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Light On Me, Ep. 13: Extra AF Namgoong Karaoke

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LOVE IN THE BIG CITY Nam Yoon Su as Young Episode 5

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Stay away, you’re giving me goosebumps.

First Kanaphan as AKK & Khaotung Thanawat as AYAN THE ECLIPSE SERIES (2022) dir. Golf Tanwarin Sukkhapisit

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Love in the Big City TV Series Episodes 5 & 6: Kylie Once Again Recontextualizes Everything

Thanks as always to @lurkingshan and @bengiyo for the wrangling and discussion questions!

I already wrote about the relationship between Gyu-Ho and Yeong in this part, so I wanted to focus on something else for book club. And after working on the timeline in the series, I decided to revisit my meta for Part 3 of the novel, in which I wrote about how Kylie recontextualizes everything that came before we knew about her. I’d like to do the same here for the series while reflecting on the differences.  Knowing when his mother died, the T-aras being present through the whole story, and starting the story after Kylie are the three big changes that I think worked really well in this adaptation, and all of these changes mean that the revelation about Kylie in episodes 5-6 hit a little differently than in the book. 

[screenshot from this post by @how-to-be-a-tree]

With the revelation in this part that Yeong went to the military a few months before the T-aras, we now know that Yeong had recently contracted HIV just before the series began.The hints in episode 1 that he was struggling (hadn’t been going to class, doing odd jobs and asking for the extra clothes) make more sense. It also recontextualizes the aggressive kiss in the club where he kissed that stranger so hard he bled. This also means that, unlike in the novel, he meets and befriends Mi Ae after he was already diagnosed, and since he tells Gyu-Ho that he’s the only one Yeong’s ever told, we know he never told Mi Ae either. Watching them hold each other’s hands as they whisper their secrets in the dark takes a new sad tint to it knowing that Yeong could not trust her with his deepest shame.

[screenshot from this post by @maletimbe]

I wonder if part of his strong reaction to her outing him to Jun Ho was because he had been wanting to tell her, and it was painful knowing he could never trust her with that secret. I wonder if that’s why he doesn’t go to the T-aras after his fight with Mi Ae, but goes to Nam Gyu instead, because he wouldn’t be able to explain to the T-aras why he was so hurt, and on some level the T-aras have already rejected that part of him so he can’t trust them with that vulnerability. 

I wonder if sending the T-aras off at Karaoke reminded him of Kylie and is part of what pushed him to break up with Nam Gyu. After his fallout with Mi Ae, when Yeoung is telling Nam Gyu to find someone braver than him, I wonder if he was thinking about Kylie.

When he goes to Nam Gyu’s funeral and asks how he died, I am pretty sure just by the way that scene was performed that he was thinking about Kylie and wondering whether he killed him–and it makes that revelation hit double-hard, that Nam Gyu was killed in a car accident speeding, because it just reinforced his worst fear: he had gotten Nam Gyu killed, just not in the way he thought. [I don’t actually hold Yeong accountable for Nam Gyu’s decision to speed, but I can imagine Yeong took it that way]. 

I wonder if Yeong was attracted to Yeong Su partially because of the way he tries to help his mother, who is an addict–there’s something in the way social stigma against addicts and poz folks is similar (partially because needle sharing is a way to contract HIV), and how acceptance of those states of being can often come together. I wonder if that's why he could take Yeong Su's more heteronormative kdrama lead style romance when it irritated him in Nam Gyu.

In any case, Yeong having HIV through that relationship and hiding it from Yeong Su makes his reading of Yeong Su’s article about the  immorality of being gay hit even harder. I also think about how irregular his schedule was then, and how bad he was at taking his medication regularly and on time. And knowing that there are restrictions to travel and to moving places, I wonder if part of his rage at Yeong Su moving to America was about knowing that even if Yeong Su had asked, he could not have joined him (you can travel to the USA with HIV but it can be difficult to get a green card). Honestly he was probably too hit with the betrayal and callous rejection to do that full calculus in his head in that moment but I wanted an excuse to use this gif because watching Yeoung punch Yeong Su is good for the spirit:

It also recontextualizes the scenes with his mother, and how much she cared about appearances and judgment, and how she contextualized her own disease as a punishment from God, so how could he not do the same about his own? When overdoses on pills, and his mother tells him not to be in a rush to die, I wonder if the hospital successfully did not disclose his HIV status to her during that period.

