𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍𝐄.

woong is from seoul, which is where he spent the first seven (7) years of his life. but then his parents divorced super suddenly & his dad ~kept the house~ so woong, his mom and his four siblings had to find somewhere else to go. they ended up moving to handong-ri on jeju island and settling in with the mom’s parents on their tangerine farm. so....... yeah he moved from seoul to a fuckin village 😭

really spacious house, really spacious property, really pretty property, but woong was not happy at all. he missed seoul & missed his dad, who made no effort to continue being a father figure after the divorce which was also Really Shocking because he was a great dad before that.

but, life goes on. woong was still really young anyway, so he adjusted to the farm life + to jeju. he ended up finding an activity that got him off the farm and that he actually really, really liked, too  —  soccer!!! he was a fast learner, naturally athletic so he did well and his coach had a LOT of faith in him. eventually he formed the plan to return to seoul as an athlete / to train in a big sports center there but y’know... life can’t be that easy.

aka he got badly injured during a match in 2013 / when he was 16. managed to tear BOTH his acl and pcl, so his leg was Fucked. had to get surgery and the whole recovery process (including physical therapy) took a year and some change. very bad time. i would even call it a Horrible time. he didn’t feel like he was good at anything other than soccer so he was like damn... how am i gonna get out of here now?

but he had his height and his subjective good looks going for him 🤪 in 2014, he had more or less recovered as well as he was going to, was kinda tentative about trying soccer again but Wanted to. before he could work up the courage, he was street casted by a dimensions rep. his family clowned him hard for thinking it was real so he kinda went to the audition to prove that he’s not THAT dumb, kinda went bc he needed an excuse to get tf back into a city, man. handong was NOT cutting it for him.

long story short he became a trainee from pure luck (and some natural talent ig), moved to seoul which fucked up his family relationships to some extent bc him leaving was VERY sudden, no one except his oldest sister even knew that he had been planning to leave for sports. assumed he’d stay there forever, thought it was fucked up that he was so quick to run away.

i’m gonna jump ahead to 2021... i wouldn’t really say that he hates unity, but he definitely feels like an outsider looking in. doesn’t have a background in music, so being an idol at all still feels really weird, but especially with unity’s ~experimental~ music.

he’s distant. when he was younger (and even in his earlier idol days), he was nice enough. not loud, but would laugh and play along with others if they spoke to him first, would reach out to others first on occasion. but his company-assigned image is a mix between tsundere & the “assa” / outsider type; detached, fine on his own, a bit cold/mean/aggressive. like vixx’s leo earlier on but a little more toned-down. going with the outsider portion, he also has the clueless/living under a rock vibe going for him, so fans call him caveman woong 💀 it used to be JUST an image but ultimately fucked up his ability to connect with other people so now he’s rly like that most of the time (and really doesn’t keep up with the world LOL) you can talk to him but his social skills are so bad now that he’ll ignore you but not on purpose.... mf just doesn’t know what to say ever bc he’s been told Not To Talk so much.

he isn’t.... necessarily... mean. he can be, but i’d personally say that he’s more of a self-focused, no bullshit type. really lonely guy who doesn’t know how to interact with others anymore. i guess he wants to relearn people skills, but he’s not trying at the moment. content to just float around in his bubble.

known for being really strong/athletic, which has become one of his very few defining characteristics as an idol. he cannot count the times that he’s shown off his strength by holding a note while splitting fruit on variety shows or dribbled soccer balls for extended periods of time. He’s Tired.

a lesser-known skill he shows off sometimes is his ability to identify plants. if you don’t know him as the athletic guy or the cold guy, you probably know him as the nature guy. he has most korea-native plants memorized and he’s currently working on learning exotic plants. one unspoken goal he has is to show off on a show like law of the jungle.

he raises a bunch of different fish / water-dwelling creatures. has three different tanks.

talks to his fish like they’re babies. if you ever catch him doing this, no you didn’t <3

he used to be REALLY secretive about his family, only ever said that he used to live in jeju but never shared details or clarified any speculations. his privacy disappeared when his family started promoting the tangerine farm as “a place full of unity’s woong’s charms” and allowing visitors, which pissed him off SO BAD because they were making money off of HIS labor... and then they realized he has a lot of fans & they couldn’t handle it, so they closed off the farm to the public again. somehow, this made him even more angry.

woong was first introduced to bird-watching when he was around eight years old. all he really did outside of school was sit under the same tree and feel sorry for himself, so his grandma eventually realized he needed a distraction from his Woe Is Me attitude. the solution? “going grocery shopping in town.”

woong hated the farm, so he’d always eagerly accept an opportunity to get away. however, they never actually went grocery shopping. every single time, she’d take him to some little corner of nature and whip out her binoculars.

he fell for this shit every time!!! why? because he was eight.

