Ep 192: BTS, Fandom, and Queerness feat. Padya Paramita
(00:00)
SARAH: Hey what’s up hello. Welcome to Sounds Fake But Okay, a podcast where an aroace girl (I’m Sarah. That’s me.)
KAYLA:… and a demisexual girl (that’s me, Kayla)
PADYA: And non-binary le$bean, Padya.
SARAH: talk about all things to do with love, relationships, sexuality, and pretty much anything else that we just don’t understand.
KAYLA: On today’s episode: relationship advice.
ALL: — Sounds fake, but okay.
SARAH: Welcome back to the pod!
KAYLA: M’lala.
SARAH: Who?
KAYLA: M’alala. It’s hard to do.
SARAH: Oh M’alala.
KAYLA: M’lala. Yeah. It’s kinda hard I picked a bad one.
SARAH: Mm kay. Nelson M’andela.
KAYLA: Hmm.
PADYA: M’in Yoongi.
SARAH: Ah that’s so true. M’in Yoongi. Are there any other M? There’s no other M’s.
PADYA: Jim’in.
SARAH: Jim’in. Perfect. Wow okay, we’ve just started. Kayla, before we dive in, do we have any housekeeping?
KAYLA: I don’t think so.
SARAH: Cool, this house has been kept.
KAYLA: No news from me.
SARAH: No news. Obviously we have a guest this week and our lovely guest pertains to what we’re talking to. So, Kayla, what are we talking about this week? And then we can introduce our lovely guest.
KAYLA: This week we—and by we I mean Sarah and our guest—and I’m just going to hang out here, are talking about BTS.
SARAH: Hold on, to be clear, this is not just BTScast we are talking about queerness and aspec things and queer things.
KAYLA: Oh yeah it’s not like we’re changing the genre of our podcast.
SARAH: All the people who were like, I’m going to leave now, don’t.
KAYLA: Me too.
SARAH: Also because our guest is wonderful. Hey, hey, our guest, who are you?
PADYA: Yes hello.
SARAH: Tell the people who you are.
PADYA: My name is Padya, I am the transcriber of this podcast. Kayla and I met about two years ago at a workplace that shall not be named but we have been very good friends ever since. And I started transcribing the podcast last year in August and one day at 2 am when I was staying up for a BTS concert, I was transcribing the podcast and I saw that Sarah was interested in BTS and I left some deranged sleep-deprived comments saying “why haven’t we talked about this?” And then Kayla made a group chat that I think she very much regrets—
KAYLA: Uh huh.
PADYA: And we’ve all been friends ever since.
SARAH: Yeah. Padya became my BTS parent, just bringing me up in the world of ARMY. We also never text not in that group chat just to annoy Kayla.
PADYA: One time I accidentally texted just Sarah and we felt really wrong about it so we never did that.
KAYLA: I mostly just ignore the group text cause it’s things I don’t understand, but it’s comforting to know it’s there, you know?
SARAH: Yeah, we’re just vibing, just existing. But I feel like this episode has been kind of a long time coming cause it’s something that’s been tossed around. You’re obviously very familiar with the podcast, maybe too familiar, so yeah we’re just going to dive in here. For anyone out there who doesn’t know who BTS is, they are a K-pop group, they’re from South Korea, there’s seven of them, they make music. BTS stands for Bangtan Sonyeondan if that matters to any of you. But they’ve been around for a couple years and they’ve really broken into the West, I guess in a way that a lot of K-pop groups haven’t previously. And they’ve kind of become a little international sensation. Some people call them a boyband, some people don’t care, it’s just the way it be. It’s definitely brought a lot of people together from a lot of different places. Also, people who are fans of BTS are called ARMY, that’s relevant probably to this conversation. Kayla, I do urge you to participate, please don’t just check out.
KAYLA: I was also going to say that Padya should give their BTS credentials.
SARAH: True.
PADYA: I am a writer, on the side, I attend school for writing so maybe not on the side. I’m trying to be a writer when I grow up.
KAYLA: She’s 25, still waiting to grow up.
PADYA: Yeah I’m trying my best. I started a magazine last year during quarantine with our friend Nikki because we are both interested in literature and BTS so we thought “oh these guys have some really cool themes in their work that inspire us in our own literary work and writing so why don’t we create a space for other people to do the same?” So we started Dream Glow Mag, we have issues, we host events, a variety of things for people who like BTS, like to write, like to read, like to just have fun.
(5:00)
SARAH: We love creativity fueled by other people’s creative work. We have to stan. Padya do you want to start by telling us how BTS has helped you with understanding your own journey to your own queerness? Cause I think that’s an interesting place to start especially for people who don’t have a ton of context as to what the group is about, what they do.