Seeing the T-aras there and so worried about him must have been healing even if they still don’t know about this major part of him; he knows they love and care for him and want him alive. Yeong not telling the T-aras about his application to the company because he’s afraid of being rejected for his HIV status tells me that he still hasn’t told the T-aras about Kylie through Part 3; I’m not sure he ever will. But there are people in our lives who we love and who love us in return who we keep secrets from; it means there will always be a level of distance, but it does not mean we aren’t important to each other. 

His mother dying at the beginning of Part 3 is a significant detail that we don’t get in the book, and it made me rethink why Parts 1 and 2 did not mention Kylie at all. In the series, we have Yeong writing Part 1 in episodes 1-2, Part 2 in episodes 3-4, and Part 3 in episodes 5-6. We know he wanted his mother to never know about Kylie, and we know that she followed his literary career and kept copies of his work even if she won’t read them. So it makes sense that he could only write about having HIV and incorporating that into his narrative after her death. I also wonder if Yeong being willing to open up to Gyu-Ho about Kylie has to do with his mother’s death: One of his reasons for keeping the secret so carefully is no longer present.

This isn't recontextualized because by the time we see this we know about Kylie, but how much of Yeong's fixation on Gyu-Ho's silent sleeping and needing to check he's still breathing has to do with his fear that Gyu-Ho still hasn't settled into the relationship and is tip-toeing around him, and how much of it has to do with his fear of giving Gyu-Ho HIV and making him ill? They're barely having sex so it's a pretty irrational fear but that's not how fear works. We know he's thinking about Kylie all the time through this section because he asks Gyu-Ho about how he feels abut Yeong being "dirty" more than once.

One last moment of painful reflection: The first two parts of this series had clear relationship pairings and parallels: Mi Ae and Nam Gyu in Part 1, and Yeong Su and Yeong's mother in Part 2. I was thinking about whether Kylie and Gyu-Ho are our pairing in Part 3, and while I don't think we get enough reflection about Kylie to make this case strongly, I'm struck by how Yeong characterizes Kylie as something he is "stuck with forever", and how he is determined to let Gyu-Ho go.

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Nam Yoon Su as Go Young & Jin Ho Eun as Gyu Ho Love in the Big City (2024)

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The relationship between Yeong and Gyu-ho is the kind that we rarely see represented in drama: it’s real. They have strong chemistry but it’s not necessarily of a primarily sexual nature. They’re fucking adorable in a relatable way, not an overly cutesy performative way. Their interactions are deeply affectionate but also layered with the kind of every day annoyances that inevitably spring from a life lived together. They laugh and cry and touch and bicker and tease and make bitchy little passive aggressive comments about their repetitive arguments. It’s beautiful in large part because it’s so mundane, and that’s also why the loss of it hurts so much worse. A relationship like this is not big drama and movie moments, instead it becomes part of the foundation of your life until you have no clue who you are without it.

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qi ye is such a book tho. it’s game of thrones in china but even more fucked up. but it’s gay. but it’s also about reincarnation. the main couple are implied to actually be immortal deities and soulmates who have forgotten their pasts together. the main character is a prince who fakes his death to become a trophy wife. also he remembers his past lives but never mentions it to anyone. one of the best books i’ve ever read

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LOVE IN THE BIG CITY(2024) 1.05

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GO YEONG'S SMILE AND GYU HO'S EYES

I will be thinking for far too long about Go Yeong's smiles when he's in pain...

...and so he smiles after his mother's funeral and tries to get his friends to smile too

...and so he smiles when he tells Gyu Ho about Kylie, and again when he is walking away from the conversation and trying not to cry...

...and so he smiles when he and Gyu Ho are on the train to the airport, and smiles again as wide as he can when Gyu Ho is trying to get him to admit that Go Yeong is breaking up with him.

