sorry in advance because cube lore is my specialest interest and ive been dying to talk about cube woochan for literally years... if youre interested in his cube history, ill direct you to my unabridged cube timeline here: https://princesshakky.dreamwidth.org/860.html

but ill also summarize his story and add my thoughts as someone who was following him for years before he ever stepped foot into hybe. he first enters cube around 2015-2016, when he was 10-11 years old, and he was revealed in a pentagon predebut mv (alongside lightsum juhyeon!) he goes on SMTM in june 2017, being the youngest contestant ever i think but making it quite far. then hes officially revealed in a post on the cube trainee instagram in late 2017 and also often seen at cube post-broduce with seonho and other trainee oscar wang. woochan then participates in a one-off collab group called OGZSCHOOL in 2018 before going quiet. in 2019, he leaves cube in july, citing academic reasons (because he's literally 14) but interestingly lai guanlin also leaves cube in the same month by filing a lawsuit against cube. before this point, i think cube was toying around with a lineup built around seonho and guanlin that may or may not included woochan, but guanlin leaving kinda derailed their plans. in my opinion, cube thought woochan was too young and if he didnt make the 2019 lineup, it would make sense for him to just leave rather than wait it out. cube doesn't do solo artists and they were locked in on perfecting their next boy group lineup, so i dont think there would've been space for woochan. the academic reason does also make a lot of sense considering how young he was, though after he left, he still seemed to be interested in making music.

i kept occasional tabs on him after that (2019-2020) and he had a youtube channel where he posted a song or two but mostly neglected, and sporadically updated his instagram. around this time, i thought he was going down the independent rapper artist path and focusing on his education (at HANLIM omg) until the rumours of him being at hybe surfaced in 2021. i investigated and even though he was a hidden member of trainee A, i did feel confident it was him (he posted hints on his instagram lol, wild times) i was really excited when he was properly revealed as a trainee A member because wow woochan is going places! he has had impressive talent for rap and music since SMTM and seeing him get into hybe felt like he was finally being recognized for it. i didnt follow trainee A super close but then the scandal happened in 2022 and leo left and things fell apart. i still remember woochan releasing sherpa, a really personal song that i recommend all woochan fans check out, and thinking will any cube boy actually be free from suffering?? there was a moment when hybe was teasing boynextdoor and i was hoping woochan stuck around and got reshuffled into it... tbh i think he wouldnt have been a bad fit? but alas...

he occasionally updated his instagram throughout 2023 and i still have some old screenshots of his posts lol. but then he did a big rebrand and archived all his old posts and posted a black and white profile shot in 2024. i was curious what he'd do but he went quiet again until suddenly theres talk about the new the black label co-ed group in 2025... i wasnt even expecting anything but then BOOM woochan is debuting! holy shit! i was excited for him and i did check out adp's debut but you know... tarzzan's existence... i didnt get that into adp for that reason but it was so interesting to see other people perceiving woochan for the first time and to see his current personality.

prefacing my opinion here by saying even though i sound like a heavily invested fan of woochan, i actually didnt watch most of his content. i just kept obsessive tabs on most guys who have trained at cube because im crazy. but i felt like he did change over the years, particularly post-trainee A, and im not sure how much of it is the kpop industry and how much is just puberty and growing up. i was kind of disappointed when i saw that video of him saying "how can you like me" to a male fan on live... its obvious what he means and very honestly, it kinda turned me off him. (literally yesterday i was looking at cute interactions between nowz and male fans) i dont know if he was always like this but TBL definitely has a different environment/company culture from cube or even hybe. maybe its the industry people that he's around (maybe this is an extremely deep cut, idk what the average woochan fan knows about him: he attended choiza's wedding in 2023...) maybe its the cube/trainee A trauma, maybe its how successful adp ended up becoming, maybe its him just growing up, but i feel like he has an ego now. on one hand im glad his talent and his dream to be an artist is being recognized but on the other hand i feel like he's changed between trainee A and now, not a moral judgement here but an observation. again, i dont follow him too closely! id love to hear more of your thoughts as a trainee A follower, i didnt end up getting into them then but it's funny that things are coming full circle and all of them have debuted now. watching leowon on b2p and knowing them makes the photo of leowon at woochan's graduation more sentimental. let me know what you think!

