i loved the ending bc the happy idealistically romantic ending was their first marriage and that's where the fairy tale ended and their story began, this drama was about how love may conquer all but only if you put in the work everyday

QUEEN OF TEARS (2024)

people wanting a motive for seul hee's tenacity with the hongs......... beloved peers, i fear the answer is quite simple: that's the dumb rich grandpa she managed to hook and she has already spent more than a decade on this con, her reason is sunk cost and it doesn't matter that it's a fallacy. people often complain about the "met as kids" trope, which i'm not particularly fond of either, but when we get a plot that doesn't revolve around an extended backstory it's suddenly weak? everyone wants a female villain but when she's nasty from beginning to end with no good reason then it's too much?

the second thing bothering me is people being mad that eun seong's death was played as kinda sad and... what the hell? it's sad bc he was a victim that ended up perpetuating the cycles of abuse he suffered, i don't feel like they tried to portrait him as the victim but he certainly was a victim at some point and the fact that he chose to victimize other people to such an extreme instead of dealing with his issues is sad.

p.s.: send some love to park sung hoon who did an awesome job as eun seong and is getting hate for it??? his whole demeanor at the wrap up party when he asked people to hate the character and not him?? it broke my heart 😢

How did you even get into SNU?

{Words by Anaïs Nin, from The Diary Of Anais Nin, Vol. 4 (1944-1947) / Cynthia Cruz }

da hye really went from "i will leave you" to "i will leave for you" just to make her third 180 and finally decide to stay instead of running

I'm halfway through the show, Queen of Tears, and something that I've seen floating across is the anti Hyun Woo sentiment regarding how he treated Hae In initially and was just trying to do it all for the will.

Something to understand here is that in situations such as his, where he was emotionally empty and just a shell of himself who was just functioning, he didn't have the bandwidth to understand the gravity of situation that was Hae In's terminal illness.

In Hyun Woo's mind, he didn't have Hae In's support anywhere, be it against his in-Laws or in the company. She is silent against her family and hostile and argumentative in the company. He doesn't know what all she does for him on the sly or in backstage. He is not aware and Hae In never made the effort to change that situation.

All that pressure, anxiety, gear and emotional drain took its toll on Hyun Woo's emotional capacity. Stuck in a state of constant negativity, his initial reaction to Hae In's illness might be a form of self-preservation. He shuts down completely, unable to process the additional emotional burden of her mortality.

Something to remember is also the fact, that although he was thinking of it, the one thing that pushed him to draft the divorce papers were the talk of their child, whose entire identity and life was being decided by Hae In's family while she had no opinion on that and couldn't care less. This entire situation fueled the fire of resentment burning within Hyun Woo. Here was Hae In, seemingly indifferent to the future of their potential child, the very thing that initially distanced them. It felt like a repeat of their early struggles, where her family held all the cards and Hae In remained silent, leaving him to battle alone.

This perception, however flawed it might be, explains his impulsive decision to draft the divorce papers. Exhausted and emotionally hollowed out, he saw the child issue as the final straw, a symbol of their inability to stand together. He might have been grasping at a desperate solution, a way to force a change in their dynamic, a cry for her to finally fight for him and their future.

Of course, this doesn't paint Hyun Woo as a hero. His actions were undeniably hurtful, a clumsy and emotionally charged attempt to solve a complex situation. But by understanding the immense pressure he was under, the constant negativity seeping into his core, we can see a flicker of vulnerability beneath his anger. He craved Hae In's support, her voice alongside his in the face of adversity. Perhaps, the divorce papers were a twisted plea for her to finally break her silence, to acknowledge his pain and fight for their future together.

Here's where empathy becomes crucial. While his actions are undeniably hurtful, it's important to consider if they stem from malice or a desperate attempt to cope.

Think about it this way: Imagine a cup overflowing with negativity. Hyun Woo's daily struggles with his in-laws, the lack of support at work, and the constant emotional strain have already filled his cup to the brim. When Hae In's illness is revealed, it's simply too much for him to handle at that moment. He doesn't have the emotional space to understand the gravity of her situation, let alone offer support. in fact, it's easy for him to consider her death as an easy escape since his capacity for empathy or his love for her was essentially buried under all that negativity.

This NPR interview with with Angela Saini about how race science never really left the global scientific consciousness is super interesting! I’m gonna read her book!

Credit to moeai.art on Tik Tok

Hyun woo’s face when he realized Hae in is still alive.

The second she realized what just happened.

Hyun woo is so devastatedly broken, absolutely crushed and it finally triggers something in Hae in. She’s witnessing her husband utterly destroyed about her death even though she’s in front of him, clearly alive.

And I’ve always loved how strong Hae in is and this is a great example. Hyun woo has been comforting her for several weeks through the loss of her grandpa and her lifestyle and her fortune and now she stepped up to comfort her husband. She says “it’s okay” with confidence and rubs the nape of his neck. 😍🥺

Has In’s eyes when she’s come to terms that she’ll do the surgery. I give props to Kim Jiwon for her stellar acting. She does such a wonderful job with her expressions.

i feel like people often forget that we, the viewers, know about everything but the characters have limited information?

