#i would simply perish

[firstkanaphans]

su su na joong

[fredmundo]

Joong's professor every day of class forever now

[embraceweird]

SIOBHAN!!!

little did they know Siobhan was just across the street

[unluckyhorseshoecrab]

@extravierge put the idea of bishop's knife trick back in my brain and now i am pacing like a caged animal imagining it as patrick's emotional devastation piano ballad leading right into don't stop believing

[that-vampire-loser]

The way I always forget that Kevin Day’s mom was the one that invented exy. Like, he’s got coaches kid syndrome already, but THIS. The poor Exites workers, just trying to do their jobs, when Kevin MymominventedexyandIknowmorethanyou Day walks in the store.

He’s a menace to society

[cam-the-orange-cat]

There's a casual, comfort-video game I play and while playing it, i always play a specific Spotify playlist. What this has inadvertently done is made the Spotify playlist very comforting. Sometimes when I'm stressed or upset, I turn on this playlist and I feel immediate calm and happiness. And it's weird, because all those happy feelings are connected to memories inspired by a piece of fiction.

[flamingdiva]

No seriously how do people survive looking into Minho's big gorgeous full of love and wonder eyes

[al-mayriti]

imagine being in that academy thinking the visit at 3 pm is gonna be rafa romera or eli rosex and then noemí opens the door and the mf antonio banderas is there

[shuinami]

I can't conceptualise a spidersona cause I would never be close enough to a spider for it to bite me and if you ever see me that close to a spider... help the spider 💀💀💀

[orpeche]

"if the sims 2 is so broken, have you considered playing the sims 4?"

[taystays13]

Right??? Like I could never be so stoic and calm in front of Taylor while she sings the most heartbreakingly beautiful lyrics to literally my face

underrated part of the eras tour is taylor crawling on top of the table visibly trying not to laugh as her poor back up dancer must passively make eye contact with her while having no reaction. like that’s the hardest job on the entire tour and he does it flawlessly every night

[myokk]

“She’s tolerable, but not handsome enough to tempt me”😤😤😤

(Regency AU with Eloise and Sebastian inspired by my slow trek through Bridgerton these days & @bassicallymaestra ‘s AMAZING regency inspired art😮‍💨😇🙏)

[kindlythevoid]

Me sending a confused carrier pigeon to my friends so I can’t be tracked (I thought about perceptions of myself in the world for a little too long after midnight and gave myself anxiety): Hey guys! Just realized I don’t actually wanna be perceived anymore! If you could forget I ever existed and never speak about me again while I strike my name from the records and erase any mention of myself, that’d be great, thanks! Sorry for the inconvenience of meeting me, love you, have a nice life!!

[bidokja]

I was joking a while back that the actor they have playing KDJ for the orv movie was too handsome for him and a friend who's read orv was like "KDJ is actually secretly attractive!!" And I just felt my soul leave my body right then

SIGHS...

Okay. Buckle in. I'm gonna finally actually address and explain and theorize about this whole...thing.

I'm not gonna cite any exact chapters cause it's like 11:30 and I've got an 8 hour drive in the morning but I'll at least make an approximate reference to where certain things are mentioned. Also, this post is just my personal interpretation for a good bit of it, but it's an interpretation I feel very solid about, so do with that what you will. Moving on to the meat of things:

There is one (1) instance in the web novel that I know of which describes specific features of Kim Dokja (especially ones other people notice). This takes place when members of KimCom are trying to make Kim Dokja presentable to give his speech at the Industrial Complex (after it's been plopped down on Earth). This is when they start really paying attention and focusing on Kim Dokja's appearance since they're putting makeup on him; I still don't think they can interpret his whole face, but they can accurately pick out and retain more features than usual. If I remember correctly they reference him having long eyelashes, smooth skin, and soft hair. These features can be viewed as (stereotypically) attractive.

Certain parts of the fandom have taken this scene and run with it at a very surface level, without realizing (or without acknowledging at the very least) that this scene is not about how Kim Dokja looks. This is, in part, due to not realizing or acknowledging why Kim Dokja's face is "censored" in the first place, and what that censoring actually means. I think it's also possible that some people are assuming the censorship works like a physical phenomena rather than an altered perception.

I'll address that last point first. The censorship of Kim Dokja's features is not something as simple as a physical phenomena. It's not a bar or scribble or mosaic over his face. If that were true it'd be very obvious to anyone looking at him that his face is hidden. But his face is not hidden to people. They can look at him and see a face. If they concentrate on his eyes, they can see where he's looking. They know when he's frowning or grinning. They see a face loud and clear. But what face are they seeing? Because it's not really his, whatever they're seeing.

No one quite agrees on what he really looks like. And if they try and think about what he looks like, they can't recall. Or if they do, it's vague, or different each time. We notice these little details throughout the series. Basically, Kim Dokja's face is cognitively obscured. Something - likely the Fourth Wall, though I can't recall if this is ever stated outright - is interfering with everyone's ability to perceive him properly. This culminated in him feeling off to others; and since they don't even realize this is happening, they surmise that he is "ugly."

Moving on to the other point about what the censorship means: To be blunt, the censorship of his face is an allegory for his disconnect from the "story" (aka: real life, and the real people at his side). The lifting - however slight - of this censorship represents him becoming more and more a part of the "story" (aka: less disconnected from the life he is living and the people at his side). The censorship's existence and lifting can represent other things - like dissociation or depersonalization or, if you want to get really meta, the fact that he is all of our faces at once - but that's how I'd sum up the main premise of it. (The Fourth Wall is a larger part of the dissociation allegory, but that's for another post).

So you see, them noticing his individual features isn't about the features. It's not about the features! It doesn't matter at all which features got listed. Because they could describe any features whatsoever and it would not change the entire point of the scene. Because the point isn't what he looks like. The point is that they can truly and clearly see these features. For the first time. They are seeing parts of him for the first time. Re-read that sentence multiple times, literally and metaphorically. What does it mean to see someone as they are?

This is an extremely significant turning point dressed up as a dress-up scene.

---

P.S. / Additionally, I'm of the opinion that Kim Dokja is not handsome, and he is not ugly. He is not pretty, and he is not ghastly. Not attractive, nor unattractive. Kim Dokja isn't any of these things. More importantly, Kim Dokja can't be any of these things. The entire point of Kim Dokja is that you cannot pick him out of a crowd; he is the crowd. He's a reader. He's the reader. Why does he need to be handsome? Why must he be pretty? Why is him being attractive necessary or relevant? He doesn't, he doesn't, it's not. He is someone deeply deeply loved and irreplaceable to those around him, and someone who cannot even begin to recognize or accept that unless it's through a love letter masquerading as a story he can read. He is the crowd, a reader, the reader. He's you, he's me. He's every single one of us.

[lavenoon]

Was overcome with the urge to smooch @clxckwork-sun-n-moon So Cries The Wolf Eclipse - only I ran into a slight issue

Namely, they're 10ft tall:

Had to bait them down with chicken nuggets <3

[vampyre-kin]

She said what all of us were thinking.

Rewatching midnight mass