the-hopeful-squid

[the-hopeful-squid]

"The good guys always win and the villains always lose," is a hero power fantasy.

"The bad guys always win and the heroes always lose," is a villain power fantasy.

Both of these are black and white power fantasy narratives.

There's nothing wrong with being more entertained by one of these fictional narratives over the other.

There's nothing wrong with finding something more moving or meaningful or cathartic in one of these narratives than the other.

Different people get their own meaning from any story they engage with, for reasons that are not the business of random ass nosy strangers to interrogate and judge.

But both of the above are black and white power fantasies.

Neither one is 'more realistic' than the other.

If you want realism and nuance, don't buy into absolutes.

[the-hopeful-squid]

To put it another way:

I am firmly of the belief that it is unethical for corporations to have the right to force individual creators to sign over intellectual property rights to their own stories before those stories are allowed to be told to a wide audience.

In regards to franchising in particular, it is unethical for corporations to force individual creators to sign over intellectual property rights to their own stories so that, if the original story becomes sufficiently popular, the corporation can continue to make money by profiting off of what is effectively corporate funded fanfiction of the original story.

If regular people are not allowed to profit off of fanfiction, corporations should not be allowed to profit off of fanfiction, either.

With so many SG spin-offs apparently already being discussed or set up, I want to say only one thing.

As far as I'm concerned, once a story like Squid Game leaves the hands of the original writer, all other spin-offs/franchising/etc are little more than corporate funded fanfiction.

Squid Game is HDH's intellectual property.

The fact that he had to sign away intellectual property rights to Netflix in order to have his own story told to a wide audience is an example of how the insatiably greedy beast of capitalism will take and hoard and use to further its own power anything it can get its hands on.

Not evidence that Squid Game intellectual property rights should belong to Netflix.

[the-hopeful-squid]

With so many SG spin-offs apparently already being discussed or set up, I want to say only one thing.

As far as I'm concerned, once a story like Squid Game leaves the hands of the original writer, all other spin-offs/franchising/etc are little more than corporate funded fanfiction.

Squid Game is HDH's intellectual property.

The fact that he had to sign away intellectual property rights to Netflix in order to have his own story told to a wide audience is an example of how the insatiably greedy beast of capitalism will take and hoard and use to further its own power anything it can get its hands on.

Not evidence that Squid Game intellectual property rights should belong to Netflix.

[the-hopeful-squid]

For anyone else who is interested, I've put together a little rec list of some of my favorite S3 fix-it fics so far:

Us, Unexpected (Daehee centric; canon divergence from the end of S2, in which the rebellion worked & everyone got out; incomplete: 2/5 chapters so far, 6k wordcount)

after the night sky (Dae-ho centric time travel AU starting from S3Ep2, everyone lives/nobody dies, incomplete: 4/? chapters so far, 23k wordcount)

all i have left (post-S2 canon divergence; starts from the end of S2 and then ignores S3 entirely, somebody lives/not everybody dies; complete: 1/1 chapters, 5.9k wordcount)

[the-hopeful-squid]

Anyways, fell into a bit of an anger spiral the last few days at how ridiculously nonsense SG S3 wound up being. In the interest of getting back to more positive and hopeful things, I'm revisiting one of my favorite Tolkien quotes, from the Foreward to the Second Edition of LotR:

"The Lord of the Rings has been read by many people since it first appeared in print; and I should like to say something here with reference to the many opinions or guesses that I have recieved or have read concerning the motives and meaning of the tale. The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe even excite them or deeply move them. As a guide I had only my own feelings for what is appealing or moving, and for many the guide was inevitably often at fault. Some who have read the book, or at any rate have reviewed it, have found it boring, absurd, or contemptible; and I have no cause to complain, since I have similar opinions of their works, or of the kinds of writing that they evidently prefer."

I am happy there are people who found something moving and meaningful in S3. We all have to find our own meaning in fiction; just as humanity cannot be summed up by any one, singular thing that applies to all people, so too is there no one, singular "correct" type of fictional story to tell which will move all people the same, no one, singular "correct" type of story in which all people will find positive value or meaning.

