Content Warning: Sexual Abuse

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Wilting 

My mind is uneasy

stirred and shifting

Flickering lights

signal changing faces

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The earth beneath your feet rumbles

The birds are out of tune —

uprooted and unclear

a circulation of fear

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A fool to dream

or perhaps foolish desires?

Woven, stitched deep

into layers just out of reach

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This is the place

yes, this is the place

Watch it appear

then drip, drip away

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Rotting 

I ache for another day —

be it an unreachable day

One only in a dream

gone by the time you wake

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I ache for a deeper sleep —

be it tonight or the next

One that restores my mind

so, I can live

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I ache for a new body —

be it young or old

One that knows love

deep in its veins

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I ache for better hands —

be them nimble and lean

Ones that will paint

paint without fear

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I ache for another day —

one I know will come

A day I will be here

A day I will ache no more

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Rising

There is an inferno inside of me

I feel it burning

I am no longer afraid

to spit fire

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Places scorched

from wandering eyes, please

sorry — give us a smile

such natural feminine hues

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This trespassory

cannot be buried

it can only be burned

Let this blaze

ignite your body

and the ashes

be all that remains

of the unwelcome visitor

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Tired eyes, hear our cries

deafening and fierce

We are no longer afraid

to spit fire

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Blooming 

The vase of flowers

on the table are blooming

freshly picked and young

shades of the autumn sun

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Soft cries tease the sky

I’m silenced by their beauty

delicate and fluid

they dance intuitively

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You see, today

is only today

and tomorrow, I may not rise

but for now, let’s dream

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Like the wildflowers

which bloom in the fields

of your imagination

I am only temporary

The post Las flores silvestres que sueñan (The wildflowers who dream) appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

Angela Jin

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UTS Queer Revue 2020, Higher School Musical, speaks to every millennial and Gen Z. Is there a better way to spend an evening than to watch beloved pop culture and childhood characters be defiled, sexualised, and politicised? Didn’t think so. If, like many, you yearn to see live theatre again, then you won’t want to miss out on this year’s cheeky and energetic UTS Queer Revue!

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Sevin, Alice, and I were unsure what to expect, but we were excited nonetheless when we arrived on Tuesday night to catch the rehearsal. Despite the lockdown hiatus, the cast and crew have managed to come back together and put on a dazzling show. The show kicks off with a high energy opening and closes with an equally lively number. We giggled, belly laughed and, at one point, went on a rollercoaster of emotions. Darn sock puppets.

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Emily Mead, performer, sums the show up to be about, “Stuff that shouldn’t be sexy, but is.” Have you ever seen houseplants come together and make sexual advances on their human? Queer Revue has it all and more!

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Though largely satirising and mocking through a queer lens, Higher School Musical has something for everyone. Topics touch on racism, dick pics, classism, environmentalism, rental market, vegan jokes, fresh interpretations of tired memes, contemporary art, and more. There’s social commentary aplenty for all to relate to and left a lasting impression on each of the Vertigo editors who were invited to the rehearsal. Other skits simply offer multifaceted absurdity. Some skits are so efficient that the actors had barely walked on stage before walking off again.

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Our personal favourites include: “Straight Man Confused By The Existence of Lesbians”, the “IKEA song parody”, and “Ninja Turtles Face Common Turtle Problem”.

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The song parodies were unanimously agreed to be some of the best skits in the show. We were serenaded by familiar melodies and tickled by new lyrics. We left the show humming “…get’cha dick out the frame, we gotta get’cha get’cha get’cha get’cha dick out the frame…” The songs were catchy, funny, and clever enough to make you forget that this is only an amateur production.

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The humble cast of ten were tasked to each play a multitude of characters over the course of ninety minutes, but they rose to meet the challenge with their passion and hardwork. There is something so charming about their DIY cardboard props — at first glance, we did mistake that flimsy laptop for the real deal.

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Higher School Musical will be opening tonight at the Aerial UTS Function Centre in Building 10. It’ll only be here for four nights so grab your tickets here! Though COVID-19 restrictions are gradually lifting, the Revue will only be seating 100 audience members per night. Worry not if you are unable to attend in-person! Friday night’s performance will be livestreamed for people to watch remotely for only $10.

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UTS Main Revue will be running auditions for their 2021 show on the 7th and 9th of December. More information can be found here.

