Heart Shaped Hell

was it all right? was our time together good?  it was more than perfect. it was so wonderful that i couldn't have asked for more.

Mr. Park, you need you to sign a consent form in case one of them- I choose my wife. I choose my wife.

When Life Gives You Tangerines (2025) | Ep. 1

I love the generations of mothers and daughters in this story. Each mother-daughter pair has a complex relationship, love and respect and resentment all tangled up. The way they hurt each other but also give each other a reason to strive feels so real. Each mother wants her daughter to live a better life than her own, and every daughter wants to realize that dream while also struggling with the pressure. I appreciate the time the drama spends on these relationships, and how the memory of Ae-sun's mother in particular propels so much of her choices that reverberate through her own daughter's life.

I love the romance, especially because it's not all shiny and happy. This is a love story between two impoverished kids doing their best to survive and build the life they want for themselves with very little means to actually do so. Their loyalty to each other and their bond forged in the hardships of their early years gives them a strong foundation to weather life's various storms. It's not a story about a passionate affair or destined soulmates; it's two regular people who chose each other to be teammates for whatever life throws at them. I find that kind of love just as moving as the swoony variety, if not more. The steadfast nature of their commitment, and the way they choose to protect each other every time, is touching.

When Geumyeong's classmates carelessly boasts how city people are inherently more empathetic? I can feel her anger even if she's quiet. She thinks of the times she blamed herself for her brother's death, how her mother still can't look at 4 years olds, how her dad treats kids born on the year of the tiger like his own.

When she spoke in defense of those "backward careless villagers", she thinks about the candy left on the windowsill. About the name no one at home dared to utter, lest it crack the fragile dam of grief they built together to carry on.

I think of my grandma, who lost 3 kids after bearing 11 children. How she doesn't breastfeed her 5th kid onwards and switched to formulas - enlisting as a maid to afford it - because she was afraid that she was killing them. I think about how when my aunt died from cancer, my grandma stopped cooking this one fish because it's the fish my aunt liked, even if it was her favorite too. I think about how hard it must have been, to carry such a heavy weight for so long because the price of grief is too expensive.

As a kid, i thought she was tough, then, just the strongest woman out there, being able to waltz through life after so many losses like that. But I realize it now that maybe she wasn't just strong for the sake of it, but also because she couldn't afford to be weak. There are 8 other kids depending on her and grandpa's scrappy maid/hawker-seller salary back then, how on earth can they break if it means the rest of her kids can't eat?

But what strikes me is how they are equal in love and care for each other - the way she tries to cheer him up even in a situation that is so dire. If you think about it, the dice are so loaded against them - they are terribly poor, not particularly educated teen parents - and yet they have so much love and care for each other and their child and they want to be a functional family unit and the drama doesn't gloss over how hard even survival is - despite their love and their work ethic and everything - but the way they really stick with each other through it all is !!!!!

(the way the camera focuses on his messed up finger!)

And the thing is - I've seen complaints that oh it's another "ML loves FL and makes her his whole identity and FL follows her dreams" thing but that is such abysmal media literacy failure I can't even tell you - yes he is so utterly devoted to her but she is equally devoted to him! Her dreams of college and career and everything are gone to become his wife and a teen mom and she never says a word of complaint, she is HAPPY to be his dirt poor wife and her dreams are not for her at all - they are for them to raise their kids to have a better life.