Hello hello, just rewatched the first seven episodes of Friendly Rivalry with Laura this fine Monday, and I'm having so many reactions to so many things - I wanna dig into the mutual animosity between Jaeyi and Kyung and where it comes from on Jaeyi's side, how Kyung must feed her fears of a sistergirlfriend who will kill her if she doesn't stay strong and armored where Seulgi somehow eases/heals those same fears; and speaking of reactions, it is highkey worth rewatching the first few episodes JUST to keep an eye on Ara's reaction faces in the background of various scenes. She is truly the live slug reaction meme @ Jaeseulgi.
BUT, the thing I had the biggest feelings about (crying on my friend's couch) is definitely Jaeyi and water.
I took the metaphor at face value the first time Jaeyi and Seulgi introduced it to me: the fantasy of being alone underwater lets them feel simultaneously free and held, engulfed in a safe and soothing pressure akin to being a helpless nurtured fetus, not the pressure of everyone around them endlessly pressing in, trying to hurt them or take their place.
But in many ways, that contrasted second kind of pressure is what they both currently experience as the demands of simply staying alive. So as much as the serenity at the bottom of the ocean is a fantasy of returning to the security of the womb, it's also a fantasy of death as alternative/escape from the endless stress and pain and vulnerability of living.
For Jaeyi more than for Seulgi of course, but since Seulgi's underwater fantasies are tied to her experience of drug use, there's definitely still that component of exhilarating freedom mixed with destruction of the self.
[brief discussion of suicidality, feel free to skip] I know for myself (and many others, but not everybody!), the most severe of my suicidal ideation and impulses was not an actual desire to destroy myself, but despair, an overpoweringly trapped helplessness, a feeling that there was truly no way out or no way forward.
No matter how many times Jaeyi practiced, her endgame plan, escape by water, always stood a very strong chance of leaving her dead. That's the brilliance of how she set it up, though: Either she escapes Taejoon by holding her breath long enough to make it, or she escapes Taejoon by drowning.
And what really really hit me in this rewatch was the detail in her original "vision" (of jumping off the bridge), that it's her armor that weighs her down and brings her to the bottom of the ocean no matter how good a swimmer she is. There was just something so acute about that imagery, that the thing that protects her from everyone around her is also the thing that makes her sink - sink to a place where no one can touch her, but also where there's no light or people, where anyone else would find it scary but because her experience of life surrounded by other people in the light has been harrowing since she was 5 years old, escape from it is actually an exhilaratingly soothing thought.
But also!!!! Her armor, dudes. Seulgi is the only one she lets past it. Like I was saying, Seulgi is the only person who Jaeyi "accidentally" lets get close - first as a pawn and a non-threat, then as something more - who Jaeyi embraces having there. Jaeyi is so opaque that we don't know exactly what moment it was Seulgi outgrew her role for Jaeyi; in this viewing I'm suspecting it's when she confronts her in episode 5 and reveals she was the one who printed her own essay out. Regardless, I will always come back to the comparison between Jaeyoon and Seulgi for Jaeyi as the explanation for Seulgi's special exempt-from-armor status, where Seulgi transforms from fluffy docile non-threat to someone good and brave and loyal enough to trust even after she proves she has teeth. PUPPYGIRLFRIEND!!! Ahem.
But yeah the scene in ep15 or so, where Jaeyi is practicing for her dive (complete sidenote: Jaeyi's handle when she talks to Ara about drug dealing is "dive". Her sister-saving plan is like, a lifetime fantasy come to terrifying fruition. I can't decide if she's eagerly anticipating the plunge, or dreading it and trying to immunize herself to the fear like she does with needles, or bothhhh) and Seulgi thinks she's suicidal and throws herself in the water to stop her... It's so clear to me that the whole emotional conversation that follows, which is basically Seulgi begging Jaeyi to live, to keep her promise and stay even if she makes Seulgi wait, is, narratively and thematically, why Jaeyi DOES survive. She lives for Seulgi.
And so just likeeee. Jaeyi's "revelation"/prophecy playing out as warning rather than predestination, Jaeyi surviving her very real dive to the bottom instead of staying trapped there, because she's loosened her metaphoric armor, because Seulgi forced her metaphoric armor open and Jaeyi let her - because Seulgi made Jaeyi promise to live, because Seulgi gave Jaeyi something to live for, to find freedom for and alongside in life, instead of in the isolation of escape/disappearing forever unseen and unknown, or death - aghahgahghghghhhhh [feral animal noises]
There's something about the scene with Jaeyi on top of the wall of the medical center in episode 7 too btw, where she looks both like the queen of the world and like she's ready to jump, and Seulgi has that moment of almost wanting to push her, because she's so fundamentally misunderstood what Jaeyi wants of her and for her, and how much that dynamic transforms between them by the pool scene at the end of the show, that really gets to me.
And I want to think more about Jaeyi and skating too, another extreme sport (she skates through traffic without a care!) that offers her freedom and danger hand in hand; our earliest introduction to sk8ergirl Jaeyi is the skateboard as a way of leaving her sister and her would-be assassins at school in the dust, so it's the freedom of being alone again, of staying ahead of everybody else so they can't touch you or hold onto you.
Just always stuck with the image of Jaeyi at the end of ep16, skating back and forth by the water, above the water but by it, free and waiting for Seulgi to be alongside her.
Maybe the conclusion of this post is that Seulgi should learn to skate so they can skate into the sunset together. She was a girl, she was a girl, can I make it anymore obvious?
Real quick edit: Lol upon finishing the rewatch, I realized I was conflating the two emotional pool scenes in my memory.
Seulgi throws herself into the pool just to get Jaeyi to talk to her, not when she sees Jaeyi standing ominously three floors over the water herself. I still think a lot of what I was saying holds; Seulgi begs Jaeyi to let her in on the plan because she doesn't want Jaeyi taking all the risk and throwing away her own academic future. "Don't ghost me and come up with self-sacrificing choices all on your own" is still a plea for Jaeyi to choose hope in what life holds for her over a freedom that comes with self-destruction. In the end she still chooses "plan B", freedom that only comes with deadly risk, but I still firmly believe she survives that risk because more of her wants to keep her promise and return to Seulgi than it wants to give up and escape into oblivion.
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