Lgc:workshops - Blog Posts

rua is so sweet, offering solutions to problems lili was probably making bigger than they actually were. it’s to a point that lili felt the need to further whine, arms winding around the other, almost leaning on her, as she groans — the workshop had been fun but the evaluation was truly going to be the death to her and her creativity (and she severely lacked in that department), “ughhhhhh, why can’t we just go on shows together — i wish this evaluation was a paired thing, at least, if you were by my side i wouldn’t feel as weird about making a fool of myself.”

and it was the truth.

looking dumb by herself was one thing — but doing it together, at least it shaved off some of the embarrassment.

then she pauses, pulling back to give rua a look. “please tell me you are not seriously thinking of stuffing your mouth full of marshmallows on national television as a form of entertainment.” she frowns, shaking her head, rua was much too good for this industry. “if i can be cool, you can be cool too.” 

rua had a point, she could just be super competitive and witty and cool in that way but did lili want her public persona to be that of a cool girl? hadn’t she wanted to be someone so far off from her regular persona a la double life? 

་ ⸼ ⸒ ✴ previously、

rua pauses drinking the water and blinks at lili's words for a moment before slowly nodding. "i think, anyways...?" she caps her bottle and places it next to her before thinking. "astrid sunbae seemed to think me being able to fit a lot of big marshmallows in my mouth was a good talent but i have a hard time calling it a special skill, you know?" it felt a bit silly to, honestly, but she supposes that is probably expected when it comes to variety shows. "i might just go with that," she shrugs, still a bit unsure herself. at the same time, it's not like she had many other potential skills she could use that would also be possibly entertaining.

"i guess anything can be turned into a special skill or talent, in a way," rua says after hearing lili's concerns and mulling them over, trying to recall what she had learned from the workshop and how you can find surprise so-called 'talents' from the most minor and random things. "like how did me being bored one day and deciding to try stuffing my mouth with marshmallows after seeing the chubby bunny challenge becoming a trend become something i could use for a variety show?" rua laughs because she never would've guessed that random moment would come in handy at a time like this.

an idea suddenly hits her at that moment though and she sits up straighter like something had physically struck her. "oh! but you're a good dancer right? that could be your talent too! it doesn't always have to be something funny... you could just be cool, too?"

it's then that she remembers something else from the workshops and decides to bring it up just in case it might help the other. "you could also just go the route of being witty and clever, and bantering with the cast and other guests on a show, instead of just focusing on a specific skill to show off... or maybe just being super competitive if its a show or segment with missions and games," rua suggests as she mentally goes down the list of shows she's watched in the past and what she's fund personally entertaining while watching them.

୨୧     W     :     FINDING YOUR INNER VARIETY STAR   _   2

WHAT DID YOU CONSIDER THE EASIEST & HARDEST PART OF THE WORKSHOP?

“to be funny.” lili wasn’t funny at least when she tried to be — funny had to be an instinctive trait, one that came easy for them, but lili wasn’t like that. “don’t get me wrong, i’m funny, but not when i want to be — at least that’s what people say.” people tell her she’s funny but lili didn’t think so, if anything, she believed she was a far cry from it.

HOW WOULD YOU RATE YOUR OVERALL SATISFACTION WITH THE WORKSHOP?

“out of ten?” lili thinks on it, pausing for a moment before, nodding her head, satisfied with what she’s come up with, “i’d say ten. astrid 선배님 had a lot to share and tried her best to make us comfortable.” and when lili said she tried, she really did try — but it wasn’t enough for lili to cross her boundaries and her ego, unfortunately. at the ripe age of twenty-four, lili was already set in stone and could not (rather, would not) compromise herself in the name of variety. and maybe that had been her downfall from the beginning.

WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN A FOLLOW-UP WORKSHOP ON THE SAME TOPIC?

should she be honest — would it look bad on her if she was? or should she lie? she was good at that — through her teeth, tongue to cheek, a gentle, slow breath before she says what’s exactly on her mind: “no, i think i’m just not suited for variety, at least, if i were to go by myself. i feel like i’m a go with the flow, rely on people i know type of variety person but if i was just the individual guest? i don’t think i’m funny enough for that — or i suppose, it just depends on the type of variety. gags and the like, please refrain from recommending me.” was that a bit much? maybe but lili had to draw the line somewhere. this workshop had proved that this was not the line of work she wanted to be associated with.

