comme argile

[jecca-o9.livejournal.com]

comme argile
Key-centric
261 words
So, uh the idea of idols altering themselves to make the fans happy just popped into my head and told me to write, so I did.
I've been a fan of SHINee since their debut, and for people who've been in the fandom since the start, I'm sure we all have noticed how the boys changed during these two years.
I did this in under ten minutes at almost three in the morning.

He is the feminine one, with the sharp cheekbones and almond eyes. He's the umma, the fans say. He's the umma, the girl of the group, simply because feminine-looking Taemin-ah was already the maknae.

Every group needs an umma, the fans insist.

So he cooks, becomes the mother, nervous, prattling and controlling.


He has the high cheekbones, and the doe eyes, and the thin lips. He is not the leader or the maknae. He is not the lead singer, and nobody (especially the fans, God forbid) will ever think he's manly---not now, and certainly not in the next three years. So he is the diva, the beauty, the temptress, the temper, the one everyone is afraid to piss off.

And the fans nod, and scream and squeal, and they love it.

They love him for it.


(Somewhere inside, Kim Kibum is still there, lost, buried under the Key the fans have made. Sometimes he checks on him to see how he's doing. Sometimes he'd see a boy, who used to slide his matchboxes down the stair railings and make model airplanes.
And then he can't quite remember how that feels anymore.
Soon enough, he forgets about Kim Kibum entirely. He was just a face, just a face in old pictures that would sometimes surface on the net.)



Because now he was Key, the umma, the diva, the Almighty.

The fans are happy, content, ecstatic. He's in love with Jonghyun, he's in love with Onew, he's in love with Minho, they would say.


He will be whatever they want him to be.

Comments

[byuldeureul.livejournal.com]

Wow. Wow, this was really really an intense little piece.

Especially, I guess, for someone like me that looooooves to over-analyze and over-think these boys. Especially Key, though.

I remember when I first stepped into the SHINee fandom five months ago and I kept saying to myself that Key was the only one that I couldn't quite "get" (though now, ironically enough, he's pretty much my SHINee bias hahahaha) and that I felt he was such an enigma to me. And this fic pretty much lists all the reasons why I had such conflicting feelings about him at first.

He's the umma, the girl of the group, simply because feminine-looking Taemin-ah was already the maknae.
Sometimes I wonder if it's the angles or the stagelights, because there's times when I think this way too (a-and Taemin is my favorite member, too /flails), but this is so true. For all of them, really, I've had moments where I went, "Ahhh, is this photoshopped...? Makeup...? --Oh, but I can see pores, so..." over a picture and--as strange as it sounds, this reminded me of how much I love the pictures where you can see the imperfections on their faces...because it gives them a sense of humanity that we don't see so often when they're larger-than-life "idols" to us. It's amazing, really...

He is not the lead singer, and nobody (especially the fans, God forbid) will ever think he's manly---not now, and certainly not in the next three years. So he is the diva, the beauty, the temper, the one everyone is afraid to piss off.

And the fans nod, and scream and squeal, and they love it.

They love him for it.

Ouch. Just...ouch. ;X; I'm pretty sure those lines were meant to sting, because...they sure did for me. And it resonates rather strongly, too, with all the times I've looked at Key and went, "You seem really confident, Kibum-ah...but I wonder about you~"

It's...probably just my imagination, but sometimes I get the feeling that immediately after he goes and does something that only Key could get away with (dance to every girlgroup song in existence, fixes his hair/primps/et al, or does just about -anything- that makes people question him if only for a second or two), I'm seeing a rare flicker of something there in his eyes that hints at hidden insecurity; a nagging self-consciousness that he's trying so hard to compensate for, something...

Idk exactly what I was thinking as I read this, honestly. But...it was something like that. (Sorry!! :x) I really hope I'm not killing this comment with my TL;DR thoughts here, either homg ;;;;

A-And THANK YOU for writing this beautiful (although sad...) piece that's gotten me to think about these kind of things again! Really, it's so refreshing to read this kind of fic every once in a while especially when it's written by someone that can really write & convey this kind of thing well. :'))♥

[jecca-o9.livejournal.com]

Can I just say that I enjoyed reading this comment a lot?

Most of this fic was borne out of the subtle changes in Key since they debuted--I've been a fan since the MV for Replay was released (2 days before their actual debut), and all of them have changed significantly, in different ways since then. Key's 'girly-ness' and 'diva' personality has been amplified a whole lot, in comparison to Key when he debuted.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me. :) And thank you so much for reading and commenting! ♥

[mafuyuchains.livejournal.com]

:O wow...I don't want to seem creepy or anything but I just had to comment on your comment
I was wondering if I was the only one that did that! The over-analyzing and over-thinking their (smallest, often more meaningful) actions...and we have the same bias and I understand exactly what you mean when you say you don't 'get' key >_< I can't help but analyze people,I'm not happy with just seeing the surface, I want to know what's beneath it, I want to feel like I really understand that person or atleast understand why they would act a certain way. The other SHINee members arn't so hard to figure out, you can tell that they're just being themselves, but with key...I just don't know >_< sometimes it's like he's showing us a character of someone (almost overly) confident and somewhat of a know-it-all (this fits with the fact that he likes to act, act out little scenes with jjong often(I thought this wasn't too meaninful in the beginning but it is because it means he likes to pretend to be someone else)and also his stagename which he seems to really cling on to)and other times he just really seems to be like that (I'm not doubting that his (brutal) honesty is real and his nagging at others apparently also is real xD). I don't know...it just seems like the way he presents himself on tv is like a caricature (to hide behind it?to get attention?it's clear he understands that if you want to survive in the idol world you need to be acknowledged and remembered(I think that's why he's so sensitive to camera's and why they call him keymera). Or maybe his personality really is like a caricature, and I don't mean this in a bad way, it just means that he just so happens to have all the personality traits that would make him a very different and quirky person. I think maybe it's a combination, it's clear he has a strong sense of who and how he wants to be. Maybe it started as presenting a character but I think he's beginning to slowly morf into it(and not because the fans want it but because of how he himself wants to be, I do think he's one of those that's too hard on themselves and wants to change the things they don't like about themselves). Maybe it's just my inability to understand a personality like his that makes me suspect that he's hiding another personality under there, I've understood this trait of mine and now I can see how maybe it really is just his real self(because a lot of things point towards that direction).
Well uhmm I think I wrote an even longer psycho analysis essay than you xD But seriously I would like to discuss these things with you because most people arn't interested in what's under the surface, they want to think they're just perfect like that but I think it's so much more interesting to know how they got to that point. Anyways I'm just dieing to figure Key out, seriously it's driving me crazy >_<
and to jecca, thanks for writing such an inspirational fic that gets people thinking ^^