#definitely just a random thought with no relation to recent media discourse

[d00rh4ndl3]

"I cant believe this character in this show is acting so unreasonable and not understanding other character, this is such bad writing"

So theres this thing called character conflict.

[sizzlingpatrolfox]

Lately, there's much weird energy going on regarding jm related things. Since his OST something or the other is happening, the whole insurance bill followed by company sayin "no comments" but they were backing up that bully girl and also billboard didn't posted any article on his proof video but they posted all the other members till now (surprisingly I haven't seen BTS is 7 trend yet lol) Even him in that Spotify video just sitting without much enthusiasm like he always had is all making me feel like is everything okay??! Also I'm new to this all hate/negative discourse on a celeb (haven't been in any fandom except bts) so it's bit weird to see a particular member getting hate for whatever he is doing. Would like to know your thoughts on this if you have any??

- hybe's treatment of jimin's ost is especially abysmal. i shift back and forth as to whether he'll resign with them when the time comes but it just gets more and more blatant that something's up due to the way they go about everything regarding him. it's not isolated either, they just do all they can to not care about jimin and his work.

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It reminded me there was another similar ask so I'm including it. Eventually I would've gotten to it but now that we're on the subject 😅

It has certainly been nonstop. The change in the time release for the OST was very random, didn't and still doesn't make sense why would they do that. Everyone else released their Our Blues OSTs at 6pm. It has been a while but so it doesn't sound like the time is something crazy to care about, and in case it hasn't been made obvious by how, days after, Psy released his album at 6pm and not 11pm LMAO, I saw this explanation by traceofjimin.

And they said the time release was discussed and decided on by the artist's agency (or agencies). They know how it works and they still decided to do it. BTS used to release their stuff at 6pm kst too, it changed to accommodate USA time of release but it was 6pm until ON.

Aside from that, I really think the insurance bill and filter issues were done by akgaes. Hybe/bighit has never exactly handled any "scandal" BTS were involved in, probably the tattoo shop thing was the most they gave statements on or said they would do anything about. But usually it's just one single "we deny this" and they move on. So I'm not surprised and I don't think it's weird that they disregarded the bill issue so quickly. And also, to be honest, I don't know what else was there to say. I genuinely think the articles and the way it was dragged out was an akgae thing. Same with the filter credits for that man. Whether his personal info was leaked because someone from the company was "careless" when managing his documents (that's a very sarcastic careless), there's no way to know that. If it was leaked or sold by people that work close to him, I hope Jimin is aware and is handling it.

It also all just piled up over the already existing and recent enlistment controversy, so it's possible that media are just taking advantage of it, you know the saying "when it rains it pours".

Now, the billboard articles........................ It's fishy af. I don't know who's deciding that and if it's hybe, I don't know why would they want to alienate Jimin from album conversation like that but it definitely looks like a conscious choice to not do an article about him. It was deliberate.

About the hate, yeah.. kpop is like that, unfortunately. It definitely does not happen this often or this seriously when it comes to western celebrities. You can google "kpop anti-fans" "kpop anti-fans incidents" and you'll see for yourself. It's crazy. It's an industry and fan culture that for some reason or another has always begotten a lot of hate.

As for Jimin, I think he was like that for most of 2021, sadly. I mean, he was quiet and seemingly uninterested for a lot of their interviews, especially during butter promo. And last year he actually said on few ocassions that he wasn't feeling that happy or excited, it wasn't anything alarming but he did subtly mentioned being too lost in his thoughts and things like that. He's probably got a lot on his plate, honestly. I guess we should just wait and see; he's a person like anyone else and being under the weather sometimes it's completely normal, but it's also not too logical for us to make conclusions based on one or two clips, imo. I would like to know what he really, really, really thinks of this album tho.

Before, the times that anything controversial happened, there was always positive, good BTS content to push that negativity back or even completely ignore it; now, there's nothing like that and even the album-related content released so far is honestly nawtttt making a lot of noise so it's easy to get carried away with the negative stuff.

[bronanlynch]

recent media consumption summary time

could’ve sworn the last one was only two weeks ago but apparently it was three. sorry for becoming unmoored from the passage of linear time

listening: you know when you use a song lyric as a fic title and then you get that song stuck in your head for the next week? anyway Whirlpool by Sea Wolf sure is a song that I enjoy and also have had stuck in my head for a week. I feel like I should have smarted musical things to say here but I like Sea Wolf, they’re nice to listen to, they’re sad man with guitar music without being identical to every other sad man with guitar band

reading: finished my reread of Crooked Kingdom by Leigh Bardugo, and my main thought this time around is that I love Kaz with my whole entire heart. also love a good multi-layered heist scheme. also also Wylan/Jesper is cute but I do think they don’t get nearly as much relationship development as the two m/f couples and like, I really like these books but that is very much a trend especially in sff YA these days

also finished Lord Seventh (Qi Ye) by Priest and. god I love the characters so much. a friend group can just be a bunch of horrible gay people pining for each other and betraying each other in order to save each other’s lives. extremely tasty. also,

