shall we go to sapporo

i dont consume media, the media consumes me

[bellamyblcke]

we are all trying here (2026) // isabella desendi - someone else's hunger// jennifer michael hecht - september// ruth l. schwartz - tangerine// richard siken - field// anne carson - red doc & eros the bittersweet

[bellamyblcke]

we are all trying here (2026) // richard siken - kitchen window // sally rooney - normal people // isa b. - this survival hasn't been soft // mary oliver - starling in winter // mary shelley - frankenstein // frank o'hara - selected poems

[captainjoongki]

eun ah and dong man using terms like "brilliant" and "shining" to describe each other and their dream lives is just so beautiful because when you consider the main theme of the drama being worthlessness combined with them relating a 500 won coin to finding happiness in a day and to dong man fishing out that coin from the gutters versus eun ah collecting a bag to sprinkle around dong man.......

it's like, as this coin shines, as this singular coin shines and reminds us of happiness, you shine brighter, more splendid, more brilliant in the midst of this darkness and emptiness around me. i see you here as spectacular while others see you as worthless. i see you gleam like my 500 won coin that gives me happiness. you are happiness......you deserve to be happy.......you are that coin to me.

[crackers4jenn]

I'm absolutely losing it over how protective dongman and euna are of each other without either realizing it!!! euna sticking up for dongman every chance she gets, even as it further alienates her at work. throwing the rock through the agit window and later saying "yeah, it was me." telling his entire ex-friends group "he's brilliant and he's mine" in the place they gather to shit talk him, where there's a sign taped to the door banning him entry. dongman confronting her ex and calling him out for using her, for not putting her on the pedestal she deserves!!

and then their small meaningful acts of "I'm thinking about you" that are also "I'm giving my luck to you" and "I'm returning your luck." The caught leaves in the banchan dish! The coin!!! Fished out of the gutter, taped to his wall.

Them being the cause of each other's first green emotion of the day in the dead of night :')

[tinyevilgremlin]

euna saying she wishes she had an 'oppa', which can mean both an older brother or a boyfriend depending on the context, and the scene cutting to dongman reading through her ex's screenplay and calling him out on his bullshit, because euna is more beautiful than the weather, because euna strives to find worth in things that the world deems worthless, and because euna is a jewel whose shine doesn't deserve to be tarnished or hidden by the likes of her trashy ex. i love you, show

[captainjoongki]

he tells her this......

and the episode ends with her telling him this.....

[captainjoongki]

what makes romance in park haeyoung written kdramas so special is that the characters never explicitly say “i love you” or even share many outright romantic moments.

instead they say things like “you’re like someone with a thousand doors open, here is luck i caught for you, i want to experience this person, i am worshipping you, i am rooting for you, you’re like a sacred haven i keep away from my hate, let’s live happily now”

instead they do things like spending hours walking through the streets together, sitting and talking about their failures their anxieties their worst ghosts and skeletons. instead they eat together and catch each other’s eyes over a table. instead they support one another quietly and are determined to break free of the boxed in boundaries of a daily existence trapped by the confinements of society, their own webs of depression and anxiety, and to come out of it as people who are worth something even if they have nothing. they are not inherently good or incredible or positive or charismatic. they are just humans, searching for a soul connection.

because what is love truly, if not simply the quietness of togetherness?

[mothy-tt]

Also knowing that Dongman's brother wrote a poem that devastating in high school? Middle school? Means both were an artistic soul but Jinman had to stop pursuing his dreams and go work in hard manual labor (probably not even going to college so he can support his younger brother), angry and full of resentment about how life turned out, never angry at his baby brother because they shared kindred soul, but seeing him fall into similar pit of despair must break him apart... apart from all the things he must feel about himself that's got to be crazy

[krushing]

I'd be willing and able. If you're willing, I'm able.

[krushing]

We Are All Trying Here / 모두가 자신의 무가치함과 싸우고 있다 (2026)

[bellamyblcke]

it’s worth saying that koo kyo hwan is kinda giving the performance of a life time like this is what full commitment to beautiful loserhood looks like he’s eating with his mouth open he’s twirling like a ballerina he’s staring off into space like his soul is dying he’s sooooo embarrassing and hard to take and also that’s my motherfucking guy

[1liv]

WE ARE ALL TRYING HERE 1.02

[jedaos]

good afternoon everyone please join me in pouring one out for kwang chulhee. nothing happened to him he just moved to a rural town, got punched in the face for calling the history teacher's blatant revisionism propaganda, and then fell down a mountain and broke his arm & leg during detention, all during his first day of school

[wormwoodandhoney]

some books read in 2024: the sword of kaigen, m.l. wang

Misaki tied the obsidian sword at her hip and realized how much she had ached for its weight there. A baby just wasn’t the same.

[shawcl]

this part actually destroyed me bc 1. it was at this point i realized that oh shit mamoru really is gonna die like yes he had half of his organs exposed but i was still hoping for some kind of miracle and 2. how fucking heartbreaking is it, that no one will ever know he finally mastered the whispering blade in his final moments. that no one will ever know he was the youngest to ever do so. and when he thinks "i can’t wait to tell them" despite knowing that he's dying. literally kill me.

[cikebabbler]

absolutely genius of rf kuang to elaborate on virtually nothing about speer's culture. the only things said about speer are "speerlies are mindless savages" and "speerlies are most definitely not mindless savages". there are no deep dives, no explanations of their way of life, nothing beyond the glimpses that disproves nikan's belief that they are nothing but a violent group. we saw that they had leaders that cared about their people and children. we saw that they are people who found joy in life. but that's really not much.

this emphasizes the horror of genocide. millenia of culture and history, individual lives filled with love, pain, and passion, just completely wiped away. there were only two surviving speerlies. one of them was too young when he was taken away, and probably doesn't remember much. the things he did remember was also probably buried under years of abuse and drugs people were plying him with. the other one didn't even know she was from speer until the last few months of her life, and there was really no one around to teach her about their culture. and if there was, life as she knows it was falling apart. learning about her dead people's culture probably didn't even cross her mind.

without saying any of these things and by intentionally leaving readers in the dark about what speer was truly like, rf kuang said so much about the horrors of genocide. by not saying anything, she said everything. she did the "show me, don't tell me" tip for writers and it was brilliant.

we will never learn most of speer's culture and history and that was the point.

[lncomfortable]

I will never get over Fang Runin who didn’t have the privilege of having a heart. She destroys her uterus and any chance of having a family and writes to no one in her hometown because she can’t afford to be distracted from her studies the way that her classmates can. The people around her open up about their past and their feelings and she can’t comfort them, she can only tell them to be stronger because that’s all anyone ever told her. She falls in love with someone who betrays her because his whole life’s purpose is creating a future that she can’t exist in. She actively refuses to see her enemies as people because she couldn’t live with the choices she made if she stopped to think. She couldn’t even hang onto the love she had for her best friend, the one person she loved more than anyone and swore to always protect, because she is so consumed by rage and grief and despair that in the end, she kills both him and herself.

The tragedy of Fang Runin is that she was never allowed to have a heart so she stopped considering having one to be a possibility. Everyone around her told her that her life is not her own and no one gave her a chance to be anything but a peasant or a soldier. Peasants and soldiers don’t have the privilege of love and safety and comfort. Rin’s birthright is anger and violence. And that is what kills her.