BTS Is/in Art

💜BTS is/in Art💜

Where are you, Min Yoongi? 🤣

ART USED: Saint-Malo, Arnold Lakhovsky (1880-1937

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Arnold Lakhovsky (1880-1937) was a painter and sculptor of Ukrainian-Jewish descent, he was known for his landscape paintings. He later lived and worked in Paris (where Saint-Malo is) and New York City.

SEE & READ MORE:

https://vsemart.com/russian-jewish-painter-arnold-lakhovsky-1880-1937/

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Hi I'm reaching out re. your post on the bts-polls blog, since you redirected people to contact you here. I'm not the same anon who sent the other ask. I understand your reasoning for personally choosing to continue engaging with HP fandom, that's your choice and it's fine as long as you don't contribute to JKR financially. I guess I'm just adding one more trans ARMY voice to say that seeing casual references to HP and other Rowling works immediately gives me a bad feeling and makes me feel unsafe and alienated in the community. I'm also Jewish, so JKR's recent holocaust denial and her support of neo-nazis like Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshul add to this feeling exponentially. This issue is related to so much trauma and ongoing abuse that it's honestly triggering to see 'fun' references to that material as if nothing's happening.

I know it's probably 'not that deep' to most people, but small things like this mean there's one more space where the majority can be comfortable, but I automatically can't take part... in the end it's your choice, but since that blog seems to be aiming to be somewhat of a 'community' space rather than a personal blog I thought it might be relevant for you to hear how people feel.

You seem like a thoughtful person, and I appreciate the arguments you made in your other post. I hope this doesn't come across as attacking you or trying to stir up drama, these are just my honest feelings. Also I'm not saying you should personally cut HP out of your life, I understand there are ways of engaging in a fandom that don't involve supporting the original creator. Thanks for listening!

Hello Anon,

I apologize that this has taken me ages to answer. I haven't been able to spend much time in tumblr-land recently but this topic deserves more than an off-the-cuff response.

For any of you that are not familiar, anon is referencing this post. I'll put the rest of my response below a cut so that anyone not up for further discussion on this topic can bypass:

First, I want to thank you for reaching out. The only way most of us learn how deeply affected by events is if we share, but I know it can be a very difficult thing to do. I don't know if I'm the right person to really do anything specifically on this topic, but I can absolutely share a little bit more about my thoughts.

So, professionally, I'm a technical systems subject matter expert. And it's impossible for me to hear about something without trying to narrow it down to the root cause to resolve there. Yes, there are also actions to be taken to fix the immediate problem, but if the source is left alone, it's going to continue happening.

So, if that won't resolve the problem, what will? In my mind there are two possibilities:

To me, the root cause of the issue isn't this specific woman, it's much bigger than that. Because if we were to remove her specifically as an issue, there would just be someone else spouting the same junk, maybe with less of a following, maybe more.

1. Not allowing people to form and share their own opinions on issues like this. After all, if we HAD to comply to a collective moral standing, then we'd all be on the same page and there wouldn't be all this suffering, right? Hopefully everyone reading this knows why that would be a BAD IDEA even if was possible. I'm not going to go into detail here but if anyone reading this has any doubts, we definitely can!

2. Stop giving power to the words of people that have no authority. This is honestly one of my biggest issues with celebrity culture. Period. Why on earth do the opinions of someone who has absolutely no expertise on an issue carry so much weight in our society?

I'll give y'all an example: Let's say BTS states that they enjoyed seeing the purple streetlights so now we should repave all roads everywhere in the world purple. Not only would this be a logistical nightmare there would be significant ramifications regarding safety and economically. BTS has no expertise in city planning or road safety. 'But they've been all over the world and seen how happy people are when they're surrounded by purple, we should listen to them!' No, we shouldn't correlation is not causation. If there is to be any benefit gained from such a change, it would need to be researched and trialed by actual subject matter experts. Idk, this example is pretty convoluted but hopefully you get my point?

Anyway, now that we've established that fame is not a good enough reason to give weight to someone's opinion, it just becomes a skill issue of recognizing when to listen/disregard and how to implement it on a large scale. Let's face it, both are difficult issues to tackle. The lines definitely get blurry about who has valuable contributions vs who is just the loudest voice. Especially with the ease that anyone can have access to a platform, there's very little threshold to finding countless individuals sharing 'facts' about issues of which they have absolutely no knowledge. I think all of us have seen that first hand in the BTS fandom so I won't list any examples.

So, the first challenge is how we discern the value from the noise. I am personally a huge believer in non-traditional education, so you can't just rely on the alphabet soup of degrees list after people's names either. The next hurdle is getting the majority to start doing this as well so that value is attributed to the correct people and not those who have no business with it. And that is what SHOULD be society's goal overall (in my opinion).

I truly believe that everyone is entitled to have and share their views and opinions but that doesn't mean we have to continue to listen or give value to what they say once we've realized they don't align with what is actually good for us.

To finally circle back to this before-named woman and the hateful ideas she shares, I genuinely don't understand why anyone continues to listen to what she's spouting, with one exception. When a creator shares a viewpoint that is malicious of intent, I think the created work should be evaluated to determine if there is an ulterior influence that can be gleaned from new audiences. Like I said in my post before, personally the effect that the Harry Potter world has had on me and the people in my immediate circles has done far more to foster overall inclusion and understanding of marginalized groups than pretty much anything. It was one of the few things to get past the heavily conservative religious viewpoints in the community that became a gathering point for those of us who didn't conform to the norms.

The great irony in all of this is the parallel that can be drawn between the author and the main villain who literally went insane breaking his soul apart for the gain of power. Perhaps she should spend more time reading her own work?

