#&TEAM theories

[bookishtheories]

In the latest update of Dark Moon: The Grey City with &TEAM they finally confirmed the names of the members of the pack. Some we already know, while others are completely new!

First off, we have the four original members that we already met in Dark Moon: The Blood Altar with ENHYPEN.

K = Khan Nicholas = Najak EJ = Enzy Taki = Tahel

We first met Khan and Enzy in ENHYPEN's Drunk-Dazed, but all four wolves are predominantly featured in both the Webtoon and the Wattpad of Dark Moon: The Blood Altar.

Harua = Ruslan Jo = Camill Fuma = Mahan

While these three characters are so far absent from the Webtoon version, they do play an important role in the Wattpad of The Blood Altar.

Yuma = Louis Maki = Luka

Louis and Luka are NEW Entries in the Dark Moon Universe!

So far they haven't been mentioned in neither the Webtoon not the Wattpad, but this could change at any moment. We'll have to wait and see :D

[igiveyoumyblood]

'War Cry' MV Reactions Part 2.

This is Part 2. For the analysis, see below the line.

Starting off here with wolfiness #15.

Now that's just a cool shot. But also #16.

#17 hell yeah.

&TEAM coming through again for the third album in a row with 100000/10 choreography.

That's right, don't you let her control you.

I love this bit.

Why does he look so sad? TT

Okay my bad, it looks like the ice powers well and truly belong the the werewolves.

YESSSSSSS.

#22.

#23.

Nice.

Why does he look like Hwall from THEBOYZ here?

Forever missing Hwall TT

Dude that is so metal and Gothic. I love it.

It's also edited to be split-second enough that we, the audience, get an idea of something violent and spiky, but don't see the details - this particular scene is shown in something like 6 frames across 2 shots - VERY quick.

Very nice and emphasises their connection to ENHYPEN who had a similar shot - although far smooher and more choreographed (ahem vampires ahem) in 'Bite Me'.

YES I LOVE IT. It's circular, and it's wolfy.

So that's the end of the MV, with a large count of wolfy moments and some very cool shots. Let's talk about the lyrics for a moment.

Lyrics

Well, they're what you'd expect from a young highschool-themed werewolf boy group;

The moon and silver imagery

Light/dark/night/day imagery

Time and the changing of the world and yourself

Blood, instincts, pack mentality etc

The howl being a war cry

Being together/mirrors of each other/generally growing as a person as part of a group

Yep. Nice, but other than that, there isn't much to say about them that isn't a full-on analysis of them.

Conclusions

A very cool MV. I desperately want to be involved in directing HYBE MVs, and the creative team at HYBE in general.

There are wolves, they do wolfy things, they are very cool while doing so, and so on. What would you expect?

Even better, I know everyone's names and faces now, so I can have EVEN MORE appreciation for them than I already did!

The choreography is the best, as always.

Interestingly, this MV seemed to lack the motif of their other MVs - collecting and preserving memories. The only thing here is K's vision, which isn't even really a memory....? Perhaps the trauma of Sooha possibly murdering them in 'Firework' has made them rethink their obsession with the past.

[skipppppy]

Broke: Giovanni is Ash's father

Woke: Giovanni has mistakenly believed Ash was his hookup mistake for like a decade and is about to get the surprise of the century seeing that not only are they not related, but the employee he fired a few years ago for being too stupid is now living with him and being a more active father than he was

[yak-leather-whips]

Guys, its not some fucking “bad luck devil” or whatever. It’s clearly this fucking time gargler or whatever the fuck that’s behind all this nonsense. Aguefort literally lays it out for us that the quangle makes things happen out of order. Things like, say…Zelda and Gorgug being broken up even though we know from the Seven that they’re still together in Junior year, or Aelwyn suddenly moving out and going from a snarky 19 year old whose never had a job or gone to college to a middle school teacher with 5 cats in the course of 3 months, or the sophomore album being 10 months late even though Fig only finished her debut a little over 16 months ago AND they were in the middle of the tour, or Hallariel and Gilear getting engaged after like a year when 3 months ago Gilear wasn’t even allowed to sleep in her bed, and Sklonda defending one of the organizers of this folk festival when the festival hasn’t even happened yet, or Figs birthday suddenly moving from Christmas to July.

