A study of Eric Sohn's Idol Persona
Nov. 27th, 2020 11:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
acetopiasokay so i dont really know where to start with this lmfao. just know i'm a huge fan of him and i think about him all the time, plus i'm an aquarius ficwriter so i like to overanalyse him <3 i've been a deoby for two years now so this is essentially just going to be a ramble about eric of the sohn family and his struggle with finding his 'idol persona'!
first things first, something i genuinely adore about eric is that we're watching him figure out how he wants to portray himself! he constantly flips between different opinions and things and personally i think it's because he's still trying to figure out what his unique Brand is and how he fits into the boyz as an idol. i think he's figured out his role as a member, but trying to find out how he wants the general public to view him is vastly more complicated.
i think he struggles with wanting to be authentic and his real self, while also wanting to be a more improved version, while also trying to be what deobis expect him to be. if you also factor in the fact he's still young and figuring out who he actually is outwith the public gaze, it's a confusing time for him!
earlier i mentioned how he 'constantly flips between different opinions' and i'd like to expand on that with some references to what i'm talking about. i wont be able to link the videos i'm referring to, so you'll have to just trust me that these all happened ig! anyway - obviously eric is the youngest of the boyz and they debuted in 2017 (when he was 17 international age) which, if you've ever been 17, is a strange period of time, let alone for a famous person (i assume).
due to this, eric has been trying to walk the line between being a cute 'baby' and being someone more mature than that, especially recently, what with all the sexy comeback stylings and such. this has resulted in eric flipping between acknowledging his status as baby and denying it! for example, when i called him a baby in fanship chat on vlive a while ago:
as you can see he pretty quickly decided to agree with me LMAO, however this ties into how erics main goal is to make his fans happy. which is a whole other entry if i'm honest. but back to him flipping back and forth on things. if you're reading this i assume you know who eric sohn is! so you probably know that he's a big fan of the color pink, and a big fan of ramen.
however, there is a vlive from bloom bloom era, when he did a vlive while he was walking back to the dorm from school, where he did try to shed both those associations. i'm not entirely sure why, but i assume it's because he was in the process of trying to shift his persona from being Incredibly baby to being someone mature, much like the other two members of 00 line (at the time) were doing (with more noticeable success, imo).
that shift didn't last that long, though. it didn't really stick with deobis and they continued to associate those things with erics brand, so he didn't bother trying to reiterate it and went back to identifying with those. i think the problem with it was that it wasn't a genuine shift. as he really does still love ramen, as proven by the fact that the rest of the boyz have now tried to put a ban in place! i do think this was eric testing out forming a boundary between his real self and his idol persona and it didn't work out.
i think eric was trying to find a balance between hwall and sunwoo. whereas hwall definitely had an idol persona, that we can acknowledge considering how much he changed after he left the boyz (i'm not saying that 'hwall' was fake, just that it wasn't his entire truth. which is fair tbh) however sunwoo doesn't really seem to have a separation between his idol self and his true self!
i also think that trying to create this boundary after you've already debuted makes the whole process a lot more complicated, as your fans have already formed their own perception of who you are by that point. especially considering the boyz had a predebut show!
another example of eric trying to alter his image is when he tweeted this picture of him reading twilight in front of his pool back in LA:
i'm not entirely sure why he thought this would impact his brand in anyway and i think he was just trying to flex on all of us about that pool, regardless, he announced in a vlive (i believe it was a vlive) later that he only managed to read three pages before getting bored.
we know that he doesn't like 'boring things' (quote from his section in the Whats Your No. video), and i do think that reading counts as something he finds boring, for the most part. he's not the kind of person who enjoys sitting still, which is pretty much the entirety of what reading is, which is why he has more active hobbies, such as sports, dancing or video games. you might not consider video games active hobbies, but there's undeniably more involved than there is with books!
there's also the fact that he was trying to emulate the other members for a while, drawing inspiration from the things they do that affect their brand. he's since moved on from that and has started going against the curve, trying things that the others haven't touched (jazz music and editing are ones that come to mind immediately).
