November 26, 2023 - Over 1500 American Jews With Jewish Voice For Peace And Their Allies Blocked Traffic

#HIS SMILE!!! #you can literally see how much that meant to him 🥹

Taylor announcing a new song???? Rick announcing Grover and Annabeth castings???? girlies it's time to go INSANE <3

“Visenya why aren’t we burning the dornishmen?”

never seen a man that was meant to be middle-aged more than shawn hatosy, he was meant to have salt and pepper hair and a few wrinkles.

Hoping,praying,manifesting pls they better give them a happy ending

i'm not sure if you're aware that fans have discovered that yijin's stuffs are in heedo's old room, but do you think this is just a hint that they *will* be endgame in the end?

ppl thought that he might've died and gave his belongings to heedo. although that'd be kinda weird bcs shouldnt they be given to his family instead?

honestly i think there's no way this show won't make baekdo endgame... but all the theories and speculations i see on twitter make me anxious. 🥲

another anon said:

Have you seen on Twitter that apparently in Heedo's bedroom in the present timeline her and Yijin's casset players are together? The post I saw if from Twitter user lovebkyjn. I'll try sending a link and see if it works: https://twitter.com/lovebkyjn/status/1506302553545666565?t=OP5zxkuq99eMO6y9v3HVJg&s=19 From another tweet in that thread apparently Heedo also has a tiny skateboard from Yijin's apartment.

thank you to both anons!!! i decided to collate both asks because they refer to the same topic 💕

so, to answer the first question: yes, i’ve seen both posts! in fact i had a little celebratory dance afterwards and went to scream in my bestie’s dms about how it made the endgame all the more likely.

to answer the second question:

as of now, both interpretations of the pictures are equally likely when taken out of context. of course the show can still screw us over, because everything is possible. but i discussed this at length with my friend, and here are some of the observations we came up, including further theories of hee do and yi jin’s future:

as you said, there is little reason for yi jin’s belongings to go to hee do in the event of his death, especially a cassette player, unless she asks for it explicitly. while there is a technical possibility for this to happen, i don’t believe that it would.

the belongings are all collected in hee do’s old room, where we’ve also seen other objects connected to yi jin, such as a telescope and two bicycle toys. this got me thinking: why would hee do have toys connected to yi jin that she brought into her old room as early as her twenties? my theory is that when yi jin and hee do had min chae, she often came to stay in hee do’s old room and be watched by hee do’s mom, which is why they bought min chae the toys and arranged them for her.

the photo yi jin has ended up in an album with hee do’s photos, which i strongly believe proves that the album was made by the two of them.

hee do takes a long time to fall in love with someone. me and my friend were discussing that she could be demisexual, because the only people she’s had a strong emotional bond with are people she knew for a long time: yu rim and yi jin. she’s never had real crushes on people she met briefly, which led us both to believe that it would be very difficult for her to move on in the case of yi jin’s death.

hee do had min chae when she was 26, leaving her only four years from being with yi jin to having a child in the case of him dying when she was 21. given that it took her four years (18 to 21) to even date yi jin as per the premise, it seems unlikely to both me and my friend that hee do would have been able to move on from this loss and fall genuinely in love in time to get married at 25 and have a child at 26.

min chae is the child of a healthy marriage filled with love. she exhibits all the qualities of the “spoiled” only child, including a healthy amount of rebelliousness towards her parents, and none of the burden and sadness that yu rim and yi jin exhibit from having to bear their parents’ burdens too early. this means that hee do did not experience divorce and remarriage, so there’s no way she could be with someone other than yi jin.

so many details of hee do’s present life symbolize yi jin and their relationship. her workshop is called 25, 21, and a name for a lifelong business is always chosen with a positive emotion, because you want that positive energy to fuel you in your daily work. there are five rainbow chairs displayed where she works, items symbolizing or belonging to yi jin in hee do’s old room, and the photo album.

so here’s a quandary: if hee do has moved on from yi jin, why would she surround herself with symbols of him? and if hee do is stuck in the past while yi jin is gone from her life, why would she forget about the beach trip and the photo album, if she idealizes and cherishes the memories of him? none of these assumptions make sense when we take the full picture into account. this leads me and my friend to think that the show is messing with us for fun, that yi jin and hee do are happily married, and that she forgot the beach trip because she has many more memories with him to remember.

let’s take a final look at “sad ending evidence”: jaurim's song twenty five, twenty one as an inspiration for the show. for those unaware, the song is played over the ending of episode two and is based on the singer’s life; in it, she reminisces about her first love, who died when they were young. the point i want to make here is about how writers approach influences and retellings: we always want to change something. when we approach a source text, we never want to replicate it exactly, because we need to keep surprising ourselves and our audience. we want to tell a story different from the story we heard, but with enough elements remaining to remind of the source.

hence, the show constantly plays with our expectations of a sad or happy ending, but its ultimate choice depends on the way it develops the relationship. if yi jin was going to die, we would have seen him and hee do have a long and acknowledged romantic relationship, a happy time that was tragically cut short. but twenty five, twenty one isn’t the journey: it’s the destination. it’s not a golden age we watch the characters be happy in: it’s an event we keep waiting and waiting and waiting for along with them, the moment where they will start the relationship that will warm them for the rest of their lives.

