In Yemen the death count stagnated at 15,000 until the war ended and the people were able to count their dead. Today, it's commonly accepted that over 300,000 Yemenis have been killed by war and famine. We will see a similar situation in Gaza after a ceasefire.
Countries around the world should slap targeted tariffs on Teslas, block X in their country, and cancel their SpaceX and Starlink contracts immediately.
Hit President Musk where it hurts.
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okay guys sgtwt is pissing me off so i’m coming here to rant instead because that place scares me 💔
THEYRE EXTERMINATING SANG-WOO STANS IM NOT JOKING. THERE IS A LITERAL BUNKER
so the people are fighting over sang-woo and gi-hun’s fight in season 1. some people are saying gi-hun was too mean (??) while others have said sang-woo was heartless in general, only looking out for himself and that he didnt care about gi-hun.
[screenshots of how it began attached]
after that, everything went to HELL
so i’m going to talk about this discourse and give my opinions here instead of twitter because i will get FLAMED.
here’s the questions we’re ultimately going to be diving into:
1) were sang-woo’s responses heartless or justified?
2) was gi-hun’s reaction and clap-back justified?
3) who was in the ‘right’?
everybody knows i love and cherish both of my babies intensely, but you know what ELSE i do? i understand and pay attention the flaws they have without letting it diminish my love for them.
why? ive said it once ill say it 400 more times. BECAUSE. THEY. ARE. HUMANS. IN A DESPERATE SITUATION. THAT. BRINGS. OUT. THE. WORST. IN. THEM.
we need to look at both sides of the coin here.
--
SANG-WOO
going back for a moment.
sang-woo was very visibly LOSING HIS MIND in general past episode 7. everything that happened fucked him up BAD, especially after ali’s death. we see him snap at player 069, (which i still believe was a subconscious manifestation of his inside feelings toward himself at the time fighting with the mindset of "i need to win the games" but that’s not on-topic rn) and later we do see the first time genuinely he kills a man.
(i find the lighting choice here, where he’s backlit by darkness, very fitting. he’s pretty much lost his mind atp)
but without him pushing the glassmaker, EVERYBODY would have died. gi-hun especially; he was at the very back of the line!
not to mention, sang-woo constantly repeats the “it was necessary” or, to gi-hun, “he was just somebody you knew for a few days” mantra, almost like he’s trying to justify his actions. (that’s called rationalization. a defense mechanism.)
i hope this is enough proof that, while yes, sang-woo had completely lost himself, he wasn’t just some heartless monster who felt no remorse.
--
GI-HUN
gi-hun, on the other hand, just VISIBLY witnessed his childhood best friend kill somebody. OF COURSE he’s going to be shocked and upset. we forget he’d never actually witnessed sang-woo kill ali, nor was he aware of sang-woo manipulating him — he likely just assumed ali lost the game in a fair fashion.
no wonder he questioned sang-woo; he wasn't expecting him to do that. he didn't find it necessary either, and from his perspective it looked like sang-woo had just killed him to get rid of him.
not to mention, that's still his childhood best friend! somebody he cares about a lot. it's very... off-putting to see people you love do bad things.
--
(one question i also see people contemplating on sgtwt is this: if the roles were somehow reversed, and gi-hun had pushed the glassmaker, how would sang-woo have responded? would he have been shocked, or would have have not cared? and would have have confronted him?
my simple answer to that is: i don’t think sang-woo would have confronted gi-hun at all, but i do think he would have definitely been shocked because of how gi-hun is as a person. it probably wouldn’t have affected him as much, but it would have likely shaken him up.)
—
now, about the actual confrontation.
(although translation is a large factor here, the words said pretty much boil down/summarize to this.)
gi-hun: “why did you kill him??”
sang-woo: "you got lucky at the back of the line, he was wasting our time, he would have killed us all"
gi-hun: "but he would have moved eventually, there was no need to push him"
sang-woo: "he watched ALL those people die and yet didnt do anything about it"
gi-hun: "he's the only reason we made it out"
sang-woo: "no. i made it out because i worked hard to make sure i stayed alive"
gi-hun: "stop making excuses. you killed him, his blood's on your hands."
sang-woo: "well it's almost like that's how this works"
gi-hun: “and if it were me on that tile, would you have pushed me?”
sang-woo completely ignores the question.