the hospital only knows the (yes, doting<3) husband of a patient was arrested by the interpol in the hospital, literally dragged away screaming (in korean, we have subtitle they don't), and that some other guy showed up claiming to know her

this is a high risk patient, subject of an experimental treatment, she has no family in the country, they probably have no way to contact the hongs

eun seong plays the worried (boy?)friend, he is korean, he has some photos to prove they know each other, he was just so scared when hae in traveled with her (ex?)husband who was accused of murder, he just had to help her

i mean, i don't know about you all, but i don't know what was the latest scandal in corporate korea and i'm guessing the average german hospital staff doesn't either but even if they searched they'd find the news accusing hyun woo of murder and yeah, about eun seong threatening them but i feel like one outweighs the other in this situation. plus, with her case, hae in wasn't in her best mentally so from an outside point of view (and with some sweet words from eun seong) it could've looked like she had been manipulated into saying those things about eun seong

see, i'm not defending eun seong, i despise him too, but just because he is stupid for the way he is still trying to win hae in even after she said no so many times (and how much i've enjoyed each one of them), doesn't mean he isn't smart about other things and that the plot is horrible

i mean, as someone who works in a hospital i would say they didn't have much choice?

they are a foreigner couple with no ties to the country, the hospital has no means of contacting any family member (i doubt they were even given the number for the hongs), this guy comes in with the police and interpol to arrest the husband on murder charges and he is dragged out, then the guy says he will take care of the patient, he is korean, he shows pictures of them together, tells them about how he ran to catch the crazy husband who was arrested… sure a google search would clarify that eun seong threatened hae in and hyun woo but still, the interpol arrested hyun woo, the hospital is not gonna fight for him bc his was worried about his wife

Ok now that it's been like...seven minutes and the initial rage has worn off slightly I must say...

The last 15 minutes of ep 14 make absolutely no sense jdjfkf they're really gonna let this random man be alone in the room with their patient when she wakes up from a high-risk surgery that makes it very likely she's gonna lose all her memories? You're leaving your vulnerable patient with a man you've never seen before and who has no legal ties to her? A man she's actually publicly accused of blackmailing her? (I can accept they might not know abt that last part but...really?)

ESPECIALLY when her husband, the person who initially contacted the hospital, the one who's been with her at every visit, the one whom you called to say the surgery was gonna be possible, the one who is clearly her emergency contact and who was SUPPOSED to be in the room with her when she woke up in that vulnerable state (as agreed with medical personnel, I'm sure) was fucking ARRESTED inside the hospital while she was still under?? And you're gonna let any random asshole take over??? I don't think so.

QUEEN OF TEARS // Ep 14

QUEEN OF TEARS (2024)

the older I get, the more the technological changes I've lived through as a millennial feel bizarre to me. we had computers in my primary school classroom; I first learned to type on a typewriter. I had a cellphone as a teenager, but still needed a physical train timetable. my parents listened to LP records when I was growing up; meanwhile, my childhood cassette tape collection became a CD collection, until I started downloading mp3s on kazaa over our 56k modem internet connection to play in winamp on my desktop computer, and now my laptop doesn't even have a disc tray. I used to save my word documents on floppy discs. I grew up using the rotary phone at my grandparents' house and our wall-connected landline; my mother's first cellphone was so big, we called it The Brick. I once took my desktop computer - monitor, tower and all - on the train to attend a LAN party at a friend's house where we had to connect to the internet with physical cables to play together, and where one friend's massive CRT monitor wouldn't fit on any available table. as kids, we used to make concertina caterpillars in class with the punctured and perforated paper strips that were left over whenever anything was printed on the room's dot matrix printer, which was outdated by the time I was in high school. VHS tapes became DVDs, and you could still rent both at the local video store when I was first married, but those shops all died out within the next six years. my facebook account predates the iphone camera - I used to carry around a separate digital camera and manually upload photos to the computer in order to post them; there are rolls of undeveloped film from my childhood still in envelopes from the chemist's in my childhood photo albums. I have a photo album from my wedding, but no physical albums of my child; by then, we were all posting online, and now that's a decade's worth of pictures I'd have to sort through manually in order to create one. there are video games I tell my son about but can't ever show him because the consoles they used to run on are all obsolete and the games were never remastered for the new ones that don't have the requisite backwards compatibility. I used to have a walkman for car trips as a kid; then I had a discman and a plastic hardshell case of CDs to carry around as a teenager; later, a friend gave my husband and I engraved matching ipods as a wedding present, and we used them both until they stopped working; now they're obsolete. today I texted my mother, who was born in 1950, a tiktok upload of an instructional video for girls from 1956 on how to look after their hair and nails and fold their clothes. my father was born four years after the invention of colour televison; he worked in radio and print journalism, and in the years before his health declined, even though he logically understood that newspapers existed online, he would clip out articles from the physical paper, put them in an envelope and mail them to me overseas if he wanted me to read them. and now I hold the world in a glass-faced rectangle, and I have access to everything and ownership of nothing, and everything I write online can potentially be wiped out at the drop of a hat by the ego of an idiot manchild billionaire. as a child, I wore a watch, but like most of my generation, I stopped when cellphones started telling us the time and they became redundant. now, my son wears a smartwatch so we can call him home from playing in the neighbourhood park, and there's a tanline on his wrist ike the one I haven't had since the age of fifteen. and I wonder: what will 2030 look like?

Trying to remember the last time I played hide and seek. The last time I said hi to everyone on the street or saw the girls I spent every day of six years with. The last time my dad picked me up, or my mum brushed my hair. When was the last time I dressed without consideration? There is so much to think about now. I remember falling on the grass at school and making stories with the clouds. Hanging upside down from the swing and realising how big the world was. I wonder on the path of growing when we stop feeling big. I am taller now, smaller still.