#<-she doesnt have to be with kdj!!

[ssunfish]

How do I engrave this into my soul

Han Sooyoung as anti hero or mastermind antagonist? (Ignore that it is just from different povs)

Antagonist as in, trying to put an end to the hero’s ultimate objective? (Dying? Giving his life meaning through sacrifice?)

In a meta sense, she’s a mastermind antagonist.

“You crazy fool, you were tricked into saving yourself!!” <- something like that right!! Actively opposing the “hero”?

In a way it was all for personal gain… she was never too concerned for saving the world, but in both lives was devastated she had to have a hand in ending it. I think, if the universe allowed her to reach her goals without going that far, she would have chosen differently. Her goals are always first and foremost.

But at the same time, Han Sooyoung is also the most selfless person (to ME) in the novel.

It would be hard to call her an antagonist in this case.

Her love and dedication to Kim Dokja is completely unconditional. She can give up ANYTHING for his sake.

She wanted her own world so badly she made a deal with SP and forsook (is that a word) her companions for the sake of this wish. When she had the chance to create a world of her choosing. She chose to make it for the sake of Kim Dokja instead.

She gave up her nights so he could have his days.

Kim Dokja doesn’t even have to know her face, her voice, or even that she exists and she would still love him just as much.

If Yoo Joonghyuk, to kdj, is “I would give up everything just to be with you”.

Then Han Sooyoung is “I would give up being with you just so you can have everything”.

[astranauticus]

Director of the False Last Act

[anthyies]

happy incarnation kim dokja will die at the hands of the person he loves the most tuesday

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

thinking about "please... please stay in the 17th round, where i am". thinking about how ailette has confirmation that the timeline will keep going on even if tesilid dies, but nonetheless she became a healer for him and she dedicated the past 10 years of her life to becoming strong enough to defend him and how she tries so very hard to keep him from harm and to feed him well and shield him from harrassment and

[everyones-least-favorite-bard]

i have many thoughts on lee gilyoung and kim dokja but i fear i may explode if i try to articulate them fully

there is something to be said in the way kdj and orv as a whole really tends to sidestep lgy. like kdj cares about lgy of course. and orv obviously wants us to care about lgy or else they would have killed him off for shock value or fridged him way earlier than they did or something. and yet he remains in the main story but still on the sidelines

i think there is something very sad to be said about how kdj very openly tends to love on/lavish attention onto sys and like consciously acknowledge that she is, in many ways, his daughter, yet doesnt really do the same for lgy. there is something very sad to be said about the way kdj tends to refer to sys individually, but only to lgy in the collective "kids." there is something very sad in the way kdj saw himself in lgy the first time he saw him on the subway and saw him both as a boy to be saved and a tool to be used and i dont think their relationship ever really recovered from this.

like he cares about them because he doesnt want to be a shitty father-figure but hes a shitty father-figure because he cares. and while sys is saved from the brunt of this to a degree because shes a character so he can just mimic how yjh treats her in worldlines where she's saved and get by on that, lgy doesnt have that kind of support. lgy is not a fictional wunderkid or pitiable, fragile little girl (however true or false that assessment of sys is). hes a snot nosed foul mouthed violent boy obsessed with bugs and death and kdj, i think, knows he ought to care for him but he doesnt know how and doesnt bother to learn and that, i believe, the not-bothering that is, is what truly incriminates him as a shitbag father. hes afraid so he doesnt try and lgy spends 90% of orv being terrified kdj secretly hates him and the worst part is hes almost right

[orphiclovers]

Okay. Long incoherent rambling theory post ahead. Specifically, I want to talk about how the Han Sooyoung 'split' happened/how Han Sooyoung got the avatar skill, extrapolating from canon where I can and headcanoning the rest.

Let's start from what she herself says on the topic. 3rd rounds Han Sooyoung tells Kim Dokja, in a conversation about how 'Avatar' works, that the very first time she made an avatar, she gave it too many memories and it 'went out of control' and ran off. This was a friendly conversation and hsy brought it up herself, so there's not really a reason for her to lie here - this is probably close to how she actually remembers the situation.