PADYA: Yes, absolutely. I think one thing to clarify is that these people aren’t really allowed to talk about their dating lives, let alone their sexuality, so a lot of this is just me reading their music or interpreting things my own way and finding comfort in them, not to say that they’re not queer, but we don’t really know. For me, I found BTS early in 2019 when I was kind of looking for a job and really helpless in the world and the thing about BTS is that they provide a lot of happiness and serotonin. And you watch a video and you can see that they genuinely love each other, love their fans, they’re really happy to be here. I’m a former One Direction fan or whatever, I think one of the things that really stands out to me is how happy they are to be there, BTS is not treating this like it’s a job, it’s genuinely bringing them the same kind of joy that it is bringing their fans.
SARAH: They’re very genuine and I feel like a lot of K-pop groups are seen as being an industrial sort of thing where they’ve been manufactured.
KAYLA: They kind of are manufactured, in a way, aren’t they? In the way a lot of big K-pop groups are put together in South Korea?
SARAH: To a certain extent, yes but I think BTS has really broken out of that and I think they’re allowed a little bit more freedom than some other groups and so what you see is what you get with BTS. Which I think is part of the international appeal. But yes, continue.
PADYA: Celebrity culture is weird like in that we don’t really know what really is going on but they seem to be genuine. I think there are a few levels of the queerness and BTS thing in my experience that I think first of all I was freshly out of college and I was missing so much of that whole found family-ness and my friends and living with them and just being with them, and I kind of saw that reflected in how BTS were with each other. Each of them have a very unique friendship with each other but also all seven of them together, they live together even though they’re gazillionaires. They have their own apartments but they kind of choose to live together to an extent where Jimin and J-Hope just live in the same room.
SARAH: They can’t be apart!
PADYA: Okay I guess I’m not that attached to my friends. It was really wonderful to see and I was kind of projecting my own loss onto them and that helped a lot. A lot of their music, especially since 2017 or 18, so much of it has gender neutral lyrics, there are songs that can be kind of seen as having queer messaging or when I see them I think, this is how I feel in my own queerness. I think I didn’t really label my sexuality for a long time and in August of last year I saw this tweet that was like, “oh I may be a lesbian but if Jimin wanted to kiss me, would I say no?” and then I thought about it and I was like, “wait, am I only not calling myself a lesbian because I would kiss all of BTS given the 0.0001% chance?” and I think I talked to you about it too Kayla about having celebrity crushes on men and them really just being celebrity crushes and you kind of explained the whole aesthetic attraction bit to me and then I tried to find any man in real life that I was actually attracted to and it came out zero.
SARAH: They don’t exist.
PADYA: And I was like, wow this tweet about being a lesbian and Jimin, I get it now. But I think BTS have also been really helpful in helping me figure out my gender identity which they kind of have a speech from the UN where RM kind of said we love you no matter your gender identity and that kind of always you know struck a chord with me because for BTS to acknowledge something like that is very very special given that they’re not really allowed to talk about a lot of these things where they come from. But another thing was that they have these things called BT21 which are these characters they created and Yoongi who is Sarah’s bias, maybe—
(10:00)
SARAH: Yes that’s still true.
PADYA: —had actually insisted on saying that these guys shouldn’t have any gender and everyone was like, “oh yeah they shouldn’t have a gender” and that followed up with little tidbits. And in October they did a concert, a livestreamed concert where, Kayla has just disappeared—
SARAH: Kayla’s camera just fell down.
KAYLA: Recording with a cat is hard.
SARAH: I just saw you pick up the cat and then you disappeared.
PADYA: Yes anyway in the online concert they were doing that had like a million viewers, there was one song, “Filter,” which was performed by Jimin who is arguably one of the most androgynously dressed among them—honestly they’re all like fuck stereotypes, they don’t give a shit about what they wear, they’re very pro-makeup and things like that—but this performance was really important to me because at the beginning of the song he was like dressing up—he was just admiring a mannequin who was dressed in a skirt and he was admiring her clothes, and in the second verse all these men came and put a suit on him, and then in the bridge he was like fuck it all, fuck everything, I am Jimin, I am gender, I am no gender, I am all genders. I don’t know exactly what the message was—
SARAH: I am the gender.
PADYA: Jimin gender. And I think that was something that meant a lot to me and really helped me internalize the fact that it really doesn’t matter how people perceive you in the world, you kind of need to come to this journey on your own and gender is fake.
SARAH: Yeah. Hell yeah. I feel like BTS as you mentioned, they can’t publicly say a lot of stuff. Part of that is just being in the K-pop industry, part of that is being so incredibly famous that you can’t just say what’s on your mind because there would be backlash.
PADYA: People would get hurt.
SARAH: I remember one time they mentioned something about the Korean war and they said about the Korean soldiers and the American soldiers and a Chinese company was like,”well what about the Chinese soldiers” and they pulled the sponsorship.
