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Tuesday, Dec 31, 2024 - 22:22 SGT
Posted By: Gilbert

All Shaping Up


Cylinders personally hand-made from a polymer clay workshop;
leftover tickets from the Sanrio Carnival


This must have been the half-year with the lowest post density since the inception of this blog, and frankly there's simply too much to catch up on. As it is, Squid Game Season 2 urgently deserves follow-up commentary from the previous analysis on its circle-triangle-square motif in October 2021, and thus it will be (mild unavoidable spoiler warning, please skip if required). Before that, a short diversion into truth, mysteries and supposed conspiracies, which should be extremely helpful in planned expositions to come:


The Invincible Reason

The past months have also seen my experiencing a host of crime-solving games, ranging from home-playable casefiles such as Detective for a Day, to escape room-type scenarios and performances like RED: An Artful Murder and UNTAME: Breach Resort (the scale of SAGA City of Light was unmatched, but I suppose it doesn't count). By the way, the format for most of these appears to have converged: three to five suspects are presented, possibly with details such as height, weight and other trivia etc., together with clues that serve to eliminate them through alibis or other conflicting evidence.

Now, in theory, these puzzles should be unambigiously solvable through application of logic assuming all clues are obtained and considered, but in practice one figures that there often remain residual possibilities (i.e. in legalese, the solution would be more towards [heavy] preponderance of evidence, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt). Worse, details may not even add up in the first place; for example, one of the shows had the emcee-detective declare that a knife had no fingerprints found on it, when one of the suspects had very clearly picked it up bare-handed in a panic, after it was planted in her belongings.

Anyway, the key point here is that, as a prerequisite for truth, there must be at least internal consistency to begin with. Consider multiple choice questions in say physics - sometimes, options can be eliminated simply on the basis that they are not dimensionally consistent, without knowing anything else about the underlying equation(s) applied.

This is clearly very useful in performing reviews of academic papers (and really, stories in general). For example, let us say that for some experiment with 112 subjects, an accuracy of 89.6% is claimed. This is however basically impossible, since getting 100 of 112 predictions correct would be 89.3%, while the next possible step up of 101 correct would give 90.2%.

Note that one should not automatically assume subterfuge when such occurrences happen - there are very many possible (and mostly-honest) explanations for discrepancies. The author might simply have been careless in his typing, when transferring the results from another source (especially if hundreds or thousands of such values are involved). The value might have been incorrectly copied over from a spreadsheet because the wrong shortcut key was used. The data and/or analysis scripts might have been passed from one research assistant to another, and an old version used... so on and so forth.

As a reviewer, I typically just point such inconsistencies out, and invite the authors to set the record straight in the revision. However, developments in certain major real-life events have left little doubt that malicious deceit was the intent, for at least some players - which will be covered in forthcoming posts.


The Game Is On!

"No matter how old they get, they'll continue to say... 'My real life hasn't started yet'... And on their deathbeds, they will finally realize: The life they lived was the real thing. People don't live provisional lives, nor do they die provisional deaths."

- Some New Year resolutionish wisdom by Middle Manager Tonegawa of Kaiji, on the fantasies of those that believe they aren't part of The Greatest Game in real life... but definitely are



Choose - Team Red or Team Blue?
[N.B. The moral is that it doesn't really matter, one is doomed either way]
[N.N.B. Fortunately for Gi-hun, The Salesman's not a slapfight pro]
(Source: forbes.com)


All seven episodes of the second season of Squid Game have been released on Boxing Day, and after watching through them in two sittings, the (long-admitted) influence of manga such as Kaiji and Liar Game (as also discussed back in October 2021, introducing and explaining the real-life Pandemic Game) has become only more obvious:

  • The Squid Games are held by the uber-wealthy globohomo class, who have nothing better to do than to watch the common peasantry murder each other in contrived contests. Kaiji in particular features the Human Horse Race and Steel Frame Crossing games, where the participants have to cross a narrow beam suspended high in the air, to entertain the privileged spectators (all but one of the players perished in the latter). The similarity to Squid Game's Glass Stepping Stones in Season One, and the sabotaging of those ahead in line via malicious pushing in the Red Light, Green Light game in Season Two, might then be easily recognized.

  • As for Liar Game, the masks worn by the organizers* (uniform for the rank-and-file functionaries/foot soldiers, unique for the officers and VIPs) are a common feature, right down to the top guy in both stories (the Front Man for Squid Game Season Two, and Artier-san for Liar Game) being fashionably hooded.

  • "Freedom of choice" is a major common theme in all three series. Strictly speaking, all players' participation is entirely voluntary, at least initially; players are also generally given a choice to leave, after each individual game ends. Squid Game is perhaps the most restrictive, requiring a majority vote for the games to end and all players to leave. On the other hand, players can typically choose to discontinue participation after each round in Kaiji and Liar Game... although debts (oft accrued in the games) can force a player to continue, since the sole alternative would be forced servitude.