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UTS Main Revue will be running auditions for their 2021 show on the 7th and 9th of December. More information can be found [here] <https://www.facebook.com/events/394429368363159/>

The post UTS Queer Revue 2020: Higher School Musical appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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Well, hello there! You must be looking for a new angle, a new avenue, a new way to climb that mountain of obstacles and power smash your dreams into reality. Shall we dive straight in, then? Because achieving your dreams waits for no one but you. 

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There are many ways to go about working on yourself: lists, networking, daydreaming, and of course, the tried and true vision board. Just this year, I managed to check off almost all of my goals on my vision board, in some capacity, except for one — but who needs to graduate from a learner driver, anyway? Public transport is cheaper than petrol! And if I could do this during 2020, of all years, then you’re going to be in a much better position for success! 

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Let me break it down for you so we can all start 2021 with a bang — so we can push ourselves, go beyond what we thought we could achieve, climb to the top of the productivity ladder. I don’t know about you, but I’m kinda tired of doing the bare minimum and not seeing results. So, let’s fight to make some personal progress!

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Materials:

1 cork board

A box of pins, or something else that will work to hold down your images. Make sure that it is removable so you can reuse the cork board again next year.

Scissors

Access to a printer (UTS has plenty if you don’t have one at home)

Good ol’ Google Images

Laptop/computer.

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Step 1: Realistic Goals

So, what do you want to achieve? An easy enough question you may think, but hold up my friend, this is in fact a loaded question. I recommend firstly picking a time frame, roughly between one to two years. A timeframe gives you a definite finish line, frames your goals, and helps to visualise them as achievable. Anything shorter than a year might feel too constricting, but anything longer can seem so far off.

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Now that you’ve decided on a time frame, let’s move on to your actual goals. It’s all good to have ambition — in fact, it’s going to be crucial in life and making a vision board, but we need to contain it to a manageable size for this exercise. Ask yourself what can you realistically accomplish in a year? Figure out what the first step is to reach the finish line. If you want to start a company, then maybe something you could do this year would be attending seminars (webinars these days) that will help inform you or make an industry connection — put yourself out there!  A simple email goes a long way! Start to list what you want, and don’t limit it to career! Include goals for all aspects of your life. If you only focus on your career, then you’re subconsciously telling your brain you can only succeed in your career. Don’t forget about relationships, hobbies, and personal goals. Be inclusive and realistic. But, in saying that, you can add a visual image of your ultimate dream to the board too, just to keep your brain on track.

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Step Two: The Fun Part — AKA Image Gathering

So, on to the part we’ve all been waiting for — Google Images! Yay! But first, a few tips. When considering your newly written list of dreams, try and find an image for each one that is clear and precise to what you want to achieve. Having vague images leads to vague visualisations and plans that will fall through. If you want to save up money for that year, then instead of finding an image of a $100 note, calculate, roughly, how much you want to save. Say realistically you’ll probably save $6,000 at the end of the year, boost it to $10,000, find an image of that number, and bam! There’s your visualisation for your savings! 

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I upped the price because we are trying to push ourselves here, but it still should feel realistic. Really take a moment to collect these images and compare them with your list of hopes and dreams. It’s my dream to get into the publishing industry, so rather than have a picture of a book, I collected the names and logos of some of the top publishing houses and pinned them on. Now I’m writing reviews for Penguin Random House and Hachette. If you’re going to use a quote, keep it short. If your brain can’t read it at a glance, then it’s too long — so make those few words count. 

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Being concise and varied is key. Gather multiple images for the same dream — you can pick and choose what you’ll use! Print out all your images, and get cracking on the next step.

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Step Three: Construction

Hit play on your favourite jam and flick the switch on your design brain — it’s time to put it all together. Get out your handy scissors, cork board, and pins ready. Cut out each of your printed images and lay them out so you can see them all. If you want, you can organise them into groups like career, family, relationships — they’re all going on the same board. Now fiddle around with the images until you have an arrangement that pleases you. If you have something that is the centerpiece of your goals, I recommend you put this image in the middle to draw your eye.

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Step Four: Visualise!

