#yeom mijeong

[sosrantings]

EP12

[asteptowardyou]

listen

About Gu Jagyeong telling Mijeong that they will stop meeting if he has nothing more to say to her after ten or twenty sessions. I really love the implication here that, in the end, this condition will probably still lead them to a long relationship with each other, because of course he’ll continue to have more to say to her. And she’ll continue to listen. We, as humans, will always desire someone to listen to us wholeheartedly. We cannot go through life without processing the situations we live through, especially the ones that we didn’t enjoy or that didn’t go the way we had planned. If you have someone to listen to you and if that person understands how to properly respond to your ramblings, you’ll never grow tired of those conversations. You’ll always look for that shoulder to release your tension and to share your burdens. Gu was, and still is, that person who Mijeong felt comfortable enough with to voice her truest thoughts. She, in turn, is finally becoming that person for him as well. And she knows after having experienced that, after she started feeling lovable, that it is something so precious. It is a special bond that one will never truly grow tired of. She’s not worried of him leaving her, because once she let herself fall into the rhythm of talking to Gu, she didn’t want it to end. She’s let go of the anger of her past relationships, and she feels filled with love. Mijeong knows that she is being liberated, little by little, and Gu will be too, if he allows himself to be. 

[queenkimjiwon]

My Liberation Notes (2022) Opening 🌸

[thesetornadoesareforyou]

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

Summary: “Have you met a man that worships you?” he asked.

He hadn’t been prepared for her answer to be ‘yes’.

It feels like Im just yelling into the void about my love for Gu and Mijeong but I WILL keep doing it. Here's an angsty little one shot (with a happy ending btw)

[czares-tea]

Drop that line and slide an ice cream to Mijeong.

My Liberation Notes (2022)

This is not just a kdrama, this is a way to live.

[astarlightmonbebe]

mijeong x mr. gu || white ferrari [1x4]

earbuds recommended! interact and sub if you like it <3

[asteptowardyou]

heartbreak

Kim Jiwon and Son Sukku are so, so talented. The tension between them during the conversation in Gu's house. I can't stop thinking about it. Mijeong seemed too calm, too collected, too accepting, and you could see in Gu's face that he felt it. She said from the beginning she would not cling to him. So, why is Gu upset that she isn't asking him to stay? Didn't she say that all she wanted was to feel whole? She wasn't proposing a longtime commitment to begin with. But, he knows she should be angry. 

Anger. Anger is easier to deal with than sadness. So much easier to lash out and yell at each other. What can he do with sadness? Comfort her? No, not really, because even if he hugs her and lets her cry in his arms, it won't change the situation. It would probably end with them feeling even worse. 

I wonder why Mijeong suggests seeing each other in Seoul. Logically, sure, it makes sense for her to say, "let's stay in touch," to her boyfriend, but, well, I can't disagree with Gu and say they have an ordinary relationship. He can't worship her, not properly, from afar. Their relationship is based on their proximity and their availability to one another, both of which will no longer be there. 

“What about the kind of life I’ll live?” I’ve watched the scene several times now, and it hurts to hear Gu say those words to her. Every time. Oh, the cut to Mijeong’s face. Her eyes. Oh, her eyes and her glance toward him. The hesitation. It’s her hesitation that annoys him, because she should be able to say anything, to speak her mind with him. 

“I’m just fine with my life.” We all know you’re lying with that statement. Gu so clearly despised his life before. I understand that he can’t continue running away from his past, but why not be honest? I guess if he says he wants to stay, that it pains him to leave, he’ll actually attempt this in-between situation and continue seeing Mijeong periodically. But he’s right. That world is separate from theirs in Sanpo. 

The difference in how Gu and Mijeong express their frustration in this scene is fascinating to see, as devastating as it is. Mijeong is facing it directly and telling him what she’d like for them moving forward while Gu wants to avoid discussing the future altogether and cut off what they have now. He doesn’t want his world in Seoul to get tangled with hers. 

“I’m ordinary now, too. Exhaustingly ordinary.” 

“Being ordinary is when you have common desires. That’s when you can say you’re ordinary. Not ‘worship’ or ‘liberation.’ The desires that everyone else has. As your brother said, like the women who have the strollers they want.”

“I’m going to carry my child. I want to carry you. I want to carry you at one year old.” 

“That’s why you live like this.” 

“I’m going to live like this. I’m just going to live like this.” 

This exchange. Mijeong calls herself ordinary. Finally, she felt loved, worthy of love. She felt worthy of worship because she could be genuine with him and be assured that he would still like her. He would still listen to her silly, at times disturbing, stories. He’ll listen to her ramble and comfort her. Perhaps, she finally understood how other people push aside those existential questions and allow themselves to feel happy. But Gu is saying she’s far from ordinary for wanting too much out of life. For being too honest about her desires. But aren’t those the very things that he admires about her? He feels terrible. For leaving. For saying those things to her. For purposefully hurting her feelings. His eyes. Again, his eyes and his intense gaze. So different from Mijeong’s unsure glance earlier. So telling of how he truly feels, even if he won’t say it to her out loud. I don't know what exactly to make of it, but there's definitely something significant here in Mijeong still feeling so ordinary, so unseen while Gu sees her as too observant, too smart for her own good. 

[asteptowardyou]

I love you, but you let me down

After watching the beach scene a second time, I’ve been thinking about how Gijeong mentions that the five of them never traveled together because it was after their father loaned money to his sister and how this affected Mijeong. Mijeong is clearly a reflection of her father. She’s quiet. She’s not truly intimate with her family. She’s not one to get angry easily, but she does have a temper. (It’s still funny to me that she threw Changhee’s slipper right out the door.) She’s so used to closing off her desires and her frustrations, even her needs, to them. Before Gu, it seems the person she’s most honest with is Hyuna, as Changhee acknowledges in this episode. Mijeong asks her family for nothing. She’s learned to not depend on them and to fix her issues on her own. And, obviously, part of this is just personality. But perhaps it’s because, by the time she was born, her parents were working to earn their keep day-to-day. I think of Changhee saying she had to play with the village idiot as a kid. She probably didn’t get many chances to have just pure fun as a child, and sometimes one learns not to want things to avoid disappointment. 

But, really, Mijeong desires a lot. She desires a full life. She so desperately wants to feel alive, and it seems like she did not feel that growing up. Of the three, she’s the one to begin working on her days off at home without needing to be asked. She’s diligent the way she’s always seen her father be, but after episode 13, it’s shown that Jeho isn’t necessarily diligent because he wants to be. He trusted his sister and ended up having large financial losses and, thus, had to give up a lot of his freedom. The “car chase” scene showed that he still had that drive to let loose. 

I think Mijeong, being so similar to him, understands him most. When they are standing outside of the crematorium, she stands behind him quietly, watching, knowing he's allowing himself, finally, to tear up. To let go and let himself feel. Mijeong lived with the consequences of Jeho trusting his sister, seeing him hide behind a blank face, and, again, while I do think it’s partly due to her personality and nature, I think part of it must be a learned behavior built on lack of trust, not just in others. I must imagine that it is a huge blow to the ego to put your wholehearted trust in someone only to be let down. I should note that we meet Mijeong after being let down by her ex-boyfriend, although he had been paying off the loan himself. She not only grew up with the consequence of her father’s loss but is now having to deal with her own. She is so bogged down by the loan and by the loss of a partner, by that annoying feeling of guilt when she did nothing wrong. There’s little worse than knowing you should not feel the way you do.