WORD COUNT: 640 // TOKEN COUNT: 01
CONTENT WARNINGS FOR: implied death of a family member, terminal illness
CHO SOONYOUNG'S VERY SECRET DIARY, AS KEPT ON THE NOTES APP OF HIS PHONE. IF YOU HAPPEN TO CATCH A GLIMPSE, LOOK AWAY. THANK YOU.
there's nothing juicy to read here. i'm deeply, profoundly, painfully boring. save yourself the time.
thank you.
i'm sorry if i sound rude, please just. stop reading.
seriously.
ruth,
i wanted to send you this for real. it makes me a little crazy i kept putting it off and now i can't do it anymore at all. i was going to write in korean so you know i'm doing okay and that i'm not forgetting our roots or whatever mrs. kang was saying when we last went to church together. do you remember that?
it's been so long ago, but it always bugged me. maybe because mrs. kang always made it sound like our fault. that we don't visit our grandparents regularly, that mom doesn't cook for us the way mrs. kang thinks she ought to. that us being korean means we have to be korean in a very specific way.
i'm not good at that very specific way bit. i'm getting better at it, i think, but it's not enough. remember when you'd used to rush me so i'd finish things faster, but then i'd get tripped up and i'd start crying and we wouldn't get anywhere anymore? it's that, i think.
except for, you're dead so you can't rush me, and if you trip and fall in life it won't wait like you would.
i wish i'd sent you letters the way i said i would. i'm sorry.
ruth,
remember the audition thing? of course you don't. you can't read my letters because they're on my phone and i never sent them off, and you can't read anyway.
but the audition thing. i went. i was so nervous, i thought i'd die on the spot (or embarrass myself to no end, at least) but i didn't. or, well, i did, my voice cracked so horribly on that high note that i was convinced i needed to put in because i wanted them to know that i'm serious business and can sing.
now they probably think i'm an idiot who was trying to show off. which i was, honestly. an idiot who was trying to show off. i'm telling myself not to think too hard about it because if i do i might cry.
i want this. i don't know if anyone else does, but i want it. for myself, but also a bit for you. because it's what you would've wanted a little bit too, even if we're both too old for this kind of dreaming.
ruth,
i'm not ready. they want me in the debut line-up and i'm not ready and i'm terrified that if they stop and think too hard about it, they'll realize that i'm a fraud, actually.
i should be excited and grateful (i want to be, i want to be excited and grateful so, so bad) and this should be the happiest day of my life but all i can think about is that they must've made a mistake.
anyone here can sing at least a little bit. like, that's an idol's bread and butter, right? anyone can sing at least a little bit. so that can't be it. that can't be why. but if it isn't that, what else would it be?
i'm so scared. you'd know what to do.
actually, no, you probably wouldn't. but you'd probably joke about me being a pushover and a crybaby and you'd tell me to just do my best and i could really use this just about now.
ruth,
what if when i get on stage i can't be the person you would've wanted me to be?
A Midas Music break room; the headquarters
with you?
He didn't remember when the text had started to blur before his eyes. Hell, he didn't even remember how far he'd read on without any of the words registering, his eyes scanning the pages of the novel he'd picked up out of habit, rather than interest. Soonyoung had no idea when he'd last fallen asleep in a public place like the break room (semi-public, but close enough!) and it was beyond embarrassing that his first impulse had been to shoot up in his seat and immediately hit whoever had been kind enough to shake him awake with his own head.
His book, a paperback, made a pitiful flopping noise where it hit the ground. In a way, it was the perfect accompaniment to Soonyoung's equally pitiful howl, just loud enough to make his dissatisfaction heard, but lacking enough teeth to have a spine. He curled back into himself and landed on the couch with a small 'oof'.
