hi. just found your blog and felt the need to say that i LOVE what you're doing. and also the need to share some of my own thoughts (over here hoping that this doesn't go against the guidelines in your pinned, lmfao)
despite me being a firm minsung believer (sorry if you're not LMAO, this is gonna be really awkward) i was always, like, really skeptical of other dating rumors. by other dating rumors i mean hyunlix, lol. i have thought that felix is into men from the get-go but the whole hyunlix thing never felt quite right to me. i've had my first "oh, are they...?" kinda thought after watching the recent changlix 2 kids show episode, but now going through your blog is just like... yeah. yeah they are. so thanks for that as well
the rest of this ask is gonna be a big tinfoil hat moment loosely inspired by you mentioning the possibility of changbin playflirting with hyunjin as a way to distract the public from the real deal because he might be uncomfortable with changlix shippers. it's also gonna be me taking my belief that changlix & minsung are dating and making it the baseline, so like... as i've said, if you're against minsung this will be awkward. LOL. but whatever :) i'm just some silly anonymous person on tumblr dot com
i think you're both right and wrong at the same time? as in, the playflirting is obviously happening to distract people from the real deal, but i don't think that it's changbin's decision to do so per se. i think it's the management. and yeah, ik that blaming things on the ✨ evil ✨management is like, poster girl for conspiracy behavior, but hear me out:
1. stray kids are quickly rising in fame and if i had to pinpoint when they started gaining momentum and had a breakthrough in the recent years, it would be 5 star era. full album, etc. with that influx of fans it's only natural that they would have to start being more careful with their reputation, which, of course, includes dating
2. coincidentally, the hyunjin/changbin thing started being pushed around the same time. even back then i thought it was weird, since it wasn't obviously just the boys having fun - i mean, no, i do think they're having fun and probably find the whole thing bloody hilarious, but it was more than just that. the way things they were edited, to include as many hyunjin/changbin moments as possible felt weird to me. i didn't even think of changlix as a possibility back then so it wasn't like i was biased, but i felt like the editors were just told to push hyunjin/changbin down the viewers' throats for apparently no reason
3. another coincidence - in the most recent comeback, right after their unit song dropped and people started freaking out because things began seeming real, the same thing started happening to minsung, except this time with hyunjin/minho
now i... don't think that the boys are being held hostage in the Fanservice Basement where the Evil Management is holding them at gunpoint. but i think it is highly possible that they were told to just up their game in the "fanservice with other members" department and that the editors were told to include more of these moments in the final cut. both as a distraction and as a safeguard. so every time there's a, say, changlix moment, people who don't really pay attention to the ships/don't care for that would excuse it with "well, changbin is like this with other group members as well, there's nothing suspicious about that", ykwim? they are also all adults and understand very well how the industry works, etc. i do find it weird that both times it's hyunjin at the crime scene, but then again - i think he also finds it pretty funny, and he's also one of the more popular members. any ship with him is guaranteed to have a certain amount of insane people ready to eat that up just because more fans means more crazies, lmao
but then again, this is just me and my tinfoil hat, oops. sorry if you do mind people waltzing into your inbox like this </3
hiiiiii sorry for responding super late, i hope you're still around to see this answer! thank you so much for this ask, i love it, it's so long and thoughtful! that said, i'm about to disagree with everything you said jdgfdsfsdg i'm sorry.
first of all i don't believe in minsung at all. no hate to anyone who does, you're all smart and valid and beautiful but i don't think they're dating or they ever have been. i do think minho has a big sad unrequited crush on jisung or at least he used to but that's it. i think so because the minsung ship is treated as such a joke among the skz members. obviously it's the most popular ship in skz so the members love teasing them with it. i don't think they'd do that if they were actually dating. and now minchan is becoming a juggernaut ship in skz and chan is ON that fanservice train. he takes every opportunity he gets to make the minchaners happy bc he knows how to play the game. so that's the first point on which i fundamentally disagree with you.
the second one is the company involvement in changbin flirting with hyunjin. obviously there is a possibility that that's the case but i tend to stay away from what i call the larry excuse. the notion that the company is dictating what to do about fanservice and managing which ships are popular, pushing one ship when another gets too big or suppressing other ships feels silly to me. i don't think div1 concerns themselves with that. they just look at which ships are popular and push those because it makes numbers. also the larry excuse is just so lazy lmao. you can just say that it's the evil company's fault and no one can disprove it because no one knows shit about what goes on in that building. it's an easily defendable position. and that's why it's completely boring to me to discuss what the faceless people behind the curtain might be plotting because we will never know so we might as well just not even try to speculate, you know? i know we like to put every decision we don't like on the people we don't know, but i think the members decide what they do in terms of fanservice.
my point was that i think that changbin flirts with hyunjin bc he himself got a little uncomfortable with how big the changlix ship had gotten and he just didn't want it to be quite as centered. that's what it looks like to me based on how he interacts with felix and with hyunjin (side note, changbin's flirting with hyunjin didn't start around 5 star era, it started way earlier. maybe even as early as noeasy. i agree that it's gotten way more intense around 5 star but it has been going on for quite a while). i don't think he's actually trying to make people think he's into hyunjin, it's just playflirting. it's fun and it gets screentime and it makes people talk less about changlix. and it's totally working! changlix as a ship is becoming less and less popular and hyunbin is growing.
again thank you for your ask! i hope it's not disappointing to you that i disagree with what you said. but you know, i'm just one changlixer of many so it doesn't matter what i think!
