k I just finished reading the rest and I cried even more, I don’t think anyone knows just how much it means to me when the ugly reality of queer culture in the perspective of Asian society is slowly unfurled through a firsthand experience.
when the lore from their academic days started to emerge and steadily build, I had the idea that FL (Jin-ah) was simply carefree, immature but I caught on immediately to her bi-curious nature/queer-curious intentions towards FMC(Jina), but what can you do with a bubbling feeling you have no words to describe? FL says she likes men, but the curiosity alone was enough to send her into a spiral, when one moment she’s looking at YOU, only you, and then another moment, FMC’s eyes and attention abruptly shift to a man, and suddenly FL isn’t the center of her world anymore. FL world is shifted on its axis, and with no reassurance from FMC, FL decides to do what she probably does best, fix it her own way.
what better way then to.. get rid of the problem itself?? If there’s no man for FMC to run to, FMC has no choice but to turn her attention back to FL. And that’s what matters right? till it didn’t. then you’re graduating, you lose contact, but by some miracle she’s back in your life. after all this time, FL never explains herself, never let go of this facade that she was just playing around, while letting FMC build this resentment towards her. But FMC WANTS to be hated, she wants to breed resentment, to justify this facade, to make a show out of their twisted reality. To try and make sense of queerness, this attraction she can’t control nor reign in. At least if FMC resents her, she’d have a reason to keep thinking of her.
shit happens, they end up back in each others lives, back in that same dance of push and pull, but their adults now, still the same shitty feelings, the same homo-erotic tones hidden between the complicated lines of their relationship. Resentment, lust, infatuation with the familiar ache of teenage queer curiosity. still wondering what it’d feel like with another girl, another woman. Then thinking, maybe if it’s just this one time?
Then suddenly FMC is madly involved with the very same girl who threw her school-life into the gutter. The same girl who sparked that incessant fear of bi-curiosity, the same girl who made her think, what if? So infuriatingly carefree, like what she’d done hadn’t ruined the careful cautious life FMC has always lived in the shadows of a girl like FL.
One drunken accident leads to another few accidents, lips on each other, hate and lust a confusing mix of emotions in the chest, hard to decipher which is which, and then it’s the same story again.
The hesitation, FL pulls away every single time, disappearing after sex like a ghost, hitting up FL only when she’s drunk and vulnerable, the only time she has an excuse for her loose tongue. The only time she knows FMC has a reason to hate her even more, she does it on purpose. Keeps her from getting too close, too attached. Both of them know, that the other might pull away like they both did at one point. That hesitation is enough to become the unsteady soil their relationship is built on.
it wasn’t enough though, FL’s first homo-erotic experience probably stuck with her through all those years of playing around, just like it stuck with FMC and the insomnia she has, the first girl she ever kissed, the first girl she ever considered a “maybe”, was now ingrained in her psyche.
Then everything blew up in their faces, the both of them were too deep in, and a confrontation had to be had, FL is always on the same shit she’s always on, she doesn’t think FMC is actually mad right? After all, she let her come back every single time, never pushed her away, she wanted this as much as FL did! But FMC was over it, over being an experiment for FL’s shallow emotions, and even shallower words. FL never took her seriously, even now. Being queer was just a question, an experiment to FL, getting rid of FMC’s boyfriend just to explore it a little more.
FL says that FMC was too scared to date a woman, that she could only want sex out of a relationship like that, but to be honest? FMC was braver than FL could have ever been.
She opened her body, her home to FL, let her explore her in a way she’s never let another woman have her, even with that resentment in her heart. Even after she got played in highschool. FMC’s cowardice is her own shame. FMC isn’t comfortable in her own queerness, she changed her hair, her clothes, everything. But it’s not going to wash away that dirty feeling in your chest. That ache you felt towards the girl in high school she fucked over.
Can’t heal it through sex, can’t deny it and tell her that you don’t have any feelings for her. Cowardice is weak, FMC won’t be able to burrow away any longer. Thats the ugly truth though, the layers you peel away to reveal the queerness waiting to be acknowledged.
I’m such a fucking geek bro, I love queer people so much, I hate society, I wish things weren’t so hard for you I wish it was as easy as it seems on TV. But this is real, and it’s raw, and ugly.
sorry, meant to switch that. FL is the blonde, FMC is the black haired. I mixed up their names.
and I messed up at the last part lol, I meant to say that FL’s queerness is her shame. Not FMC. To be clear I was talking about the blond girl in the last three paragraphs.
Great recap/analysis!!
I always forget how personal lesbian romance feels in media after so long watching mlm and mlw dominate web-spaces. I actually cried when it did a flashback to their academy days, immature queer-curious teenagers who didn’t know any better, trying to communicate the intensity of their unnameable emotions through the wrong methods. Never realized how close to home this trope hits when it’s someone like you, I probably would’ve seen it as any other trope had it been between two men, and labeled it as any generic toxic romance. But when the perspective shifts, it’s something genuine, tangible to me. ugh I’m so weird, I just really fucking love lesbians