"I'm sorry," he mumbled once the pain had ebbed off enough to look back up again. Soonyoung's faces were flushed red with shame. "Are you hurt? I didn't mean to— I just— I panicked—" He bit down on the inside of his cheek and grabbed blindly for his novel. "What I meant to say is, what can I help you with?"
definedlines:
“you don’t have to explain. just drink something before the lights shut off completely.” she left it at that. no clipboard, no agenda. just a quiet moment and the comfort of not being watched too closely.
Eunhee had scared Suran at first. Anyone who didn't immediately give her an positive reaction to work with. It didn't work like that, she knew that, but could you blame the girl who learned that neither making herself invisible nor making herself seen would bring her peace?
It had taken time to learn that she couldn't simply read coldness into the absence of people doing what she wanted or expected them to do. Eunhee had taught her some of that too, though Suran wasn't sure her manager knew.
"I'm still here," she mumbled in place of a greeting and reached for the small towel she kept nearby. Feeling ashamed of looking sweaty and unkempt had become a fool's errand so soon into her training, so she didn't really bother with it anymore. Instead, Suran took the proffered drink with a tired, grateful smile.
"I just wanted to get something right." Had it been not-right before? Not really. It'd been suboptimal, perhaps, but it had been. But other things weren't, and it was easier to control your body through a difficult passage of a choreography than one in life.
Obediently, she followed Eunhee's instructions and moved to where she'd stashed her belongings. She wasn't going to be hounded to go home now, but maybe she could allow herself to call it a day now. Maybe this was the sign.
"I'm sorry if I'm costing you time off the clock," Suran said and pulled on a white crochet shrug. Her voice was small, but the practice room was so quiet, she might as well have yelled. "Did you have plans for tonight that I'm currently thwarting?"
orbitjae:
“ah okay – here’s a question! what are the top three qualities you admire in others?” he reads out.
She'd known people like Seungjae — in school, at the dance academy, watching a group of peers in a different school uniform joke around at the metro station. The volume of their voice and the brightness they'd exuded had irked her for a long, long time. She'd wanted it for herself, that ease with which they seemed to move around in the world, unafraid to take up space, to call for attention.
Suran still felt somewhat inadequate faced with it now, here. A little bit ironic, considered she had opted for the attention hog line of work in the end. Someone like her didn't really get to complain anymore, did they?
"Phone games? What kind?" She wasn't an expert by all means, things like PUBG or Fortnite made her head hurt and she didn't have the patience to weather neither the onslaught of ads for small puzzle games nor the stamina limitations for the games that didn't have them. But she was genuinely curious. "I'm not a gamer myself," she added hastily, worried to look like a poser, "But maybe if you have something to recommend to a beginner…"
The random question generator on his phone made her laugh a little. She didn't want to be presumptuous, but for a moment he seemed a little less put together. Prepared, but not in a bulletproof way. It was reassuring, endearing. "That's a hard question," she mused, making a conscious effort to meet him a little closer to where he was at right now.
"Openness, I suppose. And kindness, and patience." Suran brushed her hair back over her shoulder. "It's all rather boring, I fear. What about you?"
deuxblues:
"well, actually, I'm joo jaeyoon. you are?"
I'm nobody. A stranger's words shouldn't hit her like that, especially not when they weren't meant as an affront to her in the first place. The echo of them buffeted her anyway, left an ugly, red mark where it'd slapped her. Suran knew what being nobody was like, too.
Hungry for perhaps a bit of unspoken kinship she relaxed a little, put on the shy ghost of a friendly smile. "Hong Suran," she replied. If he was going to use his civilian name, so to speak, so was she.
This, too, felt like pulling a band-aid off of a wound that hadn't yet fully healed. The scab underneath was unsightly and not fit for a bystander, even if to Suran herself it showed how far she'd already healed. She looked away, a little too nervous to keep anything remotely related to eye contact, and flagged the bartender for another one of— whatever she'd been nursing for most of this evening.
"I'd hardly call you nobody," she hummed, just loud enough to be heard over the bustle of the venue. Part of her trembled underneath her skin, worried that she'd taken a wrong step. Listening to herself nervously form words, she found her choice thereof to sound almost glib, like she was trying to suck up to him.
