Why Ateez’s lore is confusing (on purpose) | Ateez Theory

Summary

The transcript from Tiny Bug Ink explores the complex and deliberately confusing narrative of Ateez's lore. The video suggests that Ateez's story involves two worlds, Old World and New World, each with their own reality and illusion. The creator argues that the diary entries from the Fever series should not be taken at face value, as Ateez members are unreliable narrators and their perspectives are inherently biased. The interplay of these biases creates confusion, which is an intentional storyline move by Ateez to blend reality with illusion, culminating in a unique narrative space where both coexist.

Highlights

• Ateez's storyline is confusing on purpose, involving Old World and New World. 🌏
• Diary entries from the Fever series offer biased, unreliable narratives. 📖
• Bias in storytelling is intentional, similar to compass directions. 🧭
• Ateez's narrative explores reality versus illusion and the resulting confusion. 🔄
• The audience is invited to share in the confusion experienced by the characters. 🤷‍♂️

Key Takeaways

• Ateez's storyline involves complex storytelling with two worlds, Old World and New World. 🌍
• Diary entries should not be trusted entirely, as they provide biased perspectives. 📚
• Confusion in the storyline is purposeful, blending reality and illusion. 🤔
• Bias in Ateez's narrative is compared to everyday biases, like compass directions and map orientations. 🧭
• The narrative challenges the audience to question reality and illusion within Ateez's lore. 🔍

Overview

Ateez's storyline is a masterclass in weaving a narrative that purposefully leans into confusion. By introducing two parallel worlds, Old World and New World, the creators craft a tale that's rich with intricacies. Through the Fever series, diary entries provide personal accounts of events, but are inherently unreliable as each depicts only one biased perspective.

The video's creator emphasizes the concept of bias, drawing parallels to everyday examples like compass directions and world maps. This same bias underpins Ateez's narrative, making audiences question what is real and what is an illusion. It's all a clever design to keep fans engaged and questioning, mirroring the very confusion experienced by the characters themselves.

In a world where Ateez's lore becomes a Möbius strip of reality and illusion, fans are invited to unravel this storyline alongside the characters. The lore makes it clear that reality and illusion are twined together, and the resulting treasure lies in the place where they intersect. By embracing the confusion, fans connect more deeply with the band's creative world.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction: The Concept of Confusion The chapter "Introduction: The Concept of Confusion" delves into the author's reflections on confusion, a topic they've pondered over a considerable period. The author expresses uncertainty about their understanding of the concept and questions whether their thoughts indicate they've lost clarity or if the subject is inherently complex and intricate. They acknowledge the compelling and beautifully constructed nature of storytelling by KQ and admit they are in the early stages of comprehension, suggesting a thematic exploration throughout the chapter.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Obsession and Invitation to Viewers The chapter titled 'Obsession and Invitation to Viewers' revolves around the author's intense fixation on a particular topic, which is described as being so consuming that it's affecting their daily life. The author invites viewers to join in this obsession, but advises newcomers to first familiarize themselves with ATEEZ's storyline and the author's previous theories. However, the choice to dive in immediately is also accepted. The mood is welcoming, despite the intensity of the obsession.
• 01:00 - 02:00: The Role of Diary Entries This chapter focuses on the significance of Diary Entries in albums. Specifically, it looks at the 'Fever Diary Entries' where each character, or member, provides a first-person point of view narration. These entries allow the characters to describe their personal experiences related to the story, offering a detailed account of events through their eyes. Fans often feel a strong inclination toward these narratives, as they offer an intimate glimpse into the characters' thoughts and emotions.
• 02:00 - 03:00: Bias in Storytelling The chapter 'Bias in Storytelling' delves into the concept of trusting diary entries as a complete and accurate representation of a story. While acknowledging their importance and the essential information they provide, the chapter questions the reliability of diary entries, suggesting they are not the story in its entirety but rather a subjective perspective.
• 03:00 - 05:00: Old World vs New World Perspectives The chapter titled 'Old World vs New World Perspectives' explores the notion of reliability in narrative storytelling, specifically relating to the group ATEEZ. The discussion hinges on whether ATEEZ can be considered reliable narrators of their own story, ultimately concluding that the group's account is skewed and potentially unreliable due to inherent biases and confusion present in their storytelling. The narrative, described through the Diary Entities, is characterized by biased and skewed perspectives, indicative of ATEEZ's confused state within the story.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Reality and Illusion: A Matter of Perspective The chapter titled 'Reality and Illusion: A Matter of Perspective' discusses the concept of 'bias' in the context of ATEEZ’s storyline. The term bias here does not refer to a preference for a favorite member, but rather to its true meaning, highlighting its significance in understanding the narrative presented.
• 06:00 - 08:00: Confusion in ATEEZ's Storyline The chapter discusses the concept of bias, comparing it to the common misconception about compasses. While people often say compasses point North, it's more accurate to say that they point both North and South at the same time. This reflects how bias operates - favoring one viewpoint over others without fully considering the complete picture.
• 08:00 - 09:30: The Concept of 'Treasure' The chapter 'The Concept of Treasure' explores the idea of bias in perceptions and interpretations, using the analogy of a compass. By discussing how painting the north needle red biases our perspective towards North, the chapter illustrates that our thinking and language are oriented around this bias. It proposes that if the opposite were done, painting the other side instead, we would have a compass biased towards South. This analogy highlights that the difference between a North-pointing and a South-pointing compass is merely perspective, as they are functionally the same, offering two opposite ways to interpret the same concept.