Which is interesting because 1863rd rounds Han Sooyoung denies this fact and says SHE is the main body and that she left an avatar behind to act as her. Now 1863 could be lying here to unbalance kdj, they were having a battle of words at the time with lying being an explicit part of the game, but she could also be telling the truth and maybe 3rd just doesn't know she's an avatar (like 49%). we don't get a comfirmation either way so that is left ambigous. So. That's a dead end.

Then, how does the Avatar skill evolve in general?

Kim Dokja says the requirements to evolve it is that you need to be in a creative field of some kind (so you have an 'Author' attribute) + under enough psychological distress for your mind to 'split' in a way that orv compares to DID (in not the most tactful way). It's a rare skill so I'm guessing it probably requires both of these to be true at the same time. A key hint is that we do actually get one other example of someone evolving the Avatar skill on screen. 1863rd rounds Yoo Joonghyuk. It goes like this:

So...not exactly a fun time. But actually I'm sensing a pattern here. Both Yoo Joonghyuk and Han Sooyoung, after evolving and using the avatar skill for the first time end up as two sepetate autonomous entities with their own free will - 1863rd!hsy and 3rd!hsy and white and black coat wearing yjh respectively (Kim Dokja too actually - with 49% 51%). So, I think this might be how the skill functions, spontaneously splitting you in half the first time and then both halves of you can make avatars at will after that. Let's assume this is true for the sake of the theory. This conflicts with the way both Han Sooyoungs describe it - they both say they 'created' an avatar the first time BUT I think neither of them were being entirely truthful.

Let's talk about that second parameter. 'Severe psychological distress' in a way similar to that of DID. How I interpret this, based on what we see of 1863rd!yjh, is that there needs to be some fundemental dissonance of core beliefs that cannot exist or be held at the same time, so requires the soul to split in half. For Yoo Joonghyuk it's 'I want to live/I want to die.' (Although Kim Dokja doesnt get the skill in the natural way, I think this concept still holds true. His dissonance is not so explicitly stated but maybe it's something along the lines of 'epilouge/eternity' i.e 'happily ever after OR atonement for his (percieved) sins'.)

But also there's an element of, how do I say this...'purifying self-destruction' to how we see our trio use Avatar. Yoo Joonghyuk takes the blackened and traumatized part of him that wants to die and kills it with a sword, leaving only the part of him that still has hope to regress to the 3rd round, free and unburdened by the weight of bad memories.

You could interpret 51%/49% this way too. The inherent act of Kim Dokja choosing to use this skill to split his soul in half means he did not see another way foward - that psychological distress and belief dissonance is an inherent part of this skill. 49%, the one who get's the 'happily ever after' does not remember needing Ways of Survival, maybe because Kim Dokja couldn't imagine himself having a happy ending with the weight of those specific memories.

But coming back to Han Sooyoung. Just look at the way she uses Avatar in kaizenix. She is a person who does not enjoy being emotionally vulnerable so in any heavy situation she clings to her dry and witty personality like a shield.

Let's just fully realize what she's saying here. When she says she erased the memories of her life deliberately, what she means is that she created an avatar, a sort of 'black coat wearing han sooyoung' and killed it again and again, every year, so she could keep that sarcastic and light hearted attiude. Otherwise she would have become someone like 1863rd rounds Han Sooyoung - hardened and unhappy. And I mean that she literally was on the path of becoming her - she even got 1863rds skill.

She deliberatley brushes off Kim Dokja and doesn't acknowledge the weight of her actions in kaizenix, both waiting for 50 years and killing parts of herself over and over.

And I think this is the sort of mindset she had while telling Kim Dokja about 'creating' an avatar for the first time. She doesn't see the point in potraying herself as vulnerable, so she probably would obscure some details of that story, for example if she was on her knees clutching her head a la 1863rd turns Yoo Joonghyuk at the time. This would seem like a pointless detail to add when the point of the story was that her avatar ran off.

So FINALLY, here's my headcanon on what I think the original belief dissonance was for Han Sooyoung and how she got the Avatar skill.

The split happened very early on in the scenarios. And well, there is one obvious Big Event that might cause someone to have a mental breakdown/identity crisis. The first scenario. I think whoever Han Sooyoung killed, she couldn't deal with the fact she had become a murderer and 'exorcised' those memories - and so 1863 was born, with blood on her hands, in an already destroyed world.