But she'd liked his voice well enough, and if someone's voice was memorable enough to be remembered that was already a step removed from nobody, right?
"But if you insist, I suppose we can be nobodies together." Another approximation to a smile played on her lips. She was grateful when her drink was brought over, the stem of the glass she'd been fiddling with being taken from her hold only to be replaced right away. A question burned on her tongue, nothing real, nothing serious, just chatter to fill the emptiness between them. She bit down and swallowed it. Instead, she asked, "Is nobody comfortable with silence?"
hi, idols! as an apology for the pause in operations on the main and the lack of monthly schedules, we come bearing gifts... an ask meme! this isn't the honesty hour that was mentioned a while back (as that will be used as part of our next event), but we think it'll still be lots of fun. check under the cut for all the details!
✩ [조태준] message is here!
our second ask meme will be in the form of interactions on hi-u, midas labels' very own artist-to-fan communication app, and girl talk, the exclusive communication app for girl code. the following questions, inspired by questions that idols are commonly asked by fans online and during fansigns, must be answered with your muse's public image in mind. your muse's answers do not have to be honest, but they must remain appropriate. if you do choose to have your muse respond inappropriately, there will be in-character consequences. if you're willing to take that risk, you may, but we recommend running any potential inappropriate answers by us to know what the companies' reactions would be. the goal of this meme is to explore your muses' public images a bit further, and let other muns see how they interact with their fans.
you can send any of the below questions to any mun/muse that reblogs this post. you are more than welcome to send in your own custom questions, from the pov of that muse's fan (or an antifan). we do encourage avoiding sending any questions that could be deemed too inappropriate, but many idols do experience hate and inappropriate or intrusive questions on these platforms, so you're welcome to also send in questions in that vein (as long as the mun you are sending it to is okay with it).
would you rather have five [group member] or a five-year-old [group member]?
would you rather date [group member] or [group member]?
which member do you spend the most time with lately?
how would you rank your group members based on visuals?
how would you rank your group members based on personality?
what's your favorite thing about your group?
what do you like about the company?
what's your favorite thing about yourself?
who do you look up to the most?
do you have any friends in the industry?
what variety show would you like to go on the most?
what does your dream comeback look like?
how should i ask out the person i like?
can you recommend me a song?
can you recommend me a movie?
what app do you use the most lately?
do you have any new hobbies?
how do you destress?
where do you want to travel to next?
what's the first thing you think of when you think of your fans?
can you share your personal scent?
what do you want for your birthday?
if you could spend one day with your fans, what would you want to do?
what's the key to your heart?
what's your most prized possession?
what's your ideal type?
what's your favorite season and why?
today's TMI?
tell us something about your trainee days!
tell us a story from your childhood!
who's your [group name] bias?
what girl group do you like lately?
what boy group do you like lately?
✩ are you their manager?
nowadays, it's getting easier and easier to find an idol's manager or stylist on social media... and we know fans can be a bit intrusive! staff members may also reblog this post, and muns may send them any of the above questions (that are applicable, of course), a custom question of their own (whether a genuine question or an intrusive comment by a fan), and/or any of the below questions. we recommend that staff muses reply to these questions as if they're really replying to a fan on social media, but if your staff member would not have a public sns account, you may answer these honestly as if they were speaking to a friend.
what's the hardest thing about your job?
what's your favorite comeback from [artist/group]?
what's your favorite thing about [artist/group]?
do you get along with your artist(s)?
what do you wish more people knew about [artist/group]?
what's one thing you'd change about your artist's career?
what's one thing you'd change about the company's policies?
do you have any regrets about your career?
do you think you get paid enough for everything you do?
if you could work with any other artist, who would you work with?
if you didn't work in the industry, what other job would you like to have?
what advice would you give to someone who wants to work in this industry?