KAYLA: It’s like the one—I forget who it was—some celebrity had to apologize to China for acknowledging that Taiwan was a country I think.
SARAH: It was like John Cena?
KAYLA: John Cena was like, “sorry China, I didn’t mean that this country that’s definitely a country is a country.”
PADYA: Before BTS my big fandom was wrestling and before acting John Cena’s big profession was wrestling. And then he started being a BTS stan also so there are overlaps here.
SARAH: He is a BTS stan, he loves BTS.
PADYA: John Cena was taught to be an international rep for WWE and he learned Chinese just for that market so that makes sense.
SARAH: But, point being, there’s a lot of stuff that they can’t say or they have to be careful about. Even with what they don’t say, the way they present themselves, I know a lot of that is just stylists and whatever but you know they do, gender-bending things sometimes. And as you mentioned, they have had gender neutral language in their songs and sometimes it’s like, okay they can’t say certain things out loud but sometimes it’s what they don’t say, the stereotypes they don’t play into which makes the difference. And I feel like maybe it’s just the circles I run that but I feel like so many of the ARMYs I know and see are queer.
KAYLA: I feel like any ARMY I see is super queer and probably because I’m on ace Twitter all the time, there are so many ace ARMY.
SARAH: We’re everywhere.
KAYLA: They’re everywhere.
PADYA: And BTS’s journey too is very interesting and kind of exemplary because they didn’t start out being so cool—they were teenage boys, they were hormonal as fuck, they were writing things about how much they loved girls.
SARAH: Jungkook was 15. He was 15.
PADYA: Yeah he was 15, they were getting canceled left and right and they very slowly learned that if we are about to have a western audience and it’s not just Korean fans and they adapted to everything. Educated themselves about everything. Namjoon, who is RM, the leader he read up on history of American racism, he consults a feminist scholar every time they write lyrics and things like that.
(15:00)
KAYLA: Wasn’t there a song they rewrote or rereleased—I feel like you were telling me about this, Padya.
PADYA: They had a song that can be read as misogynist from 2014, then they wrote an apology-ish song that celebrates women left and right.
SARAH: And also they haven’t performed that song for a very long time, I don’t think they’ll ever perform it again.
PADYA: It’s kinda catchy.
SARAH: It is, it’s a good song.
KAYLA: Padya’s like, I mean, I don’t know.
PADYA: It’s like, “women are world’s greatest invention” and who am I to argue with that.
KAYLA: Padya’s like, “I’m not a woman so I can be into it and not be offended it’s fine.”
SARAH: And I can listen to it and say, “on behalf of all women, this is fine.”
PADYA: There’s a line that’s like, “yes I’m a bad boy so I like bad girl,” and it’s a 15-year-old singing this and it’s like, yes, thank you.
SARAH: Yes, I am bad boy. But yeah I think there are so many queer ARMY and I feel like a lot of the times with the “boybands” and “stan culture,” this definitely falls into people on the outside assuming oh “it’s teenage girls who are attracted to them and they have a crush on them,” and—Kayla is—yes?
KAYLA: Raising my hand. I saw this TikTok the other day of this girl being like, “oh now I know why I never had a One Direction phase, it’s cause I’m a lesbian,” and I was like, no, that’s not how it works. I was like, good for you, now realizing you’re queer but also shut the fuck up.
PADYA: One Direction has some great lesbian anthems.
SARAH: Truly.
PADYA: Story for another day.
SARAH: Queer icon Harry Styles.
KAYLA: Yeah next episode we have—did Harry Styles just get married?
PADYA: No!
SARAH: No.
KAYLA: I saw a thing that said he got married.
SARAH: Don’t believe everything you see on the Internet, Kayla.
KAYLA: That’s why I asked.
PADYA: I don’t think so.
SARAH: I don’t think that’s true.
KAYLA: Anyway.
SARAH: I think with BTS’s audience, my mom is ARMY, I got her her into it.
KAYLA: Julie loves BTS.
SARAH: She does. She sends me a BTS video everyday. But you know there’s a lot of diversity age wise, in terms of race and where people are from and also in terms of sexuality and orientation among ARMY. And I feel like it’s so lovely to see a group where it’s not like, “everyone who likes this group is attracted to them,” but there are so many people in the fandom who are not even attracted to men. And I think it definitely does break a lot of the expectations and a lot of the reason those queer people are drawn to BTS is because of the vibes they give off and the genuineness of them and the kindness and the fuck the norms we don’t want to do that that’s just a part of who they are at this point.
