#Omniscient Narration

[tchistorygal]

SCY3 # 2 Tips: Point of View (POV) by Diana Peach

Welcome to a new feature of Story Chat Year Three – Tips/Author Shop Talk. This month our Tips Feature author is Diana Peach. At last count, she had published more than 20 titles in a variety of genres. Her blog is Myths of the Mirror. Diana started last month as one of our wonderful authors. with her Story “The Grand Adventure.” Story Chat is a unique blogging program in which a different author…

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

so important for every character to be an idiot, but each in their own unique beautiful way

[pyrox39]

Kim dokja

[lancabbage]

Personally, I think the real reason people keep insisting MDZS is told from WWX's POV, even though they admit it's third person omniscient, is because JC is addressed by his birth name 'Jiang Cheng' throughout the entire novel and not his courtesy name. So people wrongly assume it must be from WWX's perspective...

Well, those that cling to such a take aren't going to like the real answer to this... But that's still not the case. If it were from WWX's perspective, JYL would be addressed as 'Shijie', LWJ would be 'Lan Zhan' and JFM would be 'Jiang-shushu' etc. JC is addressed by his birth name throughout the novel because even the narrator thinks he is a clown.

Sorry, but that's the reason. They do not think he deserves respect, just as the rest of the cultivation world doesn't either. If you actually look at the text, you'll notice behind his back, nearly everyone calls JC by his birth name out of disrespect - it's literally in the first few chapters for all to see. He's rarely called by his courtesy name by anyone other than LWJ, WWX when he's pissed and later by JGY and XY in the extras. That's it. It's a show of disrespect throughout the novel and the narrator shows the same. JC isn't called 'Sandu Shengshou' for nothing you know, it's a running theme of disrespect for a character that doesn't deserve much if any at all.

[its-your-mind]

thinkin bout how orv starts with kim dokja actively working to ensure that kim namwoon dies during the first scenario

thinkin bout how kim namwoon was a teenager at the start of the scenarios, dealing with the apocalypse using the mental paths that came easiest, jumping into the new world with both feet

thinkin bout kim dokja as a teenager. tired. hurt. alone. his internal and external struggles ignored by the adults around him. choosing to throw himself off a rooftop because there wasn’t anything in his life worth living for

thinkin bout how kim dokja woke up again, even though he had planned not to

thinkin bout a teenage boy. lost, alone, broken, scared, angry, in need of someone to come and show him how to keep moving forward

thinkin bout a protagonist in a webnovel who is an example to you of how to survive against all odds. a mantra to repeat when living life as yourself is too hard

thinkin bout a hardened and powerful hero who knows exactly how this world works, who holds out a hand offers you a place with him

thinkin bout teenage kim namwoon, looking to yoo joonghyuk as captain, teacher, and protector

thinkin bout teenage kim dokja, looking to yoo joonghyuk as role-model, hero, and refuge

thinkin bout teenage kim dokja, who saw himself more as kim namwoon than any of yoo joonghyuk’s other companions

thinkin bout adult kim dokja, reclusive and unsocial, hiding his phone from his coworker so she doesn’t see what he’s reading. convinced that yoo joonghyuk would look down on him if he learns who he “really” is. ashamed of any details kimcom learns about his past

thinkin bout what happens to a life when the person living it has never seen in it any redeeming qualities or objects of value. how someone feels about life when they tried and failed to give up that life a decade ago, and every day since has felt almost accidental

thinkin bout the lesser fire dragon. the disaster of floods. the strongest in seoul dome. the devourer of dreams. the 73rd demon king. the industrial complex. the war between good and evil. the wager with secretive plotter.

thinkin bout the most ancient dream. an empty station. a cold and hard bench. bandages and a notebook and a too-loose uniform. smaller than he should be for his age and more broken than any child should ever become. alone.

thinkin bout an unbreakable faith, shattered. a family frantically throwing themselves at their heart to save him from himself. desperate hands prying a blade out of shaking ones, moments before the jagged edge pierced deep into vulnerable flesh

thinkin bout how the younger kim dokja, recently released from the hospital, does not watch. instead, he instinctively curls up to protect the parts of himself already hurting the most. he begins to repeat his mantra

thinkin bout how kim namwoon kicked and fought and screamed and stabbed. and then, when he realized there wasn’t anything he could do, he got down on his knees and begged kim dokja for his life

thinkin bout how kim dokja just stood over him, held him in place, and looked at him in silence as the clock ran out

thinkin bout kim dokja at the beginning of his story and at the end of his story. in a subway. looking down at a teenage boy.

