LOONA / YMMV - TV Tropes

Accidental Innuendo: As some have pointed out, "Stay inside me all night... deeper" from JinSoul's solo "Singing In The Rain" is probably related to the lore, but many Orbits are still shocked by the sexual-sounding lyric when they hear it. Her repetition of "Hey, boy, I've been thinking about us" and the fact that the song has one of the very first Hotter and Sexier music videos in the LOONA discography makes it seem even more like Intercourse with You.
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- The morality of each character within the LOONAverse is a hotly debated topic. The ones often theorized to be "evil" or antagonistic are Olivia Hye, Yves, and JinSoul due to their darker motifs. However, practically every LOONA character gets theorized as evil/antagonistic at some point — even characters like YeoJin and Choerry, thanks to their associations with JinSoul. Then there are people who believe that none of the main LOONA girls are antagonists, especially because they're all shown wanting to be free from the same thing: the standards of society, which are symbolized by the Möbius strip.
- Most of this centers around Yves vs. Olivia Hye, and which one of them wronged the other. Although Olivia is presented in a lot of dark scenarios and is shown lashing out, "love4eva" shows that she was a victim of cruel isolation by her only friends; likewise, Yves seems fairly well-meaning in trying to get the others to accept self-love, but some of her behavior can be read as that of a Toxic Friend Influence, such as utterly ignoring Chuu until she gives her what she wants, which is to eat her Forbidden Fruit.
- To some fans, the strongly hinted-at possibility that yyxy may all actually be the same person turns the bullying in "love4eva," and Olivia Hye's general resentment towards the other girls, into a story of self-hatred. Instead of forgiveness, her later reconciliation with Yves, Chuu, and Go Won becomes self-acceptance too. The "&" era takes this above up to eleven, with one teaser seemingly implying that maybe it's not just yyxy who are actually the same person, but all of LOONA. The idea certainly made Orbits reconsider the events of the LOONAverse in a tremendously different light.
Anvilicious: Their themes of female empowerment and rebelling against misogyny are very much in-your-face.
Applicability: Fittingly, Yves has provided the Word of God (or at the very least, Word of Saint Paul) aspect to this trope, as the songs/MVs featuring her have been the most frequent candidates for it. She has said that as far as she knows, they did not actually make "Heart Attack" (Chuu's solo, where her character seems to be romantically pursued by Chuu's) and "new" (her solo) with the intention of depicting same-sex attraction; but the LOONA girls are happy that gay and bisexual fans personally find their work meaningful in this manner. As mentioned below, "new" is also very popular among trans fans. Thanks to its lyrical content that describes the euphoria of shedding the narrator's own "miserable appearances" to embrace "refreshed, new days" with a "new face" that's been within her all along, as well as the video, it's incredibly easy to see why it would resonate with trans Orbits.
Awesome Music: Has its own page, and with over 60 songs in just two years, feel free to add to it.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The Love Cherry Motion Choreography Version has a split-second closeup of Choerry's crotch early into the video. It's weird, lasts an instant, and is never repeated or acknowledged.
Broken Base:
- Most of the members were under 18 when the pre-debut videos were shot, but like the above, there is occasionally a line crossed when it comes to how much Male Gaze is used. The Korean fandom has criticized this, but the international fandom goes easier on it. There's also the matter of whether or not the videos actually do sexualize them. As with Choerry, one of the biggest subjects of this particular debate — some think that her solo and performances in ODD EYE CIRCLE sexualized her as a minor, but others think that they're perfectly fine and age-appropriate material. Choerry's solo was apparently met with a boycott from Korean fans thanks to the perceived sexualization of then-16 (international age) Choerry, whereas international fans didn't see as much of a problem with the song and video.
- An unusual example in that the break is by era rather than faction. Line distribution arguments are of course not unfamiliar to any K-Pop fandom, but orbits' turmoil over it is particularly palatable. HyunJin, HaSeul, YeoJin, ViVi, and Go Won were given very tiny pieces of the pie for [++] and [#], and while the ruckus might be extreme to some, it's possibly an example of an "unpleasable" fanbase not actually being so, as in follow-up albums [xx] and [12:00], steps were taken to repair these issues, leading to celebration. Unfortunately, that was shattered again with [&], where ViVi and Go Won were again given very, very, very few lines. How much one tends to like an album will vary based on how much stock one puts in fair singing time.
