#kdj thoughts

[kim-dokjas]

.. I'll regret this, but when this blog has 50 followers, I'll go kiss a certain constellation. You all better give me coins for this.

[wildrbst]

Orv doodle comic time

[auuwmk]

another one of these

[milkbreadtoast]

idk how i want to draw him yet and not ready to make a srs attempt but here's a bad kdj phone doodle lol🚶🏻

[zi-vian]

How did the author even cook up orv??

like where the hell did the idea come from? a dream? thats way too creative. plus there's so little loopholes too. and the amount of foreshadowing shows that the story wasn't js writing and improvising. someone please solve this mystery 💀

[noadore]

[everyones-least-favorite-bard]

in observance

[fretsaffron]

I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead - louisa may alcott

[briebysabs]

I’ve been deliberating for a couple days now and have decided to discuss in-depth about Kim Dokja and the tendencies of putting his life on the line. For most of the novel, I was split on whether I should view KDJ as a self-sacrificial bastard or a suicidal character. And by the end, I’ve reached the conclusion that he is both.

Before I elaborate further, it should be noted that while we all meme about KDJ’s dying count, he actually isn’t that careless with his life. What I mean is he sacrifices himself usually as a last resort, plans A to F didn’t work and it’s the only option left to hope for kimcom’s safety-ditch effort. Usually. We’ll circle back to that when we bring up OD. But his sacrifices are always done as granting his companions salvation, utterly blind to how they feel about it. But to understand his constant need to do this you have to first start with where he learned how to love. Lee Sookyoung’s love was sacrificial, she’d take the brunt of her husband’s rage to shield KDJ, she’d take on blame for his death and be incarcerated for years so Kim Dokja won’t discover the truth. All of this, in my opinion, unbeknownst to KDJ, imprinted onto him this interpretation of love. As nobody else until the scenarios began had loved him (Yes HSY technically but he doesn’t know that). Which gives the irony that multiple characters KDJ resent in the story such as Kim Namwoon, his mother, the constellations are ultimately revealed to be reflections of himself.

Another component to his self-sacrificing is “Kim Dokja the reader”. I’m not going to dive deep into how orv interweaves dissociation and escapism into its narrative, I’ll do that some other day. But KDJ views himself as the reader, an outsider, the sole member in the audience watching the story unfold before him. Yes he grants commentary, the players notice and acknowledge his existence, but he isn’t part of the play. So if he decides to step out of the auditorium for a while, if he decides to leave a bookmark where he left off and close the book, nothing should change. The story will continue in his absence, the characters cannot possibly miss him because Kim Dokja was not a character. He was not part of their world so even if he’s gone, the ending will still happen. And that is something I want to stress here.

KDJ says “he wants to see a certain story’s epilogue”. Specific choice of words, “see”. He doesn’t say he’ll be part of it,that he’ll be with them, or any close variation of those phrases.

This is where I want to diverge to talk about KDJ's suicidality. You can say “Ok then, KDJ has a clear goal in mind to reach the ending he desires. Yes he may feel the need to step out of the story every now and then, but he does so reluctantly. So obviously, he doesn’t want to die.” And you wouldn’t be wrong really but that simplifies it to an overwhelming degree. That’s how I initially thought of it until I realized how complicated it actually is. Because most people who deal with suicidal thoughts aren’t searching for death but rather feel there’s no other choice. It often isn’t as clear cut as 1863 YJH who, anyone that read this arc will say with certainty that he was suicidal. Yes KDJ isn’t chanting in his mind over and over that he wants to die but why does he want to live? To see the proper ending of a web novel that stopped him from attempting again to begin with. Over the course of orv he finds people he loves and who love him back deeply. People he longs to live for but despite that because of the disconnect between them, his self-loathing, accompanied with what I said before, believing he has no other way out of these threatening situations. Yeah it’s to save his companions but in the end Kim Dokja still feels the need to die. Even if you do not see KDJ as a suicidal character, it is undeniable that so much revolving him, the impact it has on those who care for him, and the visceral descriptions used to convey their thoughts, is a direct metaphor for that.

Or in a few cases, straight up what’s going on and now we arrive at what I think was the final straw for Kim Dokja. Meeting the Oldest Dream. For me, this is THE scene of orv. The biggest twist and what finally irreparably broke KDJ. Prior to this, Kim Dokja had become the “Enemy of the story” but it was unlike his previous dances with death. This time he truly had no intention of dying, he wants to be a part of the ending with his companions, he understands now that his sacrifices do hurt them. That according to him “I, someone of no redeeming quality, could be loved by the others.” That he is a character and that just maybe, he does deserve to live happily ever after with them. And then Kim Dokja meets a 15-year old boy with the same face as his, doodling in a notebook his ideas for Ways of Survival and a notification tells him to ‘Please end the Oldest Dream’. All of that progress is shattered in an instant.

KDJ tries to excuse himself by recalling his promise to SP to kill OD but we all know if that was any other kid, he would not have tried to kill them. He would’ve hesitated much more, he’d look for a loophole, he would’ve tried talking which is his biggest strength for every corner he gets into. Killing them would not be the first option but now it is. Because this isn’t an instance of sacrifice anymore, KDJ is sick of himself. OD is a presence that confirms KDJ’s worst fears. That he’s meant to be weak and pitiful and alone, that he was always an outsider, that he unintentionally causes pain and misfortune to people he loves, that everyone would be perfectly fine and better even without him. And Kim Dokja is the physical manifestation of them: a monster. And there’s only one way to get rid of this monster.