[egophiliac]

YOU MANIFESTED THE TWEEL CARDS CONGRATS

YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

seriously though I was probably like. 60-80% thinking we'd get at least one tweel for chapter 10. but I was NOT expecting it so soon! both of 'em! in August! a shame we're not getting a Coral Sea event after all...but I guess I can be resigned to that and ALSO excited for getting shiny sparkly glowing(!!!!) mertwins along with Azul fighting his inner demons and going right for the eyes! AHHHH I CAN'T WAIT

(also heeeey I recognize that rowboat... 👀)

[floweroflaurelin]

BigB is making me lose my mind.

—

My buddy @salemoleander made a post going over all the weird stuff with BigB’s unusual Secret and it got my mind racing. The red icon... The isolating, grindy, antisocial task... The strange phrasing… Makes you think 👀

(Even if it turns out to be nothing I WILL be headcanoning lore about it hehehe)

[hotdaemondtargaryen]

THE CAST OF 'HOUSE OF THE DRAGON' REACTING TO HELAEMOND'S THEORIES:

AEMOND IS THE FATHER OF HELAENA'S KIDS.

> PS: "How do you feel about that?"

> TGC: "It pisses me off, actually. I'm so protective over my children. That would be so sad for Aegon. He loves them so much."

[nobodysdaydreams]

One of the funniest things about “Hatchet Town” is that over the course of three musicals and Nightmare Time, most, if not a significant number Hatchetfield residents HAVE committed murder or been accomplices/accessories to murder in at least one timeline. To the point where if you randomly accused pretty much anyone in town of being a murderer, there’s a good chance you’d be right.

[gobbogoo]

Who Is Scout's Ma?

She's a character we know extremely little about, however when you stop to consider the IMPLICATIONS of what little we DO know, things start to get interesting:

1. She lives in the roughest part of Boston ("if you were from where I was from, you'd be dead") but dresses quite elegantly.

2. She had 8 boys, all of whom she raised BY HERSELF, and yet somehow she finds the time to maintain this impeccable appearance.

3. Scout clearly loves and admires her to a point where it's one of the few things he'll drop his "tough guy" act for, and dialogue in the comics like "Ma's gonna kill me if she finds out" implies he also still fears her disapproval, despite being a fully autonomous adult.

4. Spy, despite what he likes to pretend, is clearly head-over-heels for her. He even had her likeness engraved on his fanciest gun! (Note the distinct hairband & hoop earrings) For a man who avoids attachment to the point where he never lets anyone see his face, that's an unusual degree of infatuation.

5. None of Scout's brothers left Boston while he was growing up, despite a few of them presumably being adults by then. Not only this, they were still all getting into fights together, implying they were both continuing to live with or near their mother and brothers, AND had reasons to brawl with others beyond just some adolescent street scuffle.

My Theory:

Scout's Ma is the matriarch of a Boston-based crime family.

It explains her elegant appearance, how she and Spy were able to meet, why their bond clearly goes beyond a one-off fling, why she was able to be in Scout's life so much despite the financial burdens of being a single mother of 8, and why all of said 8 were continuing to get into fights with other locals. They weren't just some street gang, they were enforcers. It also explains why/how Scout got into mercenary work, his many mafia-themed weapons, and why he continues to fear her ire even as an adult.

Plus, take a look at this unused angle of the last photo from Meet The Spy:

You'd THINK a single mother from the rough side of Boston wouldn't appear so in-her-element on a fancy date with The Spy, and yet her appearance and demeanour here just SCREAM "confident and in control."

Scout's Ma is Boston's Godmother, and I desperately wish to see someone draw her as such.

