BTS Is/in Art

💜BTS is/in Art💜

Happy ARMY Day!

All of your support, kindness, and love means everything to me. Thank you all!🫂

ART USED: Northern Lights, North Norway, Anna Boberg (1864-1935)

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Anna Boberg (1864-1935) was a Swedish who worked in ceramics, textiles, painting, set design, and writing. She was of an artistic family, but never received any formal training in the arts

READ MORE:

https://artherstory.net/anna-boberg-artist-wife-polar-explorer/

SEE MORE: https://youtu.be/ioxINybyLc0?si=99F_8dKx6tz0sLG1

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SMERALDO GARDEN MARCHING BAND

My thoughts prior to the release of MUSE. I've avoided pretty much all reactions and analysis posts until I finished this so I have no clue if anyone else has come up with better words to describe some of these concepts but here's my take on it. I wanted to get this out prior to MUSE so that I can see how my view evolves with further context but here's where I am now.

Initial Reaction:

I'd actually had a few issues that night so I wasn't in the best headspace to take in a new song but I did listen to it on Spotify first and then watched the mv twice, once without subs and once with. (And yes, I know it's technically not called an mv...deal with it lol)

Anyways, I definitely wasn't immediately sold on it - which is expected from me, it's EXCEEDINGLY rare that I like any song on first listen but SGMB only took a couple of runthroughs before I was on board. One thing that helped me reframe it in my mind and with my previous expectations is to remember the first part of Jimin's self-proclaimed attributes: Cutie, sexy, lovely. SGMB leans very solidly into the cutie aspect, a little near the lovely side but far deeper into Cutie than anything we've seen in his solo releases. (RememberCute was an answer in the seossword puzzle). That got me thinking about where the rest of his songs would be in comparison and here's the placement I've landed on. Some of these have changed over the past few days but I'm curious where y'all disagree with my placements.

Good old Serendipity, a perfect balance of the three in my opinion. All of FACE is firmly in the Sexy section with Like Crazy leaning more evenly into Lovely. Lie is also right there with LC but more closely on the border. My beloved Promise and Letter holding down the Lovely section with CTT straying closer to Cutie. If you forgot about the cutie circle though, SGMB would have seems like it was complete out of the expected range. I am curious if we'll ever get something that's a mix of cutie and sexy, I can't comprehend what that would be like but I wouldn't put it past our JM to find a way!

Theories?

So, how do I think I did with all of my theories? Let's go through them one by one:

Open Locker Meaning: nothing to prove/disprove this yet. There were an awful lot of references to Serendipity in the mv though, so maybe that's the tie-in? I don't know, this one was a streeeeeetch in any case.

Sound Effects Interlude: we know we're getting an interlude but we'll have to wait for MUSE and any behind info to learn if it's sound effects that Jimin recorded himself like Dive.

Rooms Going from Dark to Light: Yes! I mean we knew it was going to be a lighter album than FACE but I think the word BRIGHT is all over SGMB. And I think this technique in both of those videos was trying to highlight that for us.

SGMB as an Actual Band: Yes! Definitely right here too! I'm going to talk about this more below because I think this is actually a very important part of this song.

The Emoji Poll from the Insta Chat: Yes! I think some people are still trying to make the argument that each option is supposed to represent different songs on muse. And while the others may lean more into any of these specifically, SGMB definitely has elements of all of them as well

An Actual Band?

So, like I mentioned in the theory above, I had the thought that SGMB could be portrayed as a fictional band itself, very similar to what MCR did with the Black Parade. And since Jimin decided to use this as the song's title; as well as make it the pre-release track, I think this is an important topic to delve into.

First, this allows Jimin a perspective shift to share with us his career outside the lens of BTS. Not because he NEEDS or WANTS to separate himself from them but he has had his own journey as an artist that may differ from his experiences from the perspective of a BTS member. Obviously BTS is completely woven through this journey and he gives us an acknowledgement of that with the line about 12 June and the handsign.

