"character quote / catch phrase"

PERSONALITY TRAITS — Shameless, ambitious, desperate, selfish, arrogant, determined, angry, fearful, passive aggressive, deceptive
 

ELABORATION —

 

• Shameless, ambitious, desperate, and selfish -

Moonho is not going back to the way it used to be. Becoming an idol is his ticket out of poverty and he's damned well going to grab it with both hands. There is nothing Moonho won't do for the promise of success. Nothing. Put on a dress and dance to Dumb Dumb? Just tell him where to change. Hold a fansign after a whole night of shooting? Just make sure there's a coffee ready, he's got this. Do aegyo for the fans? One and one is gwiyomi.  And that's just the more innocent stuff. 

Really though, Moonho is in this for himself. Moonho will do anything for success, but by that he means success for him not success for all of them.The group is his ticket to fame, so he sticks by them, but don't think he wouldn't throw them under the bus if that was the price for success. Let me repeat, Moonho is not going back to the way it was. He can't. He won't let that happen. He has to succeed in this. There's no other option for Moonho.

Moonho is also totally loyal to the company. The way he sees it, the company is the one who pulled him out of the he was in. It took him 3 years to find a company that would take him on, and he's not going to squander that opportunity but biting the hand that feeds him. That, and the company is the one in charge of his promotion, and as such in charge of his future success. He owes them. He will do whatever the company wants him to and he won't be too fond of those who disrespect it. Don't they see how lucky they are? That's gratitude for you.


Arrogant, determined, and pretty damned desperate did I mention that? -

When you meet Moonho without his idol facade, it's easy to assume he's arrogant. He's got that resting face, cold attitude, and almost allergic reaction to fun. It's easy to assume that Moonho thinks he's better than everyone. And... there's the fact that Moonho thinks he's better than everyone. The way Moonho sees it, he's suffered. He knows what it means to have it rough, and it's made him stronger. It's made him determined, focused, and in it to win it. All those others going around frivolously don't know what struggle is. They who don't take seriously? Weak. He takes pride in his own skills, he worked impossibly hard for them after all, but he knows he has a long way to go before he's satisfied with where he is. The arrogance is a way to cope with the constant shame and make him feel better about himself, but it doesn't exactly make him mister popular.

Moonho... doesn't do fun very well. He used to sing for fun, but since he turned that into his goal it turned into work too. He hasn't sung for fun in years now, whenever he sings he's practicing something to make himself a better vocalist. Whenever he dances he does so to make himself a better dancer. Moonho is so crazy focused on his whole goal of becoming succesful that he's forgetting to take a step back and also be human. Have fun. He's not an idol robot. There are certainly lessons Moonho has to learn if he wants to stay sane. He has to reconnect with his fun in performing, that joy he had while singing as a kid. He has to learn how to relax and have fun again. He has to learn that a good part of becoming succesful is being likeable and his fake idol babble isn't going to cut that.

There is a human underneath all the layers of ambition, shame, fear, and deception. It's there somewhere, the real human Moonho. He just has to find it. But that's not going to be gentle. Moonho is just going to keep going until he can't anymore. Until he crashes. And that, ladies and gentlemen, will not be pretty.


Angry, fearful, passive aggressive, and deceptive -

Moonho might try so hard to push his emotions aside and protend to be a robot, but they're there. All that pent up anger and resentment and shame that's been building up since he's was 7 years old, all just festering. It didn't magically go away when he found himself in a better situation. It's still there. Resentment at his dad, and more abstract at his situation. Shame for where he came from. Anger about the fact that he feels shame, and anger as a way to vent out the resentment and shame. None of it is good. None of it is healthy.

A lot of that anger and resentment comes out in passive aggressive comments and snark. Bringing others down around him because if he feels like then everyone else should feel like too. Even when he doesn't realize he's feeling like , he's still subconciously jumping at the opportunity to bring others down with him.

And then there's fear. Moonho is afraid of a great many things. Afraid of being dropped and ended up right where he started, with no prospect for the future. Afraid of deviating from his plans and not having a clear goal. Of being aimless. Of someone finding out where he came from. Someone seeing through his lies. Afraid of not becoming successful. Afraid of not being good enough. Oh, and afraid of spiders. Those things are nasty.

Moonho is not in a great place right now. Moonho hasn't been in a great place since he was 7 years old. How he deals with that shame and fear? Lying. Moonho lies. Moonho lies about a great many things. When people ask about his parents, he makes them up. Wholesome and normal partents. They ask where he came from? Lie. They ask why he wanted to be an idol? Lie. Sometimes he even lies when he doesn't have to, just out of habit. Thing is, he's not all that good in keeping track of his lies. It's become natural to shoot one out, but he can't remember them all that well.


So what is real and what is fake? 

So now there's layers to him. It used to be just the lie, and the real him, with a layer of pent up emotion between them. Now there's the idol layer on top of that. With so many layers, is it any wonder this boy has trouble remember who the real him really is? Especially now that the lie layer is on constantly. Live a lie long enough it starts feeling like the truth, but that gets a lot more complicated when one isn't consistent with the lies. And what even is the truth anymore? Moonho is so busy trying to fit the mould of what everyone thinks he should be, and underneath that what he thinks he should be, that he's completely out of touch with who he really is.

When in idol mode Moonho is a pretty standard idol. He can't hide all of the things hiding below the surface, nor can he banish all of his snark as he rolls his eyes at the ridiculousness around him, but he tries to be the run of the mill squicky clean idol. He tries to be charming and make people like him. It usually comes out rather bland, just another one of those idols more concerned with their image, and he gets overshadowed by the more fun and sincere group members, which then makes him more salty.