The chain of events from him swinging his sword at OD, trying to stab himself with the blade only for YJH to stop it desperately with his hand, everyone restraining and begging him to stop, KDJ crying and screaming for SP + the other Outer Gods to kill OD. Everyone else is forgiving him and KDJ is only thinking of getting a blade.

This is Kim Dokja’s relapse. It’s real, it’s harrowing, and he never recovers from it. He reaches the conclusion that he has to be alone, it’s his atonement, it's what he deserves. So he splits himself 49-51. I interpreted this when I first read it as presenting 49% of what you believe people want to see. More real than a facade but it’s not the true you. The true, fucked up version of who you are is trapped in a prison of your making, trapped in a darkness you feel you don’t deserve to escape. Which is why it’s so powerful that KimCom went after that 51%. They didn’t want just their version of KDJ, they wanted everything KDJ is including the larger side of him that he wishes didn’t exist. But the plan fails, they managed to turn that full stop into a comma but they couldn’t save KDJ. Because you can’t drag someone out of that train, out of that mentality, you can’t force someone to love themself. All you can do is reach out to any corner, every worldline you can and let them know you’ll always love them. That you’ll always love every aspect of their story and hope that perhaps one day, they’ll accept your hand and believe it.

[ID: Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint art by Blackbox: first of Kim DOkja smiling, seen through a space in a bookshelf, and second of astronaut Yoo Joonghyuk floating upside down as letters float around him. End ID]

[kim-dokjas]

Hello, I'm Kim Dokja! Han Sooyoung forced told me to make this, so here I am.

I guess people can ask me questions? You can do that, if you want. I don't know why you'd want to talk to me though...

//HELLOOO this blog is brought to you by my crazy obsession with orv right now. im a webtoon reader but im slowly getting through the novel so no big spoilers from the end of the novel please! you can call me mod amia, and while i am 18+, id rather keep this blog rather sfw (although i am fine with suggestive jokes!) other than that, have fun ! <3

tags list:

#kdj answers ; for asks

#kdj responds ; for reblogs/rp

#kdj thoughts ; for random yapping posts

#a constellation ; all ooc posts

[kingadi97]

Kim Dokja is one of the most tragically beautiful characters ever written and this isn't me just glazing him because he's one of my hyper fixations I mean this in the most genuine way. The more I think about him the more melancholy and bittersweet he is as a tragic character. You have this man, mere this boy split into multiple fragments of himself being his past, present and future stuck in an endless loop of trying to save his companions and sacrificing himself over and over and over. Not to mention his past in itself is just a tragedy. A young boy whose life that has been nothing but torment watching his mother be beaten and take the abuse while finding escapism in a novel that he's clung on to for long wishing he could fight back like the protagonist to the point where when he does in fact become a part of the novel he's still wishing he were him. We've all watched and read Kim Dokja grow and we've all become a part of his story and his fragments because stories in his world are what keeps people going. Sure he's witty, sarcastic, self deprecating, stubborn, nerdy, and maybe even a bit manipulative but the more you think about him he's just so bittersweet. He feels selfish, he understands human nature because he's practically written as a fully fleshed out human. Even in the ending in his own story he's still almost Macbeth esquie. I could write about Kim Dokja all day and it still wouldn't be able to summarize the deep emotional connections I have with him as a character.

[uris9158]

do you ever think about how lsk loved kdj more than anything, so much that not only did she throw away her freedom to protect him but also was even willing to bear his resentment and sacrifice her very relationship with her own son, to protect him? (and how kdj did the same to his loved ones like yjh and kimcom, willing to bear their resentment to save them?)

do you ever think about how kdj, too, loved his mother so much, and so much of him is made of his mother - she taught him to read, gave him his love of stories, taught him to read again, taught him love-as-sacrifice... how incredibly similar they are, like mirrors of one another... how they both hurt each other so badly but underneath all that is so much profound love?

do you also ever think about how orv is about love, and about stories, and how those two are the same thing. and kdj and lsk.. their story was always about love all along! what would you do to protect the people you love? what would you sacrifice? what if you grew up and had loved ones of your own to protect and found yourself making the same kind of decisions your mother did to protect the people you love?

[ceryulean]

I don't remember if it was in the novel or in some fic I read but this scene has been in my head for too long so

[rlaehrwk21]

when i say i love this character, i mean my interpretation of him. whatever is actually wrong with him has got nothing to do with me

[auuwmk]

what kimcom was doing with the group regression was the same as what kdj was doing with twsa:

using all their knowledge of the scenarios and changing the course of the story

hsy literally takes kdj's role as the "protagonist" and kdj (49) gets sidelined -> kdj taking yjh's achievements and role as a protagonist and yjh gets sidelined (somewhat)

doing it to save someone and change someone's fate (because he deserves be happy, because his story shouldn't end this way, its just not fair)

[rikan-oo]

Post epilogue professor Han Sooyoung showing off her trophy husbands to her students be like:

[ID: A meme captioned "The author of this writing textbook casually throws in pictures of her cats". Below that are two photos of pages from a textbook, both featuring photos of cats that are captioned "The author's first cat" and "The author's second cat proofreading the manuscript" and which are respectively labeled as Yoo Joonghyuk and Kim Dokja. End ID]