BRO???????????😭 Explain Yourself Gi-hun 🤨🏳️‍🌈

Why 457 is actually valid af and not just a "joke" ship

I wanna start this by saying that I'm in no way, shape or form convinced 457 is canon nor I think there will be anything remotely romantic between the two of them in season 3. But people seem to think it's just a joke inside the fandom, while actually, their dynamic is pretty fucking valid and I want to analyze that in this post.

One of the most discussed things (if not the most) when it comes to this ship is the stares.

Some think this is the stare of love, others think In-ho just enjoys seeing him suffer. Well, let me tell you it is neither.

But before we delve into the way In-ho stares at Gi-hun, we first have to go back to talk about Hwang In-ho as a character.

As we know, Hwang In-ho is the Winner of the 2015 Squid Game. He went into the games so he could have the money to treat his sick, pregnant wife, much like Gi-hun who did the same for his sick mother. Both of them won the game, but both of them were too late to save the person they loved from a sad fate.

This lead to In-ho becoming the Frontman. We don't know exactly what happened in the timeframe between him winning and him becoming the Frontman, but we can safely assume that after loosing his wife, In-ho lost faith in humanity. The games have destroyed him, they turned him into the villain he is today.

And the thing is, when he looks at Gi-hun, he sees his past self in him. This was confirmed by both Lee Byung Hun (In-ho's actor) and the director of the show himself.

Or to be more precise, he sees his past self. He sees who he was before the games changed him. And this is what led to his fascination and obsession with Gi-hun, because here's the thing; the games traumatized Gi-hun, but they didn't break his faith and hope in humanity, like they did with In-ho himself.

And this is the thing that, in my view, both fascinates and deeply angers In-ho. Deep inside, subconsciously, he is thinking, "Why were YOU able to retain your hope in humanity? Why were you able to remain a good person when I couldn't?"

In-ho was genuine when he told Gi-hun he wished he'd try to be happy after winning (or to better say, surviving) the games. I find it especially interesting when he tells him "Just pretend it was all a dream."

In-ho wishes he could pretend it was all a dream, but he couldn't. Think about it: he's a billionaire, but he lives in a shitty, small apartment. He doesn't talk to his mother, he doesn't talk to his brother, he doesn't even go visit his wife at the cemetery. Pardon me for borrowing the phrase from The Hunger Games, but he's not living the life of a victor. whether it's because he feels guilty or something else, I guess we'll find out in the next season, but that's not the point. The point is, that In-ho wants Gi-hun to do what he wasn't able to do after he won. He wants him to be happy because he sees himself in Gi-hun.

This is the most important point in this post.

Now I wanna focus on these moments. During the second game, during mingle, and during the lights-out massacre, we see Gi-hun being absolutely destroyed over the players that were killed. He's undoubtedly blaming himself for it. And here we see In-ho staring at him, not with the look of love, not with joy at his suffering, but with sorrow. He's sad for Gi-hun, because he could have spared himself further suffering if he didn't stubbornly decide to go back into the games.

What In-ho is thinking right here, in my view, is; "See? There is no hope. There is nothing you can do. Stop torturing yourself, just give it up already. How much more pain do you have to go through before you give up? Accept you can do nothing and go on with your life. Try to be happy."

Now you might be asking, okay, but what does that have to do with romantic love?

Well let me tell you that these feelings I just described can easily and quickly turn into love.

Many philosophers over the centuries have come to the same conclusion; we see part of ourselves in the people we fall in love with.

"The Front Man believes that Gi-hun is wrong in his way of thinking, but perhaps, he reflects on himself through Gi-hun. He does want to destroy Gi-hun's belief. I felt that a small part of him, unknowingly, might be hoping for Gi-hun's thoughts to be right. And rooting for him in some way."

These words Lee Byung Hun said about In-ho, makes me think of Jacques Lacan's theory in particular (which is a rather complex topic and I will try to summarize as shortly and as simply as I can).

For Lacan, love, at least in the beginning, is essentially a form of narcissism. When we fall in love, we're also falling in love with ourselves. We see ourselves in the other person, but we also see in the other what we subconsciously think we are lacking in ourselves. Which doesn't mean the other person will fix us because, at least according to Lacan, this lack is something that can never actually be "fixed".

And I think that's exactly was is happening with In-ho. He sees in Gi-hun what he's lacking in himself. They were traumatized the same way, but reacted in two completely different manners. In-ho became cruel and disillusioned with humanity, while Gi-hun still believes in humanity and wants to save everyone.

I know that this way, 457 seems like a one-sided kind of love, but that's honestly my personal interpretation of the ship. I think Gi-hun could have fallen for Young-il, for the person In-ho was before the games, if they had more time. But the Frontman In-ho? The person he became after becoming the Frontman? There's no way.

Not all loves are meant to happen, not all lovers get to be lovers. Some are meant to just leave us wondering what could have been. Which is what makes transformative works so fun and interesting! From the canonverse toxic fics to the wholesome alternative universe flower shop fics, I think their dynamic is valid as fuck.

