#spero talks

First, I want to clarify why I approached treasure as a separate story. When I was working on this, I tried to gather as many different theories and takes as I could on the timeline and story and such, but a problem I kept running into was that when I saw theories that included treasure as part of the larger story in its entirety, I had trouble being convinced. A lot of the theories had to stretch quite a bit to include it, and I felt like separating it made it much more cohesive, regardless of whether it was approached as just a prequel or a sequel, or anything like that. That being said, I've been keeping my eye out since then for ways they could be trying to tie it back in because I desperately WANT them to. If you had asked me a couple months ago, I probably would have told you that I am doing so and that I just haven't seen anything that convinces me yet. HOWEVER. After reading the Golden Hour Part 2 diaries, my mind started churning and I felt something click that connected treasure for the first time, something was convincing enough. I'm currently chugging through finals but this is actually a huge reason I'm planning to remake the slideshow and rework it, because I feel like the information we learn about the history of Halazia and the new artifact really puts things into perspective. Anyway ig long story short, yes I think it links in now and my theory is relatively manageable (although too long to summarize here) so I'd just keep an eye out for the slideshow update.

I think the simplest answer is, ironically, simplicity. I think initially I took what Hongjoong said to mean some sort of alternate story and then after fumbling around with it, I landed on sort of a similar conclusion as that of Treasure which is to say I had a lot of trouble fitting it in with the rest of the story, particularly because of the way it constantly insists upon distinguishing itself from the rest of their titles. This is another one that will get rewritten in the update, along with Answer I believe.

A big stretch theory that would be kind of interesting to consider would be to wonder if perhaps the moon in this series has always been a crescent and everything they've experienced in "World Z" has been a dream, and I think I've seen theories similar to this floating around so definitely something I've considered. I actually kind of hope this isn't the case because I think it's kind of a cop-out, but at the same time, it would fit into the general themes we've seen from the story so far. I would LOVE to hear your theories on this because I was really stumped by it. Ateez is very intentional about those sorts of details, and so it really makes me wonder, but I haven't been able to figure it out.

Finally, in terms of the sketches at the concerts, I think there's a lot of symbolism in them and I want to analyze them deeper. If the content of the dances doesn't make it into the slideshow, I'll make a post about it and tag you. Funnily enough, I went into the concert thinking "I will pay such close attention to the dances so I can analyze their place in the lore" and then I proceeded to be so awestruck that I forgot to think about it and lowkey blacked out so I don't really remember anything about it hahaha. I'm gonna look them up and revisit them in closer detail soon.

Sorry, this is so long, and sorry that some of them are kind of non-answers. There's still so much I don't quite understand so I appreciate you pushing me! This month marks 1 year of being an atiny so I think there will always be more for me to learn and discover. Please feel free to send more questions if you have them! I love rethinking things and seeing what people notice that I miss. I would also like to say please check out the sources linked at the very end of the slides because a lot of my theories are pieced together from various atiny who are much smarter than me <3