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idolizerp · 5 years

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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.

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