and then the boys started fightingggg 💔
sang-woo: “your life is so pathetic because you’re a nosy dim-witted moron, that’s how you got into this mess” (pretty much just throwing words around)
gi-hun: “well you’re in here with me, aren’t you? why is the pride and joy of ssangmun-dong who went to SNU in a shithole like this? hm?”
i find it interesting how gi-hun uses the very things he praised him for against him.
some people think sang-woo was mad because he shattered his ego. however, i think he was more affected by it because he knew gi-hun was right.
see, contrary to popular belief, sang-woo doesn’t think highly of himself. he gets visibly uncomfortable when people address him higher. [examples: his constant distaste of gi-hun ogling him , him constantly requesting ali to not refer to him as sir , telling mi-nyeo that he’s not the leader of their group and that they’re all equal.]
he’s not some egotistical bastard that thinks super highly of himself — he visibly LOATHES himself. it's implied in canon he’s had to put so much effort into (he’s an only child, and an INTELLIGENT CHILD in a poor household, so a lot of the responsibility surely fell on him growing up to make sure he could help their family get out of poverty) and now he’s fucked that up (i have another psychological theory on this but it’s off-topic and for another day)
so, do i think gi-hun's response was too harsh? no. i do, however, think he gave sang-woo a harsh reality check that likely fucked him up even more.
BUT. i do also want to just. bring up one thing; a major factor in the argument that people seem to be forgetting.
uh. it was an ARGUMENT.
some people don't always mean 100% of what they say when they fight; mainly because of the heat of the moment. (this is targeted more at sang-woo, considering he was literally just. throwing down insults like it was a playground schoolfight.) not to mention they were very obviously trying to strike a nerve to prove their points.
and im not saying this was some kind of freudian slip where they're revealing their unconscious beliefs on each other. i dont think they hate each other or some bs like the tweeters are saying, i just do think that tensions were heightened overall because they were trying so hard to prove their point that they started tearing the other down. etc. (however i do think gi-hun's rhetorical question was likely genuine: what is sang-woo the genius doing with him)
--
FINAL VERDICT
now to the final question. who was in the right?
..sorry for the anti-climacticness of this but uh. neither of them were in the right nor wrong. that's something a lot of people fail to understand. this was a fair argument. they both had fair points.
at this point sang-woo had lost his mind in the games, yet he still wasn't wrong: if he hadn't pushed the glassmaker, they likely all would have died, and killing is how the games work. morals are twisted in death games.
and gi-hun wasn't wrong either. obviously sang-woo shouldn't have killed the glassmaker, and he wasn't wrong about the fact that sang-woo fucked up bad to be in a place like this.
anyways. i hope ive fed you all. yes this is what ive been writing for the past something hours free me from sangihun jail i miss my shaylas 💔
I brought cookies. Ah, so thoughtful not to make them yourself.
Pedro Pascal on Saturday Night Live (Oct 21, 2023)
I’m just here to remind everyone once again that we can’t stop protesting and boycotting and spreading the word for Palestine, even if it’s been a while. The people in power (mainly the Israeli and US governments) are relying on us losing steam.
And I do want to mention that a small bit of hope to be found among all of this is that things aren’t losing steam. I still see dozens of posts about Palestine every day, I see footage of protests almost every day, and the boycotts are working. I just want to encourage everyone that we just need to keep it up! I’ve seen so many social issues fade out over time, a week of outrage and then things settle down, but that isn’t the case here and I really respect everyone who’s still posting and protesting and seeking out information to end this once and for all. Focus on that hope, and use it to keep going :)
I hope y’all know that between the ambiguity in the episode itself, the survivor foreshadowing, the weird way they keep talking about it, and especially Michelle Ang’s haltering “he doesn’t come back—in this episode—at least” and Joel Aron replying to a fan on Twitter who was really spiraling badly about Tech being perma-dead and the batch never reuniting and next season the last season with this
I’m treating Tech’s survival as a matter of fact from now on. If I get crushed later I get crushed later. I’ll deal with it. I just refuse to continue being crushed right now.
ذهب الى السوق من أجل شراء الطعام لاطفاله ،فرجع ووجدهم شه.داء
خلال استهداف مدرسة للنازحين في مخيم البريج
He went to the market to buy food for his children, then came back and found them martyrs during the targeting of a school for displaced people in the Bureij camp.
