#bts chapter 2

Things that got answered:

1. The complete meltdown Namjoon was having up to and following Festa 2022. I talked a little bit about that back in this June 19, 2022 post.

In the past, Namjoon once said being the only one who spoke fluent English meant he was thrust into the frontman position when they began doing interviews and promotions with western media and it made him unsure of himself. He said it was nerve wracking to be required to think on his feet while fielding questions for the group, to speak for the members without actually consulting them before speaking for them and then have to answer these questions coherently and off the cuff in ENGLISH.

As this episode opens Namjoon says he "loves BTS because of the music... but if he had to continue like this he might want to die."

That's a heavy statement. But it is edited with the context left out.

I know this because further into the episode the context around that is included: they all felt the burdens of ALL eyes on them, and at some point they all had to become conscientious of who they were and act accordingly. He loves BTS because of what they do, the music that they bring out to the world. But if he had to care about what everyone else thought, all the people who put pressure on him to be responsible for everything and had to deal with that constantly, he felt he wouldn't be able to withstand that, that he felt he'd want to die.

2. The complete shit-show their military enlistment caused for them. I talked about that in this June 22, 2022 post and here in this Oct. 17, 2022 post.

All of the "MS exemption" stuff was such a waste of time and it really did hurt everyone's feelings, mine, yours, and theirs, backwards and forwards. A truly damned if you do, damned if you don't scenario. I believe Jin was relieved to finally get to the base and begin his service in order to get it behind him. And I'm sure the others knew how he felt about it. And in 15 days Jin will be back! We are about to begin a new Bangtan era: post military.

I watched this MiniMoni Music episode twice, pausing and rewinding both times. Not just to make sure I understood what they were saying to each other but to surround those words, to put context to the words, with the heft of the emotional support and reciprocal gratitude that accompanied the conversation.

And Jimin brings a different perspective than say Yoongi would if it was Yoongi and RM having this conversation like during a Suchwita episode.

I also had to pause a few times to savor that sudden burst of love upon seeing beautiful Jimin.

Jimin listened as Namjoon explained how he second-guessed himself when he delayed enlisting. He was supposed to go with Hobi but then chose to continue working on RPWP.

He totally related to Namjoon declaring himself contradictory in nature.

Namjoon said he had to "turn off BTS" in order to focus on himself. He had to be physically apart from them in order to stop thinking about them as a team and see himself as an individual. And then Jimin revealed that he and the members detected Namjoon's distance and wondered if he was drifting away from them. But they also realized it was part of this era, part of this process they were all going through.

Throughout this episode, Jimin listened to the songs for the first time and offered his thoughts.

Namjoon says he had to get this album out because he believes things have an "expiration date", meaning he needed to get this out of him in order to move on artistically. He had tied his identity to BTS all this time, that he had no idea who RM was, or who Kim Namjoon was.

They then go on talking about when they come back, the return of the pressure of being the leader of BTS and they wonder how their concerts will look then. They throw out the idea of more subunit work. Namjoon says when they are done with their service, he will focus on the team and each of their originality must go into it ... and he feels good about his position as a member of BTS and as RM.

He reiterates whether you are a fan, a casual listener or a hater, everyone is a Right Person or a Wrong Person at times.

Jimin tells him that he, the members and the fans are influenced by the things Namjoon says and that when he's feeling down that they and we will be ok with it.

This is my personal opinion: I disagree with people who keep saying "After they are discharged, I hope they spend a little while enjoying some down time."

Their military service is "downtime" to them. Being their civilian self is down time. Military time was an interruption to them. It disturbed their career's momentum.

The longer they delay getting back to work in their real job the longer it will be for them to be where they ALL said they want to be: on stage.

However, that being said. The break needed to happen. And military service forced the break.

As Joon says: "... and I look up in the sky and see silver cloud, yo hurry!" I think it could be taken as the cloudy, forboding future is unavoidable but can see it will bring necessary and refreshing new challenges and change for the good. It is a healthy way to embrace the unknown.

The timing of filming this episode... was it possible Jimin did not know their enlistment date yet? RM said within 4 weeks he was enlisting. That would put this filming the week of November 13, 2023.

Jimin left Nov. 15 for Budapest, returned on Nov. 18 and then Jimin and Jungkook left together on Nov. 23 to go to Japan. They returned on Nov. 28. JK left again the next day for Los Angeles and returned Dec. 2. That's a lot of traveling for men just days away from enlisting in the military.

They knew this episode would be out six months after RM enlisted on Dec. 11. But possibly they didn't know Jimin and Jungkook's enlistment date yet or they would have said "by the time you are seeing this, we will all be enlisted." Maybe they found out their enlistment date almost immediately following the filming of this episode and the Japan trip and JK's LA trip were crammed into the last few weeks they had. I don't know, I'm just thinking out loud.

