paranoid humanoid

Staging Positions

Back to Camera: Anonymous. Conveys emotional isolation. Frames the subject as alone against the world. “I.”

Idk how much more of his backstory we’re gonna get in s3 to know if Inho hit all the marks but there’s a few ways to look at it I guess. Was the game his trials with the final game being his supreme ordeal, the money his prize? Did the supreme ordeal come later, after the death of his wife, with the role of frontman being his prize? Or had he been in the trials for years leading up to s1, the supreme ordeal a literal brother battle? The prize perhaps gaining the power that was Ilnam’s?

Or, did his path kind of take him through the journey more than once (and fail both times)? The games/death of his wife was journey 1, but he gets stuck in the refusal to return, skips the final two legs of the journey, and receives the second call to adventure— to return as front man, thus embarking on journey 2. This would be an interesting way to look at it bc it would mean his hero’s journey was intentionally interrupted to push him down the villain’s journey.

Either way, he failed to return. To the ordinary world. To his family. To the person he was before, perhaps?

The hero and the villain are so similar; their journeys are similar. The even both linger in the refusal to return. They even both maybe receive the call twice (Gihun’s being s2-3). But as people they are so fundamentally different.

But Inho’s and Gihun’s journeys didn’t end with their games.

I’ve thought about s2-3 in terms of a second hero’s journey for Gihun, but I’m leaning toward s1 being a false or unfinished hero’s journey, with s2-3 being the resolution of the (sacrificial) hero’s journey.

Was Gihun’s return at the end of s1 “real”, given what we learned from s2-3 (or even based on the very last scene of s1)? Gihun physically returned. For a time. But part of him never left that world. He became fixated on it, on finding it again, on getting back, on destroying it.

I think Gihun’s return at the end of s1 could be viewed as the actual refusal of the call, made to look like return. Crossing the threshold happened in that airport. The trials were the subsequent years of isolation and then once again joining as a player. Gihun’s final battle was an ideological one. Which he of course won.

But reward? Return? No. It ended in sacrifice instead.

Someone returned though. Inho returned. Inho, stalled for years in the refusal, exiled from the rest of the journey, witnessed the sacrifice and in a way was transformed. Gihun’s death was Inho’s call to return. And he didn’t return to his world, he didn’t complete his journey. He completed Gihun’s, in a way. He took the flight. He gave Gihun’s daughter closure. He (presumably) adopted more of Gihun’s ideology. A proxy return.

Lera Abova as Nico Robin / Miss All Sunday

Even after I'm dead...