thinking about the season 2 interview where delainey said claudia was always very mindful, even at her angriest, not to trigger louis's ptsd by getting all up in his personal space, vs how 3x06 had ghost!claudia yelling two inches away from louis's face and smacking his forehead.
prev tags i believe op is referring to this interview with delainey:
Even as their relationship is experiencing what could be a permanent shift, Claudia is still taking care not to trigger her traumatized father.
āClaudia has a lot of trauma [because] of Louis and Lestatās relationship, so when she argues with Louis, itās never a case of her invading his space,ā Hayles says. āWhen she argues with him, thereās always distance between her and Louis. Sheās scarred from Season 1. No matter how angry she is, sheās never really in Louisā face like Lestat was. Sheās still caring for him. She saw what he went through. She doesnāt want to put him through that, but at the tail end of it sheās furious.ā
she's referring to their argument in 2x04 (relatedly, the only s2 episode in which a Black writer, a. zell williams, receives writing credit) where claudia stands a distance away from louis as they argue
its a very sweet and upsetting detail from delainey :'(
Note: Iām republishing these early deep dives with edits so I can have everything in one place and to make the reading experience smoother overall. Some entries will only have minor changes; others, like this one, will be extensively revised (aka basically rewritten from scratch).
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In this entry Iāll be covering the rest of Seul-giās Episode 1 prologue. Like the beach scene that kicks it off, this prologue is operating on multiple levels, and it moves fast. The narrative current is so powerful itās hard not to get swept along, but in order to catch everything, weāre going to slow way down.
Seul-giās life story is broken up into three stagesāchildhood, junior high, and high schoolāeach marked by a different actor playing the character, and by a different van. First thereās the yellow kindergarten van that drops her off at the beach, then the orphanage shuttle she rides to school, and finally we see her climb out of Byeong-jinās black drugmobile.
Unlike the other motifs introduced in this prologue, the vans donāt ever come back, and yet they are probably the single most obvious instance of repetition in the episode. Itās pretty hard to miss three vans in a row, of similar shape and size, framed in a very similar way by the camera.
I think this is Friendly Rivalryās helpful (and, contrary to Kim Tae-heeās claim, even friendly) way of signaling to the audience how weāre meant to be engaging with the series. Here at the top of the first episode weāre given a very obvious visual motif, repeated three times, just to make sure we catch on. Itās like a bright flashing sign saying, āHey! Look out for visual cues like this! If anything shows up more than once, pay attention!ā
Since its main purpose (I think) is to alert us to patterns elsewhere, the van is one of the less loaded symbols in FR, but it isnāt totally arbitrary. A moving vehicle matches the kinetic restlessness of the prologue, and it implies that Seul-gi herself, as she passes from one stage of the life to the next, remains transient, rootless, unsettled.
In the last entry, Seul-gi introduced the idea of her invisibility, the quality she seems to blame for her abandonment. Her prologue is loosely organized around this theme, with each chapter adding new layers to it.Ā
The orphanage scenes lay the groundwork. All of Seul-gi earliest memories are of being ignored and neglected. In a line-up of children put on display for adoption, sheās passed overāwe can assume this was a regular occurrence throughout her childhoodāand when itās time to eat breakfast, sheās left behind and misses the meal. Her anonymity is emphasized in the saddest most adorable way possible by her pajama top proclaiming the words that she, being five years old, lacks the assertiveness to say out loud: āHello! Iām here!ā
Then we come to the scene that probably should have tipped me off that Friendly Rivalry would be a masterpiece, but unfortunately for me, I had to write a million words just to be sure. Iām referring of course to Seul-gi drinking water from the tap at night!
This moment is sooo emblematic of Friendly Rivalry. Itās ultra-condensed: a single shot and a few lines of narration. Itās visually inventive, expressing through the fanciful image of Seul-giās shadow with a heart-shaped hole in it more than words ever could. Itās also just believable as something a child in her situation would do. If youāre hungry, and thereās nothing to eat, but thereās unlimited water in the faucet, why wouldnāt you try to fill yourself up that way?
But above all itās using another helpfully obvious exampleāanother flashing signāto teach us how to read Friendly Rivalryās symbolism. The shadow imagery makes it impossible to miss the implication that this water isnāt just water (and, believe it or not, water is never just water in Friendly Rivalry). And of course this scene isnāt just about physical hunger, either.
