tl;dr: Over the next few months or so Iâll be republishing my earliest deep dive posts (the ones still hosted on my old blog) on this, my new blog. Iâve been meaning to consolidate everything in one place for a while now, and also I want to update those early posts to cover up all my mistakes and make myself seem way smarter than I am hehe okay Iâll mainly be editing for clarity, comprehensiveness, and such. Frankly I did not understand this show very well when I started this project, and now I understand it better! So hopefully these updated posts will reflect that. But if you would rather read the old versions, Iâll have links to the originals at the bottom of each post. And now for my overly grandiose introduction...
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The first episodes of Friendly Rivalry were released in South Korea on the U+ Mobile TV streaming service on Monday, February 10th, 2025. Four weeks later, the final episodes came out on Thursday, March 6th. In that brief window, Friendly Rivalry became a minor sensation, in and outside its country of origin. Fan communities sprung up across East and Southeast Asia, and international releases on major platforms like Rakuten Viki and Netflix soon followed.
This early wave of success, if weâre being real here, can be almost entirely attributed to online hype around the kiss scene between lead actors Chung Subin and Lee Hyeri. It wasnât the first ever kiss between women in the history of Korean TV, an honor that rightfully goes to Seonam Girls High School Investigators from 2015 (also starring Lee Hyeri!), but that kiss caused such a wave of conservative backlash, including disciplinary action from the KCSC, that it was literally ten years before another attempt was made to move the needle.
I first watched Friendly Rivalry in the space of a few days in March 2025, shortly after it finished airing. I was excited by the buzz (girls kissing yay) but also skeptical. When I learned the kiss was part of a dream sequence, I assumed that it was more likely a promotional gimmick than a sincere attempt to portray a queer romance, and lowered my expectations accordingly.
At the time, FR was a lot harder to watch than it is now, and the desperate masses were forced to make do with often unintelligible auto-translated subtitles on out-of-the-way websites of ill repute. But despite understanding maybe 35% of the plot, as soon as I finished watching it, the conviction began to grow inside me that I needed to watch Friendly Rivalry again. I didnât know how I felt about it yet, but I knew I wouldnât be able to make up my mind until I had given it another chance.
As readers of this blog will know, I spent the next eleven months of my life in an FR-induced fugue state. I thought about it, I wrote about it, I made my first-ever fan videos about it. I read the whole script, along with every single piece of commentary I could find on the internet. It even surpassed the almighty RGU to become my #1 most rewatched show of all time. Even with my obsessive personality and tendency to fall down rabbit holes, this was an unprecedented (and probably unhealthy) level of hyperfixation.
The result of that fever dream is the series of blog entries, totaling more than a hundred thousand words, that you are about to read.
If thereâs one thing Iâm certain of after all this time, and all those words, itâs that Friendly Rivalry is a singular piece of work. But even now itâs not easy for me to articulate what makes FR so special. I mean, itâs the characters, right? And the fact that such a large cast of mostly women is allowed to embody all the contradictions and complexity of humanity at its best and worst, without condemnation or glamorization. That alone is rare.
ButâŚitâs not unheard of, and itâs probably less rare today than it was fifteen or twenty years ago. But!! How common is it for a piece of media full of messy, ethically dubious women to actually go to the root of their dysfunction, and offer a clear-eyed diagnosis of the social maladies that produce such messed-up people in the first place?
Okay, again, maybe not completely unheard ofâalthough for a show set in high school, Friendly Rivalryâs social criticism is remarkably sweeping and ferocious, with withering glances cast at targets far beyond the education system it so clearly disdains.
Maybe itâs the fact that, even while painting a bleak picture of South Korea as a society that is deeply deeply unwell, and even while going to some very grim places narratively, Friendly Rivalry never stops being a briskly paced, genre-savvy, deliriously fun lesbian pulp thrill rideâa sort of private-school Bound with excursions into The Handmaiden-style gothicism.
Or is it the romance? (Because, readers, I was wrong. Friendly Rivalry is definitely a queer romance.) Certainly, of FRâs many unusual qualities, itâs the one-of-a-kind love story between Seulgi and Jei that is most likely to live on in the hearts and minds of fans.
But while this love story is Friendly Rivalryâs beating heart, its reason for being, andâneedless to sayâa huge contributor to its popularity, it still feels a bit reductiveâin the same way that calling RGU the âsword lesbian showâ feels reductiveâto say that yuri (regardless of how phenomenal the yuri may be) is The One Thing that sets Friendly Rivalry apart from the rest.
Near the start of her introductory Writerâs Note in the script book, director and co-writer Kim Tae-hee declares, almost apologetically, âFriendly Rivalry is by no means a friendly drama.â She goes on to list some of the ways FR can be unfriendly to its audience: âIts story moves fast, its characters are entangled in complex relationships, and it often withholds more than it reveals.â
Sheâs not wrong. And at a time when so much art, even art made ostensibly for adults, feels the need to remove all ambiguity and spell out its intentions in bold letters, I think it might be that last quality she mentions, the tendency to withholdâa quality Friendly Rivalry shares with many of its charactersâmore than any other, that makes it such a unique viewing experience in the Year of Our Lord 2026.
Itâs also what makes me worry about what Friendly Rivalryâs legacy will be. Because there is so much more to this show than âtoxic yuriâ and a dream kiss in a bathtub! (Not that those things arenât fabulous.) But FR expects youâtrusts youâto find the clues, connect the dots, and read between the lines. The plot and characters present an elaborate web to untangle all on their own, but under that web is one knot after another of symbolism and subtext to pick apart.
This isnât âpuzzle boxâ theory-crafting, which in the past twenty years has become commonplace. While thereâs certainly some of that to be done, Friendly Rivalry is ultimately less about the mysteries on its surfaceâthe whos and whysâthan it is about the mysteries below the surface, that have no one solution: the mirrors and doubles, the gaps and synchronicities, the secrets buried in the heart of each character.
Itâs a bottomless pool to plumb. I spent a year thinking about this story every day, and even after all that, fans still point out new details to me all the time that I never would have noticed on my own.
These deep dives are my attempt to document the many reasons I believe Friendly Rivalry deserves to be remembered: as one of the greatest shows about high school girls being mean to (and kind to) each other; as a masterclass in genre storytelling; as an urgent call to âburn it [the edifice of our corrupt and unequal society] downâ; as a moving allegory of redemption, liberation, and rebirth; and yes, as a love story like no other.
First-time divers, jump in, and donât worry if you canât swim. I wonât let you drown.
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Is Jae-yi's evil dad a crank doctor?
Musings on God, Gut Health, and Gay Soda
Happy Pride everyone!! (for like another hour in some timezones, shhh it still counts) And hey, it's a World Cup Summer, where we get to watch elite competition bring out transcendent human spirit in unpredictable ways even as it's all orchestrated by corrupt rent-seeking institutions who only value rivalry for the profit they can extract from it and the abuse they can sanctify with it! So that means there's no better time to vomit more words onto the internet about Friendly Rivalry <3
And wouldn't you know it, this time I actually have some beautiful and profound thoughts about the lesbians from the lesbian show about lesbians that lmaooo just kidding, I'm stuck on this loser-ass Tae-jun line to Jae-yi in episode 11:
It's one of the fakest confrontations these two ever have, for sure â he's at such an enormous advantage in this moment that he could be saying anything, and he's absolutely making that point to her by choosing words this inane and perfunctory. But even so this specific line fascinates me, because bro what?? The big Tae-jun contrast is usually between the hyper-competent surgeon and the abusive monster hiding in plain sight, but in moments like this... is it just me or does the show also keep lowkey calling him a crank doctor whenever he's not literally in the operating room?
Ok so hear me out: "You'll catch a cold from being out in the rain" is a really common thing to say but it's not true, it's a classic case of correlation mistaken for causation. It's the rain and/or cold trapping you inside where all the people breathing at you are that makes you sick, which of course is a lot more front of mind for all of us in the real world 2020s (wait did COVID happen in the FRverse?? I think the timeline benchmarks we get make it just barely impossible to tell either way). Now, for your average person just running on intuition it's a reasonable mistake, but Tae-jun's whole thing is Trusted Medical Professional. Surely he doesn't actually believe it. Surely this is just another part of the game, where Jae-yi knows it's bullshit and so does he. Surely the master surgeon is not a huge dumbass about how viruses spread. Could he really come through the system that purports to demand perfect demonstration of knowledge all the way up the ladder and still carry an elementary misconception about how human bodies work?
I'd argue absolutely! We know for one thing about his religion, and the show does not pretend to have kind things to say about it. Tae-jun's very first appearance in Seul-gi's metanarration is played for absurdity, even if it quickly segues into what will become his familiar menace; we're meant to understand from his superstition and the way he railroads the needs of others to accommodate it that Tae-jun is a fundamentally unserious man, who is dangerous precisely because he has the power to make his religious hangups everyone else's business. And the subsequent scenes of his abuse of his daughters, while much more chilling, retain a heightened extremity to them, with his twisted inversion of the tale of Cain and Abel being so flagrantly sinister and self-serving that it immediately signals that he's willing to twist any narrative any way he requires to facilitate his abuse. It's made clear from the start that Tae-jun's belief that God made him special is not tempered with any of the humbling poetry and metaphysics through which the average parishioner might take on such a belief, but is held quite literally â his Electness makes it unthinkable that he be made of the same stuff as everyone else.
That belief, over and above baseline religiosity, fundamentally negates the supposedly scientific mind that turned him into a surgeon, and it forces him to resolve the contradiction by turning the work itself into a religious exercise; Tae-jun relishes the ability to act on the bodies of others at their most powerless, he relishes manipulating viscera with hands that will always remain clean, but the vital societal role of helping people that has ostensibly elevated him to his station is entirely incidental to his sense of self. And as long as his power is unchallenged, he has no reason to back down from these beliefs. If rivalry is all that matters, and if God exists, then he'd be a fool to not think God wanted him to win, just for the sake of winning.
But while a weaker show might use the disturbing extremes to which Tae-jun bends standard CCD parables as a shield to insulate religion writ large from critique, here it's just the opposite â the show sees his particular derangements as an outlier, yes, but very much part of the predictable distribution of abuse that takes root deep in society's bones. As the fucked up ethics of Friendly Rivalry's child protagonists are shaped by their families as a proxy for society, so too do Tae-jun's beliefs come from his community, from his church and its services; they are not sprung sui generis from his own wicked soul (sorry meta-narrator Seul-gi, i know despite/because of being raised by nuns you don't really get religious shit at all but there are so many more of him out there than you think). And those services are consistently played for outright parody, the solmenity of the adults and Je-Na undercut by Jae-yi being bored out her mind and quickly understanding the whole enterprise to be best enjoyed on a purely transactional basis, just like everything else in her life. Her family is pointedly hardly ever seen together in their foreboding fortress of a home, but the one place they're always together is the pews, the organizational nexus from which Tae-jun's domination over his family and his class's domination over society flow together to become a durable system. It's no accident that it's also here where we see our only glimpse of the family he grew up with, a fleeting glimpse into his long-crushed vulnerability making itself known at the very moment the cracks in his dominion are finally appearing, as he has to enact his most morbid farce in the false funeral of his daughter.
Of course what makes this blistering critique of Christianity land is that it's not unique; Friendly Rivalry does not pick favorites among powerful institutions. Religious, secular, Christian, Buddhist (those scenes with Kyung's family doing pre-test prayers are also depicted with less than zero reverence), every corner of society falls under the same microscope. And on the flip side, the show never condescends to individuals just for participating in the big institutions that make up the world around them, which we know because even the C-SAT itself is not fully vilified â a big part of the hopeful ending is the sincere implication that Seul-gi is about to ace the test, secure her future, and then go make out with Jae-yi about it! Friendly Rivalry despises the broken promises of its institutions â capitalism, religion, the education system, the family â but it never lets those betrayals negatively polarize its storytelling against the dreams of those promises made real. And paradoxically that turns it into a scorchingly honest reckoning with how much we need to. ahem. Burn It Down for that reality to ever exist. This is not a work about selling out or refusing to conform to mainstream society as abstract concepts, it's a work about abuse and the systems that produce it, with a cleared eyed focus on the how of it all: Tae-jun is not the only outcome his communities and institutions and in-groups can produce, but someone like him is an inevitable result of the impunity they provide. And since Friendly Rivalry understands that revealing power alone does not dismantle it, Tae-jun's favored technique is invariably not to hide at all; within this framework, playacting a concerned father bullshitting that Jae-yi's going to catch a cold and actually believing it are one and the same. His indifference towards an accurate understanding of his daughter's health is the flex, his power is that it doesn't matter that he's wrong.