PADYA: Yeah I think the language thing also plays into it. People are obviously very quick to write them off because they’re like, “oh I don’t want to listen to this foreign music,” because they’ve never heard of Google or the fact that translations exist and you can just look these up. And I think that kind of ties into why there are so many queer fans because the messaging in their songs are incredibly fuck the patriarchy and fuck all sorts of norms. They’ll talk about social class, and generation divides and things like that. And also, I’m thinking of one song called Stigma where the singer is like, it’s like, “I’m sorry my father, I’m sorry my sister” just kind of like, I’ve brought my family to shame. And anyone kind of non-straight who has kind of had that kind of sexuality crisis—I just said kind of three sentences in a row—who has had a sexuality or any kind of identity crisis will relate to it because it’s not saying why I’m sorry to my entire family but it is going through this I’m experiencing a lot of change and I’m not sure who I am kind of thing. And it’s relatable no matter what your own identity is.
SARAH: Yeah and I feel like too when music is in your native language, you understand it but you don’t always pay attention to it and when it’s in another language, you’re like, oh I want to know what they’re saying so then you look it up and you look at the translations and you’re like, oh shit, this shit’s meaningful, and you know. So then you notice the very gender neutral stuff, you notice all of that. And so I think that’s also a kind of side effect of it being for what is for a lot of people a foreign language because they really look at the lyrics and they’re like oh. Cause when it’s in English, I just hear bits and pieces I don’t often stare at the lyrics you know.
(20:00)
PADYA: Yeah and another important thing that has an overlap with queer fans is mental health. And they are very open to talking about their own struggles in a way that hasn’t been done in K-pop or even western media before. And they’re very open about seeing therapists, being depressed, going through hard times and kind of just breaking stereotypes in their own country as well in broader music industry.
SARAH: Yeah, cause we know all the do be depressed.
KAYLA: All the queers do be ill.
SARAH: I’m ill.
PADYA: True they literally have one line that’s “I’m ill.”
SARAH: So, here we are.
KAYLA: I have a question.
PADYA: Yeah.
SARAH: Please.
PADYA: Kayla!
KAYLA: Just thought I’d enter my own podcast with a question. To me as someone who is a complete outsider but understands things from a very surface level, you’re talking about how they all live together and they’re very good friends, do you think that’s part of the reason aces and aros are so drawn to BTS in kind of a QPR, emphasizing friendship very hard way, because it just seems like it seems with the aspec mindset.
SARAH: They’re very unapologetic about how close they are and how much they matter to each other. And the relationships they have with one another. I read that part of that is in Korea it’s more acceptable for men to just be friends with men and not have it be a weird no homo thing. But it’s definitely also there’s another layer of it where they have spent a lot of time living together and they spend all of their time—they’re busy people and they’re always working and so they’re always with each other. And you can see the genuine bond and care that they have for each other cause they’re constantly feeding us with content and so you’re not just getting, oh this is an interview on a late night show. There’s Run BTS, there’s random other things—
PADYA: When they go on vacation, they always record that.
SARAH: Yeah.
PADYA: It’s just them painting or sleeping or camping and it’s so peaceful, it’s great content.
SARAH: In the Soop is the most calming, wonderful, it’s literally just eight 30 minute episodes of them being on vacation.
PADYA: They’re in a forest.
SARAH: They’re in the forest.
PADYA: Vibing.
SARAH: And it’s so nice.
KAYLA: I just wonder, because they are not able to talk about any romantic or sexual relationships they have, which is not, it’s not great if they are being forced to do that, I understand doing that for privacy reasons out of their own choice but almost part of that is that because they don’t it makes them more relatable to aspecs who are just, it’s almost an aspec, for some people, an idealized reality of I can just live with my friends forever, not having to worry about what am I going to do when my friends get into relationships and move and we can’t be roommates anymore. It feels like an ideal situation for a lot of aspecs who are worried about losing their friends, you know?
SARAH: I think there’s definitely something to that. It’s hard for me as an aspec looking at them knowing they’re not allowed to publicly date. That sucks for them, if that’s what they want to do, if they want to have relationships or if they want to have non-heteronormative relationships, you really can’t say shit about that. Obviously that’s very difficult and I don’t want them to have to go through that but also, you know. A lot of the reason for that is to avoid drama but also you know, cause then fans can think they have a chance—shut the fuck up you don’t have a chance, what the fuck are you talking about? But the aspec in me appreciates that. Sure they have songs that are about romance or whatever but as we’ve talked about on this podcast before, so many songs are about love and romance and blah blah blah. And a lot of BTS songs are not. And so the combination of that and being able to see them just living their lives not constantly chasing sex and romance visibly at least from my vantage point is kind of nice. So it’s hard for me, on one had I want them to do whatever the fuck they want. But on the other hand, it’s nice to finally maybe see that a little bit.
(25:00)
KAYLA: It sucks that it’s obviously not their choice but seems nice you know?
PADYA: I was going to say on the love songs thing, I was trying to think, most of my—almost all of my favorite BTS songs have nothing to do with love or romance. One of my favorite songs is Black Swan, which is I’m in this art, what if someday I no longer have this talent, what do I do with my life, that’s the end. And that’s something I’m really scared of. Or, Moon which is just Jin is the moon, ARMY is the earth and we love him.