When it comes to SG, I'm disappointed primarily that the story told in S3 is not the same story that was told in S1. The themes and messages are different between S1 to S3, in some cases so different as to be mutually incompatible messages. And I loved the messages of S1.

S1 is my Squid Game.

S3 is not.

[the-hopeful-squid]

If it exists in people, then it's part of human nature.

Hope and compassion exist in people.

The existence of one part of human nature does not negate the existence of other parts.

Ergo, hope and compassion are parts of human nature, regardless of whatever else people might also be.

[the-hopeful-squid]

We are not tilting at windmills when we identify and fight back against specific harmful people and institutions in this world, especially when we work together with other people in our community to do so.

We tilt at windmills when we try to fight against the ideas of hope and compassion as positive values that can bring more hope, compassion, and joy to other people, too.

[the-hopeful-squid]

We as a species have literally only continued to survive as a communal species that puts value on kindness and compassion because people who are kind and compassionate and communally driven have existed and survived throughout history.

Literally since the start of humanity as a species, kind people have existed, survived, and helped other kind and compassionate people do the same.

If kind, compassionate people always got ground down and died as losers, there wouldn't be any kind, compassionate people left.

That's how evolution works.

And yet humanity has existed for at least hundreds of thousands if not millions of years, and kind people still exist.

[the-hopeful-squid]

Tilting at windmills, as applied to the story of Don Quixote, is a phrase used to describe someone who is fighting against imaginary enemies.

Gi-hun in S2 was not tilting at windmills.

Gi-hun in S2 was fighting against a very real organization of very real, very viciously cruel and dangerous people who kidnapped and slaughtered hundreds of poor and marginalized people every year, for the entertainment of wealthy, evil people who had grown so utterly disconnected from their own humanity that they could consider the games entertainment in the first place.

That is in fact not an imaginary enemy. That is an incredibly reasonable and justified group of people to declare as a very real enemy.

You know when Gi-hun was tilting at windmills?

In Season 3.

Gi-hun was tilting at windmills after the rebellion, when he wanted to find anyone but the game runners to blame for Jung-bae's death, because he had failed to stop the games but still wanted an accessible target on whom to take out his anger and grief.

Gi-hun was tilting at windmills all through S3, when he basically gave up on fighting back against the people actually running the games that had murdered his hope, to the point that he eventually left a literal helpless baby in their dubious care while he died instead.

You know who else is tilting at windmills?

Any of us, when we buy into the capitalist lie that the real enemies are our mildly shitty neighbors who are the regular kind of not very great people, instead of the people at the top forcefeeding us the false value of hopeless despair in our own poor little lives where we are too powerless to ever make any real difference with our choices, because our despair only helps their goal of hoarding up all the wealth and power they can get off the blood and exploitation of everyone else.

[the-hopeful-squid]

S3 where everything stays the same up until the point where In-ho gives Gi-hun the knife and makes his offer the night before the 6th game.

And instead of deciding not to kill the other finalists in their sleep because he sees Sae-byeok's ghost telling him that he's, "a good person," Gi-hun thinks about the helpless literal baby in his arms and the fact that he knows most of these finalists are an active threat to this baby's life. Then he tucks the baby close in one arm and uses the knife in his free hand to slit the other finalists' throats one by one-

Until he reaches Min-su's bed last, baby in one hand and bloody knife in the other, and instead of finishing off the last finalist and completing In-ho's deal he kicks Min-su's bed frame hard enough to startle him awake, gives him a moment to take in the bloody knife and the row of too still, too red bodies in the six beds behind him-

And then gives Min-su the chance to call for one more vote with Clause 3 and help Gi-hun end the game with three winners that night.

Because yes, Gi-hun has done monstrous things, now (he killed Dae-ho, it wasn't Dae-ho's fault but he blamed him he hunted him down and he killed him, pinned Dae-ho to the floor as he struggled and begged and pressed down on his throat until he was dead, and he walked away but he didn't deserve to, he doesn't deserve to keep breathing when he's the reason Dae-ho's breathing stopped-), things that maybe he'll never come back from-

But this child hasn't, this two-day-old baby hasn't done anything yet, and she needs someone to get her out of this place in one piece or she'll never have a chance to make any choices at all, and who else is left on this island of monsters that kills everything selfless and good but himself, himself and maybe this boy who he barely knows but who had looked so scared and so lost and so angry yesterday in a way that tugs at something still left in the shattered husk of his heart that somehow still feels like kindness?

