closed.

it's always so hard for me to decide whether to use their stage names or real names in a story. on the one hand, real names sound very natural and seem to be the preference of most readers, but on the other hand, for me, it feels too personal TT so even if I use their real names in my fic, I still type winter/karina in drafts and then change it to jimin/minjeong when I post it
          	
          	but the problem with stage names, particularly in stories set in seoul, is that it seems kind of weird that a native korean woman has a foreign name out of nowhere, and no one is questioning that, pretending it's the most normal thing in korea (mmm exactly what happens in my fic lmao)
          	
          	also, one thing that I'm not fond of is the combo of a stage name/real name like karina/minjeong, which creates a certain dissonance. don't even ask me why I did that in FI, now I regret not just using jimin instead of karina cuz it would've looked much better!! 
          	
          	LMAO a whole discussion out of such a small and insignificant thing TT but I actually have a lot to say on this topic, like that some plotlines/settings look better with stage names... OKAY I'm logging out