#(and also looking at them long enough to make this gifset has seriously impacted my cognitive capacity)

[uhbasicallyjustmilex]

alex + looking at miles

[number5theboy]

Please elaborate on how Five could've turned into the most insufferable character to watch

Thanks for asking me to elaborate on this text post:

@tessapercygranger​, @waywardd1​ and @margarita-umbrella​ also wanted to see a more detailed version of it, and I ended up writing an essay that’s longer than some of my actual academic essays. So buckle up.

WHY NUMBER FIVE SHOULD BE THE MOST OBNOXIOUS CHARACTER IN TV HISTORY, AND HOW HE MANAGES NOT TO BE

Number Five: The Concept That Could Go Horribly Wrong

Alright, let’s first look at Five in theory in an overarching way, without taking into account the execution of the show. The basic set-up of the character, of course, is being a 58-year-old consciousness in a teenager’s body, due to a miscalculation in time travel. Right off the bat, Five is bar none the most overpowered of the siblings; by the end of Season 2, no one has yet been able to defeat him in a fight. He is a master assassin – and not just any master assassin, but the best one there is – and a survival expert, able to do complex maths and physics without the aid of a calculator, shown to have knowledge of half a dozen languages, has very developed observational skills and, to top that all off, he can manipulate time and space to the point where he can literally erase events that happened and change the course of history. And Five knows how skilled he is; he is arrogant, self-assured and sarcastic, and his streak of goodness is buried deep inside. David Castañeda once described Five in an interview as 90% chocolate with a cherry in the middle, meaning that you have to get through a lot of darkness and bitterness before knowing there is a good core, and I think it’s an excellent metaphor. However, Five is also incredibly, fundamentally terrible at communicating with anyone, and, because he is the only one with time travel abilities, the character a lot of the actual plot - and the moving forward of it - centres around. Also he’s earnestly in love with a mannequin, who is pretty much a projection of his own consciousness that functions as a coping mechanism for all the trauma he has endured. All in all, this gives you a character who looks like a teenager, but with the smug superiority of a fifty-something, who a) is extremely skilled in many different things, b) has a superiority complex, is arrogant and vocal about it, and most of the superiority is expressed through cutting sarcasm, c) has one very hidden ounce of goodness that he is literally the worst at communicating to other human beings, d) is what moves the plot along but is also bad at talking to anyone else, meaning that the plot largely remains with him, and e) his love interest is essentially a projection of himself. Tell me that’s not a character who is destined to be just…obnoxious, annoying, egocentric, a necessary evil that one has to put up with to get through this show. There are so many elements of this characterisation that can and should easily make Five beyond insufferable, but the show manages to avoid it, and I’m putting this down to three aspects.

That Trick of Age and Appearance

Bluntly put, Five as a character would not work if he was anything else than an old man in a 13-year-old body. Imagine this character and all his skills and knowledge, but actually just…a teenager. Immediately insufferable. Same goes for him being around 30, like his siblings, all of which are stunted and traumatised by their father’s abuse. If Five, being comparatively unscathed by Reginald to the point where he explicitly does not want to be defined by his association with his father, were 30 like his siblings, it would just take the bite out of that plot point and also give him a lot less time in the apocalypse, reducing the impact it had on him as a person. And making Five his actual 58-year-old self would make him very similar to Reginald, at least on surface level, with the appearance and attitude. Five and Reginald are two fundamentally different people, but having one of the siblings being a senior citizen that’s dressed to the nines and bosses his siblings around in a relatively self-centred way does open up that parallel, and would take away from Five’s charm as a character. Because pairing the life experience of a 58-year-old with the appearance of a teenager gives you the best of both worlds. You get the other siblings (and a lot of the audience, from a glance in the tags of my gifsets) feeling protective and paternal about Five, but his age and experience also give the justifications for his many skills, his arrogance, in a way, and his ability to decimate a room full of people. It’s the very interesting and not new concept of someone dangerous with the appearance of something harmless, a child. This is also where Five’s singular outfit comes in. I know we like to clown on Five to get a new outfit, but I think what gets forgotten often is how effective this outfit is at making the viewer take him seriously. The preppy school uniform is the perfect encapsulation of the tension between old man in spirit and young teenager in appearance. The blazer, vest and especially the shirt and tie are quite formal, relatively grown up. They’re not something we, the audience, usually associate with a teenage boy wearing; it makes Five just a little bit more grown up. But there is also a reason characters in this show keep bringing up Five’s shorts and his socks, because those are not things that we associate with grown men wearing; they’re the unmistakably childish part of his school uniform. Take a moment and imagine Five wearing a hoodie or a t-shirt, jeans, and sneakers; would that outfit work for him as well as the uniform does? Would he be able to command the same kind of respect or seriousness as a character? I don’t think so; the outfit is a lot more pivotal in making Five believable than a lot of people give it credit for.