You know what you want, you’ve got beautiful images to match it, and you’ve constructed your board! Now what? Now, it’s time to put in the real work, my friend! Place your vision board somewhere that you’ll look at each day. A desk, near a door, kitchen, anywhere you pass by often. That way, every time you do wander past, your brain will have a moment to take in all the information you’ve gathered and file it away. Glancing at your vision board enough should start to kick you into gear to want to work on some of those goals. But don’t stop there: take a moment every once and awhile to properly visualise achieving these goals or how you’re going to do it. If it’s setting up that company, visualise sitting down at your laptop and sending an email to a member of the industry or having a chat on the phone.

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It won’t take much, but visualising yourself acting on the goal and then achieving it streamlines the process in your brain, frames it as achievable, realistic, and something you’re actively wanting to do. Give it time: you’re not going to check off everything in the first few months. I only recently (and accidentally) reached one of mine, but in saying that, I had taken active steps to get it. It didn’t fall out of nowhere, I put in the effort and it may not be the finished product of my dreams, but it’s still a great success and drives me to do more!

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I wish you luck on your pursuit for happiness and smashing your dreams. Keep pushing, don’t give up the fight: now is the time to get up and move! Change starts with you. You’ve got this, don’t be afraid to go an extra mile — just make sure you know it’s within your power to do so. Eventually all those extra miles, even if it’s one per year, will amount to you crossing over that finish line, turning to look back, and going, “Wow, that was a lot of work, but thank god I did it!”

The post How to Make a Vision Board and Smash Goals appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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Let Me Be

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Unit

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The post Selected Works by Haein Kim appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

The post Online Declaration of Results appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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Hey there, my name is Viv and I am an illustrator and graphic designer. I’m currently working on my BA of Design in Visual Communication and BCII at UTS. Although Australia is not planning to re-open international travel for a while, we should still keep planning our future and I would highly recommend any students or recent grads to consider doing an international internship in 2021 or 2022. 

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“My New York internship has given me a step in the creative industry far earlier than I would have ever imagined.”

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Vivian and the Spring Studios crew

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My New York internship has given me a step in the creative industry far earlier than I would have ever imagined. The ArtBound Initiative program catered to my goals of wanting to figure out who I was as a designer. They helped make the integration — visa, portfolio and resume workshops, and interview training — as seamless as possible. As a result, I was placed with a creative agency called Spring Studios.

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“I was responsible for concept designing campaigns and identity rebrands for large clients such as Estée Lauder and Hilton.”

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Estee Lauder campaign by Spring Studios

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Located in the heart of Soho, Spring Studios New York is a global creative agency that not only works with renowned names, but challenges the way design can communicate a brand. As a Graphic Design Intern, I felt extremely intimidated, yet excited, to be working at such a renowned and fast-paced agency like Spring Studios. Though, having this unimaginable opportunity encouraged me to speak up with my ideas and ask questions, which led to the team basically treating me as a Junior Designer. Initially, I spent the first two weeks looking over past projects and their brand guideline to gauge the type of work and style Spring brought to the table. An important part of this process was the ability to be adaptable, which was crucial for me to accelerate. As I updated Spring’s brand guideline and curated client case studies for team presentations, I was able to impress not only the team but myself, realising what I was capable of doing if I just put my mind to it. As a result, they onboarded me to design concepts for large clients such as Estée Lauder and Hilton, which required multiple rounds of heavy research, concept boards, artwork mockups, and presentations to the clients themselves. This responsibility definitely overwhelmed me, particularly with the fear of failure and embarrassment. Though, I had the privilege of being mentored by highly experienced and talented people in the team (Design Leads, Senior Designers, Project Managers, and Strategists) to reassure my quality of work and process was beyond acceptable. It was this mentorship, opportunity to sit in on team and client meetings and trust every day that really built my confidence and capabilities as a designer, as well as deeper interests in branding and collaborative design.

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Spring Studios Office in New York

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Particularly in New York, the hustle really is worth working towards because not only can you prove your value to your team, but also to yourself.

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“ArtBound Initiative helped connect me with an internship opportunity that I would’ve never been able to gain this early on in my career.”

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ArtBound Initiative gave me the opportunity to form a network that helped to push my professional aspirations and create meaningful friendships. They helped connect me with an internship opportunity that I would have never been able to gain this early on in my career. Through this internship, I’ve been able to answer questions about what I want to achieve and learn, which is an invaluable experience for anyone to go through.  

