Warum ich mich selbst nicht gerne als Kpopfan bezeichne

Ich habe mit mir selbst vereinbart, dass ich über die Sachen schreibe, die mir einfach so in den Kopf kommen.

Also hi, willkommen auf meinem Blog und meinem ersten richtigen Beitrag 2018! 

Der wird etwas persönlicher, aber hey. Warum nicht?

Ich bin jetzt schon seit 2014 im Kpopfandom. Eine Freundin von mir, hat mich damals auf die Boybands BlockB und GOT7 aufmerksam gemacht. 

Vorerst war ich der Sache gegenüber sehr skeptisch. Ich meine.. koreanische Popmusik? Wer hört denn schon sowas? 

Trotzdem habe ich dann irgendwann Gefallen gefunden und bin immer weiter in die Materie reingerutscht. Hat sich ein wenig so wie Treibsand angefühlt und die Metapher passt wirklich sehr gut, denn ich bin bis heute nicht rausgekommen. Es kamen immer mehr Bands dazu. Dann auch noch passende Variety Shows und ähnliche Dinge. Ich will gar nicht wissen, wie viel Zeit ich damit verbracht habe mir sämtliche Bands und deren Shows zu infiltrieren. 

Aber ich bereue es nicht und ich werde es auch nie bereuen, denn schließlich hat es mich sehr, sehr glücklich gemacht, mir gute Musik gezeigt, neue Freunde beschert und sogar zu besseren Leistungen in meinem eigenen Leben angespornt. Kpop und alles drumherum war und ist für mich eine Oase zu der ich zurückkehren kann, wenn es mir nicht gut geht. 

Und trotzdem posaune ich es nicht gerne heraus, dass ich ein Kpopfan bin. Und das liegt für mich größtenteils an der Entwicklung, die die Hallyu Wave innerhalb der letzten Jahre gemacht hat. Eigentlich ist das eine tolle Sache, dass koreanische Filme, Musik und Serien immer weiter verbreitet werden, aber leider resultiert das auch in einer sehr einseitigen Verteilung der Fans. Insbesondere innerhalb der Musikszene.

Dadurch, dass ein paar Bands nun viel mehr Fans haben als andere, gibt es viele Komplikationen, Streit und Stress. Umso größer ein Fandom ist, umso mehr Idioten sind eben darin. Und meistens werden die dann die Repräsentanten. Denn für die unproblematischen Fans interessiert sich keiner..egal ob die nun in der Überzahl sind oder nicht. Ist leider ein Phänomen, das recht oft vorkommt.

Zugegeben, habe ich damals 2014/2015, als ich noch neu, war eine gefährliche Kurve in Richtung Koreaboo gemacht. Zum Glück haben mich Freunde aber darauf hingewiesen und ich bin dem Schicksal nochmal entkommen. Anscheinend wird man als Kpopfan aber automatisch mit dem Begriff in Verbindung gebracht. Einfach weil schon einige mit schlechtem Beispiel vorangegangen sind.

Und genau davor habe ich Angst. 

Problem ist, dass man selbst nicht vorurteilsfrei an sowas rangeht. Zumindest mir geht es so, dass ich nicht gerne neue deutsche Kpopfans kennenlerne. Denn jedesmal schwingt im Hinterkopf der Gedanke mit, dass es ja ein cringy Kboo sein könnte. Keine Ahnung, warum die da ist. Aber es ist schade. Gerade, weil ich genügend Gegenbeispiele kenne. 

Und genau aus diesen Gründen bezeichne ich mich nur ungerne vor anderen als Kpopfan. Dankeschön für das aufmerksame Lesen meiner wirren Gedanken. Zum Abschluss noch ein paar Fragen, die ihr mir gerne in einem Kommentar beantworten könnt:

Habt oder hattet ihr auch schon ähnliche Gefühle darüber? Was haltet ihr davon? 

Ich hoffe, dass sich niemand nach diesem Text persönlich angegriffen fühlt. Er wurde lediglich als Denkanstoß und Zusammenfassung meiner eigenen Meinung geschrieben. 

Wir sehen uns dann nächste Woche in einem neuen Artikel!

Tüdelü,

Eure Lara

BlockB in London - A Freaking Experience

I still can't believe, that that weekend actually happened. It's been a week by now and all I can say is, that I've never experienced a more awesome thing in my whole life.

But let's start from the beginning:

BlockBs stressy schedule.