So he took the knife Hwang In-ho gave him and he slit the throats of six sleeping players (and all he could see in each bed was Sae-byeok's cooling corpse, but now Gi-hun's the one standing over her body and holding the knife, again and again and again-), but maybe it doesn't have to be seven (and he'd beg, "Please," if he thought it would help, he'd fall to his knees if the last man lying beneath him asked with the breath Gi-hun hasn't yet torn from his lungs-)-

And all he can do is tuck Jun-hee's baby closer into his side, grip the knife in a hand soaked with six players' blood (seven, it's six on the knife but it's seven in the blood on his hands because he killed Dae-ho, he put these same hands on Dae-ho's neck and pressed down and that's blood he will never wash off-), and all he can do is (stupidly, stubbornly) turn his back once again on certain victory for himself to instead offer even one other person the chance to go home without anymore killing, and all he can do is (stupidly, stubbornly) hope that this time the last person he's standing over will finally say, "Yes" (and even he doesn't know where he finds the audacity to keep hoping for anything good anymore, not here in this hell that kills everything good-)-

And the boy who only got this far in the first place on a whole lot of luck and help from strangers that he'd barely known what to do with and a handful of pills he stole from the man who killed his only friend here while he watched (the friend who he'd betrayed and left to die twice) looks at the man standing over him with a bloody knife in one hand and a baby tucked into his side with the other, and maybe Min-su's not really awake after all, maybe this is only a dream, the last dream he'll ever have before he wakes up in the morning and finds out his luck has finally run out-

But he hears Gi-hun's offer and he thinks, or maybe this is a chance that he can finally go home-

And he says, "Okay."

[the-hopeful-squid]

Do you have a favorite ship in squid game. If so which one and can you explain why?

Tough one! In typical hopeful squid fashion, I have a hard time picking favorites and this might get long, lol.

--

While watching S2, I was most drawn to Inhun, though I was also pretty fond of Hyunju/Yongsik right off the bat.

I've written up my thoughts on Inhun before, in this post.

After the end of S2, I'm really only into unrequited Inhun unless it's an AU where In-ho never killed Jung-bae.

For Hyunsik, I just like how Yong-sik is so matter-of-factly supportive of Hyun-ju right from the start. The instant his mom points her out and starts getting weird, he shuts her down gently but firmly in a way that doesn't call any further attention to Hyun-ju that she might find uncomfortable. He pulls his mom over to pair up with her during the Pentathalon, and then treats her like any other player. After the Pentathalon, when he realises the invasive nature of his mom's questions, he moves to shut her down again but then backs off as soon as Hyun-ju says she's okay answering. He's a little awkward but well-meaning when she mentions wanting to move to Thailand and feel beautiful, and he gets super excited because he has heard there are lots of beautiful trans women in Thailand, so clearly this is an excellent plan and he is 100% on the get-Hyunju-to-Thailand train!!

He's just so consistently sweet and supportive and kind without being overbearing or creepy, and he's willing to stand up for trans people as regular people even to his own mom - without getting weird about it and trying to fight Hyun-ju's battles for her, because he respects her voice about her own life. He's also a sweetheart in general (if you don't count S3, which I absolutely Do Not), who might be a bit of a mess in his personal life given his debt, who gets tripped up over his desire to solve his problems On His Own and lied to/avoided his mom for like 3 years instead of owning up to his debt, but only because of how deeply he wants to be a son who his mom can be proud of. He is a man who loves and respects his mom so much, and just genuinely respects women in general as capable, competent human beings. Such an underrated character, imo, but still one of my new faves from S2.

And I just think Hyun-ju deserves someone like that for a partner <3

Daeho/Junhee, on the other hand, has been growing on me a lot more, lately. Jun-hee deserved to survive and raise her baby with a decent, reliable guy, and Dae-ho deserved to survive and get a chance to prove he could be a much better dad than his had been. Plus, I find it super cute to imagine Dae-ho teaching Jun-hee how to play gonggi, since she never got to learn as a kid.

