#gtop

Seunghyun's family

Starting strong! Seunghyun's mother and sister have both been quietly supporting them for years at this point. During the MADE era, when his sister and nephew (in the blue) came to watch BigBang perform, Hyeyoun posted this about Yeonjun loving his Uncle Jiyong so much that he wanted kisses from him:

Jiyong has also included Seunghyun's sister and nephew in gifts before now - this was posted by Hyeyoun, of a PMO x Nike collab in 2021, where her and Yeonjun both received a pair. The caption says "Yeonjun and I wear matching sneakers ❤️"

Seunghyun's mum has also quietly shown her support over the years. I don't really believe those old fan sightings from the early, early days, but this one is too cute not to imagine:

'I’m not sure if I’m allowed to post things like this……. It was last October when it happened! Seunghyun’s mom visited the dorm but the members were in the car due to their schedule.

Seunghyun’s mom opened the car door and said a few things to him but Seunghyun just replied carelessly, unwrapping a candy like this……. “Yeah, No, yeah yeah, okay.”

His mom told him see you later and closed the door, then the car door suddenly opened again and someone stuck his body out and said “Omonim (means mother but it’s also a term used to call “Mother in Law”)!!!!!!! Hello Omo… It's Jiyongie…."

Jiyongie didn’t even care about all the fans were around and he greeted her like that... Jiyong made sure that he said goodbye to her as well. Seunghyun’s mom was very happy to see him and she greeted him back in a really lovely way… "Oh~ Jiyong-ah~~ Long time no see~”

She showed a smile that she didn’t even show to Seunghyun... the mother-in-law is in love with her daughter-in-law.'

Anyway, even if that didn't happen, we absolutely have concrete proof that she still loves her favourite child-in-law haha. She follows Jiyong and Taeyang on Instagram (no Daesung, sorry Todae stans!):

And she also follows several GD-specific and GTOP specific fan accounts:

I can't lie, there is something very funny about the idea of Seunghyun's mum following an account called 'gdragooner', who drops shit like this on the regular:

I don't think I'd follow an Instagram account posting things like that about my son and his childhood friend that he no longer talks to, unless there was truly something in it. And if you want to call Seunghyun's own mother a yaoi fetishist pervert too, be my guest!

Jiyong's family

I mean, obviously. Most famously, they stood outside for about half an hour waiting for Jiyong to get out of the car before enlisting for his military service, and it turned out all along he was in that car with Seunghyun. Again, why give him all that time alone with his childhood friend (who caused a scandal to their group not long before), unless there was something important there? I love my friends dearly, but I'm not sure my mother would be cool with me spending my last minutes before being enlisted in the army with them instead of her, unless my friend was also... oh, I dunno... my partner?

It's also clear that there's often a sixth adult with them during family dinners and events - we can absolutely write these photos off as being taken by a server at a restaurant, because most of them have been taken at either Jiyong's or Dami's homes, and there's absolutely evidence of a sixth person eating and drinking at the table.

Speaking of Dami, she's also posted things about the artwork featured in either Jiyong's or Seunghyun's apartments, such as this gold Rudolf Stingel piece and the Alexander Calder mobile above it, two things that have switched homes between them in the past:

Mark Grotjahn

Mark Grotjahn is a close friend of Seunghyun's - they've been friends for at least a decade at this point. He's an artist known for his abstract, geometric paintings, and both Seunghyun and Jiyong have featured his work in their homes and have personal connections with him.

I can't tell if Mark himself is queer - I know he's had female partners, but he's also worked closely with amfAR, a foundation for AIDS research, with his work raising significant amounts of money for the foundation at the Two x Two For Aids and Art benefit. He also created his Butterfly series of artworks, which feature rainbow colours. Obviously, there's a huge connection between butterflies, rainbows and the queer community.