...and so he smiles on the train before he cannot bear it anymore and starts to cry.

I will be thinking for far too long about the fact that on Gyu Ho and Yeong's third date at the bar, all Go Yeong wanted was for Gyu Ho to look his way just once while he was working.

And how Go Yeong never looked Gyu Ho's way when he was working.

And how Gyu Ho looks at Go Yeong when they are on the train to the airport, but turns away when Go Yeong smiles, because he knows what Go Yeong's smiles mean.

And how Go Yeong's refusal to engage with Gyu Ho's question about if they are breaking up, leads to Gyu Ho storming off in anger, never turning around for one last look at Go Yeong.

And how Go Yeong stands up to watch Gyu Ho walk away (I suspect in hopes the Gyu Ho will turn back to look) and immediately sits back down when Gyu Ho walks through airport security without even a moment's glance back.

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JIN HO EUN as GYU HO

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Young-ah! We're here!

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You should lie here with me.

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literally just realized there were some scenes cut in the version of litbc i watched?? im watching it on viki and now that im reading through other people's posts im like "wtf is that gif from"... what the hell man?????? I don't have it in me to watch these eps again right away but now i Have to

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Water Bottles in the Fridge as a Relationship Metaphor [Eps 5 and 6 of LITBC]

I sobbed after finishing Episodes 5 and 6 of Love in the Big City and I have been trying to find the words to articulate why but they aren't coming. So instead I'm going to talk about this relationship, focusing on the image that stuck strongest in my mind: The water bottles. [No book spoilers, this is all just reaction to the series].

After Gyu Ho moves in, Yeong comes home from a really draining day at work late because he's been writing in a cafe, only to passive-aggressively spray the drying laundry to mask the smell and stare at the empty shelf in the fridge where their stash of water bottles should be. He goes to his laptop to write more of his novel, while Gyu Ho behind him puts the laundry in the dryer and fills up the fridge with water. There are at least two other times when Gyu Ho fills up the fridge with water after one of their fights; the other one that stood out to me was Gyu Ho putting water in the fridge after coming home with his suitcase rather than moving out/leaving permanently. That relatively small but repeated chore stuck with me as an embodiment of Gyu Ho's tip-toeing that Yeong mentions in his voiceover.

If you've ever lived with anyone else, you know how the tiniest things can become massive irritants, especially when you are depressed or stressed, but it's true anytime. And you also know that those massive irritants do not mean you love them any less. I was blown away by how well these episodes, especially episode 6, captured a long term relationship's ups, downs, and mundanity. The palpable tension between Yeong and Gyu Ho, mixed with the easy dissipation of that tension and back to life as normal, radiated from the screen. Even when they fight, like in the cafe where Yeong is writing, they are fighting about how they want good things for each other. They just have different ideas about what that looks like and how they get there. I loved the tiny moments like Yeong, frustrated after the fight, walking home and hearing a stranger cuss out a cat, and smiling to himself because it reminded him of the 'Crabby Tabby' nickname Gyu Ho gave him.

[This is a bit of a sidenote, but the difference between Yeong Su's 'I'm moving to New York, did you think what we had was love?' and Gyu Ho's 'Come to Shanghai with me, I won't go without you' is so massive it's still sitting with me days later.]

It's clear that they're both trying, and at the same time, that they both are holding or held back. Gyu Ho is not a pushover and does hold his own in these arguments, and does make his mark on the space by e.g. putting up curtains, but he keeps backing down in the end; and Yeong continues to keep him at arms length even after trusting him with his biggest secret and deepest shame, and even after inviting him to live together. It's clear that sharing knowledge of Kylie does not free Yeong from shame about her. He asks Gyu Ho multiple times where he sees him as 'dirty', and Gyu Ho's response that he's the dirtiest joke is, I think, a loving attempt to say no in a way that Yeong can hear.

The scene on the train to the airport near the end of the episode captured their dynamic perfectly; Gyu Ho is willing to stand in order to spend time with Yeong, and Yeong is unwilling to let him. And Yeong is fundamentally correct that the circumstances of their lives (especially his life, with Kylie) mean that he would be holding Gyu Ho back, and Gyu Ho in the end makes the choice to listen and leave Yeong when he's told to rather than continue to fight him on it.