Who he thinks he should be is his best impersonation of a robot. He's all work and no play and always looking toward the future. Toward his goals. Whatever he does, is has to be to further his goals, otherwise its useless. A waste of time. His anger comes out in the form of passive aggression towards those around him, and judgement, and he's certainly not the easiest to be around at all. He's also the one pushing for hard work if its detrimental to his own performance, but other than that if people want to be lazy s and sabotage their own future then Moonho doesn't care. And over that is the web of lies he's built around himself. Ordinary childhood, happy parents, a passion for singing. Things he feels he should have had.

And then there is the real him, the one that hasn't seen the light since, well, probably since he was 15 years old and created this goal of success for himself. The real him is still passive aggressive, mind you, but there is also playful snark. He's muted still, Moonho will never be an energetic ray of sunshine of any kind, but he's much more good natured and most of the snark is playful and his humour dark and often too real. He'd be the kind to lampshade the industry or other's faults and the kind of playful banter, but all of it is just a lot less mean. Most of all, this Moonho is sincere. This Moonho is real. And this Moonho is no longer afraid to be real.

But good luck finding that Moonho.

 

 

BACKGROUND + CURRENT EVENTS —

 

• Lee Seungwon had it all once, a wife, two cute as buttons kids, and a steady job. Then that marriage fell apart, there was a divorce, he was left with the two babies, ell into a deep depression, and lost his job. Just like that everything had fallen apart around him, and when the savings were gone and spent not much was left. Gone was the proverbial white picket fance and in was the tiny apartment with the cockroaches in the bad part of town. Moonho was 7 years old when they moved, old enough to still remember the before, while his little brother was 4 and young enough not to. He always did envy that of Sangho. 

So now they had to adapt to a new lifestyle. His dad was on again off again at work, going from temp job to temp job while they lived on government benefits, something that Moonho was deeply ashamed of. He still remember the first time he went home with one of his new friends and the guy's mum asked him where he lived and what his parents did for a living. And he still remembered overhearing how that mum told her son not to play with boys from "that part of town". He knew the looks people gave him when he mentioned his dad was once again between jobs. That they were living on benefits. The judgements. Living on government handouts. Why doesn't he just get a job and support them? What a lazy man. Leeching off the state. And thus Moonho learned shame, and he learned to lie.

Honestly through much of his childhood Moonho was pretty damned angry, and in a way he still is. One of his outlets was singing. He had no actual training of course, no lessons for him, but he liked to sing anyway. He took any opportunity, it made him feel good. Music became an escape from his anger and his unhappiness. And then it became a literal escape when the idea popped up that he could do this. He had a decent enough voice, a pretty face. This wasn't an impossibility. He started going to auditions when he was 15 but it took him a long time to get picked up. As someone with a more unique tone, a lot of companies just weren't interested, and he had zero dance experience at all and no way to actually get it either. More and more, being an idol was starting to look like a pipe dream. And then when he was 17 he finally got a callback, and after that callback he got an offer. He had attained his goal. It didn't matter to him that TS was starting to rack up a reputation, Moonho was desperate, and in his desperation TS would do.

 

Well. A step to his goal. Then there was training, but Moonho was here now. He was out of the apartment and away from his dad. Away from the shame. Moonho had that winning combination of desperation and determination as he threw himself wholeheartedly into training. He even quit high school as soon as he could. Moonho was focussing solely on training. On becoming better. And god knows he needed it. With no formal training in anything, Moonho was at a disadvantage. He'd gotten into the company on promise and raw talent alone, and now it was time to hone it. Moonho was that kid who was always to be found in the practice room. Whenever one entered the trainee section, there's an 87% chance Lee Moonho is somewhere in there. He even slept there at times, it eliminated the time wasted having to go back to the dorms.

Needless to say Moonho didn't make very many friends. Most people know him as that evasive overachiever. Whenever someone asks Moonho about his family he always tells a lie, but he's not particularly good at keeping those lies either, so he prefers to just not get too close. Friends occasionally want to get closer, and so it was better for Moonho to just not have friends. He's so cripplingly ashamed of where he came from that he'd rather feel lonely than risk anyone finding out. 

 

 

RELATIONSHIPS — 

 

• Father - Lee Seungwon (54) - temp worker, taking anything he can get - weak-willed, dubious, caring, kind of an unfortunate soul but he tries and that's what matters -

 

Moonho is not his dad's number one fan. He was old enough during the divorce and subsequent fallout to remember what life was like before the dingy apartment with the cockroaches, and he's always blamed his dad for it. Even though the depression liften a year or two after the divorce, and even though his dad did his best to get his life back together and be a decent dad to Moonho and Sangho, Moonho's anger and grudge didn't let up, and the fact that he learned to be ashamed of his situation and his dad did not help. He sees his acceptance as a trainee as a release from the situation that was basically all his childhood, and doesn't really try to stay in contact more than he has to.

 

• Brother - Lee Sangho (18) - cashier - hardworking, unambitious, positive, stubborn, open0minded -

 

Moonho has a pretty good relationship with his brother. They were always in it together and he tried to be a decent big brother at least. He was always envious of Sangho not remember what it was like before. The kid always took to anything well, had a way to stay positive no matter what happened, and often time was the one supporting Moonho instead of the other way around. They keep regular contact, and while Sangho isn't happy that Moonho basically severed contact with his dad, he's his brother and he's going to support Moonho anyway.