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.
this is all very normal, i hope. can a long-time kpop fan please affirm me? thanks!
until next time!