blood in the moonlight

he/him

[crimsonlaplacian]

something something about how moonjo's room doesn't have a bed. how we never see him rest. how he has nothing soft. nothing that provides comfort.

[crimsonlaplacian]

i once read a reddit comment that confidently stated that moonjo was right-handed. this piqued my interest because, as a left-handed individual myself, i immediately identified moonjo as also left-handed. instead of just letting this go, i went and re-watched the show to see what this all was about. what i noticed was that moonjo performs certain types of tasks with one hand, and certain types with the other. when it comes to typical "handed" tasks, he's right-handed. moonjo eats with his right hand

when he is doing dental work, he holds a scalpel and a syringe in his right hand.

all the things that immediately "out" someone's handedness, he does with his right hand. on the other hand (haha get it), he frequently uses his left hand to do more "unconcious" tasks. things that he does without thinking. things he instinctually reaches for or does while distracted. he picks up the phone with his left hand. he holds his beer in his left hand. he presses play on his phone with his left hand (not pictured).

when he's injecting people with the paralytic he uses before he murders them, he uses his left hand. He does this for kihyuk, jieun, and jaeho

he puts his left glove on first when he is murdering kihyuk.

these things are less conscious than something like suturing, where you have to learn a specific way and reverse it to do it left-handed. they come more immediately to him. moonjo only changes his handedness when jongwoo brings attention to the scar on his hand. he offers jongwoo the beer with his left hand, but the second jongwoo notices the scar, he switches hands and even puts his left hand in his pocket, out of sight.

it all comes back to the scar he has. the one that goes all the way down his left hand.

it's established canon that he's ashamed of his scars, or at least conscious enough of their appearance to not want to draw the attention of others. all of his other scars are shorter slashes, as if someone sliced his flesh in anger. this one is long. it's darker. it looks like someone held him down and carved into him. it makes me think about how my dad was convinced that the devil possessed me because i am left-handed. it makes me think about how my elementary school english teacher was left-handed until she "became" right-handed when her teacher's kept slapping her fingers with a ruler. i wonder if moonjo forced himself to be right-handed. whether the injury was unrelated and it forced him to eat with his right hand or it was deliberate and he changed himself to avoid further punishment, i think it is somewhat unclear. either way, it is evident that the subject is more complicated than meets the eye.

[crimsonlaplacian]

Squid Game 3 Spoilers !!!!!!!!

I can't stop thinking about how what if In-ho wanted to keep Jun-hee's baby? He waited six months to give her to Jun-ho, which is a long time for him to just be caring for her in the interim. What if he gave her away because he found himself unable to be happy? Babies are very sensitive. If you start crying, they will often also start crying. What if In-ho cried when he held her, trying to stop but ultimately unable to. He would watch how she would pick up on his emotions. How she would start crying too. And he just couldn't do it anymore. Not because it was too much for him, but because he wanted to save her from him. And so, in the end, Hwang In-ho lost every single one of his children.

[crimsonlaplacian]

The cis and extremely sex repulsed asexual to trans and maybe not quite so asexual anymore pipeline goes crazy

[crimsonlaplacian]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. I'll shout it off the rooftops if I have to.

In-ho being in a position of power and continuing the cycle of abuse does not change the fact that he is equally a victim of the machine, the same way Gi-hun is, if not more.

Disagree with me all you want, but I think losing your elderly mother when you're almost 50 is completely different than losing your WIFE and the child you were going to have when you were in your 30s.

Gi-hun and In-ho are almost foils of each other. In-ho is a man that "did everything right" in his life. He helped raise his brother. He donated an organ to him. He had a respectable job. He supported his family. But it wasn't enough. Nothing would ever be enough. Gi-hun on the other hand had a failed marriage, a failed chicken shop, leached off his mom, etc. Then he lost everything as well. I am NOT saying Gi-hun deserved the suffering he endured or that he's a bad or worse person. I'm just laying down a comparison to show that both of them ended in the "same" place despite their journeys there being so different.

I believe this to be the core of Hwang Dong-hyuk's messaging. That Capitalism chews you up and spits you out no matter what rung of the latter you occupy.

This perspective extends to In-ho's role in the game. He's the "frontman," literally the man who is the "front" of the operation. He's the most exposed, the most vulnerable. If the whole thing comes tumbling down, he will likely be the one prosecuted while the VIPs go off scott free. In-ho is a representation of the "self-made" man. People like doctors and engineers who make enough money to live comfortable lives are not the people who poison our atmosphere because they only fly private or go for a five-minute joyride in space.