I rest my case.

One of the things I love most about the Squid Game fandom is that we all collectively decided that In-ho ordered his guards not to injure Gi-hun upon his return.

We all watched that scene where In-ho shot his own guard and we went "Oh yeah, someone defied their orders, didn't they". This is hive mentality at its peak and I love that for us.

s1 gi-hun: “I’m gonna hold your hand when I say this…”

s2 gi-hun: “Why the fuck did you give me your hand? Get the fuck away from me”

also s1 gi-hun “You can’t just, you can’t just, do that to people you don’t know.”

also s2 gi-hun: “What the fuck are you looking at me?”

Reference

I don't know if anyone has pointed this out yet, but in the pub scene when aziraphale tells Criwley he told tge angel's he made Nina and Maggie fall in love- criwley suggests he just do a miracle to fix it. Aziraphale says it doesn't work that way. To me this implies that criwley has never tried to make someone fall in love but aziraphale HAS.

they make me want to chew on rocks

yes? yes.

This is actually so peak what

ranting about the way bnha ended, copied from my comment on ao3 because it's too good not to share.

it's been HEAVILY discussed that the epilogue chapter was neither written nor drawn by horikoshi and it's suspected that he didn't want to do it. the publishers wanted to tie up loose ends and he was like "absolutely not" and they said fuck it, we'll get someone else to do it. i mean, the art doesn't even look like his at all, and the plot points covered are RADICALLY different from everything he set up and built out.

ESPECIALLY katsuki's arc. that boy was evolving faster than a pokemon with a rare candy addiction, proving that not only was he intelligent and powerful enough to be a top-5 hero, but he was growing into a more considerate and mature character, learning from his and other's mistakes, turning inward to examine his own fears and biases. he's been a number one fan favorite every single year since inception. to shit all over him like that at the finish line was the worst, dirtiest, most disrespectful thing anyone could have done.

as for the world changing after the war, i call bullshit. how many heroes turned their backs on their career? how many criminals were let out from the max security prisons? how many innocent civilians had their entire lives completely uprooted and destroyed, lost people they cared about, because of shigaraki? big fucking deal they won the war: how much of the country was irrevocably fucked because of it tho? people don't endure that much trauma and just magically go back to status quo. people don't get lectured by a couple of teenagers about heteromorph lives mattering and immediately clue in like "shit, yeah, you're right."

that's not how reality works. and for someone like horikoshi who was building this long slow burn of "not all men are created equal," to have it turn out like a 90 minute direct to video disney fairytale is insulting. we know damn well the reality around inequality is systemic and deeply entrenched in society. what i expected from the epilogue was:

"the war is over, we're rebuilding and trying to heal the millennia-old ecosystems that were wiped from existence, because we're japan, and we care a lot about that kind of thing. the hardest part of repairing this country is fixing its people; so many have suffered deep loss, have been terrorized by ptsd, are listless and drifting like ghosts unable to find meaning in anything worldly again after so much death and destruction. it's a daily struggle to save people from themselves when their darkest thoughts manifest, or when their grip on reality falters.

now more than ever, we need heroes to watch over and help people move forward into a more tolerant and open-minded future--for heteromorphs, and for the people with unusual quirks or no quirks that might alienate them from society. we know now to what ends a person who feels so ostracized will go to--it takes a village to raise a healthy, happy child, but if that child is turned out into the cold, he will burn the entire village to the ground to feel even a little bit of warmth.

i won't let that happen again. WE won't let it happen again."

--and deku never loses OFA. biggest beef of mine ever with the whole ending. (that and, people being all self-satisfied that "izuocha confirmed" is """real""" because they got the equivalent of a doujinshi make me so annoyed. you'd really throw the entire manga under the bus just to get that pathetic non-crumb? please. love yourself better than that.)

allmight gets to see his protege-sons become grownass heroes revolutionizing the world and leading the charge towards FURTHER EQUALITY. he himself knows damn well what it's like to be born quirkless and what that does to a person, and seeing His Boy accomplish what he never could makes all his agony and physical deterioration completely worth it. "look at him, nana. look what we made."

ALSO. there's an insidious problem in japanese society that's glorified in their media regarding one's school years as being the Greatest Time Of Life, and everyone's greatest works and achievements are miraculously done before they're 20 and washed up. ("""washed up""" because once you're out of university, you get a job and that's the end of the line. no more self-development, no more hobbies, no more cool, quirky behaviours. you're a cog in the machine. hell, even haru from Free! says it succinctly: "i can't wait to be an adult. when you're a kid good at something, you're a genius. then you become an adult and you're just a face in the crowd.")

it's really sad and depressing to think that IZUKU MIDORIYA'S shortass life lived like a pariah changed because he got the Special Thing for 3 years and then graduated into the real world and lost it.

fucking. bull. shit.

I AM HERE

Ima be so fr I forgot this scene existed so when I rewatched s1 I genuinely felt so bad for Inho like this scene convinced me that he most definitely is not some big bad guy but instead a very broken man who’s lost so much.

this scene 🙏