(no subject)
Jan. 2nd, 2017 10:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsFor my first post about television in 2017, I want to grab all of you by the collar and tell you at great length about Age of Youth, now on Netflix as Hello My Twenties.
Age of Youth is about five college roommates, almost all of whom are haunted by a DARK SECRET of some sort or another -- murder! ghosts! crushing debt! loan sharks! stalkers! even more murder! -- and yes, all of these are problems, but you can't worry about them all the time when you're also sharing a house with four other people, and the trash always needs taking out, and someone is ALWAYS borrowing your stuff without asking, or looking out the window and whistling obnoxiously when you're trying to have a romantic moment, and also there is ONLY ONE BATHROOM.
Although there are a couple of love interests floating around here and there, the primary focus of the show is emphatically on the relationships between the girls; there's maybe one reverse Bechdel pass in all twelve episodes. And let me tell you, every time we got a fakeout where it looked like a girl was about to call on a love interest for help and instead the roommates came charging to the rescue, MY HEART GREW THREE SIZES.
Also, the general lack of tolerance the show has for male angst is ... kind of amazing.
Eun Jae is the baby -- a socially anxious, deeply awkward freshman who spends the entire first episode shuffling silently from room to room, seething with bottled-up resentment at her new roommates for forgetting to empty the laundry and eating all her jam.
Eventually, however, her older roommates take her under their wing.
Much to everyone's surprise, baby Eun Jae also gets her very own love triangle!
Bachelors A and B:
Eun Jae, for the record, thinks Bachelor A is the dreamiest dreamboat she's ever encountered.
Child. CHILD.
...however, it must be admitted that poor taste in men and social anxiety are not Eun Jae's only problems.
Murder baby Eun Jae is my favorite.
The only person in the house with fewer social skills than Eun Jae is her roommate, 28-year-old Yoon Jin Myung (known to her housemates as Senior Yoon). This is because Jin Myung is a full-time student AND works three jobs AND has no support network and just does not have TIME for social skills. Instead, she communicates with her roommates via passive-aggressive post-it note.
Unlike many impoverished kdrama girls who work three jobs to pay their bills, Jin Myung is neither plucky, cheerful, nor feisty. And certainly not optimistic.
She does have a mutual pining thing going on with the cute chef at one of her jobs, but refuses to allow it to progress an iota because she has no time or emotional bandwidth for human relationships.
Jin Myung is a bitter would-be-robot of a person, and she also is my favorite.
Her polar opposite is the next-oldest, Kang Yi Na.
Yi Na does not have a real job, never seems to study, always seems to have expensive jewelry and a slightly sleazy older man on her arm, but that is nobody's business but hers?
Note: this man is not Yi Na's love interest. He appears for literally this scene and is never seen again, because her life is, we repeat, NONE OF HIS BUSINESS.
Which doesn't mean Yi Na has no worries about what her future might hold.
For the record, Yi Na also features in pretty much every femslash ship for the show, and ... there are reasons.
Her main buddy outside the house, meanwhile, is a gigolo. This is not played for laughs; the show is very matter-of-fact about their collegial relationship. However, colleagues or not, Yi Na will not brook any interference with her precious roommate children.
Yi Na is ferocious and careless and occasionally distressingly relatable. Surprise: she is my favorite.
Intrepid reporter Song Ji Won is pretty, intelligent, funny, charismatic, the life of the party, and cannot seem to land a second date with anyone. SOMEHOW, NONE OF THE TROPES APPLY.
It's OK, though -- at least she has her carefully curated porn collection!
And her rich inner life of imagination!
And, you know what, at least she's Eun Jae's idol.
She's an incredibly weird drama queen, and she too is my favorite.
Ye Eun, meanwhile, is completely normal!
She smiles no matter how she's feeling, like a normal girl, and has a carefully curated social media feed designed to give the impression of a happy and busy life, like a normal girl --
-- and has a really heinous asshole of a boyfriend that all her friends are hoping and praying she breaks up with, like a normal girl --
-- OK yes, Ye Eun, as unwilling as she might be to admit it, has her own problems. Ye Eun is an Utena episode waiting to happen.
(...which then happens. Um, please take this as a trigger warning for episode 11 in particular.)
SHE ALSO IS MY FAVORITE.
("But Becca, you just said that every single one of these girls was your --"
Yes, yes I did. DO YOU WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT.)
Oh, and let's not forget the landlady, whose appearances are brief BUT MEMORABLE.
Anyway, as aforementioned, I highly recommend this drama -- though please ask me if you want trigger warnings, as trigger warnings may be needed.