Common Knowledge:
- To this day, plenty of foreign fans mistakenly call Kim Lip "Kim," as if it were her forename. It's actually her surname, both in real life and in her Stage Name.
- When discussing YeoJin, it's common for fans to inform others that she was prevented from joining the 1/3 subunit due to the fact that she was failing her classes. Not only is there no evidence of any such thing, it would be highly unlikely it would have any impact on her career given 1/3's activities only spanned two months. YeoJin being excluded from subunit activities was almost certainly planned from the beginning, given she was too young to legally perform onstage at that time. She did use the extra time to focus on studies, however.
- Contrary to popular belief, HaSeul is not a trained operatic. Although she planned to study opera in college and is still deft at singing opera as a hobby, joining LOONA prevented her from actually pursuing formal opera training. She is also not the only member of LOONA who was familiar with operatic singing, as Chuu's mother is a classical singer.
- Kim Lip and JinSoul did not record any vocals for the "Love Cherry Motion" track. For that matter, Yves and Chuu did not record any vocals for "One&Only", either.
- As far as LOONA theories go, people will often bring up HaSeul having an association with rain (tying her into JinSoul's general theme), as well as JinSoul being stuck in a basement (sometimes in Hong Kong), and YeoJin being lost in a forest. All of these are actually in-jokes that originated on early LOONA video descriptions. HaSeul and rain are brought up in the vein of the meme "HaSeul's Curse", in that she had extraordinarily bad luck while filming, to the point that it rained on-set both for her solo and for Love Cherry Motion. JinSoul being trapped in the basement was likewise a fandom in-joke regarding her being teased early on ViVi's b-side but being kept hidden for an extended period until Kim Lip's solo era was over. YeoJin being lost in the forest is a reference to her getting lost on the way to school one day.
- Some people also genuinely believe that there's a dead body at the end of Yves' solo "new" due to the filter washing out the final frames, but it's actually just Yves lying down. This is especially obvious when viewed on a bigger screen or with more saturation/contrast on the frames — you can clearly see the ridges of Yves' skirt, her white shirt, and hair.
Ensemble Dark Horse: "Star", the English version of the b-side track "Voice" from the [12:00] album, has been getting unprecedented appreciation from American listeners. Despite the phenomenon known as the k-wave, American radio has still been a very difficult market to break into for South Korea, which makes it especially amazing that "Star" broke the previous record for a female k-group's musical stay on Billboard's Pop Airplay chart, staying within the top 40 for nine straight weeks! The previous record was BLACKPINK's "Ice Cream" with Selena Gomez, and in fact the only other kpop acts to reach this status are them, BTS, Monsta X, and Psy. It's also been gaining enough traction to play in everything from small businesses to Walmart. Not bad for a song that wasn't even a title track nor single.
Epileptic Trees:
- The whole concept for LOONA seems to thrive on giving fans material to theorize on, and the video direction pays enough attention to detail and relevant symbolism to give rise to a whole forest of these. Among the theories that are grand enough to verge on this territory, the "simpler" ones include ones like "HeeJin is the creator of the LOONAVERSE and/or caused the time loop", "Olivia Hye is the world's version of Satan, sent to destroy Yves' new Eden", or "HyunJin was supposed to be a member of OEC, and Choerry was called upon by JinSoul and Kim Lip to fill the void." These theories, of course, almost always have evidence backing them up, fanning the flames for yet deeper theorizing.
- The members of LOONA themselves aren't fully in the know about some of what goes on in the LOONAVERSE, and even they end up taking guesses themselves. Choerry, while watching Olivia film her Stinger ending shot for the Cinema Theory teaser, for example, is egged on by the other girls until she (jokingly) theorizes that Go Won's Living Shadow is "Adam", who is responsible for some of the events in the story in his efforts to become human.
Fandom Rivalry:
- With ITZY, largely due to LOONA allegedly ripping off the former's Signature Style in their "#" era.