Writing Nuance

The other big building block in not making Five incredibly insufferable is the writing. Objectively speaking, I think Five is the most well-written, and, more importantly, most coherently written character on the show (which does have to do with the fact that the show’s events are all sequential for him), and his arc and personality remain relatively intact over the course of the two seasons. More to the point, a giant part of what makes Five bearable as a character is that he is allowed to fail. He is written to have high highs and low lows, big victories through his skills and his intelligence, but also catastrophic failures and the freedom to be wrong. His superior intellect and skillset are not the be-all end-all of the plot or his character, just something that influences both. His inability for communication has not (yet) been used to fabricate a contrived misunderstanding that derails the plot and left all of us seething; instead, it’s a characteristic that makes him fail to reconnect with the people he loves. This is a bit simplified, as he does find common ground with Luther, for example, but in general, a lot of the rift between Five and his siblings is that they can’t relate to his traumas and he does not understand the depth of Reginald’s abuse, which is an interesting conflict worth exploring. Another thing that really works in Five’s favour is that he is definitely written to be mean and sarcastic, but it is never driven to the point of complete unlikability, and a lot of the time, the context makes it understandable why he reacts the way he does. Most of the sarcastic lines he gets are actually funny, that certainly helps, but in general, Five is a good example of a bearable character whose default personality is sharp and relatively cold, because it is balanced out with many moments of vulnerability. Delores is incredibly important for this in the first season, she is the main focus of Five’s humanising moments, and well-written as she totes the line between clearly being a coping mechanism for an extremely traumatised man and still coming across to the viewer as the human contact Five needs her to be. In the second season, the vulnerability is about his guilt for his siblings, it’s about Five connecting a little bit better to them. There’s also his relationship with the Commission and the Handler specifically – which honestly could be an essay on its own – that deserves a mention, because the Handler is why Five became the man he is, and this dynamic between creator and creation is explored in a very interesting way – their scenes are some of the most well-written in the entire show. And TUA never falls into the trap of making Five a hero, he is always morally ambiguous at best, and it just makes for an interesting, multi-faceted character, well-written character, and none of the characteristics that should make him unlikeable are allowed to take centre-stage for long enough to be defining on their own. I know a lot of people especially champion the scenes where Five goes apeshit, but without his more nuanced characterisation, if he was like that all the time, those scenes would not hit as hard.

