#id.chile showcase

[archiveidjuniper-blog]

jenga.

@idminsoo // chile stage preparation.

chile is a step forward. 

for jawbreaker it’s a big day, though no one knows it just yet. she’s so ready for this, for being able to sing playing with fire again. pretending like her.oine had never happened? it had been hard. almost impossible. she’d spent so long clawing her way out of obscurity with the girls, riding on the scraps of fame and social media attention a father who didn’t talk to her all that much anymore could bring her, gifs from a show so outdated it was almost unrecognizable, a baby with short cut hair and a love of space found obsessive and endearing. it’s hard to remember that that had been her once- a baby on a television show. and to think her father had dared say she shouldn’t pursue music. as if he hadn’t exposed her to all of this in the first place, encoded it in the depths of her dna. 

but soon he’d have to listen to her. he’d have to acknowledge her. she’d taken a chance with a recent song on unpretty, the autobiographical type, and she’d gone raw and emotional and truthful. laid herself bare, in forty five seconds or less, and was given in exchange the offer to turn it into a full song, with the help of one of the atlas boys. it felt like a tangible step. the last thing they’d let her do solo had been a dubiously sexual music video featuring- not that she’d minded the whole thing terribly, but it wasn’t exactly what she’d been pushing for in terms of being taken seriously as an artist. this was more of a step in the right direction, this song with gun. and this stage here in chile, too. a vocal powerhouse sort of stage, a gathering of recent generation main vocals, and juniper would be lying to say she wasn’t a little bit nervous about it.

she’s most nervous, frankly, about the fact that she’ll be up there all alone for the beginning of the stage. standing there on her own, without choreography or compatriots to fall back on for the first twenty seconds feels, even in simple rehearsal, like the longest time possible. but if she’s eager to go solo, it’s the kind of thing she’s going to have to get used too, especially since she’s been told she needn’t focus to intensely on her performance abilities for any upcoming solo work, that they’re likely to give her a microphone and producing credits and focus on the whole “artist” aspect, so if ever there was a time to prove she could handle that, it would be now. 

the only problem is she’s not so sure she’s ready. they’re incredible vocalists, the lot of them, and in recent months she’s been more focused on her rapping than anything else, in order to hopefully not completely fall flat on her face on unpretty rap star. so she’s putting in overtime on practice for this, fobbing off the chorus parts and soaring notes to the others, because if she’s going to take a risk it’s at least going to be calculated, careful. ease herself into it. she pauses to take a gulp from her water bottle, glancing sidelong at the boy who enters the room after her. her smile is tentative and kind. “how are you feeling about the performance?’ she asks him, oversharing immediately to add, “i’m so nervous.” juniper is a girl with her heart on her sleeve, to say the least. 

[ryanid-blog1]

loyalty.

                                        Midday memories disappear somewhere                                   As if it's a dream, I am only looking at the night sky                                                                   @idjunseo

even as the day dwindles down to night, the air is warm on her cheeks. the rooftop is littered with a fractional amount of people, scattered at the edges, tangled together, or wrapped around cigarettes. ryan just needed a break from the party, from the heavy weight of daein’s words, from the chance she’d run into taeho, or sooyeon.

she just needs space. she needs time to breathe. she needs a moment to think about all this. about telling daein she might love him. he gives it over so easily, offers it up to her as if it’s effortless. but every time she attempts to give back it’s like pulling teeth. it can’t happen if she doesn’t pick a fight first, if she doesn’t prod him towards fury. it’s as if she just wants to get rid of him, as if she’s challenging all the hope that he’s put in front of her, all the love he’s poured into her. it’s foolish of her to trust someone again. she’d trusted taeho, and been left with scars for it. she’d trusted sooyeon and look how that had ended? she should know by now that people would promise the world to you just to have you, just to promise that your name could be etched on their list of friends, or conquests.  it wasn’t genuine. maybe it wasn’t for anyone. 

daein made her think it could be, sometimes, but the years had worn down on her, the promise of her inferiority. too fat when she debuted, too skinny now. an elementary school body- that was what they all said of her. not the face for acting. it had taken endless projects to claw her way past that, years to try and shake off the negative connotations of her time with taeho. she still got hate comments, vitriol, cruelty from olympus fans on the regular. it would probably never end, if she was honest with herself. an eternity being reminded of a man she’d loved, who’d ultimately chosen something else. 

she hears the crunch of shoes on the cement nearby, glances askance and finds a somewhat familiar face there. she’s seen junseo around for years and has always been hesitant to engage with him, largely out of loyalty to sooyeon. and what had the good of that been? what was the point of being loyal if it wasn’t returned. “hey,” she says, as her lips twitch into a grin at the edge, lifts her glass towards him. “escaping the party too? or just out for a smoke break?”