Taemin Fanmeet

Taemin promotions for Press Your Number are over. Which is a little surreal and sad because just yesterday we were lightheartedly saying we were looking forward to resting now that promotions are over and now I wish we were going to more promotions this week.

I don't know if I talk very much about how tiring doing promotions is. I like to think that seeing SHINee and seeing Taemin isn't a burden and I can put up with anything to see them so I don't see the endless hours of lining up and not sleeping as much of a sacrifice but when you get to the end of a promotion cycle and you feel exhausted and emotionally run down it kind of hits home how tiring it can be. For me I work a full time job and my entire weekend as well as a handful of weeknights is consumed by the long process of getting into recordings. If you don't work full time like me, going to all the weekday recordings as well as weekends is a full time job in and of itself. 

I thought I'd just write my thoughts and feelings about promotions and the fanmeet out this time, which is a little different to how I usually write posts about promotions.

For me Press Your Number came out at a really difficult time in my personal/professional life. I feel like whenever I listen to PYN it's going to remind me of the difficulties I'm facing at the moment. And I don't mean to say that the album and promotions are going to remind me of a dark time and be stained in my memory. I mean that I'm going to remember them as the bright moments that helped me get through an otherwise really stressful and upsetting time. 

I'm going to think of how awestruck the Drip Drop mv left me because of Taemin's beautiful dancing and how I forgot about how much I didn't want to go to work sitting on the train in the morning and watching the Press Your Number mv, which might be the coolest thing I've ever seen. I'm going to think about how I didn't need to go home on Friday night and feel sorry for myself because my week at work was so bad, because I was too busy rushing off to MBC and seeing all my SHAWol friends. So I think first and foremost, that's the feeling I took away from PYN. Because Taemin's beautiful smile and kind words and sometimes cheeky antics made me feel light and happy and weightless for a little while. I think that's something that a lot of SHINee and Taemin's fans have in common; maybe we're troubled or depressed or living in a tough situation but SHINee makes us smile and forget about it for a while. 

Talking about Taemin himself, he's such an impressive person that it leaves you feeling a lot of mixed emotions. I'm sure a lot of you have heard that the fans are always calling Taemin a fairy or an angel and it might seem like an exaggeration or a cute nickname but... there really is something other-worldly about Taemin. He's just so enormous in presence and in talent that you can't get around the fact that there's something different about him compared to other human beings. He's a rare spot of something that's burning brighter than everyone around him and I don't think he realizes it. 

A lot of the things Taemin said at the fanmeet yesterday revealed that somewhere along the way Taemin's become really knowledgeable about shawols. I strongly believe that groups of fans develop cultures very differently to one another. It'd be an awesome area of anthropological study if I had the strength of will to invade a different groups fans for research's sake. A good example is that SHINee's fans as a group are extremely self-policing. SHINee fans here in Korea do not accept bad behavior, stalkers and girls that go too far are completely shunned and touching or pushing at SHINee is totally unacceptable. This isn't the case for other groups fans. I think our fandom developed the way it did because SHINee started out targeting older female fans and even though young fans continue to filter into our community, the older women are still a solid presence. 

So one of the things that was kind of a sore point about the fanmeeting yesterday was that so many people showed up. Now from an outsiders perspective it's amazing that so many fans came out to see Taemin. But what it means for fans who consistently show up to support Taemin every week is that the stakes are a lot higher and there's a lot of competition for spots in the fan meet. There was a lot of room in the venue, but for fans who work so hard for Taemin and are tired and exhausted from attending PYN promotions, it feels really unfair to be at the back of the fanmeet where you can barely see Taemin, when people who never show up are at the front. I think it's a really hard mindset for me to explain, because an outsider might think: oh but if they don't go to promotions, they don't get to see Taemin as much so it's ok if they're at the front of the crowd. I think it helps if you shift the way you think about it a little. As I mentioned above, going to promotions is hard. Not just for SHINee, for any group. However because SHINee is so popular, it's a lot more difficult. There's always a possibility you will have spent literally days of your time lining up and you won't get in because there's no room. Fans have been trained to constantly fear at any moment being cut. So it's competitive to get into recordings. People are really invested in getting a really high number, and they work their butts off to make it happen. You spend money on getting into taxis to rush to studios, you spend hours sitting in line and you sacrifice tonnes of sleep. So girls who spend as much of their time as possible going to all of Taemin's recordings and screaming their lungs out, aren't just complaining because they're greedy in my opinion. If you worked that hard to support Taemin and suddenly people who were too lazy to come appeared at the end because there's a fanmeet, you'd be upset too. The fanmeet is a kind of thank you from Taemin to all the fans who spent so much time and gave so much love and attention. I went to weekend promotions only because of my work, but there are certainly girls who are extremely tired right now because they have been running to Taemin recordings and line ups for weeks on end at this point.

