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can we just talk about how inho is shy and socially awkward for a minute? like painfully so. we saw the bad jokes between games and during mingle—he is hopeless. and it doesn’t help that he hasn’t had a proper human conversation that didn’t involve, you know, death games and psychological torment in close to a decade.

gihun doesn’t realise the extent of it at first. sure, inho as young-il was a little stiff, a little weird, but that had to be part of the act, right? and as the front man? inho was composed. cold. smug. voice like velvet-covered steel. every time they spoke, gihun got the distinct sense of being measured by someone who already knew the answer. all sharp angles and control. that’s the version gihun thought he was dealing with.

so when the games collapse and they start orbiting each other again, gihun expects someone cold, commanding, maybe a little emotionally constipated—but put-together.

what he gets instead is a man who still tells absolutely abysmal jokes and then immediately stares at gihun’s face like a puppy waiting for approval. (sometimes he’ll even laugh first, just in case gihun doesn’t. like he’s trying to cue him). who blurts out weird facts because he thought of them and didn’t know how else to keep the conversation going. who, for a man who stares so much, absolutely flounders when gihun stares back. like, cheeks going pink, eyes darting away, suddenly finding the wall very interesting. he’s a disaster. a cute, sweet disaster.

and don’t even get me started on strangers. he’s awful with them. can’t order at cafés without rehearsing it in his head first.

also: he’s a nerd. a massive one. the matrix limo convo wasn’t a mind game, it was enthusiasm barely disguised as ominous metaphor. inho loves sci-fi, psychological thrillers, obscure old anime films. he has a letterboxd account and he uses it like a diary. and above all: he loves art. always has. went to galleries alone before the games. sketches in his free time—not for anyone else, just to get it out of his system. there’s a little sketchbook in his drawer gihun isn’t supposed to know about, filled with quiet charcoal drawings and half-finished portraits. when he’s nervous, he doodles spirals on napkins. when he’s in love, he draws from memory.

the only time he isn’t awkward is when he corners gihun and info-dumps about his favourite painting of the month or a book he has finished. eyes bright, hands moving, voice gaining momentum like a train with no brakes. he lights up. he’s adorable. and gihun—gihun finds it ridiculously endearing.

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inhun x princess mononoke x the empire of light

i am losing my mind 😭

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i hope these two will get their happy ending

umm uhh... bare exposed a$$ below the cut so slight nsfw

aftermath of the explosion

yup

idk if tumblr will smite me with this, idk how tumblr works with their moderation

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It's wild what a three-day 𝙨𝙞𝙩𝙪𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨𝙝𝙞𝙥 can do to a middle-aged man...

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"Forgiveness"

Well, tell me how you came to such a life. Youngil. Oh Ilnam at least introduced himself by his real name

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My unpopular opinion is that it's not gihun's job to comfort and save Inho, not after what he did to him and jungbae (and the other players too)

He will feel empathy, probably, and he will try to understand him. They are both ex winners after all. But forgive him and save him? I can't see that. Gihun forgiving Inho would make jungbae's death look like a joke

If Inho will have some forgiveness or something, I can see it more with Junho because of their history and because they are family. But Gihun? That's a big no.

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"Sooo...are u mad at me?" 🥺👉👈

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im here. i'll be here until june 27th.

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ARE WE GETTING FLASHBACKS FROM IN-HO'S GAME IN 2015????? I'M SHAKINFGSHJ

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He gets more and more pretty every season

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Hwang In-ho: is he Redeemable?

I've noticed people are way too polarizing when it comes to Hwang In-ho's character. They either see him as just a psychopath with zero humanity and zero potential for redemption (looking at you, reddit) or this little traumatized meow meow who only did bad things because he's suffering.

But things are never that simple.

A few things I want to address in this meta post:

Where Gi-hun and In-ho are different

Why he became the Frontman (in my opinion)

His possibility for Redemption

In-ho is a very complex character, and I'll try to break it down in this post with the limited information we have.

Where he and Gi-hun are different

We all know the similarities between Gi-hun and In-ho. We know that In-ho himself sees his past self in Gi-hun. While they are similar in many aspects, I think they are fundamentally different.

Now, we don't really have In-ho's complete backstory. We know he had a pregnant, sick wife who died. We know has had a half-brother and a step-mother. We know he was a cop and that he lost his job.

I want to focus on this point in particular because, as I see it, this is where Gi-hun and In-ho are fundamentally different.

Gi-hun first worked in a factory, then as a shopkeeper, then as a chauffeur. For all we know, before becoming the Frontman, In-ho only ever worked as a cop, which is a job that can require you to kill.

Likely, he was already a murderer way before entering the games. Which is why, he tells Gihun that he knows that's blood money, but it doesn't matter to him if that's what it takes to save his wife and child. He went into the games the first time, ready to kill because he had already killed before. While Gi-hun, who had a pretty regular job before, was only ready to kill when pushed to the limit. And even then, he refused to do it.

But this guy? This guy never had any hesitation.

I'm not saying being a cop made him a bad person (before the games), even Jun-ho is a cop and he killed people too without hesitation; first when he infiltrated the island, and then to escape.