[orviposition]

this week's side story was banger after banger after banger i cannot even begin explaining how i feel 😭😭 orv the story of all time jfc

the time for the prophecy to be realized was approaching and lhh used stage transformation to the time where dkos had been killed in dark castle. the reader group was there to aid him but they were not strong enough to harm someone as strong as dkos

then yjh's group comes and they all attack dkos one by one. lhh is sad to see how they attack him without the slightest hint of hesitation

lhh gives yjh the sword that can kill dkos' lives and yjh attacks him but dkos taunts him like: "it doesn't seem you know how to use a sword?" and hes right. 41yjh has sacrificed many memories, one of them being his sword skills. so lhh uses orv and shares yjhs body. both stories "three ways to survive in a ruined world" and "omniscient reader's viewpoint" activate as dkos gets stabbed

[constellation demon king of salvation will die in the story he loves"

then dkos smiles almost dazedly, "it's a shame" he says. "i really wanted to read it one more time"

so he gives all his stories to lhh and prepares for death but it doesn't come bcs lhh has already restored the fourth wall inside himself with the help of his story "heir to the eternal name" and therefore has absorbed dkos and sent him to live in the library where he and all the other kdj fragments he had absorbed beforehand are living and reading the story together. dkos is crazy to think that lhh wants to be someone who is great at dying.

he will be the kim dokja who never dies.

his existence restoration rate is 18.8% now

but in doing so the fate was switched back to lhh who is now the demon king of salvation, dkos' stab wound is His stab wound. the portal that will suck him away and eject him from the scenario opens and lhh feels his body get sucked into it little by little. ji eunyu uses yoo sangah's webs and she and his readers try to hold on to him. lhh talks to killer king and calls him by name "cha sungwoo-ssi you are the yoo joonghyuk of these people. please guide them" even yjhs group helps but to no avail. lhh is dropped in the story horizon

bihyung then appears and gives lhh the items he had requested beforehand but he's ambushed by olympus who have come to take lhh with them. just then someone curses at them harshly. lhh looks behind to see 41st turn yjh but he knew that yjh would never curse like that. and then white angelic wings appear behind yjhs back.

[constellation 'demon-like judge of fire' doesnt wish for your death]

1864th uriel has had many regrets.

she tasked yjh with lhh's protection no matter the cost, and yjh has accepted it

even as uriel fights athena, artemis and apollo he doesnt budge to help nor does he let lhh move either. even when poseidon shows up and lhh thinks shes gonna die and begs yjh to help all he says is "no, i have to protect you"

and then kimcom's lee jihye comes to help uriel. poseidon is shocked at her strength. 41yjh even more so. but she is gilyoung's big sister, and when the younger brother goes off on his own ofc the big sister has to follow

she then talks to 41yjh: take him (lhh) and run away. if that ahjussi dies, i'll kill you myself

(needless to say 41yjh is shocked lol)

[righteousenjoymentofthunder]

orv aladdin au! with kim dokja as aladdin (conman supreme), han sooyoung as fellow thief (also aladdin), yoo sangah as jasmine (trapped by her family), yoo joonghyuk as ysh's bodyguard

kdj 'cons' yjh into being distracted while hsy sneaks into ysh's room to steal jewellery and then ends up panic-flirting with ysh

jhw and lhs are there too! heewon is a robin hood steal-from-rich-to-give-to-poor and hyunsung is the guard that sort of lets her but also doesnt because its for a good cause. (poor guy has 'turns a blind eye to injustice' attribute canonically). on the other hand sooyoung is absolutely DECKED in the face when she tries to get into the treasury or any other place.

they're all friends and sort-of not, especially after hsy flirts her way into becoming co-queens with ysh.

lee jihye and kim namwoon! jihye is joonghyuk's squire (officially) and namwoon is also his squire (not officially) - dokja is some sort of weird uncle to namwoon (the aus where theyre distantly related are always funny to me) and if bribed at the right time, knw is swayed pretty easily into letting his weird-ass uncle get into the royal palace.

yjh actually knows about this - hes always the one being sent to go after kdj - but kdj somehow always escapes the cells and manages to reclaim whatever loot he'd been trying to steal when yjh sometimes catches him.