Aidan Gallagher’s Performance is Underrated

But honestly, none of the above would matter that much if the Umbrella Academy didn’t luck out hard with the casting of Aidan Gallagher. I think what he achieves as an actor in this show is genuinely underappreciated. Like, the first season set out to cast six adults having to deal with various ramifications of childhood trauma, and a literal child that had to be able to act smart and wise beyond his years, seamlessly integrate into a family of adults while seeming like an adult, traumatised by the literal end of the world, AND had to be able to create the romantic chemistry of a thirty-year-long marriage with a lifeless department store doll. The only role I could think of to compare is Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, where she plays a vampire child who, because she is undead, doesn’t age physically, but does mentally, so she’s 400 in a child’s body. And Kirsten Dunst had to do that for a two-hour movie. Five is a main character in a show that spans 20 episodes now. That’s insane, and it’s a risk. Five is a character that can’t be allowed to go wrong; if you don’t buy Five as a character, the entire first season loses believability. And they found someone who could do that not only convincingly, but also likeably. As I said, he is incredibly helped by the costuming department and the script, but Aidan Gallager’s Five has so much personality, he’s threatening and funny and charming and arrogant and heartbreaking. He has the range to be convincing in the quiet moments where Five’s humanity comes to show and in the moments where Five goes completely off the rails. Most child actors act with other children, but he is the only child in the main cast, and holds his own in scenes with adults not as a child, but as an adult on equal footing with the other adult characters. That’s not something to be taken for granted. But even apart from the fact that it’s a child actor who carries a lot of the plot and the drama of a series for adults, Aidan Gallagher’s portrayal of Five is also just so much fun. The comedic timing is on point, he has the dramatic chops for the serious scenes, the mannerisms and visual ticks add to the character rather than distract from him, and his line deliveries, paired with his physical acting, make Five arrogant and smug but never outright malicious and unlikeable. It’s just some terrific acting that really does justice to the character as he is written, but the writing would not be as strong if it wasn’t delivered and acted out the way Aidan Gallagher does. He is an incredible asset for this show.

Alright, onto concluding this rambling. If you made it this far, I commend you, and thank you for it. The point of all of this is that Five, as a character, could have been an unmitigated disaster of a TV character. He is overpowered, arrogant, uncommunicative and could so easily have been either unconvincing or completely unlikeable, but he turned out to be neither. It’s a combination of choices in the costume department, decisions in the writing room, and Aidan Gallagher’s acting skills that make the things that should make him obnoxious and annoying incredibly entertaining, and I hope you liked my long-winded exploration of these. Some nuance was lost along the way, but if I had not stopped myself, this would’ve become a full-blown thesis.

[wuxian-vs-wangji]

Sorry if you've answered this before but I'm curious about the lost tomb. Does one need to watch the other seasons to watch the reboot or whatever the new thing is? I saw gifs from it a couple months back and thought the cast was really pretty but didn't watch because I didn't want to have to watch all that other stuff to get to the pretty boys yanno? Would I be losing out on anything by not watching the other content?

Hum...

So I watched “The Lost Tomb” first, the original season is only 10 episodes long, and then dove immediately into “Reunion”;  but since every single character is re-cast between seasons with extremely few exceptions, you still have to learn everyone over again. I did feel like I was missing some stuff, but not to a degree that impacted my viewing.

Um... I’ll make a little character guide for you. Read that and you should be fine::

Wu Xie (Iron Triangle #1)

Wu Xie is the main POV focus. Wu Xie’s great-grandfather began robbing tombs during China’s great famine as a way to feed his family. He left behind The Gravedigger’s Notebook (title of the book series), which catalogues hidden tombs both explored and rumored. It is considered the family’s greatest treasure.

Wu Xie does not rob tombs to make money. He believes in studying their history and secrets, and sort of goes in as an advanced scout before summoning archaeological teams and donating everything inside to museums and such.

In the original “Lost Tomb” series (2015), Wu Xie is poisoned inside a tomb. To save his life, Xiao Ge feeds him something called “Dragon Medicine”- an ancient, rare form of Chinese medicine that grows more potent with age. The piece Wu Xie eats is 3,000 years old, and it causes permanent changes to his DNA. This appears in the story as both Wu Xie’s blood being used to protect others sometimes and whenever someone mentions Wu Xie having “Dragon’s Blood”.

Kylin // Zhang Qiling // Xiao Ge (Iron Triangle #2)

A 100+++ year old tomb raider. Xiao Ge is the patriarch of the most powerful tomb raiding family- though he doesn’t have anything to do with them. His kind are incredibly long lived and he may even be an immortal- so long as he doesn’t die of injury, starvation, cold, etc.

