birth? Yeah, I know, marketing, because nostalgia sells really well and they’re still first and foremost a business, but why spend energy and resources to change the image of some of the members only to go back in such a small timeframe, even if only for the short time of the pop-up? A big chunk of the fandom (me included) is really new, so it basically had no problem with consistency in this regard and yet now they decide to create it themselves. It’s so damn fascinating.

Does someone know anything about all of this? Does someone have some kind of theory? I’d very much like to know if you’re willing to share.