always rooting for the anti-hero
Jul. 11th, 2025 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
arundelsSometimes you just have to make a dreamwidth post about something that literally nobody cares about except you. Today, it's The Devil's Plan, season 2! Specifically, it's about my favourite player this season, and a ship dynamic involving him, which highlights interesting things about what makes the anti-hero character archetype so appealing — and what that looks like in an rpf setting.
Massive spoilers for season 2 of The Devil's Plan follow…
The anti-hero in question is the player Jeong Hyun-gyu, who ultimately won the whole game. He’s around 27 years old, I believe, and is a university student. He was also on season 2 of Transit Love, not that I watched it. To be honest, I didn’t really retain much information from the introductions and so I spent the longest time thinking he was an actor. (He’s very handsome and extremely my type, which isn’t the main reason why I like him so much, but it certainly helped…)
Jeong Hyun-gyu during the first main match of The Devil's Plan, season 2.
I didn't notice Hyun-gyu much as first (that pale yellow cardigan really created a false impression of the type of personality he was), but once we got into the first main game, he started to stand out to me. I won't go into details, but from that very first game onwards, he showed himself to be a very clever, and strategic player. And I could wax lyrical about his intelligence, and his ability to consistently perform at his highest level even under pressure, but I won't. I'll just say this — the fact that he was surprised by the 8x8 grid during his solo hidden stage, and still managed to beat it despite the horrifically stressful conditions (the totally dark stage, what the hell), is hugely impressive. In every game he also showed a real understanding of the big picture, and of how other people would behave — a truly strategic mind.
But intelligence is one thing; lots of players were very intelligent. The thing that really stood out to me at the start wasn't any of that.
Going your own way
During the first main game, Hyun-gyu played a "hidden traitor" role, which he kept under wraps until the very end. But the rest of his "traitor" team had made a deal with some of the other players, to help them out in exchange for an alliance / benefits. When the deal was revealed, it would have been easy for Hyun-gyu to go along with it, despite having had no knowledge of it beforehand. But he refused, saying that this wasn't a deal that he'd made and there was no reason why he should be bound by it. (From memory, he actually wanted to help one of the other players who he felt had been helpful to him, but I can't remember exactly.) Anyway, it made perfect sense and yet it wasn't an easy thing to come out and say, particularly when a whole group of people want to sway you in one direction.
But Hyun-gyu displayed a real independent mind and strength of personal conviction which I admired, and which is one of the things that I liked best about him. It came up a lot during the course of the show, where he would make decisions that he considered best for his own position, and stick to them regardless of what other people were saying to him. I think this pissed a lot of people off (both other players, but also viewers), because it made him seem really competitive and calculating. But that sort of criticism pisses me off, because this is a competition game show! What I find way more frustrating are the players who would sway back and forth depending on who was trying to convince them to do what. There's a saying in Chinese, 墙头草 两边倒 — which basically means, "the grass at the head/edge of the wall, falls both ways". To me, to be so easily swayed by other people shows a lack of independent mind, and frankly it makes any alliances they make totally meaningless because they could be changed by circumstance.
Which brings me on to — loyalty, and what does that mean in the context of a show like The Devil's Plan? I know a lot of people think Hyun-gyu is a bit of a snake, because he had no problem throwing other players under the bus in order to save himself, or advance his position. But once again, this is a competition show! You cannot be allied to every single person; there will be times when you need to sacrifice other people, and it will suck but as Hyun-gyu said many times — it's just a game, people aren't actually being killed. And what he did extremely well was deciding which players he would ally himself with, and then being incredibly loyal to them.
We need to talk about: the "sacrifice" of Kyuhyun
The thing that seems to have generated the most controversy online was the game in episode 10, i.e. the episode where Hyun-gyu ended up playing solo against everyone else, but Kyuhun and Sohee defected (or went back to their original alliance) to help Hyun-gyu. Which resulted in Kyuhyun being eliminated. Frankly, I think everyone is focusing on the wrong thing here. Kyuhyun and Sohee were behaving entirely rationally, given the circumstances of the shifting alliances.