the kids (gilyoung, yoosung, biyoo) are all kdj's little apprentice minions that hsy begrudgingly helps train and look after as well. yoosung actually wants to be a knight (of some sort, more about just protecting people) and kdj indulges her on it by introducing her to jihye through namwoon.

gilyoung and biyoo very much want to follow in kdj's footsteps, on the other hand and have a fun little dynamic where biyoo for a while echoes a lot of what gilyoung does and in an older brother kind of way gilyoung is SO angry at this.

jang hayoung is also in the web of kim dokja's weird-ass long distance relatives, but is a NOBLE?! very funny, hayoung finds out she has a weird uncle and cousin in the city and forces them both to visit sangah with her at some point, and its very awkward when the infamous conman of your kingdom and the kid he bribes to let him into your palace - who is also a KNIGHT of your palace, are talking over tea.

through a series of events that involve saving sangah from some ransomer (yjh is indisposed), kdj gets a badge of HONOUR and also a queen's pardon for most of his crimes before he disappears back into the shadows. he and sangah are now besties but hsy WILL NOT let him ever live it down that he ever went that 'good.' kdj goes on a crime spree at his nearest convenience to bump back up his tally of crimes and wanted-ness.

[og-seaweed]

its so sad that we will never truly know any of yoohankim as characters

obviously kim dokja always puts up a wall between himself and reality, so no matter how deep we read into orv, we will never truly see past that wall. (also hsy writing orv would likely not capture a lot of kdj's thoughts and stuff)

for yoo junghyeok, we never really see him pre scenarios. The countless regressions and the trauma which they instilled in him, his distrust and yet still optimistic character - how would he have been without the scenarios? We only get to see glimpses in the epilogue mostly. All we really know is a man steeled by his horrifying experiences, a will forged in betrayals and the death of his companions over many regressions. Even kim dokja, who read his story for most of his life, doesnt really understand yoo junghyeok when the scenarios do not follow the lines that twsa had set up. How could we, from even beyond that, ever understand the guy?

And han sooyoung. By using avatar so frequently, and with 1863!hsy just running around, through most of the novel, hsy isnt whole. During the Kaizenix arc, we know hsy has killed countless of her clones to keep herself sane. Who can say that the hsy we follow in orv is the real one? Its like filling a bucket with water, only the bucket is leaking a bunch. All we know of her character is the water inside that bucket, not the droplets that have seeped out. We dont know her as a whole, also as orv is centred around Kim dokja, and is written for him. Hsy, as stated in the novel, has previously felt a bit out of place with kdj and yjh, with the connection of a reader and the character, with a writer who has forgotten that they are the writer. Hence, she puts less focus on herself throughout the entirety of orv.

Of course with other pieces of media, noone ever fully understands a character, but for orv it feels so tragic- and the readers stretch out their hands and try as much as we can to understand that story, by analysing them: their personality, trauma, how their experiences have affected them.

[chirpycloudyrobin]

this au has probably been done before but let me yap

au where kdj is somehow able to rewrite so much of reality at the cost of himself that he was able to literally write himself out of reality AND make sure everyone else has their happy endings.

he has pinpointed himself as the sole reason why everyone's lives has gone to shit and maybe this is one of the ways he thinks to repent. he's got all this godlike powers now. he won't exist after this but lmao this is a small price to pay for what everyone went through because of him, right ?

hsy never had to write WOS because there was no 15 year old boy who needed it to live. instead she was able to write the novels she wanted to write. she's a happy, successful writer. no one's lives rested in her hands.

his mother never got married to his father. she lives a free life. she was never a murderer. there are no regrets haunting her. she doesnt have a failure for a son.

yoo sangah works at a much better workplace where her coworkers actually respect her and she's able to live her best life. maybe she's backed by some of the most powerful people in the corporate world.

the WOS characters are instead rewritten into reality. there is no apocalypse. they're all living their best normal lives. yjh is a successful pro-gamer and he's not weighed down by failures of a thousand lifetimes. maybe bihyung is his overworked manager lmao. yma gets to grow up with her older brother and there's no need to worry if she'll see him again. sys grows up happy and loved without blood in her hands. her dog grows with her, unharmed. her parents adopted lee gilyoung. ljh goes to uni w nbr. maybe she's yjh's gaming protege. jhw works with uriel at their own law firm. lhs lives his life volunteering and he doesnt rigidly follow the soldier's manual anymore. lsh is one of the top doctors in the country.

