Bi-Weekly Feature Belated Edition(twss): Favorite aspects of my favorite member(s)

[arbitrary_greay]

Why do I love SooSun?

Take us through a day in the life of your favorite...
Well, the first thing she does is...

Comments

[greywing]

how I'm most comfortable stanning someone who's clearly comfortable playing the idol game etc etc.

Askbask, you made me think about how HyoYeon is not only the complete opposite of this, but that my fan attraction to HyoYeon means that although I fell for her initially because I liked her dancing, that initial admiration meant that I had to accept other parts of her personality in order to be her fan.

That is:
1) Discover HyoYeon is the dancer of SNSD.
2) Watch her dance videos and go, YES!
3) Watch her in appearances.
4) Realize she's a terrible "idol."
5) Accept that she's a terrible "idol."
6) Come to like the parts of her that are terrible at being an idol.
7) Like her more and more due to continuing displays of terrible "idolness."

Which makes me wonder about the paths to liking an idol. That is:

1) Appreciation of talent --> personality
2) Personality --> enjoyment of vocals/dance abilities/etc (that is, if they're around the levels of average or even below average [see: Kusumi Koharu)
3) a. Physical attraction --> personality
b. Physical attraction --> talents

Which makes me wonder: Does being a "true fan" mean that you have to come to accept the whole package? That you have to like all points of hte idol presentation triangle* (talent, personality, appearance)?

And how often does that happen, to like all points? It's that part of the idol trap, to hook you with one or two and then get you invested in all three?

*Or is it a bigger polygon?

[askbask]

I think you can be as much a fan of someone as anyone without liking everything about the person, but I don't think a 'true fan' exists. People who flaunt a term like that will probably demand that you accept anything your idol does or leave the fandom. In some cases I'm a huge fan without knowing about most of the polygon's points.

Did you 'accept' those parts, though? Did you dislike her being a terrible idol at first before warming to it? Or was it in fact an immediate charm, something that separated her in your books.

Sunny and Hyoyeon being opposites, probably... but it's not like that means my views on Hyoyeon are the opposite of Sunny. I like Hyoyeon's lack of idol-ness as well. What I DO have a problem with is certain marketing strategies where idols are sold as the 'girl next door', or average, friendly girls or 'innocents' or whatever. They should bloody well be on my computer screen for a reason. I don't want a camera installed at my neighbour's flat, and I don't want to see them on stage.

Rambling is hard work!

[arbitrary_greay]

I had to accept other parts of her personality in order to be her fan.
Interesting wording. This implies that before Hyo you'd prefer a non-terrible idol. But as askbask points out, did Hyo being a terrible idol actually endear her more to you than if she was savvy? Yuri's more savvy than Hyo, but was that why you preferred Hyo over Yuri?

As I said to R above I prefer the "terrible" idols, but SooSun provide an interesting case in that the two of them are savvy, but too savvy, especially Sunny. And a look at my other biases reveals that while I do like the girls that do batshit crazy and funny things, my biases tend to ultimately lie with girls that play with the usual idol concepts instead, such as Gyuri and Sayumi. So, like askbask, I like the girls who are comfortable with gaming the system more than the usual "terrible" idols. Hmmm. In those cases, especially with Sayumi, I can then "accept" when they're acting all cutesy and girly because I know that they're actually sending it up at some level. So in contrast to grey, I have to accept when my biases act like a standard idol rather than having to accept that they're terrible. XD

paths to liking an idol
I've gone through pretty much all of those with various girls, and I don't know if they're trying to use one appeal style to lead you into another so much as just trying to use whichever one will keep you paying for merch. What is interesting though is that diehard fans almost always have this two-stage fandom of "initially I liked x about her, but it's y that really kept me around/made me a stan."
But is it? With H!P it was initially the music and performance, but the personalities got me truly invested in the group, but now I'm more a fan of their music again. I initially got into SNSD because of their personalities, and then I loved their dancing, but now I get neither, and what's keeping me around? And with SNSD especially, it's coincidence that my first Kpop bias has such great personalities and dancing in one package. If I had gotten into WG instead, would I have eventually switched over to SNSD fandom due to their better dancing? 2NE1 have just as much talent and personality as well, but I don't like their music style as much, so does that mean SNSD's music has the bigger hold on me? But then why haven't I jumped headfirst into Miss A or f(x) fandom?
Ugh, stupid X-factor complicating things. And you have to keep in mind, that X-factor can make fans stick around despite disliking some aspects of their biases, or not care about other idols that should hit all of their appeal points. It pretty much renders any attempts to rationalize the attraction to a particular idol useless. DX