I grew up very poor (like sitting on the floor of the kitchen to eat because we couldn't afford furniture poor), and I am intimately acquainted with how the middle class can feel like the enemy. It was the middle-class kids who made fun of me wearing secondhand clothes as a child. It was the middle-class kids who ridiculed me for not being able to afford Lunchables. I get it. But in comparison to actual blood-money, emerald mine, child labor wealth, those kids and I were the same.

In-ho does what he does to survive. We can sit here on our moral pedestals and criticize him all we want, but when it comes down to it, he is an expendable tool, a means to an end and nothing more. The VIPs would discard him like a used tissue the second he started acting up. He does not shoot Jun-ho off the cliff because he does not love him. He shoots Jun-ho off the cliff because if he didn't, the other guards would surely kill Jun-ho, and maybe the VIPs would even order In-ho's death for breaking the rules.

I so frequently see the phrase "abuse doesn't turn people into abusers," and I agree with the concept wholeheartedly. I have PTSD and I'm not running around killing people or hitting anyone in my family. On the other hand, abuse absolutely can create the circumstances that make it possible to become an abuser yourself. Would my grandfather have become a raging alcoholic had he not watched his entire family be shot by a firing squad right in front of him as he hid in a cabinet? I can't say because I'll never know what could have been, but it would be ignorant to not at least consider that his experiences had a lasting negative impact on his psyche.

In-ho is a man so fractured by the system that he has no choice but to believe in it because otherwise it would all have been for nothing. It's a counterintuitive logic, but it makes so much sense from his perspective. He managed to survive it, to dig himself out of pit of Tartarus and live. He did what he had to do, justifying the horror as a means to an end. Then he lost everything, so where was the justification for the monster he had become? He had to turn to the rigidity of the system. Forced himself to believe that it worked. Forced himself to be a success story. Or else, there was nothing left for him.

Many people speculate on whether In-ho ever attempted suicide after the games. I think that either way, he was in a vulnerable position that was exploited to the fullest extent by Il-nam. A man who throughout his entire life had some purpose, whether it was providing for his brother or his wife, he had something to cling to. Now he didn't have anything. But Il-nam gave it to him.

Gi-hun was never scouted to participate again, not until he was becoming an unavoidable nuisance. Why is that? Because Il-nam was dying and then dead. In-ho doesn't have to follow his wishes anymore.

In-ho does not do what he does for the sake of entertainment or cruelty. He does not enjoy blood and suffering the way some of the guards do. It's a fact of life for him now. When your life is so bathed in blood it becomes difficult to differentiate the iron in the air.

Also, I would lastly like to push back on the idea that In-ho is a fundamentally bad person because he was a cop. I think that this perspective is indicative of the overwhelming presence of Americans in the fandom. I get it. I live here. Policing in the US exists as an extension of slave hunters. Police as an institution here exists to maintain the status quo and support oppression instead of stand in opposition to it. I think that there is a general lack of awareness surrounding the impact of career on social respectability in other countries. Or the importance of social respectability and status in access to things like medical treatment. In-ho chose a job that would help him support his family, that would present him as a strong head of the household in his father's absence.

His career is an extension of his entire character arc. How In-ho finds himself supporting corruption and the institution as a response to adversity and as a clutch for stability and control of his own life.

[crimsonlaplacian]

Will Graham with Chernobyl 2019 quotes

[crimsonlaplacian]

Content warnings: implied SA, abuse, forcefem

I can't stop thinking about this idea I had about an Inho whump fic. I've been particularly struggling with chest dysphoria these last few weeks, so this prompt was kind of born from that.

What if Gihun's plan failed, the games concluded as usual, but the VIPs where angry? What if they removed Inho from his position, claiming "dissatisfaction with his services?" What if they originally planned to disregard him, like a worn-out sponge that doesn't hold its shape anymore, but one of them decided to take him back "home?" What if Inho suddenly finds himself in a foreign country, locked away in a room with no way out, serving one purpose and one purpose alone? What if he starts losing ownership over his own body, not only in a proprietary sense, but because the VIP that took him decides to forcibly feminize him?

In-ho wakes up, all his usual aches and pains greeting him. He pulls the duvet off himself. The prospect of laying in a bed, even his own, for longer than necessary leaves a bitterness in his mouth. As the fabric runs over his skin, he feels a soreness in his chest. 

Maybe he left bruises there yesterday. In-ho does not remember him touching him there during it, but he often finds his mind wandering, trying to escape to anywhere in the world that is not that moment. He looks down all the same, expecting to find purple discoloration. 

