I Love Hermes And Apollo Hc's. They Hurt So Much

I don't get why people keep comparing the Dean and Kevin Tran scenes where they figure out someone is actually a demon.

The scene from season 1 where Dean figures out his dad was really a demon possessing him, and the scene where Kevin figures out the demons acting like Dean and Sam aren't really them.

Kevin realizes it's not the Winchesters when the demons were doing everything he asked. He asked for lunch, they brought him lunch. They went out and got him things and they were politer then the real Sam and Dean. Really, to me, it was a comedic moment, because they (mostly Dean) can act like a jerk without meaning to. (It reminds me of older siblings being annoying to a younger sibling) Not because they don't care about Kevin but because Dean naturally comes off that way. They do care about him and show obvious concern when he wasn't eating and sleeping enough.

When Dean realizes his dad was really a demon it was because the demon didn't yell at him, scold him, and be mad that he 'wasted' a bullet saving Sam. Instead the demon told him he was proud, like a good dad would. However, John isn't a good dad. He was emotionally abusive and he was neglectful, maybe even physically abusive. He forced Dean to act like a parent since he was four. He trained him to be a soldier and then abandoned him and Sam at the beginning of season 1.

These scenes are similar because they both involve demons and both involve someone realizing they are a demon. However, they are not comparable. One involved Dean and Sam acting like assholes (affectionate). One involved child abuse.

(ALSO, When Crowley was like, "my demons were too nice?", it made me laugh out loud.)

Happy aromantic visibility day!! Love this aroace king

Day 2: Mental Disability - Autistic Ranpo

I didn't get to doing anything proper for this day, but Autistic Ranpo is featured heavily on Day 7, so keep an eye out for that. (this can sort of be read as the background for that post if you want to know what my personal interpretation is.)

Instead let's talk about some of my Autistic Ranpo Headcanons! (ft. Poe and emotional support animal Karl)

(these are my personal hcs based on my autistic experience and is not reflective of everyone's interpretation and experience of autism <3)

I think Ranpo went undiagnosed until several months of living with Fukuzawa. Because of Ranpo's intellect, no one ever really questioned the things he struggled with until Fukuzawa.

The first time Fukuzawa started thinking there might be something actually up (rather than Ranpo just being Ranpo) was the first time he properly got lost trying to navigate the subway. Ranpo ended up going missing for serval hours 4 towns over and Fukuzawa finally found him curled up on a bench having a meltdown.

Another thing that clued him in was food. Fukuzawa, trying to be the Responsible Adult™️, pushed a little too hard about not having so many sweets. It wasn't until there was a big blow-up fight about it that Fukuzawa understood that Ranpo wasn't just being picky.

It took a little time, but the two of them fell into a rhythm and Fukuzawa became a safe space for Ranpo.

Before the agency was set up properly, Fukuzawa kept stim toys and earplugs in his sleeves for whenever Ranpo needed them. (now he keeps them in his desk drawer)

After getting a diagnosis and settling into the agency, Ranpo manages his autism much better. The agency always has someone there to help him navigate, everyone respects him in spite of his childish demeanor, and he has a very set routine.

When things do get overwhelming, he still has places within the agency to calm down. Fukuzawa will always let him join him for tea in his office. Having made a bit of an adoptive sister in Yosano she let's him chill out in his office if he ever needs any down time (everyone's too scared of her to bother him when he's in there.)

The rest of the agency is good at accommodating him too. Kunikida has no problem using his ability to make stim toys or aids for him whenever they're out on a case. Dazai, while kind of a pain in the ass, gives him some good intellectual stimulation when they hang out that's hard for him to get elsewhere (they're besties you can't convince me otherwise). Atsushi carries around snacks for him. And everyone regardless of who they are will help him navigate transportation.

Eventually he also has Poe who he can either go to or call to come and bring Karl. The author has a really calming presence and having a soft animal to pet and play with always helps.

Speaking of Poe, their first interaction will always haunt him as one of his autistic blunders. Ranpo really respected him as a detective and wanted to complement his skills... but didn't quite realize comparing him to himself would sound like gloating. He's really glad to have met Poe again (even if it was through a 6 year revenge plot).