[umblrspectrum]

hi heres art so you pay attention to me now go read the tags

[insanesonofabitch]

Kind of funny. SPN was supposed to end in s5, with Sam in Hell, Cas in Heaven, and Dean on Earth, living with a wife and a son. But it ends after ten more season later with Cas in superhell, Dean in Heaven, and Sam on Earth, living with a wife and a son. Like some fucked up game of musical chairs. Except the chairs are never taken, the song remains the same, and they’re just going in circles. Anyways, Happy November 19th.

[bookishtheories]

In the latest Dark Moon: The Grey City update, they revealed new interesting information about the upcoming storyline!

"This story goes back 20 years before the werewolves settled down in the Sunshine City School when the new encounter and destiny began as they became one as brothers."

The Grey City will therefore be a PREQUEL to the events that are taking place in Dark Moon: The Blood Altar. It will be set throughout the 2000s, thus explaining the dates that appeared in the concept clips of the JUVENILE ver. of First Howling: ME.

The description that accompanied the second Concept Poster is just as interesting:

"On the outskirts of a port city lies a run-down house and an abandoned factory. A place where an inn is located in the dark alley Greyville, a grey city where no one cares for each other."

Dark Moon: The Grey City will be fittingly set in the town of Greyvill, a port city where everyone has to fend for themselves. The fact that Greyville is described as a city with a port implies that it is close to the sea, which is also coherent with what we saw in Teaser 1 of Under the Skin.

In the opening scene we see K (Khan?) talking to an injured man, possibly the current alpha of the pack who is about to pass his role onto K. The messy alley where this conversation is taking place also fits the description that we have of the run-down alley where the inn of Greyville is supposedly located.

One thing that doesn't fit, however, is the attitude of the characters on screen: Greyville is described as a city where no one cares about each other but K cares about the dying man and, in turn, he cares about the pups.

This contrast between the people of Greyville and the wolves of the pack will probably be very important moving forward: Greyville is a Grey City that might be violent and unforgiving. But the pack is always there for each other and no one is left behind.

[igiveyoumyblood]

'War Cry' MV First Reactions

Here it is. The dual comeback. Actual wolfy things going on. I love it. So of course, you would expect ENHYPEN to be super vampiric, right? Wrong... I'm super disappointed.

Anyway, I'm disappointed in ENHYPEN's creative team, not in &TEAM and their comeback. So let's talk about the wolfy half of our supernatural duo.

I will say, I tried to learn everyone's names and faces, and although I know all of the names, I'm in that period where I'm getting stuff wrong (probably), so please be nice to me and correct me if I get someone's name wrong.

As far as general thoughts - well really, it's more of the same. I like how there were more wolfy things here. I was especially a fan of the 'wolf's jaws' choreo, but we'll get to that.

&TEAM lack the explicit storyline that ENHYPEN do - we get the girls, we get K being traumatised and becoming the leader of the pack (fitting considering his irl story), and we get them doing wolfy things and having fun in high school (cough, K in his mid 20s, cough), while both hunting and being hunted by the girl and ENHYPEN. Snazzy.

So let's have a look at what goes on in this one, while trying to be less stressed about how it fits into the storyine and more interested in how it uses cinematography in general, and symbols etc to tell a story.

We open on K in this wondrous rocky environment which reminds me of the set from ENHYPEN's 'Sacrifice.' There is a full moon (wow, who would have guessed a werewolf story would have a full moon) and a bloody sky (wow who would have guessed that a vampire story would have a blood red sky).

I do think it's a bit interesting how fake the rocks look. I mean, obviously they are fake, it's a set. But HYBE has the money and dedicaton to concept to make them look real if it wants to. I think this is another case of songs like 'Sacrifice,' 'Film Out,' 'Nap of a Star' and so on - it's supposed to look fake because it's some alternate supernatural realm. The gardens in 'Nap of a Star' and 'Film Out' look fake because they're Magic Island, and the landscapes in 'Sacrifice' and 'War Cry' look fake because we're in some drunk-on-fantasy alternate universe.

Anyway, K also has this pendant with a circle and a fang/claw. Very wolfy.

So he puts it on and... I can only assume ascends to some kind of wolf godhood/leadership.

