#this is the quickest i've ever gotten a profile made

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Hi BPP,

I debated on this ask but decided to go for it. I have what may seem like an odd question but feel like you're probably the most sober minded about stuff like this because you've been in Kpop spaces a long time, aren't a Jimin bias, and have a much better understanding of how the big three and Hybe move. So I know you said in one of your previous posts that anyone thinking Hybe would purposely sabotage their own artist and choose to lose money is basically being an idiot (or something to that effect) I was inclined to agree except I can't think of another reason why things that may seem minor to some really do keep happening to Jimin.

His profile and merch not on Spotify.

His albums still not being shipped to Chinese fans after all this time.

Face not being restocked on the store.

Articles about an irrelevant racist shading Jimin and Yoongi actually posted on Weverse by the critic who was practically salivating over a Like Crazy freefall.

And the latest Take Two post by BH on Twitter with him being the only member with no embedded preview while all the others have it on theirs.

Now while the last may seem minor, the point is you can clearly tell it was intentional. Like you can't convince me someone just made a mistake. All these things and others taken together are not a coincidence. They are legit moving like he's not their artist at all, imo.

Anyway, my question is I know trending hashtags aren't all that effective. My ideas/experience of how to properly address these 'slights/errors/issues' or whatever we're calling them with BigHit where they will actually take it as serious from the fandom is non existent. I didn't mention all the things that happened with BB because for all we know that's being handled behind the scenes or not. Either way that ship has sailed and BB is basically committed to being shady to BTS so that to me is a losing battle until alot more people who can affect change in the industry join that conversation or until BangPD buys a radio station🙄. All that said it does seem to me it that someone in that company has a serious issue with Jimin. I know solos are problematic and always victimize the boys but in this instance I do think there is a legit concern. I have actually started to see other actual OT7 start to acknowledge there might be a problem. I guess my question is as loved as Jimin is (outside Army Twitter that is) I would think with enough incentive, push, noise by the fandom Hybe would get their butts in gear and resolve/address some of these things. At the very least ship the albums Chinese fans paid for. I know I can write to them but I guess I want to actually be effective and that takes more than one person so my question is have you ever seen this before and if so how exactly has Army addressed it in the past and gotten results? Yes, I know Jimin is a grown man and can advocate for himself but to be frank it doesn't seem like he spends too much time on focusing on unfair treatment. This seems to be more than that though and all these micro aggressions seem to keep happening. It's not like Jimin is aware his post on Tweet is different or his fans haven't gotten their CDs. Thanks for listening to my long diatribe and please don't hesitate to tell me I'm an idiot if I'm looking at this all wrong. I can more than take the criticism and frankly would love to have another perspective that makes a modicum of sense, instead of what seems like the obvious.

***

'Anon' later followed up with a link to a more exhaustive list of suspicious incidents that only happen to Jimin at the hands of HYBE. 'Anon', I know I said I'd get to this later, but I realized this would be simplest/quickest ask in my drafts to respond to, so might as well get this out of the way because the backlog I've got is atrocious lool.

Hi Anon,

I read the laundry list of suspicious incidents.

Normally, when I see these lists of grievances, I ignore them. For two reasons:

Hard as it might be to believe, I don't care to spend my time defending BigHit. With what I do for a living, incompetence is unforgivable, so you won't find me getting in the way of anyone checking even a whiff of it in BigHit.

This is just what solos do, collecting an ever-expanding list of targeted sabotage on their chosen member, to buttress their case for why the member they believe is better than the rest, should leave his company and go solo. Like, that's literally what all these people are there for. Hobi solos have a list that's twice as long as the Jimin one, just from the last 12 months. Jungkook solos have a shorter list but I can wager 40 pounds it will be longer than Jimin's by the end of the year. RM's grievance list is more focused on the fandom than the company, but even then there's complaints of shipping and restocking delays aplenty. No other group of solos have perfected the art more than Taehyung's, in my opinion. Solos exist to differentiate their chosen member, in every way - he is more disadvantaged, more talented, more long-suffering, more harmed, more beautiful, than anyone else - all of it is fuel to intensify their devoted support of that one member. It has the side-effect of motivating solos to stream harder so if a missing cake pic gets someone to rejig their playlist, you won't find me getting in the middle of that. I too want more streams for Jimin and other members.