Age of Youth is about five college roommates, almost all of whom are haunted by a DARK SECRET of some sort or another -- murder! ghosts! crushing debt! loan sharks! stalkers! even more murder! -- and yes, all of these are problems, but you can't worry about them all the time when you're also sharing a house with four other people, and the trash always needs taking out, and someone is ALWAYS borrowing your stuff without asking, or looking out the window and whistling obnoxiously when you're trying to have a romantic moment, and also there is ONLY ONE BATHROOM.
Although there are a couple of love interests floating around here and there, the primary focus of the show is emphatically on the relationships between the girls; there's maybe one reverse Bechdel pass in all twelve episodes. And let me tell you, every time we got a fakeout where it looked like a girl was about to call on a love interest for help and instead the roommates came charging to the rescue, MY HEART GREW THREE SIZES.
Also, the general lack of tolerance the show has for male angst is ... kind of amazing.
Eun Jae is the baby -- a socially anxious, deeply awkward freshman who spends the entire first episode shuffling silently from room to room, seething with bottled-up resentment at her new roommates for forgetting to empty the laundry and eating all her jam.
Eventually, however, her older roommates take her under their wing.
Much to everyone's surprise, baby Eun Jae also gets her very own love triangle!
Bachelors A and B:
Eun Jae, for the record, thinks Bachelor A is the dreamiest dreamboat she's ever encountered.
Child. CHILD.
...however, it must be admitted that poor taste in men and social anxiety are not Eun Jae's only problems.
Murder baby Eun Jae is my favorite.
The only person in the house with fewer social skills than Eun Jae is her roommate, 28-year-old Yoon Jin Myung (known to her housemates as Senior Yoon). This is because Jin Myung is a full-time student AND works three jobs AND has no support network and just does not have TIME for social skills. Instead, she communicates with her roommates via passive-aggressive post-it note.
Unlike many impoverished kdrama girls who work three jobs to pay their bills, Jin Myung is neither plucky, cheerful, nor feisty. And certainly not optimistic.
She does have a mutual pining thing going on with the cute chef at one of her jobs, but refuses to allow it to progress an iota because she has no time or emotional bandwidth for human relationships.
Jin Myung is a bitter would-be-robot of a person, and she also is my favorite.
Her polar opposite is the next-oldest, Kang Yi Na.
Yi Na does not have a real job, never seems to study, always seems to have expensive jewelry and a slightly sleazy older man on her arm, but that is nobody's business but hers?
Note: this man is not Yi Na's love interest. He appears for literally this scene and is never seen again, because her life is, we repeat, NONE OF HIS BUSINESS.
Which doesn't mean Yi Na has no worries about what her future might hold.
For the record, Yi Na also features in pretty much every femslash ship for the show, and ... there are reasons.
Her main buddy outside the house, meanwhile, is a gigolo. This is not played for laughs; the show is very matter-of-fact about their collegial relationship. However, colleagues or not, Yi Na will not brook any interference with her precious roommate children.
Yi Na is ferocious and careless and occasionally distressingly relatable. Surprise: she is my favorite.
Intrepid reporter Song Ji Won is pretty, intelligent, funny, charismatic, the life of the party, and cannot seem to land a second date with anyone. SOMEHOW, NONE OF THE TROPES APPLY.
It's OK, though -- at least she has her carefully curated porn collection!
And her rich inner life of imagination!
And, you know what, at least she's Eun Jae's idol.
She's an incredibly weird drama queen, and she too is my favorite.
Ye Eun, meanwhile, is completely normal!
She smiles no matter how she's feeling, like a normal girl, and has a carefully curated social media feed designed to give the impression of a happy and busy life, like a normal girl --
-- and has a really heinous asshole of a boyfriend that all her friends are hoping and praying she breaks up with, like a normal girl --
-- OK yes, Ye Eun, as unwilling as she might be to admit it, has her own problems. Ye Eun is an Utena episode waiting to happen.
(...which then happens. Um, please take this as a trigger warning for episode 11 in particular.)
SHE ALSO IS MY FAVORITE.
("But Becca, you just said that every single one of these girls was your --"
Yes, yes I did. DO YOU WANT TO MAKE SOMETHING OF IT.)
Oh, and let's not forget the landlady, whose appearances are brief BUT MEMORABLE.
Anyway, as aforementioned, I highly recommend this drama -- though please ask me if you want trigger warnings, as trigger warnings may be needed.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-04 12:15 am (UTC)Other stuff: a guy almost murders one of the other girls in another episode - I think 7? - but it is not sexual or sexually motivated at all. Yi Na has a lot of consensual commercial relationships. There's also that one time that Yi Na makes out with Ye Eun, non-consensually (alas), to prove a point.