Why Ateez’s lore is confusing (on purpose) | Ateez Theory Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 The topic of today’s video, which ironically enough is ‘confusion’, is something I have been thinking about for quite a long time now and it is still very hard for me to wrap my head around it. And I don't know if I have actually lost my mind and I’m just gonna end up being wrong about everything I say in this video or if this really is just incredibly intricate, and complex, and beautifully  well laid out storytelling by KQ and I am just barely starting to figure it out. But either way
• 00:30 - 01:00 I cannot stop thinking about this. I am completely obsessed, it is a little bit ruining my life. And I refuse to suffer alone, which is why you’re here. So welcome aboard. Yo Ho. This video is probably not one I would recommend  if you are new to ATEEZ’s storyline or unfamiliar my theories about it  and so I would encourage  you to have watched or read  all of this stuff first before coming here. But if you don’t want to, that is also fine. Let’s get into it.
• 01:00 - 01:30 In the Diary version of the albums we get little chunks of the story in the form of Diary Entries. And at least in the Fever Diary Entries, they are first person point of view narration from each of these characters, each of the members, describing their account of what happened in the story. And I feel like the inclination of a lot of fans
• 01:30 - 02:00 is to wholeheartedly trust the Diary Entries, to believe that the Diary Entries are a 100% accurate telling of the story, the Diary Entries ARE the story. And I sort of disagree. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the Diary Entries are important, they are super insightful, there is information in them  that is undeniably essential to understanding the story. But they’re diary entries.
• 02:00 - 02:30 And given that fact, they are only be reliable source material if you consider ATEEZ to be reliable  narrators of their own story. And in my opinion,  ATEEZ are inherently unreliable narrators. The Diary Entities are an incredibly biased and skewed telling of the story, and on top of all that in this story we know that ATEEZ can become… confused.
• 02:30 - 03:00 I wanna take a minute to explain why I think bias is so important when it comes to ATEEZ’s storyline. And I don’t mean “bias” as in like “who your favorite member is” I mean “bias” as in like the actual definition of that word.
• 03:00 - 03:30 The unconscious or uncontrollable tendency to favor one particular viewpoint over another. Take for example a compass. We usually say that compasses point North. Now this is not completely true. I mean, it’s not wrong, but a more accurate statement would be that compasses point both North and South simultaneously. The needle inside a compass has two sides. And so any compass that points North is also a compass that points South.
• 03:30 - 04:00 We just so happen to paint the North needle red. And because of that the way  we think about compasses and the way we talk about compasses is biased towards North. If we started doing the opposite, and painting the other side instead, this would be a compass that is biased towards South. These two compasses aren't functionally  any different from each other.  A compass that points North and a compass that points South  are just two opposite ways to  think about the same thing.
• 04:00 - 04:30 A similar example would be a map of the world. This is the map of the world that I am most used to seeing, and it is a map that is biased towards the global North. But the Earth is a sphere, a 3D shape in space, and so this is an equally valid map of the world that is biased towards the global South. Neither of these maps are the “right” or “correct” or “authoritative” version of what the world looks like. It’s just the same thing understood from two opposite perspectives.
• 04:30 - 05:00 But when you show a map of the world that map will always be biased because of the way you choose to depict it. My point is this, when we think about ATEEZ’s storyline and when we talk about ATEEZ’s storyline, the way you choose to talk about something will often be biased towards  one perspective over the other. Looking at my own theories I overwhelmingly tend to favor Old World; and I am trying moving forwards to do that less.
• 05:00 - 05:30 But just like displaying a map, it is kind of hard to talk  about it in a non-biased way. And I think this concept of bias is  even true of ATEEZ’s content itself. Music videos are typically biased  towards whatever world they exist in. They depict that world as the real world, as true, as reality, and the other world a falsehood, an illusion or a dream. So while I have a whole video explaining  why I think “Wave” is a music video
• 05:30 - 06:00 that simultaneously takes place in both reality and an illusion at the same time, it does not negate the fact that  “Wave” is also a music video that is very biased towards Old World. The initial deduction you make from viewing this music video is that this is normal ATEEZ, awake in Old World, existing in reality. But that conclusion is only one perspective on what is happening in “Wave”. Something like “Guerrilla” would be an example of a music video