--

The SG ship I probably find most compelling, though, and the one I'm most often drawn to fanfic for: Sangihun.

Why: Where do I start?

You've got opposites attract - the smart/driven child prodigy with the bright future turned cold & anxious adult wreck drowning in debt on the run from the cops, vs. the disorganized & impulsive walking disaster with a kind heart who no one has ever expected much out of yet who gives away everything so freely including his love and admiration and care.

You've got years of repressed gay yearing up against happy-go-lucky bisexual obliviousness.

You've got childhood friends to estranged adults who reconnect in a frightening, high stress situation that takes them from estranged adults back to friends to enemies to "I have loved you for so long that I cannot fathom killing you or even letting you passively die if I could save both of us instead, and if the only thing I take out of this hell with me is you alive at my side then I can't imagine making any other choice/I have loved you for so long that I got used to ignoring it, I was told I was better than you for so long that I convinced myself I believed it, and I was going to kill you to save the shameful ruin I'd made of my own life, but you held out your hand to me anyway after all that and would have gone home with nothing but me, so I killed myself to make sure you got out of here with something of value instead," over the course of a week, and if that's not compelling ship fodder then frankly I don't know what is.

[the-hopeful-squid]

who are your top 3 fav squid game characters and why???

One qualification to start things off: I do not consider S3 canon for these answers. Strictly S1/S2 characters and character arcs, here.

Kang Dae-ho! Why: Sweetest boy. Bestest boy. Precious golden retriever of a man, who learned how to play girl's games from his 4 older sisters, joined the marines to please his shitty father and only got a bunch of fresh trauma out of it instead, but was still so positive and caring and hopeful and so excited to be part of a team of older men he looked up to. Kang Dae-ho, king of my heart <3

Cho Sang-woo! & Hwang In-ho! Why: Both wonderfully complex, tragic antagonists, and well-crafted foils to Gi-hun and his character arc in S1 & S2, respectively. I could write whole essays about them both, but then I'd never be finished and this ask would never get answered. Bonus: In my headcanons, at least, they are also both deeply repressed queer men (gay Sang-woo, bi In-ho) who fell in love with Gi-hun for all the qualities he had that they deeply admired, yet hated themselves and resented Gi-hun at the same time for those same qualities, which they were taught to look down as 'lesser' than the intelligence/strength that they were taught to define their own value by. Unfortunately for In-ho, Sang-woo is the only one who'd have had a chance with Gi-hun, if he'd lived to sort his shit out and try something instead of stabbing himself in the neck in the sixth game. Poor In-ho, on the other hand, screwed himself out of even the faintest scraps of a chance he had at Gi-hun's dick the moment he shot Jung-bae just to break Gi-hun's spirit

Gi-hun! Obviously! Why: Do I even need to explain? My whole blog is basically one giant love letter to Gi-hun, lol. Still, I will try to summarize! First: Gi-hun's S1 arc around recognizing his own power and personal agency is everything to me. Love a hero who has to look himself in the eyes and choose who he wants to be. Second: Gi-hun, my beloved <3. What a wonderful, hopeful, brave, and utterly kind character. He is smart and perceptive in unexpected ways; he is bold and brash and believes in his own personhood even when he doesn't believe in much else about himself; he cares so much about other people but isn't afraid to call them out when he thinks they're wrong; he wants so badly to be able to be a positive force in the lives of his friends and loved ones; whenever he gets any money or power his immediate instinct is to spread it around to other people, to help them or even just to brighten their day. When he discovers that he is smart/valuable enough to help other people, he tries and tries and tries, even as each success is matched by another failure he just tries harder to help someone else all over again. When he loses faith in himself after the last game in S1, it is his love for and faith in other people that brings back his faith in himself, as he watches one complete stranger help another complete stranger in a selfless act of kindness. He has so much love for humanity, he has been through so much trauma and hurt and personal failure in his life, and he decides to only have more faith in humanity's potential for good anyway, because other people are the only thing that makes anything worth it. (And now, 1 brief aside: In the distant bubble universe where S3 does exist, I legitimately, unreservedly hate the Gi-hun & Dae-ho plot choice. It was a miserable, unnecessary writing choice, and as far as I'm concerned Seong Gi-hun is dead to me from the moment he kills Dae-ho. That's how much I hate it. (So. Y'know. Good thing S3 was really just Gi-hun's nightmare, in my heart!))(2nd aside: I am also 100% uninterested in anyone trying to explain this one to me as a good or valid writing choice. I do not care. I hate it.)

