Wildflower Tranquility

I feel like I have at one point most likely shared about my journey to finding BTS, but I have moved blogs a few times and been gaining a few (actual real) followers recently (as of October when I started writing this), so I thought I would attempt an intro and history.  I’ll be honest, I find these things to be quite difficult.  It’s hard to find the balance between saying too little and putting down every little detail. 

MY ROAD TO BTS: It starts with insomnia.  I don’t have an “I found BTS in my darkest hours/at the moment I really needed them” story, but there are certain definitive moments in my life divided by before/after and the impact they have had on my life. One of those moments was in early April of 2019 when I got into BTS - I don’t remember the exact date but it was within 24 hours before or after of when the teaser trailer for The Rise of Skywalker was released, so to make it easy I count April 12th as my BTSversary.  During one of those dates I went to bed and couldn’t sleep, and following what had been my “I can’t sleep!” practice that year since February, I watched the kpop videos that facebook’s video feed kept recommending to me. One of those lyric translation videos came up  for BTS’s Answer: Love Myself and I watched it and the next video to be recommended, which was Namjoon’s first speech at the UN. I remember thinking “These guys get it. They really get it!” about the importance of Loving Yourself. It didn’t take anything more than that for me to instantly become a fan. The first two weeks I only listened to Answer: Love Myself and Mikrokosmos while I finished a project, and only after that was I able to listen to the rest of their music. (I always prefer to listen to albums while reading the lyrics as sometimes it can be hard to understand what is being said even if they’re speaking my language.) So while I am a “Boy With Love Era ARMY” I didn’t really get to the Persona album when it was first released so it’s always a little hard for me to “place” myself in the fandom in that way. (This is a somewhat mini version of the story with a lot of details left out but my first attempt at writing it all out got waaaaay too wordy and this will suffice.)

WHAT I FIND IN BTS: Hope, Comfort, courage, strength, joy, freedom - letting myself express myself and be silly, these and so many more things are what BTS have given me through their music and their shows, and their words and actions. BTS showed me that love is the language of the universe.  Finding BTS brought me dear friends through the fandom. They inspired me to write poetry again.  I allow myself to dream a little more.

FINDING MY “BIAS”: Tumblr helped me a lot with learning to identify the boys due to the tagging system. (I spent a good 6-8 weeks going through the BTS tag every day - this was back when they did pages instead of endless scrolling so I could actually catch up to where I left off if I devoted the whole day doing it.) While it wasn’t perfect - too many people tag everyone even if it’s only one member on the post - eventually I was able to pick out who was who on stage without relying on hair color!

So, at one point in my daily trips through the tag, I found a post about Namjoon, praising his leadership skills, and that was enough for me to go “That one! He’s my favorite!”. (I took a quick peek through my first blog, thinking perhaps I had shared it there, but couldn’t find it.) It was kind of a “There was one I could follow, there is one I could call king.” moment, to borrow a phrase from The Hobbit films.

Though it took quite some time with some of the members, they’ve all found their way into my heart in their own ways, and I really struggle to have a bias now.  These days it’s really more a “bias of the day/week/hour” situation, haha! Occasionally Joon will do something that makes me go “That’s WHY he’s your bias!!!!” but it feels badly to prioritize one over another even more now than it ever did since I first learned about the concept of biases. 

FAVORITES: This title is misleading, because I’m not going to talk about it, but I didn’t know how else to introduce it.  Firstly, my “favorite? What’s my favorite? Suddenly I can’t think of/decide any favorites!” overwhelm turns my brain blank. Secondly, the list of my favorite (songs/albums/lyrics/outfits/etc.) would be so so so so so long, and thirdly, it would probably take me all year to write this post and I’d spend the next year thinking of “oh! I should have mentioned that one!”.  I will say that with most cd’s/artists/fandoms/, prior to BTS it was easy for me to be “this is my favorite song on the album”/that’s my favorite character (but I also like that one and that one too.)..... with BTS it tends to be more like “maybe I can try to tell you my least favorite? That might be quicker?”  “That's maybe my least favorite song on the album?” or “I’m not as much a fan of that look/concept/etc.”