And that confluence of power and ignorance, however religiously it's justified, is reinforced by secular society at every turn. Knowledge and truth and a well-rounded understanding of how the world works and why are repeatedly discarded by Chaehwa's incentives. Unapplied math "taught" through gated study materials dominates the curriculum. The only real science education we see is Jae-yi larping as a Bond villain in Med Club, which clearly exists more to be another point of competitive ranking data than to actually do anything with those mice (and you wonder whether you can join any of the clubs at Chaehwa just because you're interested). Kyung gets accidentally pushed into her true calling because the adults that don't give a shit about her sense of justice also don't give a shit that she can quickly parse the documents she stole off Mom's desk; they just know that the maximum payout for second place math grades is engineering school, then patent law. Not actually engineering anything, of course, then we might have to teach her something.
There's no cliche Sellout STEM vs Righteous Humanities thing going on either, it's all a toxic pit with nowhere to hide. Jae-yi has to learn enough English so she can flex it as a symbol of the school's prestige in the opening assembly, and then never needs to use it again. Yeri's harp lessons aren't a corrective to Jae-yi's love of music being ripped away or the underdog story of a devalued skillset, they're simply the other side of the coin, a cynical and desperate attempt to shop around for sparsely populated fields to scam a number one ranking at literally anything (and speaking of music and the assembly, lets pour one out for that school choir that don't even get to finish their one song, the very first warning sign we see for what Chaehwa is like). And a major plot turn can hinge on Seul-gi being a better writer than everyone, including Jae-yi, not because she's particularly dedicated to it but because that's a skill that's only seen exercised for resume building â it's not the priority stat to buff, so the orphan with a unique life story can easily lap the field and be rewarded with insincere supplication by the same peers who were sneering at the country bumpkin moments ago. Again and again grift is rewarded in broad daylight and genuine learning happens almost by accident, all the way down to the killer question heist â it would already be an enormous act of cheating to give favored kids the problem in advance, but no one is paying all that money just for their kid to botch a prepared calculation under exam pressure, so the capsules also simply write down the answer. The point was never to learn something, even with an unfair advantage, but to skip to the result. The actual knowledge never mattered at all.
So if we're all gonna grow up to be grifters, what exactly will that look like? One thing that set my alarm bells off on rewatch is that Tae-jun's practice is gastrointestinal medicine, and discussions of Gut Health always have me on the lookout for medical quackery â the disgraced doctor who founded the entire Anglosphere anti-vax movement that's destroyed so many lives all over the world was a guy who thought the MMR shot caused autism specifically through bowel disease. That specific link definitely feels coincidental, since the corruption of healthcare we see in Friendly Rivalry is much more about control and surveillance and toxic incentives then the kind of anti-public health free for all I'm used to stateside; it's the original form of eugenics where you try to violently shape the population using the tools of science, rather than by withholding them. But the boundaries of these things are amorphous, and there's a shared core of disgust towards difference, fear of frailty, and charismatic manipulation across the whole spectrum of health fraud. And beyond vaccine denial there's an entire genre of alternative wellness junk specifically predicated on the fantasy of achieving perfect control of the gut microbiome, full of grifters parasitizing an incredibly rich vein of real science to make a quick buck telling people what they want to hear.
We don't know what's in "A Daejun-dong Dad's Guide to Full Marks on the CSAT," the book Tae-jun shills during one his TV spots, but given the abusive control he exerts over his daughter's diet we can hazard a guess. And in any case the title tells us all we need to know: the concept of "I'm just a normal father doing what's best for my daughter" is a classic hook that straddles the lines between real science, pop science slop, and outright grift. It's a perfect loop of bad incentives; it positions health not as a something you deserve in its own right but as a means toward results, but then sells itself not with that same credentialed expertise those results are ostensibly meant to obtain but with the faux-humble authority of the patriarch, literally Father knows best. It's reaction in its purest form â the modern patriarchy is inherently threatened by the rise of mass education and the resulting social and scientific miracles that could lead to its undoing (birth control yesterday, HRT today... artificial wombs tonite queen?) and it responds by coopting science and education into tools to reify itself. Toiling away in the classroom is only meant to deliver you to a paradise of power that frees you from challenge, skepticism, or even curiosity. And Tae-jun's specialty is the ideal vehicle for this weaponization of science against itself â the human digestive system is just too ripe for cultural neuroses that are desperate for perfect control, cleanliness, and purity when that will never be what our bodies have on offer, and the food we put through that system is too easily subject to control and restriction by the powerful, whether by the rich in our societies or by the Father (or Mother, as Ye-ri can attest) in our own homes. Which brings us full circle: what much more famous Friendly Rivalry scene does Tae-jun's fake concern about Jae-yi's delicate immune system remind you of?
Yes, it's the festival, the moment where Jae-yi realizes she's in love, and ok maybe I will write a little about the lesbians.
Despite one scene being significantly more important than the other, the parallels are striking. In both instances, Tae-jun is dispensing plausibly believable health advice to try to undermine his daughter's confidence, and this time it isn't even complete bullshit! But it still mostly is â yes, too much soda and grilled red meat is bad for you, but no self-respecting nutritionist is going around snatching single glasses of coke out of people's hands at parties, because they understand that health is a cumulative process that has nothing to do with purity or abnegation in their own right. But Tae-jun's deeply rooted beliefs in his own superiority cannot allow for the existence of bodies that aren't subject to paternalistic moralism. So even though he knows the science, he uses technically accurate facts in a thoroughly unscientific way, where the adverse affects of certain chemicals in sufficient amounts over long enough timeframes get reduced to an absolutist question of sin â the tiny molecules inside us that simply do what the laws of physics demand are transformed into scales of judgement weighting our souls. The problem is not Jae-yi doing something bad for her health; his abuse has already ensured she has to live with depression-induced sleep deprivation that's ruining her life. The problem is being outside his control, whether because of her stubborn love for her sister or because her heart was controlled by Seul-gi instead. And that brings us to the other key parallel: he only deploys this particular move in circumstances where one party has enormous power over the other; he delivers the line about catching a cold when he finds Jae-yi with the phone he planted, cornering his daughter with no way out.
...Except at the food stall he's the one reeling! As if aware of his own typical staging Tae-jun tries to enter the scene as a sinister figure, very rudely snatching his daughter's glass right after her girlfriend lovingly filled it up for her (a moment which shattered my heart when I finally noticed it â it might the first time Jae-yi reflexively waits to receive Seul-gi's care as if it's normal, as if she could deserve it). But he's probably legitimately scary in every single scene of Friendly Rivalry except this one. He has no aura, no menace, and there's no real tension; he's nothing but an annoying pest, and Jae-yi and Seul-gi seem untouchable. For maybe the only time in the series they're completely united, neither holding back from the other, openly relishing each other's presence and the visceral pleasures of life itself. Seul-gi's response to his wheedling is to belch soda bubbles, and Jae-yi, in full sight of her father, looks at her like THIS:
Hye-ri is the master of making her most affectionate expressions her subtlest but my god does she commit to the perfect exception here. No one has ever been more in love or less guarded about it than this, the moment the full force of Jae-yi's feelings hits her like a runaway train, when she realizes that Seul-gi has just instantly neutralized everything she's ever been afraid of. The end of Friendly Rivalry is so bittersweet because it's all about Seul-gi and Jae-yi being bound to each other and strengthened by each other even as they're torn apart, but the festival gives us that brief utopian fantasy â what if they could skip all that hard miserable work of getting into the Yuri Hall of Fame and just be together, two teenagers in love for the first time? And in that fantasy they don't just get to have a real date, or play out a kiss they can't have yet in each other's eyes with all the people around them none the wiser. They achieve a temporary invincibility, they go to a place together where Tae-jun cannot reach them even as he's standing right there. It's a heartbreaking "could have been" even as it's really happening â a world where this persists, where they kiss under the fireworks because Kyung never has to interrupt, would have to be a world where Tae-jun was just an out of touch old man, where the long shadow of his abuse did not fall over every corner of their lives.
And it's not an accident that that moment is communicated by the two of them putting food in their bodies purely for pleasure â once you start wondering if Friendly Rivalry is using hunger and the Gut as a metaphor for love and desire where a patriarchal class system tries to control and suppress both, you can't stop seeing it. Seulgi's malnourishment creates the heart shaped hole in her shadow. Jae-yi falls in love with her for good while she eats junk food messily and defies her panoptically-controlled diet in response. Ye-ri's eating disorder is paired with the constant threat of sexual exploitation and the financial and familial isolation that turbocharges both. Kyung's gastritis-exacerbated back pain mirrors her sex drive being a huge physical inconvenience that she can't get truly in touch with or talk to anyone about. And then the romantic climax of the whole show is lesbian intestinal surgery, culminating in Jae-yi taking the scalpel from her father and leaving a very conspicuous scar in an area of Seul-gi's body that she might be seeing a lot more of in the future. None of these thematic layers or the conclusion they build to are subtle, but all of it utterly passes Tae-jun by. To him the Gut is simply a collection of unclean matter subject to his purifying control, invested with religious meaning only through his own power over it, and therefore he cannot see what's happening when love transforms the same guts he saw as an instrument of humiliation into something truly holy, something he has no right to touch.
(...wait is this whole show about all the different disgust responses girls are trained to have toward their own existence and how that changes for worse and for better under each other's gazes, that's not why i like it so much is it, hahaha jesus christ ANYWAY -)
Tae-jun will use the same line from episode 11 one more time, in episode 15. But this time Jae-yi's hair wasn't wet from the rain. She was swimming, and when she throws an equally bullshit line about her own exercise regimen back at him, she's covering up that she was swimming to save Seul-gi, to pull her to the surface and put her own air in her lungs. That scene, excised from its own moment and only revealed to us in the finale, is famously Kim Tae-hee's partial solution to the "they never get to kiss for real" problem, the only real moment where we know for sure Friendly Rivalry, a show that is not shy about making itself hard to watch, added something in to throw a bone to the fans. So it's remarkable that they managed to find a way to thread that needle without compromising the story, and it's even more remarkable that I don't hate, hate, hate the moment with a burning passion â in a vacuum "CPR-as-subsitute-kiss" is a horrendously tacky trope, and people being immature about it in real life is why doctors stopped recommending mouth to mouth entirely in the hopes that it would get more people to actually attempt the chest compressions. But Friendly Rivalry makes it work, for one thing with excellent direction; the CPR goes by in a few frantic moments where all we feel is Jae-yi's fear (that wide shot!) and the only physical gesture the camera lingers on is Seul-gi's ensuing wrist grab. But it also works thematically, because the basest mechanisms of survival have been at the heart of this love story from the very beginning. Of course Jae-yi sealing Seul-gi's lips to fill her lungs is romantic, not because it has anything in common with a kiss, but because it has everything in common with cutting open her insides to extract a secret she swallowed to prevent her lover's own self-sacrifice, and then sewing her back together again â all the with the power and purpose of well-trained medical science.
So by the final time Tae-jun is trying to cow Jae-yi with condescending bullshit about her health that he probably also believes anyway, he doesn't know he's already lost. He'll be able to gain the upper hand in his schemes against the children he's torturing, sure, but the world he so carefully engineered for them is no more: Jae-yi will never heed him again, and Seul-gi will never fear him. His final appearance is on its surface a reminder of his impunity, a haunting specter that will follow Seul-gi wherever she goes, but the framing puts the lie to that. Friendly Rivalry's telltale vertical lines tell the real story, and this time it's Seul-gi looking down from high above, and a pathetic man stripped of his self-aggrandizing narratives, with no other purpose than to look up at her, all alone in the rain.
Hang on to that umbrella, Tae-jun. You wouldn't want to catch a cold.
My second fic for @fr-fest! This was supposed to be much more focused on the prompt, but it kind of grew into...whatever it is now. Basically a post-canon one-shot of Kyung and Yeri and their eventful and yuriful evening together. Itâs a lil bit rushed because I was trying to finish by the end of the month and the plot doesnât really make any sense if you think about it too much but haha oh well. Thanks for reading <3
cw: brief description of attempted SA
~~~~~~~~~~
The first time the phone rang, Kyung ignored it. The second time, she declined the call, tossed the phone into her desk drawer, and hunched over her notes, hoping to regain her focus by staring intently at them. But when it continued to buzzâthe dull rattle inside the desk like the mumbling of her insufferable classmates, who didnât dare speak up lest they be caught having an opinionâshe gritted her teeth and answered it.