ok let me think…
keita- alpha for sure. the only time i would want him to be an omega is if yunseo is an alpha, like a subversive thing.
hanbin- i think he would have to be an omega but he would have a difficult time dealing with it at first. he probably feels a certain way about it
leejeong- this man is the definition of beta. at most he can be the right hand alpha?? but hes a beta
yunseo- i feel like its fun to play with this guy, he can be anything you want. i think alpha yunseo who comes out softer than the others is fun, beta yunseo unrequited love for an alpha and/or omega, omega yunseo yearning for a mate and a family etc
seungeon- i can see him as either a beta or an alpha. he isnt always the rowdy one or the one jumping the gun but he has his moments. he knows what he wants
munjung- alpha. its only been clearer over time lol.
jihoo- hmmmm idk… i feel like he may be a beta? i dont get omega from him but i dont feel strongly about him as an alpha…?

i dont have super strong ideas about any of their omegaverse sec genders and im open minded! im interested in public opinion. let me know how you feel about these anon!

listen. above everything else im a yaoi purveyor. in order to push my alpha haneum agenda, i will be open to any and all haneum pairings. i really enjoyed neumnil though i think junil got cut from inkode and maybe will become a normie for good. that size difference and dacryphilia and hanlim boy best friends storyline is just soooo delicious but rip.

i have been considering liyuneum more but i am approaching it cautiously because im not a huge fan of the popular fanon liyuneum. i feel like people arent capitalizing enough on haneum's manhandling tendencies?? hes not very rough with liyu either though, its mostly with sanghyeon. i also dont think liyu is very omega-coded hes just like... a typical gay taiwanese guy to me. kinda beta coded. i mean liyuneum are definitely close and theyre cute friends but i havent seen anything so far that makes my fujoshi brain click... im watching though. im looking for an angle to push alpha haneum... ive considered them as hybrids, deer hybrid haneum and rabbit hybrid liyu, prey animals dynamic...

i did make a goal in my mind to try my hand at liyuneum if they end up debuting in some kind of group together though. im open to it but i just need more to work with lol

haolong is more interesting to me conceptually right now, they really have barely interacted on camera and they don't seem super close out of the people in haidilaoz. its like my yaoi forecasting... haolong is like a wine that's being fermented right now its not ready yet.

hengyu saying he likes jiahao because of taemin... i think hengyu is actually a real freak. have you seen him calling various other guys (including those who are younger than him) oppa? and then saying at his fanmeeting that the word he wants to hear the most/encourages him the most/makes him happiest is oppa? he has a weird oppa kink and its very funny to me... haha...

haoxin is fun! i appreciate how comfortable they are with each other and how they adore each other. anxin thinks the world of jh and i think thats beautiful, plus the tropes you mentioned are fun. ill try looking for the leowonhao you mentioned lol. i miss b2p c as well... i wanted to see more of early show jiahao when he was cutting jack's hair and everything... ugh. sometimes i think about how people like jack and binghua haunt the meta-narrative long after they leave the show. planet k didnt get there until midway or latter parts of the show.

neumgeon is fascinating to me in theory and in the small bits they say or imply. like haneum saying theyve known each other since they were 15 really struck me. plus the cube boy nostalgia... i think they have a fondness for each other and a bond but theyve grown into different people now and they interact with each other in a different way... fascinating.

why were leejeong's pants unzipped and unbuckled at leowon's apartment? does that mean we're looking right at his underwear? things to think about. leejeong/leowon is appealing because i barely saw leo and leejeong interact. meanwhile leejeong and sangwon... leading me to my next point about 03z. sangwon and kangmin are hanlim boy best friends which makes me sick but they have a history together so it makes sense that they are gonna recruit other 03z to join them. sangwon formed a friendship with leejeong because theyre both artsy freaks and have sunho as a mutual, and leejeong (trying to hit) is gonna follow sangwon like a puppy. (other topic: fascinating that geonwoo isn't included in 03z activities. he doesnt really fit in the friend group bc he isn't an art hoe but neither is kangmin until now... lol)

i did see sangwon and sunho's instagram interactions its crazy!!! i feel like they probably got close in that 2023-2024 post trainee A era through friends of friends because they seem like they'd belong to the same kind of artsy, idol-adjacent but most importantly gay social circle. the vibe i see in them is like flirty friends to fwb to comfortable friends (now that leowon are basically glued together...) which is such a fun dynamic. especially because sunho and leejeong have their crazy history.