- With OnlyOneOf, because Jaden Jeong, who became Public Enemy #1 for numerous Orbits after he left BBC, transferred his attentions to them — an all-male group, which stings even more for some, given that girl groups struggle as it is. However, with both groups, there's also high incidence of Friendly Fandoms, as you can read about below.
Fan Nickname: With 12 girls, several of whom happen to have a stage name, the fans tend to get very creative.
- HaSeul: Jo PD, Mama Bird, Momseul.
- ViVi: BB Cream, Vivian.
- Yves: Eebu.
- JinSoul: Jingolas, Jindollie, Bruni, Jinsoul Aguilera.
- Kim Lip: Kimberly Lippington (which also reached memetic status), Lip PD, Prince Jungeun^note.
- Chuu: Chomp, Chuuriah Carey, Whitney Chuuston
- Go Won: Adam, Cha Cha, Princess.
- Choerry: Queen of Positivity, The Actual Sun.
- Olivia Hye: Baby Wolf/Wolf Cub, Ollie, Olhye, Marceline.
- YeoJin: Smol Bean/Lentil Bean, Froggo.
- Heejin: Heekki (her name combined with "teokki," the Korean word for rabbit, her representative animal), Founder, Ambitious Bunny
- Hyunjin: Aeong or Aeongie (referencing the sound of a cat which Hyunjin often imitates)
Fanon: As far as fan theories go, there are some interpretations that are almost universally incorporated into theories spanning everything else:
- The presence and threat of a time loop is one of the main problems that the girls are trying to overcome. This one is usually founded on the cassette tapes, specifically those in "Girl Front".
- The Mobius Strip's property of things traveling along it being indistinguishable from their mirror image is interpreted as some or all of the girls having counterparts of each other on the "opposite side" of where they're from.
  - Usually this is 1/3 being counterparts of yyxy, in reverse order of debut and excluding the lost YeoJin. This one began when people began finding patterns in the cameos of 1/3 in yyxy solo MV's (Vivi in "new", Haseul in "Heart Attack", HeeJin in "Egoist"). In this interpretation, Go Won is acknowledged as special, somehow, as HyunJin herself doesn't appear in "One&Only", but her representative animal, a cat, does.
- ODD EYE CIRCLE, and Choerry especially, are looking for 1/3. Choerry is seen in "Girl Front" holding a map with stickers of their representative animals on them.
- As far as roles go, Choerry is usually thought of as the "protagonist" because she hits a lot of hero tropes: regular girl whisked away into a supernatural setting, described as the character that connects and moves across the three worlds, has direct encounters with other powerful characters, you name it. On the other hand, the "antagonists" or "villains" are usually Yves (responsible for the rebellion against Eden, possesses cassette tapes, common suspect for the person running circles around OEC and letting go of Olivia in the start of "Egoist") or Olivia (biblical wolf symbolism, being described as "sent to destroy everything", the popular "Olivia killed Vivi" theory).
Faux Symbolism: Since her debut, theorizing around Go Won and Jinsoul has run rampant due to the persisting idea that "Go Won" is a Nigerian name meaning "rainmaker". That's "Gowon", a single-word given name; Go Won, as in a full name, is taken from a standard Korean surname and adding in part of Chaewon's real-life name.
First Installment Wins: [+ +] is their best received full group album. Some may consider [x x] an Even Better Sequel, but that's technically a repackage of [+ +] and, therefore, an extension of the first installment.
Friendly Fandoms: On the flip side of Fandom Rivalry...
- With ITZY, because the two groups have a focus on releasing music that's meant to empower young women/girls. The fact that HeeJin and HyunJin are close friends of ITZY's RyuJin also helps. To make things even more heartwarming, LOONA witnessed ITZY's first music show win, and ITZY later saw LOONA receive their first win. This has caused fans of both to dub LOONA and ITZY "the Nation's BFFs."
