#love in the big city

[antonhur]

I translated Sang Young Park's LOVE IN THE BIG CITY into English and got nominated for an International Booker Prize and the Dublin Literary Award for it.

Ask me anything.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #literary translation

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

New images for Love In The Big City the series

I'll update with the source when possible. ATM the site is down for excess traffic apparently.

#love in the big city #kbl #upcoming bl #I love that I can recognize at least two of these moments

[lurkingshan]

Love in the Big City Book Club Meta Round Up

Already so many great essays and we’re just getting started! If you haven’t had the chance to read and share everyone’s thoughts, here is your weekly round up. Any additional essays that post after today will be added to the list next week, and I'll add on a new section for each part every week as we progress.

So let's see what our book clubbers had to say!

Background

AMA with Anton Hur, LITBC Translator

Translator’s note by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Part 1

Blueberries and Cigarettes: Universalities and Differences when reading Love in the Big City by @brifrischu

Jaehee: a good distraction–until she wasn’t by @serfergs

LITBC: Jaehee, and why she matters so much to me by @starryalpacasstuff

LitBC Part 1 – Timeline by @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 1 by @fiction-is-queer

Love in the Big City: Reflections on Part 1 by @becomingabeing

Love in the Big City Part 1 Check in by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City, Part 1 by @emotionallychargedtowel

Love in the Big City Part 1: Jaehee by @sorry-bonebag

Love in the Big City Part 1: On Friendship by @lurkingshan

Love in the Big City Part 1: Reliable and Unreliable Narration by @twig-tea

On expectations by @hyeoni-comb

Part I: The unacknowledged relationship by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Two Friends Diverged in Emotional Sincerity: Reflections on Love in the Big City–Part 1 by @wen-kexing-apologist

Young’s world is small and private by @colourme-feral

Part 2

Finding Familiarity Despite Cultural Differences: Love in the Big City Part 2 by @fiction-is-queer

Hyung’s internalized homophobia and hatred for the US by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

libtc part 2 by @hyeoni-comb

LitBC Part 2: A bit of rockfish, taste the universe by @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City - A bite of rockfish, tase the universe by @littleragondin

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 2 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City: Part 2 by @wen-kexing-apologist

Love in the Big City: Reflections on Part 2 by @becomingabeing

Love in the Big City Part 2: Emotional Distance by @twig-tea

Love in the Big City Part 2 Check In by @bengiyo 

Love in the Big City The Playlist by @brifrischu

On Parents and Apologies Never Received by @lurkingshan

Part II: Historical Context and Hyung’s Background by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City (Part II) by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Part 3

LITBC Part Three: Now Introducing, Kylie by @wen-kexing-apologist

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 3 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City Part 3 Check In by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything by @twig-tea

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader 2 by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings

Love In The Big City Part 3: Words and Miscellaneous Context by @doyou000me

On Gyu-ho, the Mundanity of Great Love, and the Destructive Nature of Shame by @lurkingshan

Part 3: No Disappointment Without Expectations by @doyou000me

Rose Reads Love in the Big City (Part III) by @my-rose-tinted-glasses

Part 4

Adaptation Concerns by @doyou000me

Anticipating the LITBC Adaptations by @lurkingshan

Depictions of physical intimacy by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings 

LitBC - The Structure of Change @dylogpenchester

Love in the Big City Book Club: Part 4 by @profiterole-reads

Love in the Big City Part 4 Check In by @bengiyo

Love in the Big City Part 4: Having Trouble Letting Go by @twig-tea

Love in the Big City: Part Four- Regret, Rain, Love, and Loss by @wen-kexing-apologist

the story | relationships + Young by @hyeoni-comb

Young and Imperfect Character Growth by @lurkingshan

Young asking himself meaningful questions by @hyeoni-comb

And that's all for now, folks! Thanks to everyone who participated; it was such a fun experience discussing this book with you. Excited to get the chance to talk more about this story with all of you when the adaptations arrive later this year.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #korean bl

[wen-kexing-apologist]

WKA Gay Analysis Assembly, Part Two

Well, it finally happened. My first Gay Analysis Assembly Post refused to edit for me. So I guess it's time to start a Part Two for all the new essays that I have been writing!

Please check out Part One here, it contains essays on: Utsukushii Kare, Moonlight Chicken, Bed Friend, Our Dining Table, Our Skyy 2, Step by Step, La Pluie, Cupid's Last Wish, Be My Favorite, My Ride, Only Friends, I Feel You Linger in the Air, Shadow, Last Twilight, and The Sign

Unknown

Episode 6: Breakdown Breakdown

Episode 7: Return Breakdown

Episode 8: Losing My Mind

Episode 9: Parallels

Dead Friend Forever

Dead Friend Forever: Episode 5

Power Dynamics in Dead Friend Forever

Dead Friend Forever: Squicks and Triggers Ep 1-8, Ep 9, Ep 10, Ep 12

Cooking Crush

Cooking Crush, Episode 8

Body Language in Cooking Crush

Love in the Big City

Part One: Two Friends Diverged in Emotional Sincerity

Part Two

Love for Love's Sake

Symptoms of a System Error: Manifestation of Depression in Love for Love's Sake

Kiseki

Kiss-eki: Dear to Me

#kiseki: dear to me #love for love's sake #love in the big city #cooking crush #dead friend forever #unknown the series

[conscbgb]

Actor Byun Jun Seo (Perfect Marriage Revenge), Kwon Hyuk (The New Employee) and Jin Ho Eun (All of us are Dead) are joining Nam Yun Soo, who will be playing the lead Go Young, a gay HIV positive novel writer in the upcomimg #LoveInTheBigCity

( 8 episodes BL / queer mlm drama based on bestseller novel of the same name)

This is gonna be one of the great ones 🙏😉 my expectations about it are very high 🤞🤞🤞🤞

#kwon hyuk #jin ho eun #nam yoon su #byun junseo #lee hyeonseo #kactors #kbl #love in the big city

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

LOVE IN THE BIG CITY IS GOING TO BE A DRAMA???

