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I think understanding squid game season 3 becomes easier once you realise that everything is an analogy. The squid game is capitalism. When faced against such a powerful system, you can choose to give up and accept that humans will always be controlled by money OR you can choose to continue fighting and have hope in the good of humanity. Inho is the first, Gihun is the latter. The random group of finalists represent governments, and how they’re often filled by men who use democracy as a tool to decide what’s fair and unfair. The baby represents all the goodness of humanity, and who the baby gets passed to also matter (junhee to gihun to inho to junho) (but that’s another analysis for another day). The VIPs are us: they make surface level commentary and only focus on the individual games rather than diving deep into the actual story.

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day 42 || this post + its tags have been rotating in my head and i needed to draw it out. also jws mention because i couldnt help myself

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Love you 3000 💔

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Little Canon Gi-hun Things I See Underrepresented In Fanon:

-References to his time as a factory worker / mechanic building cars - he most likely worked on a factory line, building specific skills and muscle memory that probably stayed with him forever

-This would likely affect how he thinks and how he sees the world - ex, does he conceptualize problems as mechanical parts that he's trying to build into a functional machine? Maybe that's why he thinks he can stop the games... he knows how to make machines, surely he can dismantle one (he thinks)

-And so: KNOWS HIS WAY AROUND A CAR. He likes cars! He built them for over a decade and drove professionally on and off afterwards. One of the only things he actually spent money on after the games... was a car. Gi-hun is a car guy! I wish we saw that more.

-His identity as a dad is SO important to him - I see this discussed in reference to Jun-hee's baby of course, but we saw Gi-hun’s attachment to this part of his identity and place in society from S1 ("Why do you keep calling him the kids' dad? I'm Ga-yeong's dad!")

-Building off the above: a huge part of Gi-hun’s identity and personhood is a desire to CARE FOR people. Not just care about them, which he also does a lot, but care FOR them.

-He's probably a good cook, actually. Both of Gi-hun’s business ventures were food places, and we can tell how much he enjoys food in general, how much it means to him. Personally I think it's likely that he's a really decent chef, when he has the chance, and it was his financial incompetence that drove the businesses to the ground. I often see In-ho portrayed as the better cook but I think it's probably the other way around.

-He tells the Recruiter that he grew up in a Buddhist household, which I don't think I've EVER seen represented in fic (not that he strikes me as overly religious, but surely that cultural structure would remain within the framework of his inner life somehow)

-He's MANIPULATIVE. Listen I love our sweet innocent baby but he's not all innocent. When he wants or needs to be, he can be as manipulative as In-ho. (Ex: whining at his mom until she gave him more money; causing Deok-su to question his men's trustworthiness)

-He's an opportunistic little liar who will sometimes say whatever he thinks he needs to; see: telling Sae-byeok he'll forget about the money if she unties him and then immediately hopping after her dwmanding it back anyway. Again: he's the SWEETEST little bean but he's ALSO a little shit.

-His neighborhood is a huge part of him and who he is. He mentions Ssangmun-dong every chance he gets in S1. In fact, he says it so much that Ali thinks it's his name! (He also associates it a lot with Sang-woo, the pride of Ssangmun-dong, and I rarely ever see Gi-hun get to mourn his old connection with his childhood neighborhood after it's forever associated with what he lost.)

-Gi-hun’s knee-jerk reaction to trouble is to call for help. He asks people for help all the time. The lady at the kiosk who gave him back his bill. Screaming to the guards when Deok-su threatened him. He's a team player (see: working as part of a team at Dragon Motors!). Being independent or a leader isn't something intuitive to him; he had to learn and grow into that to do what needed to be done.

-This man has the common sense and survival skills of a rock. Got pickpocketed by Sae-byeok and gave her soda back... including the straw that fell on the ground already smh... Asks Kim Jeong-rae (the loan shark who wanted to DRINK HIS BLOOD AS A SOUP like thirty seconds ago) for a loan... IMMEDIATELY after that same man threatened his LIFE for owing him money... bud...

-The TEMPER this man has on him. Flashbang. He runs HOT.

-He's SUPERSTITIOUS which I think is weirdly cute?? It's mostly centered around his gambling (less cute) but he attributes meaning and significance to numbers and other things - I WISH I got to see Gi-hun’s weird little superstitions more in fanon!

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Listen carefully. I'm not a horse. I'm a person. SQUID GAME 2021-2025 | Created by Hwang Dong-hyuk

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what if we use 100% of our brain? woo-seok 🤝 siri

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🕯

Please reblog with a candle to show how much Gihun impacted us all! 🕯

Or a your favorite photo of him.

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i might be the only person in the world who liked season 3 LOL

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Hot take, apparently: Squid Game season 3 was good.

(Spoilers for S3) I’m assuming the reason everybody didn’t like it was because everyone died, and especially Gi-hun. However, that was where the show was leading the entire time. The games are inherently impossible to win (or get out with a happy ending). This is because the players are desperate and have far too large egos. This is perfectly explained by the Front Man when he assures the VIPs that the last game will take place. Because the players can “choose who dies”, they are far more willing to continue. They want to target the weak players and profit off of their demises. This reinforces the metaphor that Squid Games is; Squid Games is a metaphor for capitalism, and it always has been.

