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A Theory about “Trivia 承: Love” – Part 1

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~ BTS Love Yourself Albums explained ~

Hello ARMY

As per my first post, I’m going to be analysing BTS’ Love Yourself Album series in detail to uncover the full meaning behind the three albums (Love Yourself: 承 Her, Love Yourself: 轉 Tear and Love Yourself: 結 Answer) and their respective songs.

I believe that the BTS Love Yourself Album Series is one great big (puzzle) story, and that at the centre of the story lies a beautiful love story they are forbidden to tell. I have summarised my theory at a high level here.

To unravel and be able to fully appreciate the special little details of their story (and the genius that is Kim Namjoon), we must first start our journey by talking about the song: “Trivia 承: Love”, a song written by Namjoon and sung solely by Namjoon. This is important as it means that this song is incredibly personal for him, and for him only.

As there is much to uncover, I have spread this analysis of Trivia 承: Love out over two posts:

In Part 1, I discuss:

In Part 2, I discuss:

And, to see how all the songs in the Love Yourself albums connect, you will have to read my blog in chronological order from oldest to newest. A list of all my blog posts can be found here.

Before we continue, please know I did not start this blog because I ship anyone in particular. I do not have a shipping bias nor an individual bias, nor do I find someone’s gender preference a big deal. Someone’s gender preference is as mundane to me as someone liking chocolate, vanilla or mint chocolate ice cream because I believe Love is Love.
Read my About Me to understand why I started this blog.

The concept that Love Transforms

Now as many of you ARMYs know, and as explained by NamJin Home in a brilliant video, in this song, the Power of Love can transform and smooth rigidities. If this is the first time you’re hearing about it, I strongly suggest you watch Namjin Home’s video first as I don’t touch on everything, just the bits I find most relevant to my theory and analysis of the song.

Namjoon said that in this song, he played around with the text and focused on how words in the song looked like rather than how they sounded like. His work is based on the metaphorical concept that love re-shapes you into a different, softer being, smooths ups your edges and makes you see life in a less rigid and intransigent way.

As per the helpful screenshot below from NamJin Home:

So love, with its force, smooths out a person’s edges so that the ㅁ in 사람 (person) becomes an ㅇ to become 사랑 (love). In this song, Love has the power to metamorphose words. Here are some examples:

“…you are the one…who will make a ‘person’ into ‘love'”

“You erode all my corners and make me into love, love, love”

“My love…when you sit on top of it and you become my heart[1]“
(i.e. Sitting on the top of “O” in “Love” makes it becomes a heart shape)

This can also be seen in the English words “LIVE” and “LOVE” which appear recurringly throughout the song. The “I” changes into an “O” because of Love:

“I live so I love
I live so I love
(Live & love, live & love)
(Live & love, live & love)
I live so I love”

I also just want to point out that there is some brilliant imagery play on hand. Take a look at these lyrics:

“Too many words circle around me”

The sentence is overloading with “O” imagery, which is symbolically linked to Love and the concept we have just been discussing.

The relationship between the Korean words for “Straight lines” and “Seokjin”

Back to NamJin Home’s theory, the song contains the following lyrics:

“Before I knew you, my heart was filled with straight lines only”; and

“In a myriad of straight lines; My love, love, love”
(Note: There seems to be two translation of this line on the internet, the other translation is:
“In those countless straight lines, my love, love, love“.)

Now, in Korean, “Straight Lines” is spelt = 직선 (JikSeon)
And Seokjin’s name in Korean is spelt = 석진 (Seokjin)

If you simply swap the order of the first two characters on top of “직선”, it morphs into 석진 (Seokjin). As Namjin Home pointed out, given Namjoon’s brilliance and the theme of metamorphosis of words in this song, it is just too coincidental to be a coincidence.

The countless songs of Seokjin

Now keeping the above metamorphosis of words in mind, I also noticed something else about the following line:

“저 무수히 많은 직선들 속, 내 사랑, 사랑, 사랑”
(In those countless straight lines; My love, love, love)

Now let’s assume that 직선 (straight lines) is really referring to 석진 (Seokjin), the sentence would now read as:

“저 무수히 많은 석진들 속, 내 사랑, 사랑, 사랑”
(In those countless Seokjin; My love, love love)

Now this sentence doesn’t quite make sense, BUT, if we transform the “lines” of a single Korean word into something else. Something magical happens.