First, Kyuhyun and Sohee broke their alliance with Hyun-gyu in the first place because they had been convinced that it would be the better strategy for them — which was arguably true, given Hyun-gyu advantage from the hidden stage that he had completed — but it wasn't definitively true, given their "lesser" position in the prison alliance. It wasn't purely about the numbers game; it was also about the strength of their alliances. And, to be honest, after that game Hyun-gyu gave Sohee more pieces because she was his clear number two; none of the prison gang would have prioritised Sohee in that way.
Second, the condition for Kyuhyun and Sohee joining the prison alliance was clear — Sohee wanted Hyunjoon eliminated, not Hyun-gyu. The prison alliance went behind her back to form a secret alliance with Hyunjoon, and gang up on Hyun-gyu instead. She was entirely within her rights to turn around and say, hey you guys haven't upheld the terms of my deal with you, so I'm going back to my original alliance.
Third, it was actually the prison alliance who stabbed Kyuhyun in the back and caused his elimination — which is fair enough, it's a competition and someone has to go — but it frustrates me how everyone online glosses over that. Kyuhyun and Sohee wanted to switch sides immediately once it became clear Hyunjoon had betrayed Hyun-gyu, but they were convinced to finish playing out the round first. So they didn't attack the prison alliance, and made moves that were not the moves they would have otherwise wanted to do. But on the very last turn of that round, the prison alliance turned around and attacked Kyuhyun, breaking their promise to him and leading to his elimination.
On the other hand, Hyun-gyu had been extremely upfront from start to finish about what he wanted. When Kyuhyun and Sohee first defected, he respected their decision and didn't try to stop them, instead making a new alliance with Hyunjoon. It was only when Hyunjoon betrayed Hyun-gyu that he went to Kyuhyun and Sohee to ask for their help.
Hyun-gyu was perfectly within his rights to say, "guys, I've been abandoned by the one guy I thought I had on my side, can you guys come back and join me?" He wasn't manipulating them; he was being incredibly honest about his situation and what he wanted from them. He didn't say, "if you don't do this, I won't speak to you again", or "you're a bad person if you abandon me like this" (at least, not that we saw in the edit, and that's all the viewers who are criticising him have to go on).
The cornerstone of loyalty
Kyuhyun was also right when he said, "why are feelings not relevant here?" Sohee had clearly become friends with Hyun-gyu, and it upset her to see him being ganged up on; I don't think she would have been happy with herself to eliminate him in that way. Kyuhyun also wasn't necessarily just trying to gain moral high ground, I do think he genuinely felt pained to abandon Hyun-gyu in this way. And I think it's worth thinking about why Kyuhyun and Sohee felt such loyalty to Hyun-gyu, and what it says about the nature of their alliance.
To me, Hyun-gyu is more honest and open than most of the viewers give him credit for. While he was extremely competitive, and clearly wanted to win, he also didn't do it by backstabbing his allies. Yes, he was ruthless and sacrificed other players without a second thought, but he was very open about which players he was allied with, and which ones he wanted to eliminate. Some viewers found that callous, but personally I much prefer someone who is open about what they're doing, than someone who uses sneaky betrayals to get the upper hand.
When he did lie about things, it was to people that he felt no loyalty to. So, for example, with the hidden stage that he completed, he lied about what the game was, and then what the prize was. But (apparently), not to Kyuhyun or Sohee. He had made up his mind to trust them, and so he told them, and only them, the truth. And they in turn proved themselves worthy of his trust, because they kept his secret even to the end.
One moment that really stood out was when Hyun-gyu gave two of his pieces to Sohee over dinner. When Hyunjoon came into the room, she hid the pieces quickly — because she would have kept it a secret, if Hyun-gyu wanted to keep it a secret. That was their dynamic, that they kept each other's secrets. But Hyun-gyu was extremely open about what he'd done, and immediately told Hyunjoon. And he made it really clear — albeit a little callously — that he would not be allied with Hyun-gyu going forward. Which is totally fair enough, because have we forgotten that Hyunjoon stabbed him in the back, mere hours ago?
