EXO, Kris Wu, and the Fanfiction Plot Twist I Never Saw Coming
The K-Pop Group That Raised Me (And the Betrayal That Almost Broke Me)
I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of talking about the things that have shaped who I am as a person. For one, I’m not above admitting that I am in desperate need of help, and many hands on me (heh heh heh) is very needed to mold me into a semi-decent person.
For two… What if I just like shapes? Circle is my favorite.
And for three, I believe stories have a way of strongly shaping who we are as people. In the same way that people, perhaps those who don’t even know we exist, can shape the stories of our lives. (Did I mention I reeeally like shapes?)
EXO is a South Korean and Chinese K-pop group (oh yeah, I’m just gonna plop you smack in the middle of it) who debuted in 2012. They have a really cool origin story, thanks to their hyper imaginative marketing team, where they were presented as aliens with supernatural powers.
There were twelve of them. And then there were eleven, because the one that left wanted to change careers and go solo. Plus he wanted to exploit women, and he didn’t want the rest of the team involved. How sweet, right? The group has since trimmed down to a solid group of eight men, with the ninth, Lay, being an honorary member despite him not being in the group anymore.
Needless to say, many of us fans felt a roller coaster of emotions, leading up to betrayal. But we’ll get there. Let’s talk about the fun things first.
EXO came crashing into Earth on their music-video-set spaceship, and I landed on Calgary shortly after
The hype and build-up for the group’s debut was nothing short of exhilarating. There were twelve boys, and they were introduced in chunks through “teaser videos” on their Youtube channel. For a new fan like me who’s also a writer, this was so important. I never thought two of my most favorite things - K-pop and fiction - could come together and form a group! Naturally, they became my favorite. To this day, I’m a fan.
Not long after, I moved from Manila to Calgary, leaving everything I’ve ever known behind.
Tropical trees and constant rainy weather that I loved, were replaced with leafless branches and snowy deserts. There were no more street food vendors, or neighbors who sat outside their porches gossiping with other neighbors. No one woke up at five in the morning anymore to the sound of roosters’ cock-a-doodle-doos and the smell of freshly baked pandesal. Everything opened at 9am, and everything closed at 5pm. It was dark out for 17 out of all 24 hours a day.
To cope, I pretended I was also an alien who crash landed on a planet so foreign to me. I pretended that I had to blend in, so that one day, I could find a spaceship that would send me back home.
EXO’s whole discography was my only companion. That, and their appearances on different variety shows. I would play them all every day, like prayers I would recite under my breath. Like a phone number I would dial every hour… and they would always pick up, and comfort me with their songs. I often met with them in the stories I wrote. They saved me from the snowy isolation Calgary introduced me to, over and over again. EXO was my emergency contact. Because they understood me. Of course they did. They were aliens too.
I fixated on EXO’s songs and wrote stories about them
Lexy, a high school student, was the photographer for the school paper. After class she would go around looking for newsworthy shots. She took pictures of the soccer team, the rock band, the chess team, and the ghost story chasers. Each of those teams consisted of three members, making up twelve boys.
The girl kept “waking up exhausted” every day. She fell asleep in class, zoned out during conversations, lost her train of thought often. As it turned out, she was a sleepwalker, and recently had had constant vivid dreams about the boys she took photos of.
One night, she woke up in the middle of sleepwalking and found herself in the middle of the woods right outside the town square. Surrounded by twelve figures in hooded cloaks. They each pulled back their hoods, revealing all twelve of the boys from the soccer team, the rock band, the chess team, and the ghost story chasers. This has to be a dream.
Only this time, it wasn’t. These weren’t her classmates—they only looked like them. They claimed to be from another world, where a queen named Kallix, their ruler, was in danger. And guess who she looked exactly like?
Our high school photographer-slash-sleepwalker. And the cloaked figures claimed the key to saving her was to search the universe to find her alter-ego… Lexy.
…
Look, I wrote this fanfic a decade and 0.2 years ago, and I’m not sure I know how to write it anymore. But I’m gonna spoil you, since you’ve come this far to read my super long intro to the story. My main plot twist was this - Queen Kallix’s right-hand man and brother was none other than YiFan, who wanted the throne to himself, so he planned to exploit and 86 her (Ctrl+Alt+Del her. Veto her. Erase her… You get it.)
