sorry i dont post often, i've been lurking on this thread for a long time, but i wanna talk a bit about 5hinee jjong and taem
can we please be more sensitive regarding his death? i know one of the main topics of this thread is discussing his 'sacrifice' and i understand, but it sounds really crude and insensitive to say things like "5hinee k!lled him" or saying taem is copying his whole career and he benefited from his death and stuff, please think before you say such things.
if i analyse it from that angle, taem already had a successful solo career and solo debuted before the others, lsm picked him because of his huge improvement in sherlock era.
and jjong is the one who mentored and trained him, he even wrote songs for taem which taem wouldnt sing because he didnt think he would be able to do them as well as jjong. out of all 5hinee members taem was closest to jjong, he might have a mischievous image but he has always been extremely attached to his group and members.
the worst part is jjong passed away in 2017, and that was already a very tough year for taem, you can watch the documentary behind for his budokkan concert, he was struggling a lot mentally. he had just had two very difficult japanese releases, and the pressure from the hit the stage and mama performance from the last year was a lot to live up to, everyone who says taemin gained from 2017 is not completely true, he started being known as kpop's best dancer from a long ago, but especially 2016.
so he has a lot of pressure to deliver a good korean comeback since press your number, which was two years ago, and at the same time he has to hold his first solo concert, which is a 360 degree arena, for a japanese audience and having to adjust all his songs to japanese, and work on his korean comeback at the same time, he even had to perform at an sm concert right after two days of his own concerts.
physical stress leads to mental stress as well, but he had a lot of mental stress to begin with, and he was being filmed a lot constantly, during the documentary his manager had to request the camerman to stop recording tm and give him some privacy because he broke down crying while rehearsing, it was a hard time for him and jjong came to support him, he stayed with him after the concert and ate with him to cheer him up, jjong genuinely cared about him to adjust his own concert dates just so he could attend and support taem's concert.
i cant find the video to link sorry if anyone wants to link it you're welcome.
and then during move promotions, even though tm had schedules the whole day he still went to jjong's concert at the end of day to support him, it wasn't a one-sided thing, they both cared for each other and supported each other.
another thing i want to mention is that very shortly before jjong's passing, taem went through another sad incident when his friend auditioned on a show where he was a judge, called unit, and he performed exo's kokobop, his other best friend's song, it was sad because k@i, taem, and moon*yu were all friends and trained together but their paths turned out to be so different, it must have been very difficult for tm to see his friend struggling like that, i found a twt link to that moment
he's never broken down into tears like this before, he must clearly have had a lot of stress piled up for him to breakdown like that.
another thing is that he was already feeling selfish for promoting solo and not giving his group enough attention, reports say he was crying inconsolably after news of jjong's death, i dont think we can just say it's all fake, imagine how hurt you would feel if a friend that was like a big brother to you for over ten years suddenly left like that, and he already felt very guilty i dont think it's fair to sit and speculate like it's his fault when he already blames himself.
tm didnt have solo activities the next year, except his japanese album and the title track 'under my skin' is an extremely sad song where he confronts his guilt and pain over jjong's passing.
last year with supe*m, a western interviewer asked him directly about jjong which was very rude, and he didnt want to reply but the CPTL record staff insisted and he gave a very short answer, but he was clearly very uncomfortable
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even recently he's been having a very difficult time, he prepared hard for tokyo dome concerts last year only for them to be cancelled, and every single time he would bring up his solo activities sm would cancel would all their meetings and brush him off, and then they didnt promote any of his comebacks, he's been injured too and they made him a film a reality show but postponed his solo content, he's even explicitly stated that his mental state has been suffering, tm is not the type to share these type of things so for him to say just this much is enough to know how bad it is.
he's even mentioned in passing how he knows his career isn't forever, he knows he's gonna retire one day and it all has to end, why would he do horrible things for fame when he's said so many times how much he struggles with it and how it's caused him to have two different identities as a celebrity and a real person, you can see in the lyrics for his japanese song 'famous':
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the reason he's successful is because he's simply accepted the dark and ugly side of it all, he has an extremely strong mental state to deal with it so cleanly like he has been doing for years, i've seen some comments on this thread before criticising him for not showing emotion, but that doesnt mean he's not feeling anything, he's still in pain and suffering.
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a lot of times tm's lyrics and concepts are overlooked because of the aesthetic or his charismatic appeal, but looking just a little deeper into it all reveals the reality behind his perfect mask. i would share more but this post is already too long sorry
all his cbs and concepts from 2020 have been very dark because he is struggling with all these things, he just expresses himself in his art form like that, because he has dark thoughts and feelings doesnt mean he's an evil person, it's unfair to paint him as this evil demon a lot of you all talk about him like that and it makes me sad because he is actually suffering a lot but just because he doesnt share it doesnt mean we should speculate like this.
sorry for the long post i didnt mean to spam, i just wanted to show a side of taem that i feel is often overlooked on this thread simply because of his concepts, he is human too, he feels pain too, it's not right to speculate over his pain and trauma, that's all, thanks for reading.