His blood is a deterrent to most of the creepy crawlies in tombs, it can cure some poisons, and he has two fingers on his right hand that are elongated and possess near super strength thanks to an ancient and lost technique. 

Xiao Ge often wanders off on his own, but he always appears when Wu Xie is in trouble. For an unknown reason, Xiao Ge has had a couple instances in the past where he as badly injured and lost time or memory entirely, so much of his past is a mystery to him as well.

Wang Pangzi // Fatty (Iron Triangle #3)

Wu Xie’s constant companion and, along with Xiao Ge, one of his best friends. Pangzi was a tomb robber once upon a time, but a couple of raids in a row landed him with Wu Xie, who doesn’t allow him to steal.

Pangzi has friends in low places, but Wu Xie has become the person he is most loyal to. Seriously, they act like an old married couple most of the time. Oh, and Pangzi might have magical abilities like Xiao Ge- no matter how long they’ve been in a tomb or how unprepared they were to enter, he somehow always has plenty of peanuts or sunflower seeds in his pockets. It’s a running joke.

** Wu Xie’s uncle Sanxing had a companion and right hand man named Panzi who is mentioned a couple times. It gets confusing, just a heads up.

Wu Sanxing // Third Uncle

(Couldn’t find a GIF)

Wu Xie’s father is the first brother, Wu Sanxing is the third (the second is listed next). Wu Xie idolized his uncle Sanxing his entire life, but Wu Sanxing vanished after a tomb exploration, never to be seen or heard from again. 

Wu Xie’s guiding mission is to find his uncle Sanxing at all costs- but to do that he must use his grandfather’s notebook to follow in his uncle’s footsteps and try to piece together a decades-old mystery.

Wu Erbai // Second Uncle

Wu Xie’s... second uncle, lmao!

With Wu Sanxing missing, Wu Erbai is the only family Wu Xie has around (in some “Lost Tomb” adaptations Wu Xie says his parents are dead, but in this one it is implied they are alive but estranged from Wu Xie). Wu Erbai is a bit of a mob boss, though he is kind to his family. He tends to finance Wu Xie’s explorations and takes a keen interest in his nephew’s safety and wellbeing.

A-Ning

(No GIF)

A-Ning was one of the first tomb robbers Wu Xie ever encountered on his travels. Over “The Lost Tomb” series, Wu Xie and A-Ning go from enemies to friends- and there are little hints that they may have been heading towards intimate relations.

In “Reunion”, A-Ning is revealed to have died on Wu Xie’s watch as they searched for a tomb (IDK if this is part of another of the Lost Tomb shows, I’m going back now to watch my way through the whole series). Her memory is very present in the story, so it was worth mentioning her.

Black Glasses // Hei Yanjing

(Not Giffed, but... you know... look for a dude all in black wearing sunglasses religiously)

One of the people Wu Erbai has on his payroll. Black Glasses is another semi-immortal. He is only a little bit younger than Xiao Ge, and very nearly his equal in terms of power. 

Yanjing’s main abilities lie in his eyes though. Out in the world- day or night- he is blind without his simple black sunglasses. In a pitch-black tomb though, he can see perfectly due to his insanely good night vision.

Xiao Ge fights mainly with his sword, but Yanjing is more fond of modern weapons such as guns. He’ll use anything to his advantage- and he’s quite mouthy. I think he and Xiao Ge are... cousins? Or something?

=========

=========

That’s pretty much it for “Reunion”. There are a few other characters who are returns from earlier seasons, but their purposes are pretty easy to guess and their roles minor enough that you’ll pick up on their characters pretty quickly. This includes Liu Sang- the one whose GIFsets I keep sharing :)

The show contains itself in its own story very well, so I think you’ll be able to make it through. But if you feel lost, all I watched before going into it was “The Lost Tomb” from 2015 (10 episodes), mainly to learn who the characters are. You can also look up the characters in the DMBJ Wiki (DMBJ = shorthand for the name of the novel).