My personal take: The more the members say and explain the feelings/intent of what they say, the easier it keeps getting to ignore the solos, mantis, haters, boycotters of BTS and toxic fans. Etcetera. Because they are so foolish. Both Jimin and Namjoon called you all "jerks".

RM's album and whatever we heard he and Jimin speak about, ALL that reinforces that THEY the individual members, have the freedom to do what they want. They are Koreans, they will speak in ways that, inherently due to their culture, will be framed in a way that will be "polite". RM said "fuck you jerk" in his music, not to the camera while addressing the fans and public.

One thing this genre-bending album of Namjoon's also does is help the other members continue to step over all of the pre-conceived ideas/restrictions/lines that idols are not supposed to cross over that people throw at them.

All of their solo efforts will help each of them to be more progressive: Yoongi's smoking in his MV, JK's irreverent singing about fucking every minute of the day, Jimin having female dancers actually touch his body (and male dancers as well), Tae and Jennie.... all of that helps pull us along with them, helps normalize things for us so every baby step is a legit step towards more freedom, more maturity, wider spaces to explore artistically.

And they are fully aware of all these "rules" they are going to step over and move on from.

Revelations:

Namjoon has at least 25 pairs of shoes in his entryway. And the small path through them...

Those high-dollar apartments actually have shoe closets in the entryway.... Namjoon... please.

Things that didn't get answered:

Namjoon secretly a saxophone prodigy? I'm still waiting to learn exactly when did he learn to play the sax?

My disjointed thoughts on seeing this:

They have muscles in places most people don't even have places

Uh, is this going to become a competitive activity? If so, can someone sign Yoongi up pls?

Now I'm remembering when Joon took off his jacket in the Butter behind the scenes, and Jiminie needed smelling salts. He isn't going to know where to put his eyes.

(Watch again Here at 4.55)

Tae honestly looks so good with bulk. I hope he doesn't need to drop back too much to accommodate the choreo... for our sake

Jungkookie really looks like the younger brother

I understand it could be nerve-racking and unsettling to not have answers you want or to not have them presented in the way you want.

But this is not about you. And I’m quickly losing patience for the people in my inbox who simply cannot resist the impulse to center their own desires and expectations over whatever is actually going on with their biases and/or within HYBE which nobody here actually knows.

What I do know,

- is seeing akgaes complain about BigHit neglecting Jimin for years because out of all the vocal line members, he never had a solo OST project. Like, before BTS’s PET era, this was one of the topics his akgaes would be getting hit tweets on practically every month. This was their raison d’être. How could the company that shunned solo work allow that solo opportunity for other members but not Jimin? Nobody got any answers or even acknowledgement of this great disservice from the company, for years. Not until early 2022 when Jimin casually mentioned that he was never interested in that sort of opportunity in the first place until a friend personally asked him as a favour.

- is seeing akgaes claim the company never acknowledged Jimin’s historic BB Hot100 win, when anybody can google to see that’s clearly not the case. I’m convinced the only reason this continues to be a talking point is due to akgaes and their sympathizers centering themselves in an equation that has nothing to do with them. Jimin has said his team acknowledged it, we can see this from their main sm profiles and the members’ personal sm pages, just as was done for Jungkook, we know HYBE’s management highlighted it as the main accomplishment in the quarter to their investors, and his achievement was positively highlighted in many articles on the k-side. But just as with the cake situation, the people complaining about this want the company to respond in a way that reflects their own personal expectations regardless of the reality of what actually happened, what the members have already said and what they actually wanted at the time.

- is seeing akgaes assert blindly for months that HYBE partnered with Billboard to delete Jimin’s week 2 and all D2C sales. Assert that HYBE masterminded the buttfuck that was the deletion of sales by Hanteo, by Billboard, by *insert random industry player*, only for it to be revealed that Billboard treated every HYBE artist mentioned in their expose article dishonourably, including NewJeans who akgaes have decided for whatever reason is why their chosen idol is not getting the recognition they want for him. It’s been clear that issues with shipping and stocking are not even limited only to BTS members much less just Jimin, and so HYBE must be sabotaging TXT, Enhypen, and the other artists in the company they’re supposedly pushing to replace BTS and Jimin. HYBE must’ve also been behind BTS’s sales irregularities on Hanteo as well as other groups’ including Twice and EXO’s sales deletions in the past.

- is seeing akgaes assert for almost a year that the decision to use Weverse albums and not provide an option for physical versions was forced on J-hope by the company. His akgaes demanded answers for months and received no answers and no acknowledgment. Only for Hobi to reveal almost a year later that he chose that option out of his own desire to try something very different, despite advice to the contrary from others within the company including other BTS members.