A shiver runs down his spine. There is nothing there. In-ho runs his palm across his chest, slowly, attempting to pinpoint the sensation. The area surrounding his nipples is incredibly sore. Not as a result of overstimulation, but some other, foreign feeling In-ho has never experienced until now. 

He presses against the spot on one side, gently probing with his fingers. He freezes when he feels a small, spherical lump. 

[crimsonlaplacian]

I'm going to say something controversial so bear with me please.

We talk a lot about the harmful societal impact of men's porn addictions, but not enough about women's. I'm not saying they're equal in harm! Just that we often don't even label women's porn addictions as a "porn addiction" because it's given so many euphemisms. "Spicy books." "Booktok." "Smut." It's porn. By no means is it wrong to read smut, or even watch porn, but I would like to point out that just like there are ethical and unethical ways to consume video material, there are ethical and unethical ways to consume written material.

Take Sarah J. Mass' Throne of Glass series for example. It's marketed as YA. I read the entire series as the later books were coming out. The first three or so are definitely YA. It's actually textbook YA. Then we get into the later books, and you have explicit material. Sure, it's not "then he fucked her pussy with his cock," but it's not YA either. Authors like SJM introduce these kinds of topics in a way that is sneaky and unethical. Yes, teens have hormones and are discovering their sexuality, but the problem is that you go into the book with no idea what it is you're going to end up reading.

This is an overall issue in the YA genre, where the concept of what sex really is seems to be up for debate. How explicit is too explicit? This "lines are blurred" attitude starts the desensitization to pornography I see so often on Tiktok. So many people are joking about reading smut in public. I'm not saying reading what you want to read is inherently bad. I've read smut in public. I've WRITTEN smut in public. It starts being a problem when people start talking about how they can't get through a "normal" book anymore. How they were disappointed when there wasn't a smut scene in a book they were reading. That's a porn addiction.

I used to be of the opinion that smut wasn't harmful, unlike video material, because video material allows exploitation, abuse, etc. I still believe you have to be really careful with where you're sourcing the material you watch, but I've changed my mind that smut can't be harmful. Sure, on paper, it's overall less problematic. It's purely fictional, so no real people are getting harmed, right? I'm not so sure.

The main two ways you can get your hands on smut is either on fanfiction websites like AO3, FFN, Wattpad, even Tumblr, or in real published books. Both have their own problems.

Real books are going to be about fictional characters always. They are also published by adults, and there are at least a few people involved in editing and publishing the book. However, there is not really a filtering system to tell you what you're about to get yourself into.

Fanfiction websites are generally better when it comes to knowing what you're reading because of the tagging and filtering systems. I can only really speak for AO3's tagging system, but even here on Tumblr people generally give you a list of tags or warnings before you read anything. On the other hand, these online works can be written by anyone, so there is no real feedback system outside of comments (not to mention that the general attitude is that if you don't like something you shouldn't read it).

I understand the idea that you shouldn't comment if you don't like something. These authors write for free in their spare time. It's supposed to be fun. And I agree! As an author myself, I'm not looking for someone to send a laundry list of complaints about my fic to my inbox.

On the other hand, I feel like the lines get blurred a bit when it comes to certain issues.

The reason I bring up women specifically (particularly straight women) is because of the rampant fetishization of gay men and gay relationships. Straight men do this to lesbians too of course, but I'm not here to talk about that, even if it is a significant issue. I can generally tell if I'm reading something written by a straight woman because it's just unrealistic.

I get it, there's a lot of aspects of anal sex that aren't "sexy". I don't write explicit details about douching or anything like that, and I'm not expecting anyone to either. But when I'm reading how someone is bottoming for the first time, they're using something like olive oil (actually wtf) or hand lotion, the top is being rough, and I'm expected to believe it feels good for the bottom? That's just not it. I know smut doesn't always need to be super realistic. You definitely can be brief about certain details, but my issue is that these are the same people who would complain about straight porn being unrealistic. I think it speaks to a fundamental lack of care to understand gay relationships and sex.

If you're benefitting from or partaking in a community that you're not a part of, you should be doing your best to accurately represent it. Just like how being a gay man doesn't prevent you from perpetuating and benefitting from misogyny (even if you are harmed by it yourself), being a woman doesn't automatically prevent you from being homophobic. The "for the girls, gays, and theys" attitude puts these identities that don't have much to do with each other on an assumed plane of equality when they just aren't. Being an ally extends past writing inclusive stories. It means putting in effort to make sure these stories are accurate and realistic*.