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ArtBound Initiative crew at the Yayoi Kusuma exhibition

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Since coming back to Sydney, I’ve had the opportunity to start freelancing for a brand agency that challenges my type and layout skills. Having my confidence grow throughout my time in New York both by practising my networking skills and communicating concept pitches, I stopped feeling doubtful of my capabilities and started to truly believe the work that I did was acceptable, which helped me land this gig so smoothly. On top of that, currently in my last year of BCII, there is a subject that offers student placements with industry partners based on your interests. From this, I was placed with PwC as a Design and Innovation intern. Although not everyone studies BCII, there are still internships that students can apply for at CareerHub or speaking to your subject coordinator, who can help advise you take that next step if you take the time to establish what you want to gain, why you want to work with the company, building your portfolio, and know what you can bring to the table. Again, I honestly did not have this confidence prior to my 4-month creative internship; without the coaching from ArtBound Initiative, I would still be sitting in a deep pool of self-doubt as a creative junior.

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Now in my final semester of university, my journey this year has been focusing on what I like and don’t like to do as a designer. I’ve strived to form networks by taking opportunities even from the most unexpected people to take on different challenges in the pursuit of developing my passion further. 

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“Doing internships will allow you to refine your career goals and will help you tremendously to kickstart your creative career.”

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If you’re not able to intern abroad, the ArtBound Initiative internship program recently launched in Sydney and Melbourne and are currently accepting applications! Whether you join an internship program like ArtBound Initiative or not, doing internships will help you tremendously to kickstart your creative career and develop an understanding of your own style, goals, and path towards your passion. 

The post How my internship in New York impacted my creative career appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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The definition of luxury is the Savoy Hotel. Every whim, request, and secret are accounted for inside the walls of the Savoy Hotel. This book exposes the life of the D’Oyly family from the start to the end. The reader is gifted with an exclusive experience of seeing behind the curtain of the magic that was piled into the foundations holding the hotel up. As always, needs are met with an abundance of information, characters, and juicy gossip.

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The Secret Life of the Savoy isn’t your average rinse and repeat history lecture about the grand hotel, instead, Williams favours the story of its creators, choosing details for the explicit purpose of surprising and intriguing the reader. There are connections that most of us have no idea were even there. The best example is the turbulent relationship/partnership between Gilbert and Sullivan and the founder of the Savoy Theatre and Hotel, impresario Richard Carte D’Oyly.

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This book is a true deep dive into the tremendous lives of the D’Oyly family. At times the writing lacks a certain lightness, offering facts and connects, but sometimes moving on at a pace that doesn’t allow the reader to form a connection with any of history’s characters such as Gilbert and Sullivan. However, if you don’t mind that and the heavy load of information, this book is certainly a nice one to sit back with and soak your mind with knowledge and luxury. I recommend a nice glass of wine to accompany the sitting with. 

The post The Secret Life of the Savoy: and the D’Oyly Carte Family by Olivia Williams | Review appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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We are the Western world — drowning in privilege, but blindly walking forward to scrounge for more, dressed in the latest labels. Fast fashion is a by-product of this. Perfectionism is a result of this. Consumerism is the mother-feeding-tube making us feel ‘not enough’, so we spend more. But as we buy more, search for more, spend more, ultimately we end up feeling less.  

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We want everything now. We want more, more, more. We are a greedy species. We are intrinsically hungry. But for what?

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I doubt many young people feel confident as they are. This breaks my heart. It’s frustrating and exhausting. Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how many hours we spend at the gym, how beautiful our hair, and ‘snatched’ our makeup is, how curated our online lives are — we are living  in this environment of disposable culture. The acknowledgment of it all is not enough. We need change.

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Your changes don’t have to be huge to begin with — think on a microcosmic level. I started by avoiding fast-fashion ‘sales’ and supporting local clothing brands I found through Instagram or local markets. It’s more fun to wear something that a small handful of people own anyway! If you are unaware where your fashion/makeup/technology products are manufactured, how they are made, and who profits from them — I encourage you to do some digging into this. Don’t hesitate to ask these questions, remember knowledge is empowering and can lead to change, even if it’s on a personal level. Of course, none of us can be perfect consumers, but it does help to be informed. If a brand is operating from an ethical standpoint, they will most likely openly advocate this and be transparent with their processes. If they don’t, do the math. 