hades and persephone run a successful chain of gourmet restaurants with branches all over the globe. abfd is han sooyoung's cousin who annoys her at any opportunity. he and knw are chuuni bros. maybe they cosplay together too lmao. sun wukong's either a famous martial artist or an actor, ill get back to u on that.

maybe they're all connected with eachother like the world's most unexpected friend group. maybe they're a bunch of social circles that happen to have a lot of mutual ties. one thing they all do have in common is that they have this distinctive feeling that something is missing. they all have their perfect little lives, but why does it feel like something is wrong ? why does looking at a subway make them feel so melancholic ?

idk how theyll end up realising WHO they're missing but it's going to destroy them fr 🥳

[king-of-a-kingless-world]

not metatron just casually handin out 30000 coins

b- bro. i. uh. ahshagsga. yes sir 🫡. anything fo u dokja kim.

hahahah

:((

DUMBASS. god i fucking hate him

AS SHE SHOULD THIS DUMBASS SUBJUGATED A KID TO THOUSANDS OF YEARS OF ISOLATION ALSO KNOWN AS THE WORST FORM OF MENTAL TORMENT AND FOR WHAT? SO HE COULD GET A LITTLE LUCKIER EARLIER ON? THAT MAN IS AN ASSHOLE AND THE WORST AND I HOPE HE DIES MULTIPLE GRUESOME DEATHS

NO NO DOKJA DONT JUST LET HIM DIE JUST LET HER KILL HIM

AFYZYSFAUSTJXKTCTISRUAQUFUG 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

OH SHEEEET

ok the thing about this is up to this point theyve basically only referred to eachother using their full names, first+last but here joonghyuk only calls him dokja and it gives the vibes theyre close enough to refer to eachother like that so...he cares no denying you cant hide from my perceptiveness i can see everything

BROOOO HES TRYING TO HOLD HIM UP NOT LET HIM FALL OVER CUZ HES GONNA DIE AND DOKJAS JUST GRABBING ONTO HIS ARM AND ITS NOT INTENTIONAL ITS INSTINCT AND AHSHAHSGS SO MANY WORDS THEY DENY IT BUT THEY CARE AND DOKJA WAS PROBABLY DIGGING HIS NAILS INTO HIS ARM CUZ HE KINDA IS MISSING HIS ENTIRE LOWER TORSO AND EVEN WITH FOURTH WALL THATS GOTTA BE SO PAINFUL AND YJH JUST IS FINE WOTH IT AND DOESNT CARE AND HES WORRIED ABOUT HIM AND SNAJSJWJSJDBSI

bro he has a giant hole where his stomach should be

also i thought you hated and wanted to kill him

THIS JUST SHOWS HE CARED THE WHOLE TIME BECAUSE HE KEPT TRYING TO KILL HIM BUT THE SECOND DOKJAS ACTUALLY GONNA DIE HES ALL LIKE NO NO NO NOT TOO LATE EVEN THOUGH DOKJA LEGIT DOESNT HAVE A LOWER TORSO AND THERES NO LOGICAL WAY FOR HIM TO SURVIVE BUT HES STILL IN DENIAL HED ONLY BE DENYING IF HE CARED AHAHAHAHHAHAHSBWHABSH

dude he looks so scared for him im gonna cry 😭😭😭😭. like hes looking him in the face with the most terror ive seen for him i cant wtfffff

no shit

never seen him so angry he even has the glowy main character eyes ✋

bro there aint no way he wasnt in love w dokja cuz he was perfectly fine with letting seolhwa die even tho he like dated her last regression and here he is only having spoken to kdj a few times and ready to fucking kill everything for him

YEA YEA UHUH HED PISSED CUZ YOU KILLED THE GUY HE WANTED TO BE HIS BF YEA YEA JOONGDOK CANNON THESE BITCHES GAY THEYRE ANNOYING AS ALL HELL AND THEYRE GAY

[joelletwo]

also 'the kdj-to-hsy direction is pretty standard shipping material' is like. YEAH. remarkably. the most aro guy in the world is written w a pretty standard romantic formula. which i needs must pair with theeee little quote from around the 'kdj will be killed by the one he loves most' prophecy when everyone is guessing who that means and kdj is eavesdropping and nodding thoughtfully to each option bc he himself doesnt know. and hsy comes up and hes like picturing her features mentally holding up a paint swatch labeled 'romantic attraction???' going idk do i think shes pretty is this what that feels like. i guess i could have fallen in love with her. probably maybe. i guess??

like hes so malleable about it lol. guy of all time. like if i imagine (mutually aroace) hankim i must also imagine them both separately convincing themselves theyre in love w each other bc thats what they think its supposed to look like. i love them........

