retrograde irregular satellite

miscellaneous 2nd-5th gen girl group fic scraps from girlsfest attempts. might clean up/complete the gyulheon, might reuse the yunah/jeemin + yunah/minju lines for future yunjeeminju triangulationa ttempt, but nothing certain abt it. this is somewhere between wip amnesty and the regular wip/snippet post lol.

kara, jiyoung/youngji, 38 words. prompt.

tags: canon ambiguous?

Jiyoung splits her time between Korea and Japan not quite equally, but close enough. Youngji is glad to catch up with her whenever she’s home (in Youngji’s eyes), or go visit her when she’s home (Jiyoung’s lived reality).

fromis_9, gyuri/jiheon, 628 words. prompt.

tags: canonverse, yearning, author is a one trick pony

‘Makdingie,’ Gyuri calls her to this day. It is in text more often than in person, something that leaves Jiheon wishing to chase after that fluttering feeling in her chest every moment she can, that reminder of their time together. She misses Gyuri’s voice in their shared bedroom, in the shared dorm, in the evenings spent on the living room’s couch. It seems so long ago now. It is long ago now — since then she’s roomed with Nagyung, then alone, and then Gyuri moved out.

One foot in, the other halfway out the door until she left. There were no hard feelings, only the cold hard truth that Gyuri dreamt of something else more than she dreamt of the idol life and sharing her rooms and beds and every moment with eight other girls.

Just like how Gyuri puts her own wants first, so does Jiheon.

Selfishly relentless; it had been written off when she was younger, her vying for Gyuri’s attention. It had been cute, puppyish, once. Something to be laughed off, never quite uncomfortably so, but made into something small and insignificant.

It had broken Gyuri’s heart when she realised just how true Jiheon’s words were, how she had consciously blurred the edges in the months leading up to her departure.

Between the lines everything Jiheon said and did screamed at anyone willing to see: ‘Notice me. See me. Look back at me. Don’t you dare forget me, or leave me behind.’ all of it aimed at the same person.

Jiheon continues promoting. Does her lives, goes to her classes.

Her body taken over by the heady rush of being on stage, an extra smile to a camera held high. She smiles and thinks, ‘Don’t you stop watching me.’

[...]

“I saw you, on that show,” Gyuri says, her voice warm, a hint of a rasp. “Just a few cuts, here and there… your unnies didn’t try to keep you in check, did they? Our little Jiheonie, dancing like that.”

‘Did you really?’ Jiheon doesn’t ask. Doesn’t dare to. Jiheon has looked up some snippets herself already, wonders what else is being circulated online. From what Gyuri says, she did see at least a moment.

Jiheon hadn’t done anything too extraordinary, nothing that would damage her reputation, but the weight of the upcoming departure from their label weighed heavy on her shoulders — she danced, moved her body, drank well. There had been a pleasant buzz beneath her skin that night, blocking out the noise of her regular thoughts.

She had touched herself beneath the sheets when she got home, buzzed and dazed until sleep took her over, her thighs still sticky when she woke up the morning after. She had missed the idea of Gyuri in her room more on nights like that, even when she knew she had been far too young when they roomed together.

Normal college student Baek Jiheon, out with friends. Is this what it looked like on those rare occasions too?

She had played a slightly dangerous game, but it was also something that could just be shrugged off. Laughed off, like another silly drunken thing.

‘I only kissed her on the cheek, unnie,’ Jiheon considers saying. She doesn’t know if Gyuri saw that part too. It had popped up in her own feed though; the chants of her name, the split-second decision.

Gyuri laughs. A soft, low sound. Honey-filled; Jiheon could sink into it.

[...]

“You were always the best of us,” Gyuri says

It had taken Gyuri years to get past the guilt she felt at making Jiheon this way, as if it could have ever been like that. It had taken Jiheon time to convince her that the feelings she carried in her heart were hers and hers all alone.

illit, wonhee/iroha, 141 words. lost prompt.

tags: canonverse, fluff

“We’re the same age now,” Iroha says, clearly pleased with the development. Wonhee looks at her, thinks their youngest a little odd and mostly cute. Iroha is always cute, so different from what she was like onstage — as a trainee, more so than as an idol — to what she’s like off-stage. This whole age thing, though, is a bit silly. Just because she’s born in February while Wonhee’s birthday isn’t until early summer doesn’t actually make them equal in age.

“We literally are not,” Wonhee says, a repeat from last year, “it doesn’t work like that, Roha.”

Iroha gives her a look. “It really does, unnie.”

Cute, Wonhee thinks again.

Korean lies a little awkwardly in her mouth every now and then, a little muddled and soft in the wrong places.

“Why does it matter so much to you?”

r u next?/illit/izna, yunah/jeemin, yunah/minju, 30 words. prompt.

tags: canonverse, being rivals is the most romantic thing, triangulations

When Yunah declared Jeemin to be her rival, Minju had felt a little put off.