୨୧     W     :     FINDING YOUR INNER VARIETY STAR   _   1

lili and silly — though a cute little rhyme — had never been remotely said in the same sentence. nor should they ever because lili was not silly — not funny in the way people found comedians a laugh; not inviting or a ray of sunshine that was often seen in variety-dols these days; the funny bone had surely skipped her, in some way or form.

in short: lili is no variety star.

sure, she can crack a joke; murmur a hmm and nod her pretty head at any question come her way, but variety was it’s own beast. and lili had no interest of taming it. it was fine to watch on a boring saturday morning, but comedy and variety had never been her strong suit.

so how she had landed a spot in the workshop is beyond her — but she enjoys it, learning new tricks of the trade had never been boring to her. they are all things she can recall from shows she’s seen in the past but had never once thought to reiterate or replicate, because she knows, despite all this fro and fray, she will not become the variety star they’re looking for, not when her worst fear was looking stupid in front of thousands — no, millions on national television.

(dreams of millions laughing at her for voice cracking was a close second but such things should not be thought into the universe, lili thinks)

it’s uneasy, stepping out of her oh-so-comfortable comfort zone. but at least astrid is nice and her voice is soothing to listen to and her tips are fun and inviting; so lili keeps them in mind, writing them in her notebook with her cute and pink gel pen thinking that a fun color only suited such a fun activity. sealing them in her mind for a rainy day — if that rainy day ever came. 

the problem with lili was her ego.

in this business, it proved to be her make it or break it point and for lili, she could not sacrifice herself to the masses just for a few laughs — it was below her. she loved herself far too much to make herself look dumb just to receive her awaited fifteen minutes of fame. no — she was far too talented for such a thing.

( at least, that was how lili often viewed variety-dols ; sacrificing their sanity in exchange for the automated laugh machine, it was something lili could never bring herself to do )

thankfully, she found a kindred spirit in rua — her tears ( there were no tears ) and complaints not falling on deaf ears as someone who shared lili’s very same sentiments. if anything, if lili wanted to be funny — she would find her dry humor fanatics on her own; unfortunately, dry humor did not make for amusing national entertainment. 

she looks to rua then, almost begrudgingly saying do i have to before nodding, tossing her notebook to the floor and straightening up where she had been slouched — appalling lack of poise aside — lili had been stressed out over this workshop.

“wait, wait, wait — have you already decided what skill you’re going to do? ugh — i can only go so far as using korean as my second language as funny but i don’t know what skill i have other than that and that can’t be called a skill, could it?” maybe she was overthinking it, overstressing — the workshops of the past hadn’t been this hard. lili had put her head into it and ran through it with the determination of a bull. this, this, couldn’t be handled with the same ease.

take a chance ʚ♥ɞ

་ ⸼ ⸒ ✴ a closed workshop starter for @lgclili、

rua honestly had some doubts about her variety potential; she didn't see herself as particularly funny, naturally or otherwise, nor was she super willing to make a fool of herself in the name of entertainment if it came down to that. sure, she could be sociable and wouldn't shy away from conversing with someone older or more senior than her in the industry but the possibility of still being boring is very real.

however, she supposes that's exactly why she was put into this workshop to begin with - to change that. was she improving though? rua wasn't quite sure but at least she wasn't alone. she looks over at lili next to her and finds it funny that they're practicing for their final evaluation together because it was like the blind leading the blind. they were trying, don't get them wrong, but nothing felt right and neither of them felt confident enough about their variety talent to point themselves in the right direction.

"okay, maybe we need to try pretending we're in a specific variety show?" rua suggests, plopping on to the floor of a practice room they had managed to reserve and grabbing her water bottle nearby to take a drink from. even if they weren't dancing, rua has to admit that she feels most comfortable here, as opposed to using something like a meeting room or elsewhere to practice. "one of us can pretend to be a mc and the other a guest, and then we'll switch roles?"

໒꒱ . WORKSHOP OPPORTUNITY # 002 _ IDOL JAPANESE: THE EVALUATION 、 aka “LILI, CAN YOU TEACH ME JAPANESE?” I SAID 「はい、はい」

the unfortunate thing about all this is that when pushed, lili pushes harder.

and lili wouldn’t call what they did pushing, per say. unless you could call dangling lili over a cliff with nothing but herself and ichika as a safety net below her pushing — then so be it, they pushed her.

because lili did not like to be pushed around.

despite the practices for that nostalgia show the girls were all participating in, she had this on top of it — and lili was no stranger to overachieving and doing too much in order to appear as pristine and as put together as possible. even if it meant, forgoing necessary ailments such as sleep and food, lili was going to prove them why they shouldn’t push lili to do things.

in the grand scheme of things, the evaluation comes in a blur — her prepared speech, ran through and corrected by ichika with alarming quickness is something lili can only warrant from her own neck-breaking determination to get things done right. even if she had gone into this workshop not knowing a lick of the language — she could at least call herself somewhat knowledgable — if not, able to say more than yes. 

she goes through the motions, remembering the sounds of the vowels — trying to not trip over them as she slows her words, carefully, because the more she quickened her pace, the more she stumbled over them. taking a breath, and with another smile, she begins — in a banter with her partner, thank god at least they knew what they were doing, while lili felt like she was still dangling from that tell-tale cliff, searching for a savior. 

the breath helps, it eases the nerves tickling the back of her neck. her smile used like a shield in the midst of a battle against herself and the evils who had put her in such an uncomfortable position. never had lili felt this unprepared — even if she had spent every waking moment of the past three months preparing for just this — she still felt uneasy. 

was this is? 

her fall from grace?