Notice, all of this have been things to be legitimately upset about, but akgaes taking control of the conversation has only served the purpose of redirecting any focus away from the members, to render them powerless, shifting focus away from third-party industry players who work independently of HYBE and have their own motivations, and towards the company where they aim to remove their chosen member from to exert more control. 10 times out of 10 this has been the case, even when it’s not just irrational to arrive at that conclusion, but flat out counterproductive. I don’t even like HYBE, but it’s annoying to constantly point out obvious holes in logic or in situations that anybody with any knowledge of how BTS has operated for years can easily see.

We’re not actually privy to the full conversations the members are having with the company about their career strategy and goals.

What we do know is that like any other team, resources are allocated and the results nearly every time have been greatly influenced by their own input. We can judge for ourselves that despite the members working within the constraints at BigHit, such as:

- Yoongi being told he couldn’t release D-2 in 2019 due to unknown constraints but released it in 2020 to no issue,

- Yoongi being told he couldn’t give Jimin a song he wrote due to PDogg’s refusal but this not hampering the artistic output of either artist,

- Jimin being refused his request to have a visual album but no expense was spared for his very elaborate production choices…

…that while the company sometimes says no to the members for reasons we don’t know (and can’t know, we’re fans not A&R managers for BTS), in retrospect these decisions appear tied more to logistical and strategic constraints, sometimes incompetence, rather than malicious intent. The company still supports the members’ projects and all seven members are happy enough with their current management over any other option, that they’ve chosen to renew their exclusive contracts early, not just once, but twice.

I too want Jimin to have received nominations for the MTV EMAs. I want that for all my biases but especially Jimin because his chart and sales performance dwarfed most of the competition, but even more so because Jimin released one of the most remarkable works of art created in 2023. And it deserves to be recognized and celebrated.

But already, the conversation is shifting towards HYBE propping up Jungkook to shaft Jimin, deliberately refusing to submit his work (which just like the other claims about Billboard and Hanteo, none of these people can provide any evidence to support except this happened to another artist years ago and HYBE bad), etc - all akgae talking points that have as little basis in reality we know as any other conspiracy theory you see in any solo space in BTS fandom. These theories only support the idea that the members are in direct competition with each other, do not deserve their team, and should leave the group. Because there’s a whole host of explanations for what we’re seeing here, but the constant impulse to reach for that particular reason is because it leads to only one goal.

I already said months ago after the Billboard article, that it served the purpose of handicapping Jimin’s chart performance to look overly reliant on Asian buyers (read Chinese money) reducing its legitimacy for Western awards, and we’re already seeing that play out. This has nothing to do with HYBE, and everything to do with the carelessness of the fandom in blowing up funding sources while aiming to shatter yet another Western record. When history has shown us every time BTS as a group did this, the industry responded by looking for a way to handicap the group. Which was then done for Jimin as he was the first to break that record.

HYBE could’ve sent his songs to radio. His songs have very good commercial quality. HYBE could’ve sent Still Life ft Anderson Paak to radio too as it had very good commercial quality. But we also know the members chose their roll-out strategy and suit of promotion tools and this likely influenced decisions like why some songs were sent to radio and others weren’t. And the first thing I noticed about all the EMA nominations is every artist had their songs sent to radio. Every single one. And so if the Billboard expose didn’t completely handicap Jimin, then it’s possible because his songs weren’t sent to radio he wasn’t even in the running in the first place. Here, feel free to blame HYBE all you want. I blame them too, but just as I did in Hobi’s case, I also believe this was in part influenced by his own decisions and hold him responsible as well.

I don’t baby any of the members in BTS. I’m not their mother. And when I see things I don’t like, I don’t absolve them of all responsibility and place it squarely on the company, because the members know more than me about their own situations, and are grown Korean men who have all the privileges and options that entails, and who continue to remain in a team they keep saying they respect and are grateful to.

I cannot want more for my biases than they want themselves. That’s not why I’m here. I don’t see myself as their advocate, contract lawyer, mother, manager, or girlfriend. I’m their fan and so I’m ARMY. I’ll support them as much as is within my means and preferences, object to actions of the company that directly impact me or on issues that I find morally repugnant based on having all the facts at my disposal, not based on fan theories made by groups of people who have a history of working outside of the members own interests and desires.

I can manage my disappointment on various things while recognizing all the above. Perhaps after this first set of debuts, both the members and HYBE will rethink their promotion strategies, make modifications, and maybe they won’t. That’s their cross to carry, not mine.

This is my position on everything that happens in Chapter 2 and 3, (because all these grumblings will only metastasize when the members come back, as that’s how it’s typically goes in every k-pop fandom, regardless of the fact this only ever works counterproductively for the artists).

“Welcome, first time with BTS?"