This is like one of THE works of queer Korean literature OMG I can't believe this is going to be made into a drama.

The book, written by Park Sangyoung and translated to English by Antor Hur (both of whom are vocal members of the queer community in Korea) is a semi-autobiographical account of being a gay 20-something in modern day Seoul. It touches on a lot of important topics (including HIV and the current attitude towards it in the Korean medical community) and as well as containing a very frank (sometimes joyful, sometimes lonely) account of gay dating culture in Seoul.

IT WAS ALSO A HUGE HIT IN KOREA. Like bestseller popular, like nine printings popular, like major bookshops top 5 list popular, like a queer for queers book went MAINSTREAM popular.

If this is well made (and I really hope it is) then it could very well be a game changer for k-bls. As I said before, it tackles a lot of difficult and important topics (some of which are almost taboo in Korean culture) and is unashamedly and almost confrontationally queer. Not only that but it's a BIG project, one that people who don't normally watch BLs or queer media might tune in for and pay attention to, one that might complete the journey (or at least bring us even closer to the finish line) that shows like Where Your Eyes Linger and Semantic Error started and break the queer media/mainstream media barrier once and for all. I AM SO EXCITED FOR THIS OMG!!!!!

Article Here

Goodreads Summary Here

[Adding these tags because you might be interested in this news, if this gets made it'll probably be very different but also there'll be so much to dig into and it just feels like a BIG thing to be happening. Also I'm just excited and want to share: @waitmyturtles @rocketturtle4 @respectthepetty @lurkingshan]

#kbl #kdrama #love in the big city #queer media #I'm screaming into my pillow right now #I need this to be masterpiece #please do the story and the visions and aims of the author justice #kbl news #also if anyone wants korean queer literature recs let me know I have a list

[archiveofmystuff]

Jin Ho-eun for W Korea magazine: on filming Love in the Big City

Actor Jin Ho-eun was part of a feature on a few young male Korean actors for the magazine W Korea. For one part of the interview he talked about filming Love in the Big City.

Here is the feature. Below is a screenshot of the relevant part of the article. **DISCLAIMER** This is just through autotranslation on the webpage, it is not an official translation nor a fan translation and could very easily contain some errors. I don't know Korean so I can't vouch for its accuracy lol.

He does confirm he's playing Gyu-ho, which we already knew but I'm not sure if it had been "officially" confirmed by the production or him/his team. He's been posting regularly on his instagram about filming Love in the Big City, so between that and this interview he seems really excited!

He seemingly calls it a queer drama so it's safe to assume it's not going to be "straightwashed" as some people evidently feared. I never really had any doubt about that since I heard the author was involved and also bc....what story is there without it being gay...but some people on other social medias (cough tik tok cough) seemed worried it would be turned into a "bromance" (again not sure how that would be possible), so there you go. Obviously doesn't necessarily confirm they'll depict everything that was in the book, but still! A queer drama with fairly established actors and apparently pretty good budget! From Korea! That's a pretty big deal imo.

Also, I didn't realize he was only 23! He's younger than Gyu-ho in the book but Kdramas (based on my slightly limited experience) don't shy away from having younger actors play slightly older characters so I don't think anyone should assume they're like aging down the characters or anything. Nam Yoon-su is 26 and obviously the book basically spans the main character's entire 20s into his early 30s so it makes sense to choose people kind of in the middle!

Have some pics from the shoot of our future Gyu-ho!

#love in the big city #litbc book club #jin hoeun

[twig-tea]

Love in the Big City Part 3: Kylie Recontextualizes Everything

I have waffled all week about what to write about this chapter. There have been some great essays about HIV and the stigma in Korea by @stuffnonsenseandotherthings here, as well as how antiretrovirals and pre-exposure prophylactics work and when they were available from @wen-kexing-apologist here. This context was all critical to understand everything Young doesn’t talk about in this section of the book. 

I’ve been stuck on so many parts of this section of the book. The way stigma holds people back from care, from maintenance, from life-saving treatment and knowledge, from understanding their condition and preventing them unnecessarily from living a full life, which @doyou000me had me thinking about with their comments about Young’s coping mechanisms of minimization and emotional distance that possibly worked in conjunction with the Korean government healthcare policies and social stigma to keep Young from being informed about his own condition. The way Young holds himself back from happiness, and how it’s so heartbreaking to watch him open up to it slowly in this section and then, as @my-rose-tinted-glasses wrote , he let the shame and self-loathing take control again. The way this relationship feels so real; @lurkingshan wrote so eloquently on how this section describes the details of a relationship as it started to settle. The relationship with Hyung was entirely ephemeral, in the liminal period of time between when Young was visiting his mother in hospital and before everything opened again for the day. There is so much that Young and Hyung never talked about–more than was obvious in chapter 2, because he never told Hyung about Kylie. In contrast, as @bengiyo pointed out, his relationship with Gyu-Ho started with honesty and was rooted in the physical presence of their apartment, which as a beautiful metaphor was grounded and improved slowly over time through the work they put into it but was also too small for them. 

