Go Futa's Blog

Hello once again K-Pop Idol Diaries readers! It’s been too
long since our last blog that finally, we can no longer say future readers, as vol.1 is out NOW on
Amazon – FREE for Kindle Unlimited readers. That’s right, at long last the
result of our blood, sweat, and tears is released in physical and digital
formats. We can’t thank enough the people behind us who helped make our dreams
possible, and the people who showed early interest in our story. None of this
has sunken in really as we’re super busy plotting out details of our next
volume, but we’ll make time to enjoy the fruits of our labor. Speaking of which,
have you read K-Pop Idol Diaries yet? If so, we’d love to hear what you think
(especially if it’s good! Haha) so please leave a positive review on Amazon and/or
Goodreads to share with others who might wanna get into the series. For those
who haven’t read yet, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! Haha! Just kidding, but please
don’t wait any longer, and enjoy the series on your next break – we promise
it’s a quick and fun read, and you’ll fall in love with the protagonist, Gigi,
in a heartbeat.

While we’re on the subject of Gigi,
it’s time to admit that she’s the main subject for this blog post. Why? Well,
not only is she the star of K-Pop Idol Diaries and she’s yet to have her own
blog feature, but because the Gangnam Goddess herself had a birthday this week,
on Sept. 13! Happy Birthday Gigi! Celebrations are in order, so let’s celebrate
by putting the spotlight on Gigi and getting a behind the scenes look at her
character development.

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

So, what can we say about Gigi? Well
if we were limited to three words, we’d probably say she’s strong, passionate,
and funny. Considering that the reader is reading the events of SKS-7’s journey
to debut and rise up the ranks of K-Pop superstardom, it was important that
Gigi comes off as relatable, likeable, and someone with a sense of humor, which
we believe shines well in her entries. It’s really fun for us to re-read the entries
from Gigi’s perspective, even though we wrote the story, so we hope that our readers
get the same impression. Overall, we think it’s easy for readers to want to
root for Gigi to succeed, especially in the first four entries.

In this volume, Gigi goes through a
lot of hardships, first from being at odds with her mom about signing with
One-Shot Entertainment, then joining and quickly leaving girl group SKS-8, only
to be at odds with her newly assigned co-ed group SKS-7, which showcases a lot
of drama on her end, but gave us a great opportunity to explore her character
development; more so than the other members of SKS-7. For instance, while we
only scratched the surface with the boys of SKS-7 and only had to reveal enough
about them for the purpose of making it through rehearsal, we had to establish
the family dynamic of Gigi, explore her background as an outcast, and show her
vulnerability when it comes to putting up a front to remain strong in
situations when she’s really losing it. This meant Gigi had to be a lot more
developed than the boys, or run the risk of having our story told by a narrator
who wasn’t fully realized. Consequently, we spent a lot of time fleshing out
her personality, playing out who she would and wouldn’t get along with, and her
relationship with her family, which believe it or not, was barely touched upon
in an earlier draft of the story – now we can’t even imagine the first chapter
without Oppa! Needless to say, it was important to make readers feel they know
Gigi despite the fact that there is more of her to explore. The irony isn’t
lost that Gigi’s full name is not revealed like the boys of SKS-7 – trust us,
this is intentional, and just simply food for thought…

When it comes to character design,
Gigi went through one or two design phases before settling on the look she has
today, but as seen in the image attached below, she did have the hair style in
Gigi’s entry “The Audition” so much hasn’t changed. We’ve received comments
that Gigi resembles I.O.I’s Chungha or BP’s Jennie, but her design isn’t based
on a single K-Pop star – rather we were inspired by the style of many of our
favorite K-Pop stars which resulted in the style of the Gangnam Goddess, which
is stated to be edgy and tomboyish. Overall, Gigi’s own style is said to be
inspired by her personal idol G6, who readers will know is obviously a parody
of G-Dragon, so readers should expect to see a little more of him as Gigi’s
style evolves following the debut of project SKS on MVNet in the next volume.
Will G6 himself make an appearance in volume 2? You’ll just have to wait and
see!