[thegleampt3]

this shit makes me feel so crazy on reread

i dont have any real coherent thoughts about it right now and im at work but just these two scenes side by side

like. i dont know. yjh being the first one to be able to break down kdj's wall by being there for 13 years of his life, being someone who he could feel close to. but kdj still being afraid of him despite the affection he feels (that he wont admit) once he becomes a real person. you can look in at other people but having them be able to look back at you feels dangerous. hsy creating yjh as a conduit to save kdj because she doesnt know how to reach out, how to get through to him without stories. because shes also someone whos deeply lonely (all 3 of them are.) and then here being confronted with the fact that she cant only depend on her creation to save him because hes also escaping from being a character. yjh who went though all that to understand himself and then went through all that again because he also wants to be understood. by kdj. but also theyre not alone now because they have all of kimcom with them and they all love kdj so so much that can together know the whole of kim dokja. but its still not enough. but they still wont give up and now hsy is going to do all that shit again. for him. whatever

[its-no-biggie]

gets reminded that mario and luigi partners in time exists > wow i really love the concept of adult characters interacting with their younger selves > remembers that i follow an artist who has a similar au for bsd > seems like a cool scenario to put all manner of blorbos in > current biggest interest is orv > thinks about yoohankim as kids > gets sad

anyway lets do it. orv epilogue spoilers ahead

okay first of all. canonically as kids we have: suicidal, possessed by an alternate future version of herself, and literally does not exist. so im gonna come right out the gate and say a mario and luigi-style time travel scenario is off the table just. logistically. and also thematically. you understand.

but luckily the scenario mechanic makes it pretty easy to do whatever you want, so we still have options. are the kids personalities extrapolated from who the characters are now, just younger? or are they based on what they were like at that age? (or what they thought they were like at that age?) do they have the memories of the original? all of them, or just up to that age? if not, would that affect their personality? are they based on/created from childhood memories, almost like an avatar? is it some kind of creature that transforms into a younger version of you? to what end? or is it a robot or doll created specifically for this scenario? and most importantly - how old are the kids?

so heres a potential situation - they randomly encounter a hidden scenario thats meant to test you in some way? i guess i dont really have an idea for a plot or arc yet so i have no idea what the clear condition would be but. hypothetical scenario that creates a younger version of you and forces you to interact with them until you achieve some personal growth. if you wanna get angsty with it, the best way would probably be something like, the kids have all your memories up to that age and you have to help them overcome their trauma (and therefore your own). so in this case the kids would probably be a bit older, like 10-12? i dont remember the exact timeline on the kdj stuff but im pretty sure that would be after his mothers book came out but before he started reading wos. its a liiiiittle older than i was thinking but i think its the perfect age for maximum emotional turmoil 👍

this scenario would obviously be hell for kim dokja specifically, but i think it also has interesting implications for yoo "literally didnt exist as a child" joonghyuk. yes kim dokja has to face a version of himself potentially dealing with the very fresh aftermath of the situation with his mother, but yoo joonghyuk has to face his own lack of identity pre scenarios. probably the more realistic scenario here is that he just doesnt get a kid version of him because he has no memories to base it off of, but what if he does anyway? a quiet, closed off kid with no memories or family to speak of. its just so sad....... admittedly i dont have a whole lot of ideas for han sooyoung here though. well. actually. quick han sooyoung tangent