I keep thinking about how Part 3 is bookended by Young disappointing Gyu-Ho with his absence. How he leaves him at the airport both times, thinking he’s doing Gyu-Ho a favour actually–he characterizes Gyu-Ho’s trip to Japan without him as much more fun, and he imagines Gyu-Ho’s future in Singapore will be better. In both cases, Gyu-Ho was only going because of Young, because Young wanted to, and Young planned it. But our narrator cannot get past seeing himself as something that brings Gyu-Ho down, and so he sabotages his own future. I feel for Gyu-Ho, being shepherded onto a plane alone when he was envisioning his future with the man he loved. It must have been devastating to be pushed away. 

This is not related to anything but I just love the detail of Young’s split lip and how he tastes blood when he kisses Gyu-Ho while drunk at the club and not yet knowing his name, and then panics, and we as readers don’t yet know why. Brilliant storytelling. 

I can’t stop thinking about how this reveal recontextualizes everything in parts 1 and 2. How the “incident that earned me a medical discharge” means Kylie was already in Young’s life as he took the engineering student he was seeing with him to get an STD check; as he was screamed at by an ex who prophesied that Young would get sick from being promiscuous and called him a ‘dirty rag that could never be cleaned’, which Young took with stoicism. I loved @bengiyo ‘s observation in his post linked above that Kylie’s presence likely coloured his reaction to Jaehee outing him to her fiance. 

Kylie was present as he watched his coffee be stolen by Hyung, when he thought about introducing Hyung to his mother, while he was wrestling with how Hyung (and, I think the narration makes clear, how he) was ashamed at how Young couldn’t ‘pass’ and was ‘obviously gay’, when he choked Hyung in his mother’s kitchen and it was seeing his tears on Hyung’s face that made Young let go. Kylie was part of him when he drank pesticide and tried to die, while he sat by his mother’s sickbed and had her head in his lap in the park, when he said “disease can turn anyone into a completely different person”, when he said he would “hope that she would die without having known.” 

Mostly, my brain keeps getting stuck on how familiar Young is to me. His choices, his self-loathing, his refusal to take anything seriously because at his core he’s terrified of facing what his reality means. And that fear ironically gets in the way of him understanding that his reality is not as scary as he thinks it is. He functions like he has to be alone, and so much of that comes from his internalized homophobia and his HIV diagnosis. He’s been told he’s dirty, something to be cleaned but irreparable, by so many people in different ways through his life. The man he claims as his greatest love barely even liked him as a person, and didn’t fully know him. I think that’s why he was able to feel more fully with Hyung, because in a way that relationship felt safer..Gyu-Ho, the person who knew all of him, and who wanted to build a life together with that complete and full knowledge of him, must have been terrifying, and I’m not surprised it felt easier to push him away than to fight for their future together. But it breaks my heart. 

There’s something rattling in my head about the T-aras that I don’t really know how to get out onto the page. In this chapter it’s revealed that the T-aras have been around the whole time, but they weren’t mentioned in parts 1 and 2. I think the fact that Young’s life feels more rounded, filled in with other people, and rich, than in parts 1 and 2 speaks to his emotional state in this part, as well as to how his time with Gyu-Ho wasn’t obsession but was more grounded in the mundane and the everyday. The T-aras themselves feel like familiar friends. Like with Hyung and JaeHee (at first), Young is drawn to people who he can remain emotionally distant from and who remain emotionally distant from him. People who will buy the story of “ruptured disc” for why he left military service early. People who joke about being poz and won’t ask questions and who hear the news about his new boyfriend as an ‘in’ to their favourite club. People who don’t take things seriously (or in Hyung’s case take things so seriously that Young can’t take him seriously). I was so glad to find out they existed because up to this point Young felt so isolated most of the time, with his world circling around one obsession in each part. But he had the T-aras the whole time; I’m choosing to read this as he just didn’t hold their importance to him in the same way in parts 1 and 2. As was already clear in the narrative but this makes even more obvious, Young’s isolation is not only self-inflicted but it’s in some ways a lie he tells himself to feel safer. He has friends, he just refuses to acknowledge their presence or importance, or to let them in to be more important, because he is so braced for being rejected for core parts of him that cannot be excised.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #sorry i'm so late with this one #this got more florid than i like to be #this Part had me way too in my feelings

[bengiyo]

LITBC Part 4 Check In

I’ve been mulling over this book for the entire week, and even as I sit here to get my thoughts down I am still fighting back an intense melancholy that grips me. I know Young. I have loved Young. He is a beloved friend. He is a pain in the ass. He is someone I will always miss. He is someone I wish I could have been closer to. I am still thinking about that balloon.

I think what I’m happiest about is that Young seems to genuinely regret failing with Gyu-ho. I like that most of our time thinking about Gyu-ho is not spent on the mean things he wrote in his fictionalized version of Gyu-ho in his stories, and instead we’re hit constantly with small memories of their time together. There’s a passage from this section that continues to linger with me:

“Using all kinds of other methods to create Gyu-ho and write him as other characters, I’ve tried to show the relationship we had and the time we spent together as complete as they were, but the more I try, the further I get from him and the emotions I had back then. My efforts become something fainter and more distanced from the truth.”