- With OnlyOneOf. Orbits who aren't hostile towards OnlyOneOf tend to view them as LOONA's cousin group. As a bonus, its leader Love (Park JiSung) played ViVi's Love Interest in "Everyday I Love You" (as well as Kim Lip's best friend in Woomanna); some fans affectionately refer to Love as ViVi's man, checking them out due to this connection. It helps that the cause of the rivalry, Jaden Jeong leaving LOONA for them, was seen by many fans as a 'good' thing — a significant portion of the fandom despises Jaden Jeong, since they believe his idea of having "a mysterious, unknown girl group" contributed to LOONA's lack of advertising, and they were sympathetic rather than jealous when he started working with OnlyOneOf.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: One of the biggest examples in K-Pop, probably. In their native South Korea, they're nowhere near the level of fame as girl groups like Blackpink or Red Velvet or TWICE yet have one of the most massive international fanbases. Even within the group itself, this is at play: wholesome, adorable 1/3 are the most popular in SK but ODD EYE CIRCLE (which, to be fair, was indeed tailored to appeal towards Western audiences) is the best-loved subunit among Western fans. Also, some members of LOONA are considered unconventional beauties in SK. Outside it, people just tend to be in awe of how pretty they all are, with "unconventional beauties" like HaSeul even being seen as standouts for their conventionally pretty looks.
Harsher in Hindsight: Orbits used to express endless delight at how the LOONA members appeared to be eating healthily without restraint. Then, in 2020, Olivia Hye and Go Won casually revealed that BBC actually made them go on incredibly harsh diets when they were underage, even forbidding them from sampling any local cuisine when they shot in Hungary.
Hilarious in Hindsight:
- Wong Kahei's Meta Casting, turning her struggles with the foreign language of her profession into an in-universe struggle with being an android among humans, is roughly the same thing that was done with Arnold Schwarzenegger to create the Terminator.
- Yves being given a heavily French-inspired aesthetic in the Loonaverse, with a French Stage Name and solos flavored by French pop, is made hilarious by the fact that she thought "je m'appelle" ("my name is" in French) was spelled "jumabell," and was confident about it, too.
- As noted under Older Than They Think, LOONA's worldbuilding concept is similar to EXO's, who are under SM, and they've often been called the "girl group EXO". Turns out, Lee SooMan himself worked on the "#" album, so they really ARE the girl group EXO now!
- The song "Satellite" dropped, and Orbits were thrilled by how the song seemed to be a Shout-Out to their LGBT Fanbase, as it's a love song with the words "Come on, girl!" as said by Choerry. However, the official lyrics claimed that she said "Come on, boy." Anger and arguments ensued. Flash-forward to 2020, and they perform "Satellite".... Does Choerry say girl or boy? Somehow, she seems to say both at the same time ("giboyrl"), leading fans to joke that "Satellite" is for the bisexuals. As for Word of God, song producer Ashley Yoon simply said on her YouTube channel that "it can be whatever you want it be."
Hype Aversion: Due to the extreme prevalence of "Stan LOONA" this is a frequent response to the group.
Hype Backlash: As a result of people using the "Stan LOONA" meme inappropriately or insensitively, this has also been a frequent response to the group.
LGBT Fanbase: Cute, fun aesthetic designed to appeal to teenage girls and young women... exceedingly pretty girls... actual LGBT content for the fictionalized characters these girls play... You do the math.
- Heart Attack, especially, is popular with the community, and was even voted as the No. 1 gay anthem at Seoul Pride. Several other LOONA songs are on there^note, and Yves' song, "new" is popular with the transgender community and placed 21st on the same list.
- Yves and Chuu placed 11th and 19th, respectively, in a poll of the top 100 idols Korean lesbians, bisexual women, and pansexual women loved. Seven other members placed lower than 20th.
- Before yyxy took the LGBT community by storm, ODD Eye Circle was particularly popular with LGBT fans, as their associated colors are the same ones featured on the bisexual pride flag. JinSoul also debuted during Pride month.
Memetic Mutation: Enough for its own page.
Moe: Chuu is generally considered the cutest one in the group because of her big smile and bubbly personality. YeoJin also gets this to a lesser extent due to her combination of being The Baby of the Bunch and being very tiny even in a group where no one is exactly tall.
My Real Daddy: Opinions on Jaden Jeong are, to say the least, torn. Many people hate him and are glad he's gone, but many doubt Blockberry's ability to retain fans without the guy who created roughly half the reason people enjoy LOONA (that being its expansive universe.)