And I think Hyun-gyu's approach ultimately benefited him, as we saw in episode 10. Because he had put his own trust in Kyuhyun and Sohee, and demonstrated his loyalty to them, it meant that when push came to shove, they simply couldn't let it just be Hyun-gyu on the chopping block. You don't get that kind of loyalty unless you've shown yourself to be someone worthy of that loyalty. And building up those strong relationships is part of the game. The fact that Hyun-gyu managed to get Kyuhyun and Sohee back to his side, essentially the moment he asked, is in my view hugely to his credit.
I do also think that Hyun-gyu did genuinely care for both of them — at least in the context of the game, by which I mean that he felt a sense of responsibility for their survival. I think that tears he shed when Kyuhyun left were entirely genuine; he wasn't being performative about them, and in many ways was trying very hard to keep them hidden. Some may think them crocodile tears, but I think the reality is this — he knew that Kyuhyun would have to be sacrificed, because the position they were in was such that there was no way to really save him. But he felt guilt because he knew Kyuhyun became exposed to attack as a result of rejoining his team. That frustration and guilt can coexist authentically with the fact that he did want to win and to stay in the game — we saw it many many times with the prison team in the death matches.
"A man's gotta have a code"
I promised I would talk about anti-heros. And all the things I like about Hyun-gyu as a player on The Devil's Plan come down to what I think makes a good anti-hero (and, in many ways, that was the role that the narrative had put him into). To me, the archetype of an anti-hero is a combination of having two things: (1) an independent mind — both the conviction in your goals to go your own way, but also the confidence in your own abilities to stick to that even when no one else is on your side; and (2) a moral code — which doesn't mean following the rules of morality as dictated by society, but having a personal code and sense of right/wrong, and sticking to it.
(Obviously, in the context of The Devil's Plan it feels silly to talk about morality. I want to be very clear that I'm only discussing the characters that have been presented via the lens of this TV show, and not the underlying people who inhabited those characters during the course of the show. I'm also conscious that we're not actually talking about morality, and simply using the way the players interacted on the show as a mirror to talk about how anti-hero narratives are presented in fiction.)
I think Hyun-gyu was the perfect anti-hero for this show, and the fact that he's received so much backlash online is hugely disappointing. Not only because it's generally very upsetting to see how people can't separate a TV show from the real people behind, but also because I think there's a real lack of media literacy that makes some people incapable of reading between the lines to discern deeper character motivations. Obviously, people can dislike Hyun-gyu for perfectly valid reasons (his blunt tone can come across as pretty condescending, I'll give you that). But criticism that fails to acknowledge that it was not purely luck, or stupidity on Kyuhyun or Sohee's parts, that led to his victory, really pisses me off.
I said at the start that Hyun-gyu really understands the big picture. And he understood it with not only each individual game they were playing, but with the entire show as a whole. Because he knew that in order to win, he needed to make strong alliances — not alliances that could fall victim to changes in circumstances, but alliances that were founded on a solid base of trust and respect, because those are the types of alliances that really carry you through to the end. And they did.
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As an addendum, but an important one (to me!) — I want to talk about the Hyun-gyu/Sohee ship. As always with RPF, this is not really about the real people involved, but about the characters/roles they inhabited while on this show. I was surprised by how compelling I found this ship, but on further reflection I can see the threads of what I love about other ships, woven throughout the dynamic they had on the show.
Shipping basis #1: Mutual respect
So we all know that I usually go for the enemies to lovers-type ship, which HG/SH were very much not. But what lies behind my affinity for enemies to lovers is this — I love ships that are based fundamentally in a very strong core of mutual respect. Two people, seeing each other as equals, particularly it it's in a "literally no one else in the world is my equal except for you". Which was exactly what HG/SH was to me.