I can’t stop thinking about the sadness of grief and what it means when we no longer have someone around. They stop being a person who interacts with us and shapes us, and they become only this memory in us, and the quirks left behind. It makes me sad because truly most relationships fail. A lot of us are going to have many loves, and a lot of them won’t work out. I love that Young is so bad about all of his relationships and we can see where he messed up with Gyu-ho. I hope that the next time I fall for someone I do a better job at recognizing what he needs.

I hope that all the other queers reading this book were able to find parts of Young they could connect to, and I hope that listening to his stories helps them.

I will be chatting about this book with others, and I hope Young’s sass comes through for them. He’s been one of the most engaging narrators I’ve gotten to read in a while. I love listening to him talk and the way he thinks. I just know he would get on my nerves in person, and I couldn’t deal with him all the time, but I do love him.

As for the adaptation, I am really looking forward to the sequence when Young and Hyung meet up with Hyung’s fake activist friends, and also the scene where he tries to strangle that man. I think I’m also really looking forward to the final scene where Young sort of collapses on a random porch in Bangkok. I feel like that shot is going to be incredible.

This book club has been a great experience. I want to thank all of you for sharing so much of yourselves and your experiences over the last month. I appreciate how everyone has taken to the spirit of the book club and kept up with the reading and adding on to everyone else’s posts. I can’t wait to react to the show and movies with you all, and I hope we find another good book in the future.

#Ben reads #love in the big city #litbc book club

[starryalpacasstuff]

LITBC: Jaehee, and why she matters so much to me

Ok, I don't have a lot of time, so this is going to be messy, apologies in advance

When you're queer and living in a country that is generally homophobic, the default expectation one has is for people to be homophobic, hence Young's shock when Jaehee doesn't seem surprised or disgusted when she finds him kissing a guy. The two of them bond quickly due to their mutual status as social piranhas, and I can't stop thinking about why Jaehee matters so much. To be honest, Jaehee is everything one could want from a straight friend in a conservative country. Not only is she completely fine with Young being gay, I want to stress how important it is that Young can talk to her about his flings and one night stands openly. In asian society, it's typical for queerness to be something that people know about but never acknowledge, and for openly discussing it to be taboo. I've had experiences where friends that know I'm queer simply don't acknowledge the fact, choosing to act as though I'd never come out to them. That's the standard for 'acceptance' in asian society; tolerance. People don't stop associating with you, they simply act as though your queerness doesn't exist (and get visibility uncomfortable when you bring it up). That's why Jaehee is so important. Jaehee talks with Young about sex, his flings, and sizes up his dates from behind a coffee shop counter. She doesn't treat Young's queerness as something she has to tolerate and ignore.

It's not to say that Jaehee is the perfect ally. She still doesn't fully understand Young's queerness, and she outs him to her fiance, saying that he's basically a girl because he likes men (there's a whole host of issues to unpack with that, but as much as i'd like to, I don't have the time). But it remains a fact of the matter that Jaehee is incredibly progressive by asian standards, for the simple reason that she doesn't treat queerness as a hush-hush topic. And, I think, that's part of the reason that Jaehee outing him to her fiancé hurt Young so much. Young says it himself, his anger and feeling of betrayal was funny if he thought about it, because he'd never really cared about being outed before. He says it himself, the only explanation that he has is, "Because she was Jaehee". He says that he wasn't used to feeling betrayed because he expected so little of others. But his situation with Jaehee was different because Jaehee was different, and unlike the others, he'd come to expect her to understand him, to stand with him no matter what. Because Jaehee wasn't like the others, so Jaehee shouldn't have done what others would have. It hurt him when he realized that Jaehee was choosing to fit fit into society's expectation of her over him.

But that's something I can relate to so much; expecting people to understand you, especially those you hold close, until reality hits. Mistaking tolerance for acceptance, acceptance for understanding. I mentioned that the default expectation for I have when meeting people is that they will be homophobic, and I learned that through finding out, over and over again, that people I held close to me simply did not accept me, or understand me. And even if you do your best to not care about it, once you've figured it out, the crack in the relationship only widens with time, because you simply can't bring yourself to think of the person the same way as before. And that's what happened with Young and Jaehee. Because Jaehee accepted Young, he expected her to stand with him no matter what. But she didn't, and that's what hurt him. Jaehee accepted Young, yes. But she also chose to fit in with society's expectations over him, which ultimately caused the two to drift apart.

To me, Jaehee is a bittersweet character. She's loud and unapologetic, and she accepts Young in a way that seems almost too good to be true; because it sort of is. Because she also represents how people in asian societies have a long way to go before they understand queerness, and how queer people lose friendships because of it, which is something I know painfully well.

#i know i know i'm late to the party #ive been extremely busy #im sure theres a lot more to talk about in this area but i don't have the time to sit down and think about it #anyways i didn't see a lot of people talking about how amazing it is that jaehee accepts young so easily and openly #so i decided to throw together this to give my two cents #litbc book club #litbc #love in the big city #jaehee

[antonhur]

Bonus content! Sang Young Park and me at the British Centre for Literary Translation right after the LITBC UK tour last year. Yes, he's much taller than I am lol

#litbc book club #love in the big city #actually everyone is taller than i am

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Rose Reads Love In The Big City

Part I

So as I finished reading Part I and went to look at the questions that @bengiyo provided , I felt that I couldn’t really talk about this chapter from any other place than my own experience. I usually have a hard time writing from a non personal view point which is why I don’t write that much on here. But I wanted to be part of this event and it felt disingenuous to not write from a personal place. With that said.