#غزة #فلسطين #غزة_تحت_القصف
I’d love to absolutely yap about Gihun and Sangwoo and how Gihun is in this season so here it is ‼️ ( sorry for any spelling mistakes, English isn’t my first language 🙏)
I don’t see a lot of people really talk about just how much of an affect Sangwoo had on Gihun, especially on this season and how he takes his actions, and even the intentions behind it, but I’d love to go on about Gihun first.
Gihun was never a remarkable person, his life before the games was already in shambles. The company he worked under went on a strike, and that’s when he came in touch with death for the first time, witnessing a coworker die right infront of him when their workplace got attacked, the same day his wife gave birth, which he couldn’t attend, since then he’s been losing things more and more, his wife and daughter, and to cope with it all he turned to unhealthy ways, gambling and detaching from the pain by doing so. Lots of people say he was happier back then, but he was just ignoring all his issues. He’s stuck in the past, his mind refuses to register the pain he went through, and in turn to find a way to heal and work on his life. And being stuck on the past means attaching to things in his childhood, one indirectly being Sangwoo, considering he spends a lot of time with his mother. He knows his state, and indulges in it instead of pretending to be something else.
Sangwoo on the other hand, was the opposite of him. Which is everything Gihun admired in him, and everything Sangwoo envied in him. Gihun views him as someone remarkable, and obviously doesn’t shy away from saying so. But Sangwoo isn’t, and doesn’t believe so. Sangwoo his entire life was fixated on a image he wants to put out to the world, and does whatever it takes to do so, betting on everything and even his mother, who just like Gihun, views him as “ the pride of their hometown”. His methods of doing so however, were immoral and illegal, which caused him to be heavily in debt, a physical proof of his failure. Unlike Gihun, his coping mechanism simply is either money or nothing, to be something else or nothing, anything but himself, and something better than him. Because of his failure, he feels like an imposter in a suit, pretending to be everything he’s not, the image he so desperately wants to portray would falter infront of his mother, and already does infront of Gihun, so his instinct is always to run away from the past, to never go back to his hometown, to his mother, because of how ashamed he is of himself. Seeing Gihun again reminds him of everything he couldn’t be, and that reminder is a constant agony to Sangwoo.
Sangwoo envies the authenticity Gihun has, how he unapologetically connects with others in a death game, helps out Oh Ilnam, an old man who is deemed to be a weak link in a game where everyone is out to get each other, and how despite it all, he still keeps his humanity intact and doesn’t let it falter, how even though Gihun treated his mother horribly, he still had her love, while Sangwoo believes his mother only loves the image he put, not himself. Gihun is the only person who saw his image falter, in the scene where he asks him if he’d push him if it was him instead of the glass maker. Sangwoo breaks, immediately arguing back like a defensive child, his argument almost childish when he calls Gihun a “pea head” and a “dumbass”. When Sangwoo mentions how his entire life is pathetic, Gihun replies that he knows the state of his life, and asks why Sangwoo, the pride of their hometown, the graduate of SNU, is right here in the pits with him, despite their vastly different lives, to which Sangwoo replies with nothing. Gihun through the show realises more and more how insecure Sangwoo is, and in turn also perfectly broke down the image he was trying to hard to put to justify his actions. Sangwoo, probably because of the pressure of Gihun’s own admiration, feels like his actions if for the sake of Gihun’s, no matter what, is justified, which he tries to use when arguing with Gihun, but in reality, it’s his own desperation, his own need to present as something else than himself, if it means bringing worth to his life, which he deems meaningless.
When he tries to connect with someone authentically, that person being Ali, he finally tries to allow himself to be without guilt, to help without thinking of any ulterior motives, and to have a relationship that isn’t wholly transactional, but that ultimately shatters when he teams up with Ali, who he ends up actually using his skills ( intelligence and manipulation, which he wanted to use hand in hand with Ali for each other instead of against each other) and like his old clients, cheats and robs him after promising to help. A painful reflection of how Ali, who was always cheated off his money and used in his workplace in unjust ways, the people who were his bosses, now gets cheated off by someone who he used to call from boss to Hyung. That’s when Sangwoo ultimately reverts back to his mindset, that he should be striving to save himself, make worth for himself, to make the blood in his hands make sense, and for the guilt to be worth it in the end, but also sees how Gihun still helps others, how he still helped Saebyeok, and is filled with anger about how he can pretend that he doesn’t also have blood on his hands too, that they’re all gonna die because of each other, but he still moves in the same empathetic way, as if they can afford to be kind.