It's worth noting that the above picture is one of the many many instances of GTOP sharing artwork (or, if not the same piece specifically, then pieces in the same collection). For an even more interesting bit of lore, Jiyong posted the above photo around the time of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, 2016 - he had to take down his post in outright support of those affected and the LGBT community as a whole, and subsequently snuck a lot of rainbows into his posts afterwards. You can read more about that here!

This is also a really fun thing that I found recently:

Mark has a series of works that look like... idk, spirals and random squiggles lmao, but he's pretty famous for them. Obviously, they've also featured both on Jiyong's and Seunghyun's Instagrams.

However, Mark's artwork entitled 'Baby Dragon No. 2 Face' featured as the background of Jiyong's phone not too long ago! I just thought that was very neat and fun hahaha:

Anyway, what has all this got to do with him shipping GTOP?

Well, Mark has famously posted things of the two of them before now, which have also been acknowledged by Jiyong and Seunghyun. This very famous GTOP picture is of them stood in front of his artwork, which was initially posted by Mark (and liked by Seunghyun), and then reposted by Jiyong himself (see below). Remember this, because it'll be coming back later!

He also posted the photo on the left of GD&TOP era Jiyong and Seunghyun wearing faces from his Angry Flower series of works. Seunghyun then used the one covering his face in his infamous 'chicken and beer' insanity when he received his exclusive matching flower shoes from Jiyong:

Finally, this is just cute, lol.

In 2016, Seunghyun posted a photo of himself with Mark, plus a picture of the stylised autograph that Mark had done for him. Later that same day, Jiyong (who was on holiday in Hawaii with Daesung at the time) posted a photo of a drawing he'd done in the sand, captioned: "I also got an autograph for TOP!" with the hashtag "#MarkGDrotjahn" hahahaha. Seunghyun, being the prick he is, commented, "I don't need that copy."

Richard Prince

Richard Prince is a pop artist who became famous in the 1980s - he worked in New York, so he was a contemporary of other big GTOP heroes like Andy Warhol, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. He's most famous for the Nurses series, and oh boy do we have a lot to say about that.

Jiyong LOOOOOVES the Nurses series, particularly Millionaire Nurse. He's done a photoshoot with it (looking very cunty if I do say), he's got it in his home, he's used it as his lock screen, he's referenced it in his music, he is all over this man and his art lmao:

And, of course, Seunghyun is also a big fan:

In 2016, GTOP met Richard Prince and he signed something for them:

And from that, he seemed to form quite a nice friendship with them. He also posted a manip of the two of them stood in front of one of his artworks, where Jiyong's private account replied 'don't cry, hyung 💕' and Seunghyun responded with a keysmash lmao.

Remember the Grotjahn version of this from earlier? I hope so, because I buried the lead a little there - when he posted it, Richard commented underneath it with the frankly insane response 'Hey. I had that same couple stand in front of one of mine. That's Life.' Might I remind you, he's an American man who was working alongside a variety of queer artists in 1980s New York at the height of the AIDs crisis, there's absolutely no way he'd not know the connotations behind his words there - especially as he knows both of them personally.

You've then also got the time Richard Prince commented under one of Jiyong's posts not long after Seunghyun went into the military:

The turtle has a shell too haunts me in my nightmares, besties. We all, of course, know about turtle and shell, right?

Turtle and shell are their nicknames for each other. Seunghyun is turtle, because he would always carry his backpack around with him and it made him look like a turtle (confirmed in the 2012 episode of Healing Camp). Jiyong would also call him turtle on his old Cyworld messages back in 2005/2006, and would refer to himself as shell:

Jiyong made a reference to turtle and shell as recently as last year when he was on Park Myung-soo's show and they were making, I think, bracelets together:

it makes absolutely no sense for Richard Prince to know about this and reference it if he weren't a personal friend of theirs who knows personal things about their lives, like their little childhood nicknames for each other. Unless, of course, Richard Prince is another yaoi fetishist pervert just like Seunghyun's mother, and he just happens to know the really insane in-depth GTOP lore because he's a secret shipper.