I remember when you once said when explaining your thoughts on sm as an institution and using aespa as an example that there were around 4 steps or criteria. And I think I'm actually seeing it 👀 with aespa I'm starting to see them show their personalities more which makes me think of minho from shinee saying in his first year he was supposed to look cold and not really speak.

Also this is still related to the idea of a persona but I think that's another reason I got kinda meh about bt*. Bc I watched rm's mv and I felt more for the featured artist's vocals than him. This pushing of authenticity is nice and certainly welcome but it can feel dull and ironically not authentic anymore instead feeling more corporate or forced. I would talk about how bt* and bighit's authentic "concept" takes advantage of the already dangerous para social relationship between fans and idols but that'll be an essay so i won't lol

i'm not gonna say that my theorized lil step system was right bc we're never going to actually know, but it always takes a bit of time for rookies to get a feel for how the industry works post debut and where the personal and professional lines of how much they want to portray. so now that they've been out and around the block doing stuff, it makes sense that they're getting more comfortable. it's more of an experience thing than anything else.

not to harp again on the general principle but the more money used to make something, the less 'authentic' it feels. because the finer the polish you put on something, the less like the real world it looks, and the less 'relatable' it is. and it also makes it very hard to build a signature style, unless you're doing something that has a strong aesthetic. like the sort of soft indie type aesthetic that rm is trying to do with that mv just point blank doesn't work when you have that much money. the reason that that indie aesthetic works is because it's shot on shitty cameras with $12 and a paperclip, not on a red camera with vfx budget. when you're trying to go that low key with aesthetics, you have to be able to show the flaws in what you're doing, because there's nothing else to visually help you establish that style. nothing about that mv looks real, and you need it to look real to the viewer if you want it to come across as authentic. the quality of production that hybe CAN do is better suited for large scale spectacles that can back a really strong and distinctive aesthetic that needs that kind of money to pull off in the first place. and not to pit groupmates against each other but i will anyways bc it's funny, but jhope has a SIGNIFICANTLY better understanding of that.