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aijee · 3 years

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hello! i’m the anon who left the 6-part ask regarding mg a few months ago (i refer to those asks bc i’m back to drop more thoughts about mg and might touch on what i previously said). i wrote this whole thing disregading word count, believing i could drop it all in one go because i managed to log in to my tumblr, but it seems i still have to break it up… lmao i don’t know how many parts this will be or if i could post it all tonight, but i will signify the very end with “6-part anon” :)

Cont’d with response under the cut (I made some executive decisions about where the paragraphs break lol so it’s not all one block of text):

they want to be famous; that part just came along with the package. then i read in your bts post, you see mg as more wrapped up in entertainment, having star power with a bright personality, liking the limelight. reading that, i do agree, but i guess ive never thought of that before. i think wanting to be a star and wanting to be in the spotlight can seem self-centered. i hope im not coming across like im judging everyone who wants to be famous as “bad” because that’s not what i’m trying to do, but i think it’s safe enough to say that wanting to be famous means wanting people’s attention on you. i’m trying to tread carefully but i suppose i am saying that on the surface, wanting to be a big star can seem a little selfish in the sense that you want to boost your image, present your best self at all times, want people’s eyes on you and want them to think good things about you. combining those general thoughts about wanting to be a star, with my thoughts about mg in particular, is interesting to me.

i’ve always seen him as someone so selfless, so lovely, so considerate towards others. throughout idotsc, you’ve written him throughout as someone so amiable, liked by everyone, and also selfless and considerate. and in chp 7, his reaction twds the pictures is... well, I think they’re pretty true to character, and again i think it shows selflessness. then the ‘Love Languages’ text that OP had written— while, of course, OP doesn’t know him and everything is an assumption to a certain degree, I think their writing summarizes in one place what I observed about mg through the content available to the public: he constantly gives to people around him, exhibiting sincerity, words of gratitude and acts of service. at the same time, i definitely agree with what you said about his star quality, so i think that was the first time i really stopped to examine my thoughts about stardom and how some things may not be mutually exclusive.

“stardom” also makes me think about his recent incident, because of course, such incidents are definitely a potential consequence of fame. during that time i’ve also come across several opinions saying that they’re not surprised if a current idol was a past bully… i don’t remember exactly what people said but i think it was somewhere along the lines of, if they were so confident and cocky since predebut, then they might have had the qualities of a bully. something like that. i think from the outside looking in, it may be easier to equate star quality with a diva attitude/disregard twds others.

one thing i’d like to add is sth that a famous person said abt fame, and why they value it more than money, bc if they meet a fan, the look on the fan’s face upon meeting them gives them a feeling money can’t buy. and i suppose from this angle, being a star seems selfless. with svt too, they expressed how meaningful it is to them that theyre able to bring us so much joy. i think from the outside looking in, it may be easier to equate star quality with a diva attitude/disregard twds others. one thing i’d like to add is sth that a famous person said abt fame, and why they value it more than money, bc if they meet a fan, the look on the fan’s face upon meeting them gives them a feeling money can’t buy. and i suppose from this angle, being a star seems selfless. with svt too, they expressed how meaningful it is to them that theyre able to bring us so much joy.

i hope this all makes sense; i had lots of thoughts and wanted to try to write them. i struggled to understand why one would want to be a star, and went in circles questioning if i thought it was more selfish or selfless, and what one’s true motives might be behind wanting fame. ik u implied u embrace long writing bc you also write in length, but i’m less eloquent than you are so i hope this was fine! thank you again for having a space where people could offload their thoughts :) ~6-part anon~

There’s a lot to unpack here, isn’t there! A buffet of food for thought, for sure. I can’t possibly respond to everything written here because there’s just so many points, so I’ll write a few points. As always, take what I write with a grain of salt.

I don’t think there’s anything bad or inherently wrong with pointing out that, hey, people who are interested in a profession necessarily tied to a public image probably to show off or want attention. These things are perfectly natural to want, even for people who aren’t celebrities, because we’re (1) inherently social creatures and a lot of our survival is contingent on external success, and (2) we are brought up to feel validation from others, especially in an age where our lives are much more on display. But I can see why “selfishness” may be thrown in the mix because we often look down on attention-seekers and “popular” people, many of whom exhibit arrogant/tone-deaf behaviors. On the other hand, it’s understandable that an idol with a big public image necessitates putting their best foot forward all the time to maintain good opinion of them and to earn more money, frankly.

I’ve probably repeated myself too many times, but something I’ve been grappling with recently is this black-and-white mindset/judgment system we often have of others (very much exacerbated by social media, e.g. witch hunts). Bad is bad, good is good. I’ve thought this way for a long time of myself in an upbringing that always punished/looked down on bad behavior (or what was considered behavioral flaws, like speaking out against elders, swearing as a femme person, etc.) rather than acknowledging that “bad” behavior can be exhibited by people who also do and act “good.” In short, while I can only speak from my perspective, I think we’re programmed to subconsciously seek behavioral perfection for a number of reasons: we were raised that way by family; and/or society; we feel judged by the presence of social media and greater access into our lives; accessibility to celebrities and “perfect” public figures makes us judge ourselves by comparison; education systems that poorly address internal learning as well as external learning, etc.

In Mingyu’s case, there’s nothing wrong with seeing and continuing to see him as all those good qualities in my opinion. There’s nothing wrong with grappling with potential past problematic behaviors of your faves, as long as you’re critical and open-minded about the parties involved (which is rarely ever a fanbase at large, but the skewed authority of a fanbase is a different can of worms). Idols are human, which means dealing with the good and bad that comes with interacting humans. Contrary to popular belief (and I write this sarcastically), people CAN change. People should be ALLOWED to change. Characters are static. People are not. And it’s sad to say that this is still an issue in the K-Pop world.

As hard as it sounds, a person who bullied others in the past could still have good or pure intentions for becoming an idol. They could still feel fulfillment from making others happy; is that a bad thing? I personally don’t think so. Or maybe a person’s intentions for becoming an idol could be mixed good or bad, who the fuck knows? Not us. Honestly, I firmly believe that we fans don’t have the right to make definitive moral judgments of idols in the first place because we don’t know them personally. That, and people are extremely complex and hard to categorize, as much as we want to because it’s easier to do so. People are messy. Real life teaches us that more than the Internet does imo.

In any case, I don’t think selfishness and selflessness are mutually exclusive in the same way a person can be both good and bad. I learned that language, too, is a powerful vehicle that influences how we think. In that vein, with how compartmentalized definitions are in specific words, perhaps we think that their existence/practice is separate, i.e. being “selfish” is never being “selfless” because each word’s definition exists solely in their respective word and not the other (hopefully that makes some sense).

TL;DR: I think wanting attention and validation from others is okay and not inherently a bad thing, and people are fucking messy and rarely good without the bad (and vice versa).

Pretty sure I rambled a ton as well and probably didn’t hit that many points that you offered, anon. You ended up putting me on a thought train as well!

#askaijee

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