from the very start the road hongjoong took to get where he is now has been rocky between his career choice not being ideal to his family to pursuing a company with such a passion that he sent in a cd of his work through registered mail directly to the ceo only for them to ignore it for a year and by absolute chance someone found it when they were moving. and to be introduced into this place he wanted to work at and being told you must do well if you want other trainees to come. you have to be good so others will join. while being alone and the first and only trainee for 6 months in a company who had less than/equal to 10 employees at the time and had no experience with trainee idols in any sort of way. and his mentor being so harsh and unwilling to teach him that he gave him a difficult task and giving him scathing remarks on his first day and yet. hongjoong still looked at that situation where he was hurt and belittled and said 'if nothing else, i need to prove this one man wrong and get him to respect me'. to have 40+ songs created by him before debuting and losing everything except the mp3 files on all those songs bc someone happened to break into their residence in the states during ateez's training and to still pick himself up and remake some of those songs despite that. hongjoong is someone so in love with his job and his dream and so persistent in the perfection of his craft beyond it being a fame game or for money or for attention. a lot of his art gets lost in the process because the edenary team is unwilling to look outside themselves and allow him the space to grow and develop inside ateez's sound, and you'll constantly hear hongjoong say that he doesn't make much music for ateez because the sounds he makes don't suit ateez but i think that's a bs excuse the production team are feeding him bc he is this fundamental foundation in ateez. he is ateez, he is part of ateez, he is someone who represents ateez no matter what he does. there is no one better suited to help ateez flourish than the members themselves and as the captain and leader and the one person ateez was built around, hongjoong deserves the platform for his creativity and work.
dededos
romaincrisis
kianamaiart
blakekathryn
stormborns