âKyung-yaaah.â The way the voice drew out the last syllable made Kyungâs skin prickle. âWhy wouldnât you pick up?â
âJu Ye-ri?â As soon as she recognized the voice, Kyung stood abruptly, her free hand catching the desk chair before it fell over. âWhose number is this?â
âAggh fuuuck.â There was a tearful note in Ye-riâs voice that put Kyung on alert. âI should have used a pay phone.â
âWhat? Why?â
âIâm so stuuupid, Kyung-yah.â
Nothing pissed off Kyung more than Ye-ri underestimating herselfâshe was smarter than ninety percent of the stuck-up chaebol-baby wannabes at universityâbut worry eclipsed Kyungâs annoyance for the moment. âStop that. Just tell me whatâs going on. Did you lose your phone?â
On the other end, there was the clink of a hollow bottle striking something hard, like pavement. âItâs notâŚlost.â
âYe-riâare you drunk?â
âShit. You can tell? I only had one sojuâŚâ
Ye-ri never drank. Something was definitely up.
âWhere are you? What happened?â Around the hard knot of concern in her stomach, Kyung felt the swelling of something lighter and fiercer, and a bit dizzying. âWhy call me?â
âIâm outside my building now. Can you come? Iâm sorryâI know itâs late.â
âGive me thirty-five minutes. Under thirty if I catch the next train.â Kyung was already reaching for the shoe cabinet. âAnd donât apologize, damn it.â
Kyung found Ye-ri sitting on the curb, shivering in the cold, alongside one soju bottle, cradling another in her hands.
âI got one more at 7-Eleven while I was waiting.â Ye-ri looked down into her lap as she spoke, rubbing her bare knees together. She raised the bottle without raising her head. âSaved half for you, cheers.â
âWhereâs your coat? Itâs freezing. Here, take mine.â
Ye-ri shook her head and did not budge.Â
âDonât be stubborn.â
âI already made you come all the way out here.â There was that tremor in her voice again. âDonât you realize how embarrassing this is?âÂ
âLook.â Kyung unzipped her coat. âIâm wearing a sweater. I donât need both. Youâre taking one or the other. Which do you want?âÂ
Ye-ri looked up, and Kyung felt relief. She had not known what to expect, but on the subway ride from her campus in Seodaemun to Ye-riâs place in Seongdong, her mind had boiled over with possibilities. A part of her had been dreading bruises, a black eye. Ye-riâs face, though, was unmarked except by blotchy eyeliner. Of course that didnât mean that she was unharmed.
âSweater,â Ye-ri said, averting her eyes.
She would choose the harder option.Â
âHold this then.â Kyung shed her coat, handed it to Ye-ri, and pulled off her sweater. She was wearing an old unfashionable t-shirt underneath itânot that she would have spared her clothes a single thought had she been with anyone other than Ye-ri. Kyung took the coat back, tucked it under her arm, and held the sweater out in exchange. âAlright. Letâs put this on you.â
âIâm not that drunk.â Ye-ri set the bottle on the curb and rose to her feet, wobbling only slightly. âI think I can figure out which hole is which.â
She was able to find the big hole at the bottom, at least, and stick her head and arms into it. After that she required some assistance. Finally her head, wrapped in a cocoon of hair that gleamed like copper in the streetlights, wriggled through the hole at the top. A smile, half-visible through the frizz, split open her face, and they both laughed. Without thinking, Kyung brushed the hair away from her cheeks, nose, and lips.
Her lips. When Kyung realized she was touching them, she drew her hand back.
âWarmer?âÂ
Ye-ri nodded, but didnât speak.Â
âNow can you tell me what all of this is about?â
That was when Ye-ri started to cry. Kyung stood there wondering how to react for an eternity, and then Ye-riâs arms were around her, Ye-riâs face buried in her shoulder.Â
Kyung could do nothing to resist or return the embrace with her arms pinned and the coat still wedged under one of them. But she was oddly grateful. Would she have had the guts to hold Ye-ri like this on her own? Never. She would have stuttered, faltered, overthoughtâŚShe was grateful for how quickly Ye-ri had done it, too, before Kyung could even put the coat back on. There were fewer layers between them this way. And Ye-ri was warmer than any coat, her breath hot on Kyungâs shoulder.
âI should have known,â Ye-ri sobbed. Hearing the misery in her voice, feeling her hot tears fall and turn cold, Kyung felt a stab of guilt. She had let her excitement carry her away too soon. âI should have known he didnât just want to run lines. I donât know why I thought that actors would be differentââ
âHe came over?âÂ
Kyung knew who without having to ask. Ye-ri had been so excited. It was rare for a rookie like her to have an actor like him as a scene partner. Only for a scene or two, but still. Even Kyung knew who he wasâand Kyung, as Ye-ri often reminded her, was as far out of the loop as a member of their generation could humanly be.
âHe said we should practice together before we shoot, that it would help take the pressure off. I thoughtâI guess I thought he must know what heâs doing, everyone probably does it. I didnât want to look like an amateur. Or to say no and then do a bad job and embarrass myself. I canât believe I was so gullible. Ahh, he was such a fucking creep.â
Kyungâs hands curled, and her voice shook. âWhat did he do to you?â
âI could tell right awayâhe was so obvious about it. I triedâŚI kept trying to change the subject, to focus on the scene, but he wouldnât quit flirting. We were on the couch, and I sat as far away as I could, but it was like, every time I blinked, he was closer somehow.â Ye-ri shuddered. âAnd right in the middle of my line, he just leaned over, all of a sudden, andâŚand I kind of hit him in the head with a three-kilo dumbbell.â
âYou what?â
âWell, Iâd been working out in the living room. It was right there, so I just grabbed it. I wasnât really thinking.â
âIs heâŚ?â
âI donât know.â Ye-ri squeezed Kyung tightly. âHe collapsed on the couch, and stopped moving, and I panicked.â
While Ye-ri trembled, Kyung tried to stay calm. She wanted to be something solid and steady that Ye-ri could hold onto. It wasnât easy. Each pound of her fluttering heart summoned a new emotion. Righteous fury: that prick had gotten what he deserved. AndâŚpride? Why else would she feel so elated by the image of Ye-ri cracking his skull? Terror: this could be really, really bad. And guilt, throbbing like the pulse in her throat that quickened the closer Ye-riâs lips were to it. How was Kyung any better than him? Hadnât she felt a thrill touching those lips?Â
Didnât she want to do all the same things as that asshole?
Kyung shook her head, dislodging a thought that rose to the top. What Ye-ri needed now was a lawyer.
Little by little, like prying a cork out of a bottleneck, Kyung loosened Ye-riâs grip until her arms were free enough to pat her on the back as gently and, she hoped, platonically as possible. Ye-ri lifted her face and Kyung locked eyes with her.
âYour phone. Where is it?â
âI didnât want to be distracted.â Ye-ri sniffed. âI was trying to be professionalâŚâ
âWhere did you leave it?â
âIn my room. On the nightstand.â
âAnd you called me with his?â
Ye-ri nodded and withdrew the phone from her handbag. Classic Ye-ri. She might leave her phone behind, but her handbag? Never. âI shouldnât have taken it. I just thoughtâin case they trace the call. Maybe I should call the police with his phone, instead of mine.â
âBut heâs in your apartment, Ye-ri!â Kyung started to pace back and forth. âDid you ever think that might be a slightly bigger problem? And now my numberâs in his phone, tooâŚâ
Ye-ri started crying again, and Kyung regretted the outburst.
âHey. Sorry.â The words sounded frigid in the winter air. Was that really the best that she could do? âItâs not your fault,â she added, âitâs his.â As if that werenât obvious. Kyung wanted to do something suave, to reach out and wipe the tears away, like some dumb pretty boy K-drama star. Preferably one who wasnât a hateful pest.Â
Instead, Kyung watched as Ye-ri wiped away her own tears, the phone still in her hand. She bumped something and the screen flashed.
âWait.â Kyung eyed the phone. âHow were you going to call the police? How did you call me?â
âOh.â Was that a tiny smile? âWell, he was getting messages all night. Probably from other girls. I donât know how many times I watched him put in the passcode. No way I was just going to ignore that.â
âYe-ri.â
âI was hoping he would go to the bathroom or something and leave it behind so I could read them all.â
âYe-riâyou genius!â Kyung struck her palm with a fist. She wanted to lift Ye-ri into the air and kiss her. Fuck. Stop. Now was not the time. Instead, she put on her coat, picked up the half-empty soju bottle, and took a long gulp. She needed the courage. âIâll go up and check on him, okay? Donât go anywhere. Iâll get you out of this, promise.â
âWait.â Ye-ri took the bottle from Kyung and downed the rest. âLet me come with you.âÂ
Kyung would have preferred to work alone. She was acting almost on pure instinct, and there was a strong chance she had no idea what she was doing. âAre you sure?â
Ye-ri waved the bottle and made a face that either meant ew, gross or that she was nauseous. Or a little of both. âYou think I want to be alone down here?â
They rode the elevator in silence. Kyung bit the insides of her cheeks whenever she felt the urge to look at Ye-ri, which was about every two seconds. Her hand, a voice in her head insisted. Just hold it, you coward.
Another voice protested: She almost got assaulted tonight, you sick freak!
Then ask her first.
But thatâsâ
Thatâs what? Scary? Coward.
Arrgghh shut up shut up shut up.Â
Kyung opened her mouth, and just then the elevator doors opened. âUmâafter you,â she said, with a gesture like something out of a black-and-white foreign film, some ridiculous parody of chivalry.
Naturally. You miss your chance, and still make a fool out of yourself.
Shut up.
Outside the door, they turned to each other. âIâll go in first,â Kyung said. âMake sure itâs safe.â
âTake this.â Ye-ri handed Kyung the empty bottle. âAs a weapon. Just in case.â
Kyung gripped the bottle by the bottom so their fingers wouldnât touch. Ye-ri glanced down, her expression unreadable, then met Kyungâs eyes. âBe careful, okay?âÂ
Kyung had visited the apartment before and knew the layout; she could have found the man within seconds. Once inside, though, she felt compelled to move slowly, reverently, through the few modest rooms that were so precious to Ye-ri.Â
Ye-ri had been so proud of the place when she first moved inâa home of her own, in a neighborhood of her choosing, paid for with her own money. It was less posh and certainly less spacious than the penthouse sheâd lived in during her high school years, but it was a palace compared to the public bathhouse, and a step up from the goshiwon where sheâd stayed after finding a stable job. Sheâd been so delighted by the smallest things back then: the washing machine and kitchenware, the shops and cafes nearby, the lacy curtains sheâd bought to replace the ugly ones, the view of Seoul Forest from the ninth floor. Kyung had been humbled. When in her life had she ever been sincerely grateful for such things?
Now she admired even the tackiest of Ye-riâs personal touches: the gold fixtures sheâd installed because they looked expensive, the decorative mirrors and luxurious rugs. The photos of the two of them, developed the old-fashioned way, she had hung on the wall.
It filled Kyung with unspeakable rage to think that some arrogant bastard had waltzed in here thinking he was owed something, running his grimy hands over everything Ye-ri had poured her heart and soul into, as if he had the right. Smashing her peace and safety like a porcelain plate.
He was still on the couch, presumably where Ye-ri had left him. Kyung raised the bottle with one hand, and with the other hand checked his pulse.Â
Murmuring a mantra of gratitude, she went to Ye-riâs bedroom to find her phone.Â
âHeâs unconscious but alive.â Kyung closed the door behind her and handed the phone over to Ye-ri. âWe should call an ambulance. This will get a lot more complicated if he dies on us.â
âDo you thinkâŚI have a case?â Ye-ri was a bit tipsy for information so heavy with implications. Her brow furrowed in concentration. âI mean, it was self-defense, right? If he doesnâtââ
âThe problem isnât that you donât have a case. The problem is heâs famous. If he survives and presses charges, heâll have the best lawyers, and public opinion, and swimming pools of money on his side. He would do everything in his power to make your life a living hell. Thatâs not to say that he will, butââ
âHe doesnât even have to press charges.â Ye-ri threw an arm across her faceâa dramatic gesture she must have picked up in acting classâand with her back pressed against the wall slid to the floor. âIâm on his blacklist now. Heâll talk shit about me to everyone in the industry. Iâm finished.â
âWell, yes, thatâs probably what he would do.â Kyung sat next to Ye-ri on the floor of the corridor. âIf you werenât Ju Ye-ri.â
Ye-ri peeked around her arm. âWhatâs that supposed to mean?â
âArenât you the queen of blackmail?â
Ye-riâs eyes widened and she straightened up at once. âShit. His phone. How did I not think of that?â She moaned and pounded her forehead with both wrists. âYe-riii, baby, youâre losing your touch.â
âCheck his phone for dirt. Whatever you find, send it to both of us. Thereâs bound to be something on there. No way that man is clean. Iâll call 119.â
âWait. Whatâs our story?â
âIs there a stairwell in your building?â Ye-ri nodded. âThen he fell and hit his head on the stairs. After he left your place. You didnât see it happen. I was coming over to visit you, and I saw him collapsed in the stairwell.â
âWhy were you in the stairwell?â
âIâm...terrified of elevators,â Kyung improvised.
