#very fascinating to me that there are so many taemin sons out there but the one who actually has taemin as a mentor has a unique style

[sanstropfremir]

so!!! ten birthday. any thoughts?

very fine and normal thanks for asking!!!

no but for real though, i've been waiting for the full version of this song since APRIL; he used it as a special leader stage for gdc! that version is much shorter obvs and way more of an 'nct' song, plus i think bada may have made a new choreography for the full song. to be honest a lot of my thoughts are most just AAAAAAAAAA, which is fine bc there isn't much of a deep overarching theme and i don't think that there needs to be one either. obvs i'd love to see ten tackle something on the level of taemin or kai conceptually but i think there's a really special and underrated skill in fully embodying a performance regardless of its thematic depth, because it's hard. i talked about this with chaeyeon's solo but if you don't have something to ground your performance in it becomes very easy to be unmoored, and you can lose the thread of what you're trying to portray very quickly. something that i think ten does better than pretty much every other kpop dancer is that he is profoundly excellent at embodying feeling. you can give him a basic concept with a key visual and he makes you believe that he is that concept. and he does seem to base a lot of his creative decisions on embodying feelings, he's done several interviews recently and one that stuck out to me was that he said he's had birthday on the docket since pmn, but because he was feeling a specific way for pmn, he kept it on the backburner until his next cb. working down to your theme from such broad emotional strokes is a very difficult way of working, but it allows a lot of loose creative freedom that i think suits him very well.

obvs i gotta talk about the styling too. there's some really beautiful design choices happening here, most notably to me is the use of negative space and detailing! the main costume (the transparent shirt with the carpet pants) both draws attention to his torso and arms, while also provided fringe and loose dangling bits to accentuate the movement. most of the styling actually has these two elements, which gives a very strong unity of silhouette even though there are some pretty different types of clothing happening. one tiny weird detail that i don't know if anyone other than me noticed, but with the carpet pants and the patchwork ones from the vogue 8pm concert, because there's so many layers of fabric built up around the waist, you can see in specific moments what the pants actually stay still while his waist moves inside them. not an effect that i think was intentional by the designers, but a great effect nonetheless.

[onewfantaesy]

All sorts of nastiness/ rumours must be flying around after Taemin leaves his dad's company. Does it impact SM and the other groups too badly or just his parents? I feel like they'd be the type to try to sue him for slander and to keep him from publishing this book. And out of curiosity, what is the name of the book?

There’s tons of rumors. About how Taemin is doing it as a publicity stunt, how he’s so ungrateful, how he’s exploiting his parents to increase his own fame. How Taemin has always been a brat of a son who never appreciate a damn thing Sooman did for him. They’re all started by Sooman’s own PR team.

Because it’s been made very obvious how neglected and emotionally abused Taemin was from the time he as a young tween/teenager. Other people from the company have vouched for it: choreographers, managers, instructors. All who have since left the company for a variety of reasons, but they mention how the blatant hatred and anti-favoristism the CEO had for his own son was a big red flag. How the scoldings Taemin would get so often couslnbe heard from the elevators, how nasty Sooman could be to him, how Taemin never fought back or acted nearly as bad as Sooman made him out to be.

Other groups don’t get treated any worse, but many Exo members leave after their contract is up for renewal. Jongin is the first one to leave, and he goes straight to Ravi’s company, almost immediately has a collaboration album with Taemin. The company is still one of the Big 3, and they stay that way, at least for a few years. It takes a while for the book Taemin writes to have a real impact. But after that? After the public reads all the atrocities Taemin, the CEO and founder’s son, went through? The company is lucky not to plummet entirely.

And they do try to silence him. Try to sue him. But Taemin somehow, by the grace of God, beats it. It’s his own life. His life through his eyes. It’s his right to talk about it.

And talk about it Taemin does.

Talks about how for the first ten years of his life, he was used as a pawn against either parent. Kept from Christmases and denied birthday presents and visititation rights and for a whole year his father kept him with him, wouldn’t let his mother see him at all, wouldn’t let him see his only living grandparents. His father and mother had both accused each other of physical abuse, and while Taemin talks plenty of the emotional abuse and neglect he endured, he fully admits that neither parent ever laid a hand on him.

“But I wished they had,” he says in the book and in interviews. “I remember leaving my father’s office one day, and he had yelled and screamed at me for hours. I’d been about fifteen, and I’d already debuted and been an idol for maybe a year. And it was horrible, the things he’d said to me. How I was a disappointment. How he hated me. How I would never be allowed to come home again, even though I’d been living in the dorms since I was barely thirteen years old and never expected to be allowed to go home again, because I knew they’d thrown away so much of the stuff I’d been forced to leave behind. How he didn’t know how anyone could ever like me, it was a wonder what anyone saw in me, what the fans saw in me. Because I was an ungrateful, disturbed brat of a son that he regretted ever having. He’d even said he would have been better off had my mother swallowed me. Can you imagine saying that? To your fifteen year old child? And I just remember leaving after and admitting to Euisoo later, ‘I wish he would just hit me instead. I know he wants to. If he hit me, maybe, at least the hurt would go away after a day or two.’ And I just really wished sometimes that he would hit me instead of saying the things he did to me. Physical injuries heal eventually, but mental and emotional injuries are much harder to treat. They don’t always heal as well, and the scars can be much messier.”