This is kind of an ugly side of fangirls to be revealing and normally I wouldn't say anything about it, but the reason I bring it up is because there's a possibility Taemin can predict even these kinds of tensions and feelings. That or he's just really good at stumbling over fan's hot spots. Taemin specifically asked for fans that had come to the first promotion to raise their hands, he spoke about being at the first Mnet recording and feeling emotional and teary hearing the fanchants of his name over and over. Without shunning anyone else, he smoothed over the sore feelings of girls who had worked so hard for him and been pushed to the back by the rush of people. 

He also has begun asking questions about whether we'd eaten or not and how long we waited. In the past if Taemin asked these kinds of questions fans would say they hadn't eaten and Taemin would joke that we're dieting. Now-a-days it feels like the relationship is changing because he'll ask if we ate and everyone will immediately say they did, even if a lot of them didn't. Taemin asked at the fanmeet how long we waited to see him and the fans all replied they didn't know, it didn't matter. No one was willing to tell Taemin that we arrived at the venue from around 5:30am and waited until 5:30pm for the fan meeting to start. We got to go and sleep a little in a cafe and eat lunch though which was nice, but still the whole thing was really tiring. Honestly I began feeling a little pathetic when I realized we'd been at Inkigayo for something like 12 hours. Then Taemin said he'd seen a huge group on the sidewalk when he arrived in the morning and wondered whose fans they were before smiling and putting a hand on his chest and grinning when he said that he realized we were all his. Instantly any feelings of being a pathetic loser disappeared. 

It's this part of being a fangirl that I think is so often misunderstood. I don't need Taemin or SHINee to know my name or my face. I don't need them to search me out in a crowd and hold eye contact. I don't need them to remember me, even if I spend years and years supporting them and going to see them. But showing respect for my time and dedication and thankfulness for my support and love is the payment I get. That's everything I need to be joyful and fulfilled as a fan. Fangirls aren't searching for a boyfriend or a husband or lover. We're a sort of patron of the arts. We dedicate our time and money and emotion to lifting people like Taemin up and being respected and acknowledged and appreciated in some small way in return is all that we need. So many people from security guards to the media spend so much time putting fangirls down, we spend so much time putting each other down, that getting respect instead of disdain from idols is so so important.

Which brings me to the big moment for me in the fanmeet yesterday. I was really hesitant whether I wanted to write this, but.... I think it doesn't matter what country you go to as a foreigner, you're always going to be treated differently than a native person. Whether it's because people go out of their way to be kind to you and help you, or the opposite, I can acknowledge that I am treated differently in Korea because I'm foreign. I've said this before, but I always feel a little awkward, a little out of place and a little unwanted when I attend promotions. It's not necessarily because anyone goes out of their way to make me feel that way, but it's my own insecurities coupled with the side-glances girls will sometimes send as they mutter: 'oh its a foreigner,' to their friends. It's generally nothing more than that, but it's enough to make you feel like you're different and a little unwelcome.