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It’s easy to lose sight of the human impact of fast-fashion. We can read statistics and news articles but until it affects us, it’s hard to relate. The first major garment factory disaster occurred in New York’s Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in 1911 and as a result, 146 garment workers died, many  were young, female immigrants — probably the same age as you and I. Over 100 years later, history was repeated as the Rana Plaza clothing manufacturing complex in Bangladesh collapsed. This time though, over 1000 workers were killed. It seems that even human life sometimes is not enough to challenge the systemic culture of fast-fashion. 

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I challenge you to think about the cost you pay for clothing. The average manufacturing cost of a basic tee is approximately $7.25, which will be later sold for around $25. Workers in Bangladesh earn a mere forty-three cents per hour. And yet, the turnover in the garment industry in Australia alone was $27 billion last year. This just doesn’t seem to add up, does it?

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I know it’s a stretch to say we should be making our own clothes or buy exclusively from local/market brands, but hopefully, this makes you think twice about that bulk-online sale order, or that half-price tee that you ‘reaaally’ need. There are so many freelance artists selling their art on t-shirts or brands that donate to charity that would benefit from the money instead. If certain big-name websites and brands are coming to mind, you’re probably right, they aren’t ethical. 

(Figures from Oxfam – What She Makes, 2018) 

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What does ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ even mean?

It’s important to educate ourselves on the real difference individuals can make. The money we spend on local business and small brands all contributes to supporting a family’s livelihood or an individual’s dream. You vote with your dollar. The fashion industry is the second most destructive industry to the environment (after livestock). So, buying and repurposing second-hand clothing should not be optional, it should be the norm. We live on a planet of finite resources, and too often are caught up in throwing things away for something newer and better — even though they work perfectly fine as they are. Check out Depop and Facebook Marketplace along with some great second-hand vintage stores on Instagram for your next outfit. I found some fab vintage jeans and barely-worn PE Nation activewear (Aussie brand) on Depop for less than half of what they are brand new. Better yet,  get together with a group of friends to do a big wardrobe clear out and swap clothes — my cousin and I do this all the time. 

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Real cultural change is gradual and slow, but we must stay vigilant — in how we speak about ourselves and others, with what we consume and with how we spend our money. Our brains are sponges to the subtlest of messages. I do, however, feel optimistic that younger generations are becoming more aware of the pressures of social media and disposable culture (although part of me is nervous to see this play out over the following years). I know that we can be a force for change and I know that we can make informed, nourishing choices. Daily, small steps count — we are all cogs in the machine. 

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So what do we do?

If we’re lucky, things can be recycled and made new again. Even melted down plastic remains.  Hopefully, it can be of purpose to someone else. It can be rebirthed. My hope is that our mindsets, our way of living, can be redesigned, repurposed. We don’t have to begin again, we just need to reassess and instead of throwing away,  let’s bring it to life.

The post Putting the Brakes on Fast-Fashion appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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Content Warning: Mental Illness, Drug Use, Violence, Self-Harm, Indigenous Cultural Appropriation, Demonic Rituals

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Everyone in Australia knows how formidable the bush can be. And even if you have never stepped foot in it, you would have read about it. It’s imposing, suffocating like a bone-white hand around your throat, and your chances of making it out diminish with every passing second.

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For a group of high school girls, it seems that the bush was the real villain behind their disappearance in Tasmania’s bluffs. But what about the Hungry Man? The one that watches, and chases, abducting girls to never be seen again, only leaving their shoes behind, their laces tied in pretty, neat bows.

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The Bluffs pulls you along, sending you deeper into the bush, into the mystery about the disappearance of Jasmine, Cierra, Bree, and Georgia. With every chapter, and new revelation you feel that familiar urgency and unease – the kind you sense when you’ve strayed off the path. There is something more sinister lurking behind Perry’s words. Hidden meanings that are brought to the surface, he shines a torch on their true nature, a sometimes unpleasant nature – mental illness, the dark side of the internet, small town corruption and politics, appropriation of Australian Indigenous culture, and how a warped view of reality can shatter relationships and people.

