lovingthatofficeyfeel | Recent Entries

So, you would like to dip your toes in the waters of The Lore? Welcome aboard!

When I first became an ATINY and decided to investigate The Lore the hardest part for me was just trying to figure 'what am I supposed to go look at and in what order to understand what the story is?'

The long answer is: everything. To the extent that if it is possible to put their lore in something, they will.

The short answer is why I developed this playlist, originally just for my own reference, but I've shared it with a couple of other people since who have seemed to find it helpful. So now I have it posted here where its easily maintainable, (for me,) and accessible, (for everyone else).

Please note that I consider this playlist to be like just the absolute basic backbone of the lore. The goal here is to just get an an understanding of what the storyline(s) are enough that you can now go off and explore everything else and make your own connections and theories. So please do use my playlist as a springboard, and then go off and explore! Make all the connections! Develop your crazy conspiracy theories about wtf is going on! Because once you know what to look for, or even just how to look, you will find a treasure (heh) trove of lore hidden in pretty much every conceivable nook and cranny. Its one of the most delightful parts of being a loretiny.

Now, a couple housekeeping notes:
1) My playlist assumes you have access to read the Diary entries for the Fever era, The World era, The World: To The End, and Golden Hour. I have it noted when it makes sense to read them, but you will have to source the actual diaries on your own.

2) My playlist assumes you also have access to listen to the full album or each album however it is you consume music. The 'lore' tracks are specifically mentioned on the playlist because they are the ones that non-loretiny's tend to skip, so I deliberately added them in to make sure they aren't missed. But make no mistake that the whole album is lore. All the songs contribute to the lore with their lyrics, but you can listen to the whole album at any time you like when diving into that era, and please do. The playlist is structured around making sure that there's a compressive and cohesive order to watch/listen/read everything else related to an album in one place. So I'm not ignoring the songs that don't have mv's or aren't the 'lore tracks' I just didn't see the need to put every song on the playlist because... you should already be listening to the whole album?

3) Everything else that isn't 1+2 I should have linked so you should be able to jump right to it without having to go digging or searching for it, because that was one of the biggest things that drove me nuts when I was first getting into the lore. I used direct links to the official accounts wherever possible, but there are a couple videos where there was no Eng sub originally, and in those cases I have provided a fansubbed version.

4) I'll do my best to keep everything updated as we get new lore added, so hopefully this can stay a living playlist for future comebacks.

The Playlist

1. Treasure Era
2. FEVER Era
3. The World Era
4. Spin Off: From the Witness
5. Golden Hour Era (Main)
6. Golden Hour Era (Member solos)

Ok. So. You are probably wondering why this is its own post if its just the 9 member solo mv's that belong to In Your Fantasy. And that would be: because its not.

If you only want to listen to the 8 IYF member mv's + Autobahn and that's it, I won't stop you. But I do think you will absolutely be missing out on some seriously brilliant lore that has been lying in wait to ambush us all, apparently.

Now, as much as possible, I've tried to make this playlist in a way where everything is arranged in an order where its easy to take it all in, make your own connections, and then form your own opinion about what is going on in the lore. I love the different perspective every different loretiny brings to how the interpret what is going on. I have my own opinions and theories but I don't want to force them on anyone, because I'm just working with what I've been presented with and making logical extrapolations from it, so I've tried to keep them out of the rest of the playlist as much as possible.

But I really can't do that here, because I have absolutely Made Some Choices with this section of the playlist that are very much coloured by my personal way of viewing and interpreting the lore and I feel like they do warrant an explanation because they are at least a little bit contentious. Because you are going to notice a lot of Special Clips / cover songs, which I know a lot of people would argue cannot be lore by virtue of being a cover and not an actual ATEEZ song. And up until GH3/IYF/Ash I had agreed with that, even though I had been Noticing Things that looked very suspiciously-intentionally lore-like in those videos, (specifically half of By.Hongjoong,) pretty much since I became a loretiny. But I could never point to anything concrete that would tangibly connect all these videos to the lore.

And then In Your Fantasy and Ash came out, and I just about lost mind because it was so close that all these other videos that looked like they belonged to the lore didn't just connect, but connected here. Seeing two Yunho's on either side of the mirror in Slide To Me who were moving separately basically sealed the deal for me, because if everything in Slide To Me is unquestionably lore... none of the major elements present in Slide To Me show up there for the first time. (And I think you'll see what I mean as you go through the playlist).