I can't pinpoint exactly when this ship started making me feel things, but it was around the time when Sohee solved the Knight's Tour puzzle, and she and Hyun-gyu became obsessed with opening the secret door. I think that was what made both of them realise — but Hyun-gyu especially — that they can meet each other on the same level. Both intellectually, but also in terms of their commitment and dedication to solving the puzzles and winning the game. As Hyun-gyu said, "she's as crazy as me".
There has been criticism online that Sohee let Hyun-gyu win during the final battle. But I don't think that's what happened at all. They both realised they were in a stalemate, and that something needed to change in order for one of them to win. Sohee knew that Hyun-gyu had a 50-50 shot, and wasn't guaranteed the victory. But that if he failed to make the right guess, that she would immediately have more chips than him and be able to make her guess, which she knew it was correct. It was a gamble, one that worked out for Hyun-gyu, and not for Sohee. But it was still the rational thing for her to do, and they both knew it.
And that was something that came through a lot during the games, that they would just be on each other's level and be able to understand what the other person was doing. When Sohee made the mistake during the 1v1 betting game, Hyun-gyu knew immediately what the result would be (a one-point difference between them!). The way he walked over during his final move and just went, "why did you do that"... He knew that she knew. And he knew that she was usually better than this, and that it must have been a mistake, and that nothing else explained it. Nothing more needed to be said.
Shipping basis #2: Mutual support
But there was also a tenderness from Hyun-gyu that he displayed with basically no one else on the show. When Sohee was overwhelmed with the decision to eliminate 7high, and take the win from Hyun-gyu (thereby sending him to risk elimination himself), Hyun-gyu went to comfort her. Nothing excessive, but there was a real sense of friendship and care — the way he went and huddled down in front of her, and gently told her there was no need to be upset, that he was okay with her decision. When he did finally leave for prison, he promised to be back and told her not to cry, because he would keep that promise. And, once he was in prison, he said to Hyunjoon, "if you win, you have to take care of Sohee". It doesn't get more tropey than this!
HG/SH hugging.
And Hyun-gyu's unwavering support of Sohee's decisions has been constant. He would offer suggestions, but would always leave her to make her own decisions — like who to send to prison, or whether to break their alliance and join the prison team, or indeed whether to take 7high's offer and secure her position in the final. His loyalty to her went beyond simply "I will protect you", but also "I will support you", even if she made decisions he didn't like or agree with. Now, that's all just part of being a good partner in an alliance, but to one with a shippy brain such as I... It's also perfect shipping fodder.
The support went both ways, of course. Sohee's decision to rejoin Hyun-gyu's alliance after he was betrayed by Hyunjoon was, frankly, iconic. She said a whole bunch of insane lines like, "the one thing I won't do is let him play alone", or "even if I die I want to trust him". She was only okay with breaking the alliance when she knew that he had someone else on his side; when it became clear that this wasn't true, she was immediately back with him. And when Hyun-gyu returned from prison, she waited up and then immediately went to hug him... They care each other!! They care each other!
There is something extremely compelling about a callous, anti-hero archetype character demonstrating so much tenderness towards and steadfast support for literally just one other person. While that one other person (who is pretty well-liked by everyone else, unlike the anti-hero) cares so much about them because they can see their heart of gold and their soft side. And both of them just being on a frequency that's different to everyone else. You can't tell me that's not compelling. That's the good stuff, gang.
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Where does this leave us? God knows, because given how much everyone online hated Hyun-gyu (and Sohee, and Kyuhyun, by extension), I don't think I'm going to see much more of him. Even though I would love to see him try his hand at acting, and in particular a tsundere type role that hits all of the anti-hero boxes I talked about above. Maybe in time public opinion will settle, who knows.
I also don't know how I feel about writing fanfic about people at this (relatively low, compared to like, idols) level of fame. On one hand, I know that anything I write would be about the characters on the TV show, not about the real people. But on the other hand, with people who aren't properly famous-famous, it feels like their public persona is less defined and therefore the lines are all fuzzier.