( finally tumbling her from  her overly egotistic, completely arrogant pedestal that no one but she had put herself upon? ugh, the ground would probably hurt from a fall like this, wouldn’t it? )

these are things she keeps in her back pocket for later — for when she’s to complain about her downfalls and her supposed weaknesses to jang insung — a laundry list, really, of her woes and why she still doesn’t quite understand why she was placed for such a workshop. 

sure, she learned japanese — but at the end of the day, lili only did so because she had felt undermined, so really …

who was the winner in all this?

lili wouldn’t think it was she — begrudgingly, least said and never something she’d say out loud, it had put another notch on her otherwise ridiculously overachieving and accomplished belt — at least, she wouldn’t admit to it as so.

໒꒱ . WORKSHOP OPPORTUNITY # 002 _ IDOL JAPANESE: PRACTICE 、 aka “LILI, CAN YOU TEACH ME JAPANESE?” I SAID 「はい、はい」

it would be an understatement to say that lili take’s ichika’s words to heart. in fact, after talking to ichika, lili was probably more determined to the learn the fuck out of this language than she had initially wanted to.

it is no secret that she was confused by the assignment. like — hello?

xu lili … speaking japanese? 

girl had sat through the entire briefing thinking that she was sitting on an incredibly long practical joke — and yet, 

the punchline never came.

after the inevitable had sunk in, lili had gone to work. sulking over useless woes would never get her anywhere and lili knew better than anyone that no one was going to go boo hoo, poor little lili.

anchored to her desk, she sits upright and focused. what once was clear-cut legible writing has been reduced to chicken scratch over ever word and phrase she had squeezed out of ichika before she had to leave for her next schedule. the rest is what she picked up from random japanese learning videos she had searched up on youtube.

even though such a evaluation wasn’t going to be televised — hence the mock — the last thing lili was was a half-asser. she’d give them something to laugh about for challenging her like this — they would rue the day they thought they could catch her slipping.

if they wanted her to speak japanese, she was going to speak the best damn japanese she could muster in the three months they gave her to learn this language. 

a hand shoots up — “wait, wait — i said i sucked, i didn’t — do you think i’m a loser?” should she get her ears checked? did she, lili xu, actually sound that bad for ichika to immediately dismiss her as the affronted and absolutely — totally uncalled for — damning title of ‘loser’?

she feels herself default — not from discouragement — but the shock. never had lili ever felt herself feel so crestfallen — so rug pulled out from under her bewildered. again, it begs the question of: why was lili even here?

lili groans, feeling a crease iron itself permanently between her brows in concern. “was it really that bad?” lili was no japanese maestro but even she didn’t think she had failed as miserably to deem it — oh, god, lili didn’t even want to repeat it again.

she sniffs, bringing the stylus back to the document she had pulled up on her ipad where the rest of her diligent — but messy in the way a chaotic mind like lili could only understand — notes lay. “fine, if that’s what you think is best.” she taps the end of the pen against her cheek as she thinks.

“it’s supposed to be a mock of some hosting event, right?” she asks for clarification — “how would i even begin?”

In all honesty, Ichika did feel for some of her trainees. She had assumed that they would come with more experience but seeing that someone like Lili was being asked to perform without much exposure well, the more she thought about it, the more on-brand it seemed. When she was a trainee, there had been girls who had been chosen to take part in LGC Girls Japan with very limited Japanese, and some of them had been given more lines than she had. As long as you were able to make it work, what was the problem? Or so, she assumed the mindset was. 

“You are not a loser,” she replies even, shaking her head slightly. “You’re only a loser if you do not try.”

And to her credit, Lili does try. Ichika had dipped her toe into learning Mandarin over the last year, but for someone to ask her to host with a trace of fluency would have been hard. “You /are/ improving.” She assures the younger woman, “So long as you show effort, that’s what’s important. I want you to keep practicing your pronunciation and I’ll see about preparing you a phonetic script to practice with. If you can show confidence in speaking and continue to practice, a lot of errors can be forgiven. I’m sure you experienced that when you first came to Korea, as well.” 

Unlike the other two, Ichika knew that Lili went through a similar situation when she came to Korea years ago, and with that alone, she knew Lili was not a loss cause. “Actually, how about this: I want you to write down what you want to say and we can work on translating it. We can work from there.”

