Hi I'm Reaching Out Re. Your Post On The Bts-polls Blog, Since You Redirected People To Contact You Here.

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.

Bless this post! I've been so busy the last few weeks, i knew I couldn't keep track of everything with this promotion. Getting ready for the first mv this week!

Right Place, Wrong Person (RPWP)

Release date: 24 May 2024

Official page

Announcement

Pre-order notice

Promotion schedule

The whole project has been teased through the mysterious rpwprpwprpwp Instagram account, where pictures were regularly posted, often featuring RM.

A poster campaign in several cities around the world also advertised the project (see this tweet from Geffen Records for example). The poster features White cat with pink bow by Doris Carroll.

The main art of the album was made by Martin Groch (cr.).

Tracklist

Come back to me

Concept Photo

Concept Photo 1

Concept Photo 2

Concept Photo 3

The first concept was shot by Wing Shya (src) in Seoul and the second one by Takahiro Mizushima in Tokyo.

Come back to me

Release date: 10 May 2024

Poster

MV teaser

The MV was directed by Lee Sung Jin (src), creator of the series Beef, which was possibly referenced in Jung Kook's "Seven" MV (src).

Articles, interviews and performances

Friendly reminder for any of you that don't know, please feel free to send me anything you think is relevant to the aspec-kpop experience! 💜

I know I haven't really been active on this account recently. The little time I've had recently for tumblr has been keeping @bts-polls running and trying to make progress on my Run BTS series on my main. (I once remember thinking if I stuck to a schedule, I'd be done by the time Jin returned 😅🤣😂).

But I want you all to know how comforted I personally am by so many of you even being interested in the topic of aspecs exploring kpop. If any of you see any posts you think would be relevant to this group, please tag this account and I'll be sure to share!

Run BTS: 060 | BTS in Hotel part 2

Original Air Date: 22 JAN 2019 Episode Length: 35:36 Total Parts: 2 YouTube English Subtitles: No Title Song: Idol

Synopsis: Continuing the previous part, more games at the hotel.

Production: Still not much was needed. Those bunny hats are the only thing carrying this episode.

Endearment: The guys do much better having something to actually interact with thanks to the hats.

Winner: YG, JH, JK

Loser: RM, JN, JM, V

Best Cheater: There were so many sus moments this ep but I'm giving this one to RM. He was the first one to take advantage of the high/low guessing based on the other team's answers before they came up with a way to somewhat mitigate it.

Member Moments:

RM: I am honestly impressed with RM in the rabbit game, all those rhythm skills are paying off

JN: Jin really had to fight the rhythm of those rabbit ears. lol

YG: Yoongi's beanie worked quite well on top of the rabbit hat

JH: Hobi is absolutely awful at estimating and leaves it all up to the others. i am right there with you, I'm terrible at it too!

JM: Jimin's adorable blunder letting go of the rabbit hat

V: Ah, Tae and Jimin constantly getting in eachothers way with the rock paper scissors.

JK: Of course JK wins the rabbit game! It would practically be a crime if he didn't!

Bonus Content: Like last episode, there's not much in the bonus content here that wasn't in the ep. apparently they tried to do one more estimation by having them guess the time.

CQ Rank: 3

(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: 059

Next Episode: 061