I mean, the fur coat screams 'power and leadership,' so unless the costum designer seriously lost the plot, I imagine this is what they are trying to communicate with this costume design.

Absolute genius shot, marry me director. Do you want to know all the things this shot does?

Is dark and creepy

Becomes almost monotone in the lighting - very Gothic

Lighting creates shillouettes of the members - so they in those positions, look like crouched creatures of prey stalking the audience

Lighting also highlights the ceiling - emphasising that they are underground, in the shadows (thus not trustworthy) and the room they are in, which mirrors ENHYPEN's previous cinematography.

The room also contrasts ENHYPEN, who are often shown in oppulent places - literally the peal-encrusted ballroom from 'Bite Me.' This is a common visual trope to show the difference between vampires and werewolves - luxury vs bare-bones, oppulent vs down-to-earth, godlike vs realistic. It's part of the vampire-werewolf fantasy which has been communicated wonderfully through just one shot of each group

Anyway. I like it, as you can tell. It's creepy, wolfy, AND it does some storyline heavy lifting.

I love this close up on K's eye to transition to the next shot. He has blue contacts, which leads nicely into the blue of the next shot. The red of the sky around him also leads into the red of the bridge. It can also be seen as either a manifestation of his new power or a vision of the future he is given.

Yet again, we get more running from the boys. The bridge looks like the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, which.... guys can we please stop being American? Do you really want to be American?

So when I saw him being chased by the ice, I thought it must have been one of the vampire powers, but I did some digging and it doesn't seem that any of ENHYPEN have ice powers. So I thought, perhaps it's Sooha, the girl - I think this because we have seen her around ice a lot - an easy example is ENHYPEN's Dark Blood concept trailer. But I could be completely wrong, and it could be something random, another party, or even just a random werewolf curse.

Sooha?!?!?!?!

Y'all, this is Nicholas, right? I'm not going crazy, right?

Anyway, the blue/white/silver eyes are a pretty self-explanatory mark of werewolfhood.

Considering how unfazed he is about the cold, perhaps the snow is a werewolf power? Especially since we see them all dancing without any distress in the snow. It could have been either overused or turned against them separately at the start when they had to run away from it.

Either that or the shot was purely and only made to make Nicholas look cool and there's no deep meaning...

Yuma you're a very pretty guy but this is scary please go away.

That said, I find it interesting that they chose to go black-and-white for this shot when the rest of the scene, including the rest of Yuma's part, is quite saturated. To create emphasis and irony about him saying 'my blood' while all the blood red from the previous shot drains out? Possibly.

'War Cry' werewolf moment #4.

Okay maybe the director just likes this kind of thing and how it was used for coolness in MVs like 'Guerrilla.'

I do find it interesting, though (wow what a surprise, I find everything interesting), that the nice pristine monotone is broken by bats and weird... musculature? Viscera? In Fuma and EJ's part. Or at least, I did find it interesting, until...

...it was used to add context to and make a nice transition into the next shot, showing that Harua was the one running from the ice, AND that it is no longer there.

Suspicious.

But he's still running anyway, so I will assume he has reason to be scared.

'War Cry' werewolf thing #5 and also an obvious 1) transition towards wolfhood (he jumps towards the moon), 2) loss of a safety net (jumping away from the bridge) and 3) a leap of faith (duh).

Y'all, this IS the best shot. This is the one that instantly made this MV a 10/10... okay, not really, but it did a lot of heavy lifting. This is the moment we finally get explicit werewolfdom, and is also just generally great.

It's action-packed, it's scary, and it places Harua/the wolves in a position of power over us the viewer - as they should be. Even better than that, it perfectly transitions into the next shot with the wolf-jaw choreo.

Just don't look too close at that CGI...

This is the transition I'm talking about. And Maki's hair looking a little like the fur of a wolf in the background is also stellar.

Give yourself up to wolf-hood. Worship K.

HELLLLLLL YESSSSSSSSSSSS

The angle, the claw hands, the chaos of the shadows and the bridge beams. Yas. This is why I watch kpop.