Poe also understands his autism in a way that most people don't, being autistic himself.

The first time Ranpo had a proper meltdown around Poe was before Ranpo had the chance to explain his autism to him. After calming down, Ranpo was super impressed with how Poe dealt with it and it led to a conversation about both of their experiences growing up and why Poe has Karl as his emotional support animal.

Ranpo also gets headaches frequently. He's never really found a cause, but he suspects his autism has something to do with it.

When he was young and lived with Fukuzawa, Fukuzawa would let him sleep with his head in his lap and play with his hair when things got bad. (He would still let him, but Poe does it most often now)

This got long 😅 but I hope you enjoyed! 💖

Accurate. Very accurate. This is so funny

ic: @batfam-stuff-posts-0

based on this post :))

I agree with this. Man, now I want to write my own thoughts because Season 2 is so interesting to me. Especially since I was immediately reminded of American politics, with the two parties that are pushed to fight each other when really our true enemy is those trying to control us, when they were told to vote. I knew instantly that the game makers were trying to pit the two sides against each other. Especially with the red and blue colors. The other analogy being made is the two sides representing the red and blue pills from the Matrix.

Squid Game Season Two Analysis: Capitalist Ideology, The Illusion of Democracy, and The Necessity for Revolution

Why the second season of Squid Game is a great follow-up to the first season and offers us an even more radical critique of capitalism and its supposedly "free" and "democratic" institutions.

(Spoiler warning for both seasons. I won't go into too much detail, but some spoilers for the bigger plot points will be present)

I really enjoyed the second season of Squid Game, so I was surprised when I learned that a good amount of fans of the first season did not feel the same.

Because of that, I wanna give my thoughts on the themes and messages that this season in particular offers us and why I believe season 2 is, in many ways, even more radical than season 1 in its narrative choices.

Season One: The Dehumanizing Nature of Capitalism

Season 1 did a great job as a more general critique of capitalism (with some elements that are more specific to South Korea). It showed us a story of impoverished people that are so desparate that they find themselves trapped in a literal game of life and death that forces them to not only compete with other participants who are in similar financial situations, but to sometimes even betray and kill them just to survive and possibly win the big money at the end of all rounds.

To make it all even more cruel: It is soon revealed that the whole game just exists for the entertainment of rich elites who change the conditions of the game as they please when they are bored.

Needless to say: The game in Squid Game is a pretty heavy-handed allegory for the predatory nature of capitalism and how it literally kills us. The creator himself has stated this multiple times, since there are still people who (willingly or unwillingly) deny this.

There are already plenty of great analyses of these aspects in season 1 (I really recommend the video on YouTube called "Squid Game: Ideology and The New Soviet Man" by Kay and Skittles), so let's move on to season 2.

Season Two: The Setup

Our protagonist is once again Gi-hun, the only survivor of all games from season 1. He is practically a billionaire since he won all the money in season 1, and could therefore live a pretty comfortable life.

And yet he is fixated on one singular goal: To track down the location where the games take place to put a stop to them once and for all. Gi-hun feels guilty to spend his fortune on anything else than this one goal, since it's a fortune that came from the deaths of his friends and countless other people.

Gi-hun eventually finds himself back in the game after every other approach failed. Unfortunately for him, the tracker that he surgically implanted in his tooth got removed while he was knocked out and transported into the game. He is once again forced to participate in the game, since his rescue team that was supposed to save him and attack the island on which the games take place cannot locate him as of now.

The Greatness of Gi-hun: Resisting Hyperindividualism, Cynicism and Capitalist Ideas of Worth

I really like Gi-hun as a character. He started out as a deadbeat dad who got into severe debt because of his gambling addiction. Gi-hun is someone who many people that are entrenched in neoliberal capitalist ideology wouldn't feel much sympathy for at first, as he's shown to be pretty reckless and just overall far from a noble hero when we first get introduced to his character in season 1.

If you're from the west (or a country like South Korea which has a similar hyperindividualist capitalist culture), then you are taught to see Gi-hun's situation as something self-caused, as something he freely chose to be in with his own bad decisions. Furthermore, you're taught to see his socio-economic situation as a direct reflection of his value as a person.