something else that i think erics been trying to alter, if only slightly, is his reputation as the energetic maknae, and i do think this is inspired, in part, by the fact that sunwoo has become known among deobis as one of, if not the, most heartfelt member/s. i think that he's been trying to be someone who words things in a poetic and heartfelt manner more often? and has been trying to create that as another aspect of his persona. an example of this is the gen z video with 'eric is sometimes sensitive'!
oh and something i've been thinking about but don't really have much to say about, so i'll just throw a quick mention about it in here because it ties in with the last paragraph is that i dont think he knows whether he wants to talk about the darker aspects or not. i think he wants to be someone who is open with deobis, but he doesn't want to worry us or ruin the 'energetic' i.e positive, upbeat maknae image he has. so there is an element of him possibly feeling stuck in how he gets to change his persona.
if there's one thing that hasn't changed from the start to now, it's the fact that eric puts his love for the fans at the forefront of his personality. i could go into this in great detail, so i think i'll expand on this aspect in a different entry.
this is kind of a mess of a post and i'll do a proper write up on eric in a more general sense later i think. or maybe i'll continue to hone in on certain aspects. anyway there isn't really a conclusion to this train of thought, i just find it interesting and endearing that we get to openly see this boy figure out who he wants to be in the world!
i will say i feel like eric doesn't quite have the confidence to commit to any of these changes (as you'll notice he does tend to essentially 'take it back') and i do think this is, in part, at least, to do with his overflowing love and concern for deobis. he doesn't want to do anything that might rock the boat, such as changing how the fans view him! i did touch on this earlier, but yes. i do think that eric sees the image he's develped up to this point, and doesn't really want to do anything that might ruin his brand, or infringe on any of the other members brands (baby does wanna stand out) so the things that separate him from the group are things he wants to Keep, but he's struggling to find the balance between it all.
anyway. heres this! thanks for reading :]
first things first, something i genuinely adore about eric is that we're watching him figure out how he wants to portray himself! he constantly flips between different opinions and things and personally i think it's because he's still trying to figure out what his unique Brand is and how he fits into the boyz as an idol. i think he's figured out his role as a member, but trying to find out how he wants the general public to view him is vastly more complicated.
i think he struggles with wanting to be authentic and his real self, while also wanting to be a more improved version, while also trying to be what deobis expect him to be. if you also factor in the fact he's still young and figuring out who he actually is outwith the public gaze, it's a confusing time for him!
earlier i mentioned how he 'constantly flips between different opinions' and i'd like to expand on that with some references to what i'm talking about. i wont be able to link the videos i'm referring to, so you'll have to just trust me that these all happened ig! anyway - obviously eric is the youngest of the boyz and they debuted in 2017 (when he was 17 international age) which, if you've ever been 17, is a strange period of time, let alone for a famous person (i assume).
due to this, eric has been trying to walk the line between being a cute 'baby' and being someone more mature than that, especially recently, what with all the sexy comeback stylings and such. this has resulted in eric flipping between acknowledging his status as baby and denying it! for example, when i called him a baby in fanship chat on vlive a while ago:
as you can see he pretty quickly decided to agree with me LMAO, however this ties into how erics main goal is to make his fans happy. which is a whole other entry if i'm honest. but back to him flipping back and forth on things. if you're reading this i assume you know who eric sohn is! so you probably know that he's a big fan of the color pink, and a big fan of ramen.
however, there is a vlive from bloom bloom era, when he did a vlive while he was walking back to the dorm from school, where he did try to shed both those associations. i'm not entirely sure why, but i assume it's because he was in the process of trying to shift his persona from being Incredibly baby to being someone mature, much like the other two members of 00 line (at the time) were doing (with more noticeable success, imo).
that shift didn't last that long, though. it didn't really stick with deobis and they continued to associate those things with erics brand, so he didn't bother trying to reiterate it and went back to identifying with those. i think the problem with it was that it wasn't a genuine shift. as he really does still love ramen, as proven by the fact that the rest of the boyz have now tried to put a ban in place! i do think this was eric testing out forming a boundary between his real self and his idol persona and it didn't work out.
