It’s been a month since Netflix’s K-Pop Demon Hunters took the internet by storm, thrusting us into a world of, well, demon-hunting K-Pop music. The fever is not subsiding; at the time of writing, the film is still number one on the streaming platform’s top 10 most-streamed movies list, while the fictional bands that provide its music, HUNTR/X and Saja Boys, are dominating global music charts on services like Spotify and Apple Music, complete with a place on Billboard’s Top 100. So when’s the sequel? We can only hope, but there’s no official word just yet.
In the meantime, fans have already gotten to work — particularly fanfiction writers. In just a month, the fanfic community has managed to produce an eye-watering number of K-Pop Demon Hunters fics: 3,638 on Archive of Our Own as of this writing.
While it would be a rookie mistake to look to fanfiction as a definitive meter of what is and isn’t popular, it would be an even graver error not to give it some credence. As a huge Star Wars fan — and a purveyor of all the fanfics, thanks very much — I found dipping my toe into K-Pop Demon Hunters’ fic community overwhelming in comparison to similar communities devoted to far bigger brand names. Looking at, say, Andor, a Star Wars show that returned for a second season in April, only a month before K-Pop Demon Hunters came out, that fanfic community only has around 1,854 fics. And that’s after nearly two and a half years, as Andor’s first season was released back in 2022. Even with Andor’s critical acclaim and the Star Wars name behind it, it doesn’t come close to touching KPop Demon Hunters.
Now, the two have vastly different audiences: Andor is an adult-oriented show, whereas K-Pop Demon Hunters’ audience undoubtedly skews younger. Those who might write through the Andor lens are likely to have more responsibilities and less free time in comparison. K-Pop Demon Hunters is also far more digestible, and not just because it’s an animated film. K-Pop is a vast, booming industry, with mega-stars like BTS, Blackpink, and TWICE dominating the charts worldwide. The music is just one angle of the genre’s appeal: The singers’ personality and stylings, and the parasocial relationships they have with their fans, are an entirely different story, one of admiration, attraction, and aesthetic appeal.
But even given K-Pop’s popularity, it’s impressive how much fanfic is being written around an animated film that Netflix pretty much dropped with minimal fanfare. It had sparked nearly 600 fics less than a week after its release. Thousands of fan stories have been written about it in just a few weeks. And while I don’t doubt that ChatGPT and other AI tools helped expand that growth, the number of people driven to add to the K-Pop Demon Hunters story in some way still makes it a legit phenomenon.
This may have been destiny. K-Pop Demon Hunters hits all those important tropes that fanfic writers love: female friendships, an enemies-to-lovers arc, and my personal favorite tag: “unresolved feelings.” These tropes are catnip for many fanfic writers, and K-Pop Demon Hunters has all the setup those writers need. From exploring the potential polyamorous relationship between the three protagonists, Rumi, Zoey, and Mira and how romance affects them in the K-Pop industry to demon bad-boy Jinu and half-demon Rumi fake-dating and the repercussions of their relationship, there’s a fanfic out there for anyone and everyone.
It doesn’t look like the creative juices for K-Pop Demon Hunters fan artists and fanfic writers are drying up anytime soon. At the moment, I have more than 3,600 fics to catch up on. I also have zero complaints.
K-Pop Demon Hunters is available to watch now on Netflix.