Yeong noticed and got annoyed by the water shelf not being refilled one time, And Gyu Ho filled it every time since, even when he was furious and barely wanted to be there at all. And Yeong noticed, but didn't know what to do about it, the same way he noticed how Gyu Ho always slept silently, and would constantly check his breathing (and even made snoring noises to himself to fill the silence), and took that as a sign that Gyu Ho did not feel safe or fully settled. He was unclear how much his own behaviour vs. Gyu Ho's personality were to blame:

"I wonder why you sleep in utter silence, like you're constantly on tip-toes. As if you're never home, no matter how long you've lived here. Is that my fault? Or is it your fault? Or maybe it's simply an inevitability."

I think it's the fact that these two love each other so much, and were both so reasonable and tried so hard, still could not make things work, and how fucking unfair it all feels, that made me sob. I don't know that I'll find better words than that.

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Love in the Big City Timeline in the Series

Here are the facts I've put together about the timeline in the series (which feels, unlike the book, a little more linear and so actually possible to do this with):

[indeterminate, elementary school, est. early 2000s] Yeong's mom finds out about Yeong's father's second family and divorces him

[indeterminate, high school, est. late 2000s] Yeong is caught kissing another boy on the playground and institutionalized by his mother

2012: The year that T-ara's song Sexy Love comes out (so we know the series starts after that date)

2014: As per his own narration in ep5, this is the year Yeong contracts HIV and is diagnosed by the military (and he only spends 1 month in the military before getting a medical discharge)

[Uncertain so I'm putting them here]: Since it isn't mentioned that Yeong goes to the military in the series and we never see his hair shaved, I'm assuming that Yeong meets Nam Gyu and Mi Ae in the same year after he's back [but this is the assumption I feel least strong about]. The T-aras sing "Sugar Free" at the Karaoke event before their enlistment, so they probably also go to the military in later 2014; similarly I'm assuming Mi Ae's abortion is the same year

2015: Mi Ae's application to her job had this date on it; Mi Ae goes to the job retreat for a month, meets Jun Ho, and then several months after that, Yeong stops talking to Mi Ae for 10 months after she outs him.

2016: We know Yeong won the contest in 2016 as per the book we see on Yeong Su's nightstand, and since he called Mi Ae after that, we know they reconciled in 2016. Also, as per the last text message from him, Nam Gyu dies in 2016. After his funeral, Yeong takes over Mi Ae's apartment and Mi Ae gets married. Also, Yeong's mother gets diagnosed with cancer 3 years before she dies, which would be 3 years before Yeong tells Gyu Ho about Kylie, so that means her cancer diagnosis was also in 2016.

2017: Yeong Su tells Yeong he's moving to America [guessing based on how much time seemed to pass in their relationship]; Yeong attempts suicide

2018: Yeong Su sends Yeong the manuscript (which he throws out) [we know this was a year after Yeong Su leaves, but before Yeong's mother dies]

2019: Yeong's mother dies. We know Yeong tells Gyu Ho about Kylie 5 years after he got her, so that puts their relationship (and therefore Yeong's mother's death) in 2019

2021: We know that Gyu Ho and Yeong were dating for at least a year and more like 2 before Gyu Ho moves to Shanghai, so I'm guessing Gyu-Ho leaving is in 2021.

Feel free to correct me or add any concrete dates that I missed! I'll update with details from the last 2 episodes when I've seen them, if there are any worth noting.

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Love in the Big City, Ep 5-6: Visuals to Support Adaptation

So…I already covered a lot of the questions from this week’s discussion in the original book club and couldn’t think of anything else to talk about but the visuals which felt like a bit of a cop out since this is a book talk. So, shout out to @lurkingshan for encouraging me to write this! 