I moved to London when I was 24 with one of my best friends. Let’s call him P. We shared a flat for almost 4 years. And our lives were not that different from Young and Jaehee. The major difference here was that I was single for all that time and didn’t sleep with anyone. I was ace but didn’t call it that at the time.

But I saw a lot of ourselves in this chapter. When we weren’t working and he wasn’t getting laid, we would spend most of our time together. We would talk about the boy du jour, and why I hated him, except when I didn’t and in that case P was the one that didn’t like him. We would visit gay clubs after work and I was drunk by 8pm and by that time, he had a companion for the rest of the night so I would go home. Of course I would wake up at some point when he staggered back home alone or not. If alone we would talk about the night, and if not alone I would save the conversations till morning. Except for the few times when I was actually still awake and would quickly be put in charge of brewing coffee and providing food to soak up all the alcohol.

This went on for almost 4 years. He had some longer relationships, and by that I mean, maybe six months, and I abstained from all that. Although in the beginning P was relentless about my need to meet someone and get laid, eventually he got the message that that wasn’t me.

We also smoked way too much, drank way too much and I had way too much fun with his sex life. I got very familiar with the local clinic where he would get tested and got to laugh about his poor life choices when something didn’t go well.

One of the my clearest memories of that time was one time where he had a boyfriend, going on like 3 months, the one I liked and apparently he didn’t, and he brought another guy home, and after he left, I was being a judgemental bitch just has P gets a message from a former hook up saying he needs to get tested. My immediate reply was – instant karma. Obviously every time I made a joke about him being a slut I could always expect one in return asking when would I join the convent.

All this to say I saw a lot of myself and P in Part I. However, I ended up relating more to Young than to Jaehee which is interesting but makes perfect sense.

So now for the questions. I don’t think I can answer one at a time so I’ll just go through questions 1, 3 and 4 for now.

Well most things stuck out to me just because I could so clearly picture it in my head almost as a memory. The whole dynamic felt very familiar to me. Just like Young and Jaehee, we were each other’s home. The one we always returned too.

I read the fight the same way as the author did in a way. I saw it as a betrayal. But I don’t think it was about outing him, as he himself is not sure about that. It was the first time that Jaehee put someone else before Young. She told the fiancé the truth, because in that moment he was more important than Young. And that was what felt like a betrayal. Because although they shared their bodies with a number of different people, and even momentary feelings, emotionally Young had an expectation that he came first.

And now tying it with the fourth question. Me and P never had any sort of problems regarding optics. Perhaps this is a cultural nuance that I miss.

But as I was reading it, I kept waiting for the break. For when one of them was no longer happy with this arrangement. This is not to say that there needs to be a break. But in my experience, there was a break. First in the form of long distance when I returned home. We would talk everyday and have video chats more than once a week at first. Eventually the distance in geography translated into a distance in the relationship. However whenever he came back home and we were together there was still a semblance of what we shared before.

But eventually the real break came in the form of a new relationship. Eventually he met someone, and now they’ve been together for years and that person and I never really got along. There was no hostility and it’s not that I didn’t like him. We just didn’t mesh.

After they’d been together for a while, he started having a problem with our relationship. Mostly with the fact that I was an influence in his life, and for some reason he thought that meant that his influence was diminished. And apparently I was a bad influence. I will not speak to that because it really doesn’t matter.

So P made a choice. And he chose his boyfriend. I haven’t talked to P in almost two years. Because as much as we wanted to believe that our relationship was important, and bro’s before hoes and all that crap, the reality is that in this amatonormativity we live in, there really isn’t any space for that. Sharing your life with someone that doesn’t involve romance has an expiration date. And more often than not, eventually you will find a “real” partner and that will not leave space for anyone else.

And the thing is normally this would happen just like in the novel. I, the woman, would be the one that would “move on”, perhaps get married and have no space for any other significant relationship in my life.

Because it’s what’s expected. Eventually you will find your “actual” person and be normal. Move in together, get married and whatever you had with someone else was youth inspired and not for the long haul. Because who would be happy with that? I mean, Jaehee certainly didn’t seem like she was ready to get married any time soon, and although I can only guess at some of the pressures she was feeling in the context of her culture, it’s not like that doesn’t translate to my own.

Me and P never had anyone look at us weird because of our closeness. Not my family or his, or any of our friends. The only person that had a problem with that was his last partner. And of course P made the natural choice. Because let’s be real. At the end of the day, who would actually choose a friend over a relationship? I mean, I would but I’m not what anyone would call “normal” and that is just one of the many reasons why.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen with Young and Jaehee. I haven’t read past the first part. I hope they find their way to each other. But that ending – “that Jaehee didn’t live here anymore” hit me like a ton of bricks.

Thanks to @twig-tea for being my editor.

#litbc book club #love in the big city #korean bl #rose reads

[lurkingshan]

Love in the Big City: Book Club Schedule

Okay, besties, here we go! Turns out a lot of you are into this nerd project so we will in fact be doing a little tumblr book club for LITBC! Here's how it will work:

We will begin on Sunday, February 4, and discuss a different section of the book each week.

