Fandom fraternity

“To be a fan is to be curious, and to be curious is to have openness. Part of being a fan is to allow 360 degrees of experience – to immerse without judgment. It’s like a really fearless step forward into new experience. There’s something that feels very timeless about fandom.” - Carrie Brownstein

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Everybody has had their fair share of interactions with fandoms, or fandom as a whole. Watching the movies, streaming the songs, skimming the books - fan behavior is, inevitably, a main component of today's society.

Personally, I've been in contact with, and actually a part of, too many fandoms to count: from being a Potterhead (Harry Potter fan) to acting like a Bronie (My Little Pony fan), I've probably encountered thousands of people and communities that had similar passions as me. Yet, one fandom that stuck with me the longest, and still represents a big part of my social formation, is the K-pop fandom, specifically boy group NCT's fan base.

NCT way back when, 2020 and their 23 members

For a brief introduction, NCT is a South Korean boy group that debuted in 2016 and, since then, it has been adding and removing members. It has six different subunits (NCT U, NCT 127, NCT Dream, WayV, NCT DoJaeJung and NCT Wish) and currently stands at a whooping 26 members. To say they make K-pop music is too broad a definition, but they mostly sing R&B, Hip-Hop and EDM in Korean, Chinese and Japanese.

My first contact with the group was through the game platform Just Dance, where you have a large variety of songs to choose from and dance on. In the 2021 edition of the game, I saw a certain NCT 127 song named 'Kick It', which I had never seen or heard previously, so I decided to try it out. In all honesty.... I didn't like the song at first. I felt like it was really noisy and not put together, if that makes any sense. At that moment I decided that I would only stick to big K-pop names (back then), like Blackpink and Itzy (I'm still a die-hard Blink (Blackpink fan), Midzy (Itzy fan) and Shawol (Shinee fan)).

Sometime around spring 2021, I heard something about a group called NCT Dream and how they were going to make a comeback. I was really confused, because three month prior, I had just heard a song from NCT 127. Why did they have the same first part of the name? Were they the same group? I was genuinely clueless, so I asked trustworthy Google for some information. Eventually, I found out all I needed, and I actually enjoyed NCT Dream's spring comeback, 'Hot Sauce'. It got me jumping and dancing and, not so long after, fangirling over the group.

I remember being surprised at how many members there were in the group, and I thought that I would never be able to remember all of their names! Back then, 23 members seemed like a workload, somewhat an impossible achievement. That was definitely a big challenge when I joined the fandom: associating the name with the face. But, after some weeks, I was able to tell apart the members from each other, and I got to dive deeper in their discography, where I found some songs that I absolutely loved, like 'The 7th Sense' (NCT U) and 'Nectar' (WayV).

Think August 2021: as a newbie Nctzen (NCT fan - combination of 'citizen' and the group's name), I was excited about absolutely every move the members made. Posting a video? Liking it. Sharing pictures on Instagram? Loving them. Making a new comeback? Learning the song and choreography faster than I clicked on their updates. You could, truly, say that I was slightly obsessing over them. I even picked favorites from each group - I had a whole list of information on them that you could find on any website ...Perhaps more than just slightly obsessing over them. Infatuation aside, one of my favorite members was Lucas, who debuted in 2018 and was part of NCT U and WayV. He was really charismatic and energetic, and I tended to lean towards a more extrovert type of person. Alongside him, there were other members, like Jungwoo (NCT 127), Jaemin (NCT Dream) and Ten (WayV), whose personalities I loved and appreciated.

There are probably two main 'ropes' that I clinged on to when shaping my identity as an Nctzen: shipping videos, mostly on Youtube, and fanfictions, exclusively on Wattpad.

First of all, I can't even begin to describe what life would've been like without Youtube. It might seem a simple video sharing app, but it's so much more than that. It's the platform through which I found NCT, and it's the platform through which I found the fandom's main ships. My feed was full of this group and its members, so watching videos related to that was kind of a hobby. I discovered the most popular pairings, like Nomin (NCT Dream's Jeno and Jaemin), Jaeyong (NCT 127's Jaehyun and Taeyong) and Markhyuck (NCT 127 and Dream's Mark and Haechan). I never found these pairings to have necessarily a romantic potential, as I only saw them as strong friendship bonds, but I specifically remember certain Youtube videos encouraging that there is a more-than-platonic relationship between those members.

A second important point, that derives quite directly from the previous one, is the discovery of fanfiction, exclusively on the story-sharing platform Wattpad. It was quite taboo at that time in my environment to log in to Wattpad and read stories made by fans for fans, because they could, and most probably did, hint at not-so-family-friendly events. Yet, I was around 13 at that time - it was cool to rebel, right? Long story short, I discovered way too many works that wouldn't have been approved by my family, but I was happy: I got to connect with an actual part of a fandom. My status as an Nctzen wasn't just a theoretical concept anymore, I was really participating in building that community.

My involvement wasn't breaking any never-seen-before barriers. I was more of a quiet kind of fan, at least on social media. If you had met me in person at that time, all I would've talked about were those 23 members of a South Korean group, how good their music is and how unique they all were. But my social media presence as a fan only reached certain limits, like only spamming the 'love' button on their Instagram lives and saving a couple of works in my Wattpad account.

Basically, as a quiet Nctzen, life was peaceful, life was rewarding and life was full of 20-something year-olds dancing on 3-minute songs and possessing qualities any fan could obsess over.

And I guess that's my journey to this fandom! Not a really rough ride, just a bumpy one at the beginning. Hope I could connect with any other fan of NCT, or just K-pop in general.