So, if you couldn’t tell from my original essay that got way too in the weeds about antiretroviral medications in Korea that Part 3 was one of my favorite parts of the book, then let me inform you that before I watched Ep 5-6 I…(1) finally purchased Love in the Big City, (2) re-read all of Part 3 before starting the episodes, and (3) actually took notes on my thoughts while watching 5 and 6. 

Which means Park Sang Young’s writing was fresh in my mind. 

What's Fun About Adaptation

Something that is always interesting to me in adaptations between mediums is how they convey information. Love in the Big City the book is very internal. Young is very matter of fact about a lot of his life. He doesn’t like to linger. And as such I think there are moments where it is harder to parse his loneliness in the book, just like there are moments where it is harder to parse his loneliness in the show. 

And despite the fact that Part 3 is the most faithful to the book, there are some incredibly important visuals that change or at least add context or depth to the story we have already been told.

The Funeral

One of the most glaring differences being the opening scene, because fun fact, in the book we never get confirmation that his mother dies.

Full disclosure, I cried at the end of Episode 4 with the ending scene of Yeong’s mother and him at the park because that image could have been plucked directly from my head when I read the scene in the book.

But we open Part 3 with Young forgetting his passport and leaving Gyu Ho to go on a trip to Japan alone, rather than opening on a funeral. When Gyu Ho and Yeong meet for the first time in the show,so much of the scene is spot on from the book including the harassment of the DJ, the removal of the shirt, getting elbowed in the face, and Yeong kissing Gyu Ho on the dancefloor and Gyu Ho tasting his blood. With one major change, Yeong has his chief mourner’s band with him and drops it in the club. In the book, he does not have such a thing and instead drops his phone case. So we’ve already have a much heavier visual significance behind his and Gyu Ho’s first meeting re: Gyu Ho getting some information about how Young handles his pain (he’s at a club immediately after a funeral), and what he’s been through (literally just lost a parent).

Kylie

Gyu-Ho + Kylie

Another notable visual moment that signified a difference for me was during the scene where Yeong is telling Gyu Ho about Kylie. Because, as I mentioned in my og Part 3 post, not once in the entirety of the book does Young ever use the term HIV. The T-ara’s call it the bug, and he and Gyu Ho call it Kylie, and no one else knows. And that lack of visuals on the term HIV, I think, is an important part of Young’s character, and a good way to indicate Young’s shame around his diagnosis. So again, similarly to how we never get confirmation from Young in the book that his mother dies, we never get explicit confirmation that he has HIV. You have to read in to it, you have to know the context clues: the symptoms of acute HIV infection, what antiretrovirals are used for, etc. But in the show, we get some informational pamphlets slapped down in front of Yeong that tell the audience explicitly what Go Yeong has been diagnosed with, even if he still never says the term himself.

The T-ara’s 

The biggest example being the T-ara’s. For those of you who haven’t read it, it may be surprising to find out that in the book Young does not mention the T-ara’s were in his life at all until Part 3. And I say it might be surprising because in the show they have been there from the very beginning. They were at the hospital after Yeong’s suicide attempt, they were there to support him after his mother’s funeral, they have been there for years. And they were there for years as well, through Jaehee, through his mother’s cancer, in the book, but he only brings them up when he starts talking about how he was first introduced to Gyu Ho. 

And thus they come off as far less central to his life. 

Which diminishes the emotional impact of moments like the HIV joke and the fact that he doesn’t tell the T-ara’s about his status. Here is how Young explains it in the book: 

“I told my mother and the T-ara gang that I’d been discharged early for a ruptured disc….Apparently not all of them were total idiots because one of them did ask,  -What the fuck? Did you catch the bug? -Oh no! You’re on to me! We cackled it away. When I drank with them, and some guy rumored to be poz passed by, our resident clown Eun-jung would say 'Everyone cover your glasses,' and we’d all burst out laughing. I’d laugh along until I remembered, Oh right, I’ve got it in me, too, which sent a chill down my spine. But mostly I don’t think about it that much.” (p. 167)

But now, with the show using the T-ara’s as the throughline, emphasizing how important of a role they play in Yeong’s life, that scene carries a much larger emotional impact because a) we have seen the T-ara’s literally fighting hospital staff to show Yeong love, b) we have seen the T-ara’s acting as pallbearers for Yeong’s mother’s casket, and c) we can literally, physically see the emotional impact that the T-ara’s joking about catching HIV has on Yeong. Both in his initial moment’s reaction, the way he plasters on a smile because that’s how he’s always masked his pain, and the way he runs to hide in the dark with his secrets. 

