#ted talked

[shimdta]

Thank you @lumidotexe for my wonderful new profile picture. Please go commission her she is doing emergency commissions and her regular prices are on sale!

[orgasming-caterpillar]

"fuck it we ball" is for stress about the future "it is what it is" is for stress about the past and "this too shall pass" is for stress about the present thank you for coming to my TED talk

[thinkingabout-girls]

rating these laios hugs out of 10 cause they are quite possibly the funniest things i have ever seen

(please note this is not based on laios’s efforts it’s just rating the overall hug)

senshi hug: 10/10. that’s a solid hug right there. bit awkward with the height difference but they made it work

chilchuck hug: 5/10. i’ve been laughing at this for 10 minutes. an effort was made. points have been awarded for an obvious attempt at making chilchuck more comfortable but still is still the awkwardest hug i’ve ever seen. it is painfully obvious that laios once attempted to crouch down to hug chilchuck and received a kick to the nuts and was cursed out for 20 minutes, and has adapted to this so that chilchuck doesn’t kill laios or himself

marcille hug: 8/10. this is the way i hug my relatives that i don’t see very often at family events but it’s still a solid hug

shuro hug: 2/10. this is a great hug but points have been deducted because shuro is a bastard man

falin hug: 1000/10. THAT is a hug and it’s a damn good one. very obvious sibling love right there we love to see it

kabru hug: ???/10. what the fuck is this. what’s with the christian side hug. why are you gently holding his tit what’s wrong with you

[teacupbug]

My controversial opinion is that I think chronically ill people should be able to fight one doctor a year

[the-phantom-peach]

🗣️ huh?? what do you mean I haven’t posted any Link signing propaganda yet??

[hattersarts]

im already at the south downs cottage guys, catch up

[voiider]

*New York accent* I'm boopin' here!!!

[n0anix]

whatever *domesticates your Carnivàle Lecroux*

[devils-your-minion]

Luke Brandon Field did NOT put his all into playing young Daniel as the most horny, desperate, pathetic, limp wristed, whimpering bisexual loser who looked up at that vampire with the wettest most submissive eyes and melted into him as he accepted the loving embrace of death just for people to say that Daniel Molloy is some kind of dom top.

Don’t worry Mr. Brandon Field, I saw your masochistic vision.

[vvanillavveins]

Is she Lucy Westenra, or is she just a vessel for the writer's barely disguised fantasy of a women being punished for her promiscuity? Is she really"Bram Stoker's" Lucy Westenra: a naive, innocent 19 year old, with a cheery personality and a bright future ahead of her? Or has the writer instead just slapped her name on an OC that behaves nothing like her, and- with none of the grace or decorum that Lucy's tragically short story deserves- sexualized her slow and agonising death as much as possible, whilst very unsubtly doing their best to blame her for being murdered, so that we won't object to her being killed again later in an even more gruesome and sexual manner?

[shimdta]

Bought and tried on my first set of sexy clothes and honestly kinda feeling a little pretty

[shouts-into-the-void]

I feel like the aftg fandom has just swung hard from one mischaracterization of Neil to another.

Yes, Neil is not an innocent little soft-boy like a lot of fans made him out to be pre-TSC, but he isn't some cold, calculated badass either.

He took out a hit on Grayson over Thai food. He doodles fox paws in his notebooks and hates vegetables. He insults FBI agents' parking jobs and he spent a bus ride staring over the back of his seat making heart eyes at his boyfriend. He manipulated the agents while eating takeout in the interrogation room. He canonically internally panics and overthinks the entire time he's attempting to manipulate anyone. He uses people's family trauma to manipulate them. He misses his mom.

Neil Abram Josten is a multifaceted character

[maines]

You’re the best friends anybody ever had. And it’s funny, but I feel as if I’ve known you all the time. But I couldn’t have, could I?

THE WIZARD OF OZ (1939) | AGATHA ALL ALONG (2024)

[novahedron]

Joke that makes sense only to me and one (1) singular friend + live Martin and Tim reaction The vaguely referenced image:

[prncssguya]

on hwang in-ho/front man, seong gi-hun and their dynamic.

first, idk why people are getting so upset at other people calling gi-hun dumb, we were told that in the first season. lol being bright is not his strongest trait but he has a good heart and we love that about him. however, he is still an idealistic gullible idiot with a gambling problem. except this time his gambling addiction is backed by a sense of justice and righteousness and he no longer gambles with money, he’s gambling with people’s lives. front man asked a good question at the end of the season, “did you have fun playing the hero?” can we even call gi-hun the hero of the story anymore? he gambled with people’s lives and front man showed him the consequences of his moral heroics.