Like most fans, I was hyped for BlockBs Europe Tour and also really sad, when they postponed it to an unknown date. Well back then it was INDEED unknown and everyone was stressed out. Luckily we were redeemed, when they FINALLY announced tour dates and places in December 2016. One thing was for sure: I'd get those damn VIP-Tickets and shake my boys hands.

I decided to go to the concert in London, well actually my dad decided it because he was free on that day and wanted to go to Britains capital anyway. So two birds with one stone and time flew by as usual and I did fly too, to frickin' London!

What can I say, I really enjoy traveling anyway and even though I was kinda sick, I loved every day we spent in that city. On Friday we took a trip around London, after we arrived at our hotel and on Saturday I met up with some fellow Bees aka BBCs aka Fans of BlockB. I made so many new friends on that day and honestly? I learned to love them already on that first day and I'll make sure to visit England again to meet up with them. Sadly, I couldn't go out with them saturday night, since my tummy decided to do shit again and I preferred to sleep.

I feel like it's been a good decision though, because I arrived, actually not tired, at the concertvenue

on the next day.

The Queue

My dad, who was joking a lot about BlockB and their fans on our way, was shocked because there were actually THAT many Bees at the concert venue...it was 11am and there were many more to follow, since the concert wouldn't start until 7pm. I'll never forget the defeated look on his face, when he realized, that BlockB is actually a thing, a famous thing.

Anyway. I was number 150 in the VIP-Ticket Queue. At this point I'd like to make a big shoutout to the fan that organized the whole number-system because it made entry more fair and less complicated. To be honest Fan-Projects at the concert venue were some of the only things that were actually well organized...

To name a few:

• “Get Well Soon”cards for P.O., who couldn't attend the concert, that were signed by a lot of worried bees
• a giant UK-flag, that many of us signed aswell

• really cute banners made by the BlockB-Facebook-site

In general I felt, that the atmosphere was great. I made many friends while waiting and talked to many BBCs,I even got sweets and crisps! Everyone I talked to was cute, nice and considerate, I wish it'd be so easy making new friends outside BlockB-Concert-Queues.

There were 2 cards in total and both of them looked like this in and out.
Credit: @ultbastarz

The Rehearsal

By 4:30pm I was able to enter the Troxy (that's the concert venue) because I was one of 100 lucky rehearsal pass-winners! So we went inside and had to split into 2 groups and be quiet.... after what felt like hours of waiting FINALLY a song started playing. “A Few Years Later” and slowly BlockB entered the stage one by one. It was surreal. Not because they were still wearing their pyjama, but because they were real and in front of us. It's one of the weirdest things ever, seeing a person that you've seen only on a screen for 3 years suddenly in front of you. When Kyung entered the stage, I really had to hold myself back to not cry or just straight up scream: “Holy shit.” (FYI: he's my ult bias and basically source of smiles every day so he's kinda really important to me.)

After the first song they also rehearsed BlockBs most recent Song “Yesterday” and proved, that they can dance well, even though they just got out of bed 1 hour ago. After that the staff shooed us out and we had to wait another 2 hours in the queue.

Luckily they went by pretty fast due to interesting conversations, still it was cold af and it hailed every 30 minutes...

In The Troxy

We finally got in around 6:30pm and the Not-Early-Entry-People around 10 minutes later. It was a blast and the organization was amazing. (No, actually not, it was just a giant mess.) I tried to get a Honey Wand at the Merch Stand but apparently they were all sold out from the other concerts..I made my way back into the concert hall and suddenly got really stressed out, because all the good places were taken. To be honest that was not THAT big of a surprise, because I wasted time at the merch-stand... BUT luckily I made friends during waiting for entry and when they saw me, they just waved and made some space for me. And that's how I got to stand right in front of the stage! So remember kids: be nice and make friends. (or just elbow your way to the front...on second thought- don't. Please.) So yeah, I stood there for another hour and experienced something pretty awesome. While waiting there was a BlockB Playlist playing in the background and SO many people just decided to start to sing along. It became even louder, when around 7:30pm two songs started playing in a higher volume! That could mean only one thing: The concert was about to start.

This is only VIP-Area. There were waaaay more bees behind us.

