#that being said i hope we all understand that kwangya is not some complicated lore concept by now. sm was pretty clear abt it

[sanstropfremir]

what do u think of kpop groups having storylines and how it blends through each cb? this is definitely a 4th gen trait and some 3rd gen groups (but they’re not so strongly tied to the stories). still have no idea what ateez’s pirate thing is about. i really liked nct’s whole thing, esp nct 2018 but then sm loss the creatives behind it and now it feels messy. aespa’s kwangya is in its early stages but it’ll probably drop as they mature.

to be completely honest i do not care about it at all. if the creative teams are doing their jobs well then it shouldn't matter to the audience's enjoyment. artistic forms that employ spectacle as their main delivery method utilize suspension of disbelief in a very different way that something like, for example, your average television series does. despite having comparably horrid eyesight, human beings are very visual creatures, it is the primary way that we engage with our environment. and if you create something that has sound internal visual logic, no matter how crazy or weird or 'unrealistic' it is, our subsconcious will accept it as 'making sense' even though we know logically that it doesn't. that's why a medium like music videos has become so prominent as a cultural staple; they're about illustrating much more abstract concepts like 'feelings' and/or emotions, and it's very easy to do that when you tap into suspension of disbelief rather than trying to granularly recreate mundane situations. there is in fact, a reason why ancient greek plays are still performed to this day, some upwards of 2000 years after they were written, and that is because they are about tapping into the collective cathartic emotions of experiencing a story. do you need to know everything about greek mythology to understand the trojan women? absolutely not. when you are watching that play you are watching that specific moment in time and it is the job of the creative team to bring you into that world easily and immediately so you can live in that moment. and it is the exact same principle with a kpop music video. you can layer as many additional meanings on top that you want, you can make the text complicated or the beats weird or what have you, but the aesthetics are at the base of what keeps everything together.