Speaking of volume 2, we’re working
on that now actually, but as we’ve stated in a blog interview,
we have a unique writing process that involves the both of us literally playing
out our story like a role play, with one of us portraying a group of characters
and the other portraying another set, which results in dialogue in the form of
a screenplay that is then adapted into a narrative as told by Gigi, which takes
a bit of time. An example of this process is that one twin plays the roles of
Bae, Cray-Z, and the twins, while the other twin plays the roles of Shine,
Rocky, and Gigi. Naturally, the twin assigned the role of Gigi has the most
difficult role as they also have to draft the narration of Gigi since they
understand Gigi’s thought process more than the other after subsequent
playthroughs. However, this really has led to a rather interesting process of
developing our story, and hopefully we can share a draft on our website soon.

Well, that pretty much sums up all we can reveal about Gigi
and the state of the next volume for now. We hope you look forward to getting
updates about the next volume – make sure to subscribe to our newsletter so you
don’t miss out on Gigi’s next entries. Until next time!

Fun
fact: Gigi’s birthday is on September 13th, which
isn’t a random date. Like the other members of SKS-7, Gigi’s birthday is set on
the birthday of a family member or close friend, or to align with an important
storyline.

Hey there (hopefully) future K-Pop Idol Diaries readers!
It’s been a while since we revealed a member of featured idol group SKS-7 from
our debut novel series coming out on July 21st. Therefore, we
thought we’d make up for it by revealing not one, but two members of SKS-7. We hinted for you to prepare for trouble, and
any OG Pokémon fan should’ve connected the dots to “make it double” – as the
last two members of SKS-7 are identical twins Michael & Jordan! Just as we
did with the previous reveals, we’re here to shed a little more light on the
“wonder twin” maknae of SKS-7, so let’s get right to it.

Being identical twins ourselves, it
was a no-brainer that we had to include identical twins in our story, and what
better way to include twins than to make them the highly favored maknae of the
group – after all, who doesn’t have a soft spot for the maknae of their fave
idol group (Jungkook, Taemin, I.N., Haechan)! The maknae is an important
position to hold in any idol group, so it would’ve been hard to develop one
member for this coveted role in our story, so that solidified our position to
just make two! They’re both pretty cute, right? UwU

As identical twins, it was somewhat
easier to develop the characteristics of the twins than some of the other
members, because we’d be able to use our experience as twins to flesh out more
depth than most twins in other stories. Honestly, aside from the Hitachin twins
from the Ouran Highschool Host Club, twins are usually stereotypes – good and
evil twin, carbon copies with little to no personality differences, or just
jokesters always trying to confuse others who can’t tell them apart (hmm, now
that we think about it, were the Hitachin twins tropes too?!)

Well, to avoid feeling one, or two
dimensional, we took traits from ourselves and assigned them to the twins so
they’d feel like two distinct individuals who just happen to look exactly the
same. For example, Michael and Jordan are born a minute apart – just like us -
and the twins look exactly the same, but are quite different. Michael is the
older twin and is more extroverted and loud compared to his younger twin, who
is shy, introverted, and would prefer to read manga than go out. Yep, that’s us
alright…well, except that we both enjoy reading manga, whereas Michael is more
into sports – more on that in a minute. We guess readers can look forward to
seeing what other differences the twins possess and will probably end up having
a favorite one. Although we’re completely fine if you grow to love them both
the same.

So back on the sports conversation,
yes, the twins are named after basketball GOAT Michael Jordan, and since
basketball is our favorite sport, we assigned that trait to Michael, who came
up with the name as homage to the GOAT in his quest to be in one of the
greatest idols of his generation. Another name idea was Kobe & Bryant for
obvious reasons, but Michael & Jordan just suited them better in the end.

Because the twins borrowed a lot of
elements from us, they probably went through the least changes story-wise, but
style wise, they went through the most. Besides their hair color, which we
quickly settled on bright red so that the twins could easily pop and stand out,
the faces of the twins went through various transformations. The first
iteration we drew had the twins looking much older than their current age of 15
– they arguably looked older than Bae, the 20-year-old hyung of SKS-7. That
look was abandoned in the second iteration, shown below, which looked closer to the twins
today, but the twins didn’t really look identical – Michael (on the right) looked a tad bit
older than Jordan.

Guess the third time’s the charm, because the third
iteration is the version you see before you today. We’re pretty happy with the
result.