[mavrustheunskooled]

Why is Bare: A Pop Opera not as super popular as Dear Evan Hansen or Be More Chill? The fandom loves LGBT rep (which Bare has) and the songs are amazing and I think B:APO is actually superior to both of those. Thoughts? I mean the musical fandom tends to try to find LGBT characters even when they aren't stated, so why do you think Bare is not as popular?

this is a very interesting question and I am hopefully going to do it justice by analyzing Fandom, Musical Writing, and Many Other Things I’m Super Passionate About

the short: many factors and a lot of luck

the unnecessarily long: 

(opening disclaimer: I love dear evan hansen and be more chill, and I’m not upset that they’re popular musicals because I feel that they’re popular for a reason. anything that sounds like an insult in the following response isn’t such because I truly enjoy both of those musicals a lot) 

(another disclaimer: spoilers for bare, DEH, and BMC, also mentions of homophobia) 

on paper, bare seems like the exact sort of musical that would be popular. bare the musical (cursed as it is) has a cast of super popular actors like Barrett Wilbert Weed, Gerard Canonico, Taylor Trensch, Alice Lee, Alex Wyse, a high quality bootleg exists of the 2013 LA cast, it’s got LGBT+ rep, complex women characters… and yet it’s got a tiny fan base. Why? 

first let’s look at why dear evan hansen and be more chill are popular. I’m more well versed in bmc, so let’s look at its history (disclaimer: I’m estimating dates but this is roughly the timeline) 

the original bmc run was in 2015 I believe. they recorded a soundtrack, everything was fine, and they closed. in 2017, people began discovering the soundtrack in hoards. specifically, they were discovering one song: Michael in the bathroom. that’s even how I learned about the show- I heard that song and had to look up the rest of the soundtrack. and in February of 2019, they’ll start previews on broadway because the fandom was revived 

why this song? I think a ton of fame comes from talent, yes, but also from luck. I think bmc was lucky that Michael in the bathroom, a great song, was discovered as the great song that it is. I also think the fame came because that song is super relatable. as someone with pretty bad anxiety, that song really touched me because I’ve definitely spent parties hiding in the bathroom and avoiding everyone and wishing I was dead because I’m so overwhelmed with anxiety. it’s relatable, so people flocked to it. 

this made me pause to think “what is bare’s hook song” my first thought was a quiet night at home if we want a song in the same vein as MITB, but that song isn’t as hype as MITB (and fandoms don’t care about fem characters as much as it cares about masc characters). my next thought was are you there because I think it’s a bop and a relatable “pls someone help” kind of song, but I don’t know which song everyone could relate to as much as everyone could relate to MITB 

and speaking of relatable content- that’s where the DEH connection comes in. dear evan hansen is similarly relatable, although it takes that to an extreme given what Evan does as a result of his anxiety. Michael and Evan are relatable characters, even if you don’t condone everything they do (and if you condone everything Evan does, we have much to talk about)

but doesn’t bare have relatable characters?? absolutely !! there’s Peter, a closeted gay kid who wants to come out, and Jason, someone who acts tough but is secretly very insecure, and Nadia, with her body image issues, and Ivy, who people won’t take seriously because they’ve decided they already know her, and so many other complex characters. so why are they left behind? 

let’s look at bare’s history: 

bare was originally written in the 90s (I want to say 1999, but I could be wrong) the performance most people consider the quintessential bare performance was in 2004 with Michael Arden, John Hill, Jenna Leigh Green, etc. 