while we are not currently accepting submissions for voucher redemptions, we will be issuing out one standard item voucher for every 3 questions answered for a total of three standard item vouchers per muse, but you may answer as many questions as you'd like. make sure you send out questions to everyone who reblogged this post. if you have not sent out questions to at least 3 different muns, you will not be able to collect your item vouchers. make sure to take your answers with #midas:meme002, and we'll announce when our submit is back open. you may reblog this post and send questions as soon as this post hits the dash. this meme will run until may 1st. happy answering!
three weeks and one impulse decision later…
anyway, hi, it's me again! meet cho soonyoung, sodapop's second main vocalist and textbook example for people who want to be idols but probably shouldn't. just like last time, please give us a ❤️ if you'd like to plot and thank you for your patience in advance! (i continue to be slow, i fear)
CONTENT WARNINGS: allusions to child neglect, mentions of the death of a family member, cancer and divorce (all in background section)
BACKGROUND
sodapop's soonyoung is born as aaron soonyoung cho on march 24th, 2002, as the second child to a pair of middle class parents in irvine, california. at the time of writing, he is 23 years old. his pronouns are he/him.
for most of his childhood, soonyoung has to grow up pretty self-sufficient. his older sister was terminally ill and passed away a few years ago, and his parents separate when he's still pretty young so to an extent, he's always had to look after himself because everyone around him was busy with more pressing things.
officially, he moved to south korea for his studies. unofficially, he moved because it would help his mother financially not to have to cover for him. (his maternal grandparents took care of him and were the ones who supported him financially throughout training where needed)
was studying journalism at hankuk university of foreign studies before being street scouted. despite the fact that he struggled to assimilate socially, his korean is remarkably solid for someone who grew up only really speaking it at home.
grew up singing in his church's choir and played volleyball all throughout high school, so when ydh picked him up he had some vocal training, a nice tone and some basic athleticism to work with.
that's all he had, though, so when he was put in a rushed debut line-up he wasn't actually ready for it. he's been pretty much trying to learn on the job and as far as his dancing goes, it's slowly paying off. on a personal level, though…
PERSONALITY
king of questionably adaptive daydreaming. it's the one way he knows how to cope with the stress of being an idol. (he thought 'oh, i've survived finals in uni' and did not consider that this is a lot, lot, lot worse) it's been pretty harmless so far, but he probably should stop and think about why he needs to resort to all of this in the first place.
startlingly insecure for a public figure with a pretty good image. he has gotten backlash for not being trained well enough to justify debut and that's left reasonable scars, but for most of the part it feels like he's disproportionately scared of what people think of him.
he's so far mostly built a reputation off of his voice and a bunch of vocal-oriented opportunities and it's led him to put a lot of his self-worth on his voice specifically. which probably would be fine for someone who had more confidence in the first place, but you can probably already see where this is going to become an issue…
a high stress job like being a singer is the perfect prerequisite to bring out all of his worst traits. he's paranoid and needy and needs a ton of validation to feel like he's doing the right thing. all that said, he's also naturally pretty good with people, generous and caring and somehow, not being cut out for this job hasn't taken these things from him yet, so it can't be all bad, right?
POTENTIAL PLOTS
soonyoung has an almost comically bad sense of direction and especially during his rookie years he's absolutely gotten lost in the midas company building, at broadcasters, you name it… plenty of room for a wide variety of silly encounters on varying steps of the scale of humiliation.
through some (probably a little bizarre) happenstance your character and soonyoung started exchanging texts detailing the weird dreams they get once in a while. at this point it's devolved a bit into a good-natured competition and maybe not all of it is always one hundred percent truthful, but if it's harmless anyway… why shouldn't they have some fun, right?
your character takes great pleasure out of teasing soonyoung and taking a bit of advantage of how gullible he is.
your character sees soonyoung's self-effacing tendencies as an attempt to fish for compliments and they're not having it. coddling is for the weak, we do tough love in this house! the only downside? it's seemingly made soonyoung believe that they don't like him…
an older mentor figure that (whether knowingly or not) has a bit of a corrupting influence on him.
