What kinda headspace do you have to be in to write some shit like Squid Games?
I think about these things a lot. Like how did you get there?
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“survival game” is a whole genre, hunger games is maybe the most famous american example but it’s big in japan eg. goes back at least as far as battle royale but there’s a bunch in anime / manga like liar game. it’s less shocking once you see all the other examples
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It's not that I'm shocked (I've read hunger games & Saw also came to mind). It's that this form of orchestrated horrors is peculiar as opposed to the senselessness that pervades most real-life horrors.
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I'm struggling to describe myself here but these stories are so tightly controlled and almost clean? In a way that just doesn't happen in real life. It feels like an attempt to seize control and ascribe meaning to acts that are still senseless. Like a defense mechanism.
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yeah i do wonder about this!
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no maybe it’s the reverse, not enough twisty levels of misdirection. maybe the fantasy is that there exist entities coherent and powerful enough to run death games, *therefore* all one has to do is please or outwit such entities. a deeply bureaucratized substitute for god?
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Yes! Like a substitute for God, where people playing God infers more of a sense of likeness and tangible consequences. Seeing how fragile the old man is an (albeit unsatisfying) retribution that one would never have with a God.
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i also wonder how much of it is specifically korean cultural commentary. some kind of grievance towards the upper classes or previous generations for economic dysfunction? idk