But no matter how overt a symbol might seemāand this is about as transparent as it getsāFR will always resist facile Literature 101 readings. Instead of a dull this means this analogy, weāre given a cluster of related ideas. Seul-giās hunger for food, and her hunger for love and validation, become entwined here so that both appetites are now associated with each otherāa full belly is an apt metaphor for love to anyone whoās grown up hungryāand associated with water. And because water is associated with Seul-giās abandonment, now her hunger is, too.
This is the second appearance of water in Seul-giās prologue, and it wonāt be the last. The first time, the edge of the water is where she finds herself alone, and the water itself is like a vast dividing line, cutting her life in twoāwater as rupture, as wound.
This time sheās drinking the water, trying to heal that wound incurred on the waterās edge. What was external is now internal; the trauma of her abandonment has become reflected in her habits, her way of being in the world. The most tragic line in the whole episode is when Seul-gi casually tells us how she used to imagine, when the water didnāt fill her up, that there was a leak somewhere inside her. Kids donāt know how to process neglect. The only way she can make sense of the emptiness she feels is to assume sheās defective somehow.
The bullying scene adds a new wrinkle to the theme of invisibility, as Seul-gi has her first encounter with its evil twin. Because she comes to school in a van marked with a Sunshine Nursery logo, Middle School Seul-gi is suddenly hypervisibleāand, surprise, it sucks! Water wasnāt enough to satisfy her hunger as a child, and as an adolescent Seul-gi learns that simply being seen will not quench her thirst for belonging. Visibility can be another, even crueler, form of isolation.
The story takes a detour when we learn itās hard for kids at the orphanage who lack references to find regular jobs. This throwaway line suggests that Seul-gi is far from the only child abandoned by this societyāwhole segments of the population have been forgotten, written off as inconveniences and left to fend for themselves.
A situation like that produces people like Byeong-jin, who create opportunity where there is none. Under his wing, Seul-gi gets a gig using a fake ID and falsified prescriptions to score pills for selling on the black market, and can we all please take a moment to admire Seul-giās evolution from her femme princess phase to butch streetwear queen.
The conversation between Seul-gi and Byeong-jin is our introduction to the grown-up version of Seul-gi played by the one and only Chung Su-bin. Weāve been listening to her narrate, and weāve seen her in montage, but now we see how she acts around other people, and I have never fallen for a character faster in my life. Sheās prickly, kind of an asshole, and bristles at the mere thought of social interaction.
Byeong-jin is responsible for the next twist in our dual theme of visibility/invisibility. Itās thanks to his suggestion that Seul-gi actually begins to apply herself in school, and wouldnāt you know it, the kidās a genius!
Iām always reminded here of that Stephen Jay Gould quote about Einsteinās brain and all the people with the same potential who have died working in sweatshops. Itās basically by chance that Seul-gi first realizes that sheās smart. What if she never did?
One of many things I appreciate about her story is the implicit recognition of how unlikely and contingent her success is.Ā Friendly Rivalry could have been an inspirational bootstraps narrative about the value of studying hard and believing in yourself, but thank god it isnāt. What rescues Seul-gi from the life of dead-end jobs and/or petty crime that seems inevitably in store for her is a random conversation with a drug dealer, and the fact that her dad happens to be a math teacher at a prestigious school. Most kids in her situation arenāt so lucky.
As Seul-gi rises through the ranks, she finally gets a taste, for the first time in her life, of how it feels to receive positive attention, andāhow interesting!āthe theme of hunger makes a return. Unlike the water that never filled her up, and unlike the visibility that made her a target for bullies, the attention she receives thanks to her grades does satisfy her hunger, physical and emotional.
And so Seul-gi successfully overcomes her trauma, graduates at the top of her class, and becomes a fully adjusted normal adult. The end!
Anytime Friendly Rivalry seems headed for a neat resolution like the aboveāthe girl who just wants to be seen is finally recognized for her talents, yayāyou can expect a swerve in a new and more interesting direction. What if this long-sought recognition isā¦bad, actually? What if her hunger itself is dangerous, insatiable? What if doing well at school turns you into a drug addict?
The curse hidden within this positive attention, and all the material benefits that come with it, is that itās all conditional. To keep receiving special treatment, she needs to keep doing well in school. Going back to her previous life is āa fate worse than death.ā
Which means sheās now under pressure to succeed at all costs. But even without this external pressure, she simply wants more. (As the script book puts it: āEven when I didnāt eat, I felt full. And with that came greed.ā) Sheās been bitten by the bug now. Pandoraās box is wide open. She knows sheās goodāshe wants to know how good. How far can she go?