… friends, actually? soonyoung is introverted and his insecurity makes it hard for him to believe a friendship is genuine, but he's caring and generous, remember? dare i say he'd make for a good friend?
especially friends he actually disagrees with pretty frequently, meaning he can't just default to "this person and i don't see eye to eye so they must hate me".
silly, inconsequential crushes, because what's a hopeless dreamer if they don't fall a bit for a person who's nice to them every other week? soonyoung is no better than his fans in that regard.
a not-so-inconsequential crush that has either been dying a long and gruesome death and keeps getting revived in ways it really shouldn't or that never quite took off but endures anyway. yearning's good to cram emotion into your singing, or something like that. allegedly.
or anything else based (or not based) on these loose ideas! please always feel welcome to send me your suggestions or point out plots you want someone for and i'll gladly see what i can do for you!
Suran had never been the partying type. This probably came as a surprise to no one, between being a starlet with little and fragile popularity, a homebody and wary of people the kind of environment the Dazed anniversary party was being hosted in wasn't one she'd usually be caught in.
That made the event all the more tempting, too. Suran knew her limits, especially so close to a performance, and had been sticking to them with steely determination. But the part of her that derived pleasure from a bit of harmless voyeurism found a lot of enjoyment in sitting in the furthest corner by the bar and watching the going-ons, sipping very slowly on a fruity drink so sweet it had to be masking an ungodly alcohol percentage underneath.
She'd been so absorbed in her little people-watching game, when a broad frame stepped into her periphery she nearly dropped her glass. "Oh!" Hurriedly, she shifted her barstool a little to the side so the newcomer could have more space. "Sorry. Is this alright?"
Taking a moment to examine the other person a little more closely, Suran identified him with a slight start. "Congratulations on your performance, sunbaenim. You worked hard."
hi! this is a quick plotting call for 🌸 spring festival event purposes! nymth are performing at the jinhae and seokchon lake cherry blossom festivals, so suran will be present for both! she'll be participating at the animal shelter adoption event and mc for the dance contest in jinhae, so there'll be extra jitters involved with that event in particular :,) other than that, she's also attending dazed's anniversary party, perhaps a little less on guard than she might be if you come across her in full-on performance work mode!
i'm not being very good at catching up with all of the plotting i have to do at the moment, so please consider this more of a starter call — like this post and i'll work off of what your muse is up to and do my best to toss something nice together! if you'd like to work things out beforehand that's okay too, just give me a nudge here or on 👾 and we can discuss the specifics!
he comes across it after being sent the link a few times. first from some fans, and then staff members that insist that this is one of the best covers that they’ve heard. seungjae is no stranger to people covering his music; it’s the sort of the thing that comes with the job. and while some covers are leaps and bounds insanely different quality than others, seungjae finds himself drawn to this one in particular.
it’s a cover of little light, a song that had gotten released in 2018 – almost 7 years ago, but it’s a song he holds close to his heart. this cover in particular somehow catches the essence of the song, and seungjae can’t help the way his eyes widen at the screen, and his ears perk up. “nymth’s anne”, he sees on the screen. i have to work with her.
seungjae had been the first to approach her – never having been much of an introvert before. plus, her voice, the essence that it captured, seungjae needs it – no, wants it – on a song. though, in truth, getting to know suran, hadn’t been as easy as it seemed ( despite his extroverted tendencies, seungjae still had his guard up, and he felt as though suran was the same. )
which is exactly how he’d found himself in this situation. seated next to suran in his studio as he held up his phone. “twenty questions… i think… this should be fine, right?” he asks, furrowing his brows at the random question generator app. “since it might be important for us to get to know each other… to work well…?” he at the very least hopes that this random spur of the moment plan works.
