RM once said during Map of the Soul ON:E: “Our first march started with a very small dream of seven little boys… Along the way, we met many people who were like us. Anyone can join us. BTS is not just a story of seven people.” I find myself going back to this quote of Namjoon a year after I wrote about ARMY multistans and multistaning. It comes at the wake of Jin losing the Daesang at the MAMA 2025. Threads is ripe with discussions on fandom identity, solidarity, belonging and evolution besides. I face this conflict once again: the tension between plurality and loyalty. RM’s words are true. The march did grow. ARMY is no longer the single, roaring purple wave we once were. We have become an ocean with many currents: multistans, old fans, casual listeners, new joiners, soft stans, tired stans, nostalgic stans, hopeful stans. Different hearts. Different histories. Different ways of loving. This plurality is not failure. It is the natural evolution of a fandom that has lived, changed, and endured for twelve years. It is the proof that BTS’ love has made room for many forms of belonging. But if I am honest, plurality also carries consequences, especially in spaces that demand focus, unity, and numbers: streaming, voting, charting, award shows. It was painful to see votes split. To see playlists divided. To watch Jin lose a Daesang not because he lacked impact, but because ARMY today walks many roads at once. And for a moment, I felt torn: How do I embrace plurality without abandoning my own sense of devotion? How do I honor different journeys while grieving the effects of divided participation?
The answer that found me was simple, gentle, and grounding: Plurality explains how fandoms evolve. Loyalty explains how I choose to love. I can now acknowledge the multiplicity of ARMY with kindness without erasing the clarity of my own devotion. I can now understand why multistans exist, why priorities shift, why the ocean no longer moves as one and still firmly choose my lane: My votes are for BTS. My streams are for BTS. My energy, intention, and love remain with BTS alone. Not out of hostility toward other groups. Not out of disdain for multistans. Simply because this is where my heart has chosen to stay. This is the distinction I needed: a boundary that is honest, not bitter; clear, not harsh; kind, not compromising. RM said “anyone can join us,” and I believe that. Everyone’s way of loving BTS is valid. But my own way is focused shaped by twelve years of sincerity, memory, and a bond that has never asked me to look elsewhere. Plurality and loyalty are not enemies. They simply live in different chambers of the same heart. So as Jin’s birthday approaches, and my favorite album by RM celebrates its 3rd year, I return to what has always been true for me: We show up because the heart remembers. I stream and vote for BTS because their story is the one I walk. I honor plurality with kindness, but I stand with BTS with clarity. And in this, I find peace. Not the peace of uniformity, or belonging to a clique or an exclusive group, but the peace of knowing who I am as a fan, and with joy of who I am marching beside. Apobangpo! Purple and true!
Madeline Miller’s Galatea is a tale of emancipation from a creator-husband who controlled her every will; a man who gazed at her as his own work of art. No agency. No voice. No choice. Until, at last, she reclaimed all her faculties in a cruel, shocking act that left me pondering justice, liberation, and the cost of becoming fully human.
Winter Ahead by Kim Taehyung (feat. Park Hyo Sin) explores a parallel theme, though the rebellion here is softer, quiet, humane, but no less liberating. The music video suggests references to the myth of Pygmalion and Galatea besides. The lines:
I’ll be with you until the spring runs by And the summer starts to burn And I’ll be with you when autumn returns Yes, when all the seasons turn
signal a different kind of subversion.
They imply: He will be with you through every change, but not at the cost of his own becoming. A love that honours presence without demanding permanence. A devotion that refuses self-erasure. In this way, Taehyung seems to gesture toward the K-pop industry’s traditional creator-captor dynamic, where idols are sculpted into images and deprived of agency. A modern Pygmalion myth. But BTS, across their career, have steadily subverted that narrative, becoming auteurs of their own art, identities, and stories.
And in Winter Ahead, Taehyung widens that subversion into something tender: an articulation of loving and being loved with freedom, with consent, and with the right to grow into one’s own form. A gentle rebellion and perhaps the most radical one of al More Recent Articles
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