The point here is explicit: The drive to succeed academically is like an addiction. Schools produce little junkies.
And what symbol could FR possibly use to represent Seul-giās first pill-fueled study sesh other thanāyou guessed itāwater.
No longer an external ocean, or an internal hemorrhage, now water is the medium Seul-gi submerges herself in. In this third iteration, the already-complex symbol becomes even more complicated. Flailing as she sinks, Seul-gi is clearly not at home in the water. (As weāll be told explicitly much later, she doesnāt even know how to swim.) But once in her private bubble, insulated from all outside distraction, she adapts quickly, and is soon crushing math problems like energy drink cans.
The problem is she canāt live down there. Whatever fulfillment she finds in the water, itās limited to what she can snatch while that bubble lasts. Eventually sheās going to have to come up for air.
The end of Seul-giās prologue, as I said in the last entry, is riddled with narrative gaps. Itās actually impossible to fully decipher whatās going on here until Episode 13, but just to spell it out in brief:
Tae-joon helps Seul-giās dad track her down as part of their CSAT cheating scheme. As sheās packing her yellow suitcase (full of drugs stolen from Byeong-jin) to go live with him, she gets a mysterious call from Seoul. This call is most likely from Hee-yoon, her stepmom, notifying her of her fatherās sudden death, which is simultaneously being reported on the news (Seul-gi turns on the TV to cover up the sounds of her drug smuggling), although his name is omitted from the report.
This isnāt the first time so much information has been withheld about such a major plot development. As in the opening scene, we are once again prompted here to become active participants in piecing together the story. Friendly Rivalry never doubles back to show us that phone call from Seoul. We have to guess who itās from and what itās about based on the clues weāre eventually given.
And that brings us up to the very first title card. Each characterās prologue will be followed by a title card like this, with the color of the pencil changing each time. Seul-giās pencil is yellow: the yellow of the kindergarten van, of the uniform she didnāt wear that day, of the sand, the utility knife she uses to cut her hair, the blanket she studies under in the middle of the night, her pencil case, highlighter, suitcase...and probably a few other things that I missed. The color theming goes crazy, okay.
Before we wrap up, a few other little details.
Seul-giās prologue introduces the legendary Stair Motif ā¢ which is so important I wrote a whole separate essay about it. This girl seriously canāt get enough of stairs.
This is also our introduction to Seul-giās shoes, a character in their own right. Were there not enough motifs for you in this show yet? Oh good, shoes are another one.
Iām obsessed with these brief shots of Seul-gi eating during the drug-shopping montage, and drinking water from the tap at night during the drug-doing montage. Motifs! Motifs everywhere! No matter how much her circumstances change, Seul-gi remains in many ways the same hungry kid who drank tapwater trying to feel full.
As a top-ranking student, she may have found a way to plug the leak inside for a little while, but is academic success really enough to heal those childhood wounds?
Iād also like to point out the fake ID that Seul-gi uses under the name Lee Min-ju, because yes even this is going to come up again later.
Ohhhh and I almost forgot! This hallway photo of Seul-gi posing with her regional math competition award. No way the province where she grows up will suddenly become important in the final scene of the last episode or anything.
Lastly can I just say this shot??? Seul-giās prologue finds a million brilliant ways to emphasize her solitudeāsheās always studying alone, in places where and at times when sheāll go unnoticedābut none are quite as striking as this wide shot of Seul-gi studying on the staircase (!!!) at the top of the school with the trees billowing behind her, an image that captures all her newfound power along with a profound sense of smallness and precarity. Sheās on top of the world...and look how easily she could fall.
