Fiery Pen

If your algorithm overlaps mine at all, KPOP Demon Hunters has taken over the internet. If your children are anything like mine, KPOP Demon Hunters has also taken over your house. It’s on Netflix all the time. The songs are playing in the car. There is choreography in the kitchen.

What is unexpected, however, is that is has taken over ME.

Wait, this is a horror writing blog. Why are we talking about KPOP Demon Hunters? you might be asking. It may not be horror, but stick with me…

I’ve seen about a thousand animated kids movies in the past decade plus. I mean, I get the surface appeal of KPOP Demon Hunters. The soundtrack is catchy as shit. The animation is cool. The main trio are a badass girl group who slay demons without breaking a sweat.

But what makes this movie more? What makes it actually hit? What makes it reach across the generations in our house and get under my skin?

***SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS AHEAD ***

They say KPOP Demon Hunters in Netflix’s Frozen. You could compare them on success but also on story. Like Elsa in Frozen, Rumi has something fundamental about who she is that her family and friends tell her is wrong or broken and that she needs to hide. I don’t think it’s an accident that movies on this thematic foundation are wildly popular. Something in the message resonates with the kids. And with the parents that are paying for it.

Like me. I’m sure people are out there dissecting this moving in articles and videos (believe me, I could think of several dissertation level topics), but this blog is, selfishly, about me.

The story of a woman trying to hide and fix some perceived defect to get people to love and accept her treads on braids of scar tissue in me. When I was younger, I was never what my family wanted (at times, still am not). When I was a mess, a lot of people left, whether I pushed them away or they abandoned me. That era of my life also contains some of my more lingering traumas.

So Rumi’s experience resonates with me. I know what it feels like to be rejected (or fear rejection) by those you love, feel like you have to choose between who you are and being accepted. Apparently, that wound in me is still quite tender. As an animated Netflix movie can consistently unravel me.

When Rumi’s demon nature surfaces, she confronts Celine, the woman who raised her. She asks her to kill her because she has always been a mistake. Then she begs Celine to love her–all of her.

BAM. This was me. I lived this scene when I was a teenager (minus the kill me part). More than once. And to be honest, decades later, the same scenario still plays out. People close to me love me–but not all of me. We have to not talk about parts of me or my life. And in that silence, their judgement is still loud.

I tell myself I don’t care anymore. I do care. And all that care just pours out of my eyes when I watch this movie.

I didn’t know my seventeenth year would echo across eternity, would be the base point I always return to, would be the version of me layers deep at my core. It’s all still there, even now that I’m the parent of the teenager. Over and over just this year, I have said to myself, why is this just like when I was 17? Things don’t seem to change; I just get older.

Did I mention the soundtrack? Bangers, bops, infectious tracks all around. Music is always a shortcut straight to my feels, but the lyrics in these songs hit me right in the chest.

“Golden” is not my favorite track (I dance to a metal cover of “Your Idol”), but these lines harmonize with my past.

Called a problem child ’cause I got too wild
But now that’s how I’m getting paid

Oof if that doesn’t sum up my adolescence to adult success. I may not be a pop star, but my horror writing and metal fusion belly dancing have never been universally accepted in my life. Good enough to get published. Good enough to be invited to perform. Yet all of that is somehow negated by the type of art I create. If only it was a different genre. If only it was a different style.

If only I wasn’t me.

I cannot make it through “What It Sounds Like” without dissolving into a blubbering mess. Tell me you have unresolved trauma without telling me you have unresolved trauma.

I broke into a million pieces, and I can’t go back
But now I’m seeing all the beauty in the broken glass
The scars are part of me, darkness and harmony
My voice without the lies, this is what it sounds like
Why did I cover up the colors stuck inside my head?
I should’ve let the jagged edges meet the light instead

I spent a lifetime thinking there was something wrong with me. I spent a lifetime hating myself. I tried to kill myself. I used to hurt myself. I lost myself in self-destructive behaviors. I punished myself so hard that I very likely triggered the alopecia flare that took my hair. I turned on myself enough that my immune system identified me as the enemy. *^{(don’t take that as science, but it feels right and sound poetic)}

So, when Rumi sings about finding beauty in what’s broken in her and accepting her scars and when her friends return to “dive in the fire, and I’ll be right here by your side“, I’m done for. It’s what I wanted most back then and, sometimes, what I still want now.

So, yes, KPOP Demon Hunters is some animated kids movie on Netflix, but it feeds the damaged kid still in me. Even though I’m weeping through the scenes, it feels like healing. I’m processing something repressed, bandaging old wounds to a dance-worthy beat. Could we be sealing my own honmoon against my own demons? Maybe… Go ahead, children, play it again! 😭😭😭

Christina Bergling

https://linktr.ee/chrstnabergling

Like my writing? Check out my books!

• Red Walls – When Talia’s parents go after the monsters who hurt her, they never expected real monsters.
• Followers – You never know who is on the other side of the screen. Followers is a mystery and thriller that blends women’s fiction with horror.
• The Rest Will Come – Online dating would drive anyone to murder, especially Emma.
• Savages – Two survivors search the ruins for the last strain of humanity. Until the discovery of a baby changes everything.
• The Waning – Locked in a cage, Beatrix must survive to escape or be broken completely.
• Screechers – Mutant monsters and humans collide in the apocalyptic fallout of a burned world. Co-authored with Kevin J. Kennedy.
• Horror Anthologies