#Carrie caremel

[xx-sketchy-xx]

@the-pianist-from-accumula-town

omgggggg, Sketchy would literally fall in love with you. (platonically, maybe lol) you’re so strong willed, controlled, loving, funny, sharing, intelligent. She’d be such a cluts, and drop something, and then be far more flustered when you helped her get bandaged up.

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON ATLAS’ MAIN VOCAL KIM KIWON...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 24 DEBUT AGE: 18 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 16 COMPANY: KJH SECONDARY SKILL: Commercial modeling

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): kimki which is an abbreviation of his last name and first syllable, mochi for the rounded cheeks he debuted with, international fans call him kiwi as that’s what kiwon autocorrects to for iphones INSPIRATION: He was pursuing vocal and dance studies in Busan when he was scouted, having been inspired by the usual suspects, Gemini and Solstice notably. He was also a pretty big fan of CAREmel in middle school.   SPECIAL TALENTS:

He’s said to have exceptional natural aegyo but given he tends to freeze up on public variety appearances outside of the group’s V-live this is easily contested.

He knows the point choreo to a great deal of songs and will happily pretend to know more than that when challenged to random plays and so on. Fake it until you make it is basically his motto.

He has a blackbelt in taekwondo, but he hasn’t actually done taekwondo for a really long time so it’s basically just for the profile.

NOTABLE FACTS:

At the insistence of his parents, he is pursuing a degree in public relations through an online university program.

He claims to have an extensive network of friends outside of Atlas, but doesn’t often post pictures or references to them on social media, leaving fans surprised when he does interact with or thank someone in an album note as it’s often the first they’ve heard of his friendships.

He filmed a role as an extra in a Vixen video that was scrapped in light of their scandal and disbanding and is still bitter about those wasted hours on set.

He’s allergic to many foods and blames his notoriously strict diet on this.

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

In the short term, Kiwon is mostly interested in growing his personal fame outside of his group. Atlas’ variety appearances are limited mostly to Vlives done as a group and while he enjoys those, he might want to explore some short guest appearances domestically to help build his personal brand. He hopes to continue picking up commercial endorsement deals and improving his dance skills to meet up to the demanding choreography of the group.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

He’s very interested in, long term, pursuing a solo career. His utmost loyalty is to Atlas and to the group, but after the rap line attempted to throw them all under the bus, he’s realized that not everyone is as loyal as he is and that he should start planning for a future without them. He’ll still happily renew the contract when offered, recognizing the benefits of Atlas’ brand power, but he’s no longer putting all his eggs in a single basket. He’s also found the whole commercial modeling shindig to be quite appealing, given how easy it is to rake in money.

IDOL IMAGE

Kiwon is approachable. If there were a name for sexy-cutie when it came to boy group members, Kiwon would have that label plastered firmly across his forehead, from his squishy cheeks to his well defined abs. He’d like to point out to the fans that still call him mochi that years of dieting should have absolved him of that moniker, but these things tend to stick despite his best efforts. He’s a boy of contradiction, as softer features pair with a coarse Busan satoori and his gaze on stage can veer into sexual at the drop of a hat. Off stage he’s all laughter and eye smiles, because on a very real level Kiwon is a genuine person, does little to make a persona for himself that strays too far from the truth. Perceived authenticity is part of the Atlas brand, and Kiwon represents something pleasant and unthreatening, designed to attract fans with versatile but largely boy next door charms. There’s some reversal there, but not too much, not more than any other group with a stronger stage persona might suggest.