And with that I think I have finally done justice to the first ten minutes of Friendly Rivalry. Ten minutes :)) This show will actually make you insane.
thinking about claudiaās ghost scene and how they could have really contended with claudiaās complicated relationship with louis
thinking about how when in an abusive home the child sometimes places some of their anger away from the abusive parent and places it on the other parent (not to say louis was perfect parent but he is NOT the abuser in the NOLA home)
sometimes the āworseā parent almost stops being seen as a real person with agency and is just a villain, a monster.
but the other parent? the one who isnāt fundamentally a ābad personā how could they just sit back and let it happen? why do they keep making their home with this person? and violence enacted by the abusive parent leads to anger towards the other parent, who is not perceived as a victim but as a passive enabler
and when the child gets older they have to reckon with the fact that the parent āthat let it happenā was in fact a victim and that it was never as simple as āletting it happenā
claudia, i feel, really wrestles with how she perceives louis in this paradigm and ultimately sees him as a victim, but that he is complicit in his victimisation by being passive and weak and her love for him is always conditioned by this
claudia directing her rage about this at louis would make perfect sense. itās something thatās reitrerated throughout the series. she resents lestat for the abuse and she resents louis for his responses to lestatās abuse
let her scream about that, let it be messy and complicated
but instead it chooses to have her absolve lestat of some of the worst of his abuse and say he was her favourite and that she shares his blood so theyāre closer??
and to use her rage at louisā perceived passiveness to call him a slave? for the writers to decide that claudia should conflate his passiveness with being a slave?
itās just another complicated relationship reduced to extremes by a season that refuses to live with nuance or the natural contradictions of human emotions and especially does not allow this for any of the black characters
I'm never going to be upset at anyone for hating their parents like ultimately that is the person who owned you for 18+ years but this idea that mothers in abusive relationships are failing their children is so....like I thought we understood that leaving isnt that simple...like if shes financially dependent on him and has no friends/family what do you actually realistically expect her to do about it? women who accuse their husbands of abuse are dramatically less likely to win custody cases so she wouldn't even necessarily be saving her kids by leaving either. It always comes with the therapy speak and the "enmeshment" as if there exists a form of being completely emotionally, financially, medically reliant on a pre selected group of people which isnt enmeshed. Like you guys dont actually care about parental abuse or you would have a basic understanding of the patriarchy and how women and children are both oppressed by the family.
I'm making this about iwtv too sorry by the time louis and lestat have Claudia, Louis can no longer work in new Orleans he's a black gay man in jim crow America his family won't talk to him because lestat turned him into a vampire and made himself his only option where do you expect him to gooo
im honestly still not over this like a room full of nonblack people wrote claudia calling louis nappy-headed and telling him that etched in his ribs was the proof that he's a slave. something so horrifically anti-black because of its implications that louis being a slave is genetic and interwoven with his dna. that's literally a white supremacist talking point. they had claudia, a black person with a white lover, mock louis for being a black person with a white lover, and say that lestat was her actual blood relative after rejecting his blood in s2, acknowledging that it wasn't good enough for madeleine.
rolin truly said this and believed it to be true, and that should be enough for everyone to know what kind of person he is:
they had claudia refer to her life as not only bleak, but specifically bleak and black. a character who was never ashamed of her blackness. they had her say that she hates louis more than her rapist, abuser, and the people that orchestrated her lynching and burned her lover alive. they completely destroyed her character and killed two birds with one stone, butchering who claudia always was/how she saw louis and lestat, and throwing in more insults and hate at louis while mostly ignoring lestat.
and making it so that claudia is suffering endlessly, even in death, felt like another purposeful story choice. not to make claudia's character even more heartbreaking, either. it was pointless no matter how you look at it. this just felt like yet another way to torture a black character, and a black character that has been repeatedly exploited all season for everyone else's feelings. furthermore, summoning claudia had no effect on louis and lestat at all, as they were immediately over it by the next scene.
none of the heavy storybeats can have any emotional impact because both us and the characters are never given time to absorb them. they're just checking boxes with these heavy moments and moving onto the next scene. and all of this is, again, so we can absolve lestat of his wrongdoings and ensure no blame falls on him. his trauma is the only important thing in the show and the only thing worth discussing/unpacking. it's just antiblack, misogynistic writing again and again every week and rehashing it feels pointless but i can't help myself.
aside from the blatant racism and misogynoir, i also get the impression that these writers are just trying to get their quoteable, hashtag-able, gif-worthy scenes each episode. who needs a cohesive plot when you can have lestat say "serving cunt has its consequences" or give the viewers an iconic shot of their favorite ship that feels entirely unearnedāone of my examples of this being the fact that devils minion feels like they just put together a bunch of shots that they thought people would love, without actually telling a story with these two characters. everything we learn of their history and relationship is given to us through exposition. and because assad is such a fantastic actor, he's making these scraps into something interesting.