On Sundays, @bengiyo will post a list of discussion questions for whatever part we're reading that week. You can use these as prompts for thinking, actually write and post responses to them, or just ignore them and do your own thing.

We will all write or share whatever we like during the week, using the hashtag [#litbc book club]. Everything from simple reaction commentary to full on essays is welcome. It's also fine not to post anything yourself if that's not your thing, you can participate by reading and sharing other people's posts.

Each following Sunday, I will post a roundup of everything people wrote during the week so we'll have them all collated in one place, and Ben will then post the next round of discussion questions.

This means we are going to be on the following schedule for reading and discussing:

Part 1: Sun, February 4 to Sat, February 10

Part 2: Sun, February 11 to Sat, February 17

Part 3: Sun, February 18 to Sat, February 24

Part 4: Sun, February 25 to Sat, March 2

With the final round up posted on Sunday, March 3. Of course, this is Not That Serious and if you fall behind you should still join in whenever you can and I will add your posts in later! Also, please note for your own planning that Part 2 of the novel is the longest, nearly double the length of the other parts.

For those who asked about where to acquire the book, the good news is it's very popular and generally easy to find translated in English. A lot of libraries carry it, and you can also find it at local bookstores, on Everand, on bookshop.org, and of course, Amazon.

For those who are seeing this for the first time and wondering what the heck I'm on about: go here for background on why we're doing this book club ahead of a couple upcoming drama and film adaptations. And if you want to be tagged into future posts please comment in tags or replies so we can add you to the list! We will also use the tag [#litbc book club] for all posts related to this going forward, so you can just track that tag if you prefer. [Note: if you want to be tagged please check your settings to see if other blogs are allowed to tag you. If you asked to be tagged on the first post and you're not in the list below, it's because tumblr wouldn't allow me to do it.]

Tagging here those who have signed up so far: @alwaysthepessimist @belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas @blalltheway @brifrischu @colourme-feral @dekaydk @dramacraycray @emotionallychargedtowel @fiction-is-queer @hakusupernova @hyeoni-comb @infinitelyprecious @littleragondin @literally-a-five-headed-dragon @loveable-sea-lemon @my-rose-tinted-glasses @neuroticbookworm @poetry-protest-pornography @profiterole-reads @serfergs @so-much-yet-to-learn @starryalpacasstuff @stuffnonsenseandotherthings @sunshinechay @thewayofsubtext @troubled-mind @twig-tea @waitmyturtles @wen-kexing-apologist

Excited to get started with y’all in a few weeks!

#litbc book club #love in the big city #korean bl

[wen-kexing-apologist]

Love in the Big City: Part Four- Regret, Rain, Love, and Loss

Well, it’s official. Love in the Big City, Part Four may have been short but it cemented itself as my favorite portion of the book. I asked @antonhur when he was so graciously answering questions what his favorite scene in the book was, and I can see why he said when they were lying in the rain in Bangkok; Late Rainy Season Vacation indeed. When I first started this book, I was talking with a few mutuals like @bengiyo and @lurkingshan wondering how I would feel about Young by the end of this book, because I was not a huge fan of his character in Part One. But I have very much enjoyed seeing his progress across these parts. I said already in my post about Part One that my biggest struggle with Young and the thing I think primarily contributes to the change in his friendship with Jaehee is that he cannot be serious, he cannot, does not allow himself to feel. And in Part Four, he’s finally admitting to it. 

“I was too late to put things back the way they’d been” “That is how my memories of him are preserved under glass, safe and pristine, forever apart from me” “I’ve no choice but to stand at arm’s length”

Part Four is my favorite part of this novel because Part Four is full of ghosts. Not only the ghost of Gyu-ho, but the ghost of all that came before. The rooftop party with Gyu-ho where he got plastered on whatever alcohol he could, where now he sits and drinks champagne, a ghost of both his relationship and the way he spent his college years. Going through Habibi’s wallet, a ghost of when he snuck a look at Hyung’s secrets all those years before. The text messages Young saw on Habibi’s phone about a family member with cancer, a ghost of his mother’s own diagnosis. Habibi himself, getting unexpectedly deep for only a moment before forcing the conversation away from anything real, a ghost of Young himself, and all the times he just could not bring himself to be open and honest with the people around him. 

Just like learning about the HIV diagnosis recontextualizes everything that came before it (see a wonderful essay about that by @twig-tea here) ending this book with the admission that his only wish a year ago was for Gyu-ho recontextualizes my understanding of how aware Young was about his own modus operandi. I operated under a much different assumption that Young didn’t know what he had until it was gone, that Young was not aware of how far his fears ran, of how distant he had made himself. I assumed Part Four was where Young starts to realize himself the way he’d behaved in the past and how that contributed to the downfall of his relationship to Gyu-ho. But now I think he knew it all along and he just didn’t trust us enough to say it until the end. Because I’m not quite sure even by the end of this book Young trusts us enough to be completely honest. 