âBut heâs not in the stairwell.â
âNot yet.â Kyung glanced around the corridor. âGood thing itâs late. Best to get him as far away from the blunt instrument as we can.â
âYou meanâŚ?â Ye-ri winced. âAll the way to the stairs?â
âHe canât weigh that much.â Kyung smiled weakly. âBesides, havenât you been working out?â
The next hour passed in a daze. They were both exhausted, a bit drunk, and doing things that even the well-rested and sober would have been crazy to be doing. Kyung felt as though she were floating outside her body, watching one of those amateur short films they screened on campus where all the cuts were jarring and the plot made no sense. The things Ye-ri found on his phoneâŚthey couldnât be real. The message they sent him, Ye-ri feverishly typing in bold as Kyung offered suggestions over her shoulderâIF WE HEAR THAT YOU HAVE SO MUCH AS LOOKED AT ANOTHER WOMAN YOU WILL PRAY TO GOD AND THE BUDDHA TO SEND YOUR WRETCHED SOUL TO HELL BECAUSE IT WILL BE A FUCKING PARADISE COMPARED TO WHATâS COMING FOR YOUR ASSâhad they really written that? Had Kyung actually called the ambulance as they dragged his body down the corridor?
Had he really groaned, his eyes flickering open, as they pushed him down the stairs?
Afterwards they caught the last subway to Seodaemun District together. Kyung had offered to spend the night with Ye-ri at her place, but Ye-ri had wanted to get away, to be elsewhere. She had been chatty all throughout the nightâs madness, but on the train she fell silent, and soon Kyung felt her head on her shoulder.
Good. She needed the rest. Kyung herself was so tired that even the butterflies in her stomach had finally settled down for the night.
âWhy are you the only person in the world with any fucking integrity?â
Except Ye-ri wasnât asleep.Â
And now neither were the butterflies.
âYou think I have integrity?â Kyung snorted. âAfter what we did tonight?â
âOh, come on. It was for a good cause.âÂ
Was this happening? Was Ye-ri snuggling closer? Kyung closed her eyes and swallowed. She was still stuck in unreality. The amateur movie hadnât ended. She was co-starring all night long, apparently.
âIâm not who you think I am,â Kyung said, and immediately wanted to find a tall building and jump off it.
âI knew you were the only person I could call,â Ye-ri murmured. âAnd you were. No one else would have stuck their neck out for me like that.â
Kyung felt her face flush.Â
But Ye-ri thought she had done all that purely out of the goodness of her heart.
By the time they stumbled into the dorm room, they were crashing hard after the rush, more silly from lack of sleep than drunk.
âWhereâs your roommate?â said Ye-ri, rubbing her eyes and kicking off her shoes.
âBoyfriendâs place.â Kyung had been a little jealous of her roommate at first, until she had met the guy. He was enough to put someone off the concept of boyfriends semi-permanently. And in fact over the past year, every time Kyung had met a classmateâs boyfriend, sheâd found herself jealous in a way that was new to her. Him? Really? With a woman like that? What did these men have that Kyung didnât? âSheâs always over there. You can have her bed. She wonât even notice you were here.â
Ye-ri flopped onto Kyungâs bed and stretched out as if she were making a snow angel. âIâll take this one.â
âThat oneâs mine.â
âI know.â Ye-ri grinned. She sat up, drew her arms in through the arm-holes of the sweater, and twisted in place. âKyung-yahh,â she pouted. âIâm stuck. Help me.â
âYou are not.â
Kyung knelt on the bed and tugged on the sweater until, with a crackle of electricity, it came off like an orange peel. Ye-ri fell over, laughing, and Kyung collapsed alongside her. They lay that way until their laughter subsided, studying each otherâs faces, their smiles refusing to fade.
âMy poor hair.â With one hand Ye-ri tried to flatten her halo of flyaways. âI must look like a wreck.â
âA gorgeous wreck.âÂ
The words slipped out of Kyungâs mouth before she knew what she was saying, and then the only sound was her tempestuous heartbeat.
âDo you think so?â Ye-ri didnât ask it in a teasing way, batting her eyelashes, like she did with other friends of hers. She wasnât smiling anymore. âChoi Kyung.â
âWell, I meanââ Kyung stammered, eyes darting, searching for an exit, a way to make it sound like it had meant nothing. ââI mean, come on, just look at you.â
âThen look at me.â Ye-ri took Kyungâs trembling hand in hers. âFor real, okay? No playing.â
Kyung gulped and obeyed. How could she deny that voice anything? Ye-riâs gaze held no scorn or judgement. Her eyes were kind. And yet Kyung felt pierced through by them, stripped naked. Her cheeks burned.Â
âWhat would you do,â Ye-ri said slowly, âif I asked you to keep undressing me.â
The words were in another language. Kyung had to break them into digestible bits of grammar and piece the meaning back together, as if she were in English class. âAre youâŚasking me?â
âIâm asking what you would do. What you would think.â Ye-ri squeezed her hand. âWould you think Iâm weird?â
âNo. Never.âÂ
Was it possible that Ye-ri had been having the same thoughts, wanting the same things? It couldnât be true. But what was one more impossible thing tonight?
Yes. What was one more impossible thing?
Kyung leaned closer until their noses were almost touching. âI would kiss you first,â she said, and brushed Ye-riâs cheek with a hand. She added in a half-whisper, âWould you want me to?â
âI would want that,â Ye-ri said.
When their lips finally separated, Ye-ri was smiling again, pleased with herself. âGood to know,â she said, âfor future reference,â and she rolled over onto her other side.
âWhat?â
âItâs after two-thirty. If we did anything else tonight, Iâd fall asleep in the middle of it.â
âJu Ye-ri.â Kyung rolled onto her back and addressed the ceiling. âYou are a very bad girl.â
âAnd youâre a big dork. Shut up and spoon me already.â
As Ye-ri drew Kyungâs arm around her, and as Kyung molded herself into the shape that Ye-riâs body made, Kyung hoped that her heartbeat did not betray how ecstatic she felt, how long she had dreamt of this. (But what if it did? Was it more exciting if Ye-ri knew?) She had imagined doing more, but nothing in her lurid imagination could compare to the way their bodies fit together, the wonder of feeling the air move in her lungs when she breathed.
âHold me really tight, okay? I want to feel you around me.â
Kyung needed no further encouragement.
After giving up trying to close the last few stubborn gaps of space between them, they lay in silence for a while, fingers interlaced. Kyung said, âIâm sorry.â
âFor what?â
âYou were so happy about that role. Iâm sorry he ruined all that for you. And I know that place meant so much to you. Iâm sorry that he tainted your home.â
âKyung-yahh.â It was halfway between a laugh and a long contented sigh. âYouâre so stupid sometimes. That wasnât my home.â
âWhat do you mean? You worked so hard for it.â
But no answer came. On Kyungâs cheap dormitory mattress, without a pillow under her head, Ye-ri had fallen asleep.Â
bridges and stairs: directional movement in friendly rivalry
Ha. Well I tried, but I just canât quit. Somehow I still have enough FR thoughts bouncing around in my brain to write another essayâand somehow itâs just in time for the anniversay of the final episode?
Since finishing the deep dives, Iâve been able to think more about the themes across the series without having to focus on one episode at a time. Lately Iâve been thinking about all the rooftop scenes, and the prevalence of bridges and staircases. My thoughts are still kind of all over the place but maybe if Iâm lucky writing them down will help me make sense of it all.
Below: Banpo Bridge Rainbow Fountain
Stairs and bridges have a lot in common. Theyâre the textbook definition of a âliminal space.â Ambiguous and in-between, you pass through them on your way from one place to another. They can be beautiful, but first and foremost, they serve a function. And in fact none of the staircases or bridges in Friendly Rivalry are really aestheticized in any way until the ending. Even Banpo Bridge, a popular sightseeing spot famous for its ârainbow fountain,â is framed neutrally, like any other bridge. The stairwells are utilitarian and interchangeable.Â
The obvious difference between bridges and stairs is orientation. Stairs take you up and down; bridges take you back and forth. (Across water, usually!) So we have a contrast in these settings between vertical and horizontal motion.
Of course when our first bridge appears in Episode 3 it isnât used to travel horizontally. In her dream, Jae-yi falls off the edge of Banpo Bridge and plunges into the river, her dream-death a vertical journey from high to low. At the start of the series, Jae-yi is on a downward trajectory toward self-destruction.
Then a new force enters the picture, one counteracting deathâs downward pull. Almost every time we see Jae-yi moving up, sheâs traveling toward Seul-gi. Seul-gi is the lure that catches Jae-yiâs eye and diverts her from her downward spiral. At first simply a distraction from despair, Seul-gi quickly becomes the lodestar of Jae-yiâs life, pointing her in a new direction altogether.
Which is sweet and all but upward motion in Friendly Rivalry is rarely if ever unambiguously good. Verticality in FR is tightly intertwined, always, with power. In a vertically oriented structure, a vertical society, you have to climb over others to reach the top. Again and again, powerâJae-yiâs as queen of the school, Tae-joonâs as god of his familyâis expressed through height, the way societyâs victors survey the world from its summit.
At first Jae-yi is drawn upwards by Seul-gi not just because Seul-gi is light and love and everything good in the world, but to dominate her. When Jae-yi ascends the stairs in Episode 2, she mounts them like a panther tracking her prey, and appears before Seul-gi as a giantess towering over her. In Seul-giâs case, the same journey up the stairs is one of submission: In both Episodes 2 and 7, she climbs the stairs on Jae-yiâs orders, believing she has no other choice.
The vertical power dynamic is never static, though. Jae-yiâs sprint up the stairs in Episode 9, in contrast to her earlier self-assurance, is motivated by a sudden and terrifying loss of control. And in Episode 15 the tables turn completelyâSeul-gi climbs the stairs to the diving platform, and in a shockingly vertical power play, forces Jae-yi to forfeit.
Compare this shot of Jae-yi from behind to the shots of her on the bridge in Episode 3 and Episode 16...ahhhh....
But fissures in the staircase start showing as early as Episode 7, when Jae-yi steps down from her throne on the wall and lifts Seul-gi up. Interestingly, that happens after we see Jae-yi at the pinnacle of her power, staring down into the abyss.
I think thatâs why vertical mobility is portrayed so ambivalently in FR, and maybe why there are so many rooftop scenesâvertical motion has limits. Jae-yiâs downward trajectory has a clear and absolute end point: death. But compared to the greatest heights of power, even death looks positively liberatory. Yes, power is real, and the license it grants, from a distance, might look like freedom. But psychologically, spiritually, that elevation is a trap. A rooftop is a trap. Once youâre up there, where else can you go?
The rooftop is as much a dead end as the river bottom.
I mean, thatâs why Jae-yi tells Seul-gi to go to the rooftop, isnât it? In the whole building, itâs the farthest point from the exitâand thereâs only one doorway leading to one staircase going back down. Once Seul-gi is up there, sheâs *stuck* up there. She has no choice but to wait for rescue.
By Episode 7, though, Jae-yi is beginning to realize it isnât just Seul-gi whoâs trapped on the rooftop. Sheâs stuck up there, too, and utterly alone. From the apex of her isolation, she has nowhere to go but downâand thatâs terrifying. She can only mitigate the fear by anticipating the final plunge.
Orrrr is there another way, a softer descent? She can plummet to her deathâthe straight vertical nosedive into nothingnessâor she can surrender her power, and her heart, to the person she loves.
Either way, up or down, vertical motion in Friendly Rivalry is never easy. Even at its most liberatory, it necessitates a struggleâwith gravity, with power, with fear.
Back to the bridges. Like most of the metaphors in FR, I think bridges are operating on multiple levels. (I mean, the main bridge is a double-decker bridgeâit literally has more than one level.) As a structure connecting two landmasses across a body of water, the bridge seems like a transparent metaphor for the connection between Seul-gi and Jae-yiâand I think that reading pretty much works? After Jae-yiâs dream, the next time Banpo Bridge appears, Seul-gi and Jae-yi are walking across it together, and from then on you can easily tie every appearance of a bridge back to their relationship in some way.
But that feels a little vague to me. Water already connects them. What does this metaphor add?
Itâs interesting that Banpo Bridge first appears in Episode 3 as a ârevelationâ in a dreamâa feature of Jae-yiâs inner landscape. In her dream, the bridge connects life and death, but it also plants the seed of an idea. After this dream, her buried desire for escape becomes a plan to end her life. The bridge connects her subconscious and conscious impulses, her sleeping and waking minds.