Where I think I will end up is transplanting this sort of dynamic onto other characters I already like writing about. My brain has been turning over ideas for SVT fics, but I can't quite find the pairing that would make it work. I think part of what made HG/SH so compelling to me is that it's quite an unusual dynamic in terms of my usual preferences, and therefore it's hard to accurately mirror it with any of my (many) existing ships. But I'll keep thinking about it and who knows what inspiration will strike.
If you have thoughts about any of this please do share them because I am so incredibly curious to hear what other people think!
Jeong Hyun-gyu during the first main match of The Devil's Plan, season 2.
I didn't notice Hyun-gyu much as first (that pale yellow cardigan really created a false impression of the type of personality he was), but once we got into the first main game, he started to stand out to me. I won't go into details, but from that very first game onwards, he showed himself to be a very clever, and strategic player. And I could wax lyrical about his intelligence, and his ability to consistently perform at his highest level even under pressure, but I won't. I'll just say this — the fact that he was surprised by the 8x8 grid during his solo hidden stage, and still managed to beat it despite the horrifically stressful conditions (the totally dark stage, what the hell), is hugely impressive. In every game he also showed a real understanding of the big picture, and of how other people would behave — a truly strategic mind.
But intelligence is one thing; lots of players were very intelligent. The thing that really stood out to me at the start wasn't any of that.
Going your own way
During the first main game, Hyun-gyu played a "hidden traitor" role, which he kept under wraps until the very end. But the rest of his "traitor" team had made a deal with some of the other players, to help them out in exchange for an alliance / benefits. When the deal was revealed, it would have been easy for Hyun-gyu to go along with it, despite having had no knowledge of it beforehand. But he refused, saying that this wasn't a deal that he'd made and there was no reason why he should be bound by it. (From memory, he actually wanted to help one of the other players who he felt had been helpful to him, but I can't remember exactly.) Anyway, it made perfect sense and yet it wasn't an easy thing to come out and say, particularly when a whole group of people want to sway you in one direction.
But Hyun-gyu displayed a real independent mind and strength of personal conviction which I admired, and which is one of the things that I liked best about him. It came up a lot during the course of the show, where he would make decisions that he considered best for his own position, and stick to them regardless of what other people were saying to him. I think this pissed a lot of people off (both other players, but also viewers), because it made him seem really competitive and calculating. But that sort of criticism pisses me off, because this is a competition game show! What I find way more frustrating are the players who would sway back and forth depending on who was trying to convince them to do what. There's a saying in Chinese, 墙头草 两边倒 — which basically means, "the grass at the head/edge of the wall, falls both ways". To me, to be so easily swayed by other people shows a lack of independent mind, and frankly it makes any alliances they make totally meaningless because they could be changed by circumstance.
Which brings me on to — loyalty, and what does that mean in the context of a show like The Devil's Plan? I know a lot of people think Hyun-gyu is a bit of a snake, because he had no problem throwing other players under the bus in order to save himself, or advance his position. But once again, this is a competition show! You cannot be allied to every single person; there will be times when you need to sacrifice other people, and it will suck but as Hyun-gyu said many times — it's just a game, people aren't actually being killed. And what he did extremely well was deciding which players he would ally himself with, and then being incredibly loyal to them.
We need to talk about: the "sacrifice" of Kyuhyun
The thing that seems to have generated the most controversy online was the game in episode 10, i.e. the episode where Hyun-gyu ended up playing solo against everyone else, but Kyuhun and Sohee defected (or went back to their original alliance) to help Hyun-gyu. Which resulted in Kyuhyun being eliminated. Frankly, I think everyone is focusing on the wrong thing here. Kyuhyun and Sohee were behaving entirely rationally, given the circumstances of the shifting alliances.
First, Kyuhyun and Sohee broke their alliance with Hyun-gyu in the first place because they had been convinced that it would be the better strategy for them — which was arguably true, given Hyun-gyu advantage from the hidden stage that he had completed — but it wasn't definitively true, given their "lesser" position in the prison alliance. It wasn't purely about the numbers game; it was also about the strength of their alliances. And, to be honest, after that game Hyun-gyu gave Sohee more pieces because she was his clear number two; none of the prison gang would have prioritised Sohee in that way.