I talked in my post for Part Three about HIV treatments and prevention methods, and mentioned Truvada, (generic name: emtricitabine-tenofovir) which is a pre-exposure prophylaxis medication that can be taken to prevent someone without HIV from getting HIV should they have an exposure. I mentioned there that at the time of Young’s relationship with Gyu-ho, Truvada was not available on the market in South Korea. But as it turns out, Teno-Em (tenofovir-emtricitibine), a generic PrEP medication, was available in Bangkok by 2015. In Part Four, Young describes going to a pharmacy and getting a generic medication, and he writes the errand in such a way as to make the whole thing seem shady. And maybe it was. But maybe he was just afraid, and that fear colored his own perceptions of what was going down: 

My expectation had been that the place would be hidden away in some seedy alley, but it was right there on the main street. The interior was almost the same as any other pharmacy. I showed the pharmacist a picture of the generic version of what I needed. The pharmacist, if he really was a pharmacist, took out a bottle of pills and explained to us, in English, how they worked. He said that taking just one a day at a set time was enough to perfectly prevent the disease. He really said the word “perfectly.” How could he be so confident? He added that taking two of the pills before risky intercourse and then a pill every twenty-four hours for two more doses was enough to prevent transmission. 

The facts are these: the pharmacy was on a main street, the pharmacy looked like a pharmacy, the pharmacist was able to explain how the medication worked, and the pill regimen for prevention was accurate to the pill regimen for PrEP. 

Could they have still been shady? Sure. But I think it is far more likely that Young and his historically terrible experiences with medicine have colored his perception of healthcare and placed doubt in his head over the legitimacy of this medication. Which, learning that Young and Gyu-ho have unprotected sex in Bangkok, makes me wonder if Young’s doubts about the pharmacy added another reason for him to let Gyu-ho go to Shanghai alone, if the meds they got in Bangkok weren’t real, if they didn’t work, then he likely gave Gyu-ho HV. 

Young talked about stains in this part, about permanency- the soy sauce on the mattress, the crack in the toilet and he talked about fleeting things- immediately losing the shape of Habibi’s face when he stepped outside the door, the lantern burning up and turning to ash with all the dreams, all the wishes Young had, or just the one. Regret seems to hold a permanent place in Young’s spirit, as does loss. Love is something I think he thought did not exist, or if it did then it was fleeting. He loved Jaehee and lost her, his first boyfriend died, the obsession he had over Hyung could only be described as dickmatized. But when he gave away Gyu-ho’s love, when he let Gyu-ho go to Shanghai alone, it was one of the few times in the entire novel we saw Young grieve. He fully collapsed under the weight of it all, barely leaving bed, not having the energy to maintain his typical routines, trying to root out the memories of Gyu-ho in his head by writing him out, and killing him over and over and over again. 

I find myself stuck, thinking about what is perhaps my favorite line in the book: 

“Sometimes his very existence to me is the existence of love itself”

Gyu-ho’s existence is Young’s idea of love; to kill Gyu-ho, to remove him from existence is to kill Young’s idea of love. “The made-up Gyu-ho in my writing got hurt or died many times, and is always resurrected, as if love saves his life- whereas the real Gyu-ho lives and breathes and keeps moving on.” Young’s regret is a permanency in his life, just as his love for Gyu-ho is a permanency. All he wished for was Gyu-ho, but Young’s inability to be honest, deeply, emotionally honest, all the fear, all the emptiness, all the pain got in the way. I am not a person who minds a melancholy end, regret, remorse, grief, love. These are all a part of life. The only thing I hope is that one day Young can lay down in the pouring rain and feel peace the way Gyu-ho did that day in Bangkok.

#litbc #litbc book club #love in the big city #love in the big city book club #very much looking forward to seeing these television adaptations #thank you to shan and ben for the brilliant idea to have a book club #it has been so much fun participating in this event!

[doyou000me]

Love In The Big City Part I and II: Words and Foods (spoiler free)

I know we're not supposed to start this until tomorrow, but I did my reading yesterday and got sucked into it and ended up staying up late to read part I and II, and being a korean book there's a few words and such that are not translated.

Now, I am assuming that people who chose to partake in this blook club have some prior knowledge of Korea, korean culture and the korean language. I also realise I might be wrong, so with my limited knowledge scraped together over years of series, reading, studying and general interest in all things Korean, I put this together and decided to share it early, thinking it might be of help to someone while reading.

Words

Umma/Eomma [엄마]: Mom (informal)

Hyung [형]: "older brother" (informal), used by a man adressing a (slightly) older man, regardless if they're siblings or not. Can signal some level of closeness.

Hyungnim [형님]: "older brother" (formal/respectful), same as 형, but with the added honorific of ~님 to show respect. Often used jokingly.

Oppa [오빠]: "older brother" (informal), used by a woman adressing a (slightly) older man, regardless if they're siblings or not. Common way to adress an older boyfriend.

Nuna/Noona [누나]: "older sister" (informal), used by a man adressing a (slightly) older woman, regardless if they're siblings or not. Can signal some level of closeness.

Nunim [누님]: "older sister" (formal/respectful), same as 누나, but with the added honorific ~님 to show respect.

Unni [언니]: "older sister" (informal), used by a woman adressing a (slightly) older woman, regardless if they're siblings or not. Can signal some level of closeness.

Sunbae/Seonbae [선배]: senior. A gender-nautral way to adress a senior within your school/workplace/field of expertise.

Young/Young-ah [영 / 영아]: adding the suffix -ah [~아] to someone's name signals closeness and friendliness. It can be used for someone of the same age or younger. Often used when speaking to children. Gender-neutral.