Anyway anons, I hope both of you are able to find some healing from the trauma these issues keep bringing up. I'm grateful you've entrusted me to share your concerns. I do think it's important to keep learning and growing from each other's experiences in a positive way rather than the heavy handed 'how dare you not comply to my specific viewpoint and conclusions on a nuanced issue' approach.

Run BTS: 059 | Run BTS in Hotel part 1

Original Air Date: 15 JAN 2019 Episode Length: 31:11 Total Parts: 2 YouTube English Subtitles: No Title Song: Idol

Synopsis: The guys are divided into 3 teams and play various games whilst sitting on a (very dirty) hotel room floor. seriously, that floor is so gross, it's obvious they just moved a couch out of the way for this.

Production: There's no way this was the intent for this episode, right?? They clearly had to just come up with SOMETHING. they didn't even have a fun way to divide teams. Games that utilize BTS's discography are always a great choice though with relatively low requirements to prep.

Endearment: There's just something off about these episodes for me. i think it's something to do with how the guys are so confined and basically having to spend the whole episode in their heads answering quiz questions. they do the best they can with it, but I don't see any moments in this episode being a pull to entice ppl to learn more about these guys if they weren'talready invested.

Winner/Loser: see final part

Best Cheater: none

Member Moments:

RM: I fee like RM felt such pressure with the translation game.

JN: Jin not being able to keep track of his team name. i feel you buddy!

YG: Yoongi did so great with that translation song. lol

JH: Hobi's gestures during the Not Today translation and dancing during Dope!

JM: Im loving Jimin imitating the sounds during the song game and then Yoongi joining him. i am right there with you guys, i couldnt hear most of those either.

V: Tae's adorable lack of confidence guessing the song parts and then getting so many effortlessly.

JK: Nice steal of the DNA answer. this is truthfully the only one I guessed myself

Bonus Content: there's really not much to it. mostly the same moments from the ep, just from the wide angles.

CQ Rank: 2

(CQ Eval Date: 02 APR 2024)

Check out this post for my Masterlist of all episodes and descriptions of how I'm evaluating these.

Previous Episode: 058

Next Episode: 060

RUN BTS: THE ANALYTICS | Episodes 41-60

Overall stats:

There were a lot of really great episodes this section! Protect the BTS Village, BTS Outing, the Amusement park... I could go on. But as you can see by the trailing dots at the end, my rankings for the last half dozen were falling. We're also in a trend where the YouTube uploads don't have English translations. When these were first uploaded, there was a statement that they knew some were missing but it's been long enough now that I'm going to give up on getting any that weren't migrated. It's just a little more complex for me to do these watch-throughs on my smartTV via weverse so I'm still very disappointed. (You'd think with their overt partnership with BTS, that Samsung and Weverse would have a better user experience but alas... I usually open the episode on my weverse app and then it's at least findable via my recent...) Anyway...rant over, let's get on to the rest of the statistics:

Title Songs:

We are finally out of the Blood Sweat and Tears era! Not that I dislike this as a theme song but it was definitely starting to feel like we'd NEVER get to one of the others. BST is absolutely the song that I think of most when it comes to the show. I'm curious how the stats will actually measure up to the other songs. The pie chart for WINGS will never be as big as it right now on these analytics any more.

Wins:

Yoongi getting a nice little bump this section. Nice change after getting so many punishments in the previous review.

Losses:

JK and JH! Will we ever see JK's loss percentage this high again?? Amazingly the overall group percentages are exceedingly tight.

Best Cheater:

Jin definitely standing out a little more in this category. And Yoongi is practically disappearing!

The standout cheating moment this section is absolutely the sports section during BTS outing: ALL.OF.BTS. Seriously, that episode is absolutely pivotal in the members learning how they can manipulate the staff to get what they want if they can sell it as entertainment for the show.

See you at the end of ep 80 for another analytics post!

Check out this post for links to all of my Run BTS episode reviews and analytics posts.

Run BTS: 057 | BTS Chef part 1

Original Air Date: 01 JAN 2019 Episode Length: 24: 28 Total Parts: 2 YouTube English Subtitles: No Title Song: Idol

Synopsis: The guys are divided into three teams. They begin by competing in minigames to earn first pick of ingredients for a meat and pasta dish.

Production: The cooking episodes are always an easy concept for the show. These ones are the most forettable for me though. The minigames were fun and well-chosen. I do still think the prod team uses the info graphics as too much of a crutch. Does anyone actually try making these recipes? lol

Endearment: The guys absolutely are trying to keep the energy up on thjs episode but there's just something that doesn't feel very natural. Maybe because they had such a long hiatus from the show and just had full schedules but they seem like they're having to try just a little more than usual with this one.

Winner/Loser: see final part

Best Cheater: none

Member Moments:

RM: Is it just me or was RM looking extra tall next to yoongi during the opening.

JN: Jin is so hyped for JK on his team and all of their play boxing

YG: Yoongi absolutely using their advantage at the minigames to get exactly what he knew he could work with.

JH: Hobi being savage to Jimin again talking about needing to play smart

JM: Jimin's iconic merengue moment

V: Poor V, he wanted the italian food ep and things just kept falling a part for him

JK: JK absolutely killing those egg whites. i do think he would have won if he was paying attention to the end goal of the race and not just the mixing.

Bonus Content: I liked the bonus bits better than the main episode. The Jimin and Jin boxing moment was cute

CQ Rank: 2.5

(CQ Eval Date: 26 MAR 2024)

Check out this post for my Masterlist of all episodes and descriptions of how I'm evaluating these.

Previous Episode: 056

Next Episode: 058