Second, the condition for Kyuhyun and Sohee joining the prison alliance was clear — Sohee wanted Hyunjoon eliminated, not Hyun-gyu. The prison alliance went behind her back to form a secret alliance with Hyunjoon, and gang up on Hyun-gyu instead. She was entirely within her rights to turn around and say, hey you guys haven't upheld the terms of my deal with you, so I'm going back to my original alliance.
Third, it was actually the prison alliance who stabbed Kyuhyun in the back and caused his elimination — which is fair enough, it's a competition and someone has to go — but it frustrates me how everyone online glosses over that. Kyuhyun and Sohee wanted to switch sides immediately once it became clear Hyunjoon had betrayed Hyun-gyu, but they were convinced to finish playing out the round first. So they didn't attack the prison alliance, and made moves that were not the moves they would have otherwise wanted to do. But on the very last turn of that round, the prison alliance turned around and attacked Kyuhyun, breaking their promise to him and leading to his elimination.
On the other hand, Hyun-gyu had been extremely upfront from start to finish about what he wanted. When Kyuhyun and Sohee first defected, he respected their decision and didn't try to stop them, instead making a new alliance with Hyunjoon. It was only when Hyunjoon betrayed Hyun-gyu that he went to Kyuhyun and Sohee to ask for their help.
Hyun-gyu was perfectly within his rights to say, "guys, I've been abandoned by the one guy I thought I had on my side, can you guys come back and join me?" He wasn't manipulating them; he was being incredibly honest about his situation and what he wanted from them. He didn't say, "if you don't do this, I won't speak to you again", or "you're a bad person if you abandon me like this" (at least, not that we saw in the edit, and that's all the viewers who are criticising him have to go on).
The cornerstone of loyalty
Kyuhyun was also right when he said, "why are feelings not relevant here?" Sohee had clearly become friends with Hyun-gyu, and it upset her to see him being ganged up on; I don't think she would have been happy with herself to eliminate him in that way. Kyuhyun also wasn't necessarily just trying to gain moral high ground, I do think he genuinely felt pained to abandon Hyun-gyu in this way. And I think it's worth thinking about why Kyuhyun and Sohee felt such loyalty to Hyun-gyu, and what it says about the nature of their alliance.
To me, Hyun-gyu is more honest and open than most of the viewers give him credit for. While he was extremely competitive, and clearly wanted to win, he also didn't do it by backstabbing his allies. Yes, he was ruthless and sacrificed other players without a second thought, but he was very open about which players he was allied with, and which ones he wanted to eliminate. Some viewers found that callous, but personally I much prefer someone who is open about what they're doing, than someone who uses sneaky betrayals to get the upper hand.
When he did lie about things, it was to people that he felt no loyalty to. So, for example, with the hidden stage that he completed, he lied about what the game was, and then what the prize was. But (apparently), not to Kyuhyun or Sohee. He had made up his mind to trust them, and so he told them, and only them, the truth. And they in turn proved themselves worthy of his trust, because they kept his secret even to the end.
One moment that really stood out was when Hyun-gyu gave two of his pieces to Sohee over dinner. When Hyunjoon came into the room, she hid the pieces quickly — because she would have kept it a secret, if Hyun-gyu wanted to keep it a secret. That was their dynamic, that they kept each other's secrets. But Hyun-gyu was extremely open about what he'd done, and immediately told Hyunjoon. And he made it really clear — albeit a little callously — that he would not be allied with Hyun-gyu going forward. Which is totally fair enough, because have we forgotten that Hyunjoon stabbed him in the back, mere hours ago?
And I think Hyun-gyu's approach ultimately benefited him, as we saw in episode 10. Because he had put his own trust in Kyuhyun and Sohee, and demonstrated his loyalty to them, it meant that when push came to shove, they simply couldn't let it just be Hyun-gyu on the chopping block. You don't get that kind of loyalty unless you've shown yourself to be someone worthy of that loyalty. And building up those strong relationships is part of the game. The fact that Hyun-gyu managed to get Kyuhyun and Sohee back to his side, essentially the moment he asked, is in my view hugely to his credit.