Well, that about wraps up our behind the scenes look at the
boys of SKS-7 – which reminds us that the Gangnam Goddess herself is lacking a
detailed blog of her own. Guess that’ll be the next one in our blog series.
Stay tuned, and if you haven’t already, be sure to read the blogs of the other
members of SKS-7, as well as the FREE preview of vol.1 to get excited for our
book launch! ‘Til next time!

Fun
Fact: The burgundy blazers the twins are wearing are the uniforms
for the RisingStars Program hosted by One-Shot Entertainment, from which the
twins graduated before being placed in SKS-7.

Hello once again (hopefully) future K-Pop Idol Diaries
readers! Hope all who reads this is doing well in these times and is staying
safe. If you’re reading this, perhaps you’ve already read the sneak-peek of our
debut light novel K-Pop Idol Diaries (coming out on July 21st) on
our website. If so, I’m curious as to your thoughts. Feel free to leave a note
on this blog. If you haven’t, it’s not too late – read it here
and then share your thoughts.

           We’re
hoping you enjoy the sneak-peek, in addition to the character reveals we’ve
been doing every few weeks or so. Since starting off our reveal with series
star Gigi, we’ve now unveiled 4 members
of featured idol group SKS-7: Shine, Bae, Cray-Z, and just last week, Rocky. It
seems we have only 2 more members left to reveal for SKS-7 now – time sure
flies, as it seems like yesterday we were getting ready to post our first
member reveal. Before we begin preparations for the next member reveals, why
don’t we first shed some light on the latest SKS-7 member, Rocky.

           Rocky is
the “bad-boy” vocalist of SKS-7, and arguably more hot-tempered than Cray-Z.
His name comes from the titular star of the popular boxing film franchise,
which was chosen to match the intensity of Rocky’s stage persona – hard, raw,
and cool. However, Rocky’s portrayal in volume 1 is not a reflection of his
true nature. Contrary to what you’ll read, Rocky is actually laid back, chill,
and has a soft side! In fact, Rocky has so many layers, we find him the most interesting
character to write storylines for. Yes, as it stands, we have quite a few
volumes worth of storylines planned (which of course changes all the time), but
when reviewing our documents of planned storylines, there’s an abundance of
planned or abandoned storylines centered around Rocky. Does that make him our
favorite member of SKS-7? If not our favorite, he’s definitely up there in our
ranks.

           It’s hard
to remember for sure what order Rocky was created, but if memory serves us
right, Rocky was the last member to be developed, which is why he seems to have
the most traits retained from his original profile, including his original
sketch shown below, which shows him with the same hair style he sports today – although he
originally did have a tattoo on his neck. Perhaps he’ll get one later in the
series.

           Another
fact about Rocky that makes it easy to write for him is his background. Unlike
the other members of SKS-7 (the yet to be revealed members included), Rocky
wasn’t born in South Korea – in fact, he was born in the US, and therefore
speaks English – which is important for global promotions – and makes Rocky an
important factor for SKS-7’s future success overseas. That is if the group can
survive until debut with all the drama ensuing over Rocky’s strong opposition
to Gigi joining. Without giving too much away, Rocky does have reason to have
strong feelings about Gigi’s joining, and it has a lot to do regarding his
position as a vocalist in the group… Ugh, it’s so hard to talk about Rocky
without spoilers galore, so we’ll just stop here by saying to give Rocky a
chance before you completely hate his guts! Haha!

Fun
Fact: Rocky’s persona was developed from his days in an
underground rap trio – wait, then why isn’t Rocky in the rap line?

Hey there (hopefully) future K-Pop Idol Diaries readers!
We’ve been super busy getting things in order before volume 1 of our debut book
series launches this summer on July 21st. We released a sneak-peek
of volume 1 on our website which you can read here, so please take a look and
if you like, the link to pre-order should be there as well.

           Meanwhile,
we’re also still revealing the members of SKS-7, the featured idol group in the
series. In addition to series star Gigi, we’ve revealed Shine (SKS-7 leader)
and Bae (the hyung of SKS-7). Since then, we’ve also revealed SKS-7’s
flamboyant producer and lead rapper Cray-Z, whose reveal is the purpose of this
blog. We hinted last blog post that things were gonna get a little crazy, so
let’s get to it!