So we have this idea of the bridge as a place of connection and revelation, where something previously unknown becomes known. I think thatâs clearly true in the inverse bridge scenes in Episode 15. While crossing Jamsu Bridge, all the feelings Jae-yi has been fighting to repress rise to the surface; she awakens to her desire to live, and consciously commits to a new plan to save herself. Later, as Seul-gi crosses Banpo Bridge, driven by a subconscious impulse to run to the pool, she finally puts all the clues together and becomes aware of a terrifying possibility: What if Jae-yi plans to die? Traveling in opposite directions on different levels, they arrive at opposite revelations.
Itâs possible to reconsider the other bridge scenes through this lens of ârevelation,â but I don't know if they fit super neatly into that schemeâŚand anyway Iâm more interested in how the bridges relate to the idea of movement. Specifically, what does horizontal movement mean in Friendly Rivalry?
For someone like Jae-yi, skateboarding is kind of an incongruous hobby. I did a little research about skating in Korea, and although itâs more mainstream now, it still does not seem like the kind of hobby you would expect a rich girl at the top of her class at a prestigious school to have. Thereâs a vibe of edgy counterculture about it. (This kind of bad old Vice article describes skate culture as âone of the few feasible escapes from the mainstreamâ in South Korea.) And yes, Jae-yi is a drug dealer, but nothing about her public-facing image really screams street or punk.
We first see Jae-yi riding a longboard in middle school, before she puts on her armor. Thereâs no explanation given for how or why or when she starts. One day sheâs crying in bed, and the next, sheâs skating down the halls of her school with this huge grin plastered on her face.
Skateboarding doesnât seem like a hobby Tae-joon would encourage her to take up. Without any textual explanation, we can only really conclude that Jae-yi skateboards because she likes it. Itâs fun.
This simple fact sets skateboarding apart from basically everything else we ever see Jae-yi do in FR. The only other hobby she could be said to have is swimmingâbut do we actually know that Jae-yi likes swimming, as in, like, the actual swimming part? We know sheâs good at it, and that she feels at peace when sheâs underwater. But thatâs not quite the same thing. When she falls into the river in her dream, itâs her very inability to swim, to save herself, that brings her peace. And in real life, we never see Jae-yi swimming laps. We never even see her dive except to save Seul-gi from drowning. Most of the time she spends underwater, she spends motionless.
Swimming might be a form of escape for Jae-yi, and eventually it becomes her literal escape. But she doesnât jump into the river and start a new life for fun.
Every time we see Jae-yi skateboarding, on the other hand, she does these little hops for absolutely no reason. In Episode 6, when we see her cross Jamsu Bridge on her way to Seul-gi, you can sense the energy in her movements, even without being able to see her face. Whether or not she knows it, Seul-gi has reignited in her a childlike eagerness and excitement. Even skating home from the pool in Episode 15, a scene where the atmosphere is far more tense, she *still* does the hop. Itâs superfluous movement. She jumps just for the satisfaction of it, for the little thrill.
Seul-gi and Jae-yi both climb the stairs because they think they have to do it. Seul-gi is convinced she has to climb the stairs to find safety, and Jae-yi is equally convinced she has to possess Seul-gi in the only way she knows how. Both are driven up the steps by a sense of need and deprivation.
In contrast, Jae-yi doesnât actually need to see Seul-gi for her plan to work in Episode 6. As long as Seul-gi takes the vitamins, the trap is set. She doesnât even need to do the delivery. Wouldnât A-ra usually handle this kind of thing?
But Jae-yi goes anyway. Because she wants to go. Because she canât resist. Because itâs fun.
Unless youâre like Tony Hawk or something, skateboarding is a mode of travel notably unsuitable for traversing stairs. Thereâs no place in the vertical stairwell for superfluous things like a kick flip, and in a fierce competition, thereâs no place for useless expressions of selfhood. Your self is determined by your stature. At Chaehwa, you *are* the number by your name in the class ranking. You are the queen of the school; you are the outsider who doesnât belong. The roles Seul-gi and Jae-yi enact in their staircase power struggles will never allow either of them to be fully themselves.
Compared to the exertions of vertical movement, the sacrifices it exacts from you, horizontal movement is effortless and limitless. The world is round. There are few hard boundaries. Even the sea, to some degree, can be crossed.
Thereâs a lot packed into the final images of Friendly Rivalry that I neglected to mention in my last deep dive. Thereâs the sea itself, its vast flatnessâthe visual antithesis of a narrow confining stairwell. Thereâs the symmetrical composition signifying that this bridge isnât just a bridgeâitâs a thing of beauty, something to be admired for more than its function. (And Boritdol Bridge is kind of unique as bridges go in that it doesnât have much of a practical function at allâitâs an extravagant pathway to a cluster of sparse rocks.)
Most importantly, thereâs the fact that when Jae-yi glides across this final bridge, itâs not for any reason. Nothing is waiting for her on the other side.
She crosses the bridge just because.
If vertical motion is what humans resort to when confined to a dehumanizing hierarchy, horizontal motion is what we do when weâre allowed to just be. Free of deprivation and competition, we do things for the fun of it, for the beauty of it, because we feel like it.
Which is not to say that horizontal movement is uncomplicated in FR. What ever is? In her prologue, Jae-yi skates away from Je-na with a smirk. When Jae-yi skates to Seul-gi, her goal is to catch her in another trap. And when Seul-gi runs across the bridge to the pool, sheâs terrified.
But she isnât doing it because anyone told her to go. Itâs her own uninhibited heart that compels her.
Throughout Friendly Rivalry, horizontal movement provides a counterpoint to the power struggles that entrap the characters, revealing, if only in glimpses, the possibility of another way of being. Jae-yiâs liberation demands a vertical maneuver: she can only escape through a feat of vengeance and sacrifice. But once free, her path flattens, unfurls in all directions. She loses her power but gains the world.
Only in this new world can Jae-yi and Seul-gi finally meet as two people on the same plane, running toward each other simply because there is nowhere else they would rather go.
Noticing that every character has a missing parent: Jaeyiâs mother is rarely seen, Gyungâs dad is only mentioned in passing, Yeriâs biological dad is out of the picture and stepdad too, Seulgi who has no parents but gains a stepmom
Idk what to do with this info, but it def seems intentional
First of all, if you havenât already, read this post!! Itâs by far the best breakdown Iâve seen of family dynamics in FR and how they work thematically.
I donât necessarily have anything to say that @ceceredux didnât already say better, but a few scattered thoughtsâŚ
Thereâs a good chance the missing parents were at least partly a budgetary thing. Kim Tae-hee mentions the budget a lot in the Blu-ray commentary and it seems like they always had to be conscious of those constraints. Iâm sure that must have factored into deciding how many actors they could hire, especially for bit parts. The other parents might have been present in earlier versions of the script but the parts were so small or inconsequential that they decided to cut them to save money.
But one of KTHâs strengths as a director is using those limitations and the gaps in the story to her advantage, so even if it was a practical decision, I donât think it was *just* that. One thing that stands out to me is that they could have explained away all the absent parents with death or divorce (the most common forms of childhood trauma in western storytelling) but they donât. And I think that helps FR avoid the trap of enshrining the nuclear family as a Garden of Eden that kids are tragically tossed out of the moment the family structure is ruptured. In FR the family itself is traumatizing, even or maybe especially when itâs fully intact. Jaeyi is the only character who has two parents appear on screen together, and her family situation is the worst of them all. By the end itâs clear that both main characters are better off without their dads!
I think by showing us these families that on paper seem like relatively ideal specimens of the traditional family, but by showing them in these variously dysfunctional states with half of the parental figures absent, FR is saying, actually, there is no paradise to be lost here. The structure is fundamentally unsound.
If you think about why the parents arenât there, we can assume Yeri and Kyungâs dads are always working (or you know off going bankrupt in the countryside in the case of Yeriâs dad, whatever that entails). The kind of job it takes to sustain the illusion of bourgeois normalcy effectively erases them from their childrenâs lives. Jaeyiâs mom shrinks into an embittered non-entity under her husbandâs abusive and obsessive control, while Yeriâs mom herself is abusive and controlling because she projects onto her daughter everything sheâs internalized about how family, as a survival strategy, is built and maintainedâyou have to secure the (sexual) attention of someone who can take good care of you. (And of course the precarity of that arrangement is emphasized when Dad goes broke and Yeri is forced to fend for herself.) All these families are âbrokenâ fundamentally, regardless of whether the parents are legally together or not.
The only thing approaching a functional family, as ceceredux points out, is built in the void left over where the traditional family should be, by two people who have never met. So while itâs not quite a family abolition manifesto, I do think FR ends up being quite radically against all the more traditional family structures that we see.
I deeply appreciate the shoutout but I must return the compliment here twice over, because the ask and the response both capture something important I didn't quite get to! "Wait, you only ever see one parent for anyone" is a fantastic observation, and of course the connections @chaehwa-archives makes between the show's logistical constraints, its narrative ambiguity, and its thematic potency within a broader cultural canon are [as always] incredibly clarifying.
And now that you've got me thinking about it... "no paradise to be lost" captures FR's thesis on the nuclear family so perfectly, because the family in FR proudly proclaims itself a paradise and then constantly negates itself with self-destructive pride and inflexibility, as if Adam and Eve's exile were reframed as God being a terrible landlord. [Or as Jaeyi might put it: girl did you fall from Heaven? because your Father abandoned you <3] It's a fatal mismatch of advertising and reality â great two parent households happen all the time, and they take full advantage of having multiple sources of support, but they do so with collaboration, with teamwork, with mutual celebration. And of course this is Friendly Rivalry, we don't do that here! Just like two students aren't supposed to be content to occupy the same place in the rankings together, a patriarchal marriage isn't meant to be a full partnership but another exercise in hierarchy â and even strictly numerically, two parents cannot remain greater than one if one parent always subsumes the other. Like you point out, even when the system works as intended it produces families that are less than the sum of their parts or worse, and in this one fucked up way Seulgi's on a level playing field, with a chance to come out on top.
And since it's always supposed to be the father doing the subsuming, any failure of that process in any direction immediately leaves everyone in no-man's land, as it were. Taejun's "success" is so terrifying because you see those glimpses of exactly what his wife has been reduced to and the way that amplifies the child abuse, but Yeri and Kyung's mothers'...stronger personalities are notably the ones paired with fathers who might as well not exist. Kyung's mother gives us the control sample for "baseline respectable household" where everyone is holding it together but not having a good time Managing the Contradictions, and Yeri's mother is what happens when everyone involved lets go of the rope at once and leaves the kid holding the counterfeit designer bag. The ideal of the two-parent household [and notably all its real benefits could also apply to n > 2, the number isn't special] is rendered an unreachable fantasy by its own mandate. There simply isn't room under the patriarchal bargain for co-equal personalities in nurturing these children, having to manage that compression in turn selects for abusers with greater frequency, and so any given kid just has to pray they get lucky. It's what makes the "but for" part of Huiyun's story so haunting, that she could have very easily fallen into any of these camps had her husband lived, and then has to fight twice as hard to do right by her daughter after he dies.
So I think "not quite family abolition" hits it so well - it's a critique that says we desperately need all the good and vital things family promises to be, but that the Actually Existing Family is designed to betray those promises. And it says that something better might look completely different or superficially similar, that part need not matter, but the nature of the underlying relationships and the restrictive, reverent mythology used to justify them requires nothing short of revolution. It's a philosophy FR takes with basically all of its themes, allowing it to avoid so many common pitfalls where art assumes it has to trade convictions for realism or vice versa, and it comes out the other side feeling even more radical as a result.
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Finally! My very late response to the first prompt for @fr-fest. This is just the first half of a two-part story because I am a slow writer, and I want to try to respond to at least one other prompt before the month ends. Unfortunately that means this is pretty much all set-up and no pay-off, but hopefully you wonât have to wait too long for Part 2.
Thanks for reading <3
~~~~~~~~~~
Sister Sim-gi could classify most volunteers in seconds. There were the high school students who came to put Community Service on their applications. Such a waste when they went to university and spurned their true calling, as stage magicians; vanishing was the one thing they were good at. Then there were the daytrippers, who arrived in festive flocks on Christmas and Childrenâs Day, believing in their heart of hearts that a few hoursâ harassment from an unbearably optimistic adult would leave some poor orphanâs life forever changed. Worst of all were the nonprofit groups with their creepy pamphlets and Protestant tenacity. At least the others had the decency to get lost when they werenât wanted.
And thenâŚthere was this girl. After three days Sister Sim-gi still didnât know what to make of her. That was rare.
