Still Pretty Proud Of My Pumpkins This Year, Even Though They Weren't Quite As Intense As Last Year's

Still pretty proud of my pumpkins this year, even though they weren't quite as intense as last year's 🥰

Last year's:

the sleep/bed-sharing vmin chronicles

Keep reading

give jikook two minutes and it's enough for them to act unhinged (cr. jung-koook, transl. cr. lovemazejikook)

BigHit deleted the bangtan bomb of Black & White performance on BANGTANTV but I was smart enough to download it immediately, so here you go

About G.C.F in Tokyo

I see G.C.F in Tokyo being discussed once again. Honestly this video is such an onion experience, there always seems to be a new layer to peel back. I have felt like saying something about it for some time now but I kinda felt like it wasn’t my place.

I love visual storytelling and I love talking about it, obviously. But how could I express my thoughts about what I think I’m seeing without coming across like I’m saying Jungkook meant it like that way? Idols already get their words and actions continuously twisted to suit fandom wants and needs and I didn’t want to pile on.

But, it seems JK brought up and talked about the video in a recent vlive so I’m assuming he wants people discussing it. I can do that and I will. But, once more for the road: He himself has full ownership of his intent behind the video, I can only discuss my personal interpretation.

I first watched the Tokyo video when he linked it on Twitter. Jimin had posted his own cute little tw videos the day before or so and I wasn’t expecting anything more on the subject. Watching it, my first focus was definitely on JK’s proficiency in video production. It was really well made, not only visually but in how he was actually telling an engaging story. Things moved along in sync with the music, the boys were doing all sorts of different things around the city, there was some funny moments, some scenery. It was great.

Of course I noticed that JM was the focus a lot. The fandom made a huge joke about it because JK was a notoriously rare sight on tw and the one time he did post, it’s 90% JM and 0.2% JK. Great memes were shared about it, laughs were had.

But honestly, as someone who has filmed my friends on trips for fun and in order to practice, it’s just the way it works in those sorts of videos. You can’t keep whipping the camera around to film your own face, not if you’re actually trying to make it look good. It’s also completely natural to keep your friends in focus and show off the city through their discovery of it.

Obviously I saw the shipping potential in the video too. JM’s tw tag that had been pretty clean from ship content (save for the occasional yoonmin storyboard) was suddenly inundated with jikook stuff. But I wasn’t interested in shipping so whatever.

It was only later that I saw people pointing out the lyrics to the song used. I admit I hadn’t been paying attention to them on that first view. Even without the words the video had felt really affectionate to me but when I considered the song choice it got a new layer of intimacy for sure. Content-wise the message seemed to be very similar to V’s letter to JM that he read aloud on the boat in BV(?). To paraphrase the message of the letter and the video both as I understood it: “I’ve been having a hard time. Thank you for being there for me. I want to be for you too.”

So is there a particular reason why V’s letter comes off completely platonic and JK’s video… not necessarily that? Is it just the difference of the medium used, i.e. we are so used to associating certain kinds of audiovisual techniques (music, slo-mo) to romantic storylines that we see a romcom setup where there isn’t one?

Did JK realise how a certain part of the fandom would see his video?

The most ambiguous sequence in the video comes towards the end, starting with the teacups. This is where the pretence of “discovering Tokyo through JM” framing device is dropped and the video stops being about Tokyo altogether. Without much of a warning we suddenly get a full 20 seconds straight of JM’s laughing face without any cuts away until the screen goes to black, as if to give us all a breather.

There is also an air of melancholy to it. The part after the teacups until the end is obviously the emotional climax of the song but in the edit JM seems distant. He’s walking around Disneyland, enjoying the sights, goofing around and all the while the music is saying things like “what I got to do to show you?” and repeating “I’m running running just to keep my hands on you” over and over again. I am left wondering why JK feels like he has to keep running like that, why is there a distance for him to overcome?

You can imagine for yourself how different the overall feeling would be if these lyrics were played over footage of JM actually really paying attention to JK, footage I have no doubt he has as well. Instead JK chose to end the video with the words “you gotta be there for me too” right after he had shown the image of JM quite literally walking away. Harsh.

Maybe it’s Freudian or maybe he just has a flair for melodrama. I wouldn’t know.

One thing I do want to point out though is this one clip right after the boys get off the teacup ride:

No beating around the bush: It’s really out of focus. And I’m not dissing JK here. It happens. They are moving around, it’s all happening so fast. Sometimes you get the shot and sometimes you don’t.

I find it kind of endearing that JK chose to include it in his final edit though. No doubt he could tell it was off and no doubt this NG clip in his otherwise oh so very carefully crafted video is bugging the hell out of him. But, sometimes when you really really like a shot you gotta compromise. Its inclusion tells me he likes the content shown in it more than he hates its technical shortcomings.

Finishing off the year with an idea I've wanted to paint for a while, a cat in the clouds ☁️