Tis the season I guess😅

I got a lot I wanna catch up with but before that lemme just rant about Squid Game S3, cause boy do I want to talk about stuff!

⚠️⚠️SPOILERS ⚠️⚠️

So like the moment I'm done with my irl responsibilities I come back all excited to watch squid game s3 and I binch watch the hell out of it! The first 3 episodes had me fangirling and enjoying each twist and turn to it's fullest! Character drama is on point! Tension so high!

I got a couple of notes like the detective plot point being a little repetitive or the surprising straight forward approach of knives and keys game. Like... that was a bit unorthodox compared to every previous game. They always silently encouraged players to turn against each other and kill each other but it was never as direct. It was essentially a part of the manipulation and feeding onto the illusion that the violence was the players choice and not the system's itself. Changing that felt off. But anyway I thought it might be the frontman's doing on purpose, now given the rest I'm just sceptical. Still ..At the end of the jumping the rope game things are at their peak!!! Tragedy and human nature captured brutally in classic squid game style!

Hyping up for the upcoming confrontation of Gihun and the frontman and the freaking Inho brothers and omg I can barely wait and-

Episode 4 second half comes up and from that moment forward the season might be the biggest wtf massive underwhelming disappointment I've felt in a while.

Well...simply put.

Damnit.

You know in hindsight I probably should have seen it coming. Season 1 squid game also had a very underwhelming ending imo. S3 ended up being what I first snubbed S2 for. A rehashed experience.

Don't get me started with the American knock off on the works. The mere concept and that blond bitch in the end can fuck right off! No beef with the actual actress and people involved of course but I'm not wasting a fucking second with it. If it isn't the perfect slap in your face about how capitalism and the bad guys always win both within the show ans outside I don't know what's is.

S3's supposedly hopeful message amidst the tragedy, doesn't really read as such. Instead it's so depressingly bleak and I feel no hope at all as if it isn't already hard to keep positive in our rotten world...

I've said it before, imo real masterpieces are supposed to give meaning to our struggles, to give meaning to sacrifice and suffering.

I'm having such deja vu to Attack on Titan losing me after Krista's arc or getting a similar profound dissatisfaction with how The last of us 2 fails on what the first game accomplished flawlessly. All what those have in common is that "bittersweet" ends up feeling just bitter with the tiny pieces of hope presented feel mocking in their irrelevancy as all we're left with is just the misery.

It's the same goddamn feeling! And also from what I've briefly seen it's got the same type of people claiming that if you don't like dark stories with bittersweet endings such as these its just cause you want an unrealistic happy ending (and you lack media literacy. and as always how this term got popularized in the worst way to call someone stupid when they don't agree with your take is uuuuuuuugh!!)

Yeah no. I don't fuck with that. I actually love bittersweet endings! I love realistically dark and ambiguous endings. Please don't try to gaslight me about my own tastes.

A great example of brutal reality check that comments beautifully on sacrifice and fighting for a better future despite the odds is the hunger games books! Those have it down masterfully well and I love them for it!

Bleakness without hope is just depressing and imo not worth getting invested to. So being upset about it when media handles it poorly is equally valid. Give me catharsis or don't waste my time. I'll be as upset as I like. It's not about realism. It's about nuance and preference.

This ending felt like a suicidal man finally succumbing to that urge. Self sacrifice is such a delicate theme to pull off without leaning into questionable territories and squid game did not deliver with Gihun. He deserved so much better.

I'm not even against him dying in the first place. But it just wasn't done right imo. I didn't feel sad. I felt frustrated. Gihun wasn't just a character at this point, he was also a symbol that represented hope and a different choice than the cynical exploitive worldview that In-ho had devoted himself into.

The way Gihun died and In-ho came out of it mostly unscathed was depressing for all the wrong reasons. Oh he's haunted and his feelings got hurt? No that just isn't good enough!

Even if I'm a slut for their doomed yaoi storyline all the way through, with or without my beautiful shipper glasses on it was a messy end and not in the good way that stays with you. It lacked any meaningful consequences for In-ho for perpetuating that inhumane system and murdering more and more people each year.

Also wtf happened to properly having their conflicting ideologies crashing intriguingly against each other??? S2 was amazing with it! Climax my ass! The face reveal was so brief and uneventful! The amazing acting via their expressions couldn't have saved that nothing burger of confrontation like wtf??? Even the frontman said this would take a while and then it didn't. The scene feels like it was cut or censored in a weird way??? I felt so robbed! I wanted so much more of them!! An all cards on the table confrontation would have been amazing!! Why the hell didn't it happen??? Why the hell wasn't this addressed??

Don't get me started with that baby too. Butchered so much with it. I was rooting for her of course the entire time and got appropriately sick in the stomach with how monstrous the VIPs and the other finalists thought of her, that part was done very well and drew excellent parallels between those two groups and how greed makes them inhumane beasts.

But still. Everything else was handled so poorly with her. Literally everything took a back seat to her being a symbol. Gihun barely acted like a human in the end and more like a mute NPC character doing an escort mission, Christ!

Also I hate, God I really fucking hate the trope of basically "kids are the future we can only hope they are better than us"

Like NO! Fuck right off!! WE need to do better NOW! Try our best, as much as we can so THEY can inherit much less shit to deal with. Not dump our failures on them cause they symbolize hope or whatever. I really fucking hate that trope!!!

Honestly it's not just a squid game problem but I general one I despise.

(deep breath)

ItsjustashowItsjustashowItsjustashow

Let's move on. I'll just move on. Don't have the energy for it. I promised myself I'm not gonna waste more energy to entertainment that disappoints me.

Final verdict:

S1 was amazing! S2 still a masterpiece imo with Inho and his relationship with Gihun stealing the entire show in complexities and themes. And s3 has an excellent start and great elements with a very lackluster ending similar to S1.

Shame...

I might write some quick short fic about it to vent more creatively cause holy shit dude🤦🏼‍♀️

Maybe idk.

Moving on!

I at least have a couple of things I'm equally excited to check out even if I probably won't write full essays about them.

Alien Stage finale and new TADC both dropped on YouTube yesss! Ah there's also a new Helluva Boss short but honestly? Imma skip it. I've had enough disappointment with most of their stuff in s2 and previous shorts already and I'm in a bad enough mood with squid game as it is. Wake me up when my boy Striker makes an appearance ✌️

K-pop Demon hunters looks very promising tho! 👀👀👀