#the love club ep

[brokenxmachine]

LORDE performing "The Love Club" live at KCRW’s basement studios, US (2013).

[bitingdown17]

"The only problem that I got with the club is how you're severed from the people who watched you grow up. When you're a member, go on your great adventure again. And we'll be waiting at the end" -The Love Club

Illumination by Joe Gyurcsak

"Spend all the evenings you can with the people who raised you. 'Cause all the times they will change, it'll all come around" -Stoned at the Nail Salon

[baltharino]

Ouran High School Host Club (2006)

[morganadismay]

more doodles ft. the whole gang

[milkbreadtoast]

Scenes that still shake me to my core more than 10 years later.... god the voice acting in this scene is so good.

[shinjiikar1]

I've been trying to think about what I want to say about these first two episodes of Love in the Big City. I'm watching it slowly, it's a show that makes me want to sit rather than rush ahead, and it also hits a little too close to home to enjoy freely (I've only watched the first two episodes so far and my knowledge of the rest of the story is fairly vague so bear with me).

Go Young experiences two major losses. The parallels between these losses, what could have been vs. what can never be again was what particularly stood out to me.

Mi Ae represents a beautiful time that is forever lost. After she gets married, there's no one he can be fully himself with. He simply doesn't have another relationship on that level, platonic or otherwise, and that's truly such an isolating experience. Who do you call when you're in trouble? Who do you complain to? Who will always be your first port of call?

Often, youthful friendships are particularly intense, you're at a point where the world feels so enormous but you don't quite know what to do with it, or yourself yet. Everything still feels new and exciting. You meet people who understand you in ways you've never been understood and can't imagine it won't last forever.

And then you experience that loss for the first time.

Kim Nam Gyu experiences it too. It's clear early in their relationship that Go Young is overwhelmed and uncomfortable with the intensity of Nam Gyu's feelings (his expressions during the padlock and ring scenes in particular). He feels suffocated and anxious, he's not ready for it. So, rather harshly (at least the first time) he ends things. I've been on both ends, which makes it a lot easier to empathize with both of them. While I feel for Nam Gyu incredibly (especially as I read him as very neurodivergent), that discomfort is not something easily resolved, and it's only made worse by his inability to move on. But how can he when he also has no one else?

In the end, Go Young mentions that he missed out on what could have been a long and lasting love with Nam Gyu but I wonder if that's true. Would he have eventually opened up and reciprocated that intensity? Or would he have continued to wallow in his discomfort and let that resentment pile up even further? It's hard to say, but based on the way he behaves, I think the latter. He just wasn't in a stage of life to accept it yet, without the experiences he has with Mi Ae, and without Nam Gyu's death, would he have made it to that point before it became too much? He says he didn't really believe love was possible for someone like him, it took him a lot to get to the point where he even starts to believe it; I find it hard to imagine that he could've gotten there purely through a relationship with Nam Gyu at that stage, as sad as that might be.

Mi Ae offers a bit of an interesting foil here. She chooses loss, but the loss of her authentic self. She chooses the safe option, a stable relationship and job, pleasing her parents, following societal expectations. Maybe the guy isn't quite right, but in the end what seems most important to her is that security, and she's willing to take a loss to get it. As others in the tags have pointed out, Go Young doesn't have that option. There is no option that will (mostly) guarantee him security and safety that would even be remotely tolerable and grant him any degree of happiness. Perhaps he could have chosen to lose parts of himself to be with Nam Gyu, but that wouldn't have provided him the type of security Mi Ae enjoys. If something went wrong and it didn't work out, he could stand to lose even more.

I think that's something that a lot of cishet people fail to understand, and part of what these episodes have done so well for me. Really underlining how the queer experience differs and how isolating it can be (which I think is reflected in Nam Gyu as well).

[chirpsythismorning]

Joyce staying at the cabin with Hopper and El to keep them safe bc no one in Hawkins knows they’re alive. Will, Jonathan and Argyle staying at the Wheeler's bc they have more room and presumably aren't in danger like the others.

OH WAIT there's a witch hunt for the Hellfire club, which means all the boys are in danger from the townspeople. OH WAIT the boy who came back to life has returned from the West, the same boy whose assumed death jumpstarted this small town's curse in the first place! The same boy who apparently everyone and their fathers knew was gay...

THE END IS NEAR! THE GAYS ARE RESPONSIBLE!

+ Time jump early somewhere in between.

Now picture how that would look in an 8 episode story format, leading up to a final battle lasting about 2+ hrs, and that's loosely how s5 is gonna go down.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

It's not the tears, it's the laughter. That's what breaks me. The mask that he can't take off when he's with other people. That's what made episode 8 the toughest watch yet.

When I wrote about Gyu-ho, I said that to be able to see him made this relationship more real, and so the heart break was so much stronger. Because I saw two people hurting, instead of one choosing the right words to describe that feeling. So with this last part, I was dreading the flashbacks. I was dreading watching him alone in that city. I was dreading the lanterns. I was not prepared for the laughter, and the voice.

It's interesting when people say that we change our personality a bit when we speak in a different language and so I thought how fortunate that he needed to speak in english for this 'relationship'. I wonder if it made it easier to hide himself in foreign words. To remove any trace of himself from these conversations and be a whole new person.

That's something we also didn't have access to in the novel. And all of that, caught me off guard. I found myself thinking - who is this person? I don't recognize him. But I guess that's the point.

[flyttadigsart]

she simply has the range.

[otpadsis]

👎👎

[eltingvilleclubconfession]

i wish welcome to eltingville had at least been one of those shows that got six episodes before being shelved by the network for the rest of time

[brokenxmachine]

All my life i've been fighting a war...

LORDE performing "Bravado" live on KCRW’s basement studios, US (2013)

[joeymerenset]

My CG titles on my main account normally: character names, brief description of what’s going on, chapter numbers

My CG titles when I’m sleepy and playing on my 2nd account:

[theodoravery]

she's so me

[honeyimissjoo]

Jooheon in every ep of Bbam Bbam Social Club

[math-rocks-and-lizard-bats]

The lesbians really out here making me cry tonight omigod I love them