*When I say realistic, I don't mean smut scenes need to be super detailed, I mean that a story that's supposed to be "hot" shouldn't read like something an actual person would recount as a traumatic or unpleasant experience. This isn't about kink shaming. This is about how the human body works.

[psakhich]

[crimsonlaplacian]

born to bleed out on a battlefield, forced to prove the heisenberg uncertainty principle ten different ways

[jude457-deactivated20250828]

I've been thinking about what you said with In-ho and the younger pink guards, and that just really struck a chord with me.

To me, In-ho is a character who lost his birth mother young, and then his father. He was forced to grow up young, and even if his stepmother loved him and didn't want to cause him pain, at the end of the day he was parentified. He was thrust into this role of adult and provider as a teenager, never getting the opportunity to mess around like everyone else at school.

This experience greatly affected how he perceived love, both in how he receives affection and how he gives it. For In-ho, giving love is providing, caring for someone, sacrificing for them. Receiving love is the gratitude for his care and sacrifice. Jun-ho was too young to ever care for him, and his stepmother was too overwhelmed with being a single mother to dote on him. She tried his best, she really did. He would never hate her. But he can't remember the last time he cried in someone's arms, the last time someone else told him they would figure it out, that he doesn't need to worry.

With his wife, there was finally some equality in how she would reciprocate love. She was a partner, not a helpless child. And he struggled with this, struggled to let her love him. Then, she got sick, and suddenly he was in his early twenties again. Spending long days at the hospital, stroking her hair, telling her it will be okay, that he'll manage, that he'll find the money.

When he first joined the squid game as a player, he had this fatherly instinct toward the younger players, this urge to wipe the despair off their faces, to see them smile. And then they all die, one by one. Either because he can't save them, or because he has to kill them.

So as the front man, he has this inexplicable urge to not lead them astray. Yes, the punishment for disobedience is death. But a machine that isn't well-oiled will break. Order must be kept. But within that order, there can be allowances.

He kills as quickly as he can, a shot to the head. No drawn-out suffering.

This part of him comes out when Thanos and Nam-gyu are harassing MG Coin.

It comes out when he offers his milk to Jun-hee.

At the end of the day, he is going to let these people die. He is responsible for their deaths. But emotions don't have to make sense. Human actions are contradictory all the time. His need to nurture, driven by the child he never got to care for, compels him until he stands at a crossroads with the beliefs he adapted in order to survive the games.

YOU ARE GOING TO MAKE ME CRY AT WORK.

thinking about how Inho was parentified so young just breaks me. like—he never got to be a kid. not really. one illness after another, one financial crisis after the next, and suddenly he’s seventeen and not worried about grades or friends or dreams but about bills, hospital visits, making sure Junho has food on the table. and it just never stopped.

he gave up everything — every friend, every hobby, every quiet joy — not because anyone told him to, but because it felt like the only choice. Junho had to come first. always. and his stepmother, barely hanging on herself, leaned too hard on him without realizing. so he stepped up. kept stepping up. until “provide” wasn’t just something he did, it was who he was.

and so Inho grew up fast. too fast. worked himself down to the bone, probably didn’t even think too much about if joining the police was something he really wanted to do. every decision filtered through: will this help Junho? will this keep us afloat another month?

i imagine that’s why he got married really late — late thirties, maybe — not because he didn’t want love, but because he didn’t think he deserved it. it felt selfish. like choosing himself when Junho still needed so much. he was still sacrificing things long after Junho would’ve wanted him to stop.

and when the kidney transplant happened? yeah, Inho absolutely didn’t care what it would do to him. didn’t even pause. signed the forms like it was nothing. like it was expected. and afterwards? he definitely downplayed the pain. definitely went back to work weeks too early. definitely ignored every warning sign because all he could hear was provide, provide, provide.

and that’s the tragedy — he lost so much of Junho’s life. missed the small moments. because he was trapped in his own despair, breaking his body and spirit to keep the family afloat.

that’s why i love writing the reversal — imagining that, after the second rebellion, when they finally meet again, it’s Inho who’s fragile. who’s traumatised and worn thin and barely holding himself together. and Junho is the one who steps into that caretaker role. not because he owes Inho anything — but because he loves him. because Inho gave everything, and now it’s Junho’s turn to say: rest. I’ve got you now.

[jude457-deactivated20250828]

he definitely has just seen something that gutted him

[crimsonlaplacian]

The way he's swallowing, clenching his jaw, nostrils flaring, eyes wide. He's steeling himself for something.

[crimsonlaplacian]

"I can't be trans!" I cry as if my favorite show isn't Hannibal, my favorite artist isn't Ethel Cain, and I don't fundamentally hate my body