Kiwon is flirty. With the cameras, with the fans, he’s a charmer. He’s a master of skinship with his members, playing coy and forward as necessary for the moment, vacillating between the two to prompt fans to screaming hysteria and joy. Does he enjoy the commodification of perceived homosexuality? He’s sort of on the fence about it. He likes the attention, mostly, and someone has to do it. With the image of the group often hung up on being “more” than “just idols,” Kiwon unabashedly carries the idol brand with pride, or at least the perception of it. He dances, he sings, he does aegyo. He gives the canned answers they’re supposed to deliver and he panders to the cameras, keeps his head down, does cheesy commercials without blinking an eye. Being shameless is perhaps integral to his character. He’s nearly impossible to shame - embarrass, sure, but he’ll go along with just about anything in the end. He’s never been a leader, not really, and being a follower makes him an ideal idol pawn to pull in fans. They can dress him up in girls clothes or character outfits, school uniforms or headbands, and with a tasteful amount of embarrassment and self deprecating amusement he’ll soldier through filming, flirt and then pull back, playing the game that more traditional idol fans are so familiar with.

Amongst the rest of the group, noted for being rough around the edges, a bit less typical as idols, Kiwon is polished and shining and designed to appeal to a set of fans that the more “artist” types in the group could easily miss out on, especially back in the early days. He’s the fan appeal put forth with a shining falsetto and a clear vocal tone to bring something more typical but still necessary to the group. Does he sometimes feel his talents would be better utilized elsewhere? Ironically, not as much anymore, but it was a big complaint in the early days, when their hip hop image was ill fitting and hard to carry off. He’s come much more into his own after the rap line bargained for greater creative control, which is an irony he must recognize but does not appreciate, still holding some resentment for the whole thing in his heart.

IDOL HISTORY

BUSAN. JANUARY 1995.

the wind blows in off the sea and chills the little hospital room, window left open to air out the stale, stagnant hospital air. a baby boy is welcomed into the world but there isn’t much special about the whole ordeal. the whole thing is just average. he’s an average weight, neither early nor late, he’s healthy enough. he cries, as all babies do, and his mother dotes on him immediately, as all mother’s should. his father is not absent or drug addled and is instead smiling, gently, down at the little boy, his smile obscured by a beard that is not trendy in the slightest but seems to suit the man. there’s an older sister who giggles and laughs to see him, cooing sweetly at the baby, with ringlet curls that cascade around her shoulders. it’s a happy family and despite the winter chill in the air, it’s a warm picture.

BUSAN. MAY 1999.

childhood continues in much the same way. solidly middle class, they have the opportunities the two children need. they have love in their hearts for one another, and they mean well. there are spats and disagreements, and his father works too long and too late, and his mother deals with postpartum depression in a country that doesn’t look too closely at mental health, that doesn’t do a lot to notice, to suggest help, to encourage aid. and a little of the warmth drains. from his mother’s eyes, from his father’s heart. a little more gray seeps in.

kiwon would love to bring it back, for all of them. he’s four, nearing five, and precocious. he has to be, they keep him in plenty of kindergarten programs to ensure it, wanting only the best for their son. and maybe mom wants some time at home too, without he and his sister underfoot. kiwon is a perceptive child, sweet and insightful, with an emotional intelligence that far outpaces his motor skills, his language skills.

BUSAN. DECEMBER 2002.

this year, kiwon is introduced to dance. this year, kiwon begins to do taekwondo. after school hours are taken up increasingly by math, by english, by sports programs. he finds them all fun enough, dabbling in this and that accommodatingly enough. he’s eight years old and doesn’t have much of a choice, after all. he complains in class about being sleepy, about his mom only sleeping at home. she doesn’t cook or clean, he says to his teacher, she just sleeps all day long.

postpartum depression has turned, now, into regular depression, deep seated and lingering.

BUSAN. AUGUST 2008.

time has come and gone, months passing much in the same way they always have. his sister sowon remains a charming example of humanity, even at 15 and full in the throes of teenage foolishness. it’s funny. they find a common ground that detracts from constant bickering and whining. they find a passionate interest in idols, they find an affection for catchy music and bright, poppy tunes. sowon nudges him into dance lessons with her and he obliges. he hasn’t bothered with dance since he was seven, eight and it was an afterschool activity to keep him out of the house, soon traded out for taekwondo and soccer and gymnastics in cyclical rotation, as if his mother had forgotten what she had signed him up before the year before and picked at random. so they do it. they go to dance lessons. and eventually, kiwon transfers to an art school in busan. tests in for his dance, his potential.

