#litbc

[loveisactivated]

[taeminie]

You know I’d be lost without you guys, right? — Yes, honey!

Love in the Big City (2024)

[itsza]

#mood

[themisconceptions]

Being here with you in the dark... it feels like it's just us two in the universe.

love in the big city (2024)

[nonglukest]

Go Yeong & Gyu Ho - Love in the Big City - Episode 6

"The trip rekindled passion in our relationship... but we soon returned to our lukewarm normal."

[waitmyturtles]

(Source)

[iwantoceans]

Heartbreak Love in the Big City (2024)

[itsallaboutbl]

Love In The Big City (2024)

[doyou000me]

Someone else can probably say this in a much more insightful way but

I love the way Nam Yoon Su plays Young.

The mannerism, the expressions, the tone of voice - it's all so good.

It is so very refreshing to see this "type" of gay man played seriously, without being turned into slapstick comedy.

It's making me think about the large number of BL series where the gay male characters are made to cater to and attract the (largely female) audience - but Young?

Young isn't trying to be attractive to the women.

Why would he?

He's gay.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

[Stars' Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant] LITBC Nam Yoon Su cooking for all his men. (highlights video)

Part 1

Part 2

[shinjaeha]

thinking about how gyu ho was quite literally the light and love of young's life. how when they first meet, he's the one that presses that bottle to his mouth and asks if he's okay when young gets knocked down. how he travels all that way to young's apartment just to put his curtains up for him when he sees how the light bothers him when he sleeps. how he's the metaphorical ray of sunlight on young's face coming through the gap in those very curtains when he's counting all his moles.

how he's always smoothing out the crease between young's eyebrows when he's worried, like he's trying to smooth away his troubles. how his acceptance of kylie is so easy and simple bc he knows that it's something that young has opened up and trusted him with. something that he's never told another soul about, and it's understandably something painful for young to be so vulnerable about. how he tells young that he's still the same person with or without kylie. everything about gyu ho is a balm. the way he soothes and reassures. the way he loves.

that scene when they're kissing in the club for the last time encapsulates the very essence of their relationship imo. young doubting and constantly asking what happens if they argue again once they're back home, and gyu ho answering him so easily and honestly with "then we'll make up!" over and over again bc it really IS that simple for him. simple in a way that it's not for young who is never able to get past the doubt and insecurity of it all.

[loveisactivated]

JIN HO EUN as GYU HO

[taeminie]

This big city is ruthless. Countless men gather at this club every weekend hoping to meet someone good to have a loving relationship with. It’s a facade. That stuff only happens in the movies. Becoming an adult changed nothing. All I can do in this ruthless world is get hammered like there’s no tomorrow, and rate the guys here while I waste away my youth.

Nam Yoon Su as Go Young in Love in the Big City (2024)

[itsza]

LOVE IN THE BIG CITY(2024) 1.06

[poetry-protest-pornography]

Watched the first two episodes of Love In The Big City and I am full of feelings about queer loneliness and the different ways that that presents itself, and about how love changes us in big and small ways, and how people can carve themselves so deeply into us that being apart from them leaves us at a loss, and how it can be hard to see the ways that people love us until we step back.

And really just a lot about loneliness, and how it seems such an intrinsic part of the queer experience, and how it is reflected in Young and in Nam Gyu (and in Mi Ae).

They're not fully formed thoughts, yet. I'm going to let them marinate a little more, but I think aside from how beautiful and necessary and vital loving friends are, the biggest takeaway was really how loneliness is this giant spectre that haunts Young, and how incredibly, honestly queer that is.

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Sure, Love in the Big City is melancholy and raw and truth-telling and blah, blah, blah. But right in the center of it is this gay vitality, this flopping effeminate performance we’re rarely allowed on screen, and it’s even more rarely the central role. Ko Yeong is not a femme, exactly, but a distinctly legible gay, a stereotype if he wasn't taken so seriously and played across his full-range.

Nam Yoon Su’s characterization of the character enlivens a dour narrative. While I respected the novel I actually wasn’t a huge fan when it came out in translation because of its overwhelming depressive quality, but the adaptation’s rendering of the narrator (among some other key changes) gives us resiliency and humor in the form of a vibrant affect even within the dark lonely depths.

There’s something clown-like in the physicality of this kind of gay: neck and wrist flexible as rubber, an inclination toward what others deem inappropriate laughter, gawkiness that suddenly makes perfect sense as it bursts into spontaneous and surprisingly coordinated street dancing. In lesser hands, it’s a flamboyant cliche. But here, its a natural way for this character to be in the world, instinctively concealed when wary of others judgment, and never detracting from other shades of emotional intensity.

I've been thinking about this embodiment for a few months now, not because of LITBC, but because it's my own. Gemini's performance of Tinn in My School President is another instance where I think something similar is captured, and on the first season of South Korea's gay dating show His Man, Eun Chan carried himself with this demeanor. Its a gestural language with an insistence towards joy that drives it. That doesn't mean it's driving in the right direction, of course. However, when people watch LITBC I hope they can see how this queer characterization creates a throughline of self-acceptance, persistence, and bathos even in the face of the hardships associated with the queer experience. It's a body enacting queer irony, humor, joy.