making a choice. the same choice, both times.

the first time: an explosion, a blood splatter on his reflection, and a confused and wary protagonist who has lost one asset and gained another

the last time: arms holding him back, a family hugging him tight, and another protagonist who steps in front of him. holds the child close. forgives him everything. offers up anything more he could need. and kim dokja watches as the person with the strongest claim to vengeance upon this younger facsimile of himself instead gently gathers up the most ancient dream, tucks him close against his chest, and walks away with him safe and sound in his arms.

[kirvia]

*fight clubs your orv*

[neosatsuma]

Patrick "Aubreyad" O'Brian, you CANNOT be this funny at midnight on a Monday.

[cactus-juiceee]

chapter 372

[sleepyminty]

A character you hate not because they are a piece of shit. A character you hate because you love them so much it hurts when they didnt see themselves that way, you hate that character because they dont know know how much you love them, you know how many sacrifices and sins they made but they always undermine what they do, you know they did it for love but the love is hurt so much it like a stab in your heart, a character who didnt see themselves as how we see them, we cry, beg, crawl out of blood for them to stop doing this to themselves but they pursue into the flames. You know how much suffering, how damaged and broken they are, you just wanted to help them but oh how ironic it is that they forfeit themselves such luxury. You hate the smile that they made eventhough they felt like dying. You hate that character because it’s hurt to love them. You hate that character because it was them who orchestrate this damn ending that they didnt deserve and it shouldnt have ended that way, but who else make such an unfair, cruel choice for such a beloved character other than themselves? You, who paint yourself as a devil in the name of all ,the salvation was there, why cant you accept it?

[makethosenarratorsfight]

UNRELIABLE NARRATORS; SEMI FINALS

*NOTE; propaganda is out of order due to the post length!

Eugenides Propaganda:

the entire plot hinges on a detail he lets the reader (and every other character) assume is true. I don't want to spoil it because it's a really fun reveal but he is lying from the first second he appears on the page and you can't trust him to tell the full truth about ANYTHING related to himself and his goals. he mostly does it to keep his advantage and not have other characters be suspicious of him but it's just so fun when you realise he's been lying the whole time

Kim Dokja Propaganda:

I haven't read orv but he's fucking gotta be from what I've osmosised

He tries to remove his emotions out of the narrative soooo much, literally the most repressed guy ever. Okay so for context orv is about how this guy, Kim Dokja, has been the only reader of an obscure post-apocalyptic webnovel for years and the novel suddenly becomes reality. And at first you'll probably get the weird impression that his behavior is pretty strange for, you know, a literal apocalypse happening in his world - like yes, he is concerned with survival but he doesn't seem all that scared and he kinda treats it like a video game where he has to grind to make himself stronger and he also treats his companions like a party in an rpg. Then there's also the way he approaches the protagonist of the webnovel, from the start he just kind of describes him as a ruthless psychopath and jerk that is unfortunately a pretty useful ally. And also there's the fact that he carefully omits any mention of his past and when somebody asks if he's worried about his family when the apocalypse starts he just kinda... brushes it off? Anyway so yeah, this bastard is definitely traumatized, although I don't know how much of spoiler territory that would be, considering the fact that literally when he first reveals his trauma he's also unreliable about it. And turns out he does indeed, care A LOT about this world and the people around him. Because well, he kinda didn't care to mention that this webnovel that has become reality was like... literally his whole world before it literally became his whole world. Like, it was the only thing keeping him going for 10+ years and the protagonist that he likes to call a stupid jerk was his comfort character who he pretended to be when he felt like he couldn't handle something in his life by being himself. The protagonist is also canonically the person he loves the most according to a prophecy and he literally can't fathom the thought of him dying, even the timeline versions of him that directly oppose him. And I haven't even mentioned the Fourth Wall yet but I feel like this propaganda is a little long already

misreading the intentions of his companion (yoo joonghyuk) so many time.

