低头思故乡

Ahn was such a unique director in the Kdrama landscape in that he strove to create real stories between real people and all the messy emotions that come with that.

From a cinematography perspective, his frequent use of understated camera movement and long single takes gave his actors space to truly inhabit their characters and improvise. This was especially evident in his love scenes, which were refreshingly mature and sexy in how natural they looked. His camera captured all the subtle expressions and habits of everyday life, giving each scene an organic and sometimes painfully intimate feel--you knew these characters because you could see parts of yourself reflected on screen.

But what I think I most appreciated about his work was his deep appreciation for complicated (bordering on difficult) women and the even more complicated relationships they have with one another. His work explored heavy topics like trauma, identity, and dating taboos but in a way that was deeply empathetic to characters who would otherwise be villainized in other dramas. You really got the sense that women's stories matter in his work, and I will miss him and his storytelling.

GUYS WHAT THE HELL REVENGED LOVE FINALLY FUCKING FINALLY RELEASED THE ACTUAL ENDING SCENE FOR REVENGED LOVE IN HQ LIKE ACTUAL EPISODE QUALITY A YEAR LATER FROM THE DAY OF THE LAST EPISODE WHAT THE HELL

“This magic potion turned the emperor into an alligator” -> “huh i guess magic potions do exist.”

Simple. Straightforward. Comprehensible. Least amount of cognitive leaps to take. Occam’s razor slices through so cleanly and neatly.

“Some random peasant becomes emperor eight years after QSH’s death, after winning a contentious (haha) civil war, and beating out some of the most celebrated military men in history. Despite being a crude, backstabbing scoundrel who pissed in people’s hats, he also managed to lay the groundwork for a moderate and (relatively) humanist Han dynasty, which lasted 400 years and became china’s first golden age. He stands as a paragon of benevolence (relative) to the draconian Qin rule*. His legacy is so enduring that into the modern day, chinese people still call themselves the Han people, and the language the Han language, while his predecessor QSH (who envisioned himself as the progenitor to an unending dynasty) only managed to create a dynasty that lasted 15 years, and has nothing but crumbling walls and unopened mausoleums that stand as a monument to human exploitation” <- it this was a work of fiction i’d decry it for being heavy handed and painfully unrealistic.

The simple yet useful Arabic numeral:

you have a very distinctive mole

- France abolished the Code Noir 2 months ago. That law project that said hey you can enslave, mutilate, kill, cross breed, etc. black people at will bc they're not people they're property ? Yeah. Abolished 2 months ago. We are in July 2026.

- the last human zoo closed its doors in 1994 in France due to social pressure. Not bc they were running out of business, no. Ppl still visited that place until it closed its doors. No, it was bc (black) French people were fed up. That human zoo was specialized in displaying black (presumed Congolese) people in fake huts in enclosures, for white entertainment.

- now while this might no longer be the case, when I was growing up, I went to a French school (as in. It was an international French School w the French flag n all) and the way we were taught French geography was that France has the biggest and largest access to the sea in the world. And they'd show us a map of France and its colonies around the world. It's all occupied indigenous lands. I don't know if they still teach that. I hope not. But they absolutely did until I graduated high school in 2017. Again, I write this on July 21st 2026, for the record.

In the privacy of your own home and mind, you can do whatever you want. You dont have to like anything. you dont even have to enjoy it as an idea (ie ao3 ff), but if you do this "wince when people talk about normal human stuff" .... if you're not immature, then you're a bit of an asshole. Either way it's disrespectful. Imagine someone is talking about intimacy with their partner, maybe theyre new to this and wants some advice, maybe theyre finally enjoying it and wants to share their new experience, and YOU WINCE or leave the room mid conversation. Can you imagine how the other person feels?

imagine if cis straight people started talking about boundaries, yall lose your minds.

this all feels in the same vein as the wave of "let's make media/literature/fantasy ethical" sentiment that's sweeping the younger audience, and i have about 250502759 thoughts about the progress of modern education and adolescent psychology, but Im just gonna leave it at this:

The drama is not without its flaws, but that's what makes it endearing and charming. It has an audacity, an ambition, a healthy dose of masochism im it. It was committed to tell a story, and it followed through with that plan.

I felt it in the second episode, and I felt it at the end as well - the whole drama had a vibe of a novel. The epistolary dialogues, frequent flashbacks, the way the story constructed the metaphysical atmospheres out of a character's emotions (I am thinking of Ms Ye's hallucination of meeting Qingyu in an alley after his death, Qingyi's dreaming of his father, or the whole second episode where the story of Qingyi and Susu's meeting is a flash in Qingyi's memory) added a very literary quality to the show. It made me yearn to pick up the book, and then I realised there is no book, that the story does not follow book's trajectory at all (I loved the novel too btw, despite common discourse around it).