(Sidenote, whenever I see any of them do that now, I instantly think of that moment in Jimin's pixid ep where he said they don't anymore...I think we may have been misled...) 😝

Second, the frame of SGMB from a band's perspective also puts the song firmly in the categorization of 'work' rather than 'personal'. With FACE being such a deeply personal projectregarding his very deep human experiences, i love that he'svery upfront with us about MUSE being a work project. I've said this before, and it's one of my absolute favorite things about Jimin's music: he crafts it so that we can easily adapt it to our own interpretations. There's a lot of loving and beautiful imagery in the lines of this song that can have special meaning in all levels of relationships; platonic or not. But his delivery if this message to us, is professional. This is reinforced by the suits Jimin has worn in all of the material released so far. He's following a work dress code. (If you happen to see this post within a week of release, we have a poll regarding Jimin's suits on @bts-polls )

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LAST CALL: Which best aligns with your view on BTS's impact on PRIDE?

ME + US = MUSE

I just want to touch on this briefly here as I expect there'll be more once the album releases but there are some hints already. Like I discussed in my FACE post, Jimin has again come up with some key words to weave through the project. In FACE, it was several sentences but MUSE seems to be focusing on the following:

ME: Jimin himself

US: Jimin's view on his audience

MUSE: His awareness of us and how that effects his creations and manner of artistry.

SGMB and CTT are both bursting with these references and viewpoints. But I honestly don't think of SGMB as a traditional 'fan song'. I have another post where I talk about the different kinds of fan songs. Like I said above, SGMB details Jimin's experience as an artist and how his audience plays into that process. Not like CTT that's literally a diary of our journey with him. Maybe an extremely nuanced take but SGMB just doesn't feel like it belongs in the same 'fan song' categorization that CTT does.

The End for Now

Does anyone know anything about that little hand-wave Jimin does during the bow at the end? He repeats it. Is just an additional flourish that he's added in himself? I've never seen anyone do that during bows after a performance so I'm wondering if it's a cultural/industry thing.

What do y'all think? I'd love to hear your thoughts! If any of you have made posts about SGMB, I'll try to read them now but rumblr is not very forgiving if you miss something in the timeline. I'm very happy for you to share links to your posts in the comments!

Hey everyone, if you wouldn't mind, I just set up a couple of polls on @aspec-kpop . I'm just wondering about something I'm noticing in a kpop fandom that I didn't experience in any of my old school fandoms. More responses will help me see if my thoughts are aligned with y'all.

Thank you! 💜

Ace characters in fanfic:

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exploring kpop on the asexual-aromantic spectrum

Link to the Aro version of this poll Share for a bigger sample size!

Aro characters in fanfic:

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exploring kpop on the asexual-aromantic spectrum

link to the Ace version of this poll. Share for a bigger sample size!

Regarding Smeraldo Garden Marching Band, any of you remember The Black Parade by My Chemical Romance? There's a ton of lore that we're not going to get into but the gist of it is that the band is portraying another hypothetical band that's not mcr. Perhaps SGMB will be the same, an actual other band that's not BTS.

(I've never ventured into the mcr side of tumblr before today, definitely a fun journey to find this gif)

MUSE THEORIES

I want to hear every theory every one if you comes up with regarding MUSE. They've explicitly shown they want us to read deeper into it so I want to see EVERYTHING y'all come up with. No matter how delulu, abstract, or just plain wishful, I wanna hear it.

I'll go first:

Is there any meaning to which locker Jimin opens? It's in the 2nd bank, 1st column, 1st row:

Checking the 2:11 time stamp of Closer Than This: Serendipity??

When I think of Serendipity, I think of the choreography. Perhaps we have another Brian Puspos work coming up?? We KNOW the company got a hold of him last year.

You know what else is lovely about this? The title abbreviation AYS - pronounced 'ace' . Very fitting for our ace duo!

240703 - disney plus on twitter

Y'all know how much I adore Letter. I honestly don't know how to handle this development. I feel like I'm going to be holding my breath for the entire next week in anticipation.

240712 - bts on instagram