• 06:00 - 06:30 that is biased towards New World. If we examine The Diary Entries they are biased, they can only show you the perspective  of whoever wrote that entry, whether it was written from the point  of view of normal ATEEZ or HALATEEZ. And part of what I think makes  the Diary Entries so unreliable is that they can only ever show  you one perspective of events- any given Diary Entry is at best half the story.
• 06:30 - 07:00 My current theory is that when it comes to ATEEZ, reality and illusion are a matter of perspective. From normal ATEEZ’s perspective, or an Old World biased perspective, Old World is reality: the city of Seoul, the warehouse where they hang out and dance together, the museum, all that; that is normal ATEEZ’s reality.
• 07:00 - 07:30 And the New World is an illusion. It’s this magical fantastical land  they travel to in their dreams when they fall asleep. A futuristic utopia made up by the youth. It‘s a world that’s written off by adults as a silly foolish place that only children believe in. A place comparable to dream- lands in children’s bedtime stories, places like Wonderland or Neverland. And the complete opposite is  true from HALATEEZ’s perspective or a New World biased perspective.
• 07:30 - 08:00 For HALATEEZ New World is their reality; Strictland, Guardians  Island, the Prestige Academy, the bunker, all of that;  that is HALATEEZ’s reality. And in New World when you breathe  in yellow smoke it causes illusions, it causes people to enter this dream state. And to make yellow smoke, they’re burning people’s memories, they’re burning the past. Yellow smoke is Old World, it’s the past! The clearest example we get of this Jongho’s basketball game.
• 08:00 - 08:30 In Old World normal ATEEZ Jongho injures himself during a basketball game and thus is forced to give up his dream of being a basketball player. Later on when he’s in New World while under the influence of yellow smoke he re-experiences the basketball game. He actively experiences that event as if it was really happening because of course it did really happen. It does really happen? It is really happening? It happens. It happens in Old World. Reality in Old World is an illusion in New World.
• 08:30 - 09:00 We see the exact same event portrayed  from two different perspectives once as reality and once as an illusion. Dreams or illusions or yellow smoke show you what’s happening in the other world at the opposite point in time on the other side of the mobius strip. In the Diary Film Jongho even asks if all his dreams are going to “vanish away like smoke”. Yellow smoke is being used maliciously  by the Strictland government
• 09:00 - 09:30 to trick people into believing they’re living normal,   happy, ordinary lives in Old World, while in quote unquote reality, in New World, the smoke sedates them and turns them  into mindless cooperative drones. It’s a poison that infects the population and causes people to act like adults. Comparable narratives for this perspective would be something like "The Matrix" or "Nineteen Eighty Four". And just like we talked about with the compass and the map,
• 09:30 - 10:00 there is not one correct authoritative version of what is reality and what is an illusion; it changes purely based on your perspective. Neither normal ATEEZ nor HALATEEZ are “right” about the state of the world because neither world is THE real world. They are both real and they are  both an illusion simultaneously. In the same way that it is always day and it is always night and how they are always awake and always asleep.
• 10:00 - 10:30 All of these things are just a matter of perspective. One paradigm versus another. So we have this nice little mobius  strip model of reality and illusion. Where normal ATEEZ stays where they  belong in their reality, in Old World, and HALATEEZ stays where they belong in their reality in New World. But what happens when you don’t  just have this nice clean separation  of Old World and New World? What happens here once you’re given the power to  combine reality and illusion?
• 10:30 - 11:00 What happens when their worlds collide; when normal ATEEZ starts seeing things from the perspective of HALATEEZ, and when HALATEEZ starts seeing things from the perspective of normal ATEEZ? When you intermix reality and illusion you wind up with confusion.
• 11:00 - 11:30 “Outro: Over the Horizon”  is a song about being here;  about crossing over the horizon. At the edge of the world, at this point where one world becomes the other, where the beginning becomes the end, and they say that they are brought  to this point by confusion. Confusion is also mentioned The  World: Movement Diary Entries, in the lyrics of “Blue Summer” and it plays a pretty significant role in the whole of “Deja Vu” (because “Deja Vu” has ties to the aforementioned basketball game, and just the general effects of being under the influence of yellow smoke).
• 11:30 - 12:00 And confusion being the combination of reality and illusion I think makes sense. If you are not sure if what you’re experiencing is taking place in reality or an illusion you would probably be pretty confused. I could use any pair of opposites to explain this idea. In the past I’ve frequently used red and blue to refer to things as ‘red  things’ or ‘blue things’, but for the sake of this example  I’m gonna use up and down. Let’s say that normal ATEEZ  and Old World are ‘up things’