<tangent>

now. at risk of sounding like i have no reading comprehension. i have to admit that i was never really clear on exactly what memories han sooyoung gave up to create 1863!hsy. because okay. han sooyoung regains her memories when an avatar disappears. and when 1863 disappears is when han sooyoung gains the memories of everything that happened pre scenarios, right? [its actually not at the same time in the slightest but im not here to complain about time travel in fiction or we'll be here all day. theyre presented at the same time so i think its fair to say theyre connected]

so to me that implies that han sooyoung previously had those memories and made 1863 out of them? but why would she do that??? shes pretty careless with her memories but i dont think shes THAT careless. plus she mentions fairly early on that sssss infinite regressor (or whatever its called - her "plagiarized" novel) was based on her dreams - which wouldnt really make sense for her to reference if she previously had memories of 1863 and then forgot them. and that would also create a weird loop where 1863 has memories of herself writing wos, which i dont think tracks because she herself was confused that someone else wasnt writing wos...... and we also know that if han sooyoungs avatars train then she gains the skills from it, so perhaps this is an extension of that? and she gains all of 1863s memories independently from whatever memory hsy gave her originally

once again obligatory "i havent read the back half of the novel in quite a while so i dont remember very clearly" - i could be way off base here because my first read through of anything is usually not very reliable. but the interpretation that makes the most sense to me is that we just dont know what memories she gave up. but it seems odd to me? to specifically mention that she gave up a lot of her memory and thats why 1863 went rogue? not to mention the ways 1863 is so different from hsy.......

</tangent>

ANYWAY the point of this whole tangent is that if the children are based on the memories they had at that age then child!han sooyoung would potentially have an important memory that ours is missing (because she gave it to 1863!hsy). BUT if theyre based on their existing childhood memories, then naturally she wouldnt. in fact, id wager that over the course of the novel han sooyoung has probably lost a lot of childhood memories - that could definitely be a source of angst. its different from yjh who had no say in his circumstances - hsy intentionally threw away important aspects of her childhood in order to survive the present. and these are the consequences - a child who is missing a lot of formative experiences and noteworthy memories. imagine coming face to face with a version of yourself completely distinct from the kid you know you used to be, even if you cant quite remember clearly anymore, and knowing that you have no one to blame but yourself...... ohhhhh i really like that.

lol apparently i had the least to say about kim dokja facing his past self head on - i guess he does do that several times in orv huh. (wait. oh my god. i didnt even think about the oldest dream...... ohhhh my god kim dokja....... like, okay, assuming this happens sometime in the middle of the novel he wouldnt know about the oldest dream but. i guess i failed to consider all the things about his past he might not want to address...... but if this kid hasnt started wos yet then the reader specific guilt would likely be less prevalent. but something to think about......) and in pursuit of a different angle on that struggle i stumbled into yoohans raging identity issues. incredible

omg do the kids have skills?????? well kim dokja has to have the fourth wall no matter what. and probably also orv, but at a lower level - i guess it depends on if he has memories of wos too...... wait holy shit. little kim dokja who has started reading wos....... meeting yjh in real life....... im gonna cry 😭😭 i guess idk how old kdj was when he started reading it - wasnt he in middle school? thats probably older than i wanna go. can you tell i wrote this out of order? anyway. young yjh would have whatever skills yjh started with in the 0th turn (so, not many), but he probably has high starting stats (its only natural). im sure han sooyoung has been writing since she was a kid so she would still have avatar (again at a lower level).

to take it in a different direction though, we could do more of like. a mini clone situation? similar setup but maybe instead of a personal growth scenario its like, take care of your younger self and make sure no harm comes to them for one week. something like that. but instead of who they were as kids its like if you hit each of them as they are right now with an age regression beam. definitely go younger with this one - maybe 7-8? admittedly i have very little concept of the developmental stages of kids. i dont want them to be too young though - they should have some independence but still be way too young for all the fighting. and if sys and lgy are like 10 then a couple years younger than that seems about right? omg i was just checking the wiki for character ages - i didnt realize hsy was 2 years younger than the other two...... she'll be so little....... well i could always make them all the same age but wheres the fun in that

so anyway, in this case they keep all their memories and maybe their skills? maybe only some of them, and scaled down of course. but theyre more emotional and less skilled. vulnerable. child!kdj definitely admires adult yjh more openly, child!hsy is a biter, child!yjh is. strikingly similar but a little more readable. this also has really fun potential if the group gets split up and the kids are paired off with a different adult...... and since the kids are accurate to who the adults are but with less emotional regulation and impulse control, there could be some really fun moments of. your true feelings get revealed without your consent...... ohhhh yeah. its all coming together