    Thus, (main) characters' free choice to continue is a plot point in all series; in Squid Game, protagonist Gi-hun could have easily walked away with his 45.6 billion won (some US$31 million) as the sole winner of the 33rd Games, but returned to avenge his friends and end the games... which happens to be more or less Nao and Akiyama's motivation in Liar Game. Kaiji tends to be more self-interested, but also winds up rejoining games due to spending his winnings on helping others.


The face of a guy who's done with being repeatedly lied to by all the FAKE NEWS, much of it involving the Pandemic Game (2020-2024)
(Source: r/squidgame)

  • Pertinent to the above is that the protagonists in all three series arguably are true gamblers at heart. Gi-hun for example sticks to his word in playing Russian roulette (coincidentally one of the side-games in Liar Game, involving its own strategy) with The Salesman in the first episode, when many might have been tempted to welch and just pull the trigger twice at the other guy, with only two chambers remaining (credit to him, The Salesman accepts his loss too, and takes his own life)

    Of course, Gi-hun's backstory reveals that he was an inveterate gambler to begin with, which definitely also applies to Kaiji - whose innate good-heartedness is too often overriden by the conviction that "just one more try" is all he needs, and that "the flow" is with him (which is admittedly sometimes true). Akiyama and Yokoya are on the other hand drawn more to the intellectual side of the gamble, as seen for the latter by his being provoked by Nao to continue, by contesting his conception of the meaning of the Liar Game (i.e. Domination over others)

  • Foreknowledge of the games being played being power is also a shared trope, with Yokoya's recognizing the pattern** behind them (together with his interpretation of The Game being a competition for Influence and Control, i.e. Twilight Struggle) being a major turning point in Liar Game. Gi-hun similarly gains cachet for being the only one to know how Red Light, Green Light worked - and trying to inform the other players as to how to survive - but he is hardly universally appreciated for the effort. This is reflected by supposed "conspiracy theorists" in reality, who are often misrepresented and later shown to be largely accurate - when it is too late.


Step over the Demarcation (Red) Line, and it's World War III!
(Source: Squid Game Season 2, Episode 6)

  • The definition of "true enemy" as the game organizer (i.e. the Masked Men for Squid Game, the LGT office for Liar Game, and the Teiai Corporation for Kaiji, various globalist organizations/lobbyist groups in reality), rather than the other players/victims, is likewise designed to be a fundamental realization in all three series. This is a pretty blatant allegory of real life (with the faceless* elite disguising their true aims and dividing the clueless populace into [Red and Blue]*** teams, before egging them to fight each other, cough cough), but this will require a future post to expound on in greater detail...

  • The antagonism and division between players is moreover built into the design of the games. Mingle in the latest Squid Game for example forces players in previously-bonded groups to make split-second decisions as to who they are closer to, which swiftly poisons many relationships. There are only too many examples in all three series where players are encouraged to betray one another for profit or mere survival (e.g. Marbles in the previous edition, More Than Love, The Sword in Kaiji, and most of the contests in Liar Game, where convincing lying is after all the whole point)

  • On the age-old exploitation of religion/spirituality as another avenue for power and influence, Squid Game now features a (fallen) shaman, who is possibly the most irritating player in the entire show (at least Thanos had his funny, if half-baked, moments); despite that, she gains at least one fervent believer by the end of the season. Liar Game features a four-(wo)man cabal led by cult leader Harimoto (with a later twist), which the pretty-sharp Fukunaga notes to be a great advantage in the game, due to the absolute obedience on tap. Kaiji employs a priest in the Pachinko Bog arc as part of his double-headed stratagem, which was a success.

  • The trans angle is worked too, with Player 120 more or less designed as an overpowered Mary Sue (thus far)... and who immediately brings Liar Game's OG Fukunaga (also something of a physical powerhouse) to mind. There has been some controversy over casting a cisgender man in the role, however, all the more after he purportedly shared a, um, spin-off of the show, on his Instagram. Then again, given how much Squid Game has borrowed from previous IP, one imagines that the producers could have been more understanding on this...

To end off, I was asked as to how I could remain emotionless, as the players violently killed each other off in the toilet and overnight. My answer was simple: firstly, I knew well that this was just a work of fiction (i.e. nobody actually got harmed), and secondly, only several hundred people were involved. The better question, then, might be how people can remain unmoved, when millions perish in real life due to similar machinations. Well, since more revelations on that should be due soon, we can just wait and see how The Greatest Game plays out!


[*Thus all the masks.]

[**Odious as he otherwise is, Yokoya's drive towards unravelling what is actually happening behind the scenes - rather than just swallowing the FAKE NEWS wholesale - is a very admirable (and sadly, rare in real life) characteristic.]

[***Meaningfully updated from Red vs. Green, in Season One.]



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