I Watch 4 U - Absolute Value of Romance Eps. 5-6
Korea decided to wander into the Real People Fiction section of BL, so I'm doing what absolutely nobody asked and writing about it. We pick up in the kitchen where Mr. Meanie finally has his special glasses back and his roommates/coworkers/friends can't stop praising the wonderful person who gave them back while also questioning Mr. Meanie for being too harsh on Yeo Eui Ju. Basically, this man is in hell. And he deserves it.
Because thanks to Mr. Meanie, Yeo Eui Ju is stuck between a rock and a hard place: she must take the after-school math course, so she can no longer take the track course, which means it may not make, but the PE teacher suspects that his friend is forcing Yeo Eui Ju to do this, which is why he is the lead of her RPF BL because he is observant and kind compared to Mr. Meanie!
The PE teacher is also her bias, so she would much rather spend time with the guy who is always optimistic even though an injury forced him to retire from his medal-winning sports career.
But no. Instead she is stuck with this crazy math man who cannot let go of the fact that she only scored four points on her math exam.
He is not only forcing her to take the after-school math course, he is making her the TA for it, so she has to set up the room, make all the copies, and clean up after, which would be bad in its own, but she is also in the class with the smartest students who look down at her and think she is an idiot, like this one who has won several national math awards. She is smart, but also kind of an asshole, so maybe it's math that makes these people jerks.
Because this math course is too difficult for our girl, Yeo Eui Ju decides her time would be best spent sleeping IN CLASS while dreaming about the next chapter in the story she is writing about her teachers, We Were Friends.
Of course, Mr. Meanie is pissed and assigns her homework, but good thing she has her best friend to cheer her up, who knows she writes stuff but doesn't know she writes BL which she just happens to hate the genre because she "just doesn't get the point of writing about two men when people can just write about a man and woman."
But Yeo Eui Ju doesn't have time to think too hard about how her friend would totally hate her if she found out what she writes because the exchange student, Jenny, wants to experience a slumber party, and because of this after-school course, Yeo Eui Ju is already late for it.
During a quiet moment away from the group, she reveals to Jenny that she knows Jenny is lying about having a Brazilian boyfriend she met at the Louvre since she realized it was the plot to one of her favorite romance novels. The girls share a moment, and Yei Eui Ju promises Jenny's secret is safe with her.
They are having the perfect girls' night eating all types of yummy treats while looking at the stars without a care in the world!
Well, Yeo Eui Ju does have one care and it's that damn math homework! It's haunting her even in her happiest moments! Thanks for nothing, Mr. Meanie!
However, she decides to defy that asshat and not do the homework. Instead she will just take the punishment and write the solutions ten times each. It's a brave moment for her.
But that moment quickly evaporates when Mr. Meanie tells her that he is disappointed in her laziness and lack of care.
Which means she now has the perfect dialogue for the next chapter of her BL story!
She continues to turn all the awful things Mr. Meanie says to her into golden dialogue for her story, and the fans are eating it up.
Yeo Eui Ju is healing herself through her story, and even if the plot of this show veers left at some point, I'm going to hold onto this moment because I think it's important that the show depicts writing as a restorative tool to work through pain and emotional turmoil.
But Yeo Eui Ju's happiness as well as mine don't get to last long because something foul is in the air. Literally as Yeo Eui Ju catches a scent of . . . math.
Mr. Meanie with his bougie cologne came to check on how she was doing with her homework, but instead catches her uploading the latest chapter of her BL . . . about him!
He immediately demands to read it IN FRONT OF HER!
This is what hell feels like.
After reading some of it, he demands that she deletes it or he will speak to her parents and the principal about what she is writing.
This is her worst nightmare! If her family finds out what she writes, she will bring dishonor to them. If her friends find out she writes about boys kissing boys, they will think she is disgusting. Everyone in school will hate her. But she can't simply delete the story she has worked so hard on that has over 20,000 likes!
But Mr. Meanie is also experiencing his worst nightmare because now that he has read We Were Friends, he can't take off the shipper glasses that have been unknowingly placed on him.
His friends/roommates/coworkers are talking about ruining each other all night playing games and asking him if he is going to play with them or by himself but they are willing to switch partners if he wants. He can't unsee the queerness of it all!
The man is rightfully freaking the fuck out, but instead of walking himself away from the ledge, he decides to take the Joong Archen approach and jump fully into the BL world by staying up all night and reading MORE BLs including all the posted chapters of We Were Friends.
And perhaps it's because the man has lost his mind staying up all night reading about men kissing men or maybe he was always a little crazy, but the next day when he approaches Yeo Eui Ju regarding what she plans to do with the story, he offers her a compromiseāshe can continue writing the story ONLY IF he becomes the main character obsessive top instead of the weak side character, and strangely enough, this feels like *the* straightest thing a man would ever do by being more upset that he isn't the dom daddy in this queer romance.
But before I can get lost in the hetero meta of straight people demanding queer stories still align with heteronormative structures, Mr. Meanie gets pulled away because the principal wants these four hot teachers to take part in a great opportunity to get free marketing for the school which involves them being filmed. Mr. Meanie, who for some reason is so against being filmed that he broke Yeo Eui Ju's phone when he thought she was filming him, quickly says no and leaves.
His roommates/friends/coworkers try to convince him to do it because they believe all their jobs are on the line if he says no, and we also find out that the languages teacher has known him since the third grade, so he knows about the incident that caused Mr. Meanie to hate being filmed, but before we can get the lore, Mr. Meanie retreats to his room . . . TO READ MORE BL because he is eagerly awaiting the next chapter of We Were Friends!
He approaches Yeo Eui Ju in the hall the next day demanding to see the chapter before she uploads it, so he can make sure he is now the main character. Her friends witness the exchange but think it's merely her being berated yet again for her math scores.
But the show goes meta again because Yeo Eui Ju is having difficulties writing since 1) she knows her subject is now reading it which is causing her to think she needs to lower the heat but that would mean 2) she is now changing the nature of her story to cater to a fan her teacher since he wants to be the main character. She is, once again, stuck between a rock and a hard place, or in this case, an obsessive top and the demands of a heteronormative culture.
By golly, I think this goofy show has some serious shit to say!
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