We are going to transform the “ㄱ” in the word “속” to an “ㅇ” so it now reads “송”. “송” means “Song” in English. The sentence will now read:

“저 무수히 많은 석진들 송, 내 사랑, 사랑, 사랑”

Now the word 저, the first word in the sentence can mean three things:

  1. 저 – That (thing) / Those
  2. 저(는) – I
  3. 저 – Writings

And the word 들 can mean field, or… boy.

Essentially the sentence “저 무수히 많은 석진들 송, 내 사랑, 사랑, 사랑” I believe can be interpreted three different ways (native Koreans/Korean experts, feel free to jump in here!):

And, if we morph the word 사랑 (Love) into 사람 (which can mean: person, man, one, soul, spirit etc), it can effectively be interpreted so many more different ways (I’m not going to write all of them down as I think you will get the drift):

Clues that Namjoon is not “straight”

I truly believe many BTS songs are dedicated to Jin and contain messages about LGBTIQ+ themes. In fact, I dare say a large part of the Love Yourself series is dedicated to Jin, and hopefully this will become evident as we continue to explore this series together and the songs within it in my future posts.

For example, the album covers are of straight lines being bended into hearts. The prominent colours here are also Blue and Pink, colours that I believe represent Namjoon and Seokjin respectively (I will do another post explaining why I believe this one day).

Also, another meaning that NamJin Home identified is that “Straight” in English is another word to describe heterosexuals. So, if Namjoon’s love interest happened to be a boy, this would give the song another meaning – that love made him go from “Straight” to “Not-straight” (i.e. gay).

Expanding from this, what I find particularly interesting is the specific choice of the word “pride” in the following line:

“넌 나의 자랑, 자랑, 자랑”
(You’re my pride, pride, pride)

Firstly, in Korean, not only is there a wonderful sound play between  “자랑” (pronounced as JaRang, which means Pride) and “사랑” (pronounced as SaRang, which means man, soul, human etc), but notice again how very coincidental that the difference between the first characters (“자” and “사” is a straight line at the top of the first alphabet ㅈ); and from a Romanised lyrics point of view, the “J” sound from “자랑” can easily morph into an “S” sound in “사랑”.

The reason why I find the choice of the word “pride” so interesting is because the word “pride” around the world has immediate connotations to Gay Pride. And this line would have so much more meaning if the person Namjoon was referring to was a guy.

And if you just look at the Love Yourself: 結 Answer albums (and I point out, specifically the Love Yourself: 結 Answer album that contains this song)… there is a whole lot of rainbow going on, the symbolic colour of Gay Pride:

And let’s not forget that time in 2019 when Namjoon created this rainbow coloured keychain spelling “LOVE”:

Source: https://twitter.com/trviabts/status/1181899433572589568/photo/1

The confirmation that Namjoon is talking about Jin… and singing the song to Jin and for Jin

Now there is just one more thing I want to point out today in this post. Namjoon sings the following line in the song:

“Look, mine and yours also sound the same“
(봐 내와 네도 똑같은 소리가 나잖아)

In this line, Namjoon appears to be implying that his lover’s name and his name sound the same.

Now, both Seokjin and Namjoon have the same last names: Kim (김)

Seokjin is known as Jin to everyone, and sometimes Namjoon is referred to “Joon” or “Joonie”.

Now, Jin in Korean is: 진

And Joon in Korean is: 준

The only difference between진 (Jin) and 준 (Joon) is the one alphabet “ㅣ” in 진 which produces an “I” sounds and  “ᅟᅮ” in 준 which produces an “OO” sound. Similarly to what we’ve discussed above, if this metamorphosis is applied to the “I” in Jin’s name, it can become an “O” (or I should say, two “O”s)… and their names would sound the same:

Jin — morphs into—> Joon, and therefore sounds like Joon.

Therefore, Namjoon is singing to Jin in this song.

I feel that this is just too elegant to be a coincidence.

Thanks ARMY and I hope you enjoyed Part 1 of my first theory and analysis. You can read Part 2 here.

Remember, to see how everything ties together, please read my overarching theory and my blog in chronological order. A list of all my blog posts in chronological order can be found here.

x G
(Twitter: @btsgtheories)

Disclaimer:

As per my first author’s note, please, no hate! I love all seven members equally. I’m merely sharing with you my theories based on my interpretations of their amazing songs. Please enjoy.

[1] https://genius.com/Genius-english-translations-bts-trivia-love-english-translation-lyrics

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