But he's not a good person either. This is another thing where he and Gi-hun differ. We know from the latter's backstory (the strike, the rebellion) that he puts collective needs above individualistic needs. You would think that a cop would do the same, but given the things he was willing to do to save his wife, I think it's safe to say he's pretty selfish in that regard.

It wasn't the game that changed him, it wasn't the game that traumatized him and made him this ruthless, calculating game master; he was already like that. Someone like Gi-hun, someone idealistic who values human life, would never become the Frontman, it doesn't matter how much they're hurt and traumatized.

The games didn't turn him into a cold-blooded murderer, the games took away the only light and hope he had in life, turning an already ruthless man into a ruthless man with nothing to lose.

Why he became the Frontman (in my opinion)

In-ho was a cop. A job that gives you control, gives you power over others. But when his wife got sick, when he was dragged into the games the first time, he lost control over his life.

I think that, just like Gi-hun, In-ho was unable to go back to his normal life. He was unable to look at his mother and brother in the eyes after everything he had done. Especially since the reason he did all that in the first place, his wife and child, was gone.

He couldn't go back to his family, he couldn't go back to his job, so he went back to the only place where he could have some sort of control. He couldn't control what happened in his life, he couldn't control the circumstances that lead him to the games, but he could control the games now.

All that bullshit about fairness is just what he tells himself to feel better, but the only reason he became the Frontman was because that role gave him some semblance of control over his own life. The very one he had lost.

And this is what drastically reduces his possibilities for redemption, because his reasonings were pretty selfish, and completely avoidable.

Possibility for Redemption?

I do believe there's still some humanity in him. I've seen people say that he doesn't give a fuck about Jun-hee, that if he did he wouldn't have recruited her in the first place. Which is crazy to me, because it's not like he recruits every single person himself, he has employees that do that and keep files on the players. He only ever goes to check those files when he needs to. Like during the glass bridge, he didn't know that player was a glass-maker until he checked his file, just like he didn't know Jun-hee was pregnant before she went to Gi-hun's team to ask for help.

Personally, I think there's no way he'll ever let Jun-hee die. I think whatever's left of his humanity is buried deep inside him, but it's still there. And Jun-hee might be the key to bringing it to the surface.

When it comes to redemption, I cannot see any other redemption for this character that isn't through sacrifice. Whether he sacrifices himself to save Jun-hee, or his brother, or Gi-hun, or to stop the games, that is the only way he could ever atone for what he has done. Because frankly, he doesn't deserve a happy ending. He doesn't deserve to return to his family and be happy when all the people who died in the games couldn't. But self-sacrifice would be a beautiful wrap-up on his character; In-ho finally understanding that humans can make selfless choices, coming to realize the error of his ways, would be a beautiful ending for him.

But of course, this is just my opinion.

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Positive impacts Gi-hun has had in other people's lives which will still matter even if the games get back on track, Gi-hun dies, and the games end with the expected sole surviving player taking home the entire ₩ 45.6 billion once again in S3:

Cheol is being raised by a financially stable parental figure who loves him.

Sangwoo's mother gets to focus on being a good parent to Cheol instead of drowning alone in her confusion, grief, and lack of closure around Sangwoo's disappearance.

Cheol's mother still has a decent chance of being brought across the border and reunited with her son, who is being raised in a kind and stable home environment in the meantime.

Saebyeok's broker is making a genuine effort to be a kinder/better person to all of his clients.

Junho and Wooseok know about the games and still have access to whatever remains of Gihun's winnings from the first games. Either or both of them could easily decide to continue carrying on Gihun's mission of destroying the games, even if Gihun dies.

The recruiter is still dead. (Less obvious, perhaps, on the 'positive impact' front, but it seems likely that he was one of the better recruiters the games had, which means replacing him will probably require at least some stressful/annoying work on the part of the game runners. They'll have to hope they can find someone else as well suited to the conman's job. If they can't, it might also become more difficult to fill all 456 spots with willing victims every year in future games.)

Gihun can't undo the selfish choices he made in the past or the losses he's suffered in the games, but neither can the games unwrite every act of kindness he's committed since.

Sometimes things feel hopeless because we get too focused on too narrow a view of our personal impact on the world. A win is still a win, though - an act of selfless kindness that helped someone else still matters - even when the bigger battles are lost, our greatest goals are not realized, and despair feels so easy to lose ourselves in.

There may always be cruel and selfish people in the world, but there will always be kind and caring people, too. The games can strip away hope and compassion from the people they grind down and destroy, but they can't strip all the kindness, all the people who choose caring for each other over selfish greed, or all the acts of selfless compassion that change someone else's life for the better from every person in the world.

Gihun can't stop cruelty from existing in the world, but the games can't stop kindness from existing in the world, too.

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Frontman is back to manage the game

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my hugest pet peeve when it comes to inho is when ppl portray him as this rlly stylish patrick bateman style rich guy ESPECIALLY pre-games. GUYS the whole pointtttt is he is roleplaying the elite he would NAWT have posh taste outside of his fake persona