Fanfic / how (not) to solve a scandal

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how (not) to solve a scandal is a series of KPop Demon Hunters fanfiction by JacksonCalico. It is set after the events of the first movie and belongs in the romantic comedy genre.

HUNTR/X, Korea's most beloved pop band, goes through no small amount of scandals. But this story isn't just about HUNTR/X. It's about their army of fans in the Twittersphere and their attempts to analyze the band members' lives. Through a trail of cat photos, crazy theories, and social media blunders, a picture of a very exceptional band and their very exceptional fans emerges.

This series contains the following tropes:

• 100% Heroism Rating: It's implied that this trope is invoked by the Honmoon. Whatever HUNTR/X do, however much they defy invoked Korea's strict standards for idols, the majority of people keep loving them. The band have scandals frequently, but they always just happen to blow over quickly and never do serious damage to their reputation.
  forwardsbeckonrebound: Jokes aside, it is actually crazy the stuff that they can get away with. They could kill someone on national television and I probably wouldn’t bat an eye
  lookingrespectfully: The HUNTR/X phenomenon is truly one of the most bizarre things about the industry. They can do things that no other idol can because nobody cares. It’s actually baffling.
• Acquired Situational Narcissism: Zoey, a music geek turned national superstar, tries to solve problems with bribery and is very surprised when people don't ignore the work they are paid to do just because she asks them to. It's likely that, having not received enough positive attention in her youth, she never realized that there are limits to what it can accomplish.
  Bobby: Your "maknae privileges" do not work on me.
• Blatant Lies: When Zoey accidentally outs herself on Twitter, her first reaction is to type "I am going to krill myself" in all caps. Then she makes another post saying that she doesn't regret what she said. Then she suggests that her followers talk about a television series instead. Then she asks her coworkers, also through a public Twitter post, if they can do anything to distract people from it. Then she claims her account got hacked. Then she claims that she taught the band's cat to type and he made the post. When she finally comes to terms with her mistake and admits that what she said was true, a bystander comments that she's gone through the Five Stages of Grief.
  sunflowersavior367: have you finally hit acceptance?
  Zoey: i've realized that nobody can hurt me more than I can hurt myself.
• Brick Joke: When all the HUNTR/X members freeze after referring to Rumi as "they" on stream, "myvoicewithoutthelies" posts an image of Ferb holding a mace, the tip of which is the non-binary flag, with the caption "not yet, ferb". After it's discovered that Rumi's alt has they/them pronouns in the bio, the user quote tweets their own post with "NOW FERB".
• Faux Horrific:
  • A HUNTR/X fan, bored because of the band's current hiatus, says that he's thinking about getting a job just to make himself feel something. His peers flock to him as if he'd contemplated suicide, reassuring him that he is loved and he shouldn't say things like that.
  • In a later conversation, someone sarcastically suggests that the word "job" be treated as a trigger.
• Hidden Depths: Almost all the characters have Internet personas that seem inconsistent with who they are offline.
  • Zoey, a celebrity and closeted lesbian, uses an anonymous Twitter account to flirt very graphically with her female coworkers... and cultivate a social circle that doesn't know she is short.
  • "likeimborntobe", a self-described stan of the pop band HUNTR/X, is a practicing attorney.
• The Incomparable Bliss of Low Cuisine:
  • One of the few things that Zoey misses about America, the country of her birth, is In-N-Out meals. She is now a resident and celebrity of Korea worth millions of dollars, but it's not like she can fly across the ocean just to satisfy a craving.
  • "slippingthroughmyfingers" remarks that one of the best meals they've ever had came from a taco stand on a street corner. They don't even remember where it was.
• The Internet Is for Cats: The news that HUNTR/X have adopted a cat sends shockwaves throughout the band's fans on Twitter. The latter demand photos, and later jump to defend him from a commenter who calls him ugly.
  Derpy Two quickly becomes a staple across their social media accounts, partially because the fans adore him, but mostly because it is so unbelievably easy to just post a picture of the cat and be done with it. Long gone are the days of perfectly crafted photos and videos for every post, replaced by pictures of their cat doing literally anything and everything.
• Internet Jerk: A minor recurring account is "rumih8ter123", whose main contribution to conversations is (as their name indicates) Rumi-bashing. They later disappear after apparently undergoing therapy, and later events imply the account was run by Rumi herself.
• Love Father, Love Son: When Zoey was growing up, she had a crush on the much older popstar Ryu Mi-yeong. Several years later she met Ryu's daughter, Rumi, and the two began dating.
• Noodle Incident: Most of Rumi's internet posts are about her garden or personal opinions on plants. A commenter alludes to a "kadupul saga" that happened before the fic started and was apparently very entertaining. ^note This may be a reference to another writer's fic.
• One of Us: In-Universe, Zoey reveals that she wrote fanfiction on Archive of Our Own. This comes back to bite her in the ass when the account is discovered and linked to a separate alt run by Zoey, which is even spicier than the turtles account.
  forwardsbeckonrebound: A THIRD HUNTR/X ALT ACCOUNT HAS HIT THE TIMELINE
• Product Delivery Ordeal: Rumi and Zoey want to surprise Mira by getting her rare Chiikawa-branded keychains for her birthday. However, the keychains are sold in a different country and the fact that Rumi and Zoey live with Mira makes it difficult for them to surprise her. Zoey resolves this by offering a foreign fan of hers a lot of money to buy the keychains and ship them to Korea. It's noted that Zoey could have bought the keychains directly from a scalper, but she refuses to enable scalping on principle.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here!: After touchgrasskickass implies that rumih8ter123 is Rumi herself, with the latter's response unintentionally throwing fuel on the fire, touchgrass decides to log off.
• Shout-Out:
  • Much like ND Stevenson, Zoey wrote fanfiction based on her own work (for clarity, it's often assumed that Stevenson wrote Don't Go for She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Zoey wrote angsty Polytrix fanfiction). Like ND, the fics were found. Unlike ND, there are multiple works credited to the author.
  • One Twitter user expresses their suspicions that Rumi isn't cisgender and attaches a picture of Doakes.
  • After it's discovered that Rumi's alt has they/them pronouns in the bio, one user tweets "i'm back in the fucking building again". Another tweets "aw shit, here we go again".
• Wham Line:
  • After things look to have (mostly) blown over, one user jokingly speculates that Zoey's second alt account is rumiraontop — a user that thirsts over Rumi and Mira, and also (unsuccessfully) tries to distract the fanbase whenever HUNTR/X gets embroiled in another scandal. It's initially laughed off, but evidence keeps piling up before Zoey tweets:
    Zoey: oh come the fuck on not again
  • Implied; one user (again, jokingly) speculates that Rumi's second alt is rumih8ter123, with Rumi using it as an unhealthy coping mechanism. The latter actually responds to the accusation:
    I don’t know what you’re talking about and that’s definitely not the case at all. Stop asking questions.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: It's implied that the Honmoon or a higher power constantly tugs strings to maintain HUNTR/X's stellar reputation. One example is the band's decision to get a cat for PR reasons; that same night they step outside to run an errand and find a stray cat in a box on the street. And the cat, unlike every stray animal in the world, is a perfectly docile, housebroken animal that has no fleas and doesn't object at all to the group coming near it, picking it up, and taking it to their apartment. It's not that they accidentally stole someone's pet; they're just that lucky.
  It had been less than seventy-two hours since the livestream incident, but it’s as if fate itself had decided to smile upon them, because in that box, peering up at them with the biggest, slightly-crossed eyes, is a scruffy, little tabby cat.