SARAH: It’s a love song for ARMY.
PADYA: It’s a love song for ARMY and it’s so wonderful. And it’s things like that that also make them stand out for me is that they’re not really singing about generic topics. Except for when they’re trying to top the western charts and they do that with their pandemic anthems and those are bops too. They’re also not about love, they’re about butter.
SARAH: They’re about butter.
KAYLA: Butter is the song I have heard most of BTS’s. It’s all over TikTok and it’s just, “smooth like butter,” and for the longest time I didn’t know it was BTS cause they’re singing in English. And I was like who is this?
PADYA: They have three full English songs. Dynamite, Butter, and the new one Permission to Dance.
KAYLA: Is it just about butter? I’ve never listened to the full song.
PADYA: It’s just about having fun.
SARAH: It makes more sense than Dynamite if you look at the lyrics.
PADYA: Yeah.
SARAH: The lyrics to Dynamite don’t really make sense.
PADYA: But they talk about LeBron which is a good choice of a basketball player.
SARAH: Jump up, to the top, LeBron.
PADYA: In the new one they mention Elton John.
SARAH: LeBron, Usher, and then Elton John. There’s an American pop culture reference.
KAYLA: Why Usher?
PADYA: In Butter they mention Usher.
KAYLA: Usher is a very interesting choice.
SARAH: Anyway, yeah. I don’t know what we were talking about.
PADYA: Aceness and BTS.
SARAH: Aceness yeah. I feel like a lot of too of their love song songs are not their title tracks, their songs that are released as singles are the big ones, or their older songs where it was kind of when they were still trying to get their footing and figure out what they were doing. And so it’s like—I mean there are wonderful songs they have that are “love songs.”
PADYA: Those are derpy too. It’s like, “your dimples are illegal, that’s why I call you illegirl.”
SARAH: The dad puns. It’s the most fucking Kim Seokjin thing I’ve head in my life. Horrible puns, king of horrible puns, Kim Seokjin. You’re right though.
PADYA: Think about a song like Friends, where it’s a duet between two best friends who have gone to high school together and are in this band together and they are literally singing to each other, “you are my soulmate.”
SARAH: Look there are always going to be shippers who are going to ship whatever members romantically together. But that song is explicitly platonic about a platonic friendship between two of the band members and how they’ve grown up together. Cause none of them are from the same area, they were put together in this band. But they were so young when it happened that they have grown up together. And it’s this really lovely song about platonic soulmates and friendships and all the things they’ve been through and the arguments they’ve had and it’s such a pure song and it’s a bop.
PADYA: It’s so good.
SARAH: It’s got like gospel choir, it’s great. Truly a delight. But yeah I think that definitely all does come back into the chosen family, BTS as family thing. It’s been talked about a lot too how all the members are very different. When they first started out they were how is this going to work we’re all so different. But you know, they have found their people in the way that they can work together. It’s a reminder to a lot of ARMYs, a lot of whom are queer ARMYs, you can kind of create your own family, you can create your own safe space. Some people have done that with other ARMY. As fans. They’ve created their own little families with other families. To a certain extent, it’s not always about the band or the music, it’s about the community that you create around that. And I think that’s so often overlooked when people are talking about fandom because so much of fandom really is about community.
PADYA: That’s so true. I always try to think about my closest friends and so many of them are ARMY and we don’t have to necessarily talk about BTS to know that we have this bond but BTS will help bond us. Like when I have a conversation with my friends, we’ll talk about our own personalities but we’ll try to subtly relate it to BTS. For example, in the last full album they had these songs that were Persona, Shadow, and Ego, and so one of my ice breaker questions to anyone who is ARMY or not ARMY is which member would be your Persona, the one you’re outwardly presenting, who is your Shadow, so the one you’re avoiding, like oh I am like this member or even this outside character from an unrelated fandom and who is your ego which is like your moon sign, who is the one you are when no one is looking? And that doesn’t necessarily have to be about a BTS member you can apply it to any kind of fandom and BTS creates content that can make space for so many different kinds of conversations. And they have content that any one person can enjoy, if you want to get into it and you want to sit down and invite your friend to watch something you have so many different genres of things to choose from.
(30:00)
SARAH: Yeah, that’s true.
KAYLA: I’m sure there is drama. But ARMY just seems a lot less toxic than a lot of other fandoms. But maybe I don’t know enough.
PADYA: ARMY can be toxic when other fans—fanwars—people try to pick on BTS because there’s a lot of misunderstandings and hate and jealousy, I don’t know. I think they are attacking when attacked or provoked but within ARMY there’s a lot of respect and love. Unless you know that Sarah was saying where it’s like oh no these two people are definitely dating, and those people you want to avoid.