It’s about how the top population is uber wealthy, and because of that, they can afford to do insane things for their entertainment. They can get poor, desperate people to join these games with the misleading promise of money. They never outright lie, but they do intentionally leave out the fact that if you don’t win the game, you die. Again, this is the capitalism metaphor. In real life, the richest people have the ability to essentially do whatever the hell they want. They can give people opportunities to win money that they have almost zero chance of winning. And a lot of the time, this means a person has to uproot their life to get this chance, leaving them worse off than where they were before when they don’t win. Okay, whatever, who cares about all this?

You don’t like the baby winning the games? First of all, that’s messed up of you. Second, there’s a reason she did. She represents purity and the lack of choice that the players had. She is forced to participate in the games as if she joined of her own free will, like the others did (all for the entertainment of the VIPS‼️). Also, she had zero choice in the voting. She and Gi-hun (who was literally handcuffed to a bed) were the only ones that weren’t able to vote, and they both couldn’t vote because they physically couldn’t. So what does that say about the show? Well, for Gi-hun, it’s to show how rebelling against the games won’t get you anywhere, and you’ll be forced to continue. Like irl, you can’t fight against capitalism, and you’ll be thrown right back in. And the baby? It’s being born into an unjust system. She was born and even though every player was promised the ability to vote, she couldn’t because she was too young. This could also be a metaphor for government, but I won’t delve into that. Back to the baby; in the last game, she was going to be killed, yet she had no say in who would die like the guard promised. The group of men was taking advantage of her lack of a vote and their ability to be the majority. They believed that if they worked together, they could get through the game with minimal deaths. This, in theory, could work. However, because of the nature of the games and the nature of the men themselves, this doesn't happen. The baby is the ONLY one who hasn't done something morally wrong in the games; she's untouched by the corruption caused by greed. Okay, the baby winning didn't irk you?

You don't like the VIPs and they feel unnatural? Well, I agree, but I think there's a reason for this. The VIPs are supposed to be alienated from the players. They mostly speak English, a direct contrast to the players almost solely speaking Korean (Thanos and Nam-gyu being exceptions. However, they never had serious convos in English, so it doesn't feel the same). Their voices don't seem to match the show, and their dialogue feels too silly for the environment. Now, I'd agree with you if that was your only complaint. However, this may have been an intentional way to get the audience to subconsciously think of the VIPs in a different manner than they think of the players. Adding on to that, they wear masks. I feel like a lot of people gloss over the mask wearing in Squid Game, but it really adds to the alienation of the workers and VIPs. The VIPs only take their masks off once in season 3, and that is when they are killing players in the aftermath of the Hide and Seek game. Even unmasked, the power dynamic is still in their favor. They are always in control, and they never have to worry that they're in trouble. The show never takes the time to try to humanize the VIPs, and I'm sure that's on purpose.

Overall, this show is, and has always been about how the wealthy take advantage of the poor. They give the desperate corrupt opportunities to become rich, and a single person walks away with the winnings. The only way to win the games or get out is either through brutality (as shown in how In-ho/the Front Man won his games), pure luck (Gi-hun's S1 win), or devotion from another person (the baby's win and Player 246/Gyeong-seok's escape in S3). I understand being sad or upset that the show didn't have a happy ending, but it makes sense that it didn't. I also want to acknowledge that there will be spin-offs/sequels that take place in other countries. While this could've been a clever way to insinuate that the games will never stop if it was mentioned in the original show, it's just a cash grab. Netflix wants to capitalize off of the capitalism metaphor. How ironic.

(There are many things I didn't talk about in this post. If you want to discuss other complaints, analyses, or anything else about Squid Game, you're welcome to comment on this post or add it in a reblog)

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Cate Blanchett could never come close to the original Recruiter’s energy let's be real and I’m not even sorry

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People are saying the moral of squid game was that evil rich people always win and there's no point in fighting back against capitalism, but I don't think that was what the creator was getting at.

In-ho spent all of s2&3 trying to prove to Gi-hun and himself that Gi-hun was just like him. That people are all violent, cruel and selfish at their core. That trash deserve to die. That anyone would make the same choice he did.

But Gi-hun proved him wrong. There *are* good people. Not everyone would have made the same choice In-ho did. Gi-hun chose not to ruthlessly murder helpless people to save himself. He chose to sacrifice himself for his friend's innocent baby. He chose compassion, humanity, and selflessness at the cost of his own life.

You can always choose to be good. You can always choose to help others. Even if you can't save the world and the bad guys still win in the end, you can always choose light. 'You can win but you can't break me'. That was the point. That was the message.

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You are not that kind of person.

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Gi-hun

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Dibujo: Jugador 456 - Squid Game 3 

Regalame un ❤️ y Sugiereme ideas, Thanks

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Btw, Gi-hun — through his actions and decisions, direct or indirect — not only blew up the gaming island but also saved the lives and destinies of all these people. He is an angel. His impact is huge, he gave them a chance 😭

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all that's left of you

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i like to pretend that gihuns hair slowly grew back in the afterlife because it connects back to when he was happiest, and hair holds memories (imagine his hair to be like whatever it was when he was happiest in life. it would be misery to be stuck like that all of forever)