SEOUL. APRIL 2010.

he’s fifteen when it happens. when he’s lucky enough to convince his parents it’s time to go to school in seoul. his sister outgrew the dream soon after it’s conception but kiwon dreams for this, lives for this, loves this. his mother doesn’t mind the idea. she doesn’t mind much of anything. her eyes are glazed over almost perpetually and kiwon can’t remember the last time that she left the house, but sometimes when he tells her stories, when he shows her videos of performances that she never attends, he thinks she might be smiling. might be a little happy. he wants to bring happiness to people. he’s spent his whole life trying to cheer up a family that can’t bring itself to be lighthearted anymore. his sister just wants to move out to university overseas, his father just wants to make it to retirement, and maybe his mother can’t even want anything anymore. so, kiwon wants enough for all of them.

SEOUL. JULY 2012.

his audition goes smoothly. he later realizes this is because the company has a dearth of trainees with what one would consider traditional idol talent. he should have known, that would be the way of things. perhaps because of that, it’s his personality that they find the most appealing. stage presence, charisma, charm - he has all of it. he can soften out the edges. that’s what he hears them saying, in his audition first. he doesn’t really know what that means until he meets the boys. clearly a conceptual direction had been enacted, because when he’s added to the lineup, he finds it’s full to the brim of talented rappers and dancers. there’s a lot of producing going on, songwriting, hours spent in studios working on music.

kiwon feels out of his element, wonders what he’s gotten himself into. wonders if he should have carried on with auditioning. he’d gotten a call back from msg, maybe he should have taken them up on it. but he’d taken a chance on a good gut feeling, and now he felt a little bit out of his depth. the boys are nice enough, and the smaller trainee pool feels like a family. there’s a warmth now that he’d lost in his life, something he hadn’t known had been missing until he started to dorm with the others. it feels right, it feels good. even when the heating breaks in the winter and the air conditioner breaks in the summer, he doesn’t mind. even when the concept pushes his vocals to the edge of their limit, even when they throw a rap verse at him to see if he could do it, early on (he pretty much can’t), even when they begin debut prep for a concept that skews so far into hip hop he’s not sure how he’s going to pull it off, he figures it can be okay.

SEOUL.  NOVEMBER 2015.

the past few years have been hard. it’s been a lot. it’s been hip hop and pseudo swagger, oversized jerseys and a marathon of comments about the size of his cheeks or how awkward he looks, sometimes. comments about how the school uniform concept is played out, or about how they’re from a company no one has ever heard of except for that scandal one time. years are spent flying under the radar, frustrated, struggling. he grapples with a concept that doesn’t suit him, wears it like a poorly tailored stage outfit. pann posts accuse them of wearing fake designer goods because they can’t afford the real thing, and kiwon can’t even defend them, they’re probably right, and even if they weren’t, kiwon certainly can’t tell one way or another.

when they call the group in for a meeting, things are tense. he’s sure this is it. they’re disbanding. the company is too tired of being in the red. it’s over.

instead, it’s a new beginning. the rap line threatened to walk, they’re told. they’re getting more control, creatively. there’s going to be a brief period of rest before the next comebacks, because things are being restructured. they need to think about a new direction. all kiwon can think is, if they were going to be asking opinions, why didn’t anyone ask him? he’s one of the more “idol” members of the group, if they wanted to sell cds for once, they should have asked him. he’d have been the first to point out they should ditch the chains and quit cosplaying as a group they weren’t. should lean into the tracks that people liked, the mellow stuff, or the things like the satoori rap that no one else was going to be able to do.

but no one had asked him, had they? he was just a dancing monkey. a wind up toy. something pretty to set in the front of the group, to sing the (honestly pretty vocally mediocre) chorus bits and provide a helpful bridge to hand off to the rappers. to the real talent. it was clear that was what the company thought of them, anyway. he brooded over this unhelpfully thereafter.