When she first arrived on Sunday afternoon, Sim-gi had mistaken her for a high schooler. The start of the school year was not prime time for high school volunteers, trueâthey came most often in the summer and winter when school was outâbut even so, there had been one other young helper that day, Park Ha-eun, a born-again goody two shoes, the only third-year in recorded history to ever do more than the bare minimum. Church friends, Sim-gi had assumed.Â
She was surprised, then, when the girl had shown up again early Monday morning, alone this time.Â
âDongsaeng.â Sim-gi studied the girlâs outfit, the same as the previous dayâs. Baseball cap, sweatshirt, track pants. Everything baggy, threads dangling, likely secondhand. âDonât you have school?â
The girl seemed to smile. Above the black mask she wore, only her eyes were visible.Â
âI graduated last year.â Her answers were like that. Not rude or evasive. But brief. âWhat can I do for you today?â
Her second day she had done a little of everything. Helped serve breakfast in the dining room. Read stories to the youngest children. Chaperoned a trip to the park. Tutored the older kids when they came back from school. She had even replaced a lightbulb that none of the sisters could reach. Anything she was asked to do, she would do without hesitation.Â
That was not to say she was heaven-sent. About certain tasks she was more clueless than the children were. Had the girl never once stepped foot into a kitchen? But there were two things to her credit as a volunteer: she was a good tutor, especially to the older kids, and a quick learner.
The strangest thing about her was her lack of boundariesâas if she had confused the concept of volunteering with indentured servitude. She did not even ask to go home at the end of the day. It was Sister Sim-gi who had to tell her, more than once, that she was free to leave.
âSee you tomorrow then,â she had said with a slight bob of the head, when at last sheâd been convinced that there was nothing more to do.
âWait.â The command sounded sharper than Sister Sim-gi had meant it to be. She should be thanking the girl, not scolding her. âDongsaeng.â
Why did she still hesitate to use her name?
The girl seemed not to hear, and Sim-gi had the irrational thought that she might walk out the door and into the woods, evaporating into the night, never to be seen or heard from again. Then she stopped by the door and turned. âYes, Sister?â
âHow did you come here?â
The girl looked down at her scuffed tennis shoes.
âYou...walked?â Sunshine Nursery was on a country road, kilometers outside of town. âBut thatâsâbut where do you live?â
The girl paused, weighing something in her mind. âThe shelter.â
âYou donât meanââ Her clothes. No wonder. ââYou mean that you have nowhere to stay?â
âI stay at the shelter,â she repeated. Not defensive, but not forthcoming, either.
âThatâs no place for a girl your age.â Sister Sim-giâs mind was flooded at once with visions of every mundane horror. The girl was trafficked, a prostitute, an abuse victim, an addict. The mask was to hide her teeth. âItâs late. You canât walk back at this hour.â
Sim-gi took an involuntary step forward, reached out a hand, and regretted it. It would be all too easy to scare off a girl like this and lose her forever.
But the girl did not flee, thank God, only cocked her head. Her voice when she replied was measured, but there was a bite to it. Was that...impatience? A drop of disdain?
âWell, Sister? What do you want me to do?â
âStay here. At least for the night. Weâll find you a place to sleep. Iâll ask Sister Hyo-im to look for a change of clothesâŚâ
âThatâs very kind of you.â Suddenly her voice was sweet, her eyes smiling again. âIn that case, tomorrow morning, can I help them get ready?â
The third day proceeded more smoothly but in much the same wayâthe girl worked from dawn till evening, hardly stopping for mealsâwith one surprise. For someone so incompetent in other areas, the girl was very good, it turned out, at assisting the youngest children with their morning hygiene.
Who was she? The question would not leave Sister Sim-gi in peace. There was a screening procedure, of course. The director reviewed applications and conducted interviews. The director was a bleeding heart who would refuse to turn down the devil himself if he showed her puppy dog eyes, but Sister Sim-gi had double-checked the paperwork, and could find no reason to doubt the information there.Â
It was simply that Son Yi-seulâthat was the name on her formâdid not make sense. She was better educated than you would expect of a girl off the street, with none of the coarse insolence or helpless acquiescence of a girl who had grown up there. Her eyes did not have the cornered animal look that Sim-gi knew too well. And yet she wore grungy Salvation Army clothes. And yet she had been sleeping at a welfare center.
A runaway, or a disowned daughterâŚBut what could Sim-gi do about that? Legally the girl was an adult. Not a girl, in fact, but a young woman. A university student who had flunked out and couldnât face her parents about it?Â
But why, of all places, would a dropout come here?
âGood night, Sister.âÂ
Yi-seul paused after unrolling the sleeping bag across the foam mattress. This was the best Sim-gi had been able to do for her: a sleeping bag in the common room of the dormitory where the sisters slept. Even this was a hard-won compromise with the other nuns, who had wanted to call the police. This stranger was suspicious, she was too great a liability, it was too risky to leave her alone overnight with the children. And why wouldnât she take off her mask?
She wore it even now. And yes, there was something unsettling in the gaze that hovered above it, something that fixed Sim-gi to the place where she stood. Yi-seul was waiting for her to go. She should go. Give the girl some privacy.
âGood night,â said Sister Sim-gi, and watched Yi-seul crawl into the sleeping bag and beat the crumpled pillow. Good night. How could she leave it at that? She wanted to seize the girl by the shoulders and shake her. Do you realize how far Iâve stuck my neck out for you? Do you know what they think of me now? That Iâm a sap with no common sense who only wants to flaunt her virtue? And after all that you wonât even show me your face? How can you expect anyone to trust you?
âWill you pray for me, Sister?âÂ
The question startled Sim-gi, and washed away her anger with shame.
âOfâof course.â Watching the girl draw the cheap yellow polyester up to her chin and fall still, Sim-gi was reminded of a child awaiting a bedtime story. âNow? Shall we pray together? Have you...prayed before?â
The girl let out a broken breath that Sim-gi took moments to recognize as laughter.
âI used to pray,â she said. âBut I think Iâve forgotten how.â
âYouâveâforgotten the words, you mean?â
âNo.â Another laugh escaped her. âI mean, when I try talking to God now, it doesnât work like it used to. I donât really care if He hears me or not. Thereâs someone else who gets in the way. The one I really want to tell everything, the one I want to beg for mercy. The problem is I know she canât hear me. So Iâd be better off talking to God, wouldnât I? At least Heâll always listen.â
It was the most Yi-seul had ever spoken at once.
âIâmâŚsorry.â Sim-gi felt real pity. The poor thing. Had she lost a friend? âWe could pray for her together.â
âI donât think she needs my prayers. Or yours. My soul is the one in trouble.â
So the girl had done something. That was why she had run away. Murder? God forbid.
âThe Lordâs forgiveness is boundless. No matter what youâve done, He knows your heart. You can be saved if you repent.â
The words sounded no more meaningful than the ticking of the clock in the silence that followed. What could Sim-gi say that would reach her? Words would not be enough. She should kneel by the girlâs side, stroke her brow. You are not lost, she should say. No scar or sin of yours could frighten me. Nothing you are hiding could make me hate you.Â
âWhat about people? Is their forgiveness boundless?â
Sister Sim-gi cleared her throat. But something invisible still blocked the way. âIâll keep you in my prayers tonight, Son Yi-seul,â she said, and left the room.
ok before Home Week of FR-Fest ends i think this is as good a time as any to post my Way Too Many Thoughts about Seul-gi and her stepmom and parenthood in Friendly Rivalry that i've had marinating in the drafts for like six months. Kids can't have homes of their own, after all, only the ones created for them, and thus Seul-gi's physical precarity all her life and her abandonment as a child are one and the same â she has to fight and claw to survive on her own, because there's no roof over her head she can ever trust. Until there is. If you have no idea what I'm talking about please watch Friendly Rivalry if it seems like your speed, and if you're here for @fr-fest thank you for helping build the fandom that's been such a big part of my experience with the show. And now, onward!
It's fascinating that a show like Friendly Rivalry, with its dark and gritty genre and tone that's perfectly suited to depicting the unsparingly bleak side of life, could very well have made every adult some form of antagonist and every parent-child relationship some form of toxic. And it very nearly does! It comes so close; as far as Seul-gi is concerned at first there's no reason to think it would be otherwise! And the ways in which Kwon Hui-yun is the sole exception have burrowed into my brain and refuse to leave.
Because on the one hand, the thematic contrasts are not subtle, and they're quite daring! Parenthood looms large over the whole premise, by way of the elite academy setting â it's the exact point where literal reproduction meets elite reproduction, the place where all the baggage of legacy, class status, and children as investments is at its most amplified. We see this most starkly in the prologue to Episode 3: Jae-yi's birth is precision engineered in a grimly comedic parody of both patriarchy and religion, her father seeking an extension of himself via scientific and superstitious control of a process where her mother is depicted merely as instrumental.
danny devito I Get It Now.jpeg
The cross above the bed ain't subtle: this is one man, one woman, and a child made to obey the will of the Father, maybe with a few modern bells and whistles but ultimately just like it's supposed to be now and forever, amen. All part of the Plan, made by men who pass it off on God. Chaehwa merely integrates that control into the broader engine of the economy: the Father's investment will pay off, society will keep its elite pipeline chugging along, and Jae-yi will be rewarded handsomely as long as she keeps the whole cycle going undisturbed over any fussy feminine quibbles like "autonomy" or "justice" or "falling in love with a girl the system was designed to quietly dispose of."
Love the way Friendly Rivalry depicts institutions that don't even bother to fake a pretense of kindness when they think they don't have to, so many anonymously loathsome motherfuckers to hate
Seul-gi in turn lives such a hard life precisely because she's been accidentally cut off from this cycle. If she'd grown up with her father she'd be indistinguishable from the rest of Chaehwa, maybe even with a massive leg up, but as an orphan from nowhere trying to better herself without the built in cheat codes of elite access she's at best a regrettable glitch, and at worst a threat to be eliminated. She's not part of the Plan, not anymore. And consequently her stepmother doesn't "count" in the way everyone else's parents count; she provides no status and no inside track with her husband dead, her financial resources are tied up in wrongful death litigation, and the way she's come to be Seul-gi's guardian is viewed not with reverence by society but confusion and pity. The one thing she can give, whether Seul-gi thinks she deserves it or not, is love â a kind of love that's frighteningly rare.
Because although Tae-jun is orders of magnitude crueler to his daughters than every other parent we see [ok maybe not Ye-ri's mom, who incidentally shares with him the specific evil of abandoning a disfavored child to predators], it's clear from everything we see that the culture that produced him is everywhere. It's in Gyeong's strained relationship with her mom [and that's mostly as good as it gets]. It's in Beom-su's parents closing ranks with the school administration to ensure she has impunity for her violence after they clearly couldn't prevent her from spiraling to that point in the first place. It's in the angry mob chasing after Byeong-jin after he fails to help their kids cheat the system with the system's tacit permission, those kids' actual skills and growth a secondary concern at best. And the only exception, the only parent we see who both loves her daughter unconditionally and manages to cultivate a genuine relationship of mutual care and respect, is the one who isn't a biological parent at all.
This is almost certainly the first time in her life Seul-gi has ever heard anything like this!! i'm not ok!!!
That combination, of uncynically asserting a model of single adoptive parenthood that's wholly positive, and then pointedly contrasting it with "natural" models of respectable nuclear families that are repeatedly shown to ruin lives, is one of the most satisfying rejections of an entrenched status quo I've ever seen in fiction. And it's not an accident that it's done by the same show with an A-Plot about lesbian love and its capacity to break these specific cycles of abuse; the two narratives aren't just deeply radical, each is fundamentally an extension of the other.
After all, Seul-gi's biological mother is never seen once. And her quest to first find her father and then get any kind of closure for his death, initially presented as the core of the story, is rendered anticlimactic in the most horrific way imaginable â he wasn't killed by the man tormenting Seul-gi and the girl she loves, but by a girl just like them that he victimized himself. By the end her quest to ruin Tae-jun is no longer about revenge for her father but about rescuing the life she's built now. That means her love for Jae-yi, and that means the home she's built with her stepmother, who she has gradually come to realize cherishes her as her own. Both of those sources of love are made up of dozens of hard individual choices, but they're also both deemed mistakes by society, aberrations from the Plan that are either regrettable or outright verboten. And that lack of built in acceptance, that deviation from the Plan, provides a blank slate for these women to build love on their own terms, and a grim clarity about what they're fighting to protect and who they're up against.
Which way, parent of dark academia toxic yuri daughter?