Plus, most of the claims in these lists can be easily dismissed or cross-referenced by anyone who keeps up with things for all seven members, to see that most of these issues aren't unique to Jimin or any one member.

For example,

300k JITB sales were deleted off Hanteo with no explanation, even more sales were deleted in week 2, again with no explanation,

OTS is still not registered on KOMCA more than 3 months after release,

Indigo still hasn't shipped to China, RM solos use a network to get albums in after the sales are registered/counted in Singapore,

Jungkook's brother was doxxed on a gallery linked to the company and YG,

Suga's profile still doesn't have a bio and merch page, and his Agust D page didn't get one until March 2022 - years after Agust D and D-2, merch came two weeks after D-DAY was out,

Taehyung's official youtube views were frozen for 37 hours straight and millions of views deleted,

Yoongi and Jin's in-ears didn't work during Not Today encore stage,

Jungkook's Spotify streams were mysteriously deleted in 2022 to give a Blackpink member the title of most streamed k-artist until pushback then the streams were recalculated,

JITB was not listed on the official BTS website shop or by Geffen for months after it was released, like, you couldn't even find it to see if it was sold out or not from those websites,

etc...

And this is just off the top of my head. Not like this is a competition, I just happen see it for various members, other k-pop groups, and have recently seen a Stella Quaresma solo stan make a similar list, and seen grumblings from FLO stans on inconsistent streaming numbers for the group. Also, most people eventually come to understand that BigHit is the only fully independent label under HYBE.

And so, I usually ignore grievance lists like that, and leave whoever feels so moved as a result of it to do what they want.

Because, as I keep saying, everyone in this fandom just does what they want. And, all of what I wrote above aside, of course it's bad enough that these things are happening anyway. It doesn't matter how common it is, if it happens to the whole industry or just one person, if I think it's wrong it bothers me, even if only momentarily.

And so, I do what I want.

Usually that means doing my research to confirm the claim or my suspicions, talking about it with friends, if the issue is on a 3rd-party platform I raise the issue through that platform's support channels, and write an email to BigHit in Korean if it's a problem on their end - if I've got time and I think it's an extremely urgent and severe problem. Most ARMYs already do this for issues they find very serious. And yes ARMYs have gotten results. Examples include rectifying misleading/insulting subtitles towards Jimin on a Vlive in 2021, fixing potentially misleading subtitles on the Festa 2022 video, and getting JITB's album finally shown on the official BTS website though this took months.

Personally, lack of public twitter announcements (Jimin's BB #1 was highlighted by company leadership to investors), cake pics, and albums still available to be purchased on the US store (FACE is not completely sold out on the US store), don't make the cut for me, also just as I don't expect JYPE, Universal or Sony to comment on their artist streams getting split, I don't expect BigHit to, but again, do you. Everyone else does anyway.

*

I hope I haven't come across as excessively flippant in my response to you, because I appreciate the time and care you spent sending me this ask Anon. I'm just another fan after all, and my opinion is only worth as much as yours. You're seeing things happen to Jimin that you cannot explain, injustices the company and fandom seem apathetic to, and you love Jimin and simply want the best for him. He deserves only the very best, as do other BTS members. You want to respect the agency of the adult male artist you support, but at the same time it's true he's not meant to micro manage his career, and the people paid to do it sometimes do a sloppy job. Plus antis and sasaengs worming their way into company spaces is a very real risk that's worth keeping in mind.

I'm constantly working under the assumption that the people I'm writing to aren't stupid, that everyone can think for themselves to decide what they want, and that anyone who ends up a solo, manti, or toxic shipper, was always going to be one. And that is just as well.

And so, I hope by this point, you can understand why I'll be saying what I'm saying next:

I read that laundry list, and it was immediately clear it was written by and/or sourced from solos or someone who spends a lot of time in a siloed environment in the fandom. Generally, anyone who thinks a member is always uniquely targeted, is well on their way to becoming a solo stan or is spending a lot of time around people hyper-focused on one member, and in k-pop fandoms, that means spending time with people who actively or eventually hate other members and seek to remove the chosen member from the group.

