134340

Hi loves,

If you’re wondering when the crazy tattoo obsession will end for me the answer is apparently never – my latest appointment involved me getting 2 new additions and today’s post is about one of them – the other one I’ll speak about in a different post as this one requires a whole explanation / post of its own.

I’m excited to write about this one because I find the concept behind it so interesting (hence yanno, why it’s now on my body forever) but I’m excited to tell you about it! There’s a few reasons I got this tattoo (that I’m going to try and explain in a coherent way but really, we all know I’m a lost cause when it comes to getting straight to the point so the expectations aren’t very high) and the idea for it came around maybe…9 / 10 months ago? But I wanted to wait on it a while to make sure it was 100% what I wanted before I went ahead and did it.

The tattoo is the number 134340 on the back of my left ankle (below this tattoo for reasons I’ll get into in a minute) and…here are the reasons why I have it –

ankle pics r weird & the ink was still messy here forgive me

Age = 21
Placement = Back of left ankle
Pain = 1/10
Price = I got 2 tats at this appointment & altogether it was £40

First of all, Kpop. As you should all know by now (and if you don’t, where have you been) Kpop has been the best thing to enter my life since…I don’t even know. I can’t even remember the last time something entered my life that makes me as happy as Kpop does, but anyway, BTS are my favourite Kpop group and generally just my favourite people on the entire planet as a whole and they have a song on one of their albums Love Yourself Tear, (my favourite album by them) called 134340.

Now, when I first heard this song I’m 99% sure I wasn’t into it because I’m pretty sure I played it once and then never again, so for 6 months this song was just sitting there and I couldn’t even remember it was a thing that existed.

One day, however, I decided to have a BTS marathon and was listening to their entire discography from start to finish and therefore came across the song again – it came on shuffle and it was like suddenly I was hearing it again for the first time. I don’t know if anyone else is like this but when an album comes out I’ll play the whole thing through, pick my favourite songs from it, add them to my playlist and then those songs will therefore become the only ones that I listen to from that album. I’m 99% sure that’s what happened here. I listened to LY Tear and decided that I wasn’t really into 134340 and therefore probably listened to it once and never again and therefore didn’t add it to any of my playlists, but suddenly now that I was hearing it again for a (second? third? fourth?) time, I instantly fell in love with it.

I couldn’t believe I hadn’t payed any attention to it before (past me what were you thinking) but I heard it and was like…holy shit this is the best song ever, I feel like I’m floating. It was like listening to 90s jazz whilst floating through space at the same time, it was just the coolest thing I’d ever heard – it was me down to a T.  It was nostalgia –  seriously just 90s jazz floating through space. Literally if I could describe myself with any sound it would be that, like, I’m pretty sure my soul is made up from that sound – 90s jazz floating through space. That’s it. That’s the sound.

And now, onto the actual title. BTS are true artists when it comes to their work, they always put so much thought into their music and lyrics and really go to town on concepts and hidden messages because everything they put out is a literal piece of art and I always love to find out the message behind it. Since the song is obviously Korean, I couldn’t pick up what it was about just by listening to it (all I knew is that it sounded cool as fuck) and so instantly I was intrigued to find out what the random number was in the title. A little Google search led me to find out the following…

134340 is the asteroid number that was given to Pluto after it was declassified as a planet. Planets obviously have names, but things that aren’t planets (e.g. stars, meteors etc.) are given numbers instead. Once Pluto was no longer classed as a planet and therefore stripped of its name, it was given the asteroid number 134340.

And BTS decided to take that number and turn it into a song.

Now, maybe I’m just overreacting here because I’m a literal space freak and am so in love with the universe, planets and all that jazz (no pun intended) but… that’s the most interesting concept for a song I’ve ever heard, like really, the coolest idea. Using the numbers of things in the solar system to title your songs and make metaphors out of them? That’s cool as fuck.

So, to…

A). Hear the song and think holy shit, that’s my sound – I feel like I’m floating – 90s jazz floating through space has become an actual sound and suddenly I’ve been reborn.

B). Google the title of the song because it made no sense to me, to then realise the damn thing was about Pluto and the solar system.

