#the hiatus I did was a good choice ong

[aeonilua]

Hi Lu💙

Just passing to say hi. I hope you're doing good.

Hi hi I’m alive.

I wouldn’t say I’m doing okay but I’m barely hanging on. Taking a longer hiatus (on posting) was a good decision for me.

I’m fully aware I haven’t posted art in like two months but strangely enough I feel great, no longer pressured to post for the sake of the audience or likes, I can just draw or write on my own terms so that’s going good. But I will eventually come back with something, hopefully. When I’m feeling a lot better.

Thanks for checking in on me, I also hope you’re doing okay <3

[asterocky]

Hi, I actually had some more questions, lol. Thank you for answering the last one about Eunwoo and his relationship with the boys.

What happened to Moonbin, he took some time off and it seems like people don’t think it was a shoulder injury, but rather that he needed some time off for his mental health?

I was also wondering what happened to their last management or team? I saw Eunwoo speaking out again about how they were treated? What did their last team do or not do? I don’t remember his exact words but it was something to do with their company.

hello there again!! ^^ it was my pleasure, feel free to shoot any other questions you might have. sorry i'm a bit late with this answer, i was thinking through what to say.

regarding moonbin's hiatus.

i believe that fantagio never said anything concrete - they just said moonbin went to a check up and the doctors advised him to rest and get treatment. so no particular health concern was mentioned, so i can't give you a concrete answer. the mental health narrative might have come from some vlives moonbin did, since he was very vulnerable and obviously not in a good place mentally before blue flame era (like this one or the general conversations they had during their gateway era win vlive). i wish i could give you a more concrete answer, but unfortunately i was not too active since i work full time, so there might have been something concrete said by moonbin about his mental health after blue flame era once he came back. since the fantagio issues happened, astro developed a habit of going to aroha whenever something is bothering them. hopefully someone else can give a more concrete answer.

fantagio issues.

there's a lot to discuss here. i will try to shorten the entire situation the best to my ability but i did follow the subject closely and if you want to read into it more, feel free to go into eliot's fantagio update tag (i suggest starting from this post if you want to get into details). meanwhile i roughly summarized the situation below.

so fantagio music is a subsidiary of fantagio entertainment. and fantagio entertainment a few years back was owned by this chinese corporation jc group (they were the majority shareholders, which means that they had the majority vote during shareholder meetings). one day allegations came out in news portals that:

the board of fantagio dismissed the co-ceo and founder of fantagio na byeongjun. wei jie, who was the ceo of jc group, was instated as the new ceo;

the corporation credit cards were taken away from the staffs, so most of the activities fantagio's actors and idols had were funded out of the pocket of the staffs and idols. rumors circulated that astro and weki meki ended up paying for their fans' meals during isac out of pocket, too;

jc group was pooling the money fantagio made to an unrelated hong kong company also owned by the group;

fantagio organized a crisis meeting and settled with 9 demands for jc group, which included reinstatement of the former ceo amongst other things, as most worried that since jc group is pooling whatever fantagio makes into a hong kong company, that jc group will start selling their artists for profit.

(this is why moonbin always says he's the oldest standing fantagio member, idols and staffs included - the ceo was not reinstated and many staff, including astro's manager, left the company)

so staffs were fired and replaced by jc group (they have nothing to de with entertainment btw) staff. it should be noted that wei jie became ceo of fantagio entertainment, but not fantagio music. at the time, fantagio music's ceo was woo youngseung, so aside from the company card limitations, the artists weren't affected that much. however, all hell broke loose when jc group fired woo youngseun and wei jie (i believe) became the ceo. that was the exact moment fantagio music started operating illegally, as based on south koren laws, the ceo of an operating entertainment company has to have a certain entertainment license and ceratin experience. the new ceo was not registered in the korean entertainment management association, which was also a problem. at this point there was no choice but to stop all idols' and actors' activities because everyone that was under contract with fantagio entertainment, which did not have the required licence, would also be considered to be operating illegally. basically everyone under fantagio was forced into a hiatus because of all of the shit jc group caused because of their incompetence.

then the korean entertainment management association reached out to an illegally operating fantagio and gave them 45 days to appoint a new ceo with the relative registration and experience or fantagio will be removed from the association entirely. with all that happening, actors started going through court to terminate their contracts with fantagio. in general there were many uncertainties with the artists under the company, some news portals going so far as to say that "fantagio has no future".

for a while, fantagio (jc group) threatened their actors who went against them (terminating contracts) with court and ignored any korean entertainment association complaints and lied to press that they WERE operating legally. however, many contradicting articles came our and entertainment associations publicly announced that memebers of the associations (which is basically most of the korean entertainment industry) are banning fantagio and basically no one within the association will be working with them.

but then karma came to bite in the ass and the main vilan wei jie who was the ceo was arrested for illegal funding activities (which probably includes the before-mentioned cash pool in an unrelated hong kong company situation). also, the former kbs ceo was appointed as a new fantagio music ceo. a bit later the second main vilan of this story - jc group - sold their ownership of fantagio back to this other shareholder l&a holdings (i believe, don't quote me on this)! which was highly celebrated because fantagio became it's own company again. later fantagio did have a dispute with l&a holdings, but it was nothing too major.

as of today the company is fairly stable and doing well, the largest sources of income being ong seongwoo, astro and cha eunwoo. recently, there has been a dismissal of the management once more and a new management for fantagio music was instated. everyone had war flashbacks for a moment got scared. but it turns out the new management seems eager to put their people out there, as right after the announcement of the new management, astro announced their astro x aroha festival, comeback and all members finally had their own schedules to attend to. and right now all of astro seem to be working on something as the management cleared their schedules, also we got astro zone - to put it simply, we had not seen so much activity from astro for a while so this new management brings hope. also, fantagio was said to be getting more funding and expanding more into acting industries (i think they released more shares, too, which usually means expansion of the company), the financials of fantagio for 2020 have been the best in comparison to the last three years. so as of right now, we can be happy it's in the past and look forward to what fantagio can bring in the future.

also, it's worth mentioning that astro stayed really strong throughout the period and whenever we expressed worry about them, they always tried to calm us down and say that everything is okay and they're doing well. however, once the whole thing was over astro came out with always you, lyrics of which express just how NOT OKAY astro were throughout the fantagio issues and how hard it was behind closed doors, the song dedicated to the fandom. they were very emotional and open about what happened, a lot of fans left throughout the period (as they were on hiatus for a year basically) and astro ended up thanking the ones that stayed with them. there's also this video from astro star light where each member shares a little bit about what went through their minds, from uncertanties, fright and feeling thrown out.