The one thing people don't always understand about recordings is that they're not free events. It's not put in place to be a communion between an idol and their fans. Fans are only let into the studio at all because it's their job to provide background noise and to fan chant. A particularly loud, enthusiastic fan chant is a source of pride for fans. Taemin consistently filled the recording studios to the brim. There was literally hundreds and hundreds of girls. So the problem we've had is that a lot of foreigners, particularly foreigners who don't understand Korean, have not been doing the fan chants. Sitting in a recording and remaining completely silent is like...being paid for a job you're not doing. And because there were a lot of foreigners in particular who didn't feel comfortable screaming fan chants, it meant that the staff were getting increasingly annoyed with these girls. And being foreign myself, despite the fact my kids at school say I have a sexy voice because I go to work after screaming myself hoarse every weekend, means that I noticed that people were being really hostile and angry with foreigners in general. When I say foreigners, I mean absolutely everyone who is not Korean. That includes Japanese and Chinese girls who look Koran. It's been a really long time since foreigners have been targeted in particular like this, but the lack of fan chanting coupled with the slow nature of lining up and getting into the recordings when half the people in line can't understand Korean began to really grate on people's already sleep-deprived nerves. It's been bitterly cold some mornings and we've all had as little as 2 hours sleep or less and been running around to multiple recs beforehand. So I felt that foreigners in general began to feel a lot of hostility, especially from young, newer fans with big tempers. 

At the fanmeet yesterday, Taemin acknowledged his fans from other cities in Korea and then made a casual comment upon seeing some foreign faces in the crowd about how he was born in Korea, went overseas to promote and foreign fans came back with him. And he said he liked it. He looked pleased and he glanced at all the foreign faces in the crowd briefly. It felt really, really good. It was such a casual comment and it wasn't a huge moment to any of the Korean girls in the room. But for me, it was another one of those tiny acknowledgements that I take as payment for all the time and money I give to SHINee. When you consider they're paying out these tiny moments to literally thousands of girls, it makes them all the more precious and valuable. To have even a fraction of their consideration when they have so many people they need to give their energy to is just mind-blowing. I doubt Taemin or SHINee understand how out of place we sometimes feel, but every time I feel like I'm drowning in it, Onew will say something or Key will do something and I feel okay again. For me, SHINee is so entrenched in my social life, my friendships and my happiness, and those small reassurances are more important than all the time or money or sleep in the world. I don't want to feel special or more important as a fan, but I also don't want to feel like less than everyone else. So even though some people may resent any second of special attention SHINee or Taemin pays to foreign fans, I always feel like it's just a reassurance that they think we're their fans just the same as everyone else. Because we're not always permitted to feel that way.

As always, it was amazing to be right there with Taemin, breathing the same air as him. Through a very lucky and random turn of fortunate events I was in the first row of the fanmeet which was beautiful, but painful. I've said it before but he really is just....so beautiful. Beyond words beautiful not just on the outside but on the inside. That's the thing amazing about Taemin specifically and SHINee in general. They could be massive douchebags because they're talented and beautiful and rich, but they're not at all. I have never ever felt that they're anything but really kind, genuine people. Taemin asked fans not to spend money on buying him meat or fancy food when we don't have money to look after ourselves and told fans not to push themselves to go to recordings if they're injured or sick. Which was another surprisingly insightful moment because I know people, including myself, who routinely spend money on SHINee before taking care of themselves or push through feeling sick to be at recordings. I just...never knew that he knew that as well.

Since debuting with his first solo Ace Taemin's grown not only through his performance but also in the way he talks to fans. He said lots of flirty things, like playfully asking one of his male fans not to steal any of his girls fans away from him, or asking us to wait for his next comeback or singing Hypnosis and replacing 'you' with 'SHINee World'. But generally the feeling I got from what he was saying is that he's come to appreciate how valuable fans are and how much he enjoys and relies on their support. I don't mean to say he didn't love and appreciate fans in the past, I just think he's come to know and understand us more, which is just....I'm beyond words thankful. Like I said, being a fangirl the only thanks or positivity you ever get is from each other and SHINee themselves so I'm so grateful Taemin is so passionate about his fans these days.

A huge thank you to Taemin and all my shawol friends because I could go to work today, at a job I'm kind of drowning in at the moment, and do it with a smile and feeling content and at peace for the first time in a while. I love all my shawol crew and SHINee so much and I can't even picture where I would be without them all. Much love to the boys and my girls and to our fandom, who despite pissing me off occasionally, is generally full of beautiful, enthusiastic, amazing young women with such passion and love inside them. It makes me smile to be a part of something that's so much bigger than me.