if you compare this to DEH and BMC, the first issue is clear. DEH was hugely popular around 2016. BMC began to grow in popularity in 2017. these are very, very new shows. 20 years doesn’t sound like a lot, but in our current age where time seems to pass so quickly which each new fad, bare seems like an older musical, and a lot of people aren’t the biggest fan of older musicals. and they don’t have to be !! but it’s a personal preference of some people that could affect how they view bare as a potential musical to be a fan of 

in terms of the music of bare, it’s definitely catchy, but it’s not like a pop song. (again, no shade at DEH and BMC because those aren’t jukebox musicals or anything). bare is simply not as easy to listen to as DEH and BMC are in my opinion (and it’s not the most complicated thing ever either, but holy cow its lyrics are smart and I have to throw that in here) 

now let’s look at reasons why people may not want to watch bare. while it is great that it has canon gay characters, compelling women characters, and is very cleverly written it also has issues that can be turn-offs to people. this includes: 

-bury your gays

-gay-guy-cheats-on-boyfriend-with-girl trope 

-gay-guy-gets-outed trope 

-and potentially other homophobic tropes

I’m not shaming bare for perpetuating these tropes because it was written 20 years ago, and lgbt+ people are allowed to enjoy media in spite of its perpetuation of negative tropes, but for some people these things are enough to turn them away. and I don’t blame them! I watched bare the musical before I watched bare a pop opera, and when Jason I died I closed out of YouTube without finishing the show because I was so Sick of bury your gays. 

I am aware that there are reasons Jason died at the end of bare (they’re making a statement about how homophobia kills, particularly how homophobic religious people can have an awful affect on young religious gay people), but there comes a time when “reasons for a gay character to die” is just too much. sometimes, you just want the gay character to live, and I completely respect that notion because I felt the exact same way when I watched bare the musical. I remember when I first watched bare the musical I wrote a thread about how as a Romeo and Juliet adaptation, bare follows some things closely (like death at the end) while avoiding other extremes (Romeo running off to another country) and I thus felt the death was unnecessary. if someone else feels similarly about being sick of gay characters dying, they have every right to not want to watch bare 

that’s enough on why someone might not want to watch bare. let’s get back to bare vs DEH and BMC 

I also think a big aspect of fandoms is shipping. the fetishization of MLM (and consequently ignoring fem characters completely, along with focusing solely on white men for their shipping and ignoring men of color) is a huge problem in fandoms that I could talk about forever, but for the sake of this response, I’ll keep it a bit shorter 

DEH and BMC profit heavily off of shipping in terms of gaining popularity. people love Evan x Connor (and other ships but that’s the main one I see), and people love Jeremy x Michael (and others). so why then do people not care about bare, a show with a canon relationship between 2 basic white men, which is their ultimate goal? 

I think people like the idea of these mlm ships more than canon content. if there’s canon, it’s harder for them to make a variety of ships because it feels like everything else has to rotate around the canon without touching it (which is where the bare fandom gets Matt x Lucas because they’re the closest they have to 2 basic men- I can write my criticism of them another time though) 

I’ve also seen posts saying that things with canon lgbt+ characters sometimes have smaller fandoms because there is no need for lgbt+ theorizing- it’s right there, and if you want lgbt+ content, watch the thing. I don’t necessarily agree with this for myself (I’ll reblog every pilgrim’s hands gifset I see) but I can definitely see how other people might think this way 

failing to hype up stuff with lgbt+ characters can have a negative impact. BMC is the prime example of how a show can be revived by its passionate fan base. if people aren’t talking about bare, it’s not going to spread like other shows do 

this is kind of all over the place but anyway- I want to talk about characters more. one thing DEH and BMC have are great, complex characters that are very easy to boil down to a fandom’s favorite stereotypes. I am absolutely not saying DEH and BMC have simple characters because I think all of them have layers; however, fandoms do love to go “this is precious cinnamon roll who can do no wrong and this is evil awful terrible irredeemable person” and it’s a bit difficult to do that with bare. 

you can say Peter is your perfect son, but he does try to force Jason out before he’s ready. you can say Ivy is the evil seductress trying to tear apart your gay babies, but I will physically fight you. there aren’t any black-and-white good or bad bare characters (except Father Flynn- hate him), which doesn’t fit in line with the way fandoms function. sweeping generalizations about the current state of society based on the internet are exhausting and bad, but we do live in an age where everything must either be perfect or evil, and you can’t do that with bare. no one “did nothing wrong uwu” and that’s what fandoms Want 