front man only agreed to help gi-hun with his revolution when he mentioned about "small sacrifices for the greater good". i think he reveled in the fact that the “good guy” was willing to allow a few innocent people to die for the greater good to stop the games, which is exactly what the entire VIP theory is to rid the world of 'trash' to improve the world. notice how gi-hun's moral code and belief also changed, from being "nobody should die" into "yeah small sacrifice is okay as long it's for the greater good" at this point, he just proved that front man's belief is actually valid. AND he gets more of his own people killed in the pointless battle with the soldiers that they had no chance of winning. now he gets to feel responsible for all those deaths and the death of his friend and for whatever additional torture they cook up in the next games (as punishment for the escape attempt).

now on hwang in-ho, i believe he was once a good man and the story he told gi-hun was the truth. but in the end he lost a kidney, lost a wife, a baby, lost his money, got fucked over by the wrong people and got into serious debt and had to play this game to help his wife and probably it was too late to save her. he might have played the games like gi-hun but saw how ruthless and greedy people are and resolved that they don't deserve help

i don’t think in-ho wants/will kill gi-hun, but he wants him to understand things from his perspective and show him that his compassion for the people in the games is foolish. you can tell the frontmen (the old man and in-ho) are extremely fond of gi hun. not only did he protect their original front man when nobody else did, he then won the games and thus their respect as he is now as rich as them. he's no longer "trash", he’s an elite like them. i think they both actually kept tabs on him after he won (i wonder if they do that for all winners? inserting them with gps chips?) because they knew he had not used his reward money and in-ho wanted gi-hun to get on the plane and be happy with his daughter

there’s one interesting aspect of the games that makes front man such a complex character. the fact that they’re operating a organ transplant trafficking network. in a way, he’s creating some good to come from a really fucked up situation. but is it really for the good of others who desperately need it, people like his wife, like his brother? or is it just a money making scheme?

either way, i don’t think there is going to be a redemption arc for in-ho, he’s too far gone. we may get to see more of his human side if he manages to see jun-ho again. the only time we’ve seen genuine emotions from him was when he shot his brother like he seemed distraught

the real cliffhanger for me, is will gi-hun stay true to his belief that people can be good, or will he be forever changed into a villain and become the next front man…? after the events of this season i don’t see how his will doesn’t shatter. he’s witnessed how humanity consistently chose money over survival, he’s lost two close friends, his mother, abandoned his daughter. he has gained nothing from wanting to stop the games and this clearly feels like an origin story for the next front man. it’s clear the front man has won this round and i think squid game will either die with 001 or continue with gi-hun as game master

another thing i find funny that i don’t see many mention is how gi-hun is like the luckiest guy in the fucking world. but i don’t think him being alive this long is plot armor, it makes sense. the games exist for the entertainment of rich sadists who have so much money they don't know what to do with it (remember what old 001 said in s1 about life being no fun for both people with no money and people with too much money). and i’d imagine killing hundreds of poor debt-ridden fools year after year gets boring. especially when said fools are desperate enough to gamble with their lives because they think they can beat the system by playing better than everyone else and surviving and getting the money.

gihun is different because he got the money, got out, and still came back. not because he's unfeeling or because he wants more money, but because he's still convinced he can beat the system.

if you're a rich bored gazillionaire, would you rather watch some randos die or would you rather watch this exceptional idiot fail again and again until he learns that his ideals are meaningless and people are inherently greedy and equality is a myth and people at the bottom of the barrel don't get to question the system?

if you're an asshole gazillionaire, you don't want someone to challenge you and just get away with it. you want to hand them 45.6 billion won and make them go away quietly, traumatized, after breaking them psychologically by making them do horrible things until they understand they're just powerless "horses". if they insist on challenging you and your system and your beliefs (money = boundless power), you teach them a lesson and show them their place in the most manipulative and cruel way possible. if gihun dies right away, that's boring. so he can't die, he needs to suffer. he needs to concede defeat.

also, i find it funny how people are comparing hwang inho and gihun dynamic to hannibal and will graham. makes sense, their whole cat and mouse game, front man hiding his true nature from gi-hun the same way hannibal does, trying to corrupt the righteous protagonist, sowing chaos, testing him and observing his behavior like a lab rat, the crazy tension and staring contests, the gaslighting and manipulation. and with the fact that they think lee byung-hun looks like mads mikkelsen. i never put the two of them together but now i can’t unsee it lol

[soullessstare]

I know we often associate the canary with Sam, but I think Collin was the canary.

From the start he was singing the dangers of the job, trying to warn off everyone else. He tried to warn them, to save everyone by destroying the servers.

In the end, no one paid any mind to his voice until it was gone and he was dead. He died caged in the thing he tried so hard to escape, like a canary taking its last breath deep below the ground caged by the rocky walls that would spell its doom no matter how hard it sang.