YiFan, if you don’t know anything about EXO, is a real person. His legal government name is Wu YiFan. But in Canada, where he is a citizen, he was called Kris.
Here’s another spoiler for you. Kris Wu was EXO’s own Voldemort. He-who-must-not-be-named. The man I once turned into a tragic anti-hero in my fanfic turned out, in real life, to be a convicted predator.
Fuck Kris Wu.
Why is this such a big deal to me? Back when I wrote my fanfic, I had no idea how unsettlingly close fiction would mirror reality. My character, YiFan, was meant to be compelling—charismatic yet deeply manipulative. Years later, Kris Wu was convicted of assaulting multiple women, some of them minors. The betrayal, the abuse of power—it was all there, but this time, it wasn’t a story. It was real, and it was horrifying.
I didn’t touch my tarot cards for a year after reading the news. I stopped writing fan fiction because of gummy-smiled, minor-loving, I-want-my-mommy, Kris-motherfucking-Wu.
The news made me lose faith in humanity, and question the one-sided friendship I had with EXO, the only friends I had for the longest time while I battled undiagnosed depression and isolation.
While all of this was unfolding, I began uncovering secrets—stories of women I knew, women I grew up with, and even women I had just met.
One by one, I realized they had all suffered in some way—harassment, manipulation, abuse.
The more I searched, the more I found, determined to turn over every stone until I stumbled upon one with my own name on it.
Without realizing it, I had been walking through life unaware—until it was too late. I, too, had been exploited by men like Kris Wu.
Kris’s betrayal, and how it magnified everything else that was wrong in my life
Looking back, I can’t say I remember every detail of what came next. Trauma has a funny way of blurring the years, smudging out the in-between moments until only the sharpest edges remain. But here’s what I do remember—
I touched some grass. I let go of fiction and focused on reality, on the relationships right in front of me. I suffered. Depression and anxiety took up space in my body rent-free. But I did something I never thought I would. I sought help and ended up paying for my mental illnesses’ medical bills, which, rude. And somewhere in the middle of trying to piece myself back together, I found my voice in places that needed it most.
I fought for the women and girls I loved, and for those who couldn’t speak up for themselves. I fought for them when they were suffering at the hands of predators. I fought for their voice, even if that meant the people who “just wanted peace” turned their backs on me too… For fighting too hard… I lost people in my life because of it.
Turns out, not everyone is ready to hear the truth—especially when it means confronting the kind of ugliness they’d rather ignore. I was outcasted, left alone again with nothing but my own thoughts—dangerous company when you’re already at war with yourself. But I didn’t stop. I couldn’t.
How EXO members became my son’s tito (Disclaimer: This is NOT a tutorial)
And then, somehow, I found my way through it. Not all at once, not in some grand, triumphant moment, but in the little things. In the hands that reached out for mine. In the love that stayed. In the people who saw me, truly saw me, and didn’t look away.
Now, I’m here, quite symbolically twelve years later with a loving husband, a sweet little boy, a small but fiercely loyal group of friends, and a relationship with my parents that has never felt stronger. And soon, I’ll be going home. Back to Manila. My spaceship is finally here to take me back where I belong.
Oh, and the rest of EXO proved to be gentlemen over the years, advocating for women’s rights, treating fans, staff members, and their own female family members with the utmost respect. One of them is also a dad now! I’ve even introduced my husband to their music over the years. My whole family bops and bonds to their songs. To our amusement, my husband and I have convinced our son to call every EXO member tito. 🤣
If I ever meet them in person (I still hold this life-long fan girl dream), that would be a fun little party trick to show them. But it’s not really a trick. To me, we have always been family.
We are one.👍
Have you ever had a moment where something you loved made you rethink everything? Tell me in the comments—I wanna hear your stories. 💭✨
And if you love K-pop and want me to unpack more EXO lore, subscribe and let me know who or what you want me to cover next! 🎶🌏
Fun fact: I still write stories. Funnier fact: You can read them all - if you upgrade to a paid subscription now and prove you have great taste. Come on! All the cool kids are doing it. You know you want to. 😈
If this post emotionally wrecked you in a good way, you can support my work (and hydrate my soul) by getting me some clean drinking water. Swamp water has a weird aftertaste. Just saying. I heard Aquafina tastes slightly sweeter?
This is so beautifully written—it captures the loneliness of transition and the comfort we find in the things that make us feel seen. I really felt this.