If anyone had told Suran a month ago that her spur-of-the-moment cover of Little Light would get her noticed by Seungjae, she probably would've laughed. Small artists like Nymth didn't get that kind of attention, Suran had learned over the years, especially considering the cover hadn't really gone viral or anything of the like. And still, here she was, sitting in a chair next to Jung Seungjae himself, hands folded in her lap so she couldn't worry about what to do with them instead. (Or with her limbs, in general. Or herself.)
He was nice, that wasn't it. Suran wasn't uncomfortable as much as she was scared that she had somehow set herself up for something that she'd never be able to live up to. That, and now that she was here she was scared of losing it. The idea of it stung already.
But until she did she'd play along, do her best to make him not regret having called her here. Even if it meant playing Twenty Questions. Goodness gracious. Suran wasn't that exciting of a person ; for most of the part, being an idol meant living, breathing and dreaming rehearsals. How was she supposed to make him believe he hadn't just committed a mistake?
"That works for me," she replied instead and gave him a shy smile. Maybe if she didn't bother to fake enthusiasm and kept it subtle, he would simply misinterpret her reaction to the creeping impostor syndrome for her being naturally shy. "Though I have to warn you that I'm not super interesting. My idea of a nice evening is staying home with a book." Suran laughed softly, trying not to focus on how her voice sounded thin with anxiety. "I guess that's an answer already. Does it count if you haven't asked your question yet?"
When Suran finally found a backstage corner to settle into, the adrenaline rush of the concert was still pulsing in her ears. Part of her still worried persistently about having been seen. Junyoung had invited her as a friend and she'd cleared her presence with management, sure, but for as much as she'd dressed for the occasion — as inconspicuously as she could manage, that was — a persistent voice at the back of her mind worried all the same.
Silly. It wasn't a secret that Suran was a big fan of Sodapop's music.
For a while she was content just watching the backstage bustle from her vantage point, safely out of the way but close enough to catch disembodied bits of conversation as staff passed by her in a whirl. Selene-now-Nymth had never known this level of popularity, so while some of it was familiar from music shows and their own performances, the weight of it felt… different. She wondered if the uptick in attention her group had received would mean that they might still make it like this someday. Who knew, maybe she'd be the cool friend, then, handing Junyoung tickets for one of their showcases—
Her fantasy was interrupted when she heard a door open. Chatter spilled out into the hallway and Suran lifted her head, unable to otherwise see past the brim of her cap.
"Found you," she offered in place of a real greeting, a shy smile on her face. Sometimes it still baffled her when other idols, especially ones with better established claims to fame, wanted to spend time with her. Not everyone looked at life in a transactional manner, of course, but between the reputation of the entertainment industry (earned, in large part) and Suran's own hang-ups as far as "friends" went, even getting this far had been hard-fought.
"You guys looked great on stage." Was the compliment boring? Could it be misconstrued if someone didn't hear enough of it, or only ever heard it out of context? Weren't people who worked backstage for events like these vetted carefully for that sort of thing anyway— "Thank you, again. For the tickets," she forcibly interrupted her thought spiral and pulled the oversized jean jacket around her shoulders.
"Are you tired? I don't want to keep you from your well-deserved rest."
Suran's audition is largely laced with the idea that she should not be there. She participates in a public audition along with a friend, she's meant to play emotional support, not share the stage. To this day she's not quite sure what possesses her to change her mind on audition day itself — maybe it's the fear of being left behind, or how self-conscious she felt standing next to someone she considered more interesting, more radiant, more attractive.
Point is, she auditions anyway. It's a split-second decision, and it's the first one in a long time she makes. It certainly is the first one that holds this much weight, and it might be the last one in a really long time.
With no prepared song in her pocket, Suran falls back on her many, many, many hours of imitating starlets for fun. She doesn't have any formal training to speak of, so her song choice of IU's Raindrop is too ambitious — that's feedback she receives at the end of her audition process, too. More accurately, she's informed that by merit of her singing alone she wouldn't have been considered any further.
(Which, ouch. Fair. But it smarts.)
