[teosis]

Squid games are in vogue. But some people say it's plagiarism.

I have a hard time completely agreeing with that. What is the difference between taking a motif from the media and being plagiarized?

[bleepblorp]

I think there is a spectrum to that rather than a set of mutually exclusive factors that determines what is and isn't plagiarism. "Fair Use" is the legal argument you would make in most countries. It's determined mostly by how transformative you made your work in comparison to the existing intellectual properties you're pulling from, but the nature of the use can also help you get away with taking more of the original content. That would be things such as satirizing it, using it as a teaching aid, or criticizing/reviewing it. These are all arguments to be made though, not something cut and dry.