#woe is me ... daesung ...

[daesungindistress]

i agree with most things you say about seungri's situation, but when you hint at saying his resignation from yg & bb is noble or whatever... i just can't see it that way. i see it as manipulative. that he said it for sympathy & to get fans on his side. he Knows how dedicated vip are and how even more so vvip are and he wrote his letter knowing that.

I know. I’m just trying to appeal to Seungri’s remaining fans in a way that might get through to them. A kinder approach, you could say. Rather than going at it from the “your fave is trash and a horrible person and you should be ashamed” angle, which is more heavy-handed than I like and likely to meet resistance and something I don’t fully agree with anyway, I’m asking them to listen to Seungri’s own words in which he announced he was out. I’m offering them the chance to at least pretend he did it nobly… to save face for themselves, or what little is left anyway, just as Seungri did for himself. Think of it as a parting gift of sorts. Seungri gave us a way to hail him as a hero even as he was leaving us, i.e., “I did it for you.” For the sake of keeping the peace, if this is what it takes to get people to let him go from the group, I’m willing to play along.

Denial, though, is a hell of a drug. When people still proclaim “OT5 forever,” all I see is Seungri’s own fans sticking their fingers in their ears, spitting on his “sacrifice,” and slinging it back in his face. Doesn’t matter if it comes from his own mouth; if it’s not what they want to hear, they won’t listen. But you know what? For many of them, this isn’t new. It was never about what he wanted, it was about what they wanted for him – what they wanted from him. They’ll tear him to pieces pulling on him, as long as it means they get what they want in the end: more.

Remember when a segment of his fans were pushing him to leave Big Bang because “he deserves better”? Now he’s gone and those same fans are begging him to come back. You just can’t win when your fans are this fickle. For crying out loud, let the man make his own decisions about his future!

Right, back to his retirement. I personally think it’s 50% “woe is me”, 25% trying to save face by leaving first, and 25% still caring about his hyungs and BB’s reputation enough to recognize that the best thing he can do for them is distance himself (a concept that seems to be lost on his remaining fans, some of whom are going around to various Aori Ramen restaurants and leaving notes of support on napkins and post-its… do they realize they’re hurting the owners and employees who’ve cut ties with Seungri in an attempt to stay afloat, or do they just not care).

That said, I agree with you in that, in my eyes at least, Seungri has always been manipulative to a degree. He throws himself little pity parties when things aren’t going his way, he cracks jokes and tells funny stories to vent about things that are bothering him, be it his bandmates or his management under YG. Turning to humor as a coping mechanism and a weapon, a means to an end. He does this knowing that his army of fans will come to his defense, taking advantage of it when it suits him.

Does he mean to be this way? I don’t know him well enough to say. But even if we’re willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and concede that it’s unintentional, that he doesn’t mean to influence his followers to do his bidding for him, the best you can say about it is that it’s irresponsible. And I’ve never once cared for it.

He was doing it just this January, remember? I wrote those posts timidly criticizing him for his complaints about YG… the lack of band and few backup dancers at his concert… which, wow, yeah, that sucked, but the way he handled it? How his detailed account of what went wrong, relaying word-for-word what was said between them, mobilized his fans and turned them against his own boss? Watching it all play out was both disappointing and frustrating. At the time, I was reluctant to say too much for fear of incurring the wrath of his fans, but I couldn’t resist pushing back just a bit when the situation blew up and made the news. I thought it was unprofessional and unbecoming of him to air his dirty laundry to the world like that. You could argue that he just doesn’t think before he speaks, but… I can’t fully accept that. Does he not know tact? Something about it just felt… off.

(Might I remind you that a similar thing happened to Daesung at his 2018 tour finale in Hawaii, only worse – no band, no dancers. But he brushed it off as “visa issues” and that was that. No one questioned it too deeply and there was no resulting fandom uproar. I don’t think he wanted us to take up the fight for him, and I greatly respect that.)

I know everyone likes to pretend Seungri is this cute clumsy baby panda but I’ve never bought into that act, I always thought it was a bit cringey; he’s an intelligent, grown man who’s been doing this professionally for over a decade and he had to have known the reaction his jokes and half-truths would evoke in an audience who loves him to pieces and would do anything for him. I think he’s well aware of the power he wields over us. I believe he wanted that outpouring of sympathy, and in the end he got it. He played the victim and donned a sense of vulnerability and his fans lapped it up and went to war for him… it ticked me off back then. It still does now.

I… don’t know why I did an about-face and fought so hard for him throughout February and March. As much as his pity ploys have always rubbed me the wrong way, I guess even I wasn’t fully immune in the end (I just googled “pity ploy” to make sure I was getting that right and it took me straight to articles about narcissists… damn, that’s a little too close for comfort). Even in his Chosun interview in March, it was all me, me, me, I’m scared, I don’t know anything, how am I supposed to live from now on? A part of me responded to that, just as another part of me was repulsed by it. Then, in addressing the molka vids, he allegedly cautioned JJY, “Don’t do that stuff, you’ll get in trouble.” And I thought, wait, hold up. Not because… it’s wrong? Because it’s hurting people? Because it’s destroying lives? And the text message he sent to reporters, angry about the invasion of his privacy. Oh, the irony.

If reading this gives you the impression that I never liked Seungri, that’s not it. I did like Seungri. I wouldn’t have written so much fic about him if I didn’t. A tiny, pocket-sized part of me still cares about the guy, god. But my feelings toward him have always run hot and cold. He was an acquired taste. There were things I liked him and things I didn’t. I’ve always said that while he’s interesting to watch from a distance, he’s not someone I would ever be friends with IRL. No, I never got a “bad feeling” about him like so many others are saying lately, it’s just that our personalities, lifestyles, and values are at odds with each other. I respected him as an entertainer because I enjoyed his music, voice, and dancing, but was fairly confident that given the opportunity, we would never get along in close proximity – not for long anyway.

Moving on… it’s not just the evidence we’ve been shown throughout the course of the investigation that’s slowly nudged me away from him, it’s also how he’s conducted himself in his defense. In the early stages I enjoyed that he was putting up a fight, in a legal sense. It was entertaining. But once he began giving interviews… once he presented himself to the press, presumably without a PR rep to help him polish his statements… I haven’t much liked what I’ve seen. The character of Seungri has fallen away; this is Lee Seunghyun we’re faced with now. And I can’t say I’m impressed by this brazen display of self-interest. Why should I give him any more of my emotional energy when he doesn’t seem to give a flip about the women he and his friend group have wronged in such awful ways… I’m sorry, Seungri, but any sympathy I once had for you has finally run dry.