Additionally, I had always had that all the songs on the other side of Crescent part 2 on Fin: Will, (aka the unit songs,) belonged to a different point in time / lore storyline than the first half of the album... (And all I am going to say about that is: funny how Yeosang, San, and Wooyoung just turn to ash and blow away at the very end of It's You mv...)

So with all this in mind, I've spent the last couple months as the member solo mv's have been coming out playing with each member's videos like lego blocks, (and continually being surprised that not only did they look like they belong to the lore, but when you actually put them in a coherent order, they work, either as one coherent storyline, or as a couple different spokes all coming from the same wheel hub, and absolutely expanding upon the themes of IYF, Ash, or both).

So, yeah, I am going to actually say a bunch of the member's various covers are, in fact, actually part of the lore. And the part of the lore timeline they all connect to is the stuff happening right now in GH3/IYF/Ashes to Light.

Ok, so if I am saying a bunch of covers Are Part Of The Lore Now, then what is the metric I'm using to determine if a video should be counted as part of the lore or not? Well, these are my criteria:

the mv is deliberately and heavily using the golden hour light vs blue hour light lighting scheme that is integral to the main lore canon mv's
heavy use of 'Sopro Red' lighting, again integral to the main lore. Extra weight given if whatever is happening in a 'Sopro Red' scene makes it look like the member in question may be going a little bit crazy
the use of that incredibly prominent, almost blinding, cold light spotlight that is like an actual character 'watching' someone from above that is central to Ash (and is subsequently used prominently in Lemon Drop, Sagittarius, ROAR, Legacy etc)
the video literally turns grey/monochrome or starts progressively 'losing color'
the use of the Hala Hala 'deep in my heart, deep in my soul' flashing lights, used in the same way the main lore mv's use them
the prominent use of deteriorated/overexposed film and film damage/dust artifacts as effects/transitions (which have been established in the main mv's for quite a while but which IOMT took to an entirely different unmistakably deliberate level)
the member is having to face their own reflection in a mirror (ala San in Say My Name, Wooyoung in Sagittarius, or Yunho in Slide to Me etc)
the set design is unmistakably linked to the set of a main mv. (And by this I mainly mean the Wonderland night garden, that also appear again in the GH2 'To' version concept).
the mv contains 'stalking camera' or '9th person' POV camera shots where the camera shots are either acting like an actual person hiding around corners/beyond doorways/slighting out of sight and watching that member in that very unsettling way they've been leaning into largely OR are acting as the POV of an actual person in the mv that the member is acknowledging who is participating in that scene somehow, which has become a really important element of IOMT, Lemon Drop, Slide To Me, Autobahn, ROAR etc.
something in the mv is being lit on fire

Conversely, if a video contains a complete absence of the qualifiers, then it is probably not lore, (which I believe is the case with Jongho's JjongST covers, which are dramatic but with a complete absence of any of the lore-specific indicators. They are dramatic in a way that is clearly a tribute to the drama the song from the OST Jongho's covering. And I think when placed against Jongho's other covers which absolutely are packed full of lore-signifying conventions, I can pretty safely conclude that the JjongST covers are actually just covers and tributes to Jongho's love of kdrama OST's).

As well, sometimes a video is not lore because its our real-life South Korean idol boy singing a song because they want to sing a song. And just like I have criteria for ruling something in as lore, I also have a couple for ruling something out:

if a video is specifically tied to a real-life event with a specific purpose, (such as Hongjoong's Wonderwall cover being specifically about / a tribute to his World Vision charity run and all the Atiny that ran with him. It's not lore, thus not in this playlist)
if a video specifically references only our real-life boys and makes 0 attempts at fictional anything, (Seonghwa's At My Worst cover that is just his own baby/childhood pictures, or Wooyoung and Yeosang's cover of BTS' 친구 that is entirely real-life footage and celebration of their real life friendship. Neither qualify as lore, and thus not in this playlist)

After that I am working with the 'if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck; it is probably a duck,' approach to what I am including/excluding videos as being part of the lore. If a video contains a significant number of the above visual signifiers that are essential to a main lore video, then its probably also a lore video, even if it happens to be a cover.