SARAH: These two members are fucking and I will die on this hill!
PADYA: Or, the people I know who are like, “I am destined to marry this particular member, I’m going to write books that I hope that he will find and love me, fall in love, we’ll get married, I’m ready to leave my boyfriend for him” kind of attitude. Those are extremes—
SARAH: That’s a lot.
PADYA: Mostly, people are kind of neutral.
KAYLA: Is that why you’re writing your book, Padya is that you hope BTS sees it and—
PADYA: Fall in love with me? Yeah. Then I’ll be the eighth member even though I’m not Korean.
KAYLA: Oh my god is there y/n fanfic about BTS and your mom selling you—there was One Direction fic where you wake up and—
PADYA: You’re like, “where’s Harry?”
KAYLA: You wake up and your mom is like “we’re broke and we sold you for money” and this man is—it’s a cardboard cutout of Harry.
PADYA: The one I know it’s like, I wake up and I’m like, “where’s Harry” and my mom is like, “who do you think gave you your kidney” or whatever?
SARAH: Or who do you think gave you your heart? I also like the one that’s making fun of that’s making fun of that where it’s Niall like, “who do ya fink gave ya your teef?” And he’s got no teeth. Anyway.
PADYA: There’s definitely y/n fanfiction, yeah.
SARAH: There absolutely is. And I think a lot of the aspects of the fandom I don’t like, that I distance myself from are the aggressively allo parts of the fandom. Or people who—sure you can speculate all you want, I would eat my own left arm if not a single one of them is queer. I really would. But you can speculate without forcing things on them. I hate when people are like oh they are definitely this and I am going to keep tweeting at them about it. No, stay out of their business.
PADYA: “The M in his tattoo is parallel to the J so he must be in love with Jimin.” That’s not what that means. It just means his name starts with a J and he loves ARMY.
KAYLA: The idea that you would tweet at them, “hey are you gay,” “hey are you dating this person” what do you think is going to happen? They’re not going to answer you. For what?
PADYA: They don’t tweet fans.
SARAH: When I was a fan of One Direction and I was a fan of 5SOS, my band fandom kind of ended around the time I became aware of my identity. I think that was just a coincidence. But last time I was in a band fandom, I was presumably straight, I just kind of assumed I was. And so I was just like, I guess—I mean they are attractive, sure. But I kind of had different genres of fandom and this is the first time I’ve been a fan of a band again. Since having been like oh yeah I’m definitely aroace. And it’s definitely a different experience being fully aware of my identity and being aware of this. Because yeah they’re attractive as fuck, I would stare at them all day, I don’t like them just because they’re attractive, I am not attracted to them. I like what they stand for and what they’re like and the music they make and all these other things. And so I think being a part of a fandom where so many other people acknowledge that and accept that is really wonderful because I feel like in the past in the fandoms I’ve been in even if you’re not straight it’s assumed you’re probably into men.
KAYLA: When you were a fan of One Direction or 5SOS, did you feel pressure to pick one you had a crush on?
SARAH: I mean everyone had their favorite, with BTS you have your bias, yes but I never viewed it as a crush, it was more like this is the one I choose. This is mine.
PADYA: Niall girl or whatever.
SARAH: Yeah. Luckily as I’ve mentioned on this pod before, there was pressure to be a certain way but I just for some reason didn’t give a fuck thankfully. Very glad that I didn’t give a fuck when I was younger. And so I would be like, my favorite is so and so, but it was never like a I want to get married to them.
PADYA: I used to really aggressively avoid media with women just to prove that I was straight. I was like, oh I love High School Musical and I wouldn’t bat an eye towards Cheetah Girls because I’m not a lesbian. And so that’s why I was into One Direction at the beginning. And then I went to a different high school where they had that kind of mentality, oh One Direction is really lame because people who are primarily teenage girls like this—
SARAH: And therefore it must be bad.
PADYA: Yes, it’s uncool you have no taste, and so I canceled that and I listened to indie rock or whatever. So then after I went to college and I became more aware of my queerness, I was like, it’s actually that I really really want to look like Zayn and I also do love Harry Styles and everything he stands for and I think that is kind of more I feel towards BTS, that it feels more okay to be out to yourself and think more critically about what exactly you like about them because no one is assuming it’s only because you are attracted to them. No one within the fandom at least. Because they do carry so much depth beyond that.
SARAH: As you mentioned, kind of avoiding female groups to prove that you’re straight, that is a really interesting thing because with K-pop there’s guy groups and there’s girl groups and there’s some groups that are mixed gender but it’s not really a common thing. And something—I’ve mentioned this before in the podcast—I tend to be more into guy groups but that’s not because I’m attracted to them, it’s not because I’m attracted to men. Honestly, a lot of the reason I’m less into girl groups is because the level of sexualization of these women in the girl groups makes me uncomfortable. And so it’s not even—some people could look at that and be like, oh you’re more into guy groups it must be an attraction thing. But it’s really not. I think some of these girl groups are super talented but I’m just uncomfortable with the way that they’re often forced to be presented.