Narm:
- JinSoul in her subunit's school uniform. 1/3 had older members like HaSeul and ViVi, who were also in their 20s, but they were short and youthful enough that it wasn't suspicious. JinSoul, however, just looks like a grown woman wearing a schoolgirl's uniform.
- Olivia Hye's "Egoist" video is an incredibly polished, striking MV that makes excellent use of strong contrast and colors. This is why the comparatively poor quality of the rather amateurish "glowing eyes" effect at a few later points of the video is jarring.
- Chuu's sweet, high-pitched voice singing "I'm so bAaAd" in "So What." But the song is good and Chuu is a fantastic singer, which helps this cross into Narm Charm.
Narm Charm: The lyric "My kidney is pounding" in yyxy's "love4eva," which comes with a matching "kidney pounding" dance move.
Older Than They Think:
- Before LOONA, EXO had a debut centered on worldbuilding lore where each of their 12 members had a special ability and were interconnected through different dimensions (to emphasize the connections between their sub-units, EXO-K and EXO-M). LOONA can be seen as the Distaff Counterpart Expies to them, but to their credit, EXO dropped their worldbuilding concept pretty quickly after "MAMA."
- Introducing the members with solo releases before the group's debut first happened with Lovelyz, as idealized by... Jaden Jeong! However, the project was cancelled after the fourth release due to budget concerns (not helped by the fact one of the girls left before debut) and the group debuted normally in 2014. This made Jaden Jeong look for another agency willing to invest money in his idea and that's how he reached Blockberry Creative and LOONA was born.
Overshadowed by Controversy: Most talk of LOONA since Chuu was fired in November 2022 has been less about their content and more about the conflicts between the members and Blockberry Creative. This includes a boycott against the label, a series of ultimately successful lawsuits to get the members released from their contracts, and the indefinite delay of the [0] EP. The members have since been split into multiple smaller groups (ARTMS and LOOSSEMBLE) with Chuu going solo and Yves planning to go solo as well. Although the controversy is more damaging to BBC than to the group, it's still hard to talk about LOONA without bringing this up.
Retroactive Recognition: HyunJin was the star of the music video for "Better Than Me" by Ladies Code' SoJung.
Ron the Death Eater: The way the lore is presented encourages endless Wild Mass Guessing, so it probably shouldn't be a surprise that many fans will make characters in the LOONAverse sound worse than they are. This often applies to the characters with darker vibes, like Yves, Olivia Hye, and JinSoul.
- For example, some write JinSoul off as evil because she "drugged and kidnapped Choerry" (by placing the cherry on her cake, which transported her to the ODD EYE realm). However, Kim Lip was obviously working in tandem with JinSoul at this point — as proven by the fact that Kim Lip was waiting for Choerry and was the one who lured her into the field after she teleported — and there's ample evidence that HyunJin (Choerry's mirror) or at least another copy of Choerry herself was also in cahoots with Kim Lip and JinSoul. Yet despite this (and the fact that Kim Lip is the leader of ODD EYE CIRCLE, so it's not unreasonable to believe that she may have instructed JinSoul to "drug" Choerry), JinSoul is typically the only one who gets flak for it.
- Plenty of theories pit Yves and Olivia Hye against each other and base their perceived morality on their actions in Eden. They tend to ignore the (strongly implied) possibility that yyxy are all the same girl, which would pretty much make arguing about whether Yves or Olivia Hye came off as a worse friend a moot point. Yves is also villainized for things like "having a dead ViVi at the end of 'new'," when the reclined body at the end of "new" is... actually just Yves lying down.
Signature Song: Chuu's Ho Yay heavy "Heart Attack" for the LOONAVERSE concept. "Butterfly" and "PTT" are the main contenders for LOONA as a group.
Unintentional Uncanny Valley: The masks YeoJin's potential boyfriends wear in "Kiss Later" are unnatural-looking and odd, especially since they're in a fixed position and that the viewer can't detect any humanness coming from them.
Viewer Gender Confusion: Before consulting the behind-the-scenes commentary, how many fans knew that the blond HaSeul in "Let Me In" was supposed to be male? The big feather coat and high heels don't help.

YMMV / LOONA

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