YOU DON'T UNDERSTANDDD DOKJA IS SUCH A UNRELIABLE NARRATORRRRRR GOD I COULD WRITE AN ESSAY BUT I KNOW YOU LOVE DOKJA TOO BUT OMG HE'S JUST SO AAAAAAAAAAAH

Rest of Propaganda under cut!

he is the worst like actually. he starts the story talking about how normal and average he is. he is not. he is constantly mischaracterizing his friends and he's so good at lying to the readers that you don't even realize it at first. almost every single time he cries we have to be told by other characters because he never says it himself. there is literally a scene where his narration says "i wasn't crying" and then the in-universe entity that narrates the actions of people (orv is really weird and meta) says that he was, in fact, crying. honestly genuinely anything he says about himself (or doesn't say) cannot be trusted. he is just so frustrating. he drives me mad. i love him dearly. but he drives me so mad.

Dictionary definition of unreliable narrator. Does not tell the reader anything and then things happen and he's like oh yeah btw there was also this and this earlier but i just didn't feel like mentioning it. There's even a thing called the "Fourth Wall" that is able to see through kdj's bs so occasionally you get gems like,

Kim Dokja: I didn't cry

The Fourth Wall: [Kim Dokja was crying]

Imagine being so unreliable as a narrator you need a more powerful narrator to call out the actual narrator.

^ same submission, just spacing it out

This goes into spoiler territory, but; Kim Dokja is in possession of a skill called the Fourth Wall, which on the surface seems like it appears because he read the book that reverse-isekai’d into his own. However, as the story goes on it becomes clear that it’s pretty much a souped up version of his pre-existing dissociation. You cannot trust him to be honest about his feelings, his past traumas or his feelings about his past traumas, not to mention his tendency to just outright omit information that only gets revealed later on either when it becomes relevant or when an outsider POV reveals what’s actually happening.

Exhibit A: he says (in 1st person POV) that he’s not crying. The Fourth Wall immediately contradicts this (as it is literally words of the novel) by saying (in 3rd person POV) ‘Kim Dokja was crying’.

Exhibit B: Fails to mention entire actions when it shows him emotionally honest even in the slightest; we had to read from another character entirely when Kim Dokja was being physically affectionate with his companion. It’s so bad that there’s this entire paragraph about Kim Dokja describing himself hiding his eyes in his hands in jerky, weirdly specific detail and just AVOIDING EVERY WORD THAT MIGHT SHOW HE’S CRYING. The brilliance of ORV is that when you re-read the entire thing you get hints that ‘yes, this WAS hinted at the entire time’ but you have to dig it out of Kim Dokja’s repressed, depressed self-hating internal dialogue with your own two hands.

^ same submission, spacing it out (i really should've done this earlier.)

i am a simple man (not a man). i see a tumblr text post with the words “unreliable narrator in it”. i read nothing else. i reblog & tag #kim dokja okay but in all seriousness i’m just going with the musty basic example: so there’s this moment where he sacrifices himself to save this guy. as he lays on the ground bleeding out, he says “hey, you don’t like me, right? you should kill me to get some money” the guy says “no kim dokja i cant do that (going through the five stages of grief except there’s only one and it’s anger)” the constellations (twitch viewers irl) are like omg he (the guy) doesn’t want to kill his companion (kim dokja) and shower him (the guy) with money kim dokja: oh, he’s not killing me for the money. smart!

as i quote a brilliant youtube video (all of omniscient reader’s viewpoint in 6 minutes) “yoo joonghyuk sees kim dokja as a c_____”

yoo joonghyuk: companion

kim dokja: cunt

^ same submission, once again. spacing it out.

Hides his true feelings, tells the readers what he thinks is convenient for the plot and that his own personal feelings don’t matter or are not so significant. Has unreliable thoughts abt his companion and is a liar. And is also an omniscient reader.