PADYA: Right they are so industry-controlled and their image is very very curated in a way that they lose a lot of autonomy and they have to promote a lot of things very toxic like skinny, fair, blah blah, and it’s not just not appealing at all.
KAYLA: Why don’t they let girl groups in general be authentic, cause I feel like they’re so worried about oh we have to cater to the male gaze too? The way BTS, you guys are saying, they’re very authentic, they’re very much so themselves, but I don’t think they really let girl groups do that.
PADYA: The labels have a lot of power and the labels are always spearheaded by these old men in their 50s and 60s and I think that’s where the decisions are being made from. BTS’s label doesn’t have girl groups.
(40:00)
SARAH: BTS’s label too, they tend to give a bit more freedom to their groups but they have a girl group that’s going to debut soon so I’m super curious to see what’s going to happen there because I mean I would like to think that they would give that girl group more freedom but who knows?
PADYA: There’s gay ass girl groups out there though.
SARAH: That’s true. I feel like that kind of—again I didn’t have any questions prepared, it’s just talking points.
KAYLA: That’s it, that’s the show.
SARAH: But TL;DR, what’s the thesis statement of this episode?
KAYLA: These bitches gay. Good for them. Good for them.
PADYA: Stream BTS, hit Sarah up if you want recommendations.
SARAH: True.
KAYLA: I will say, if you hit us up via social media, if you hit us up in general, just know that I’m usually the first line of defense so it might take a bit for you to get an answer because I will have to redirect your message to Sarah.
SARAH: Yes and also we’re bad at answering to begin with.
KAYLA: I answered so many emails and DMs this weekend. Some of them were months old and it was people asking for advice and I was like, you’ve probably figured this out by now so you probably don’t need my advice anymore but here it is anyway.
SARAH: Amazing. TL;DR, fandom is queer. That’s it.
PADYA: So true.
SARAH: I don’t think that was the thesis but you know what it’s true. Stan BTS for clear skin.
PADYA: Stream any of their songs.
SARAH: Stan BTS to avoid heteronormativity. Yup, that’s it. Okay, what the fuck is our poll for this week?
KAYLA: I think open-ended, the first question you asked Sarah, how has BTS helped you in your gender and sexuality journey.
PADYA: I like that.
SARAH: That’s good. Oh boy Kayla.
KAYLA: I’m writing.
SARAH: What’s your beef and your juice? Padya, what’s your beef and your juice this week?
PADYA: My juice is that I’m going on a roadtrip to Colorado. It’s very exciting. And next week I’m going to Vermont and both of these are states I haven’t seen so it’s very exciting.
KAYLA: So busy!
PADYA: Yeah, Leo season is coming so that’s also a juice. Maybe I will get some serotonin, who knows? And that’s my beef. Everything is sad.
KAYLA: Yeah.
PADYA: I just lay in bed all day.
SARAH: That’s fair. Kayla what is your beef and juice?
KAYLA: My juice is that I had a good fun weekend. It was Dean’s birthday so we did a lot of celebrating things. And we ate good food and heard good music and it was a good time. But now my beef is that now I spent a weekend socializing and so now I never want to see another human person ever again.
SARAH: Valid. My beef is that Olympic athletes in Tokyo are test positive for COVID.
KAYLA: I can’t, they’re going to cancel it I know they are.
SARAH: They’re not going to cancel it, you know they’re not going to cancel it.
KAYLA: What are they going to do?
SARAH: They’re going to say, if you have COVID you can’t compete.
KAYLA: Don’t the Olympics start on Friday?
SARAH: Yeah.
KAYLA: Why has there been no hype.
SARAH: When this pod is out, it will have started.
KAYLA: There’s no hype—maybe it’s cause I don’t watch cable anymore.
SARAH: A golf, tennis player has COVID. Kara Eaker, who is one of the gymnastics alternates, got COVID.
KAYLA: In America?
SARAH: Yeah, despite the fact that she’s fully vaccinated. But she tested positive.
KAYLA: Yeah I was thinking that today. I was like how annoying that all these athletes aren’t vaccinated and then I remembered that some of these athletes are not from America and so their vaccination isn’t in sync.
SARAH: 80% of the athletes in the Olympic Village are vaccinated.
KAYLA: They should have vaccines being given out to the 20%.
PADYA: They should make it mandatory because some people are probably antivax.
KAYLA: Plus there’s so much fucking in the Olympic village that goes on.
PADYA: How do you know that?
SARAH: They have the cardboard beds this time.
KAYLA: Well, all I’m saying that in years past, they gave out condoms like candy because in the Olympic Village are like, “I’m at the Olympics it’s so exciting there are all these other hot athletes from all these other countries,” it is a fuck fest.