I do also think that Hyun-gyu did genuinely care for both of them — at least in the context of the game, by which I mean that he felt a sense of responsibility for their survival. I think that tears he shed when Kyuhyun left were entirely genuine; he wasn't being performative about them, and in many ways was trying very hard to keep them hidden. Some may think them crocodile tears, but I think the reality is this — he knew that Kyuhyun would have to be sacrificed, because the position they were in was such that there was no way to really save him. But he felt guilt because he knew Kyuhyun became exposed to attack as a result of rejoining his team. That frustration and guilt can coexist authentically with the fact that he did want to win and to stay in the game — we saw it many many times with the prison team in the death matches.
"A man's gotta have a code"
I promised I would talk about anti-heros. And all the things I like about Hyun-gyu as a player on The Devil's Plan come down to what I think makes a good anti-hero (and, in many ways, that was the role that the narrative had put him into). To me, the archetype of an anti-hero is a combination of having two things: (1) an independent mind — both the conviction in your goals to go your own way, but also the confidence in your own abilities to stick to that even when no one else is on your side; and (2) a moral code — which doesn't mean following the rules of morality as dictated by society, but having a personal code and sense of right/wrong, and sticking to it.
(Obviously, in the context of The Devil's Plan it feels silly to talk about morality. I want to be very clear that I'm only discussing the characters that have been presented via the lens of this TV show, and not the underlying people who inhabited those characters during the course of the show. I'm also conscious that we're not actually talking about morality, and simply using the way the players interacted on the show as a mirror to talk about how anti-hero narratives are presented in fiction.)
I think Hyun-gyu was the perfect anti-hero for this show, and the fact that he's received so much backlash online is hugely disappointing. Not only because it's generally very upsetting to see how people can't separate a TV show from the real people behind, but also because I think there's a real lack of media literacy that makes some people incapable of reading between the lines to discern deeper character motivations. Obviously, people can dislike Hyun-gyu for perfectly valid reasons (his blunt tone can come across as pretty condescending, I'll give you that). But criticism that fails to acknowledge that it was not purely luck, or stupidity on Kyuhyun or Sohee's parts, that led to his victory, really pisses me off.
I said at the start that Hyun-gyu really understands the big picture. And he understood it with not only each individual game they were playing, but with the entire show as a whole. Because he knew that in order to win, he needed to make strong alliances — not alliances that could fall victim to changes in circumstances, but alliances that were founded on a solid base of trust and respect, because those are the types of alliances that really carry you through to the end. And they did.
++
As an addendum, but an important one (to me!) — I want to talk about the Hyun-gyu/Sohee ship. As always with RPF, this is not really about the real people involved, but about the characters/roles they inhabited while on this show. I was surprised by how compelling I found this ship, but on further reflection I can see the threads of what I love about other ships, woven throughout the dynamic they had on the show.
Shipping basis #1: Mutual respect
So we all know that I usually go for the enemies to lovers-type ship, which HG/SH were very much not. But what lies behind my affinity for enemies to lovers is this — I love ships that are based fundamentally in a very strong core of mutual respect. Two people, seeing each other as equals, particularly it it's in a "literally no one else in the world is my equal except for you". Which was exactly what HG/SH was to me.
I can't pinpoint exactly when this ship started making me feel things, but it was around the time when Sohee solved the Knight's Tour puzzle, and she and Hyun-gyu became obsessed with opening the secret door. I think that was what made both of them realise — but Hyun-gyu especially — that they can meet each other on the same level. Both intellectually, but also in terms of their commitment and dedication to solving the puzzles and winning the game. As Hyun-gyu said, "she's as crazy as me".