Lucky for Suran, singing isn't all she does. Given the public audition setting, the event also includes a portion where all auditioning teens are asked to learn and perform the snippet of a choreography within a set time frame, and while Suran isn't all that technically outstanding she had two things that help her immensely: she's a fast learner as far as choreography is concerned, and she has a lot of seemingly effortless charisma as a performer, even back then.
That combination seems to be what ultimately convinces ninety9 of her potential. She's nowhere near ready to be presented to a crowd, but one of the kinder casting panel members praises for being "rough still, but a diamond nonetheless". Her adrenaline-riddled teenage mind holds onto that phrase for a long time after. By the time she's receiving feedback, Suran tries not to hope for kindness.
(She and her friend, better prepared, just as pretty, both make it. The crucial difference is that her friend eventually finds herself caving underneath the pressure of having to weather the stress of training and high school both. Suran, perhaps better suited to endure it, remains. Her friend doesn't.)
(Training destroys that friendship, the competitive nature of the environment pulling at its seams until it collapses onto itself. Suran sometimes still mourns it.)
(She wonders if she's a bad person for not regretting her decision to audition more.)
hi! nice to meet you, i'm excited to be here and present to you nymth's pink, hong suran — or anne, to the general public! it's been a while since i last wrote on tumblr (and i'm a naturally slow person) so please bear with me as i get used to the trappings of the platform again! i'm available to plot on here or on dscrd (slower on here, though, i don't want to risk the algorithmic overlords sending me into the shadow zone) and looking forward to writing with you!
with all that said, leave me a cheeky little ❤️ and i'll get in touch with you to plot!
CONTENT WARNINGS: mentions of bullying
BACKGROUND
nymth's anne is born as hong suran on june 9th, 2000, to a pair of middle class parents in seoul. at the time of writing, she is 24 years old. her pronouns are she/her.
from her father suran gets her striking looks, from her mother she gets the complacency and agreeability. you could argue that the latter is learned behaviour, but shhh.
one of those kids that seemingly have an unending well of talents to pull from. none of it is worth much without putting the work in anyway, of course, but it means that suran manages to coast by in school for a long while.
she starts dancing in fourth grade out of a seemingly futile pre-teen pop star dreams. while she's a good student, it's here where she feels most at ease, it's here where she has friends.
in school, her academic talents make her a target when the teasing and prodding and ignoring first starts, suran is way too young to understand that she shouldn't want to be special, actually, she should want to fit in.
suran will continue to struggle with bullying in school pretty much up until she graduates high school in 2018. don't worry about it. not like that would've done anything to her mental condition or anything (/s).
she auditions for ninety9 with a friend from dance classes, despite originally not meaning to, and finds herself more invested in getting her parents to sign the trainee contract than anticipated. oops.
having her pre-debut single release first in the selene chronology opens her up to a bunch of criticism, some of it picking up steam for a brief moment as old rumours of her being a bully come back up. they're dismissed pretty quickly, but a part of her reputation, even if just with a niche audience, never quite recovers.
PERSONALITY
friendly, but always seems to keep people somewhat at an arm's length. she's likely not even aware of it herself, suran thinks she's perfectly fine and normal because someone like her, who's had a comparatively easy childhood, doesn't get to have trauma impact her life, right?
a hard worker and a perfectionist, she's dedicated and reliable when it comes to work, but also horrendous at loosening up. the criticism of her skills, in particular at the beginning of selene's career, has very clearly done something to her self-esteem and the goalposts for what is good enough will always move with suran.
she's a fun practice partner, though, and while all of nymth are all-rounders, you can tell that suran comes from a dancer background in particular.
she despises confrontation and will go to great lengths to avoid it, right down to effacing her own grievances if it means peace will be kept. it makes her very good at giving into fanservice, but it also makes her pretty bad at setting boundaries for herself.
she's not really suited for fame (at least not in a way that doesn't mean damage) but she's here now and between some weird sense of sunk cost fallacy (she put in so much work and time, surely she couldn't give up now, right???), a sense of dejection at having few job prospects outside of entertainment and a fear that other than nymth she'll never find people who understand her position in life… well. she's here now. might as well make the best of it, right?