[the-hopeful-squid]

The relentless inescapability of long-term hope for 'good people' in a world where only bad guys ever win has literally never been a true and healthy view of the world or the people in it.

It's not a sign of 'being smart enough to see the truth' to think this way.

It's a sign of depression.

You want realism? That is the real hard truth. Genuinely believing that the world is nothing but relentlessly grim and only bad people ever truly 'win' is a sign of poor mental health.

Not every regular, decent person gets the life they deserve, and some awful people will never face justice for the harm that they cause.

Understanding of one's own personal agency and hope in one's own ability to reach better circumstances is still the answer, though.

We don't always get what we hope for.

But the only time we are guaranteed not to get what we hope for is when we give in to our hurt and our fear, declare hope as inherently foolish, and give up without trying at all.

Stop beating yourself up about small things.

Start hyping yourself up to actually try for the big things you want, instead.

I promise, you can do these things and still be a good person.

(Possibly even a kinder one, once you're putting your energy into helping at least one person be happier instead of hurting one person over 'the smallest things.')

"No matter how you look at it, life is just unfair. Bad people do bad things, but they blame others and go on to live in peace. Good people, on the other hand, beat themselves up about the smallest things."

The character who said the words quoted above was suicidal during that speech. Her next action was to kill herself, out of grief and misplaced guilt in the wake of watching her son's brutal murder carried out in front of her while she was powerless to prevent it.

It represents neither a healthy nor an objectively true view of the world.

What it is, is one type of common but unhealthy coping mechanism for trauma and/or low self esteem.

If this is how you feel about the world? Then you deserve hope. You deserve compassion. You deserve peace. You deserve access to affordable, professional mental health care that can help you to heal.

You deserve to know that the world can be a place worth living in, alongside other people who are worth living with.

[the-hopeful-squid]

And then he made a bet with Il-nam that hope wasn't futile. A bet that someone would help a dying, lonely man just because it was the kind thing to do. A bet that sometimes, people could be saved by the selfless kindness of others, whether or not those at the top thought they "deserved" to be helped or even acknowledged as human beings. And Gi-hun was right.

And then Il-nam died looking away, still a lonely old asshole who nobody liked, with a bunch of wealth and power and no friends, only a flat-out delusion of 1 single friend to comfort him in his dying moments.

And Gi-hun still won.

S1 was right.

While Gi-hun wanted the villain's validation in that moment, his bet didn't actually depend on what the villain did or didn't believe to come out in his favor.

And that is power.

And it's why S1 was right.

And S3 was a pile of garbage.

[the-hopeful-squid]

I've talked a lot about Gi-hun and the rebellion, but the biggest reason Gi-hun's rebellion was not an example of compromising his morals, hypocrisy, or 'sacrificing players on his team' is a very simple but important point that I think a lot of people - especially people who want to engage in activism of any kind - struggle with:

Gi-hun didn't sacrifice players. Gi-hun sacrificed an opportunity.

Gi-hun knew players were going to die in the riot. That would be true whether or not Gi-hun participated. Moreover, he knew there was a very high likelihood that participating in the riot, no matter how hard he stuck to defense over offense, would lead to either or both of him killing opposing players and/or coming out of the riot too exhausted to fight anyone else before the next game began.

If all of the best fighters on team X participated in the riot, and the vote the next day still went in favor of team O, then he would have accomplished nothing except keeping more X voters alive to die in the next game anyway. Not only that, but now the strongest X voters would be the most exhausted and/or hurt, thus the least capable of playing any game that required strength or alertness, and therefore the most likely to die.

However, because the vote had polarized the players who wanted to stay and the players who wanted to leave so strongly, In-ho inadvertently gave Gi-hun an unexpected alternative to participating in the riot - an alternative that In-ho himself would never have considered, because it required being open to the idea that players could fight the guards and overseers who had kidnapped them, held them hostage, and killed them in a series of horrific death games in the first place.