sunho asking for face pics and not liking leejeong's pants down pic at leowon's apartment... kind of delicious. kind of amazing. sunho being doomed cjes trainee yaoi with leejeong then finding the hot artsy gay community and being fwb with sangwon and then finally back with leejeong again is a crazy journey. also drawing attention to sunho posting neoguri that leejeong made (at his house?) at dawn after chuseok. idk i just feel insane that leejeong was bouncing on it until 6am and then cooking instant noodles for his man after. these people are so crazy and gay its so fun

ok gonna preface this by saying im a cubehead so this answer will be cube heavy. ive been in cube entertainment's business long before kim geonwoo has ever stepped foot in that building and ive known about his nametag on the cube lockers in yeeun's selfie since 2021. AND. im the one who first mistakenly labelled jang jinhyuk as kim geonwoo before we learned all of their names. lol

most of the guys who spent time at cube still look back on that time fondly. i especially see this with sung hanbin who doesn't get as noticeably emotional about anything as much as his cube past. like the way he talks about his cube friends is so soft and you can tell he loved them a lot. not even going to get into the mattbin of it all... a lot of the cube guys had real and close friendships with each other. they practiced together day in and day out (haha) but also lived together in a dorm, went on field trips and took care of each other. of course they were bonded together. from the endless 4cuts to exchanging the saddest letters on earth to making rings together, all of them had their inside jokes and gifts for each other.

i genuinely dont think geonwoo was a horrible person based on what the former cube boys have said about him. both hanbins and min spoke fondly of him and i dont think they would do that unless they loved him for real. there's that one clip of shanbin completely falling limp when he sees geonwoo is performing on mcountdown that i think about. plus park hanbin's story about geonwoo fighting off his attempts to kiss him until when hanbin had to leave and geonwoo was so sad he let hanbin kiss him. idk. breaks my heart a bit.

but on the other hand, i also think the "scandal" is partially true. i think when he was at bill entertainment, geonwoo did act in a way that made other people feel bullied or treated horribly. he basically admits as much in his apology (that he deleted.. hm) and it's somewhat corroborated by donggun, but from what i understand geonwoo seems to have a more playful/cocky/abrasive personality that was egged on by his environment (bill staff?) rather than being inherently evil. for this reason, i dont think i can ever be a full throated geonwoo stan or anything, but i can tolerate his existence in ald1.

so how do we reconcile these two sides of geonwoo? i think geonwoo started as a dorky little kid who bounced through that stint in source music but cube was always gonna be the place for him. he has that cube in him; that hungry, driven and slightly manic energy that cube looks for and more importantly, actively cultivates. it makes sense that he was close to park hanbin lol. but i think that changed when he left cube. he was soooo close to debut. he was the last member who was cut out of the lineup in 2022 for reasons still unknown, though i doubt he left on his own terms? if he was cut, i can understand him having a generational crashout... i suspect being cut out of cube is what changed geonwoo when he went to bill instead.

as a cubehead i understand geonwoo. hes been a trainee for so long but specifically at cube only to get cut last minute. that does things to people. so i can see how he might have changed drastically as a result... it seems he went into b2p being really confident that he's going to debut and acted that way, though i think he also learned from the scandal as well... i think he's more mindful about the way he acts with other people now. hes in the category of cube boys im going to keep up with, especially for future lore drops, but i just feel sad when i look at him and think about his cube trauma

omggg idkkkk im too scared to find them lol... theyll just have to find me somehow. im really curious about jiahao's (arno's?) potential ships. i like haoxin more as a platonic pair but i see the appeal, im more curious about him and xinlong because there's a lot of interesting dynamics between them to dissect. experienced with idolhood and fresh face, overly polite hyung and overly polite dongsaeng, master of sex appeal and sexually repressed child idol, two of three member c-line, haidilaoz, etc... i also like sangwon flirting with him a little bit during one of the lives, fun on its own but also as a way for sangwon to make leo a bit jealous... etc. (unrelated but i am struggling to get used to saying arno instead of jiahao loll)

k-rpstwt is really onto some crazy stuff. they know what they are about. xinkkang (top anxin is important) is super popular and im definitely on board. a nicher kfan ship that i really enjoyed was xinlong/nian boheng! and neumgeon (love top haneum but I'm surprised kfans prefer bottom geonwoo here) is also fairly popular and i love it for cube lore reasons. theyve known each other since they were 15... but ald1 wise im fairly open to everything. i see kfans are going hard on the geonsang, i understand the appeal but i need to see more-- i want to see how they talk to each other when no one's around. also im getting completely flooded with genderbent fanart from this season it's actually crazy!! from straight up yuri to half-genderbent pairs, ive seen it all. i liked the hzx/leejeong yuri era but these days i see boy geonwoo/girl members of ald1 (usually sangwon and maybe sanghyeon) fanart more. crazy stuff out there