WORLD WIDE. 2019.

the scale of the group has grown beyond what kiwon had ever thought possible. years of aggressive image management, diet control, perseverance have tailored him into someone even more appealing than might have initially been thought possible. it turned out with proper styling and the loss of baby fat, he made a better idol than he did an eighteen year old with mochi cheeks in oversized jerseys for teams he’d never heard of. their music slowly moves in a direction that embraces kpop, embraces their status as idols rather then eschewing it, and for that at least he can’t help but be grateful. there’s resentment, too, though. he’s learned that that illusion of family had only been a lie, a company construction. duress and hardship had brought them close together but in the end, they’d all made it clear to kiwon that it was every man for himself, and he’s not about to get left behind. he’s not about to pretend he’s worth less just because he doesn’t create in the same ways that they do. if kjh wants to play the favoritism game that’s fine, if they want to put a valuation on each member’s contribution, whatever. kiwon will make himself invaluable. kiwon will diversify. he won’t make the mistake of trust again, the mistake of blind loyalty, of reliance. for all their gabbing about what a family they are, about how tightnit the company is, kiwon knows the truth. in the end, it’s going to be kiwon on his own, just like it always has been.

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON CHERRY BOMB!’S LEAD DANCE, LEAD VOCAL AHN JOWI...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: AJ CURRENT AGE: 24 DEBUT AGE: 18 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 13 COMPANY: MSG SECONDARY SKILL: Variety

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): jojo, AJ-oppa, teddy bear, solstice’s girl, CB!’s secret weapon/key INSPIRATION: Her inspiration was and has always been her older sister. She followed her first to ballet lessons, then to vocal lessons. Initially it was just easier for their mother to sign Jowi up to tag along and get both children out from underfoot, but eventually they were even scouted for the same company. She was and remains, also, a vehement CAREmel fan. SPECIAL TALENTS:

excellent at math / quantitative problem solving (puzzles, pattern games, mental computation, memorization)

“dancing robot” that seems to be a data bank for choreography and can perform choruses/point dances from dozens of hits, classic and current.

NOTABLE FACTS:

She had her variety debut on Invincible Youth, where it was discovered her variety talents shine in an ensemble cast when she’s given the chance to play off of others.

She has been central to a lot of fan criticism and rumors regarding her relationships (friendly or not, speculated or actual) to various other artists, from company seniors like Solstice to others.

She’s known for her extensive “network” amongst idols and often surprises by turning up on instagrams from various other idols. 

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

In the short term all AJ really wants is to finally get the chance to release her solo single. MSG has been busy capitalizing off her variety attention and has, for the time being, seemingly put her solo plans on indefinite hold, something that has left her furious and frustrated for far too long. It’s not that she dislikes her variety career (obviously) but she’s getting tired of being more known for things that she hasn’t spent years training and cultivating (i.e. vocals and dance).

LONG-TERM GOALS:

In the long term she would like to follow in the steps of female soloists like Hyori or BoA, with a long running career, consistent and respected output as a soloist, and a well rounded image as performer, dancer, and vocalist alike. Clearly she’s reaching for the stars here, but despite the unlikeliness of making it to such a height as a female soloist starting from an idol group, she’s eager to give it a try. When it comes to her variety career, she’d like to find a single long running show to become her variety home in a fixed cast capacity, toning back her current break-neck schedule and trimming it into something much more manageable, supplementable with guest roles when promoting her music so that she can avoid overextending herself and her image.