for a while, he’d complain about how boring it was, how boring she was, how he didn’t understand why he had to sit around and look at a bunch of birds just ‘cause she didn’t want to do it alone. too young and oblivious to realize that she was really just trying to share her peace/happiness with him, and in retrospect, he does feel guilty about all the times he gave her hell for it.

eventually he started playing soccer, which took up most of his time & he used it as an excuse to not go bird-watching with her anymore, but once he stopped he realized that he... kind of missed it? what the fuck?

but he didn’t go bird-watching again until he was around 17, a very lonely trainee in seoul who just wanted to feel connected to something again. started out just chilling in parks when he had free time, looking at the pigeons and feeding them even though it usually lead to someone telling him That’s Not Allowed!

the hobby stayed pretty simple until he debuted, which is when he really, really needed a distraction. he bought binoculars & bird-watching books and started taking day-trips when he wasn’t busy to random places that strangers on the internet said were good for spotting birds — for some reason, he was embarrassed about this hobby, so he never talked about it to anyone. in 2021, it’s still really secretive.

because of his desire to keep this hobby a secret, he covers his face really well when he’s on a bird-watching trip. scarves, sunglasses, mask... sometimes he looks super shady, but he doesn’t care.

if you ever run into him on an off-day and see his bird-watching book, binoculars, or his Bird Notebook in his hands... no you didn’t.

speaking of the bird notebook, taewoong isn’t artistically inclined by any means, but he likes to sketch the birds that he sees. just rough sketches, obviously, though every now and then he’ll get ahead of himself and try to make them look better. he takes notes too: things like their behavior, where exactly he saw them.

one of his favorite things is going on picnics by himself, just chilling somewhere private and spending a few hours watching birds. it’s A Healing Experience.

posts anonymously on bird-watching forums, asks for the best places in korea (or abroad, when he’s on tour) to see certain types of birds. always has incognito mode on because he will NOT be caught slipping.

his favorite birds are cormorants, masked boobies, turtle doves, pigeons and snow geese, but he likes anything with wings. there are birds he’d rather avoid or ones that he isn’t as excited to see, but he doesn’t really have one he blatantly Doesn’t Like.

sun in capricorn — poor self-expression, inclination to be uptight, views life itself as a competition. stuck somewhere between not giving a damn about what he does or doesn’t do and wanting to be on top at all times. competitive, which leads to bursts of extreme effort followed by periods of nonchalance.

sore loser. doesn’t matter if he loses in a true competition or in a board game; he’s gonna be a bitch about it.

doesn’t know how to have fun.

ascendant in capricorn — not necessarily self-centered, but definitely self-focused. cares more about making himself succeed than helping others succeed. often said to be “too serious” and, to people who don’t know him, his default expression can even look a bit sad. deep thinker.

moon in aries — deep-rooted feelings of inferiority. always thinks that he needs to prove himself, whether or not he’s actually being evaluated. bragger, show-off, whatever. 

mercury in capricorn — values introspection, but somehow still seems out of touch with himself and with others. lots of deep, serious thoughts, but extremely poor communication skills. rarely says what he’s thinking, and at times, it’s almost like he expects people to read his mind. gets upset when he isn’t understood.

venus in capricorn — very, very cautious in getting close to others, whether romantically or platonically. a fear of betrayal and rejection means that woong would rather spend the rest of his life alone than admit that he’s in love with someone or let someone become his ‘best friend’. privacy, privacy, privacy; it’s one of his biggest values, even though it leads to plenty of loneliness. spontaneous people scare him the most, though he was the same way just a couple years ago.

mars in libra — passive-aggressive. doesn’t have enough self-control to soothe his temper, but lacks the communication skills needed to outright say when he’s bothered. tends to beat around the bush, but even when his point is acknowledged, he’ll be like “no, it’s fine”. eye roll.

no one’s a mind-reader, but you better learn how to read his or he’ll riot!!! (quietly, while saying that everything’s good :))

jupiter in capricorn — focused, serious, self-reliant. “it’ll happen because i have a plan”. doesn’t waste time on useless, time-consuming side-projects. looks at the bigger picture and thinks about what will help him the most in the long run.

doesn’t accept handouts.

saturn in aries — always on guard. sensitive to criticism, likely to lash out when he feels like he’s being attacked/cornered, even if it’s all in his head. feels like he has a lot to prove, so he can be a show-off at times. not above lying to make himself seem better than he is in whatever way necessary.

woong has jaehyun & jungwoo’s lines, which means he gets a lot of center time and a lot of killing parts in unity’s songs.

he used to not think much about it because he was just happy to be involved, i guess; he didn’t undervalue or overvalue himself, just viewed unity as a fun little group project and all he really had to do was carry his weight.