• 12:00 - 12:30 and HALATEEZ and New World are ‘down things’. We get this kind of punnett square situation: When normal ATEEZ is in Old World up is up. When HALATEEZ is in New World down is down. When normal ATEEZ is in New World up is down, and when HALATEEZ is in Old World down is up. From an Old World biased perspective this is reality and this is an illusion. From a New World biased perspective
• 12:30 - 13:00 this is an illusion and this is reality. But these two boxes, no matter  the perspective is confusion. ATEEZ is not in the world where they belong and thus are confused by the world around them. This would be another way to show  the same idea with a mobius strip. When ATEEZ is here Old World is reality and New World is an Illusion. When they’re here New World is  reality and Old World is an illusion. But the point where these  things crossover is confusion.
• 13:00 - 13:30 So if we look at the "HALA HALA" music video. It takes place in the warehouse, the hideout, a location in Old World. But they’re dressed as HALATEEZ. HALATEEZ shouldn’t be able to exist in Old World. It’s not where they belong. But they’ve used the Cromer  to manipulate space-time in order to allow them to really exist in a world where they should be nothing more than an illusion. "HALA HALA” does not take place in reality or an illusion
• 13:30 - 14:00 “HALA HALA” takes place in confusion. It takes place under a set of circumstances where it is completely unclear if this is reality or a dream. We quite simply don’t know if this is supposed to be reality or an illusion. We don’t know if this music video shows us the future or in the past- because it takes place in both at the same time. Which is something that  shouldn’t really be possible. In the lyrics of “Illusion” they say that they don’t know what the date is.
• 14:00 - 14:30 They don’t know if they’re  in the past or in the future.  They don’t know if they’re in Old  World or if they’re in New World.  And they don’t know how many days have passed, because rather confusingly it is always day and it is always night. ATEEZ has completely lost track of what world they’re in and who they are. They’re confused. We could do the same analysis  with “Eternal Sunshine”.  What world does "Eternal Sunshine" take place in?
• 14:30 - 15:00 What time period is this- the past or the future? Is it winter or summer? We quite simply don’t know. And ATEEZ doesn't know either; you can see it in their reactions they are genuinely shocked and surprised when it starts snowing during summer. It should be impossible for  it to snow during summer. Up is not supposed to be down. North is not South. Cold things are not hot. Red things shouldn’t be blue.
• 15:00 - 15:30 It is not supposed to snow during summer! That’s not how seasons work! The physics of how everything in the world is supposed to work completely breaks down once you can take something from one world and bring it into the other. In the Fever 1 Diary Entries  and in the Diary Film,  Hongjoong falls asleep… or maybe he wakes up. He doesn’t know. And he meets “the man in the black fedora”,
• 15:30 - 16:00 a person who looks like him, who acts like him, who talks like him; but is it him? He doesn't know. Hongjoong becomes confused from the very first moment   the Cromer enters the story. The Cromer is a powerful tool, and once ATEEZ has the Cromer anything that was once impossible becomes possible; even snow during summer.
• 16:00 - 16:30 I don’t think we’re always meant to know if they’re normal ATEEZ or HALATEEZ,  if they’re in Old World or in New World, if this is a reality or an illusion, if they’re awake or asleep. Because ATEEZ don’t know if they’re normal ATEEZ or HALATEEZ, they don’t know what day it is, they don’t know what world they’re in, they don’t know if they’re dreaming or awake.
• 16:30 - 17:00 They don’t know! They’re confused! And so we are as well. We as the audience are made  to feel the exact same way  as the characters in this story  because we are both trying to  comprehend the same series of events.  And the only thing we understand  is that we don’t understand.  I’ve spent a large part of  this video discussing the idea  that the combination of reality  and illusion is confusion.
• 17:00 - 17:30 But the combination of reality  and illusion is also treasure.  If treasure is the thing you dreamed  of suddenly in front of your eyes,  then treasure is the perfect combination  of an illusion, a dream, and reality.  Treasure is not a thing that exists in reality.  Treasure is not a thing  that exists in an illusion.  Treasure exists in a super  special secret… third… option.
• 17:30 - 18:00 At the singular center point where  reality and illusion intersect.  The only place where they become one. I consider the core underlying thesis of ATEEZ’s storyline to be: make your dreams a reality. To do the thing that feels impossible. To combine and confuse and intermix the two worlds until you can no longer tell where  one world ends and the other begins.
• 18:00 - 18:30 To take the Old World and  combine it with the New World  until what you are finally  left with is… the world.  A place where reality and  illusion might confuse you  but also coexist together  in a symbiotic relationship.  A place where anything is possible, where dreams can come true. A place where I can find myself. A place where our treasure lies.