PADYA: I have never thought about this.
KAYLA: It’s true.
SARAH: Okay this year, we’re going to have these recyclable cardboard bedframes that are intentionally designed so that they can’t hold two people in them.
KAYLA: That won’t stop the horny, you know?
SARAH: I saw this tweet that was like, “do you think the most athletic people in the world won’t find a way to fuck standing up?”
KAYLA: They’ll be fine. There’s also a floor right there.
SARAH: Anyway, my beef is that people started testing positive for COVID at the Olympics. My juice is the Black Widow movie. I finally got to see it. I would die for Yelena Pavlova and I probably will. That’s all.
PADYA: Who is that?
SARAH: That’s Florence Pugh.
KAYLA: Have you seen the pictures of the sad face she does in every movie?
PADYA: Yes!
SARAH: It’s delightful.
PADYA: She’s so cute!
KAYLA: She is.
SARAH: Well you can tell us about your beef, your juice, your BTS bias on our social media @soundsfakepod. We also have a Patreon, patreon.com/soundsfakepod. We have a new $2 patron, it’s Kate Bailey, thank you Kate.
KAYLA: Yay.
SARAH: Our $5 patrons who we are promoting this week are Elliana Currie, Green_sarah who is not green but we like you anyway, Frank Cardenas, and we have JR who bumped up from a $2 patron. Actually they’re a 4 pound patron but we just translate everything into US Dollars because we love being America-centric. Our $10 patrons who are promoting something this week are Doug Rice who would like to promote Church Too by Emily Joy, H. Valdis who would like to promote keeping your space clean, Barefoot Backpacker who would like to promote Reclaiming the Night, The Steve who would like to promote Ecosia, Ari K. who would like to promote Thought Slime and Mattie who would like to promote The Union Series by T. H. Hernandez. I think that was six.
KAYLA: Well, extra one.
SARAH: That was six. Extra. A lil bonus. Our other $10 patrons are Arcnes, Benjamin Ybarra, anonymous, my aunt Jeannie, Cass, Derek and Carissa, Aaron, Khadir, Potater, Changeling MX, David Jay, The Stubby Tech, Simona Sajmon, Rosie Costello, Hector Murillo and Jay. Our $15 patrons are Nathaniel White - NathanielJWhiteDesigns.com, my mom Julie who would like to promote free mom hugs, her biases are RM and her bias wrecker is J-Hope.
PADYA: Love that. That’s John Cena’s too.
SARAH:We established that between me, you, and my mom, we have all of them covered.
PADYA: Good, yeah yeah that makes sense.
SARAH: So, yeah, it’s good. Sara Jones who is @eternalloli everywhere, Andy A who would like to promote being in unions and IWW, Martin Chiesel who would like to promote his podcast, Everyone’s Special and No One is, Leila, who would like to promote love is love also applying to aro people, Shrubbery who would like to promote the Planet Earth, Dia Chappell who would like to promote twitch.tv/MelodyDia, Sherronda J Brown, Maggie Capalbo who would like to promote their dogs Minnie, Leia, and Loki, Andrew Hillum would like to promote the Invisible Spectrum podcast, and Dragonfly who would like to promote Padya. Our $20 patrons are Sarah T. who would like to promote long walks outside and HomHomofSpades who would like to promote getting enough Vitamin D. To our esteemed guest, where can the people of the internet find you?
PADYA: You could find me on Twitter @padyatheleo.
SARAH: And you should.
PADYA: And you should also check out @dreamglowmag on Twitter, Instagram, and dreamglowmag.com.
SARAH: I recently had someone follow me from their BTS stan account saying that they just wanted to follow BTS accounts from there but they also followed me because my likes are impeccable. What I would like to tell you is that all of my likes come from Padya.
KAYLA: So really just stop following Sarah and only follow Padya.
SARAH: So, that’s what you need to know. Do you have anything you want to promote that isn’t what you’ve already said?
PADYA: I can promote my BTS recs playlist that you can link to the description.
SARAH: Ooh, hell yeah. We will link that shit.
KAYLA: Someone remind me to do that.
SARAH: Kayla you should do that.
KAYLA: Thank you.
SARAH: Thanks for listening, thank you so much Padya for joining us. Good luck transcribing this. Thank you for transcribing also. Appreciate that.
KAYLA: Become a patron to fund Padya now.
SARAH: That’s literally what patrons do. Patrons fund Padya.
KAYLA: The Patreon money goes straight through our bank account into Paypal into Padya’s bank account. Fund Padya now. Adopt a Padya.
SARAH: oh boy. Thanks for listening. Did I already say thanks for joining us? I’m going to thank you again. Tune in next Sunday for more of us in your ears.
KAYLA: And until then take good care of your cows.