Kim Dokja always perceived his companions in this like nonchalant way like “oh yeah we get along but really we’re just fighting to survive (apocalypse setting) it doesn’t run that deep” when they all do genuinely care for him and he does in turn. He just, doesn’t think of it as an equal relationship? Dokja’ll sacrifice a lot for them but will get seriously flabbergasted if they do the same thing, so fricking problematic. Not to mention Yoo Joonghyuk, his “Life and Death Companion” (read: husband). Kim Dokja always seems to think that Joonghyuk has it out for him, which is kinda true, but he is literally blind to the fact that he’s attached to him. Like, it’s so obvious??? Also they have hella sexual tension but that’s another thing entirely

se get some many pov changes where kdj in his pov just assumed things based on what he knew the characters would do. however because of his interference the characters have changed and he wouldn’t know that if it hit him in the face

He's an unreliable narrator because he lies to himself and thus the audience. He literally rewrote his own childhood core memory. If someone says, "this guy is my friend!" He will go through so many hoola hoops in his mind just to rationalize it. Because he fundamentally believe that no one could love him and even if they did they couldn't know him and he's just gonna hurt them. He cries sometimes in canon but a lot of those times it's not even mentioned as crying he's that unreliable of a narrator. No joke, one time this guys he has a gay thing with called him his "companion" to someone who had just killed him (long story) and this bitch thought "oh wow he's doing it for the coins (another long story) he's so smart i wish I'd thought to that. He's terrible. He literally has an exchange with something called the Fourth Wall (an even longer story) where it said "you're crying" and he said "no I'm not" but he was crying. He makes me insane because the reader is supposed to project onto him. He made me see how much of an unreliable narrator I WAS. ORV is just like that tho.

[illeoust]

my wife turned into real wife

[theofficialuriel]

Bihyung fell in love with Kim Dokja at some point after the Demons World Arc

[lancabbage]

Listen, third person omniscient (POV) narration allows the narrator to dip in and out of the surrounding characters' thoughts as as and what required. In third person omniscient, the narrator acts like a guide who shows the read the story from an outsider's perspective. The narrator can choose what to tell the reader and what to keep hidden, and can switch viewpoints to avoid the reader finding stuff out before the author intends. 

This is what MXTX uses in MDZS for crying out loud! There's no "it's third person but from WWX's perspective and then switching to narrator now again." That's not how it wooooorrrks!!! It's the opposite!!! It's the all-seeing narrator and it dips into WWX's and other's thoughts when required. It is the narrator who is keeping information from you to add suspense!!!! Not WWX "being an unreasonable narrator" FFS! Yes, he lies to himself and others at times, but that's called a coping mechanism! And during those scenes, you'll notice the narrator often pulls back so we're not privy to his actual thoughts during said times. We are later SHOWN when he's done that with contradictory information FROM the narrator. The whole point of MDZS is to look for yourself, don't believe someone's word or rumours, see the evidence for yourself. Which is what MXTX does!

Honestly, do us all a favour and pick up some school textbooks instead of talking from your ass please.

[caffinateddragon-blog]

my dream orv anime is the fourth wall being the narrator. we don't get to peek inside kim dokja's head or look into his thoughts it's just the fourth wall

[colleybri]

Prometheus in Kaos is one of very few recent examples I can think of of a genuine subjective / limited (as opposed to omniscient) narrator in a drama. It’s debatable, but he’s also probably an unreliable narrator. We actually start off thinking he’s probably omniscient, but when the shit hits the fan – he shares our dismay. He realises he was wrong.

I sometimes see the term used of any character in a drama. It’s not correct. They’re not narrators at all, reliable or otherwise. Well written drama just has…. people. Saying the things that realistic people would say. Of course their perspective is limited. Of course they say things which are unreliable. It’s kind of a people thing.

It’s also that time of year to dust off my all time favourite example of an unreliable narrator: Edgar Allen Poe’s gleefully nasty The Tell-Tale Heart. I sometimes read it in tandem with Robert Browning’s classic dramatic monologue Porphyria’s Lover. In both cases, wonderfully realised psychopaths justifying their horrible gruesome murders. Ah yes. Great stuff. Happy Halloween!

[ater-love]

People calling Feyre an unreliable narrator or Nesta an omniscient narrator makes me laugh but at the same time makes me wonder how ignorant people are.

That is an elementary school type of knowledge… PLEASE educate yourselves before speaking because how can people take you seriously if you don’t even know the basics of narration?

I’m not even trying to be mean here because this is a genuine concern of mine.