In the series itself, the Front Man, the VIPs and even some other players in the game reinforce this way of thinking. They constantly express the sentiment that the players in the game are "worthless", "scum" and "trash" that deserves to be "filtered out" (killed) because they are responsible for the situation that they are in and have no worth anyway, as their socio-economic status shows according to this logic.

Gi-hun is someone who rejects all of this.

In season 2, we see him more determined than ever to save as many people as possible in the game, and to ultimately put an end to the game itself. He does not believe in the narrative that people's worth is determined by their socio-economic status, nor that they are completely self-responsible for their situation and therefore deserve to be killed in the game.

Gi-hun calls the game out for what it is: A predatory and cruel tool of rich capitalists that preys on people's fears and vulnerabilities to encourage the worst aspects of people's personalities to flourish, all just for the entertainment of rich investors who see the players as expendable and enjoy watching them die and betray each other.

Gi-hun isn't particularly gifted or talented, he's not the exceptional, flawless individual that neoliberalism fetishizes. He can be cowardly, insecure, frightened and even selfish, as we saw in season 1 when he lied to the old man to save his own life.

But at the end of the day, he is someone with an unwavering belief in the worth and potential of people despite what his hypercapitalist neoliberal culture (and people deeply embedded into it) constantly tells him. He's someone who, despite all his flaws, risks his life and happiness for that simple belief.

Gi-hun is the antidote to a deeply cynical, hyperindividualistic and neoliberal capitalist society that conditions us to not believe in the worth and potential of other people beyond their wealth and social status.

The Illusion of Democracy: A deceptive Facade of Free Choice and Equality

Let's look at the game itself this season, since there have been a few changes to its rules.

In this season, the surviving players are given the opportunity to vote after each round to either continue into the next round or to stop playing and divide the money that has accumulated so far among each player that survived. The more players die, the more money gets added to the final prize and the fewer people need to share the total sum with each other, meaning each player gets more money in the end if the majority votes to stop playing.

The staff of the game keeps emphasizing how the players chose to be part of the game, how they always have the option to leave, how the game respects free choice and values democracy, how everyone is equal in the game, and how the rules are fair and universal.

Unsurprisingly, this is all nonsense.

The players are not even aware that they are playing with their lives at risk until after the first game, a game called "Red Light, Green Light", which has a high fatality rate because once the first player dies, the shock and sudden rush of fear causes people to panic, leading to more deaths.

The first season also showed us that the VIPs can change the rules and conditions of the game whenever they feel like it, even during a round.

Age, health, knowledge and experience with the particular games that are being played in each round can also make the difference between life and death. Sometimes the games also straight up involve a factor of luck that the players have no real control over.

Then there's also the fact that not every player is in the same situation. Some players, such as Hyun-ju or Yong-sik, are shown to have severely more debt than others and lost significantly more in their life, which means some have the privilege to be all set again after just one or two rounds (if the majority votes to stop playing) while others will have barely earned enough money to fix their life, and would therefore need to play more rounds to achieve that outcome.

Some also have family and friends that need them, while others lost everything and have no one to come home to. All these factors make them unequal and shape the way they vote.

So basically: The players are stuck in a game that they didn't even know puts their life in danger until after they played the first round. The only reason they entered in the first place was because of their precarious situation that varies in severity from person to person (which means some have the privilege to vote to end the game early with their financial issues fixed, while others do not). Some players have more advantages than others in each round because of age, health, knowledge, experience or even just sheer luck. And the VIPs can just change the rules of the game whenever they feel like it.

Squid Game tells us very clearly that it thinks very little of the rhetoric of "free choice" "free democracy" and "equality" in a structurally coercive, brutal and predatory system with fundamentally unequal conditions such as our capitalist society.

The Front Man: Cynicism, Vote Manipulation and Counter-Revolution

A key aspect of the second season of Squid Game is that the Front Man himself pretends to be a regular player; he participates in the games among Gi-hun and the rest as player 001. The Front Man deliberately gets close to Gi-hun and even manages to win his trust pretty easily with his down-to-earth and kind facade, making him involved in Gi-hun's every move.

The Front Man is, in many ways, the opposite of Gi-hun.