I know &TEAM are jpop but they're kpop adjacent run by a kpop team so... yup.

'War Cry' wolfiness #9.

Omg I am so sorry for this screenshot but it shows the water-bending things they're doing, which is the important bit.

'War Cry' wolfiness #10.

#11.

#12 what a cool shot. This whole scene is wondrously done except for the weird crotch-povs on K earlier in the scene. Which I did not include for obvious reasons (ahem, asexual ahem).

YESSSSSS #13.

#14 and also there is now fire and broken glass - destruction and possibly a battle with ENHYPEN.

Or Sooha.

And that is my image limit for this post so see you in part 2!

[rockrosethistle]

I'm thinking about the implications again.

The numbers that the hive mind performs aren't random. Both the lyrics and the choreography will often boil down to to one purpose: to cause pain. (Pokey is ruthless.)

Sometimes it's physical, and that's easy to spot. The cops spend half of their song just kicking and pushing people to the ground. Join Us And Die literally ends with Ted getting beat up.

And when the choreography doesn't allow for it, the lyrics are specifically trying to elicit an emotional response. The hive uses Alice to torment Bill. He's watching someone he loves die in front of him. It does the same for Charlotte.

Okay, the hive gets a kick out watching people suffer. That's not new information. But the implications...

Look at Inevitable. It's a pretty significant shift from the rest of the numbers. Whereas those seem tailored for pain and fear, Inevitable seems to be comforting? Just look.

Paul walks out, and the first thing he does is hug Emma. Which doesn't seem significant at first, but think: Did Bill get that same courtesy?

Alice's first line is meant to taunt Bill. Paul's is almost consolatory; " Emma / I'm sorry / you lost." I won't dissect this completely, the theory is that this first line is genuine. Paul is actually sorry that their plan failed.

And when you take a look at the choreography, it becomes clear that it's a lot kinder than the other songs.

We see Paul waltzing with Emma and kissing her hands. And even though he's not letting her get away, he's not trying to hurt her. He's not even trying to intimidate her. He's shown more than once bending down--getting on her level, like you would to a child--as opposed to towering over her.

The lyrics aren't messing with her either. Whereas Sam is manipulative and Alice is spiteful, Paul's lyrics are reassuring.

"I'm still the man you trust," is a lot different than "Don't you twust me?" when you get right down to it. It carries with it a connotation of 'I'm okay, and you will be too.'

"What if I told you I made it?" actively contradicts the 'I killed your loved one' narrative that Alice used with Bill.

It's not like Emma is buying any of it. She's still terrified. Paul doesn't need to hurt her or taunt her in order to scare her, just singing was enough. But it's clear that he's not trying to.

The hive mind gets a kick out of watching people suffer. Emma is the leading lady. You'd think that she's the one who should have the most brutal song. But she just doesn't. It seems like her song is trying to be the kindest.

We know it's implied that once they get infected, people are still conscious inside their musical doppelgängers (source: the line "your own body is your front row seat" as well as Sam breaking through its control long enough to say "Charlotte" before falling back under).

I think Paul was conscious during Inevitable. I think he knew that they weren't escaping this. I think he knew he was eventually going to kill Emma, and there was nothing he could do about it. But I think he didn't want her to suffer.

Instead, I think he resolved to give her as kind a death as he could. He would lie. He'd tell her he was happy and that she was safe. He'd be as gentle as the hive mind allowed. She was running out of time, so he'd love her with every second they had left.

(but that's just a theory...a musical theory... and cut)

[oblique-lane]

hey since you’ve posted two pieces in a row about my boy Scout I was wondering if maybe you could write more your thoughts/your hcs about him? I think he’s really interesting and I don’t often see people realize that he’s more complex that what he seems, like this man just seems very sad inside. i really like your analyses and your takes are some of my favorites

hope you have a good day!

Appreciate it! Although I probably won't say anything particularly new... Okay, let's talk about Scout!

Though he no doubt wears the persona of a confident cool guy, protecting his ego from vulnerability, I wouldn't say there's sadness inside him. More accurate would be fear.