(note: they will excuse wrong actions, such as everything wrong Connor Murphy has ever done, if the character is played by a mildly attractive guy they want to ship with another mildly attractive guy) 

another point that I don’t have fully fleshed out thoughts on enough to devote too much time to is the integration of parents into the shows. in both DEH and BMC, the parents get redemption arcs. in bare, Claire does say she love Peter at the end, but she’s much less of a sympathetic character than Mr. Heere or Heidi (that’s her name right- Evan’s mom) or the Murphys. when I was younger, I wasn’t allowed to watch anything that painted parents, or adults in general, in a negative light, but maybe that’s not a universal experience 

this is getting way too long and it probably has more thought put into it than what was necessary, so I’ll try to close this quickly 

I think, first off, that DEH and BMC completely deserve the hype that they have received. they’ve got compelling stories, interesting characters, and fantastic soundtracks. I also think that luck factors heavily into them getting what they deserve. there are plenty of great shows, like bare and the boy who danced on air and spies are forever and probably more that I’m not thinking of, that have great music and characters and story that, out of sheer chance, don’t get the chance they should have been given. there is no bulleted list someone can follow and at the end they’ll be on broadway with an armful of tonys; is the luck of the draw, and bare has not been afforded that chance 

I’ll end with some reasons why anyone who happened to read this but might not be a bare fan should listen to or watch bare: 

- it is an amazingly clever show; every time I watch it or listen to it, I realize another moment of foreshadowing or a line I originally brushed off was actually very significant or there’s another recurring motif/theme in the music 

- it’s full of bops (go listen to you and I or are you there or portrait of a girl) 

- canon gay characters in a canon gay relationship 

- 3 dimensional fem characters that actively criticize stereotypes 

- it’s about a religious gay boy who grapples with his religion and his sexuality and how those two things can coexist 

- it is Very Very Good

in conclusion: bare is very good and deserves attention xx

[bapofficial]

As a baptan stan, every time I see people say things like “b.a.p would have been as popular as bts is right now if it wasn’t for the hiatus” or “b.a.p fans left and became bts fans because they got bored of waiting during the hiatus” I kind of want to bash my head against a real living version of the stupid ass tsent tree logo. 

I mean of course the hiatus did come at a bad time in terms of where they were in their career, and some fans did leave, so ultimately it did harm their popularity. But seeing this repeated everywhere sheds unnecessary negativity on the hiatus which we really don’t need because there’s already enough of that. B.a.p filed a lawsuit because they were being mistreated and taken advantage of by their shitty company, and were on hiatus for so long because said shitty company played dirty and kept postponing things and dragging it out. (Also please don’t ever wish b.a.p never took action to protect themselves for the sake of maintaining their popularity - wouldn’t it be hypocritical for a group known for their musical themes of social justice and standing up for what’s right to stand down when it came to their own matters and let themselves be used like that? Of course we don’t know exactly how things are now, but if they have money to buy cars and get time to go on holiday and see their families etc, it’s definitely better than before. Popularity is not more important than health etc.) 

Do you really think that a company who still pays their managers two months late, and announced a world tour out of the blue even though b.a.p members on several occasions said that they wanted to stay in korea in 2017 and focus on domestic activities (at least someone knows how to promote), would be able to put in half the thought and promotion that bighit has been doing since day 1? Of course nobody could predict the extent of the immense popularity bts has acquired (and several other kpop groups, or kpop in general recently), but bighit has been consistently marketing bts so well even since before debut: they were inevitably going to have a strong breakthrough of some sort.

Since everyone seems to be so eager to keep comparing the two groups (??????? never understood it and the pettiness shown by some fans from both sides????? please don’t be a loser thank you), let’s compare the management and marketing for a minute instead. 