He is shown in both seasons to think very little of the players and humanity as a whole. He sees the participants of the game as worthless trash that deserves to get sorted out. The Front Man believes humanity is selfish, greedy and cannot be better than what it is right now, which makes the game a necessary part of the world to him.

The Front Man is thoroughly entrenched in the cynical, neoliberal capitalist worldview that sees humans as fundamentally selfish and greedy beings that only have themselves to blame for their situations.

It is noteworthy that the Front Man is very fixated on Gi-hun, and even seems to grow a liking to him because of his unwavering belief in the value and potential of people that he upholds despite all the horrors and betrayal that he witnessed. This suggests that a small part of the Front Man might still have hope that Gi-hun is right and wants him to succeed in his goal.

But at the end of the day, we see that his cynical and neoliberal view on humanity rules over what little hope in a better world he might have.

As such, the Front Man ultimately sabotages Gi-hun's efforts whenever he can. When the vote was tied after the first round, he votes to continue into the next round so that more people die, something Gi-hun fought to prevent by making it clear to the other players that more people will die if they continue.

But this is not the only time he manipulates Gi-hun's efforts: When Gi-hun organizes an armed resistance to finally put an end to the game itself for good, the Front Man betrays him in the last minute by kiling members of the resistance group and then shooting Gi-hun's best friend in front of him in order to emotionally break Gi-hun and make him lose hope.

The Front Man is not just a despicable antagonist, he also serves as a pretty blunt example of a member of the ruling class that rigs elections and destroys revolutionary movements from within, a strategy that imperialist powers such as the US have utilized many times in history already.

When Voting isn't enough: The Necessity of Revolution and Class War

Despite Gi-hun's attempt to end the game for good having failed (at least for now), I don't believe the message of Squid Game's second season is one of resignation. Not only is the game shown to be fundamentally unjust and rigged, but voting alone is also portrayed to not be enough.

Throughout the whole season, those who vote to end the game never succeed. This is not a coincidence. The game is designed to make it the less likely outcome not just because of the involvement of Front Man, but because the game preys on people's despair and precarity, all while also encouraging selfish, greedy and reckless behavior in its very design.

But even if enough people voted to end the game: The next batch of players would just be thrown into the same situation Gi-hun and the others just escaped from. A successful majority vote to leave the game would save many lives, but Gi-hun's fight would be far from over. His goal to put a permanent end to the game would not be achieved yet.

The staff of the game also makes a deliberate choice to put a big X or O onto the jumpsuit of each player depending on how they voted. This encourages players to define themselves as either Xs or Os, which leads to hostility towards the players of the other fraction.

This reaches a point where players of both fractions plan to murder the other fraction in order to secure the next vote for themselves.

But Gi-hun puts a stop to that.

He realizes it's a deliberate distraction so that people fight each other rather than the game itself. He proposes that the players should instead organize together to fight the real oppressors that forced them into the whole situation in the first place.

They are not Xs or Os. They are impoverished and desparate people who were manipulated to participate into a literal game of death that requires suffering, betrayal and murder for victory.

The message of Squid Game Season Two is one of collective resistance and revolution:

The institutions of a fundamentally rigged and predatory class system are not enough to abolish the system itself. Voting can be used as a form of damage control, but it cannot replace collective action and organizing.

Instead of fighting each other, we need to organize together to fight the system itself. It is the only way we can truly all be liberated from the death game of capitalism.

The Ladynoir Texts Pt. 1-5

Reuploading The Ladynoir Texts here! This is going to take a while lol...

According to the Bible: Every hardship has a reason.

that reason being that your gods oc and he wants to give you so much trauma.

He'll show the angels and say, "look at this one! I killed their dad, made their mom a deranged sociopath, and their autistic! Now let me tell you about all their lore and character arc!" And you just have to sit there and wonder what you ever did wrong.

(This is coming from an ex-christian.)

Father's Day, 2024

In my country, I'm on time (and anyway, tomorrow's our own official Father's Day, so it works out even if it's technically the 17th :P)

Here's an overall tribute to FukuDad and his precious son ^^

Along with general tidbits that I love to revisit since they solidify just how strong/wholesome their bond is...

I think Gi-hun from Squid Game is Neuro divergent. That is all ladies, gentlemen,and nonbinaries. Good night