POTENTIAL PLOTS
suran is a known fan of your muse's group and that is either awkward or flattering to them — and colours their interactions accordingly. works best for members of angelix or soda pop.
your muse is not a seoulite, and over the years, they've developed a strange katalk correspondence thread with suran where they keep telling each other about their discoveries, recommendations for places to see, stuff like that. at this point in time, though, the two of them don't actually know much else about each other outside of obvious work things. works best for artists that are not part of nymth (or ninety9 as a whole, ideally).
for some forsaken reason, your muse's and nymth's fandoms have decided that they and suran don't like each other. whether that is rooted in a misunderstanding or just people spreading misinformation on the internet for fun is up for debate, but the point is: it's blatantly untrue at its core, but given the right circumstances there's potential for this either to turn into a surprising friendship… or actually become reality.
your muse absolutely buys into the idea that suran is a bully of sorts, even just if by virtue of her relative exposure as a member of nymth. she has no idea how to change their opinion, but for some reason she's very invested in doing it anyway.
nymth are marketed as all-rounders, but your muse is convinced that suran hasn't actually earned that title. her solution? ask them to teach them how to do better, then. (that was a lot of false bravado. she still doesn't know what possessed her to say that, goodness gracious, hong suran—) whether your muse agrees to it or not is up to you!
your muse is the closest to a best friend suran has in the industry, for whatever reason we deem makes sense! works best for a fellow member of nymth, but if the chemistry works this can absolutely be spun and morphed and changed to work for anyone else.
your muse felt spoken to when suran's "lucky anne" mindset went viral (thank you for the loan, wonyoung) and has been convinced that they might be able to have some sort of meaningful convo with suran over philosophical matters ever since, but she's mostly just intimidated because she's just one of the barely-no-longer-nugu girls, what do you mean you know about lucky anne, that's so embarrassing?!
your muse has been vocal about supporting selene/nymth in the past and it always freaks them out a little how that seems to pull at suran's heartstrings — or it doesn't, and they enjoy the tiny kernel of power they get out of this interaction. does not have to go any farther into dodgy territory as far as power distribution goes, the point is more: the support (genuine or just lip service) means a lot to suran, and maybe that "a lot" is a little bit disproportionate to others.
something something physical arrangement to let off steam? i'm not interested in writing out explicit content on the dashboard, but the general arrangement often lends itself to fun character development hijinks. people get funny and complicated and messy when they're trying to tell themselves that a bond they've created with someone does not mean as much to them as it actually does. how deep this goes or how serious it will turn out to be in the long run is up to us, this is the kind of plot i'd like to work out in detail and maybe chemistry test a bit tossing around headcanons first!
your muse and suran frequently trade styling advice. and maybe they also do harmless, mildly snarky fashion commentary on others while they're at it.
your muse and suran know each other from their trainee days and have traumabonded (word used loosely and in a memey fashion, promise) over it.
your muse and suran know each other from their trainee days and a misunderstanding has Absolutely soured their relationship ever since. what do you mean it's been five years, grudges don't have an expiration date unless you give them one!
your muse is the first girl suran ever kissed and it has altered her brain chemistry on some sort of molecular level. (cannot be born before 1996 or after 2002, ideally happened a minimum of a year or so ago)
if any of these sound interesting to you but you'd like to pitch modifications or add something, please don't hesitate to just toss your thoughts my way! again, i'm slow and i'm a little scared of strangers and messing up so i might take a moment, but i'm excited to write and your interest will mean a lot!
Portrait of Fryderyk in Shifting Light, Richard Siken
[text ID: What can you know about a person? They shift in the light. / You can’t light up all sides at once. / Add a second light and you get a second darkness, it’s only fair.]
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