But on the other hand!! This subversion of expectations lands with the same grounded, layered thoughtfulness that runs through the whole show. Hui-yun's parental virtues are so powerful precisely because they're not reified. Seul-gi and her stepmom aren't found family, there's not a whiff of sentimental trope-iness about them even when it totally would have landed. They simply are family, in every traditional sense but with their unique contingent challenges. And while Hui-yun's status as a stepmother matters immensely to both the story and themes, she's not embodying some overdetermined symbolic contrast to the dominant culture; in fact she was enmeshed in it, married to one of the most powerful and reprehensible men we meet! The flashback where it's revealed that she was helping search for Seul-gi as a futile stepping stone to biological kids of her own is heartbreaking, and raises the question of how different things would have been if they had found her earlier. Would she have loved Seul-gi the same as her hypothetical half-siblings? Would any family involving Woo Do-hyeok have been a good place to grow up?
The ambiguity in her motivations! We'll never know what combination of regret, hope, and responsibility drove her to this and that's awesome!!
We can only guess, and in another instance of incredibly thoughtful restraint we never get any other hints of what her marriage was like, including when/if she ever would have found out who Do-hyeok truly was had he survived [her half-truth explanation to Seul-gi for why she settles the lawsuit, "I don't want to be disappointed by your dad anymore," is soul-crushing for how understated it is. And her one briefly narrated interlude where she attributes her understanding of Je-na's situation to "women's intuition?" That's simply the void screaming at you, forever]. In any case, whatever plans of parenthood she once had are replaced by a very different reality, a classic "one door closes/another door opens" story but with none of the triteness of a cliche â and one where Hui-yun forces the door open herself, initiating the search for Seul-gi after her father had given up and sustaining it past the point where any pretenses of self-interest, of restoring or creating a "real" biological family, were still in play.
EDIT: ok i knew i was gonna miss something and i know the FR timeline is hard to keep straight but this is pretty embarrassing: of course Do-hyeok IS [briefly] alive at the moment they find Seul-gi, *because Tae-jun is the one who makes that possible,* manipulating this man's love for his daughter [possibly the last thing he doesn't hate about himself] to facilitate that same man's abuse of his own, and extract advantage for himself at every step. It's a horrifying final twist of the knife that every circumstance of Seul-gi's life and presence at Chaehwa has been an object of exploitation from the very beginning, with Jae-yi's manipulations only the unwitting aftershocks of her father's, but it's also grimly poetic. In assuming Seul-gi was a disposable bargaining chip and accidentally bringing her into the lives of both her father's widow and his own daughter, Tae-jun has brought her to the two woman who will love her in ways he could never fathom, and in underestimating all three of them he ensures his own downfall. END EDIT
And it's in that context where all we have left to assess is what Hui-yun does upon that search's miraculous success: she takes in a traumatized high school senior, having missed all the formative parenting years she presumably once desperately wanted, and immediately tells her that she'll never have to apologize for her presence in their home. She's not a good parent by way of her Woman Settings being set to Motherly Virtue; if anything she clearly has no idea what she's doing at first. But she immediately gets started on becoming a good parent, and she quickly laps her competition simply by stepping up for a child who has never been able to rely on anyone before.
almost murdered? car totaled? not important, got a hungry teenager to make happy
Of course Seul-gi doesn't trust it at first, and though that skepticism is misplaced she's never framed as stupid or shortsighted for it. In fact both parties are allowed to be flawed without judgement; her stepmom doesn't deal with burdens with superhuman grace. She leaves the apartment a mess sometimes, she gets frustrated when Seul-gi's desperation to beat Tae-jun clashes with her own grief and responsibility to protect her, she clearly dislikes Jae-yi [an understandable parental instinct lmfao] and only belatedly realizes how much she means to her daughter. Her love for Seul-gi is unshakeable, but not frictionless. That's why the scene outside the courthouse, where Jae-yi races down the steps to walk together with Seul-gi and Hui-yun quietly lets it happen, and THEN visibly realizes what it means that they're holding hands and that Tae-jun is Not Happy about it, is my favorite in the entire series.
Look at her eyes! She's barely in the frame but you can still see her realize exactly what talk she's gonna have to have in the car lmaooo
But the show also provides clear benchmarks for the evolution of Seul-gi's feelings. At the beginning she just barely restrains herself from venting her frustrations over a quiet, awkward dinner, because she thinks she doesn't have the standing to speak her mind. She treats herself as a temporary guest in her own home, not wanting to burden Hui-yun and convinced that the only reason she's been taken in to begin with must be rooted in some kind of self interest, the only kind of human behavior she's ever witnessed. If it doesn't quite add up, it doesn't need to â Seul-gi's simply operating from the assumptions that best allow her to protect herself. And she might have continued to, were it not for her injury and the subsequent smear campaign that threatens her last chance at a real future. With the walls closing in and her own resourcefulness not enough to save her, she has only one card left to play. But still she holds off as long as she can, and her fateful decision to call Hui-yun to her expulsion hearing is ultimately a split second choice â a choice to reject the school's vicious framing of her as a loveless orphan who can be easily railroaded, a choice to call their bluff, and a choice, no matter how desperate, to believe in someone.
when your back is against the wall but the opportunity to be petty is so tempting that you accidentally confirm that your stepmom would die for you
We never know for sure exactly how much Seul-gi thinks this is actually going to work. And when her stepmom gets the call, she has all the excuses in the world not to respond, if she truly didn't care. The hard u-turn she takes, and her subsequent furious challenge to the entire power structure of Chaehwa [who in their bottomless apathy don't even understand why she's there at first] can only be attributed to love, and even Seul-gi knows it. So it's after this that she starts smiling freely around her stepmom in a way we otherwise only ever see with Jae-yi; she opens up to the love of her life and her newfound parent in parallel as they both keep showing up for her in the same places, and proving her assumptions that she's unloveable wrong in different ways.
EDIT: my other miss was right here, though the thrust of it all still stands â it's just that the trust was already planted in the car ride over from the hospital, when Hui-yun tells her not to back down and belatedly fills her in about the lawsuit negotiations Seul-gi had left the apartment earlier to avoid; that gesture of goodwill, so far removed from her prior hesitancy to even ask for Seul-gi to communicate when she'll be home "if we're going to live together," is an unambiguous signal that she's ready to stop doubting herself and take this parenting shit seriously. So when Seul-gi makes the call, there's still uncertainty, but she does have reason to be confident it'll work. END EDIT
And then there's the most explicit moment of all â the one exchange where the unspoken becomes spoken, when Hui-yun prevents a desperate and rage-stricken Seul-gi from throwing her future away permanently by murdering Tae-jun. In the aftermath, both of them shaken, she admits her refusal to settle the lawsuit in the face of Seul-gi's fear that she'd do the opposite, but reframes it from the perspective of the parent â Tae-jun's lawyers are trying to guilt her. What kind of parent would put their child through this? What kind of parent would pass up the financial windfall of a settlement to protect her child's future? If she's failing to prioritize Seul-gi, maybe it's because she's a stepmother? But what makes Hui-yun so unique as a parent is that she doesn't TELL Seul-gi what to think about this, she asks her what she DOES think.
this moment makes me want to run through a goddamn brick wall. confidence in herself but without ego, trust in her kid but without delusion â a parenting clinic. the best to ever do it
And with the last of her distrust evaporating, Seul-gi immediately responds: "No. You did the right thing." And when Byeong-jin does Byeong-jin things and ruins the moment, she shoves her bag into her stepmom's arms before recklessly running off, the trust they've been steadily building since that school hearing sealed in a moment of classic teenage childishness â here mom, hold this, i gotta go.
Of course because this is Friendly Rivalry, breakthroughs without true escape are only prelude to more heartbreak, and as long as Tae-jun is on the board he'll try to turn love into weakness, oblivious to its resilience but very effective at inflicting pain all the same. Jae-yi and Hui-yun will both do anything to keep Seul-gi safe, even if it means Seul-gi hates them for it. And so at the same time that Jae-yi appears to be slipping away for good Seul-gi finds out that the lawsuit WAS settled after all, the nightmarish betrayal she was always afraid of, and immediately after she was promised it would never happen. And that's when she DOES blow up, her anger paradoxically a sign that she's comfortable enough to let her vulnerabilities show [again in parallel to her lesbian situationship, where she can only express vulnerability after finally defeating Jae-yi in the battle of galaxy brain 12D cat and mouse by trying to drown herself. Yuri!!] But she still responds to her stepmother's wounded but calculated rebuttal with a chastened "I have no right to argue." She can't entirely shake the internalization of herself as a burden, the scared child behind the mask of fierce independence â but in this home her outburst won't cost her anything, and by the end she'll realize that even the most painful conflict will never make her unloved.
Hui-yun adhering to the principle of "if I'm mad at my kid, really I'm mad at myself"
Because what Hui-yun never does is treat Seul-gi as one of her burdens â her status as the One Good Parent is built not with any inherent qualities or cultural signifiers but by her nigh-revolutionary insistence that her child is not indebted to her. First she's just a roof over Seul-gi's head and a guarantee of food in her stomach without judgement, then she's falling asleep at her side in an operating room even if Seul-gi can't know she's there, and then, when Seul-gi takes the first leap of faith to ask her for help, she's dropping everything to turn the car around and defend her from expulsion. The other side of that turning point, the one that ensures they'll never truly go back, is that it doesn't just sink in for Seul-gi how her stepmom feels about her as a parent. She realizes in that moment how she feels as a daughter.
Top 10 Seul-gi faces to break your heart :(
The moment she refutes Beom-su's lie, she doesn't do it to the administrators, or to her attacker, but to Hui-yun. For the first time, she cares what a figure of authority in her life thinks of her. For the first time, she wants an adult to be proud of her â and in the back of her mind she's probably terrified that even if her stepmom has inexplicably stuck by her up to this point, now she has a reason to stop doing so. And when Hui-yun never doubts her for a second, and instead throws protective scorn over every other adult in the room, they truly become a family. It's why Seul-gi can say no when an indignant Hui-yun tells her they're leaving in protest, because now she knows she's talking to someone who will protect her at all costs but also respects her as a human being.
The impact of this growing bond is significant, but never overplayed; never distracting from the main story, but always mattering when it appears. When Hui-yun is forced to go back on her promise to Seul-gi and settle the lawsuit [because Tae-jun nearly kills both of them via vehicular sabotage while making Jae-yi watch, naturally, jfc this show], it's not a moment of high melodrama, merely a grimly necessary choice and its consequences. Her chance for closure is gone, justice is impossible, but her daughter's safety comes before any of that. So she lets Seul-gi believe it was an accident, even knowing that the missing context will make Seul-gi resent her for settling for what she thinks are purely financial considerations â better her daughter be furious with her than live every moment of her life in incapacitating terror. She even takes a moment to ask Seul-gi if she wants to keep her father's wrecked old car â not because that's a reasonable course of action, but because she wants Seul-gi to know that she has a say, that her opinions matter. And yes, she's also guiltily covering for the choice about the lawsuit that she's not going to give Seul-gi for her own safety. Even the best things don't get be clean in Friendly Rivalry, but they do get to be Good, in the end.
At least Jae-yi has the courtesy to be cryptic and gay â this girl has no idea how to deal with people caring about her this directly, with words and shit
And in the end the painful sacrifices pay off, because all the work Hui-yun has done has made it undeniable to Seul-gi, no matter how high her emotions run â that everything her stepmom does, she does for Seul-gi first. You can see it even in her penultimate confrontation with Tae-jun, having hit rock bottom but still making unhinged evil genius chess moves to make Jae-yi proud [ok worried out of her mind, in reality, but still]. In her characteristic style of blunt confrontation, she lets Tae-jun know that she suspects exactly why her stepmom did what she had to do, and that she's willing to fight for her just as hard precisely because she would never ask her to. And it's not a coincidence that she's talking to the highest-status, most celebrated parent in the Chaehwa orbit, whose meticulously planned and perfected daughter was willing to die to destroy him, and is now willing to live for this girl from nowhere.
i swear this show would be 10/10 solely on the strength of its full gallery of Chung Su-bin facial expressions
Of course Friendly Rivalry's greatest balancing act is that while it's a furious rebuke of societal cynicism, it never loses its grounding sense of realistic pessimism. The power of love is great and wondrous, but it cannot in a head to head fight overcome the power of, well, power. The final tragedy is that there's only so much any of them can do against their incredibly entrenched tormentors and the systems they represent â Seul-gi goes through physical and mental hell to put Tae-jun away for a despair-inducing few months, Jae-yi goes over the ledge for only the possibility of saving her sister and seeing the love of her life again, and Hui-yun is powerless to spare Seul-gi from the grief that follows.