IDOL IMAGE

she’s thirteen years old and she’s here on accident. thirteen years old and she’s followed her sister to this audition like she’s followed her everywhere, living in the shadow of her splendor. she’s awkward and gangly - her ears stick out too far and she’s all limbs, even if she’s not that tall.  her dancing is solid enough, her singing sweet, but is she a standout, really? she looks at her sister - shining hair, shining eyes, a light that seems to pour out of her. maybe she’s not. maybe jowi is destined for second best, middle of the road, just okay.

and maybe she’s young. maybe she’s moldable. that’s probably what they see in her that day. the casting director seems to look right into her soul. they see something in her, that they can use.

they see her fire.

she’s full to the brim with it, from poorly suppressed energy to a wild passion that rages like a wildfire beneath her skin. there’s greed there too, desire, and they can use it. they can shape that. and they do. they take this gangly child and craft her into something shining, a gem cut from rough hewn stone. it takes years to polish her, an opal that flares fiery until the end, a brutal gleam to softened edges, a hardness that belies the sheen of delicacy.

when AJ is put out into the market she’s the girl everyone feels like they could be someday. that’s the gimmick. girls want to be her and she’s not so intimidating, so ethereal, that they feel like it’s impossible. there’s a relatability to her. she’s too loud, for starters, and her tongue too sharp. she’s half sweet and half sour, half dorky and half devilish. her looks are unique but not stereotypical, they don’t alienate. she’s the kind of girl you could admire.

she’s a lead dancer and lead vocal and she’s not really the best at anything. there’s a better dancer, a better vocalist, and she can’t personally rap to save her life, but she demands  attention. she’s good enough to carry it off, breezes through part switches relying on humor. she’s got the brain for choreography, reduces it to pattern memorization and becomes the “secret weapon” of the group on stage and off, the key, the pin to hold them together. the others are all mains, the best at something, but they need jowi, too, the glue to stick them together, to propel them from one main’s part to the next, to move through the song and ease the transitions.

it’s not until her first variety guesting solo that anyone really knows the msg plan for her. it becomes clear right away. she’s the sort of sweet and sour and relatable that can get away with a lot, that pushes the boundaries where she can, that sacrifices image for humor, that turns in a quick pivot from hilarious self denigration to wicked and savage comebacks and one liners. she can’t do impressions and she’s not good at chosen talents, but give her a chance to lose herself in an ensemble cast and she can shine. so that’s what she becomes.

the queen of duality, bridging a gap between concepts in her ability to play sexy and fatal on stage and sarcastic and relatable off, a duality that smooths between well polished members and sets them up to shine, propping them up for their big showy notes or solid dance breaks and fading back again.

a jack of all trades, a master of none - at least, for now.

IDOL HISTORY

“for god’s sake somi, just take her with you. someone has to watch her.” 