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With a good serving of suggested supernatural phenomenon, Perry has taken us off the beaten track of the classic thriller and shoved us into an uncomfortable confrontation with our own powerlessness – especially with the punch that’s delivered at the very end.

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There are some trigger warnings that readers should be wary of such as mentions of PTSD, drug use, violence, self-harm, and demonic rituals. This book is not just gritty but wears the filth like a badge of honour. I highly recommend you throw caution over a cliff and trust that this book has a little bit of everything. Just don’t get too lost or the Hungry Man will get you…

The post The Bluffs by Kyle Perry | Review appeared first on VERTIGO 2020.

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In the last five years, BTS has skyrocketed fromK-pop underdogs to global superstars. The group debuted in 2013 with seven members: RM, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Jimin, V, and Jungkook. From handing out free concert tickets to amassing a Twitter following of 27.7 million at the date of writing, these seven South Korean men have undoubtedly made their mark on the world. But stepping back from the glamour and the music and the sold-out stadium tours, what exactly makes a BTS stan, or ARMY, tick? I’m giving you an up-close and personal chat with one of them: me.

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First, a bit of background information on BTS themselves. Bangtan Sonyeon-dan are under the Korean entertainment agency of Bighit Entertainment, a smaller company than the more well known SM, JYP, and YG Entertainment.  This is, in part, what made their rise so shocking to the general population, as well as successful; everyone loves an underdog. They have released nineteen Korean and Japanese albums, EPs, and compilation albums, each one containing a different message and a plethora of genres that include loving tributes from the band to their fans. With iconic phrases such as “I purple you”, coined by Kim Taehyung (V), and their inter-active use of social media platforms such as Twitter, BTS is accessible and popular to their millions of fans. In fact, BTS contributed a whopping $4.65 billion to the South Korean GDP in 2019 alone. It comes as no surprise that they were awarded the South Korean Cultural Merit Award in 2018 for their work. BTS are undoubtably a part of the Korean cultural wave that’s been lapping at the shores of Western culture since the early 2000s, but part of their fan appeal is the flawed humanity of the members in an industry of manufactured, exploited idols. With their own variety shows (RUN! BTS, Bon Voyage) and a number of movies and documentaries that explore the intensity of a world tour and its harrowing impact on the members, BTS have gone to painful extremes to deliver their music and the behind-the-scenes of their journey to the world.

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That’s not to say that BTS’s music is completely removed from K-pop norms – far from it. But BTS have worked hard to create their own name and global brand, with collabor-ations across the music industry, fashion world, and even with UNICEF. Beginning with their Love Myself campaign, which advocated for ending global violence against child-ren, BTS’s leader Kim Namjoon, or RM, gave a speech at UNICEF’s Generation Unlimited campaign, throwing BTS onto the global political stage and distinguishing themselves from the idea of being just another boyband.

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Being a BTS stan is to be one amongst millions. But despite the idea of fandom being around for decades, influencing both individual lives and the course of history, perceptions of fans, and especially K-pop stans, are simplistic and un-nervingly negative. From the pervasive and comparatively innocent assumption that most K-pop stans are manic teenagers obsessed with various celebrities of assorted talents that they will probably never meet, to the frankly ridiculous description of ‘radical protestors’ after K-pop stans ruined a Trump rally in Tulsa, fans of K-pop have been subjected to a lot of unnecessary hate. While some criticisms ring true, such as the existence of female stalker fans, sasaengs, broad generalisations have given K-pop a pretty bad reputation.

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Now, having been well and truly immersed into the world of K-pop Twitter, I know that most stereotypes are untrue. Plenty of fans are not teenagers. In fact, I see constant tweets of BTS fans saying that they just got accepted into law school, just got a promotion, just had their first child, or taught their kids the choreography of a new BTS song while in lockdown. 

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BTS fans come from all walks of life.

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They are like you, like me, like teenage girls infatuated with their first boyband and like adults, finding a safe space to express their love for BTS’s music. I’ll be the first to admit that I used to look down on K-pop with similar disdain, back when I was a high schooler surrounded by people with the same opinions. It just goes to show how much we are a product of our environment; as soon as I graduated, I fell headfirst down the rabbit hole of the BTS fandom. To be fair, I was largely influenced by two of my best friends, but despite my newfound appreciation for BTS: music, performances, and genuine talent, there was a constant niggling sensation in the back of my mind that made me keep this passion a secret. 