[everyones-least-favorite-bard]

looking at WOS/ORV with the lens of like the surviving vs living semantic argument is really fascinating tbh

like i dont know what the official korean is for WOS or if culturally they also have the surviving/living distinction but in my area at least there is that little caveat dividing the two—how surviving is just continuing to exist vs living being existence with joy and/or hope. so then looking at hsy writing WOS for kdj is like. obviously kdj post suicide attempt is not really keen on doing much living or surviving. but instead of making a series called like Three Ways to Live in an Apocalypse or something to that effect she chose survive.

and i feel like that implies that shes acknowledging that yes. sometimes its almost too much already to just survive, to just pass the threshold of today into tomorrow but that doesnt make the struggle not worth it or insignificant. if living is too much then at least learn to survive and maybe one day you can take that extra step forward.

so then ofc early scenarios kdj is very geared towards survival he is (at least how he presents himself) counting numbers looking at stats hes saving people as raw units rather than actual living beings but! but! he doesnt stay that way he learns to live beyond survival he makes those connections he learns that joy he becomes a fucking BEACON of hope and thats what i think orv is. WOS was to teach kim dokja to survive but ORV tells him its ok to live and we are all kim dokja in some way and i really truly think orv wants us, its readers, to learn that its ok to live also

[orviposition]

if you could, would you have wanted for 0!yjh to meet dkos even just for a short nice moment (besides the canon one at the very end)? even if he would forget about it all in the end? vahdhv jgdjk how would that even go in your head 🤣

though i know he didnt suffer the way 41!yjh did it'd be so funny to see his reaction since 41 had such a.. memorable one XD i love them dearly. i want them to lose their shit and be down bad for a man they never met lol 41 had not even had an inkling of kdj's existence before yet fainted at what. happiness?? lol. and imagining 0 who knows kdj and has been getting help from dkos seeing his face and talking to him makes me scream

oh. ohhh man yeah ive thought about it although very briefly cuz with the way the 0 storyline is structured leaves a lot of room for imagination but also makes it clear that kdj cannot descend. but let's just say it's not the case, how it would go. maybe they'd meet during constellation banquet. yjh would be invited as seoul's representative, although he has (maybe) no story to inherit and no regression restrains at the time.

in walks kdj. yjh notices. hes rather young and much inexperienced, not exactly hardened by regression depression and still has that light-in-his-eyes so to speak. for yjh I'd say the first meeting would be bordering cute-awkward angle. this is still the guy who was paying for their private midday tryst all the time btw (yes. even during 0th turn) surely there must've been a few dms outside the context of scenario revelations that the two of them shared

for kdj, on the other hand, he'd feel probably sad, maybe even silently cry a little. he misses his own yjh and his own companions too. while 49 was busy having existential dread, 51 was having the time of his life with 0 after all. he succeeded in making him happy regardless where that happiness lead him.

gonna be talking abt side story now

oh 41yjh is still so... the human personification of "the tip of the iceberg" we know nothing about that guy. kdj knows nothing about him. hsy has no idea who he is. kdjs narration about him is both at fault and not at fault at the same time. cuz the og 41st turn isnt even written in twsa to begin with. nor is the 40th turn written either. kdj saw the one short paragraph of 41yjh shutting off his heart during that turn and using his companions for his benefit and ran with it and you cant even blame him cuz thats the only thing tls123 wrote of that turn. hsy mentions at some point during the epilogue that she and yjh (1863rd turn) did talk about events of his past regressions so twsa is not all "hsy's imagination" and yjh also mentions to biyoo that he doesnt remember the 41st turn so what if it was 1863yjh the one who told hsy that exact paragraph?? thoughts like these keep me up at night

and contrary to kdj's narration and lhh's fears, 41 isnt actually a monstrous existence. he cares for people and helps them. he loves people and people love him in return just as much. he is confused this time around though I'll give him that much. there are strange people around him. people who know him and the scenarios. people who keep mentioning this guy named kim dokja so much even he gets curious about him. most importantly his "archenemy" of the previous round is *gasps* not evil anymore. he knows something is going on just is far away from finding out what exactly.