This is potentially a slightly unpopular opinion, but there is a good portion of BTS’s music that isn’t my music style of preference, and I would be unlikely to call myself a fan of the genres. What I mean is that I wouldn’t necessarily go looking for other artists to find more music with a similar sound. For me, the magic of BTS’s music is BTS themselves and everything that makes them, them. Their artistry, their character (speaking of character as a virtue, not a persona), all the things about them that we love about them as people, is what allows me to truly enjoy the majority of their music, despite it not being my preference.  And some of the songs that I was kind of “eh” on (for not being my style) at the very beginning have become ones that I enjoy quite a bit now. After their lyrics, which is what I absolutely love the most, what I love about their music is how richly textured it is. Not just in the way that they play across genres and languages, but also how the highs and lows of their voices add such texture to it, as most of the time they take turns singing and it provides audio interest. I noticed this was something that I appreciated after I tuned into it through not being much of a fan of Black Swan at first and I realized I wasn’t liking it as much because some of the effects they used on their voices made it so that I was struggling to pick out who was singing the lines and I realized that picking out who was singing was subconsciously a big part of my enjoyment of listening to their music.  In regards to Black Swan, I now think it was a brilliant decision adding an audio echo of the muddled murky depths the song spoke about, and I rather enjoy the song now, especially after some of the spectacular dance performances. (However, now I struggle even more than I did before to listen to artists who don’t have “texture”.) 

FOND MEMORIES: I have never been to a BTS concert, so I sadly can’t count that as one, and given my health issues, anxiety, distance from where they perform, and such, it is unlikely that I ever will get to go to one.  However, I will try to list some of the fond memories I have.

The BangBangCons on youtube. Everyone watching and trying to stay awake and posting the lyrics and just the general unity in the fandom. We might have been delirious with exhaustion, but there was fun and enjoyment. And I felt like it really did well to bring a bit of brightness in those uncertain times. It felt like we were all shouting with our keyboards “YOU CAN’T STOP ME LOVING MYSELF” and I think there’s something really magical about that. (I kind of wish that they would do something like this every year - it doesn’t have to be as long - just something that everyone can participate in as a community no matter where they are in the world or what their income is like.)

RunBTS episodes that I could look forward to when I had a rough week. For those 40 minutes or so I could forget everything and enjoy the chaos that would surely happen…. or at least be bewildered but in a happy and fun(ny) way.

The way that through their words and examples they teach me to be kinder to myself, or challenge me to dream better for myself. 

STRUGGLES: I have been blessed not to have experienced much in the way of bullying/hate for being a fan. (None really, the most negative thing I tend to get is “who?”.)  But there are other things that I have had some struggles with…. In no order of importance. Fandom - I am a believer in doing your best to curate your online space for peace and comfort and enjoyment, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t become aware of “issues” through trending topics, “this post has a lot of replies so we think you want to see this” algorithm generated posts, etc. and, well, I find the awareness of certain behaviors of fandom frustrating and stressful…. And sometimes it’s a struggle to mentally/emotionally let it go. (And sometimes it makes it hard for me to let myself fully enjoy the moment/release/etc with BTS things because I know there will be those in “the fandom” who will react in certain ways and that awareness takes the fullest enjoyment out of it.) I’m trying to work on this, but it’s a work in progress. Comparison-ism - Sometimes it can be really easy for me to get “they do all this while exhausted and in pain so why can’t you.” at myself. (Not helped that I have high expectations of myself and equally strong disappointment in myself for failing at things made worse due to the interference of my health.)  I try to remind myself “you are chronically ill (and don’t have to live the life they live) and it is unfair to do this to yourself” but it happens.  (Feeling like I have a lack of passion, drive, enthusiasm, etc.  sometimes comes into this whole comparison issue too.)

Loving myself - I know, I know, they’re such a beautiful messenger of loving yourself…. But sometimes it feels like the longer I’m a fan the more I see all the ways that I don’t love myself, and at the same time it feels like I have barely made any progress in loving myself. THE ROAD FROM HERE: I’ve never had famous people that I cared to call myself a(n invested) fan of them (and not just their characters if actresses/actors) before BTS, so becoming a fan of them as deeply as I did as quickly as I did was quite a new experience for me in multiple regards.  One of the first things I noticed about BTS was their sincerity, especially in their love for each other and their fans. That said, it took me a long time, until this past year, actually, to fully trust that I could trust that sincerity. (Can people this famous sincerely be this sincere, and have this level of integrity, be this vulnerable and open and real, be this loving? “How can this be real! This just doesn’t happen! I’ve never seen anything like it!”)  My level of engagement with the music and media might change, if life somehow becomes significantly busier, but I don’t see myself leaving their music to being “The BTS Chapter Of My Life”, the way other artists and genres have been in my past.  In their words “I’ll be with you for the rest of my life.” feels true for me as well. Their souls have become the best of friends with mine, and have given me the best of me.

CONCLUSION: