LOADING INFORMATION ON NEON’S MAIN DANCE JANG SOEUN...
IDOL DETAILS
STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 18 DEBUT AGE: 18 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 14 COMPANY: Midas SECONDARY SKILL: N/A
IDOL PROFILE
NICKNAME(S): stone soeun INSPIRATION: the members of jinx, boa, cl SPECIAL TALENTS:
Contemporary Dance
Plant care
Making kimbap
NOTABLE FACTS:
scouted while leaving her middle school due to her looks at age 14
a finalist on ‘mixed up’ from which she was supposed to debut
well known to be friends with various members of aurora
has a lot of plants around the dorm, you can 100% assume that any greenery is soeun’s
she’s often described as a nut you have to crack because despite her hard exterior, she’s soft on the inside
IDOL GOALS
SHORT-TERM GOALS:
soeun wants redemption more than anything. being that she’s still furious about not getting to debut with the girls from mixedup, soeun wants more than anything to finally debut, and to not feel so worthless. a part of her feels like she was cheated, and that she deserves to finally be in the spotlight, not sadly lingering behind. it was beyond embarrassing to return to midas after her nearly-successful attempt at debuting, even just for a little bit. she wants powerful choreography and a strong thrust into the k-pop world; she wants to do well in what she’s been itching to do, what was stolen away from her at the last moment.
LONG-TERM GOALS:
there’s a lot of things that soeun could ask for from her career. sure, she’d love a solo career, it’d always be nice to pursue something beyond neon. sure, she wants to establish herself in the industry, she wants longevity – but without something beyond the face painted on during performances, what was soeun? soeun realizes that her childhood was basically stolen from her, formative years spent locked away in midas’ training room hoping for debut. there wasn’t a lot of room for growth and looking back soeun regrets never really flourishing. soeun wants to understand herself, first and foremost, and become more than just that idol from midas who let them push her around all her life. she also wants to become more than just a pretty face, she wants to create – while she realizes that maybe they won’t have the freedom to do so, soeun wants to push what midas allows from her and dabble in music production and choreography, two things that she’s been curious about but too focused on debut to really pursue.
IDOL IMAGE
according to midas, the best thing about soeun is the malleability of her personality. instead of having to fix and play with her personality, they have groomed her for a certain image since she signed her life away. sharp, chic looks contribute perfectly to the image soeun watches being cultivated among the girls in the project group. while she wasn’t exactly the first person in the group soeun wonders if she was expected to be added to the group even when she was given the opportunity to go onto mixedup. a pretty, familiar face is always welcoming when a new group comes onto the market. although she didn’t go through many etiquette classes for mixedup, soeun could tell what they wanted her to do. she always knew she was a bit colder than perhaps an idol should be off stage – but on stage she was fire. it was supposed to be a shock factor – she put so much into her performances that she was thrilling to watch. that contrast was attractive to people.
neon is untouchable and powerful, requiring an image of calm coolness – they’re better than everyone else. it’s an image that isn’t far off from what soeun already portrays. a naturally stony expression gives her the upper hand and allows her more time for practicing rather than etiquette classes. she isn’t sure how she got away with it. especially being that she’s among one of the younger trainees involved with the project, she almost expected them to force her into a more childish, young, cheerful, youthful image. she supposes she’s among the lucky ones.
soeun has worked hard toward her debut, and nearly made it. she was almost there, before losing that altogether. although she’s been forced toward acting as though mixedup never really happened by midas, soeun can’t help but tend to be noticeably bitter about the experience, because although she wants to be prideful in her progress, she can never help but think about how close she got to debuting before the rug was snatched from right under her feet. soeun is determined to make sure it happens this time, and thus is viewed as a very strong and dedicated performer. soeun works toward what she wants until its perfect, and won’t settle for anything less than – because, well, midas won’t allow it. soeun’s the picture-perfect image of the trainee everyone wants to be – effortlessly amazing at absolutely everything she does. however, no one will ever know the hours of practice she puts into every performance, how hard she works to make it appear effortless. because she needs to be that perfect person for her groupmates. she had the experience to be a well-seasoned trainee despite her age, so midas was clearly milking it for all it’s worth.
behind that, there’s a lot of confusion. while midas thinks it’s a good thing she became a trainee so young, soeun now thinks it’s a curse. she realizes now that maybe her parents were right about not wanting her to sign her contract so young. between etiquette classes and being told how to act by trainers, soeun is confused as to what her actual personality is. she’s starting to believe she doesn’t really have one beyond the hollow shell she’s sort of taken the role of. no matter how fierce she may appear, soeun struggles with herself. she works hard because she doesn’t believe she’s good enough, and the incident with mixedup is one main reason why – after all, the project was abandoned and while she knows it’s because of money reasons, it makes her feel as if maybe she wasn’t ready to debut, either.
a soft personality lies far behind the walls soeun’s built up around herself, and only shines through occasionally with the members. she sometimes wonders if midas wants her to show that side, mostly because they only preen the girl of stone nowadays, especially as the girls in project n start to dwindle down. but every once in a while she hangs on the other girls, her arms tight around them, or holds their hands during practices and walking around midas, and she’s never quite shunned. her need for affection doesn’t outweigh her concern that perhaps that isn’t what midas wants from her image, but it’s something that she can’t really control. she never really grew up normally, instead taking bits and pieces of her unnie’s and sunbae’s personalities that midas decided fit her best. she’s lost her way and isn’t really sure she knows how to truly find herself. but being stuck in that limbo makes her easy to play with and control on midas’ end, so they’re not about to help her understand who she really is.
IDOL HISTORY
on a hot summer day in daegu, jang sohye and soeun were born to two enthusiastic parents. jang seunghee, an events planner, had been stressing over organizing everything for their wedding, their baby shower, everything, that she was taken completely by surprise when the day came that her two baby girls were due – she figured the likelihood of them coming on time was low, her mother had her later after all, and that she wouldn’t have to worry about it. however, the day came and seunghee was barely prepared; when she arrived at the hospital, taehyun was already there absolutely mad with excitement. the two girls born were beautiful, a perfect mix of their parents – they were going to be a happy family, everyone could tell.
but things were never perfect.
sohye and soeun got along for the most part, but one always overshadowed the other in something. as they grew older, while the girls looked the same, it was clear they were polar opposites. sohye took on a more docile role; she was the smarts of the pair. she appeared softer than her sister, her eyes maybe a bit less angular, her features slightly less gaunt. she was exceptional at anything she did in school, and excelled beyond anything her sister could’ve wished for. soeun, on the other hand, was a lot sharper. she was the one that you looked at as she passed by, an aura of ' i’m better than you ' exuding from her as she passed by, high ponytail and striking features. a resting bitch face kept people from ever doing wrong by her, and a cunning personality kept them coming back to her. she was better than you, even in middle school, and she was the person people wanted to be. no one messed with sohye, because her sister was soeun. no one messed with soeun because she appeared terrifying to anyone who didn’t know her well enough.
and it wasn’t that soeun wasn’t what people assumed of her, because she was very much her mother’s daughter. where she could be sweet and kind, she was also cold and untouchable to anyone she didn’t want in her life. perhaps that was why soeun and her mother never got along, why most of their conversations ended up in fights as soeun grew older, and why her more malleable sister was her mother’s favorite. why a part of soeun is still jealous that she never got her mother’s positive attention.
that’s not to say her childhood before midas was ever terrible, soeun actually enjoyed her time spent in daegu. misses it, even. she misses when things were simple and she didn’t really have to think for herself – not that she really gets to now, but you know. she misses being with her sister, always having someone there that she could go to. even if they were opposites, even if soeun didn’t always enjoy being compared to her sister, sohye was her twin. there was a certain connection there that couldn’t go away.
however, there was one thing that soeun actually excelled in that her sister didn’t. there was finally something that soeun was better at than sohye when their mother enrolled them both in ballet classes. like every little girl out there, soeun and sohye attended simple children’s ballet classes at a very young age, and actually enjoyed it together. however, their instructors always praised soeun, talked about how even at a young age she was such a natural talent. which was maybe why sohye ended up complaining enough to drop out of the classes. it was something that soeun could finally do to prove that maybe she wasn’t the useless sister. she wasn’t just the looks, she was also the talent.
until about age ten, soeun continued ballet classes and progressed perfectly. once soeun’s recital came around, her instructors were talking about putting soeun up on pointe once she turned eleven, something that her parents refused, knowing the damage the young girl could do to herself. soeun also expressed how bored she was becoming with the ballet classes, how she didn’t really enjoy it anymore, and she wanted to try something else.
that was when soeun started experimenting with different classes, eventually settling on contemporary. the movements were long and clean, with the poise and elegance of ballet, but it wasn’t as structured. more free, albeit more difficult. being that she’d been classically trained for so long, it was difficult, however soeun fell in love with it.
things changed a few years later when midas held a casting event in daegu. although soeun really hadn’t wanted to be casted, after all being an idol wasn’t exactly what she wanted to do with her life, she didn’t really have a clear direction, either. she wasn’t doing poorly in school, but she certainly wasn’t doing fantastic, and she didn’t really enjoy most of her classes. so, when she was approached walking out of school one day by a midas representative and asked to audition, soeun was surprised, naturally.
scouted primarily for her looks, soeun didn’t really think that she’d make it in the audition. although she knew she was a good dancer, she wasn’t sure she really had and singing prowess. but she didn’t really have a direction in life, so when she went home that day she mentioned to her parents. both were surprised she even considered it, her mother asked her what about college – soeun just stared at her and asked, what about it? to her, it wasn’t something that was in her future. her father asked if she understood that would probably mean leaving home, soeun shrugged and said she needed to experience the world.
it took a lot of convincing, but soeun showed up to the last day of the audition cycle with the signed papers, and performed.
they had to have been moved by her dance, because surprisingly, soeun made it – she was the only person signed from those daegu auditions. soeun was suddenly a trainee, and wasn’t exactly sure what to do with that information. she was put up in a dorm in seoul by midas and accepted into hanlim mutli-arts school after a recommendation to apply to the arts schools in seoul. before she knows it, she’s shipped off to live with a few other trainees in seoul at the ripe age of fourteen, plucked from her home in daegu to pursue something more.
being a trainee at the age of fourteen isn’t exactly an ideal situation, either. not only was she one of the younger trainees, she realized just how introverted she was when it came to actually speaking to the others and working with them. despite the fact that she was known to be this towering, intimidating person, soeun was suddenly a blank face, unapproachable, to the other trainees – most people assumed she was just full of herself, but in reality she was terrified. ripped from her home and pushed into a situation where she was practically alone, soeun didn’t know what to do – she was actually alone for once.
it was then that soeun realized why she stuck to her sister – because people didn’t speak to her without that kind face. people didn’t approach her for fear of what would come out of her mouth. sure, soeun wasn’t as mean as people first assumed, but how was she supposed to showcase that when she was too anxious to actually approach anyone?
the first year of her life as a trainee consisted mostly of soeun being alone and working primarily by herself, and crying herself to sleep because she was struggling so much. training wasn’t easy, going to school and training was even harder. although her teachers were understanding, they changed deadlines and worked with her schedule, she still struggled to do anything other than the bear minimum. although soeun once believed that her parents were against her being a trainee because they wanted her to lead a ' normal ' life, she realized quickly that it was overwhelming. like any new trainee, she really didn’t know what she was getting herself into.
there were a lot of times soeun was close to quitting. but someone on the staff – usually one of her trainers – stopped her. told her to keep going. she was lucky when one of the kinder trainers caught her crying, they were far more understanding than the ones that told her to suck it up or she wouldn’t make it.
but eventually, she realized that they were right. she wasn’t going to make it to idoldom unless she stopped crying. until she stopped feeling sorry for herself. until she worked harder, and she took after her sunbaes. it took time, but by the time her second year as a trainee rolled around, soeun made a handful of friends that she worked with. having other people there for her made it easier, and they taught her how to become the ’ perfect trainee ’.
never say no.
work hard.
practice until your feet bleed.
when they do, work harder.
don’t cry, it shows weakness to the trainers.
if you have to, don’t let them see you.
if an opportunity is given to you, take it.
the girl she was when she was signed was not the same girl who was approached by midas staff to participate in the program 'mixedup’. no, that girl would’ve never made it. shaped by the words of her trainers and sunbaes, soeun’s softer side grew hard. the trainers always talked about her amazing expression while performing, but noted that she was a stone wall otherwise. when they were given etiquette classes, soeun was the perfect solider. she did what they wanted of her without question because she had to. while she was fierce onstage, she was pliant to the trainer’s wills and allowed them to say whatever they wanted to her. she was a trainee, they were her trainers, they knew better than she did.
which was maybe why the main complaint that came from mixedup was that soeun was emotionless. she didn’t get particularly close to any of the other trainees who participated, because really that wasn’t what the show was about. she was a good performer, and that was what she showed off. it wasn’t about personable skills. although the audience was small, soeun was willing to work hard for the chance to debut.
when that chance was ripped away from her was the first time she really felt something.when the end of the show came and soeun was ranked as the main dancer, she was upset once she realized that no, they wouldn’t actually be debuting from the show. sure, soeun had heard talk that the ratings were low, that there were issues with debut, that a cancellation may be in their future, she didn’t want to believe it. ignored the possibility that maybe this wouldn’t be her big break. however, money problems caused the group to fall through, and forced soeun to return with her tail between her legs. although she left the opportunity sad, it didn’t take long for that sadness to turn into anger.
she was furious that she worked so hard for no payout. she was supposed to debut, she was supposed to be an idol – and yet, it wasn’t going to happen. although most of the trainees mostly felt sorry for soeun, she couldn’t help but feel embarrassed. she worked so hard for nothing, and now she had to return to midas with nothing to prove herself. she doesn’t regret taking the opportunity, she’s a known midas trainee now and she’s noted for her dance moves – but she is still upset beyond belief that she didn’t get to debut out of mixedup.
however, upon her return, soeun told herself that she refused to let it happen again. the next time she was in a lineup, it would work out. it had to work out. she realizes now how much she missed out on being a trainee, how fleeting a career like what she wanted could be. after the rug was snatched out from under her feet, soeun was determined to make sure it didn’t happen again.
upon returning, it didn’t take long before soeun was placed into the lineup for midas’ project n – which was most likely going to turn into a debut group once midas was ready to debut another group. and this time, soeun is determined to be a part of that. she works harder than she had before to ensure her spot alongside the other girls of project n. she’s willing to do anything, to be anything that midas wants from her. because this time she’s going to make it.