jowi is thirteen and lanky, long limbed and gangly. she’s not tall, no, but her proportions are odd - like she’s more leg than she is anything else. the bruises that dot her shins speak to a recent growth spurt she hasn’t been able to adjust too just yet. her hair is in two hastily coiled buns, done up at either side of her head, set towards the top, with strands escaping around her face and forehead, wispy and already frizzing in the debilitating summer heat. somi is another story. only two years older than jowi, she’s already stunning. tall and slender, in a graceful way that speaks to the ballet training both of them have been in since they were toddlers in tutus that extended farther than their arm spans, a testament to the preferences of their mother. somi is all long straight hair, shiny and silky, and big doe eyes. she’s beautiful, honestly speaking, in the way that makes people stop and look at her. jowi is proud of this, too young still to care that she herself looks more like a child of the forest than a properly groomed human being. somi is expressive too, her eyes rolling in a spectacular display of disregard for their mother, slim arms crossing artfully over her chest as she heaves a sigh so theatrically woe-laden that jowi almost apologizes for the fact that she’s too young to be left properly on her own - at least according to their mother. she feels old enough to sit around the house alone. perhaps the problem is all three of them know jowi won’t just stay in the house, unable to resist the temptation of the wide world outside, liable to run off into trouble at a moment’s notice. jowi is always like that, stumbling into the unexpected, throwing herself headlong into whatever comes her way, unrelentingly charging forward. maybe that’s why it works out like this. maybe that’s why they tell her to stay in line she’s going to have to audition, so she does. maybe that’s why they bring them both back in, offer them spots training at the company. “you better not slow me down.”  somi says, with a hardness in her voice jowi is used to, by now. so jowi works twice as hard as anyone else even dreams of. of course she likes this, this acknowledgement. years spent in somi’s shadow mean she’s thirsty for recognition, for validity, and she’s on the edge of the precipice that is adolescence, desperate to solidify who she is and who she will become. jowi is driven to a fault, always has been, and she burns with the need to live up to the ghost of her father, the present icon that is her sister. she’s been in a race against this girl since she can remember. she’s been condemned by her mother twice as long, the child born a month after an unfortunate accident. a burden for a newly single mother, trying to juggle a toddler and the aftermath of a funeral. despite born into mourning, jowi is strangely bright eyed, a larger than life personality that beams out of her like sunlight, to the point of overbearing. like the energizer bunny she exists in perpetual movement - until sudden and abrupt crashes drag her down. months of three hours of sleep a night and endless energy erupt in one drunken night gone an hour or two too long leaving her slumped over a friend’s shoulder, carried home to sleep for the next forty hours, only waking to shower, gulp down liters of water. trainee life isn’t a sprint, it’s a marathon, and for jowi its nearly unsustainable. for most of them it isn’t, it’s a system built to break you down. but jowi is fierce, jowi is nothing if not determined,  pushing herself to her limits and past them, until she’s taking intravenous fluids in the hospital, suffering dehydration, exhaustion, anemia, you name it. she pushes herself to heights she would never have thought possible, reaches lows she thinks might ruin her. and yet, somehow, she isn’t the one who breaks. instead, its somi. somi, the perfect daughter. somi, perpetually first place, effortlessly lovely, stunningly intelligent, immensely skilled. but somi hasn’t faced adversity. somi doesn’t know criticism like jowi does, hasn’t thrived under duress and neglect. somi can’t take it - it’s too harsh, too cruel, too exhausting. for jowi, it’s something like second nature. you might think to yourself now, “surely this only exacerbated the rift in the ahn family?” and you would be right. beyond that even. the rift became a gulf, a trench - mariana’s even, the deepest chasm of the ocean. at seventeen jowi was all but alone, excluding the trainees she was working and living (at that point) alongside. of course her mother outwardly supported her, to keep up experiences, but the understanding was that any sustained contact would not pass the bare minimum societally required of her, and would mostly consist of a few thousand won here and there and phone calls that heavily suggested she was simply waiting for jowi to get kicked out and come back home with her tail between her legs. only that’s not quite how that worked out. instead, she was put into vocal lessons, and then more and more personal training, and then finally told she’d been chosen for the potential lineup for the upcoming girl group. that her monthly evaluations will be weekly now, that she needs to keep on top of her diet, that this could mean big things for her.

they put her in music videos next, dress her up and stand her in the middle of luridly bright sets, have her smile soft and serene and sweet as boys she’s mostly seen on screen up until now, or on twitter or naver. it felt unreal at first. but as hours of forced smiles and constant cameras and continuous takes slogged by, she found herself buried under the reality of what it was to be an idol, to lipsync through a chorus forty five times to get it from each angle, to perform the same song, the same segment of the same song, fifty different times in five different outfits all for ten seconds of a jump cut you pray doesn’t expose how sweaty and exhausted you were in the moment. in those moments she discovers what will be required of her, and it’s a little frightening. but then the first articles drop, just little ones on pann, who’s that girl in the video, and later, did you see her again? and eventually look, it’s solstice’s girl, her name is jowi, she’s a trainee. and then she has fans  - not many, but a few, and the numbers grow, and she gets a letter from the desk downstairs from a fan telling her to be strong, that they’re waiting for her debut, and she cries. happy tears, but bittersweet, because how can strangers see what her own mother can’t, or won’t?