That said, of course I had to make exceptions. Because the 'no real-life-idol references' would've disqualified Hongjoong's A Walker, at the same time that A Walker does use black and white, the golden hour light, dunks Hongjoong in a pool, has the blinding spotlight, and the stalking camera. In that case I looked at the legit solid list of lore signifiers vs the one disqualifier and erred on the side of 'I'd rather keep things in' and kept it. Especially if the video made perfect sense within the context of the other ones I wasn't on the fence about for that member.

Hopefully that logic, and the choices that resulted from it, make sense when you watch through the videos for each member's IYF/Ash storyline below, but also feel free to disagree with me and include/exclude other videos as you see fit.

Where a member's videos do something other than make one single linear storyline I did my best to try and split things up into parts or sides to show what videos I'm pretty sure go with what videos in what order, but with the vaguest labels I could think of so that hopefully its fairly obvious what my starting point it, without trying to dictate anyone's opinion about how to read it.

TL;DR:

Assume that the events of Lemon Drop / In Your Fantasy and the events of Ash are either happening simultaneously or in very close succession
Watch the mv's listed for each member in the order that I arranged them (because I put them in that order on purpose)
Think about the story those mv's in that order are telling for each member relating to what is going on in LD/IYF/Ash and also that member's larger character arc in the lore
(Optional: come scream with me about all of this being hidden in plain sight for literal years)

Golden Hour Era (Member Solo's)
(everything-is-connected-here-actually edition)

Golden Hour Era (Main)

Spin Off: From the Witness

Spin off: From the Witness
- ATEEZ(에이티즈) - SPIN OFF ： FROM THE WITNESS Prologue
- ATEEZ(에이티즈) - 'HALAZIA' Official MV Teaser 1
- ATEEZ(에이티즈) - 'HALAZIA' Official MV Teaser 2
- I'VE SEEN IT, WILL YOU？
So, the promotion for Halazia was super cryptic and one of the parts of it was this livestream of the abandoned shopping mall, where if you sit and pay really close attention you see things move in the shadows, random bits of morse code, random bird calls, and writing on the walls that appears and disappears. It is a whole thing, but it is a lot to sit there and watch an empty shopping mall get rained on looking for tiny clues in the shadows. So the link above is the original KQ livestream link

HOWEVER, if you don't want to sit there watching water drip onto an abandoned shopping mall hoping to catch the clues, here's is the same video from someone who reuploaded it: [DELETED ⧸⧸ ATEEZ] I'VE SEEN IT, WILL YOU？ (cc), (because KQ had it privated for about a year and actually only made it available again recently). And in their reupload the added a bunch comments in the subtitles to point out what's happening in the video to make it easier to notice. As well, a bunch of other lore-tiny's in the comments under this video timestamped all the stuff that appears/disappears, so this one might be easier to watch if you just want to skip to each Mysterious Clue
- ATEEZ(에이티즈) - 'HALAZIA' Official MV
- ATEEZ(에이티즈) - SPIN OFF ： FROM THE WITNESS Epilogue
- [2022 MBC 가요대제전] 에이티즈 - 할라지아 (ATEEZ - HALAZIA), MBC 221231 방송
- [ATEEZ - HALAZIA] Comeback Stage ｜ #엠카운트다운 EP.779 ｜ Mnet 230112 방송
- ATEEZ(에이티즈) - HALAZIA @인기가요 inkigayo 20230115
- Listen: Outro: Blue Bird (Spin Off: From the Witness)
- [ENG SUB] Professor Hongjoong's ATEEZ Storyline Special Lecture

- Bonus: CHUNG HA 청하 ｜ 'EENIE MEENIE (Feat. Hongjoong of ATEEZ)' Official Music Video.
Why did I put this here and not in The World era, you might ask, especially considering the prominent 'Android Guardian'? Two reasons. The really prominent (blue) birds both visually and in Hongjoong's little choreo, and the fact that it is the environment in Eenie Meenie which we can see actively starting to lose gravity and destabilize. And that, to me, make this mv almost kind of like a bridge between The World and (whatever happens to it to cause) Halazia.

Back to the Playlist Index