In-ho couldn't see that option, because he has indoctrinated himself too heavily into the idea that the only way to survive is to play by the rules of the System, with joining the System - preferably in a position of power, if possible - as the ultimate ideal goal. Gi-hun, on the other hand, understands that Systems are made of people. He understands that people - whether they are poor and exploited, holding guns and doing the exploiting, or directing all the guns and exploitation from a nice comfy spot at the top - are people, and unlike abstract, faceless Systems, people can be fought. People can bleed, and people can die.

People can be defeated, which means the Systems they prop up can be defeated, too.

They won't be defeated, however, if no one who is willing to fight them is able to fight, because they already spent all their energy fighting someone else that the System threw in their path for precisely that reason.

And thus we return to the crux of the matter: Gi-hun did not sacrifice his morals or his values or the lives of people on his side. Gi-hun gave up the possibile chance to help some players survive during the riot, in exchange for the hope of a more difficult but potentially more meaningful chance to save everyone and stop the games in one go after the riot ended.

Or, to repeat the more succinct version from above:

Gi-hun didn't sacrifice players. Gi-hun sacrificed an opportunity.

And those are very different things.

[the-hopeful-squid]

Bringing this one back to say:

This is why S3 doesn't even really feel like the same show as S1, anymore.

S1 understood that even powerful people aren't all powerful. That they don't know everything, they can't predict or control everything, and it's incredibly meaningful and important to recognize that.

Acting like The System is all knowing and all powerful is just a great way to intimidate people out of fighting back.

It's not, though.

Acting like the only way to fight back is to gain power from within The System on The System's terms is just another great way to intimidate people out of fighting back.

It's not, though.

Capitalism is not gravity. It is not an inevitable, inescapable force of the universe that we will only beat ourselves to death against if we try to fight it.

Capitalism is a system designed and upheld by people.

Without people, there literally would be no capitalism, either.

To fight capitalism is not to fight a faceless force of nature.

With people?

There has been a whole fucking lot of human history that also didn't include capitalism.

To fight capitalism is not to fight some intrinsic, inescapable fact of human nature, either.

To fight capitalism is to fight some people.

And all people are human.

Even the ones who claw their way to the top on the bodies of other people, hoard all the wealth and power they can cling to, and set themselves up as gods cannot escape their own flawed human nature.

Even the worst of humanity are still people, are still flesh and blood. Even their greed and cruelty will never define every last inch of the world, nor last beyond their own human lifetime without other people choosing to uphold those choices too.

The people running the games are very powerful, but does anyone else remember that we've known since the second episode of S1 that they aren't all powerful, that they don't know everything?

During the montage of recruitment clips they showed before the first game, they announced that Sang-woo had a debt of only about ₩ 600 million. In the second episode, Gi-hun questions Sang-woo about it, and he learns that Sang-woo's actual debt was about ₩ 6 billion.

That's a factor of 10 difference! That's pretty huge!

To which Sang-woo tells Gi-hun - and by extension the audience - that the people running the games don't know everything. They just act like they do.

They act like they do, because acting like you're all knowing and all powerful is a great way to intimidate people out of fighting back.

But the games are run by liars. Of course they'd lie about this too.

They don't know everything.

They can be beaten.

And that means Gi-hun is right to have hope that they will be taken down.

[the-hopeful-squid]

"No matter how you look at it, life is just unfair. Bad people do bad things, but they blame others and go on to live in peace. Good people, on the other hand, beat themselves up about the smallest things."

The character who said the words quoted above was suicidal during that speech. Her next action was to kill herself, out of grief and misplaced guilt in the wake of watching her son's brutal murder carried out in front of her while she was powerless to prevent it.

It represents neither a healthy nor an objectively true view of the world.

What it is, is one type of common but unhealthy coping mechanism for trauma and/or low self esteem.

If this is how you feel about the world? Then you deserve hope. You deserve compassion. You deserve peace. You deserve access to affordable, professional mental health care that can help you to heal.

You deserve to know that the world can be a place worth living in, alongside other people who are worth living with.