Season 1 to me really is about how circumstances change the people who you once knew, how capitalism and money twists people, and even the most innocent things to bloody. It’s best portrayed with two childhood friends, Sangwoo and Gihun, who once played together with just fun in their minds, the adrenaline and the joy of childhood innocence and childlike wonder in their minds, to playing the same games for money with life and death in their minds. I’d argue and say they’re both just overgrown kids, two who are stuck in the past, Gihun who refuses to accept it as it is, and stays behind, his personality almost childish and pathetic as a grown man, while Sangwoo who runs after his childhood dreams by any means, stuck in the image that’s already tainted with blood, his personality almost like an angsty teen who pretend to be older than he is, but both come from poverty, both struggling with money, and both their issues starting from that, which shaped them to be who they are, and turned them both to things they don’t recognise anymore when they reunited till and till their last moments together.
Maybe it’s my own point, but I believe that Sangwoo was relieved that Gihun hated him for that brief moments, that they’ve argued and fought, and that the image Gihun had of him was shattered, which in turn also freed him from his own lies and image he tried to convince himself too. He could finally feel angry without any restraint, without acting like he isn’t, without covering up his selfish desires and needs, and projects it all onto Gihun, absolutely shattering the image he tried so hard to keep infront of him on purpose. Their fight was brutal and lacked any real training, both not knowing how to fight properly, and their emotions speaking louder, their movements are sloppy and awkward, and Sangwoo, who’s way more brutal in this fight, gets a hold of the knife for longer and stabs Gihun, while Gihun who when he manages to get a hold of the knife ( which is impaled to his hand ) realises that he can’t complete his actions, Sangwoo realising so when he opened his eyes to see Gihuns sad ones looking back. When Gihun walks right to the very edge of the triangle of the squid, he realises that the money, all of it, would never be worth his friends life, his childhood friends life, waking back limping and bloody to ask the guard, referencing what Sangwoo said to use clause three and for both of them agree to stop the games and leave.
Sangwoos anger waters down with the rain puddles next to him, and he realises the irony of their place. The same two grown adults, who once used to play the same games, and as he says “ When we were younger, we used to play just like this and our moms would call us for dinner” the intensity of their fight, this one being bloody and violent, reflects on how they as kids would imagine their fights to be that intense and bloody, the adrenaline copying one of someone facing life and death, except they are now, and like Sangwoo says. “Nobody is calling us anymore” his voice here ( lovely detail from the actor thank you park haesoo!) broken like a child, and Gihun raises his hand to him, telling him that they can go him, that they will go home. All the anger they had seconds before now gentle and caring, all of it was always once love, all the anger was once love. Gihun gives him is pure clean hand, one without a drop of blood, while Sangwoo stretches his own bloody hand, one that isn’t tainted with his own blood, but the blood of others and the person above him, the one who’s other hand he impaled.
Gihun was so willing, so willing to make it all worthless. Everything they’ve been though, all the scars they got and had, all the deaths they’ve caused indirectly, directly, and witnessed from close or afar, the death of the people he cared for, even Saebyeoks, and his own bleeding wounds and stabs, all if it meant bringing back Sangwoo with him, he’d go penniless willingly, because he couldn’t truly blame him for everything, he couldn’t truly blame him for turning out the way he is, he admired him with his soul, loved him with every fibre of his being, and adored him and saw him as someone so remarkable and great despite it all, so he gave him his hand, his clean, untainted hand, as to tell him that he, Sangwoo, can taint it with all his sins, and he’ll still hold his hand, he’d still want him by his side. Sangwoo almost took it, almost. He wanted to let himself be, to accept that gentleness Gihun so willingly offered, and to accept the hands of his childhood friend.
That’s until he realises they won’t have a single penny for it all. That’s when he retracts his hand, and all he can do is apologise, to say sorry to his Hyung, as he stabs the knife through his neck without any remorse. In that moments, I think that’s when he realised the only way he can truly repay Gihun isn’t by taking his hand, but by leaving all the money for him, to repay his mother, to repay for Ali, Saebyeok, for all the people he caused to suffer, to repay it all with his life that was now worth 45.7B when the last person is eliminated. In the end of it all, he ignores even his own will to live and picks the most reasonable choice, letting his childhood friend win, not any random person, but Gihun. He knows him better than anyone, and within his last moments, calls out for his mother, asking Gihun to help her, to repay her in his behalf, because he couldn’t face her like this, he knows he wouldn’t be able to live with the weight of what he has done, even more-so without a single dim. But he knows Gihun wouldn’t forget him, he wouldn’t forget his mother, he wouldn’t forget his humanity, and he wouldn’t forget to care.