The Concert

And then..they came on stage. Greeting us with an awesome and powerful “Nice Day”. Legit EVERYONE was shook. We sang along, screamed and had the time of our lifes

Some highlights were:

The setlist.
Credit: @ilhoonsmelody

• The Very Good Remix (+Kyungs freaking Rap)
• everyone speaking in English (especially Bbomb did amazing)
• Taeil hitting the High Notes like they're nothing
• Mental Breaker. Just the whole Stage
• Zico calling Big Ben “Big Clock” after being in London for like 3 times
• Ukwon saying “Your hearts” when he was asked for his favorite place in London
• Zico, Ukwon and Kyung nailing P.O.s parts
• massive fanchants during the “Toy”-Instrumental break
• Ukwon dancing all the time and also hitting Jaehyos dick twice
• Kyung catapulting his water into the audience
• Ukwon tilting his whole water bottle over Jaehyo and his 1600$ Hoodie
• Zico telling us, we're an amazing audience and starting to sing Okey Dokey Yo
• Whole BlockB smiling and being happy and passionate about the things they do.

I bet I forgot SO many things. (You can add them in the comment section, if you want to) but everything on that list and basically everything else that BlockB did during those 2 hours made the concert unforgettable. But there was more.

Meet And Greet..

Ok, to be honest. The whole organization was a freaking mess and MyMusicTaste better be damn glad, that BlockB was amazing enough to conceal most of that. Still, 4 fans broke down and basically NOBODY cared about it. Also the “Meet and Greet” was arranged poorly and was the most confusing thing ever. We didn't know where to go, what to do and being screamed at by the MMT staff didn't make it any less messy. After 45 minutes they managed to arrange us around 300 VIP-Fans in Lines and one by one we were “allowed” to walk by and high five BlockB. It all had to happen very fast so the staff was shooing all of us. Afterwards we had to take our pics with the Band and that was it. Like I said, everything was rushed, stressed and messy, but still I made some very nice memories there and I am happy, that I purchased VIP-Tickets.

Here's some things that I found very memorable about the boys™ :

• Bbomb: He's freaking handsome and I wasn't expecting him to be that funny and nice!! Yet he seemed very spaced out during the High Five Event. Probably because he was done af. And that's relatable. I told him “You did very well.” in Korean and he nodded and then realised I said something in his mother tongue and looked even more confused.
• Ukwon: He has so much freaking energy. He was dancing ALL the time and smiled so much. You could say the sun shines out of his ass and that's amazing. Also he was great on stage!I gave him a high five and smiled (he smiled as well)
• Kyung: He's the only BlockB member that actually looked like I expected him to look. He was adorable and his smile is so contagious. You could just see his eyes sparkling while he was on stage..He's so passionate about the things he does and happy all the time. I actually kinda grabbed his hand and said “Hey, thank you for changing my life with your music.” He was really confused at first because..yeah.. you wouldn't expect a fan to grab your hand and say something to you during a high five event. He started smiling though and seemed SO happy. Oh also: His hands are crazy soft. I wonder what kind of lotion he uses.
• Zico: On stage he's also freaking passionate and just has SO much energy. Also he's so tall?? And his eyes are AMAZING. They have a beautiful color and I'm still not over it.           Shortly after the staff shooed me and I highfived him, he just nodded because he understood what I said to Kyung. And I nodded back and yeah, I feel like he was happy because Kyung got complimented.
• Taeil: He's a smol and talented bean. I was amazed by his voice and also his tattoos are amazing! I don't even remember..I think I just high fived him.
• Jaehyo: He seems kinda awkward but still really happy on stage. He's like a mannequin, so beautiful...you get captured by his eyes and his face and I don't even know how to explain his beauty. I high fived him and basically stared into his eyes because they were so stunning.
• P.O.: Unfortunately he couldn't attend the concert in London. I really hope he get's well soon and I'll be able to meet him too one day.

After All the concert was amazing. Terrible organized but still the most memorable thing I've ever been to and an experience that I probably won't ever forget. I want to meet them and see them on stage again soon. I don't think I've ever smiled that much and felt so happy ever in my life.

My time in London was a total blast, I've enjoyed it A LOT.

So many Thanks go out to BlockB and of course also to the Bees that made the whole concert even more amazing! I was expecting much but got SO much more! I hope I'll be able to experience something like it again and write another entry about it, that's just as happy and cheerful as this one!

~Lara

Our Meet and Greet-Pic~
I'm directy in front of Kyung and look confused af becuse I was still stunned by the concert. I still think it turned out great!