The name of the book is simple. The Child’s Story: Memoirs of the Boss’s Son.

He mentions how the first time Euisoo ever met him, he had no idea who Taemin was. That he was just an upset trainee who was there well after dark and clearly needed to be hugged and fed and told to go to bed. How that was the beginning of Euisoo being his chosen dad. How Euisoo knows full well that Taemin considers him his real dad, how Euisoo always looks so happy and giddy and a little proud when Taemin mentions it, but he really just wants the best for Taemin.

By this time though, Sooman is getting up there in age. He’s in his mid-70s, and Taemin even says how, when he was a trainee and sent to live in the dorms and then ignored for weeks, how he had the thought:

“I decided when he got old enough, I was going to send him to the absolute worst old folks home in the country. I was going to look up the absolute most terribly rated and reviewed nursing home. And I was going to send him there, and I was never ever going to visit him. And he was going to learn what it felt like. To be shipped off somewhere. To be ignored. To be left to someone else to deal with because the people who are supposed to love you and care for you can’t be bothered. I wouldn’t. Now. Not anymore. Not like they’d ever leave me in charge of their estate or anything, because I was disowned when I was seventeen. But that never made the news, did it? Because they buried it. Because I’m such a terrible son and person and they couldn’t deal with me anymore.”

It’s just such a shock. It quickly becomes a best-seller, because it’s so fascinating to hear how someone like Taemin, someone who is so well loved by fans and the public and so many other idols, was so despised by his own parents. How he was forced into this career but decided to become the best purely out of spite, just to prove them wrong, just to prove that he was worth something. To prove that he was worth paying attention to.

“I’m such an attention seeker now,” Taemin admits in the book. “I crave it. I need it. And I really do think it’s because I was so ignored by my own parents. Because they never even really spoke to me from the time I was thirteen. And why? Because I didn’t like that they were getting remarried? Because it made me uncomfortable? I don’t think I’ll ever known the real reason they hated me so much. I don’t think they’ll ever tell me, ever admit it out loud. I think they always hated me, but I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe they just never wanted a child in the first place. But that’s not my fault. That’s not something I did, that I caused. They had me. It was their responsibility to take care of me. But they failed that responsibility. Miserably. And I hope, if I ever have a child, that my child knows I love them. That they know I would never, ever treat them that way. I hope I can be a better parent than they ever could have dreamed of being to me.”

[onewfantaesy]

Warlocks au was as fascinating as it was sweet and sad. Would you ever consider writing the prequel to it with taemin's passing and his parents search? I feel like a masochist asking for this =.=' lol

tw for a lot of death

The two covens had been feuding as long as anyone could remember. They lived on opposite sides of a river that separated their two towns, were the only two covens for miles and miles. They both wanted control, both wanted to be the only coven in the area, both refused to merge because it was a time where covens were solely made up of blood and marital relations.

Taemin was a child. He was the only child currently in his coven; those closest in age to him were all older teenagers. He was born between generations, it seemed. There were plenty of women in the coven who were currently pregnant, but Taemin seven-years-old, would be the one of his age group as he grew and learned his magic. Taemin didn’t mind. He enjoyed being the baby, for now. He was excited to be a big cousin to his future baby cousins. Liked having a lot of attention on himself, and plenty of older kids to help him learn the traditions of the coven.

But the coven across the river was looming over them, growing larger. Stronger. More threatening.

It was a frigid winter night when the attack happening. The beginning of the end of their coven.

The darkness that blanketed that night was unnatural. Snow stopped falling, but only over the coven grounds, as if a giant tent were pitched above it. Many of the older coven members were worried, had never seen anything like it. But it was well after Taemin’s bedtime, and he was nestled beneath the many blankets of his parents’ bed, asleep. His parents were in bed as well; they had planned on giving Taemin early morning lessons the next day.

Then the attack started.

It woke everyone up. Like a bang, it sounded throughout the grounds, disoriented them. Taemin was bleary eyed and confused and pushed himself up, huddled against his mother’s chest, pulled a blanket closer around him.

“Mommy?”

“It’s okay,” Boa said softly. “It’s probably just one of the big kids messing around. Go back to sleep, love.”

But she motioned for Yunho to go check what the problem was, then wrapped an arm around Taemin. Yunho was pushing blankets off to get up when the curse hit them.

Everyone as frozen in place. Like a statue. Yunho was getting ready to stand from the bed, still glancing toward Boa. She had one arm around Taemin, squeezing him close, and the other brushing at his hair while she looked down at him. Meanwhile, Taemin was gripping st the blankets and rubbing one eye.

The chanting was like nothing Taemin had ever heard in his short life. It was evil sounding, bounced off the walls in horrific crashes, and radiated with dark energy. Very different from the lighter magic Taemin’s coven was fond of using.

His tiny bones aches the longer they stayed frozen in place. He wanted to cry, wanted to call for his mother, but couldn’t move a single muscle. He thought he was going to be sick.