the showrunners are no longer pretending to be subtle with their sloppy writing, poor pacing, and hatred towards louis and claudia. they're just writing the racism right into the script and think that, because a black character says it, they're free from all criticism. and a majority of their nonblack fans are jumping to defend them by saying that claudia's rage is justified and if you claim otherwise (even if you're not saying that) then you can't accept black characters being cruel and/or evil. which isn't true at all.
claudia's rage is entirely justified, her berating the two people that were supposed to love her and put her first but instead used both her life and death for their own gain is not the issue here. she could've been as cruel as she wantedābut having her say a slew of horribly racist things to louis and direct most of her ire towards him as opposed to lestat or the both of them equally was nothing more than these antiblack writers once again degrading louis for their own enjoyment because they hate his character and know they can get away with dragging him through the mud. especially if they hide behind another black character.
even the decapitation at the end felt like a quick moment of shock to the viewer that turned comical immediately after. the abysmal pacing of this show makes it so that loustat being beheaded has no actual weight because we know they're fine and we're given no opportunity to sit with this moment. there are no stakes and there was no real buildup to it. nor to armand and daniel coming up with this plan and suddenly working together the way they are. in fact after the dust settled, id say the scene was borderline cartoonishly evil.
these writers will never face the backlash that they deserve for this joke of a season. not only does this show not deserve to be renewed, but i sincerely hope that jacob, delainey and assad are (aside from being able to talk about it privately in some way) one day able to publicly talk about the racist/misogynistic bullshit that they had to endure this season all in the name of propping up a white character and furthering a bullshit narrative.
Note: This is an updated version of the original post on my old blog. Iām republishing these early deep dives here with edits and additions so I can have everything in one place and to make the reading experience smoother overall.
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Content Warning:Ā These deep dives are written for people who have watched Friendly Rivalry, so you should know what to expect content-wise, but if for some reason you havenāt watched the show...go watch it?? Anyway, FR touches on sensitive topics including suicide, drug abuse and addiction, self-harm, bullying, disordered eating, child abuse, rape, and religious trauma, all of which will be discussed to some extent.
A Note on Names:Ā I first wrote these posts when there was even less consistency online in how the names were rendered in English. My spelling choices were essentially vibes-based, and therefore weird and inconsistent, but unfortunately I donāt have it in me to go back and change all the spellings now. When Iām quoting someone else, Iāll use the spelling from the quoted text.
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Hello and welcome Friendly Rivalry fans! Weāll be starting our colossal undertaking today with the first scene of the first episode: Seulgiās abandonment at the beach.
As I said in the intro, Friendly Rivalry is a challenging show that expects a lot of its audience. Thankfully, FR meets us halfway. Although thereās a lot going on in this scene, the intent, beyond simply establishing the protagonist and her backstory, is to train us as viewers. Weāre being taught here what to expect and what to look out for from now on.
That goes for the most obvious surface-level things, like the fact that Seul-gi is our narrator. Within moments we learn that this is Seul-giās story, told in her own words, with no pretensions to objectivity. Her fallibility is almost immediately placed front and center when she struggles to remember the location of the beach: āWas it the west coast? The east coast? No...Maybe the south?ā
It isnāt just her narration thatās subjective, thoughāthe images are equally unreliable. There is no logical reason a child on a school trip would happen to have dog treats in her royal handbag! What weāre being shown isnāt āwhat really happened,ā or even a blurry imperfect memory. (In her narration, Seul-gi admits that she hardly remembers anything other than the moment when she first realizes that sheās all alone.) In fact, this scene is closer to pure fictionāa scene Seul-gi constructs, from scraps of memory patched with invention, to help us understand her. This āscrapbookā techniqueāwith fantasy, memory, and metaphor all coexisting on the page, as it wereāis one Friendly Rivalry will use time and time again to bring the inner worlds of its characters to life.
(Itās used even more literally in the school trip photo montage, where Baby Suel-gi, always in the background or a bit out of frame, has been helpfully outlined and decorated so that we donāt lose sight of her. Are these real photos? How would Seul-gi have gotten hold of them? Who knows! Itās her story and she will bend the laws of the universe itself to tell it!)