People with sadness baggage are pretty passive and quiet. And Scout's reaction is to hit, run, scare away, cling anxiously to the object of security. That's fear. He's fearful.

He doesn't think about it much, he's a pretty happy guy in the environment he's in. But if something makes him go off the rails and he starts, God forbid, thinking.....

His core fear is not living up to his place in the world. He knows there's a place for him, but for some reason he feels like people think he's not good enough to take it. Anyone better and stronger could take his place at any time. He's on bird's rights here.

Growing up with older brothers, being not good at school, being the smallest and youngest mercenary of the team, this feeling doesn't leave him ever. It's a tiresome inner struggle: "How do I make my stay secure?", "How do I become worthy?"

Falling into this cognitive trap of searching for self validation in the outside world instead of inside of himself, he was doomed to be stuck in ambivalence:

To continue to pretend, risking being exposed as an imposter, or to be sincere and inevitably endure the unbearable pain of rejection and loneliness?

He laughs and taunts and overexplains himself so much. He clings to the only thing he's better than everyone at. He overcompensates; he demands attention and tries to make himself bigger. He hates being alone as it basically feels like being actually pushed off his place in the world. He clings to people but immediately pushes them away for being too dangerously close to finding out his fears. He needs to be with everyone to know and to control what they think about him.

And it never makes him calm down anyway, since all those efforts take a lot of energy. Tiresome to be, tiresome to pretend. And the prize is nowhere near the sight.

This loop of pain will never end, unless he breaks the very core mindset of his. The answer is stepping into this fear, but he can't even think about it! It feels like death! His ego will die and it's going to feel like he's dying as a whole.

A full existential, primal fear of an child to be rejected by his parent. "Not worthy of living".

(Based on the Lise Bourbeau's model of 5 soul wounds: Abandonment)

[jevilowo]

I love dates in the tf2 lore. I love knowing exactly when stuff happened. Which makes THIS THING I JUST FOUND a BEAUTIFUL MIRACLE

You've seen this image before, but have you noticed the dates on the prison card thingies? Presumably this is written the American Way (the writers are so american they make Scout and Sniper both call their mothers "mom" despite preferring "ma" and "mum" respectively, as shown previously SEVERal times), so Spy and Scout were arrested on

The 7th of September, 1972.

We can do a lot with this information.

Mann Co was taken over by Grey and Olivia half a month before this: roughly the 23rd of August

Contrary to popular belief, most of the comics have to take place in 1973! Seeing as 6 months after late August is late February.

This also means Scout had to have been born in 1946/7. Not sure about Sniper, I have yet to overanalyse the New Zealand timeline paragraph. I'll get to it eventually.

Medic implies in comic 6 that our mercs have worked together for "at least eight years", while talking about the lore breaking Demo eyeball halloween thing. Assuming the "at least" confusion is over the 1972 Halloween they missed while not working together, the Teufort Nine were hired in 1964.

(I've almost mentally rationalised the lore breaking eyeball as a thing they do at like 4am after regular Scream Fortress shenanigans. Almost.)

Scout claims he has known Ms Pauling for six years. During the War! update, Demoman is unfamiliar with Ms Pauling (he knows she works for the administrator, but thats it), so we can assume that is the point she started working more closely with the mercs, and also 1966/7

I really need to go back to actively working on my timeline instead of passively wondering at 11pm "hey what time of year is it in the comics" and going down a rabbit hole.

Uh if you want to build off this, feel free to, but tell society twas I, the great and nobel Jevil_Owo, who first conceptualised all this.

UPDATE! This post seems to be picking up reblog steam again, so now is a good time to say I was WRONG about the mercs being hired around 1964.

This blog post from 2009 claims the WAR update took place in 1962, meaning the mercs have to have been hired in early 1962 at the latest.

Seeing as Scout would have been 15/16 in 1962, and as that's kind of the youngest one can be hired for just about anything, I'd assume it actually is 1962 they were hired. Ok thats enough I just felt it was my duty as Person Timelining to update people on this Discovery.