freefalling into kpop hell
if you asked me about kpop a month ago, i would’ve told you it’s something i’m not all that into. not because i think it’s weird or anything like that of course—my god, i could never hate kpop fans; they were the only people who stuck by me when i was being outcasted as an early 2010’s anime fan—but because i wasn’t big on the kind of music they made. i don’t think kpop music is awful by any means, it’s just not the kind of thing i would go out of my way to listen to. for reference, i enjoy r/indieheads & /mu/-type stuff and gay people music, and okay yes, kpop is also gay people music but in a very different way boygenius or charli xcx is also gay people music.
recently, a friend of mine told me that if i ever got into kpop i would probably like stray kids’ felix. i actually thought this was a really funny coincidence because i had been a silent fan of his for a few years now.1 i told my friend about the problem i had with not really being into the music and that’s when i learned that kpop groups sometimes have variety shows and that it was a perfectly acceptable way to be a fan of a kpop group. my friend made me a playlist of their favorite stray kids videos to watch and started sending me various felix-related tiktoks. i thought skz code was so funny i chose to stan before i even finished the first video.2
now, i’m no stranger to how expensive kpop can be as a hobby. a lot of my friends are kpop fans and often tell me about their merch collecting woes. this was one of the other reasons i kind of avoided being a kpop fan, music aside—i was really trying to avoid going into financial ruin. i think we all know that collecting photocards of your favorite idol is pretty common practice with kpop fans and i think we also all know that collecting photocards can get really expensive, what with some photocards costing up to hundreds of dollars.
back when i was really into ensemble stars i also collected photocards of my favorite 2d idol, ritsu sakuma. it was something i had gone maybe a little too insane about, but it wasn’t so bad on my wallet because ensemble stars photocards aren’t very expensive.3 i was worried i was going to feel the need to collect felix’s photocards too, so i tried to stay ignorant about the photocard market just so i could feel satisfied with whatever i got from buying an album. that didn’t last very long though, because i unfortunately became very familiar with which photocards of felix were the most valuable (against my will, mind you) and even worse, i ended up wanting them.
my other friend, camille, also saw this as an opportunity to try and finally get me into nct dream, which worked. i hope i don't stan anymore groups. i might go crazy. if my friends were really my friends, they wouldn't be begging me to watch gose (/lh).
so now i run a kpop twitter fan account where i retweet cute photos of kpop idols, regularly search up “wts lfb ph”4 to see if anyone has any of the merch i want, and take my little 10cm kpop dolls and a photocard around with me wherever i go. little by little, spending 100 dollars on a 5.5cm x 8.5cm picture of my bias because it's "very limited" and has "sparks" is starting to become reasonable. oh, and the music sounds better to me now too. turns out i just had to look a little harder to find kpop groups that wrote songs in genres i liked.
this is all very normal, i hope. can a long-time kpop fan please affirm me? thanks!
until next time!