Yunah is extroverted, loves being around people, always seeking them out and befriending them fast.

i've been thinking a lot about trying to continue my gp999 posts since i had a lot of fun writing the first, but since i started watching gp999 with a friend on the weekends i've realised that a) i say probably most of the things i want to say then, and b) i no longer take notes as i watch bc i'm active/reacting in chat instead, which means i would either have to write entirely from memory or rewatch the full episodes? because even if i don't intend to write full on reviews/episode synopses i still like to touch upon things that happen in the episodes, which works only if i have a vague outline of my reactions and things that interested me.

that said i'm so sad we're already arriving at the first elimination! avoiding spoilers for tomorrow's episode is probably going to be really difficult when so many of my twitter mutuals also watch the show, and most watch it live? i'm not ready to see girls go, and i'm just desperately hoping for some of my less popular faves to make it - if wen zhe and wang yale don't make it to next round i will cry, but i'm hoping babymetal's momoko being in her cell and and wen zhe's good edit in ep3 will save her, and for wang yale i'm desperately hoping jeongmin's slight highlightisation/positive edit throughout and the jeongmin/yale push in ep4 have made ppl notice her? (a lot of ppl seem to think she was one of the better parts of the mic drop perf, but whether or not this translates to votes....)

i've also been started watching stage boom on iqiyi as part of the weekly weekend women watching with lily! a bunch of female artists/idols are competing for resources and opportunities to perform basically, probs since there are less opportunities to be on stage in c-ent compared to like kpop/jpop?

the girls on it i'm familiar with are mainly (ex-)kpop idols in form of yuqi, xuanyi, jieqiong and qcyn2 winning group members keran and anqi, but also cql actress turned chuang2020 winning group member chen zhuoxuan! other contestants are yamy (former rocket girls members tgt w xuanyi, idk her but have vaguely positive feelings abt pre-show for no reason), lexie liu (have heard a couple songs by), vava and shan yichun who were both completely new to me tho i think i might've heard vava's name a couple times before.

it's a lot of fun so far tho! the episodes are long, there's a lot of fun moments including some FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC AND BEING GIRLS IS THE MOST SPECIAL THING, and also some things that i hate/get extremely stressed out by but overall my feelings are very positive. i'm so excited for the couple stages coming this week, even if like none of the collabs i really wanted to happen are going to happen! (oh yuqi how i wish you went with a partner you wanted/who wanted you rather than the person who picked the same song, even if i understand your reasoning...) it's so annoying two teams will be eliminated though because i have someone in every team i don't want to see go yet.

fav perfs so far: czx - open up, czx - exist?, syq - giant, wxy - i want us together, yamy - beijing journey

a biased list perhaps, but these were the performances that appealed the most to me personally! shan yichun is a SANGER tho i'm just not crasy about her perfs (tho her rnb all night 90 sec perf veeeeery lovely), and lexie's artistry and attention to her performances is incredible and i did quite like both of her performances.

yesterday i claimed to not have been interested in a rookie group in forever which is true, last time i rly got into rookies were fromis_9 in 2018 around the time for love bomb to be released (one of my all time favourite kpop songs), and guess what happen hours later?

niziu debut mv is released and i am HOOKED.. i love cute n sweet concepts, the song is so catchy too.. fsr some of the visuals (as in colour palette + sets or backgrounds) in the mv read very oh my girl to me, which is a huge compliment/bonus for my brain!!

so, now i'm on s1 ep3 of nizi project lol and im a little sad bc ngl ozaki suzu is def my fave so far and she's not in the final line-up (im sure that everyone who made it deserved it tho) & rio is so beautiful *___* still very slowly learning the members too so idr know the final lineup so its sorta like idk what's coming too, which is fun, but gotta say that nina and miihi kinda look way cuter in the show than the mv which is. strange. but i can deal...

ugh i rly love survival shows and ik i skipped nizi project partially bc i had no interest in "jpop" gg from jyp, partially bc i hate watching jyp around young girls even if he hasn't been too bad yet (im watching on 1.25-2 times speed tho so mightve missed something but like there's no point in acting outraged irt what he said to that one girl abt her weight months late), and partially because qcyn2 was airing at the time which uh was def a lot more important to me and something i had been looking fwd to for months lol

funny thing is that ive not once rly stanned the group after a survival show, however when i got into fromis i watched idol school retroactively so? not saying there's a trend bc idk if i'll actually end up stanning, but . step and a step is super cute and i highly recommend it

thoughts as i shouldn't start any fic at this time but after watching fromis room ive come to realise that one of my greatest otps is gyuri/jisun but only under extremely specific circumstances, aka

gyulsun being close-ish early on bc they get along/are alike, and eventually dating (in part bc they think they would be a good match based on mom/dad pushed dynamic) but later breaking up due to differences they only learn slowly over time / it being too much to soon, no real period of feeling each other out romantically and something that makes you compatible as friends doesn't always translate into a relationship, leading to this point in time where jisun now has moved rooms bc of it..... it's convenient to have an explanation for why this happened but really, the situation was just too uncomfortable