and then she is chosen, and she’s debuting, and she’s so fucking excited she’s overflowing with it. she’s lived in somi’s shadow for so long that to be debuting now and in a central position in the group no less, has her head spinning. surely now, now her mother will care about her. now her sister will acknowledge her. they’ll smile at her, they’ll tell her they’re proud. she’s sure of it, so sure she’s full to bursting. it’s only silence though, that she gets. they don’t even bother to decline the invitation to the showcase for her debut. the other girls are finding their families in the audience, tears spilling down pretty cheeks, and jowi is crying too. how cute, their slow growing number of fans say, little jowi is so touched to have debuted. and she is, god, is she ever. it was an accident of fate that brought her here but she finds herself born for it, made for it, thriving on it. this goal of so many years, finally in front of her. the rush and the thrill and the ache of it, heart pounding like it might explode out of her chest. but they aren’t there. for years, they aren’t there, and jowi learns to find the validation she craves so desperately in other ways. but that’s hard too. if trainee years were a marathon, debut is climbing mount everest. msg is an established company, sure, but they’re not at the top of the heap just yet. they don’t have the cache to rely on that. they’re clawing up to the top come hell or high water, and jowi’s jack of all trades status is useful, but it’s not the kind of thing that lands you cf deals or acting parts, gets you hosting. that goes to visuals and the like, and jowi’s always been a little too atypical for that, more unique and charming than broadly adored and acknowledged. 

maybe she can pretend, at first, it isn’t terrible. things are in the works. a guest spot here, a commercial there, an influx of articles on every little movement she makes. the comments are nice too - the media play isn’t oversaturated yet. t the attention is there, and the intrigue. they’re being noticed. she’s being noticed. her mother even calls her, one night, and jowi thinks maybe it can be okay. 

of course, when she lets herself stop, think, listen in the dead of the night she’s sick to her stomach. the anxiety heightens day by day, and she’s ferocious in her efforts to combat it. she trains herself into the ground and her dietary habits consist more of liquor to put her to bed and handfuls of hastily swallowed nutrient supplements than anything else, and her hours in the gym become absurd. but if they’re going to media play about her abs, she better have them, and if they’re going to talk about her figure in crop tops, she better suit them. she’s always been obsessive, when it comes to coping with her own emotions, when it come sto avoiding her life. 

it’s her personality that finally takes off. she’s been groomed to facilitate transitions in their songs, to work the bridge or the chorus and help the song get to the point the main vocal will take over and soar, or push the transition to the rap verse, or slide through the moves that will precede the main dancer’s showcase. she’s glue to the girls, fitting the distracting and diverse songs together into something that makes at least a little bit of sense, with a charisma and performance capability trained into being diverse and multifaceted, to help carry off each vastly different concept in a way that seems convincing to the audience. if she can take that first chorus or hit that opening strong, the skepticism starts to fade and “what the fuck concept is this” drifts more towards “what a weird and fun concept, as expected of cherry bomb!” she’s there to sell the image of the group, so maybe that’s why she works so well in an ensemble atmosphere. ironic, for a girl trying to go solo.

she lands a spot on invincible youth and plays off the other girls well, develops a reputation as a social butterfly, as half sour and half sweet, a startlingly savage sweetheart with a competitive fire that surprises, given her soft demeanor and boyish offstage mannerisms. from there come the cf deals, and slowly the attention builds up in bits and pieces. she gets into the normal scandals - too close to this idol, too friendly with that one, a rude face here, rumors of deviant behavior behind the scenes. the irony of a rough and tumble variety image is that it acts as a shield -  she’s so goddamn normal seeming that no one can fault her for it too much, like they might were she one of the stunningly ethereal beautiful goddess types. they don’t have high expectations for her, maybe, so they don’t hold her to a wildly high standard either. it gives her room to work with.

but it doesn’t give her a solo, doesn’t help her stand on her own two feet, doesn’t let her shine in the way she wants - the way she feels she deserves. instead she remains cherry bomb’s secret weapon, cherry bomb’s key, the glue to hold them together, but she’s tired of being the border pieces of the puzzle, tired of being the wiring that turns the lights on to let them shy.

she wants that spotlight, and she’ll get it one way or another, whatever it takes. all she wants,  all she’s ever wanted, is to be seen.