oh my god finally someone bringing up how misogynistic and pro-life the whole shebang felt. i guess hdh had shown those inclinations since s2 with inho's backstory being a dead pregnant wife, the story focusing so much on junhee and her pregnancy (from a writing standpoint her entire character is just Pregnant Woman who is Pregnant), 246's character being having a sick daughter, etc.
s3 cranked it up to 11 with every non-complete psychopath character (+ inho) becoming brain dead and obsessed with the baby, junhee dying almost immediately after giving birth (and still not getting more character development aside from going from a Pregnant Woman to a Postpartum Woman), geumja killing her own son and then killing herself with her entire words being about the baby, and noeuls entire character.
noeul's character is just plain offensive tbh, being reduced to her having lost a child (until all of a sudden it's magically found lmao) and getting obsessed with this random sick girl she'd seen once, to the point where a) it's heavily implied she'd joined the game again for the random sick girl, b) her actress says her sole purpose in life is to be with her child, c) she risks her life and kills a bunch of people for a random guy she'd seen exactly once just because he's the father of said sick girl, d) she's ready to kill herself when she thinks this random baby will die but doesn't when it lives. oh, and also she gets sexually harassed the only times she interacts with anyone who isn't masked manager or 246. i just...?
by s3 the only female characters not defined by having anything to do with children are hyunju (and i suspect her being trans therefore not being able to bear children was the only thing that stopped hdh) and seonnyeo (basically a comic relief character), both of whom get killed off as soon as possible.
s2 at the very least had youngmi and semi, although semi's character (and especially the way it was handled in s3) is questionable even without the pro-life shit. she's literally there to be a manic pixie dream girl to minsu and gets killed in a disturbingly graphic manner by a guy who calls her a bitch, a whore, and a fucking cunt, and her role in s3 is reduced to minsu's manic pixie dream girl hallucination.
compared to s1 which had saebyeok, minyeo (who were both on the receiving end of in-universe misogyny too but somehow were very nuanced and complex characters, with minyeo's death being one of my favorite due to it being a perfect conclusion to her character arc) and jiyeong? insane to think about.
wish someone would've reminded hwang that he is not aronofsky and this is not mother! 2017 with jlaw. this is squid game and it's always been about exploring the nature of the system we live in as well as the nature of humanity and the choices people make.
agreeing to join the games, coming back to play (s1), continuing to play or not (s2), resisting (gihun) or succumbing (sangwoo, inho), having faith (gihun) or not (ilnam, inho). it's not like family was not factored in, quite the opposite? everything related to hwang brothers, gihun joining the games for his mother, gihun trying to take care of his daughter despite not having the means to, sangwoo not being able to face his mom after what he did, saebyeok joining the games for her brother, ali for his family. the commentary on the relationships between parents and children and siblings was there.
how did we go from that to that entire twilight baby circus with the show simultaneously shitting on everything it developed before? gihun kinda forgetting about his daughter because living for her isn't worth it, inho kinda forgetting he cared for his brother enough to give him a liver transplant, save his life at the end of s1 and subsequently protect him from the reality inho lives in and ordering him killed because yolo (and then completely ignoring him during their 5 second interaction), inhun forgetting about their moral conflict that dated back to gihun and ilnam. all to give spotlight to a crudely shoved in baby = humanity plot line? losing my mind LOSING MY MIND i'm telling you.
(oh, and let's not forget that inho's entire speech from s1 about games being first and foremost fair, the rules that were supposed to be strictly enforced due to that very fairness and all the important moments related to said rules, ie s2's voting system, s1's game being put on pause after sangwoo brought it up, s1's easily avoidable and heartbreaking finale with sangwoo having the opportunity to put a stop to the game and go with gihun and ending his life instead because he wouldn't be able to live with himself after, etc can all get pissed on because now rules will be made up and canceled on the spot, won't matter, and also the entire point which is that people consented to being in the games and actively chose to continue to participate will be rendered void just to make the baby plot work. 👍)
anon, u perfectly summed up my feelings abt this season.
all of these interesting, complex female characters dying so that we could have an all-male final game, where 5/9 of them are nameless players and the other one is fucking player 100.
i'm not saying that junhee couldn't want her baby, of course she could. she has no parents and no partner, i'm sure that baby was a way for her to finally have a family of her own.
even hyunju had a b-side plot abt motherhood but i can excuse that one. it's important to her as a trans character and the actor has spoken how hyunju felt watching the birth and the bathroom scene in s2.
also, yeah the rules changing all of a sudden was so strange lol
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