i think eric was trying to find a balance between hwall and sunwoo. whereas hwall definitely had an idol persona, that we can acknowledge considering how much he changed after he left the boyz (i'm not saying that 'hwall' was fake, just that it wasn't his entire truth. which is fair tbh) however sunwoo doesn't really seem to have a separation between his idol self and his true self!
i also think that trying to create this boundary after you've already debuted makes the whole process a lot more complicated, as your fans have already formed their own perception of who you are by that point. especially considering the boyz had a predebut show!
another example of eric trying to alter his image is when he tweeted this picture of him reading twilight in front of his pool back in LA:
i'm not entirely sure why he thought this would impact his brand in anyway and i think he was just trying to flex on all of us about that pool, regardless, he announced in a vlive (i believe it was a vlive) later that he only managed to read three pages before getting bored.
we know that he doesn't like 'boring things' (quote from his section in the Whats Your No. video), and i do think that reading counts as something he finds boring, for the most part. he's not the kind of person who enjoys sitting still, which is pretty much the entirety of what reading is, which is why he has more active hobbies, such as sports, dancing or video games. you might not consider video games active hobbies, but there's undeniably more involved than there is with books!
there's also the fact that he was trying to emulate the other members for a while, drawing inspiration from the things they do that affect their brand. he's since moved on from that and has started going against the curve, trying things that the others haven't touched (jazz music and editing are ones that come to mind immediately).
something else that i think erics been trying to alter, if only slightly, is his reputation as the energetic maknae, and i do think this is inspired, in part, by the fact that sunwoo has become known among deobis as one of, if not the, most heartfelt member/s. i think that he's been trying to be someone who words things in a poetic and heartfelt manner more often? and has been trying to create that as another aspect of his persona. an example of this is the gen z video with 'eric is sometimes sensitive'!
oh and something i've been thinking about but don't really have much to say about, so i'll just throw a quick mention about it in here because it ties in with the last paragraph is that i dont think he knows whether he wants to talk about the darker aspects or not. i think he wants to be someone who is open with deobis, but he doesn't want to worry us or ruin the 'energetic' i.e positive, upbeat maknae image he has. so there is an element of him possibly feeling stuck in how he gets to change his persona.
if there's one thing that hasn't changed from the start to now, it's the fact that eric puts his love for the fans at the forefront of his personality. i could go into this in great detail, so i think i'll expand on this aspect in a different entry.
this is kind of a mess of a post and i'll do a proper write up on eric in a more general sense later i think. or maybe i'll continue to hone in on certain aspects. anyway there isn't really a conclusion to this train of thought, i just find it interesting and endearing that we get to openly see this boy figure out who he wants to be in the world!
i will say i feel like eric doesn't quite have the confidence to commit to any of these changes (as you'll notice he does tend to essentially 'take it back') and i do think this is, in part, at least, to do with his overflowing love and concern for deobis. he doesn't want to do anything that might rock the boat, such as changing how the fans view him! i did touch on this earlier, but yes. i do think that eric sees the image he's develped up to this point, and doesn't really want to do anything that might ruin his brand, or infringe on any of the other members brands (baby does wanna stand out) so the things that separate him from the group are things he wants to Keep, but he's struggling to find the balance between it all.
anyway. heres this! thanks for reading :]
no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 01:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 01:09 am (UTC)this post also made me realise why eric is as endearing as he is. for me, personally, even before i got to know him very well, i remember feeling this intense vibe of "he's a good boy and i love him" and i think that's because he's so green and young in the growing-pains way. which is not to say that sunwoo isn't going thru his own set of young adult angst but it feels a lot rawer and more present for eric, even at like a subliminal level.
anyway, i adore him and i adore you and i adore this <3 nerd
no subject
Date: 2020-11-28 01:55 am (UTC)i love u too b