#but my thought is that a deeply rooted contradiction like this would generate that distress when it hits a roadblock yk?

[its-no-biggie]

okay ive been thinking about this and. i really really like this theory but if i may build on it and take it in a slightly different direction - both kim dokja's and yoo joonghyuk's original split resolves an existing contradiction that is preventing them from moving forward. kim dokjas dissonance is between his two ■■s (or, more literally, whether to get off the subway or not), and yoo joonghyuks is about whether he wants to live or die. so what if, instead of one moment of immense psychological distress in han sooyoung that caused enough dissonance to lead to a split, it was instead a moment that forced her to confront a contradiction that existed in her already and left her torn on how to move forward?

my proposition is that the dissonance was her philosophy as a writer. the han sooyoung who only cares about appeasing the reader (3rd) and the han sooyoung who is determined to tell her own story no matter what anyone thinks (1863). the han sooyoung who plays into the constellations' interests and always goes for the most satisfying resolution, vs the han sooyoung who refined the 1863rd regression into something technically perfect that even kim dokja (who read 3000+ chapters of this terrible novel) didnt want to see. i mean 1863!hsy outright says it

its the conflict between catering to your audience with derivative story beats/cliches, and a well crafted narrative that ends precisely how you want it to regardless of how the reader feels.

in terms of the specific moment that wouldve caused the split, it would definitely be very very early in the scenarios - perhaps even triggered by the start of the scenarios. some struggle about how to proceed with her knowledge of wos and her talents as a writer - perhaps it had to do with her decision to seek out yoo joonghyuk? especially with the way they both treat yoo joonghyuk - 3rd tries to get him on her side asap because hes The Protagonist, but 1863 actively discards him. this also ties into 1863s overall goal, to have her own world to tell a new story, compared to 3rd going out of her way to kill off all the apostles to get back on track with the original wos (aka the safe predictable story she can easily derive from) as quickly as possible.

over and over their philosophies clash even if their methods are strikingly similar. you could even view this split as a sort of "cleansing" from both of their perspectives, which would explain why each of them asserts that they are the original - they have both discarded an annoying voice in the back of their head that prevented them from writing the way they wanted to.

this could even explain why authors are the only ones who get this attribute - this is an internal conflict that every artist has to contend with, but specifically where novels as a medium are so highly commercialized....... where you land on this issue will change the entire course of your career. no wonder 1863!hsy is so bitter - you think she was involved in the creation of sssss grade infinite regressor? that novel was a massive success BECAUSE it was highly derivative and pandered to the audience. hsys 1863rd round was very technically good but was firmly rejected by its audience (and even the star stream itself? given the probability storm immediately followed by [the star stream is looking at incarnation han sooyoung] - you could interpret that as a message from the universe that this kind of story will not be tolerated. something something the star stream is capitalism)

its also worth noting that 1863s ideal story is one that happens in isolation, while 3rd cares only about maximum viewership with no regard for actual quality. these are two extreme approaches that come together in a happy middle by the end (i.e write for yourself AND your audience), with 1863 writing wos for kim dokja and 3rd writing orv for kim dokja. its all about how a story cannot exist without a reader, so an author must have care and respect and love for their audience (which neither version of han sooyoung does at first).

actually i just noticed - 1863 demonstrates greater technical storytelling skill, while 3rd has high adaptability to what the reader wants. and one of them ends up writing a messy rushed serial novel highly responsive to audience feedback, while the other has to carefully weave together a complex story without any reader feedback at all....... another example of them meeting in the middle i suppose.

anyway im obviously extrapolating a lot since 1863!hsy doesnt spend that much time on the page. but i did reread the 1863 arc to make sure i wasnt making completely unsubstantiated claims so. i hope it holds up 👍

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.