            Cray-Z,
whose stage name is obviously inspired by a particular real-life rapper, is an
extremely talented musician with a love for hip-hop and the hype performances it
brings. He was one of the first characters in development back in 2017, but has
since gone through considerable changes in terms of back story and attitude
since his original origins (all for the better, trust us). One thing that
hasn’t changed about Cray-Z is the way he styles his stage persona. With
hip-hop elements such an essential part of K-Pop, Cray-Z decided that in order
to stand out amongst the crowd, he needed to look the part of his stage name,
hence the red & blue color contact combo he’s sporting in his profile
picture. He certainly looks a little crazy, but in a fun way, which is why it
was fun to draw/color him and think about other ways he might try to stand out
once SKS-7 debuts. Some other ideas were white-zombie contacts, but that looked
a little jarring to have as a profile picture, so we thought a quirky
mismatched color combo would suffice to get a sense of his crazy personality
and style choices. We imagine that if SKS-7 were real, it would be Cray-Z in
particular that netizens would want to see in between comebacks to talk about
his fashion and other aesthetic choices. We’ll definitively have some fun
drawing Cray-Z in SKS-7 group photos – he’s one of our favorite members, but we
think readers will disagree after reading the first volume.

           Why you
might ask? Well, we don’t want to give away spoilers just yet, but as our book
preview states, Gigi joins an experimental co-ed idol group, and the boys
aren’t so thrilled by her presence in their
group. Well, no one feels more strongly against Gigi joining than Cray-Z,
which makes him somewhat of a villain this volume! But while it might be easy
to dismiss Cray-Z as somewhat of a jerk (for lack of a better word), there is definitely
some depth to him that will unravel as the story progresses.

           With Cray-Z
revealed, we can also reveal that all the rapline of SKS-7 is complete – which
consists of Gigi, Shine, and Cray-Z. The rest of the members belong to the
vocal line along with Bae… well, sort of. It would be too much of a spoiler to
go into detail, so we’ll leave you to wonder until the next SKS-7 member
reveal. Hint: rocky road up ahead!

Fun Fact: Cray-Z and
his obsessive hobby of gaming is based off the traits of another character we
developed for a different story, but we transferred those traits to Cray-Z in
subsequent drafts of his character.

Hello once again (hopefully) future
K-Pop Idol Diaries readers. It’s been a couple weeks since the we revealed
Shine, the leader of SKS-7 and lead rapper. Now we’ve revealed the second
member over the weekend, lead dancer and hyung of SKS-7, Bae. Just as our last
blog provided a bit more background into Shine’s creation, so is the purpose of
this blog. Let’s begin, shall we?! 

           But first,
if you haven’t seen the character profile on Bae yet, don’t hesitate to visit
our official site now  (if you already have,
thanks! Haha) Bae, with his mint green hair inspired by one of our favorite
color trends in idol hair style, is the oldest member of SKS-7, but as we
revealed last blog, this title originally went to Shine. However, we decided to
give the title to Bae after a period of reconstruction where we thought it
would help progress the story if Bae was older and his level of influence would
hold a lot of sway for his dongsaeng (younger members). Plus, with Bae’s
childish tendencies, we thought it might be cute if despite being the oldest
member, he didn’t quite act his age. The reason for this is because of Bae’s
position in his own family, being the youngest of three children, and therefore
never having a chance to be anyone’s older brother. Now ironically, he must
adapt to gaining 5 younger brothers and now a younger sister with the addition
of Gigi in the group; which none of the members are particularly thrilled
about. However, with Bae’s personality, perhaps that may change by the first
volume…?

           Speaking of
Bae’s personality, we imagine it matching his dance style, which is energetic
and bright – think BTS’ J-Hope. When he’s dancing, you don’t wanna take your
eyes off him. It’d be nice if there were an “anime” adaption to show off Bae’s
dance skills, but we’ll leave that to the reader’s imagination XD

           Like Shine,
Bae’s appearance hasn’t changed much from his original conception. He still has
freckles, which we personally think is a cute trait, along with dark hair
covering most of his forehead. This is true by the fact that in volume 1 Bae’s
hair actually won’t be mint green! However, since his hair will be dyed mint
green by the time SKS-7 debuts, we thought it was OK to display Bae this way in
his profile photo.