...what a way to announce their presence into the world stage: we are here, and we are here to stay!

After the dissapointing returns of 'Dark & Wild' , the team behind our boys decided to do an 180° and change their sound - from solely aggressive, masculine hip hop to more diverse styles and, to also change their visual concept by introducing a more clear storyline that goes throughout their trilogy of albums (HYYH pt1 & pt 2 and Young Forever).

Throughout 2015 and 2016, they explored the concept of "adrift youth" and that "most beautiful moment in life", a phrase that came to embody perfectly the difficult and tiring start of one's young adulthood, where beauty coexists with uncertainty, but also with the desire to push on despite all the hardships. During these 2 years, our boys released 6 dope MV's (see what I did here?😏) and their variety show Run BTS, they filmed the first Bon Voyage, held their Festa concerts, but also their tour in 13 cities in 7 countries.

And who could ever forget this flex?

The Youth Era was also a transitional stage for BTS’s public perception, as both fans and music critics began to recognize the group coming into themselves as musicians and creators.

So...shall we proceed? As usual, the same disclaimers, we are here for the vibes, and credit for the pics go to their owners.

(btw...love how playfull and dramatic they are in this photoshoot for the 2016 Festa)

The Most Beautiful Moment in Life pt 1 - the anguish of youth

"Idle Youth By all things enslaved Through sensitivity I've wasted my days. Ah! Let the moment come When hearts love as one."

...what better way to portray all this, if not by the poems of Arthur Rimbaud peppered throughout the photo album?

The album presents us with 3 locations (a park with a gorgeous cherry (?) tree and a pond, a hotel room and a seaside photo location),

very simplistic, but such a big departure from the classic studio pictures, these photoshoots are more about expressing a feeling, a state of mind, and not about perfectly posed pictures in a sterile environment.

Also fashion-wise the looks are not particularly over the top or spectacular, they are simple, almost subdued, the make-up is also more subtle then their previous era...but this is what makes it beautiful imo - this simplicity.

There is something of a ephemeral quality about this pics...perhaps a feeling induced also by the fleeting beauty of the cherry tree petals.

I really like Namjoon's hairstyle here. It really suits him, and it has the perfect amount of a rebellious strike that the stylists seem to prefer regarding him.

I just love how pastel hair colours are introduced here by Yoongi.

Regarding the hotel room photoshoot, the thing I like is their consistency in keeping up with their fictional personas made up for the storylines that were presented in their MV's -

...the struggles of Yoongi

...Jimin's anxiety. I especially like here the almost wet look that they went here for him. Nice touch!

Jungkook's loneliness...

and Taehyung's demons.

Namjoon's fortitude and Hoseok's sadness but, also

Seokjin's dettachment.

The photos made at the third location are black and white,to further accentuate the theme of the album.

Such a shame that they are BW because I could almost swear that the shirt Yoongi is wearing is see-through.

We were robbed!!😭

If there is a member who perfectly embodies the concepts presented here, in my biased opinion is Yoongi.

I mean...what more can I say?...but maybe I'm reading too much into it.

See you in part 2! 🫰🏻💜 Anyways...

I am writing this with a heavy heart. I watched Jimin's Production Diary earlier this evening and rewatched it with Jimin (how I wished he was really with me, right? But Weverse Live it was).

(I don't know about you but I think Jimin is extra handsome when wearing a baseball cap.)

But my heart is not weighed down with sadness or grief; in fact, I am so proud of Jimin and how FACE came about and how he toiled in those 10 months before he finally revealed FACE. It was probably the most intimate Jimin content I watched – the documentary showed him barefaced, without any embellishments that we would typically associate with him as an idol. He was devoid of the glitz and glamor of a superstar; we watched Jimin, the artist struggling with words and questioning his thoughts and ideas. He was the most beautiful in his vulnerable state because you could see his passion, desire, and hunger to create something that would leave the world in awe.

Baby, you did so well. So so well.

I was emotional at the end of JPD, and the last shot, a closeup of Jimin, hit me like a ton of bricks. Jimin looked so happy, relieved, grateful, and proud that I could not help but shed tears because this guy, who is probably one of the best humans ever but subjected day in and day out to hatred, malice, and ill wishes, created a masterpiece for his solo work debut. If resilience were a person, his name would be Park Jimin.

Mine!

My heart has been broken for years now, but for the past two years, it has shown signs of life, thanks to this person in Korea, in Seoul, who understands me. This person whose eye smile I am in love with. Cutie. Lovely. Sexy. He is all of this and more. And it amazes me that in this day and age when authenticity seems to be scarce, when embracing a persona may be the way to go to make a mark in a very tough industry, we have one of the biggest artists in the world, serving FACE, in its unadorned and striking state.

Day 5✨