Then their bedroom door slammed open and a dark, murky tendril of magic hit his core. He cried out, but wasn’t sure if he actually made any noise.

Everything hurt. It burned and ached and twisted and pulled and ripped at him. He’d never been in so much pain in his whole life, never imagined anything like it, would never in his wildest dreams be able to fully describe the piercing, intense pain this magic caused him.

Then they walked in. The members of the other coven. Taemin was terrified, still hurting.

Then they ripped his poor little body to shreds. In front of his parents. It was an agozing death; slow and painful and precise.

He had been cursed. His soul had been cursed. And his parents were forced to watch, frozen, unable to help him.

They spent all night cursing and hiding Taemin’s bones throughout the grounds. Making sure the only child would never be able to leave. It was a deliberate message.

They’d killed the coven’s only child. They terminated every pregnancy. They cursed every witch and warlock to be barren and infertile. Cursed the entire coven with plagues and disease that would attack them slowly and painfully until it killed them. Until they were all wiped out, with no remaining lineage.

And Taemin, the only child, would have a spirit forced to watch them all die. Cursed to never be seen by his own blood relations, to never be able to talk to them again. All the while unable to leave the grounds his coven called home.

It was a gruesome, sickening, deliberate attack.

All the remaining members of the coven were traumatized. Scarred. Their magic left fizzled and incomplete, tainted with dark curses.

As soon as they unfroze, Boa screamed. She was covered in her own son’s blood, had watched him be tortured and killed, and she didn’t even have his body to properly bury.

“Mommy?” Taemin cries, but she can’t hear him. No one can hear him. No one can see him. He doesn’t understand what happened to them. “Mommy, where am I?”

Boa is inconsolable for weeks. Yunho isn’t much better.

The entire coven is a wreck.

“MOMMY! DADDY!” Taemin screams until his voice goes out. He runs around, tries to get their attention, anyone’s attention, until he’s exhausted.

After days, then a week, of no one seeing him, he doesn’t know what to do. He doesn’t know what’s really happened. He’s scared and confused.

So he plays with his favorite toy: a little red ball. He bounces it against a wall, then sits on the floor and rolls it against the wall and back. It’s repetitive and soothing.

And it turns out to be a loophole. Because his coven can see it. It’s how they know Taemin is still in the house, that his spirit still lingers. It’s how they know to search for his bones.

Taemin uses the ball to communicate. Sometimes he writes, but he finds it much more difficult to control the quill than he does the ball. It takes decades before he’s able to truly master grabbing and utilizing other physical objects.

But his coven is dying before his eyes. They’re searching for his bones, and they do that for ages. His mother keeps them all in a blanket she had sewn for him, but they never find all of them. They cleanse the bones they do find, but it’s not enough. Taemin is still trapped.

They play with him for a while. With the ball. Tossing and rolling it back and forth. Everyone in the coven at some point.

But eventually, other things take priority. Like their quickly deteriorating health. Like the realization that no one is getting pregnant again, no one is capable of becoming pregnant again. Like how they’re quickly dying out with no successors or heirs.

“My sweet Taemin,” Boa whispers one night a few years later, her voice hoarse. She’s lying in bed next to Yunho, the both of them not fairing well. Taemin’s little red ball is sitting very still on a chair next to the bed. “Mommy loves you so much.”

“I love you too,” Taemin whispers back, even though he knows she can’t hear him.

“Your bones,” Yunho whispers, “are in the attic. Don’t forget where they are.”

“I won’t forget,” Taemin promises. Then he takes a gasp of breath, “What’s happening to you?”

They’re very quiet. He wasn’t expecting an answer.

“Please don’t leave me,” he begs. He moves into the bed, in between them where he usually slept. “Please don’t. Don’t go.”

They both feel a chill and know he’s there.

“My brave boy,” Yunho says. “If you find all your bones, you look in Daddy’s journals for the right incantations.”

“I can’t do spells yet,” Taemin cries, burying himself in the pillow. “Daddy, don’t leave.”

“We love you more than anything, Taemin?” Yunho says.

“My sweet Taeminnie,” Boa calls. “Stay with Mommy and Daddy. Just a little longer now.”

Taemin is sobbing and begging them not to leave him, not to die like so many other coven members have in the last few months. When Yunho stops breathing, Taemin screams. When Boa is gone too, Taemin is begs her to come back.

When their bodies are taken to the coven graveyard for burial, Taemin is numb. He stays in their bed, holding his ball to his chest. The remaining coven members can see it. Can tell he’s there. Can tell he hasn’t moved.

Then they die. Everyone is gone. He’s completely alone. And for years, he stays on that bed. Decades pass and he hardly moves an inch. Dust cakes the entire house, spiders move in, then rats. He keeps his bones protected, but other than that, he has no purpose. He can’t bring himself to search for his bones. He feels he has nothing keeping him going.

It’s a lonely existence. The other spirits in the area are scary and mean. The other coven terrifies him, he continues to fear them for the rest of his afterlife. A few people had come and gone from the house, stragglers mostly, but he never felt as alive as he once did until Onew, Minho, and Key moved in.