The motivations of solo stans inform every single thing they do, and it has less to do with love, and more to do with control. Everything in that list is crafted in such a way to communicate one message only. To do it, solos often rely on half-truths, artificially isolated accounts, and flat out misinformation. Which is a pain, because oftentimes there's some truth mixed in but like the boy who cried wolf, these lists lose their veracity soon enough for ARMYs who see these lists 7 times over. And because the ultimate motivation for solos is control, their approach to solving these issues is usually one that aims to destroy the public reputation of the team or weaken whatever connection is there to begin with.

Like, if I knew nothing about BTS and I read that list, I'd think you were lying if you told me the same company provided Jimin with remixes to support buying efforts, set him up with a camp for his first solo endeavour, etc.

At the end of the day, there'll be more of these issues for Jimin and other members, at least going by what I've seen flitting through various music fandoms for artists under big companies. Plus, being an ARMY for a while, I've come to expect something or the other happening from the industry mostly, towards BTS (also, YG is BigHit's distributor...). I trust that BTS are in control of their careers, and when I see things that don't make sense, I use any channels I find appropriate to flag it so it's corrected. If solo stans highlight something, I double-, triple-, and quadtriple-check it because those people just think different.

If you've made it to the end of my diatribe, thanks for taking the time.

Goodluck Anon.

[mxcorruption]

Servant Profile:

ᜊᜃᜓᜈᜏ (Bakunawa)

"Oh the moon... So beautiful up in the darkened sky... It's dim glow is not blinding like the sun, yet still bright. It makes me want to..."

Class: Beserker (5*)

Name: Berserker of the Seas

True name: Bakunawa

AKA: Laho, Láwû

Alignment: Neutral • Evil

Height and weight: 163 cm, 53 kg (humanoid)

Gender: Female

Pronouns: She/Her (mostly, doesn't mind He/Him)

Noble Phantasm: Moon Devourer (Buster) - Deals great amount of damage to all enemies + Increases own Buster performance for 1 turn (Activates first) + Grants self evasion for 3 turns + Recovers own HP (3000) + Chance to stun self for 1 turn [Demerit]

Appearance: Humanoid - Bakunawa is a short, pudgy and youthful woman with brown skin that's speckled with freckles and black wavy hair that's accessorized with sea shells and coral reaches up to her lower back. Her eyes are ruby red with horizontal slit pupils and she has sharp teeth, with a second row on her upper jaw. Her ears are replaced by black fins with blue webbing and she has small black dragon-like wings. Her tail is serpent-like with iridescent black scales that curls at the end. She wears a white baro (shirt), a dark blue saya (skirt) with a gold belt holding it up, gold bracelets and anklets, pearl earrings and a turtle shell anting-anting (amulet) around her neck.

True form - Bakunawa is a large dragon-like sea serpent measuring 900 km in length with black iridescent scales, fins with dark blue webbing, a single rhinoceros-like horn on her snout and long barbels that of a catfish. She has small wings, a pair of hind legs with sharp claws, sharp teeth with a second row on her upper jaw and a forked tongue that is a deep dark red. Her eyes are ruby red with horizontal slit pupils. Bakunawa's tail is always curled at the end.

Summary: The sea serpent that is the cause of eclipses who inhabited the bottom of the sea, she was mesmerized by the seven moons' beauty and rose up to the sea. She devoured six of them, but was unable to swallow the last moon, due to human and/or divine intervention.

Her name is derived from 'baku' meaning 'bent' or 'curved' and 'sawa' meaning 'snake'. Her name is also spelled as Vakonawa, Baconaua or Bakunaua. Her other names, Laho (Tagalog) and Láwû (Kapampangan) mean 'eclipse', but in modern times, they mean 'to disappear' or 'to vanish'.

Though she is a dragon known to devour moons, she is also known as a man-eater.

Miscellaneous:

Will attempt to eat the moon deity/moon spirit servants from other mythos

True form literally can't fit in Chaldea

Hehe, Baybayin go brrrrr

Non-venemous

Ancient Filipinos would bang pots and pans in attempt to scare her away from eating the moon, some would play musical instruments in hopes that she would fall asleep

Big dragon rhino snake

There's many mythos surrounding Bakunawa and why she decides to eat the moon

While I did use the 'mesmerised by beauty' thing in the summary there's like a bunch different reasons why she decides to go om nom nom the big cheese in the sky

Examples include: Avenging sea turtle sister, tribe burning down her girlfriend's house (which she also lives with her), moon rejected her

There's multiple versions of her in multiple regions of the Philippines, so yeah