But everything she can do she keeps doing, down to the final scene, when she fends off invasive reporters while for the first time calling Seul-gi her daughter in dialogue, no qualifiers attached. Seul-gi's relaxed suggestion that they move elsewhere together to escape Tae-jun is met with her mother's stern but affectionate veto, and the implication is loud and clear: This is our home. Let me do my job to keep you safe, and you do yours by living your life. It's a stunningly beautiful resolution for how restrained it is. There's no grand climax because that's coming in the mail courtesy of Jae-yi â there's simply the quiet depiction of a family made whole, not triumphant but surviving. No bloodlines, no 20 year plans, no missions from God, just one woman and her daughter against the world.
Ok that's uh. everything that was building up in my brain on that. Masterful work from Chung Su-bin as my GOAT protagonist, Kang Jin-ah as Parent of the Year, and of course from Kim Tai-hee, Min Ye-ji, and the entire Friendly Rivalry team for creating something you never run out of things to say about. Happy FR-Fest, everyone â this goes out to all of you whose writing and art has built up an incredibly vibrant fandom for one of the best shows of the decade; I wouldn't have found it without you guys. Here's to one year of Seul-gi and Jae-yi, and many more to come <3
Ok so I read The Sovereign finally and I've been physically unmoored for several hours lmao, anyone who loves The Locked Tomb or really any of the Fucked Up Lesbian Media Canon - please please read C.L. Clark's Magic of the Lost trilogy now that it's all out, this should be a massive fucking cultural touchstone of a series.
I promise you'll find things in it you didn't realize you wanted and weren't getting anywhere else - political intrigue that takes its world seriously, political philosophy with a strong backbone and urgently relevant themes of decolonization, beautifully unapologetic depictions of lesbian love and desire and sex with none of the edges smoothed off, a persistent refusal to condescend to the audience or the characters in all their fucked up humanity, and across all three books the most harrowing tension you've ever seen jfc it never breaks, never alleviates, it just keeps changing form and changing YOU as you experience it all.
anyway its 4 am and there is so little screaming about these books on the internet up to this point so i will be the change i want to see in the world and then pass out
Whale Store XOXO E08: "oh huh, closeted people do know what they're doing, oops"
i'm miserable. no notes
I have my share of problems with Whale Store XOXO â the story is just NOW getting to an interesting tension with WanMaewnam that I wanted to spend way more time in [let our poor hyper-competent greenflag have a burnout arc!!], and I worry that the relatively nuanced realism about the limits of small town economies and the prejudicial downside of close-knit communities is gonna go out the window to give us a crowd pleasing triumph over the EEEEVIL big box store, but goddamn do I appreciate Chompoo being vindicated!!
I was always on her "side" [which, even saying that I feel stupid! there were no sides!! they were both doing everything they could without being superhumanly perfect about a situation that intractably sucks, that's what made it compelling!!!] because the whole thing with coming out is the worst case scenario is SO FUCKING DANGEROUS. If someone thinks they should play it safe, they're probably right, and even if it turns out fine you cannot go wrong with an abundance of caution!! Of course Tonnam didn't have to stay, a breakup at any point would have been a tragic but reasonable course of action, but she was making the hard choice to keep going because even if she was hopeful that Chompoo's anxiety was unfounded, she still understood that this is literally safety first. And Chompoo's biggest mistake was ultimately second guessing herself and trying to push too hard to prove Tonnam's optimism right; under no circumstances should they have ever given up the apartment of their own, and now they're trapped in the nightmare she always saw coming.
the casual removal of her space and privacy...such a terrifying abusive flex of parental power [and more evidence for my Everything is Housing unified theory of GLs, but that's another post]
And I LOVE the direction they went in with Chompoo's mother â you genuinely didn't know which way it was going to go anymore than Chompoo did, because she's in many ways a sweet, charismatic, likable woman! She's a homophobe in a painfully realistic way where her flaws seem at first like charming personality quirks disguising something more insidious. The abusive way she treats her kid is hauntingly subtle, easy to mistake as motherly banter in a single moment and visible for what it is only in the long run. And her avoidant strategies this episode to maintain plausible deniability as she hurts her daughter and acts like the victim were so fucking chilling; let it not go unsaid that it's been an excellent performance by Chompu Thansita from the very beginning.
an absolute tour de force of passive aggression and hostile hospitality, she nails every single layer of how people like this can ruthlessly dismantle your confidence with a smile on their face
Do I think she'll immediately get redeemed? Absolutely lmfao, if the dad from fuckin Pluto got his switch flipped to Good in the last episode there's no shot they'll withhold it from a character who has exhibited kindness onscreen at literally any point. But still!! Even if they don't give me a satisfying ending, I appreciate that they took things in a more realistic, more heartbreaking, more thematically incisive direction, at least for a little while. Whale Store XOXO has always been at its best depicting the down to earth textures of how working class society actually functions without condescending OR sugarcoating, and this was the best example of that yet.
five stray thoughts after a Friendly Rivalry rewatch [new era, it's a long story lmao]:
1) there is SO much more Ye-ri x Gyeong than I remembered and it all rules; never mind class rank the real competition between them and Jae-yi x Seul-gi is who can be more obviously down bad at all times and they play to WIN
2) I know the lesbian love story is the main draw, and for my money its one of the GOATs, but I'll also never stop being emotional at the very subtle but very impactful background arc where Seul-gi, convinced all her life she'll always be despised and abandoned, slowly realizes her stepmother loves her - the "my daughter won't give an interview...you people have no manners" scene makes me cry every time
3) when the kids go Super-Sleuth mode and they needle drop the BloodStain instrumental I get amped up to run through a brick wall, and it happens again when the already legendary Final Shot transitions into Burn It Down one more time - truly an all time great soundtrack on top of everything else
4) the number of times Jae-yi absolutely books it up or down way too many flights of stairs [and somehow always for the urgent purpose of holding Seul-gi's hand for a few seconds] gives me vicarious knee pain
5) Hye-ri has the fame and the accolades and the flashier role getting to play the Enigmatic Antihero and she deserves every bit of it, absolute perfection from start to finish, but my god Chung Su-bin might be giving my favorite performance in. anything?? ever??? the way she swings Seul-gi between bottomless suffering, teenage euphoria, beaten down cynicism, and every emotion in between, all while keeping the performance bolted firmly to the ground to allow the show's hyperreal stylism and Hye-ri's magnetic inscrutability to dance around her [and ultimately be molded by her!] is so breathtaking to watch, I'll never get over it
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I learned about the murder of Kitty Genovese in two separate psychology classes, at two separate universities. It was studied as an example of the âbystander effectâ, which is a phenomenon that occurs when witnesses do not offer help to a victim when there are other people present.
I was told by my professors that Kitty Genovese was a 28-year-old unmarried woman who was attacked, raped, and brutally murdered on her way home from her shift as manager of a bar. I was told that numerous people witnessed the attack and her cries for help but didnât do anything because they âassumed someone else wouldâ. Nobody intervened until it was too late.Â
What I was not told was that Kitty Genovese was a lesbian who lived more or less openly with her partner in the Upper West Side and managed a gay bar.Â
Now⌠is it likely that people overheard Kittyâs cries for help and ignored them because they thought someone else would deal with it? Or, perhaps, did they ignore her because they knew she was a lesbian and just didnât care?
Maybe thatâs not the case. Maybe it was just a random attack. Maybe her neighbours didnât know she was gay, or didnât care.
But itâs a huge chunk of information to leave out about her in a supposedly scientific study of events, since her sexuality made her much more vulnerable to violent crimes than the average person. And itâs a dishonour to her memory.
RIP Kitty Genovese. Society may only remember you for how you died, but I will remember you for who who were.
I also never knew this about Kitty Genovese, but I do know that, in fact, many of the dozen (not thirty-eight) people who witnessed some part of the attack (which took place after 3AM, on a chilly night in March when most peopleâs windows were closed) tried to help in some way.
One shouted out his window for the attacker to leave her alone, which did successfully scare the man off temporarily.
Another called the police but, seeing her still on her feet, said only that there had been a fight but the woman seemed to be okay.
And when Kitty Genovese was finally attacked in a vestibule where she couldnât be seen from outside, Karl Ross, a neighbor, saw what was happening but was too frightened himself to go to her rescueâso he started calling other neighbors to ask what he should do. Eventually one of them told him to call the police, which he did, and the woman he called, Sophie Farrar, rushed out to help Kitty even though she didnât know whether the attacker was gone.
Kitty Genovese died in the arms of a neighbor who tired to help and comfort her while they waited for the police and ambulance to arrive. Kitty was in fact still alive, although mortally wounded, when the ambulance reached the scene.
The man who saw the final stabbing? Who panicked and called other neighbors first instead of the police? The man who said, infamously, that he âdidnât want to get involvedâ because he was reluctant to turn to the police for help? He was thought to be gay himself. He was a friend of Kitty and Mary Annâs. After being interviewed by the police he took a bottle of vodka to Mary Ann and sat with her, trying to comfort her.
So, no. I donât think the evidence indicates that Kitty Genoveseâs neighbors let her die because she was a lesbian, because Kitty Genoveseâs neighbors tried to help.
See also: Debunking the Myth of Kitty Genovese (The New York Post)
A Call for Help (The New Yorker)
(Also, going by the content of the murdererâs confession, it was indeed a random attack.)
how on EARTH was this âscientificallyâ studied but the details gotten so wrong and the wrong as hell conclusion published and taught in schools?!?!?! where were those scientists observation skills?! on vacation?!
How to take facts and turn them into an urban legend that gets taught in schools: Make a bad made-for-t.v.-movie about it, watch it, believe everything the movie says, annnnnnnd go! Thatâs how it gets taught as this supposed âscientific study.â Someone got fucking lazy.
A book about this, âNo One Helpedâ: Kitty Genovese, New York City, and the Myth of Urban Apathy, won the Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction this year! if anyone wants to check it out try your local library!
I want to add one crucial but telling detail: the story about the 38 witnesses didnât come out of nowhere, it was handed to the New York Times City Editor by the Police Commissioner in order to distract said editor from asking unwelcome questions about a different case, and the story that was eventually written and which made headlines was almost entirely composed from police sources.Â
At the time, the NYPD was coming under quite a bit of criticism about rising crime rates and the seeming ineffectiveness of the policeâs response to the problem. In the Kitty Genovese case, even though people did in fact call the police, it took about an hour for them to show up and the first detectives didnât arrive until three hours later (at which point they mostly spent their time interrogating Kittyâs girlfriend about their relationship, because for âsome reasonâ they considered her to be the most likely suspect for the murder. In fact, the police wouldnât catch the actual killer until six days later when he was picked up for having a stolen TV in the trunk of his car, at which point he admitted to having committed a total of three murders). Itâs not an accident that one of the things to come out of the Genovese case was the establishment of the 9-1-1 system, because at the time that the attack happened, you had to call the specific number of a particular police precinct and it was up to the duty sergeant on the desk to take action - which was usually to send someone out from the precinct to the address reported, because cops on foot patrol wouldnât be outfitted with two-way radios for several years.
Itâs more than a little convenient that at a time when the NYPD is coming in for public scrutiny about its ability to do the basic job of responding to reports of crimes in a timely fashion, the Police Commissioner happens to hand the City Editor of the cityâs most prominent newspaper a story which puts the blame for the slow response on the apathy and inaction of New Yorkers, neatly absolving the NYPD for its ridiculously poor performance in this case in particular and its response to the rise in crime in general.Â
Itâs also quite telling that the New York Times ran with the story the way they did. Itâs not like there werenât people on the scene who said they had called the police, or that the basic facts about how many witnesses there were and what they had seen didnât match the account that the commissioner had given. The writer the Times sent out chose not to include this information because âit would have ruined the story.â The Times wanted to frame the story as a narrative about how the root of NYCâs problems was urban apathy and anomie - and the news organizations that picked up on the Timesâ reporting and made the Kitty Genovese case a national and global story wanted to frame the story as proof that NYC was a dangerous urban jungle that deserved its decline because of the bad character of its residents.Â
I think the takeaway from this case isnât just about sloppy scientific research, itâs that you have to always consider how official narratives are used to assign blame to specific individuals and groups and absolve larger institutions of responsibility.Â
itâs Sunday and Iâm bored so have some Galaxy Lesbian Brain One Direction Lyrical Interpretations:Â
-Steal My Girl is a self love empowerment anthem for trans girls with unsupportive dadsÂ
-the he in âDoes He Knowâ is actually He, and the song is in the thematic tradition of Only the Good Die Young
-all the song titles in Better Than Words are 1D trying to remember which song the Best Song Ever actually was (it was Irreplaceable by Beyonce)Â
-the wolves arenât a metaphorÂ
-âthatâ doesnât refer to the fact that she doesnât know sheâs beautiful, Harryâs just pointing demonstratively at her whole vibe as she does pull-ups on a salmon ladderÂ
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