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Unlike many other fans, who can pinpoint the exact date they became a stan, I fell into their music slowly, then all at once. I was beginning a strange new episode of my life called university. My life had split into two distinct categories: the reality of studying full time, working, and navigating new social circles, and the safety of listening to BTS music, learning the meanings behind the Korean lyrics, and unravelling the storylines behind their music videos. 

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For a long time, only my best friends from high school knew that I liked BTS – not even my family were aware, and certainly not the tentative new friendships I had formed with my university friends. I was so afraid of being classed as the manic teenage fan and of not being taken seriously. Perhaps, I was afraid that people would take my safe space and comfort and turn it into the worst and weakest part of me.

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Why was it such a big deal anyway, to love this group and this music and find comfort in it? 

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People did the same with sports teams all the time. Now, I realise that it may not even have been the industry or the groups or the manufactured music that people criticised. Maybe it was just the teenage girls.

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There’s a funny anecdote that almost every K-pop fan can attest to. I just wanted to learn their names, you always start. In the beginning, their changing hair colours and fashion styles and even eye colours are confusing. Distinguishing their individual quirks and traits is the first step. The second is identifying their individual voices. The third is making a Twitter stan account. The rest is history.

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There is a strange, distinct comfort of meeting someone who likes the same group as you. It’s almost a meme, to put a small symbol of that group on your clothes, on your phone, your laptop background, and seeing who notices and knows. There is a moment when you lock eyes and see the symbol or the word or the photo and you think, ah. I know you. Whether it’s a stranger on Twitter or on the street, you know that you can be yourself and not be judged for liking a particular brand of music.

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I’ve made online friendships based on a mutual love of BTS that have lasted longer than relationships I’ve had in real life. Two of my good friends live in England. I’ve never met them in real life but, for a period of time, spoke to them every single day. We started off talking about BTS. We told each other who our biases (favourite members of the group) were. We analysed their lyrics and videos together. Then we sent each other birthday cards. We video-called. We told each other about our lives and our dreams and I found people halfway across the world who knew me better than some people I saw in class every week. Now, we speak to each other less and talk about BTS less. But we still send each other birthday cards.

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It’s been almost three years since I first clicked onto one of their music videos. 

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Now, I don’t immediately go on Twitter when they post a new photo, I don’t stay up till twelve a.m. Korean Standard Time waiting for an announcement that might not actually happen and I don’t listen exclusively to their music. I don’t track how many #1’s their new album gets on iTunes. I don’t stream their music videos on the day they are released. I have stopped following them almost religiously. 

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But something that BTS fans believe is that you find BTS when you need their message the most, whether that be about telling capitalism to fuck off, learning how to love yourself, or finding your own dreams and way in life. At the end of 2017, BTS had just released their new album, Love Yourself: Her, and that was when my mental health had taken a nosedive three years in the making. I cannot say that BTS saved my life, because that’s not quite true and is much more dramatic than I’m accustomed to being. 

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But there is a reason that music therapy exists; BTS’s music threw me a lifeline and a distraction and a hug all in one. 

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It was a reminder to keep living at a time when I didn’t want to, a reminder to reach out to friends and find people in my life who would love me despite everything and not judge me. Even though I no longer watch their music show performances and every single episode of their variety show, being a BTS ARMY has changed my personality in more ways than one.

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Now, at the tender age of 20, all the people I love most know about how important that group has been to me. Because I am not in the habit of befriending people who are assholes, being a BTS stan is just another one of my hobbies to them. Some people will still laugh at me; they will ask me why I spent my time and money on something so trivial. 

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But BTS’s music was a soundtrack to my life at some of its best and worst moments, so I will be both unapologetic and unrepentant.

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In saying all this, some perceptions of BTS fans have been true for me. There was that time when two of my friends and I learnt the chorus choreography of “Blood, Sweat and Tears” while drunk at two a.m. Another time, when my best friend and I were in Korea, we definitely lined up and went to the House of BTS, a pop-up merch store, just to take photos and spend an inordinate amount of money. I admit that my mother lamented the loss of my hard-earned income over the multiple albums of ‘those Korean boys’. However, in life, I have learnt to ask for forgiveness rather than permission. In this case, I will ask for neither.

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