(I would say that missed opportunity is my one complaint but like. my actual main complaint is that as much as I love the characters, I think that if the racism in your text is blatant enough that I, a white american with very little knowledge of the specific racial coding happening can pick up on it, then it’s uh. probably pretty blatant and that’s Not Great)

also did some pride month impulse purchases at my local indie bookstore, including Molly Knox Ostertag’s The Girl from the Sea, a lesbian selkie graphic novel, which did so many things to my heart. first of all the art is so pretty

second of all, I too have been lonely and starting to realize that I’m gay while living in a beach town with a summer tourism economy, drifting apart from a friend group that I didn’t feel like I was part of and wishing I was literally anywhere else even though I loved the ocean. third of all, gay selkies

also read The Witch King by H.E. Edgmon which I enjoyed even though I am definitely not the target audience for first person present tense novels, even if those novels are portal fantasies about fae power struggles and arranged marriages. I really enjoyed the three main characters and their relationships, and the worldbuilding was fun, though the twist at the end (and lots of parts of the ending tbh) felt a little bit abrupt to me. also, and this is a personal thing, but someday I would love to read a fantasy novel with a transmasc character that actually feels like it reflects my experiences. I guess that’s part of the problem with looking for this in YA, but that’s where I tend to see transmasc protagonists so here I am. anyway, valid for anyone but especially trans teens to want to read a narrative about someone being loud and open about their identity but that’s not my experience. which I think is why I tend to construct my own trans narratives around characters who like, aren’t canonically trans but have themes about lying and hiding and being defensive about their image because *that’s* a trans experience I actually relate to.

I’ve started In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens, which is not a book I intended to buy but 1) look at the cover

2) I am weak for gay people on the sea. it’s fun so far, I’m not expecting any sort of in-depth anything about royal power but it’s cute and light and I’m having a good time. my main complaint is again a personal thing, which is not actually a complaint about the book itself and more about twitter discourse about how there should never be homophobia in sff that takes place in different worlds and how we’ve had enough of that so everything should take place in a world where it’s fine and normal to be queer. and again, that’s fine! I do enjoy books like that! I am currently enjoying a book like that! but again, I have a harder time relating to characters whose queerness isn’t mediated by fear the way mine is (this book sidesteps that by making the main character a very anxious person, which helps increase the relatability, but also. there’s this whole thing about how people distrust him and there are rumors about his ~perversion and yeah it’s about his secret hidden magic but. felt very weird to have that set-up and then not have homophobia play any part in the way other people talk about him, y’know? like please, stigmatized magic as a parallel for stigmatized sexuality is Right There)

watching: finished Nirvana in Fire and am having lots of normal and moderate emotions about it. belongs in my mental categories of “media I want to consume over and over again and take it apart and figure out how to write like that” and also “things I want to rewatch when I have enough energy to appreciate it” because I do think if I weren’t so tired these days I could’ve tried to have predictions instead of waiting for the characters to explain their plans to me, as much as I do love it when attractive people smirk at the screen and monologue about their schemes

also watched most of Castlevania season 4 (I have 3 episodes left) and it’s. well. it’s not Good but it’s a lot better than season 3. however, I only care about a few of the plotlines and everything else is kinda boring. I like Alucard’s plotline and I like Greta and I liked the two scenes where Hector and Isaac interacted and I liked the vampire lesbians deciding that being gay was more important to them than doing war crimes. cannot be bothered to care about anything else though, especially St. Germain. more importantly, Alucard’s new look fucks. love the whole cape + tits out thing.

finally got around to watching the end of the first season of Elementary and once again, I enjoy it when people explain complicated plans to me. love a good mystery. also, predictably, I’m in love with Moriarty. her first two dates with Sherlock are about art forgery and Roman artifacts in the London sewers, how was I supposed to *not* fall in love with her. also every time she interacts with Joan after the reveal has extremely homoerotic energy. ladies is it gay to become psychosexually obsessed with a woman who outplotted you

also, very importantly, my roommate realized I’d never seen Tsubasa OVAs, and they sure are an experience. I read the entire manga in like two days in a fugue state last winter and remember very little of the plot of the second half of the story, so the second OVA which is like. a random section of the late plot was kind of a lot to try to process at once, though I do appreciate one of the main ships doing a Gift of the Magi thing except instead of selling treasured possessions to get each other gifts they’re sacrificing parts of themselves. however the first one is my favorite arc, because it should not surprise anyone that the post-apocalyptic vampire arc is my favorite. also, I don’t need to remember the actual plot to remember and appreciate how much of an Eliot-core character Fai is. look at him. prettyboy ice wizard pretending to be flirty and performatively useless to hide his trauma. also he’s a vampire. he sets off the cosplay and gender envy parts of my brain so much

playing: nothing new since last time, just more Tidepools and Beam Saber. maybe someday I will play a video game again

making: got to cook for just the two of us last week instead of having to find something that everyone would eat, so Zan and I finally got to make chicken marsala from this recipe and it was extremely good. next time we’re gonna double the mushrooms though I think, the recipe didn’t make quite enough compared to the amount of chicken

someday I will make non-food things again but unfortunately, when most of your energy has to go to either cooking and cleaning for other people or trying to get other people to cook and clean,

writing: posted three new fics: the Persona selkie AU, the Nirvana in Fire miserable sapphic makeout fic, and a slice-of-life Persona fic for an exchange, and worked on a couple of other things that are still secret for zine reasons