Pia @causesciencethatswhy - Tumblr Blog

Solo's are not your friends

An advice to any ot7 shippers or heavy biased armys, please for the love of God follow accounts that are not just centred around the two or one member you heavily bias. If you find yourself constantly buying into the idea that your favourite member is being heavily mistreated and is the biggest victim of the evil company then please realise you've found yourself in an echo chamber.

This echo chamber consists of people who are either full solos or halfway into solo territory. Talking with actual ot7 armys and keeping up with what the members are actually saying in good faith will help you see for yourself how manipulative and downright abusive a lot of solo/shipper narratives can be.

This is not me trying to say that Hybe is a perfect company that can do no wrong. It has messed up at multiple occasions for each member, even the ones some people consider here as the company favourites. It is why I don't think any of it is a malicious attempt but simply missteps and over presumptions on their half on armys and their reasons for supporting bangtan.

If the only people who are giving you updates on each member are solos who've already made up their minds that their fav is the true victim and everyone in the group secretly hates their fav and our conspiring against them, then you're setting yourself up for an absolute miserable experience. The victimising narratives are not just harmful to the members and their autonomy but also to the fan who feels like they're in a constant war to rescue their fav member from the 'great evil' that is bangtan. It's all very manipulative and mentally taxing.

So please I beg diversify your timelines with not just ot7 armys but other interests you may have as well. While bangtan are the comfort zones for many people myself included, I'm not going to pretend that the constant intense discourse has not impacted my own mental health multiple times. Take a break from them if you're feeling too overwhelmed, they'll always be there doing their own things.

Loving bangtan for me has been one of my longest experiences in any fandom ever, and one way I've kept that love alive has been through taking well spaced breaks and watching original content outside of what online spaces have been saying.

And repeat with me : Solo's are all antis.

Take care of yourself, and like namjoon said protect yourself now .

#jikook #shipping discourse #anti solo #bts #jimin #jungkook #taehyung #vmin #yoongi #hoseok #jin #seokjin #namjoon #rm

minyoonjin

he is a big....BIG rockstar.

itsvminkook

😭🤏💜

jikookficsdiarry

Im sorry but why is this clip 10 hours long...

I dont think I can be normal about this...dont ask me why idk!! Im gonna crash out in one corner see you in a bit.

Always fun to return here when jikook jikook hard

#jikook

electrofolk

A genderqueer reading of Coffee Prince

I wanted to examine why I keep coming back to a show I first watched 12 years ago and why it seemed to mean so much to me. I think it's because I saw in this show an extremely raw portrayal of the struggles I have felt as a genderqueer person, which is wild for a Korean show from 2007. While I rewatched, it was so clear to me that Eun Chan is genderqueer and many of her struggles are not only about her relationship with the love interest, but her relationship with her own gender.

A brief synopsis: Eun Chan is mistaken for a man, and ends up going along with it and getting a job under these pretenses in coffee shop. She ends up falling in love with her boss, Han Gyul, who still thinks she is a man. Han Gyul is also falling in love, but really struggles with the fact that this would make him gay. He eventually decides he is willing to face homophobia to be with Eun Chan. She then decides to reveal to him the truth, but it is Eun Chan’s struggle with having to confess this which feels so familiar and painful to a genderqueer person.

Eun chan has forgotten shes in a lie, she is not in disguise like other gender bending shows, she is just being herself, wearing what she wants to wear, acting how she wants to act It is others who place her in a binary, and assume she is a man. She says right out, “I'm not a guy nor a girl", and she is terrified of what that means.

So when Han Gyul says “Whether you’re a man or an alien, I don’t care anymore”, how can she not run with that? All she is feeling in that moment is relief, you can see it in the way she hugs him.

She does feel like an alien, that much is clear from how she describes herself, and the soundtrack brilliantly confirms this – “I feel like an alien, not part of the human race...it should be such a simple thing” (Alien, by Arco). This song plays when both of them are in the car together, it could refer to Han Gyul, coming to terms with being attracted to who he thinks is a man, or to Eun Chan, who feels she exists outside of the binary.

When Han Gyul finally asks her if she really is a woman, she is reluctant to answer. Some might interpret this hesitation as fear of his anger, but it could also be that she doesn’t want to admit to and be punished for something she doesn’t even feel to be true. He has to ask multiple times because she doesn’t answer, and finally she only slightly nods her head, looking sad and scared.

Later, he begs her to say its not true, that she isn’t a woman. Again, she cant answer to confirm or deny, all she can say is “I’m sorry”, and she breaks down. He is so angry at her for being something she doesn’t even feel herself to be. He said he’d love her if she was a man or alien, but he doesn’t want her to be a woman. The one thing she never felt like she was she’s now being punished for.

When Han Gyul finally comes around and says he’s actually glad she’s a girl, her face says it all.

There are many more hints that she doesn’t feel that she conforms to femininity. She said right from the beginning, that he would never like “someone like me”, showing she had a preexisting view of herself before she ever got involved in this whole thing.

You can see she has internalized this failure to conform, saying its her fault for looking the way she does. She is not shocked when his grandmother called her a thing, She has become used to being treated poorly as she has not conformed her whole life. But Han Gyul gets angry having to grapple for this first time with non-conformity.

Although Han Gyul has a lot of issues, he does have to get some credit for eventually coming out of the woman-man binary thinking he fell into earlier. He realizes she was born this way, and when he shops for a ring for her, he tells the shopkeeper “she is not feminine” and buys her a simple band.

One final thing I’ll mention is the music choice, again. The song that keeps returning at different points is a beautifully sad song with the lyrics “And now I’ve travelled across the ocean, with the same shoes, just longer hair”. At the end she does come back from overseas with longer hair, making her seem more feminine. But she remains the same, and you have to hope Han Gyul realizes she is still the same person, existing outside of a binary, and he is at peace with that.