but as he’s aged, fame his undoubtedly gotten to his head. now he’s a bit arrogant, a bit full of himself, a bit “i don’t even have to lift a finger, i can just stand here and i’ll still be successful”. thinks he’s built different ig

he doesn’t pursue any solo activities outside of unity and turns away from any opportunities that may be presented to him for a few different reasons, mainly because he doesn’t want dimensions to get any more money from him than they already do and he thinks he’s already doing more than enough just by Being Sexy (his words)

his image is meant to be kinda cold and “chic”, the Unattainable Cool Guy, tsundere.... something like that? known best for his on-stage and off-stage smolder. very sharp stare, if he doesn’t like something or want to be somewhere, it shows. resulted in some criticism earlier on, but now fans like it.

i don’t think he pulls in many solo stans, though — he’s interesting at first, but it takes a special kind of person to stay interested once it becomes obvious that he’s not the type who opens up over time, warms up, or shows affection to fans. there’s a very high fence between him and everyone else, impossible to cross.

blunt, smart-ass relationship with his fans. he isn’t mean to them (he knows better), but if he’s doing a livestream and listening to music in the background but a fan requests for him to play something else, he’ll be like “if you’re here to listen to music, just leave and do that on your own. i’ll listen to what i like, okay?”

getting him to do aegyo is impossible. he might’ve done it a couple times when he was a rookie, but now he redirects the requests to the fan who asked, or to other members if he was asked on some kind of interview.

he pushes his luck a lot. while he IS valuable, he overestimates his value within unity and even within the company itself, thinks he can get away with a lot just ‘cause he’s moon taewoong. but on the other hand, he knows that he doesn’t actually have a whole lot to offer in any other field, so he hasn’t quite reached the “i don’t give a single fuck” point yet. keeps himself in line because he needs $$$ money $$$

boss.  musically-speaking, woong thinks that boss is unity’s best title track. he was pretty shocked the first time he heard the instrumental, was not at all expecting to hear a unity song that didn’t immediately make his head hurt. while the sound is still kind of ~experimental~, he genuinely thinks that it works??? this is probably the era where he looked the most comfortable on stage because he didn’t entirely hate the song he was performing.

kick it.  kick it is a guilty pleasure. woong hates to admit that he likes it, but he..... really does. he thinks it’s a fun song (he still knows how to have fun??? wow!) and while it’s kind of tiring to perform, he wasn’t mad about having to perform it. he thought the stage stylings were cool, too, but that’s another thing he won’t admit.

punch.  again, woong doesn’t like admitting that he enjoys this song, but he does. tries to blame it on the fact that he’s getting SO used to unity’s messy songs that they simply don’t strike him as bizarre anymore because god forbid he ever admits that he still enjoys things sometimes. as much shit as he talks about unity’s music, he’s more of a performance-focused person anyway and he thinks that punch was just..... cool.

regular.  woong liked regular, but by the time that it was released, he had fallen deep into his “money above everything else” mindset and his paranoid ass thought that it was a call-out, so he acted uninterested. “damn, could never be me” type beat. but by the end of promotions, he had loosened up a little and was having fun with it.

the 7th sense.  if taewoong knew what was ahead of him, he would’ve appreciated the 7th sense so much more. he thought it was kind of outside the box for a debut song, was kind of bitchy during promotions because he was in physical pain from not knowing what tf to do about the injuries he was hiding atm, was reported to look “bored” or “angry” on stage. the 7th sense.... come back to him. he’ll treat u better this time <3

limitless.  something about limitless feels inexplicably eerie to woong. he’s tried to talk about it before and his fans just told him to shut tf up (fair enough), but the feeling is still there??? you might think it would make him not like limitless, but it’s the opposite. he thinks it’s kind of interesting, wouldn’t mind dropping another song like it.

firetruck.  firetruck felt (and still feels) like a fever dream to taewoong. the first time he heard it, he absolutely hated it. the second time, he hated it even more. even by the time recording was done, it was released and they were promoting it, he! still! hated! it! but... then he watched the comments slowly go from saying “this made my ears bleed” to “wait, this is kinda good though?” over the course of a few weeks, then a few months. ended up becoming begrudgingly fond of firetruck as he watched others warm up to it. 

without you.  as someone who complains about unity’s experimental sound so much, you’d think that their one relatively normal-sounding title track would be higher up in the list. however, woong’s really particular/picky about music (shocker!) and this song reminds him a lot of one direction. he’s not about that.

touch.  he doesn’t really have any actual issues with touch, it’s just that the concept didn’t fit his assigned image at all and he didn’t like reading comments about how ~it’s nice to see him lighten up for once~ or, alternatively, ~woong doesn’t suit this~. felt awkward promoting touch, so it can kiss his ass. goodbye.

cherry bomb.  woong doesn’t like anything about cherry bomb and can’t even be bothered to pretend like he does. it’s not his least favorite, he just thinks that it??? sucks??? when he read comments clowning the “if you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands!” part, he couldn’t even blame them. he thinks it’s dumb, too.

simon says.  all that woong has to say about this song is what the fuck? he actually thought that it was okay the first couple of times he heard it, but by the end of promotions, he started to think that it sounds an awful lot like radio static and random stations bleeding together ‘cause the signal’s bad.