C). To then read the lyrics and realise they’ve used Pluto as a metaphor for love. They’ve used a freaking planet in the solar system as a metaphor for love and loss. In the song they’re basically referring to themselves as being Pluto and saying that the person they love no longer wants them anymore and has therefore reduced them to nothing…just a number I guess, and so you’re just orbiting this person but they don’t view you as anything significant anymore and you don’t know what to do with yourself, It’s about loving someone from a distance and longing for them, but they don’t feel the same.

Like seriously, I’m not kidding when I say this is the best concept for a song I’ve ever heard, it was the most interesting thing to me and these guys are so clever. And not only that, but to have such an interesting concept and an equally amazing sound (that felt like me in a nutshell) to go with it? My mind was blown. Honestly, can we all rise and just give a round of applause for a second.

☼

So to sum it up, this tattoo has a few meanings –

1). To pay a little tribute to Kpop and the fact it introduced me to a whole new world of things – happiness, learning a language, giving me something to focus on, taking me away from social media and general negativity, meeting the most amazing people and making some great friends, giving me something to fill the little space inside me that was empty. It seriously has brought me so much happiness and I really, really love it. There was always this little space inside me where I imagined a certain type of world and wished I could live in it, and then I found Kpop and realised that this world did in fact exist and I could in fact live in it, and now I am, and I’m having the best time ever.

2). BTS, because it’s their song. They’re my favourite Kpop group and my favourite people and they were the ones that started this for me – they opened my mind up to a lot of new things and have brought so much happiness into my life. Like seriously, these guys are true artists and they make me so happy. They’re changing everything. They challenge gender stereotypes and sing about important topics and they’re so open and accepting and if they wanna dye their hair pink and wear eyeliner they’ll do it, if they wanna wear skirts and earrings they will. This isn’t unusual in Kpop but that’s just another reason I love it so much, there is no ‘fragile masculinity’. They just experiment and are themselves, and that’s so inspiring to me and something I’m 100% for, we need more of it in the world. They love us and we love them and they’re paving the way for the world that we should be living in, and I’ll forever follow them, support them and thank them for that.

3). It’s just an amazing song in general, I really, really love it, honestly one of my favourites. The second I heard it my brain was like me me me me me. 3 minutes and 50 seconds of my own sound, I feel like I created it myself. 90s jazz floating through space. It’s the most nostalgic thing and as you guys know, I’m the most nostalgic person ever. It just worked. If sounds could be attributed to people, that would be mine.

4). The solar system and the planets – like I said before, I’m obsessed with the moon and the stars and the universe and the planets etc. and I wanted to pay a little tribute to Pluto to say that even though it’s just a number now, it’s still important. Love u Pluto. It’s a little message to myself to say that even if people fall out of love with me or don’t want me anymore and reduce me to nothing, I still matter. I still exist.

5). This isn’t one of the reasons I got the tattoo but at the beginning of this post I mentioned I got it below my Odd Eye tattoo, and this is because that tattoo is a tribute to one of my favourite groups, my favourite album (and my favourite people), SHINee, who are of course, also in Kpop. I wanted to keep the BTS and SHINee tattoos together so it was like a little Kpop area I could continue adding to should I feel the need to get more tattoos inspired by it in future. So the number and the eye aren’t connected directly, but the people they represent are and so therefore I wanted to keep them close.

☼

And here’s the song in question! I’m hoping none of you guys know a single word of Korean so that you’re able to understand what I’m talking about when I say just listen to the sound of the song. Just…the sound. Just listen. It makes you feel like you’re floating through space. 90s jazz floating through space guys, remember. Take a shot for every time I’ve used that phrase so far in this post – congratulations, you’re now drunk.

This song is one of BTS’ most underrated and it doesn’t get near enough the amount of love and attention it deserves, I feel like a lot of people forget it exists. I just love the concept behind the whole thing so much that I couldn’t not have it tattooed, I love astrology and the universe and BTS and Kpop and music and all that jazz and just everything about it. I wanted a little mark of Pluto on me to be like hey, even though you’re a number now you’re still important and I wanted to send a little message to myself to remind myself that hey, we all feel like numbers sometimes but guess what, you still matter and you’re still important. Love is hard and life is hard but you still exist, and you matter.

All my love,

Chloe .xx

☼

Previous Tattoo Posts
1, 2 & 3
4
5
6
7 & 8
9
10
11