Another interesting thing about Bae, though not seen in his
original concept art – he actually wears braces. No, this isn’t uncommon, as
Stray Kids’ I.N. debuted sporting braces, and Bae is no different. Aside from
one of us thinking braces gives one a cute youthful appearance and therefore
fits Bae well, is there an actual reason Bae has braces? Well, you’ll have to
read to find out. We promise it’s not just an aesthetic choice ;)

           We hope
you’ll like Bae as his story unfolds. For now, we’ll be working on updating our
site for the next character reveal. Here’s a hint: things are gonna get a lot
“crazier” from here!

Fun Fact: Bae,
along with Gigi, are the only characters drawn on traditional pencil and paper.
The others members of SKS-7 are digitally drawn. Therefore, Bae was drawn in
June 2019, whereas Shine was digitally redrawn late November last year.  

Hello (hopefully) future K-Pop Idol Diaries readers. It’s
been 2 weeks since we kicked off promotions for our debut light novel series
this summer. Have you explored the website reveal? If not, we really encourage
you to do so as it’s the best place to get answers to questions such as:

These are the interesting questions
we’ve been getting on social media since we launched, which is interesting since we always include the
link, but we’re learning without clear messaging in our promotions, people tend
to forgo getting questions from the site and ask directly in interesting ways. We plan on starting a
concurrent blog series on our interesting
self-publishing journey to share and get tips from others authors in our boat.

But anyway, for those who have
visited the site, thank you! That means you most likely have already seen the
profile of the first SKS-7 member reveal – the group leader Shine! It’s
appropriate that Shine would be the first character reveal, as he’s the second
character after Gigi we thought of back in 2017 - although he has gone through
a few changes since his original incarnation. For example, Shine was originally
the oldest member of the group, which was one of the contributing factors to
him being the leader, but after developing the other characters, Shine’s age
lowered to his current age of 18. We guess we gave a hint that he’s not the
oldest member of SKS-7 (he’s yet to be revealed), but we can confirm that Shine
also isn’t the maknae (youngest member). Here’s an early B&W sketch of
Shine back from 2017, which reflects an arguably more mature look – the art
style was also still in development, too.

One constant about Shine that he
retains from his original incarnation is that we knew he had to have pink cotton candy hair. Why? Well, simply because a lot
of our fave idols have sported pink hair at one time or another, and it really
stands out. If Shine is to make a strong first showing, then we thought pink dyed
hair would be a good way for him to make a lasting impression. Here’s another
early concept art of Shine in 2018, and as you can see, he and pink hair go way
back.

Aside from being the group leader, Shine’s other roles in
the group is lead rapper and main dancer, so Shine is quite well-rounded and
he’s known amongst One-Shot trainees as being able to do it all. So it’s no
surprise that when we thought of Shine, the idea was that he was “Mr. Perfect”
which of course means there’s something behind his perfect image. We will
definitely unravel those layers in future chapters, so we hope you’ll stick
around to see the character development of Shine and eventually grow to love
him as the leader of SKS-7.

Fun
Fact: Shine’s real name, Tae-yang, means “sun” in Korean, which is
the inspiration for his nickname.

Hello everyone, welcome to my first ever blog.

Well, more appropriately our blog. It turns out that Go Futa is actually the pen name of a writing/art pair
of identical twin sisters, which is why we wondered how we might approach writing
a blog under the Go Futa pen name. Moving forward, we thought it might
be easier to use the plural pronouns “we”, “our”, etc., to make it easier for both of us to start blogging.

So what do we intend to blog about? Well, we are in the midst of self-publishing our first book series, and we wanted to share our journey to writing/drawing/self-publishing our debut series with other writers and hopefully future readers.

The name of our series is called K-Pop Idol Diaries – a series by K-Pop fans, for K-Pop fans – which we have been developing for almost 3 years now. It follows the journey of Gigi, an aspiring K-Pop idol who documents her foray into idol life following a successful audition with one of the biggest agencies in South Korea, and eventual placement in the experimental Project SKS - a multi-unit idol group with plans to take over the music scene. For those interested, here’s a link to our series’ official site: https://kpop-idol-diaries.com

We hope that people will visit our website and check out this story and
group of characters and become invested in them as much as we have. However, if you visit the site as of this date, you will notice that just Gigi and one other member of the main cast is revealed. Each member will be revealed in a future date so stay tuned.

Fun Fact: we designed the entire official website ourselves, so we pulled double duty as web developers as well. Sleep is for the weak! Zzzz…