Ajussi/Ahjussi [아저씨]: "uncle", used to adress an older man. Can be used both politely and inpolitely, depending on context. (also an action movie from 2010 that awoke my interest in Korea)

Jeonse [전세]: a common way to pay rent in Korea where you pay in a lump sum rather than monthly, usually for a laese of 2 years.

Goshitel [고시텔]: A combination of the words Goshiwon [고시원] and Hotel, a goshitel is a hotel with tiny rooms, often offering the bare minimum. It's (comparatively) cheap accomodation. (I recommend watching Strangers from Hell, a series from 2019 that largely plays out at a very run down goshiwon)

Hagwon [학원]: evening school/cram school, privately operated, places for extra study outside of school hours to offer students an "edge" in the unhealthily competitive climate that is the Korean school system (Yes, I have opinions about this. No, I do not ever want to study in Korea. I believe Sky Castle from 2018 could give a look into this, but I haven't seen it on the assumption that it would make me too bloody angry)

Hanbok [한복]: traditional Korean clothing.

Foods

Naengmyeon [냉면]: cold noodles! Litterally cold (냉) and noodles (면) - and it's deliscious! I can recommend the soup version on a hot summer day, with ice, chicken and pear.

Seaweed soup [미역국]: said to be nourishing, it is traditionally served to women after childbirth to help them recover. It is also a traditional birthday dish.

Banchan [반찬]: side dishes, of which there are many in Korea! Often vegetable based.

Hwe/Hoe [회]: thinly sliced raw fish. (The Korean version of japanese sashimi, if you happen to know that that is.)

Other

Mandatory military service: Korea has mandatory military service which applies to all men and which women can apply to. It's about 1,5 - 2 years long. Excemptions can be made, but it's frowned upon. It's complicated. (I have opinions about this, too, that I shan't be getting into here. The series D.P. from 2021 digs into the dark side of it, but I haven't seen it yet, again because I think it'll make me mad.)

Itaewon [이태원]: area/neghbourhood in Seoul, known for it's vibrant and multicultural nightlife. Lots of bars and clubs, and a hub for gay people, but I've heard it's lost some of its popularity after Covid and the Halloween tragedy of 2022. (another series recommendation: Itaewon class.)

#litbc book club #let me know if I missed anything #or feel free to add to it #love in the big city

[stuffnonsenseandotherthings]

Love in The Big City Part 3 - Notes from A Reader

Note 1: What's in a Name?

Names play a big role in Part 3 of Love in the Big City, in no small part because Part 3 is the section which gives its own name, "Love in the Big City", to the book itself.

Immediately this marks Part 3 out as important, as the potential birthplace of this whole story, as the potential reason Young picked up his pen to spill his whole story to the world, as the potential reason the fictional Love in the Big City exists in the first place.

Something in this section is important, something in this section holds weight, something in this section holds the heart of the book in its hands.

And that something is Gyu-Ho.

Gyu-Ho and the love Young finally found with him in the big city of Seoul.

And here we have another name. Gyu-Ho is the second named character in the book, with the first being Jae-Hee, and that certainly doesn't read as a coincidence.

It could be argued that Gyu-Ho and Jae-Hee are the only 2 named characters because they are the only ones in the story who aren't smothered in some form of guilt or self-loathing, the only ones who are openly themselves but, for me, that doesn't quite fit (the T-ara's are given nicknames and it certainly seems like they are more openly themselves than anyone else in the book). Instead to me, feels like a sign of significance, a sign of just how important they were to the Young that is written about and how important they still are to the Young that did the writing.

Everyone else is either replaceable (Young's flings and acquaintances) or the source of a relationship that brought pain he'd rather leave behind (Eomma and Hyung). But Jae-Hee was the first person in who he found a home and Gyu-Ho was the second, and in naming them he affords them more significance than he affords himself in his own story. These are the two people who shaped him for the better, so they deserve to be acknowledged as such.

Note 1.5: You

Alongside the fact that Gyu-Ho one of the only named characters in the book, there is another reason I think his character is the impetus for the entire story that came before and that is the moments when Young doesn't call him by his name but instead calls him... you.

The majority of Love in the Big City is written in the first person with Young occasionally addressing us, the reader, directly as he comments on the events of his life. The tone is conversational and intimate, as one would address a friend or a diary.

And then, at the start of Part 3 something slips.

The "you" Young is addressing isn't us, the reader, any more. It's Gyu-Ho:

"But you, your sideburns curved into your beard...." p 133.

"Your tongue, which was as warm as your gaze...." p 133.

"Yes. to tell you the truth now, after all that has happened since. I wasn't that drunk that night." p. 133.

The tone changes from conversational to reverent, from lightly personal to intimate, from wryly removed to loaded with shared history. It doesn't happen every time, it doesn't happen consistently, but it happens and, quite frankly, I love it.

"Ah, this is who Young is writing for."

That's what those moments felt like to me, like Young had slipped as he revisited moments loaded with emotions and they had spilled onto the page, no longer a story for faceless readers but a love letter to a lost love, an attempt to speak to him once more.

It's one of the most loaded writing decisions I've come across in quite some time and the layers it adds to the section, to the book are amazing for something so seemingly inconsequentially small.

So what's in a name? A whole damn lot, but there's even more in that small word you.

#litbc book club #litbc #love in the big city #This was not what I planned to write but it's what I ended up with #I am very passionate about the word you now #there are other notes I made for this section but I'll share those later