All of this to say that the inclusion of the T-ara’s as the thread between parts exists for no other reason than to cause me and everyone else maximum emotional damage.

The Hands

That’s right…. CAPTAIN HANDS IS BACK BABY!!!!! *Insert air horn sound effects here* 

Because Hyung’s reaction to Go Yeong trying to hold hands and the subsequent unearned pinkie touch was already on my mind from last week, I took particular note of the portrayal of hands in Part Three both in the book and in the show. And I am so glad that I did. Because I got to experience the absolute highs of seeing the change from the book to the show of how visible Gyu Ho and Go Yeong are with their physical affection. 

In the book, Young describes the first time he holds hands with Gyu Ho as follows: 

“Words disappeared. I swallowed, loud enough to be heard, and our knees were touching. I covered our legs with my coat. We held hands underneath it. Soon, we were stroking each other’s thighs. Each looking in the opposite direction. We passed the Ambassador Hotel, Cheonggye Stream, and Ewha Wedding Hall, then the little theaters of Daehak-ro as we approached my house. Passing a firm and hot grip back and forth through our linked hands.” p. 157

Compare that to what Hyung says in Part Two:

“‘-Are you saying you’re ashamed of me?’ ‘-Yes, that’s right, I’m ashamed of you. You want to hold my hand in public, you call me baby. I mean, what would anyone think?’” p. 111

Compare that to what we see in Episode Four with Hyung…

…and to what we see in Episode Five with Gyu Ho…

THE COAT DOES NOT EXIST!

Gyu Ho is introduced in the story as the bartender at a gay bar, he is kissed by Yeong in public at the club and continues to pursue him, they get coffee together, they are physically affectionate on the street, and here they are meeting for the third time, and holding hands in the taxi where they could be observed. It is such an important little change for me to visually affirm that Gyu Ho does not have the internalized homophobia that was causing so many problems in Go Yeong’s last relationship with Hyung. 

And similarly we see Go Yeong and Gyu Ho cuddling up to each other in the passenger seat of the moving truck in full view of the driver, where in the book Young only describes them trading body heat through their thighs. 

And again with the rain sequence. Which I thought was interesting to include here, because it is such a prominent and important component of Part Four. Though it makes sense to include it here for the sake of maintaining a more cohesive timeline. But I was losing it when they were holding hands in the rain, with those double fucking rainbows cutting straight through them.

gif by @jimmysea

The Dream

The dream is a completely new scene in the show. Young does not dream of Jaehee or his mother, and I thought that was an interesting addition. To have Go Yeong hear Gyu Ho knocking at his door and to be haunted by the specters of the last two parts of his life, Mi Ae for the first part, asking him if he is okay and why he’s still living alone at her place. 

His mother and Hyung in the second, asking him when he is going to come home and asking if he’s met someone good, respectively. And what an ominous goddamn omen those three are, hinting at Yeong’s masking of pain, his feelings of displacement, and the specter of a relationship that failed. All things that will eventually contribute to the failure of Yeong and Gyu Ho’s relationship in the show.

Misc. 

This is, unsurprisingly, getting long so let me just acknowledge a couple of other visual moments that really fucking got me:

The red crucifix that glows out over the horizon when Go Young is telling Gyu Ho about Kylie. It’s the first thing my eye was drawn to, and it feels like a ghost of his mother looking in on Go Yeong, especially because it matches the red crucifix over her funeral portrait and on top of her casket. 

The child talking about their mother that makes Yeong turn back to chase after Gyu Ho

Yeong’s chapped lips when he’s being diagnosed with HIV as a juxtaposition to Gyu Ho helping Yeong put chapstick on.

The Kylie lyrics

FUCKING. GO. YEONG’S. SMILES.

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