Awesome things bighit has done to show they actually care about their group: 

constant presence on social media (twitter, facebook, youtube!!!!!!!! personally what made me really pay attention to bts back in 2013 was their bangtan bombs - humour reaches people where music taste might not)

actual dance practice videos!! (it’s ridiculous how easy it is to get views on youtube and yet we only have 2 proper b.a.p dance practice videos???)

focused on constantly promoting in korea without running the bts members into the ground and instead waiting for good times to go on tours, thus establishing a strong fanbase in korea (very important!!!!!)

don’t want to go on variety shows? make your own! bts run and gayo videos on v app - cheap and easy way of keeping fans interested during times when there’s not much new content

Stupid ass things ts did before the lawsuit (aside from the whole mistreating them thing y’know) that limited b.a.p’s popularity from the start and showed that they didn’t give a shit about their main money-makers:

not doing any of the cool things above that bighit does

no but seriously where the FUk are the dance practice videos???? listen this loses ts out on millions of youtube views I don’t understand what’s so hard? about filming them doing what they do all the time? and posting it?

Stupid ass things ts does now after the hiatus:

hahaha international fans = $$$$$$ right? milk out the international fans and throw b.a.p on an impromptu world tour when you’re in debt why not

it’s not like b.a.p is a korean group living and promoting in korea right? not like appealing to potential korean fans matters right? of course not hahahah :))

only gave b.a.p two-ish weeks to promote wake me up instead of the usual four (+ extra week of follow-up promos) to squeeze in said world tour

literally does not know how to promote - spends a load of money making nice music videos but then doesn’t seem to care about getting people to watch them

So basically, even if the whole mistreatment/lawsuit/hiatus thing hadn’t happened, and music styles/member personalities/etc aside, as long as b.a.p was with ts to begin with, you can’t really say they could have been as popular as bts. If they had debuted with a better company - well that’s too much guessing - we really can’t know what might have happened then. People really like to exaggerate how popular b.a.p was before the lawsuit and talk as if the hiatus completely destroyed them - really not the case. To quote something I wrote on a previous post:

people sometimes compare B.A.P’s youtube views to other groups, where we usually don’t do as well. then there’s the usual topic of some fans leaving and moving to other groups during the hiatus etc etc etc……. well actually, our youtube views aren’t really that different from pre-hiatus? I remember when 1004 (their main breakthrough and at the height of their career back then) was released on the 3rd of february, jongup’s wish was for the mv to reach 1 million views by his birthday on the 6th - 3 days later and it still didn’t reach 1 million. on the other hand, wake me up reached 2.25 million views in around 5 and a half days. with the explosion of kpop in the last couple of years, some groups enjoy immense success on a whole new scale. our achievements only seem inferior if we compare them to others 

(post)

So final remarks:

let’s please stop comparing everything b.a.p ever does to bts. and before you somehow call me out for doing that on this post, the point i’m trying to make is they’re really not the same and bts’s success was not a direct result of b.a.p’s hiatus. sure, it might have made a tiny impact in 2015, but right now? really? nope

b.a.p hasn’t been frozen in time since 2014? they’ve been active and gaining fans for the last year and a half. take a look at b.a.p mvs’ youtube comments and see how many people are curious and wanting to learn more. see how many new b.a.p blogs are popping up on tumblr. see how many more people are starting to make gifsets etc. see how many more views their comeback stage for wake me up got compared to any of their other post-hiatus comeback stages.

neither b.a.p nor their fans need pity

and on the bright (?) side, some slightly nicer things ts has done recently / since the hiatus:

this 찰떡B.A.P series on youtube and v app - posting fun videos at times when there’s no new content thus keeping a constant stream of it to keep fans entertained (finally)

letting the b.a.p members have more creative freedom. letting yongguk and sometimes zelo and the other members control their music, their concepts, their music videos etc clearly resulted in better quality music.

let jongup have blue hair

;) semi out