And so Sangwoo dies in a playground, dead in his childhood friends hands, a reflection of how everything he chased for as a kid died there too, and was always stuck in the same playground trying to prove his worth by winning.
By S2, Gihun painfully parallels everything Sangwoo was before the games. Both sharing even the same mother, who they both feel too ashamed and guilty to face, calling their families from a distance, and falling into deep depression, both sharing the same sense feeling like an imposter in their bodies for being things they aren’t ( both being wealthy, but gaining that wealth in unjust ways) their sense of worth less now and both suicidal. ( Sangwoo who tried to commit suicide in the bathtub, and Gihun who doesn’t hesitate to play Russian roulette and shoot himself) the only difference is the reason why they go back to the games.
Gihun in s2 even comes back to the games acting exactly like Sangwoo, even down to the two of them meeting someone from their past within it ( Sangwoo who met Gihun, and Gihun who now met Jungbae) but as vastly different people. Gihun uses what he had learnt directly from Sangwoo to help others ( The red light green light method, Mentioning the third clause, which was even filmed in the same space and manner, and telling others to hide before the fight broke out ) he’d always seen Sangwoo as an example of how to be, and admired him as a figure of something remarkable, so he, who already feels like an imposter in his body, who feels like he shouldn’t be the one who made it out, unconsciously begins to create an image of himself that reflects Sangwoos, one he saw as cold, intelligent, and was human despite it all.
Young Il, who Inho created, is an image of who Gihun wishes Sangwoo was. (Yes ik how that sounds lemme elaborate!) Young-il is someone who is equally as smart, someone who uses that intelligence to help the weaker, who thinks for the community, and is willing to help Gihun help others, unlike Sangwoo who limited his intelligence and help to just those who could also equally benefit him, who held back on trusting Gihun, and in the end acted on his own, and reduced Gihun’s humanity to weakness, something Gihun resented about Sangwoo, and something he sees in Young-il, who Inho knew how to build himself to be someone Gihun trusted, a familiar but strange new face. Oh but Gihun’s intentions aren’t so pure either, his guilt brought him back to the games, back to something he was stuck in, back to the past he can’t move on from and never will, his guilt drives him to think he needs to sacrifice himself for the games to end, even without any real aim or clear goal on how to, or even realising that the players will still suffer anyways, he believes his life will only gain worth if it’s used for something greater, similarly to how Sangwoo also believed his life would be worth something if he gained social status and money, something greater than himself. This time, Gihun gambles with the lives of himself and others ( the people who died for the plan) instead of horses.
Gihuns unwavering trust in others humanity, and in humanity itself, I’d say is purely because of Sangwoo. He witnessed him turn to so many things, from someone he so dearly admired, to a vile person who spat blood and killed for money, to hearing him never speak to him informally even in their angriest moments, and to crying in his arms, uttering out his mothers name as he calls him Hyung for the last time. Sangwoo, who taught him all he knew right now, couldn’t teach him how people could still be harmful, that trusting still blinds, and that being idealistic and naive isn’t good, because Sangwoo was human, Sangwoo wasn’t evil and irredeemable, he still cared for the boy he grew with, for the kid he found charming but annoyingly naive, for the kid who bragged about him every given chance, and for the same guy who he entrusted his mother to, the one who he drove all his actions for. And Gihun? He bet his entire life on that, on the shred of his cold image breaking to reveal his real vulnerability, on his humanity. And because Sangwoo showed him that, he now doesn’t believe anybody is truly evil, that they’re all victims of something bigger than themselves.
And so Gihun goes back to the games, going back to the place that his old self died in, and the one he doesn’t even know if he’ll survive in again, but is willing to gamble his life on ending it.
(sorry for how long I’ve yapped for! and if I’ve made any mistakes ❤️ please have some mercy on me! my English isn’t the best )
but you know that you had it once
and you know that you want it back
but you know that you're needing it
and you need it bad
When you're so doomed by the narrative you lose two people you thought would become your everything
(and yes i did this same type of post with steddie and stancy however long ago but listen....mitski is so angst and so them...)