There has been criticism online that Sohee let Hyun-gyu win during the final battle. But I don't think that's what happened at all. They both realised they were in a stalemate, and that something needed to change in order for one of them to win. Sohee knew that Hyun-gyu had a 50-50 shot, and wasn't guaranteed the victory. But that if he failed to make the right guess, that she would immediately have more chips than him and be able to make her guess, which she knew it was correct. It was a gamble, one that worked out for Hyun-gyu, and not for Sohee. But it was still the rational thing for her to do, and they both knew it.
And that was something that came through a lot during the games, that they would just be on each other's level and be able to understand what the other person was doing. When Sohee made the mistake during the 1v1 betting game, Hyun-gyu knew immediately what the result would be (a one-point difference between them!). The way he walked over during his final move and just went, "why did you do that"... He knew that she knew. And he knew that she was usually better than this, and that it must have been a mistake, and that nothing else explained it. Nothing more needed to be said.
Shipping basis #2: Mutual support
But there was also a tenderness from Hyun-gyu that he displayed with basically no one else on the show. When Sohee was overwhelmed with the decision to eliminate 7high, and take the win from Hyun-gyu (thereby sending him to risk elimination himself), Hyun-gyu went to comfort her. Nothing excessive, but there was a real sense of friendship and care — the way he went and huddled down in front of her, and gently told her there was no need to be upset, that he was okay with her decision. When he did finally leave for prison, he promised to be back and told her not to cry, because he would keep that promise. And, once he was in prison, he said to Hyunjoon, "if you win, you have to take care of Sohee". It doesn't get more tropey than this!
HG/SH hugging.
And Hyun-gyu's unwavering support of Sohee's decisions has been constant. He would offer suggestions, but would always leave her to make her own decisions — like who to send to prison, or whether to break their alliance and join the prison team, or indeed whether to take 7high's offer and secure her position in the final. His loyalty to her went beyond simply "I will protect you", but also "I will support you", even if she made decisions he didn't like or agree with. Now, that's all just part of being a good partner in an alliance, but to one with a shippy brain such as I... It's also perfect shipping fodder.
The support went both ways, of course. Sohee's decision to rejoin Hyun-gyu's alliance after he was betrayed by Hyunjoon was, frankly, iconic. She said a whole bunch of insane lines like, "the one thing I won't do is let him play alone", or "even if I die I want to trust him". She was only okay with breaking the alliance when she knew that he had someone else on his side; when it became clear that this wasn't true, she was immediately back with him. And when Hyun-gyu returned from prison, she waited up and then immediately went to hug him... They care each other!! They care each other!
There is something extremely compelling about a callous, anti-hero archetype character demonstrating so much tenderness towards and steadfast support for literally just one other person. While that one other person (who is pretty well-liked by everyone else, unlike the anti-hero) cares so much about them because they can see their heart of gold and their soft side. And both of them just being on a frequency that's different to everyone else. You can't tell me that's not compelling. That's the good stuff, gang.
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Where does this leave us? God knows, because given how much everyone online hated Hyun-gyu (and Sohee, and Kyuhyun, by extension), I don't think I'm going to see much more of him. Even though I would love to see him try his hand at acting, and in particular a tsundere type role that hits all of the anti-hero boxes I talked about above. Maybe in time public opinion will settle, who knows.
I also don't know how I feel about writing fanfic about people at this (relatively low, compared to like, idols) level of fame. On one hand, I know that anything I write would be about the characters on the TV show, not about the real people. But on the other hand, with people who aren't properly famous-famous, it feels like their public persona is less defined and therefore the lines are all fuzzier.
Where I think I will end up is transplanting this sort of dynamic onto other characters I already like writing about. My brain has been turning over ideas for SVT fics, but I can't quite find the pairing that would make it work. I think part of what made HG/SH so compelling to me is that it's quite an unusual dynamic in terms of my usual preferences, and therefore it's hard to accurately mirror it with any of my (many) existing ships. But I'll keep thinking about it and who knows what inspiration will strike.
If you have thoughts about any of this please do share them because I am so incredibly curious to hear what other people think!