So from the opening moments we know that Friendly Rivalry is a story that will play with, and even outright disregard, the bounds of realism for the sake of a metaphor. Seul-gi has those convenient dog treats for one reason: to illustrate how she felt back then. This poor girl is so desperate to be noticed that all her efforts to stand out and be liked only end up isolating her even more. (The princess dress is such a believable detail, tooāyou either know a stubborn kid who insists on embarrassing themselves like this, or you were that weird kid.) Has there ever been a more perfect analogy for that crushing feeling of invisibility than a dog turning up its nose at the treats in your hand?
On one level, this scene tells us exactly what we need to know about Seul-gi, and gestures at a larger character arc. How will Seul-gi react to being noticed from now on? Will she be able to overcome the trauma of her abandonment? Will she ever find someoneāsay, a popular girl at school who skateboards, perhapsāwho can see her for who she really is?
Thatās plot, character, and style, all established in under a minute. But wait! Thereās more!
This opening also introduces several motifs that will take on greater significance down the line. Maybe the most immediately obvious is color. The first thing we see is a bright yellow van, carrying a group of kindergarteners in matching bright yellow uniforms. Later, Seul-giās suitcase will also be yellow, as will be the pencil that appears in this episodeās title card.
The next most notable color is blue: the color of Seul-giās princess dress, the dogās collar, and the ocean on the shore of which Seul-gi finds herself abandoned.
If you have guessed that blue and yellow will be two of the most important symbolic colors in this series, congrats! But there are little flashes of almost every color here that will become important later. Check the toys in the sand and, in addition to blue and yellow, youāll see lots of green, purple, and red.
These colors represent Friendly Rivalryās core cast members, all of whom suffer from episodes of childhood trauma that will be revealed in prologues just like this one.
Beyond color symbolism, this scene introduces some important images as well that will take on symbolic meaning later. Thereās the dog that ignores Seul-giās treats and runs away, thereās the princess outfit that Seul-gi wears, and thereās the water. (Thereās actually one more recurring image, the van, but itās less important overall.) For now we canāt say much about these symbols other than that, because they show up in this scene, they are each associated now with Seul-giās abandonment.
Speaking of that abandonment, thereās another aspect of this scene worth pondering, and itās probably the most challenging aspect of all. Weāve already seen that the style of storytelling here is decidedly non-realistic. This is essentially Seul-giās storybook fantasy of how she was abandonedāthe story as she tells it to herself, complete with fairy-tale costuming.
But the story also follows the logic of a fairy tale. Itās satisfying in a poetic way, and on an emotional level, but it does not really make any rational sense, at all. How hard could it be to locate a lost child in a princess dress who is old enough to communicate and knows her own name? Certainly her parents would have found out she was missing the same day, and could have contacted the police station nearest to the beach, or every orphanage in the area, or...?
Seul-giās account of her abandonment must be at least partly true. There really are missing person posters with her picture on it, and in that photo sheās really wearing a princess dress. Itās also confirmed eventually that Seul-giās parents, and later her stepmom, did earnestly try to find her.
But her account is woefully incomplete, and sidesteps every question it raisesāleaving, from the very first scene, a big inexplicable hole at the heart of Friendly Rivalry.
Itās easy to chalk this up to carelessness on the part of the writers, and to some extent, I think itās probably true that they viewed such practical concerns as secondary to the emotional truth of the scene. Seul-gi, for her part, doesnāt seem interested in questions of how or why, either, and quickly moves on, leaving the gap forever unfilled.Ā
But given how carefully constructed this scene is otherwise, is it possible that this gaping plot hole was left here for us on purpose?
Like the scrapbook effect, narrative gaps are a storytelling technique that Friendly Rivalry will return to constantly. Later this episode, Seul-giās dad will die, sheāll get a phone call about it, and sheāll show up at a new school, the school where her father taught, with a suitcase four months later. Except literally all the connective tissue you would expect between those events is missing.
We arenāt told how she finds her dad in the first place, or that itās her father who dies, or that the phone call is about his death, or why she transfers schools. We have to connect all those dots on our own, and in at least one case, we wonāt have enough information to complete the picture until near the end of the series.
The conspicuous lack of explanation in this scene is part of a pattern, in other words, which leads me to believe itās yet another instance of Friendly Rivalry teaching us how to watch it.
Seul-gi is not going to tell us everything. In fact she canāt. She doesnāt remember where the beach was the day she was left behind. She only knows that wearing a princess dress that day cursed her to a life of loneliness and hardship.
The rest of the page she leaves blank.Ā We as viewers have to help her finish the scrapbook.
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