In Save The Date, you repeatedly go on disastrous dates that result in Felicia, your date, dying.
As someone who daydreams alot, I don’t consider these as stories that I consume, but after playing Save The Date, I now think of them differently.
In the past, meta literature didn’t really appeal to me. I liked a story, and thought that deconstructing what a story is, is just a pure academic exercise. However, now I see it as a way to recognize things, such as daydreams, as stories too. Imagining my future, plans I look forward to with ones I’m close with, my career, and even silly hypotheticals are stories. And these stories serve a positive function. The other side of this is bad daydreams, I used to have distressing thoughts around the bailer at work. Or I’ll have bad daydreams about things I fear may happen to loved ones or to me. It’s such a big part of life, thinking about the future, or even daydreaming about how you wish the past was different. Recognizing daydreams as stories recognizes more of the power they hold. When I experience a good story, I take something away from it, affecting who I am, my daydreams also do this.
The short nature of our relationship with Felicia is tragic, and I played the game until the end every time, despite Felicia presenting me the opportunity not to. It wasn’t entirely because I just didn’t want to do what I was being told to do, but also because I felt like I wanted tragedy to be part of the story. Sometimes you’re just in the mood to cry. Who wants to be happy one hundred percent of the time? Kind of makes me think of the movie, The Animatrix, a series of short films set in the Matrix Universe. In one of the films, they tell the story of how the first matrix created a world in which everyone was happy all the time, and it didn’t work out. People lost their sanity, and it wasn’t sustainable. My point is that another way to experience Save The Date, is to embrace the sadness. The short time spent with Felicia is punctuated by her death, made more bittersweet. And unlike actually killing someone, you can experience this sadness in your mind, a safe place to experience tragedy. Like how Felicia talks about her troubled childhood, we process sadness by feeling sad. She feels a little better when you ask her about it in the game.
Okay, spoiler warning for Squid Game. They will protect you from the spoiler
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Details
Let’s all imagine for a minute that Kang Sae-Byeok, player 067, and Ji-Yeong, player 240 somehow escape and go to Jeju Island. The how is not important. It’s a nice daydream. Thinking of what could have been, a denial of the story given to us, or some extra spice to to sprinkle onto tragedy, like pouring some salt on a wound. Say when…(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง(ง •̀_•́)ง
Hope you didn’t beat em up too bad, they’re just doing their job
Another way to cope with this reality is to imagine a better one.
Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
–W. B. Yeats
In one of my favorite movies, Equilibrium, there is a scene where one of the characters reads the last three lines. The movie is about a world where there people take medication to get rid of any emotions. The main character’s job is to enforce this rule, and one day, kills his partner (like a police partner, although shipping them sounds kind of fun) for breaking the very rule they’re supposed to enforce. In this context, I take another meaning from his recitation of this poem. Dreams are a way to explore feeling, just like stories, and feel fragile. It’s perhaps why our daydreams don’t feel as satisfying as a movie. We suspend our disbelief with a movie or game, like Save The Date. In our minds, Felicia dies if we choose to stay. But, our daydreams exist only in our mind, there is no suspension of disbelief, or can there be? Perhaps to various degrees, but complete suspension of disbelief sounds like a loss of sanity.
While we’re on the theme of meta, in my attempt at writing my experience, I tried to make it neat and persuasive. Whenever I try to describe what I feel is profound, I usually feel like it comes out cringey. I almost get the urge to say, “you had to be there”, like I failed at delivering a joke. But, hopefully, I made you also think about your experience with Save The Date, or made you want to play it, and maybe added to your existence in a slight way. Who knows.