HOW TO SAY I'M FUCKED IN JAPANESE? where lili probably shouldn't be in this workshop and yet, here she is — @lgcichika

she shouldn’t complain, really.

wasn’t this what she meant by she was interested in hosting — looking back, lili hadn’t really thought they would have taken such a small mention so seriously. at least, this is what she tells herself as she sits across from ichika and tries to find rational in why she was lumped into a workshop for a language she didn’t know a lick about.

still, she was no quitter, even if said workshop expected her to speak a whole-ass dialogue and such for some mock hosting gig as the evaluation. no, even then, lili was no quitter.

but — she did think they could have cut her some slack. just from the basic phrases and such that ichika had gone over in passing earlier with the rest of the group, lili was still having trouble wrapping her head around it all and this is after going over her notes thrice in the last half-hour. “i know, i suck — but i swear, i really didn’t know any japanese going into this so i think … really, i’m quite the improvement, wouldn't you agree?"

໒꒱ . XU LILI _ 1V1 CONSULATION 、WORKSHOP # 002

lili prided herself on her one on one evaluations with her coaches. something about receiving critiques empowered her, in a way. if they flat-out told her she sucked, it evoked an irrational sense of determination in her. if they flattered her, it validated her. in the end, it was a win-win situation that worked in her favor. 

“ WHAT DO YOU THINK ARE YOUR STRENGTHS RIGHT NOW? ”

her strengths have always been her most steadfast of skills — they were what made it easy for lili to transition from some no name agency to the likes of legacy in a matter of weeks. her defaults came easy, rolling off the tongue in a crescendo of confidence that she wonders why seo youngjae had bothered wasting his breath. “singing, dancing, modeling — it’s a triple threat combination that i feel like i’ve perfected.” and to this day, lili believes is her clandestine repetotoire for her future and yet — "do you not agree?" she asks, at point blank, because if seo youngjae didn't, then obviously lili was not working hard enough. ( and that irked her )

“ WHAT ARE THREE SKILLS THAT YOU WOULD LIKE TO WORK ON IN THE NEXT FEW MONTHS? ”

she ponders this, and realizes the slight deflation in her response. it’s no surprise to anyone that her confidence had taken hit after hit in recent months. being looked over and not even considered for certain projects had been low blows that lili had tried her best to not get to her — since nobody asked, lili assumed she had done a good job in not showing it. but now, as the cards are laid down on the table and lili is asked to foresee what she could possibly do more — she feels affronted, almost affixed to her thoughts. “i feel like i’ve fallen short on my performance” — lili only says because coach jang insung had told her something along the same lines in passing the other day and if insung noticed, there was no way it wasn’t going to be brought up today. and lili knew better than to hide from the inevitable. “so, i’d probably work on my performance.” there was also that small stint as an extra for that film project, not much came of it but lili did like her time there even if she didn’t have lines, and if her face was covered — it was something. “maybe try working on my acting, actually being on a set had struck something in me, i guess. i couldn’t really stop thinking about it.” it was her way of saying she liked it without being so upfront about it. “i was also thinking of trying my hand at hosting but if i don’t like it … i could just keep working on my singing, i still have yet to really perfect my whistle tone.” 

“ IF GIVEN A CHANCE, WHAT TYPES OF GIGS WOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING? ”

“with my current understanding, i feel i would be better suited to modeling and acting opportunities. i am interested in hosting but i don’t think i’m quite well-suited to them yet. otherwise, for modeling and acting, i feel like while i lack experience, i have learned enough about the field and have shown my interest enough that i would be easier for me to adapt to them.” a long-winded answer that, in hindsight, sounds almost rehearsed. and for that, lili’s fingers sneak into the side of her trousers for a slight pinch. it was an answer — eloquent, smooth, almost convincing in nature — that almost mimicked something her grandmother would have ate up and lili … at this point in her consultation, wanted to be honest — apparently, some habits were just too hard to forgo. 

“ DURING YOUR TIME HERE IN LEGACY, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE LESSONS THAT YOU’VE LEARNED ABOUT YOURSELF? ”

while not something she learned while at legacy, she finds it’s something that is becoming more and more of a hindrance to her growth and it’s — “i’m impatient. i feel like i’m ready for whatever it is you’ve yet to guarantee me.” but no matter how impatient she is, she finds herself drowning in this impatience. “and it makes me make more mistakes than i’m used to. i feel like i need to learn better ways to calm myself and/or learn how to be patient.” the latter is easier said than done, so lili prays for the former more than anything. and while lili does not beg, her words seem to beg to differ. 

"we'll talk more in april."

lili leaves feeling like she’s said something she shouldn’t have. a fault of saying too much to ears that only nitpicked to their heart’s desire. a disadvantage, lili thinks, as she walks away from her meeting with youngjae with an almost bitter taste in her mouth. suddenly, lili did not care for how fast time felt. she did not look forward to april.