Mood

i've had time to think about and process the 2521 ending and i'm finally ready to talk about it. first, i'd just like to say: WOW. i'm so happy i randomly decided to click "play" on episode 1 one day because watching this show was truly such a satisfying journey. the cast was phenomenal, seeing nam joo-hyuk and kim tae-ri together on screen was such a treat. the cinematography, the soundtrack, the writing, the feeling of nostalgia that this show provokes... 2521 is definitely one of my favorite kdramas of all time.

with that said, i don't claim the ending. a lot of people have said, "if you're not happy with the 2521 ending just because baekdo weren't endgame you clearly missed the whole point of the show," but i'd have to disagree. it's not just the lack of a baekdo endgame that didn't sit right with me, it's the ending that all of the characters got in their adulthood that turned me off.

seung-wan had stated in episode 10 that she found life to be boring, which is a sentiment that a lot of teenagers share. their lives are micromanaged by the schools they attend, the parents they live with, and all of their time is taken up by studying and trying to climb the step-ladder to adulthood. but even ten years later, seung-wan does not seem happy. she still finds life boring, she shows no satisfaction or attachment to the job she has chosen and she says herself that she is only able to see her friends during events like funerals. they may have hinted at a change in her love life with the return of yijin's brother, but considering how much emphasis was placed on having a "rEaLiStIc EnDiNg," his return just seemed very random and fanfiction-like.

yurim's ending also didn't satisfy me. don't get me wrong, i am so ridiculously happy that her relationship with jiwoong survived time and distance, and i'm also glad that she was finally able to gain the financial stability that she had always craved. but again, the emphasis was placed on what she chose as a profession following her retirement from fencing. we can't forget WHY yurim was so determined to make money, and the reason was her love for her family. she wanted to lessen their burden, pay off their debts, and provide them with a better life. i think seeing her with her parents in the present day would have been a lot more fulfilling in terms of a "happy ending."

and heedo... oh heedo. i can understand the baekdo breakup given the context of episodes 15 and 16, but i also think that a huge disservice was done to heedo's character in the name of being "realistic." because what were we shown? heedo lived her childhood alone until she was finally granted a short span of time to enjoy passionate love and friendship before it was ripped away from her. at the end of the day, heedo begins her journey alone and ends it alone. not only does she lose the friends that made her youth so memorable and the love of her life, but she also loses the sport that she lived and breathed for. in adulthood, she no longer finds fencing to be fun. she gets bored of winning. the girl who went through so much effort to transfer schools, worked so hard to join the national team, won three gold medals, and wanted nothing more to fence... quit. all athletes retire at some point but what she chose to do with her life afterwards had no relation to fencing whatsoever. i find that to be TRAGIC.

she shows no attachment to her husband in the present day, he's barely a part of her day-to-day life and she doesn't even mention him in passing. this nameless, faceless man that our best girl heedo spends her life with has no presence in her home, in her life, or even in her thoughts. she doesn't even have a ring on her finger. her reaction to yijin (his face during the 2009 interview, his words found in her diary in 2022) even years after their breakup is visceral, instinctual... and that's why she returns to the tunnel, erases the beach day from her mind, and just seems to have no trace of happiness in her. from where i'm sitting, her story seems like a tragedy full of regret, loneliness, and a bitterness for the direction her life took in the name of "growing up."

yijin also seems to be alone in the present day. it's a shame that he dedicated his life to a career that caused him to begin smoking, drinking, losing sleep, and sucked the hope out of his very being. it's also a shame that his "happy ending" consists of bringing the family together that provided him no form of support during the hardest time of his life. his parents may be his blood, but heedo was his family. and he lost her in a breakup that wasn't even reciprocal. they didn't part ways mutually, he was abandoned yet again during a time when he was struggling with issues completely out of his control. his ptsd and depression were never addressed and, just like heedo, he began and ended his journey completely alone.

why was a rookie reporter sent to the other side of the world indefinitely to cover a foreign story in the first place? why was jae-kyung only able to establish a close relationship with her daughter after ending her career? why did she have to choose? why did baekdo break up after their first and only fight? why did heedo say she would make sure her support always reached yijin when she made no effort in episodes 15 and 16 to help him in any way? were all of their words JUST WORDS? why were there so many remnants of yijin in heedo's present day home if they have no relationship at all? why did yijin and heedo have to lose their friendship, their love, their understanding, the very essence of their bond, just to become strangers with no tie to each other's lives after they broke up because "that's how real life is"? why did minchae even pick up that diary in the first place?

the fireworks that were lighting luke’s face up in more and more alarming shades of red as his confrontation with percy in the woods continued to build up. the fireworks turning a cold, calculating blue to show him adapting to the new revelation and switching up his words to try and manipulate percy with an approach that shows care for percy’s wellbeing and bringing back the same points made in the flashback between the two earlier in the episode

this so poetic cinema

Ewan Mitchell & Tom Glynn-Carney react to House of the Dragon Scenes