#not that kdj have any

[cannot-be-cyn]

remember kim dokja's bully song minwoo? yeah, that guy... must be wild for kim dokja to find out that his bully from more than ten years ago had resorted to cannibalism in the apocalypse to exert his alpha male dominance and unleash his inner furry when the society as they knew it collapsed. if i was in kim dokja's shoes, the moment i found out that my former bully did just what song minwoo did, i would have had a eurika moment and would scream my word vomit- because that must've have explained a lot of things. my tormentor, you must have a lot of confusion in you, huh? instead of terrorizing 4chan and tumblr in the ye ole year of '06 & '07 with your fursona, you terrorized me instead. and then, punch him in the face.

[insomaniacat]

orv spoilers

tbh I'm so happy there is no explicit romance in orv (minus the brief stuff that happens with jhw and lhs) and because of that I feel like I've been able to appreciate kdj in such a profound way as a character

like sure i like joongdok and yoohankim but to me at least kdj has this level of asexuality to him that I don't usually associate him with anyone that romantically. And their relationships are still as complex and has such a great depth that they are like THE foundest of families and I can return to the kim dokja company at the end of the day as all of them being my comfort characters. you know that saying like 'i love you so much i'd make the world burn for you'? it's meant to be this dramatic line about how much you love someone (romantically), but kdj's company fully encapsulates this in a platonic way that just isn't cringey or anything like that

they are all so platonic but they love each other to such an unconditional way that they ALL decide to relive through all the scenarios again in the hope of finding kim dokja again. and later, they all help to write and spread a story - stories, the thing the reader loves - again, in hopes of bringing kdj back home. they aren't sure if it'll work, but it is through this love they all have that they don't give up and put their hope in this seemingly impossible method

and this is also what makes them fundamentally different from kdj. unlike kim dokja in the apocalypse, they do not have any sort of proof their methods will work. kdj has twsa - the novel he grew up reading, the novel he fantasized living in, the novel that he's spent 13 years following, learning every nook and cranny and probably even planning out his own way to survive the apocalypse from this lengthy novel. he has some sort of assurance his methods will work, with the amount of time hsy put into describing the settings (remember that twsa was not popular and one of the complaints was that tls123 put too much emphasis on the settings that deterred people from reading it, when really, that too was a way to ensure kdj survived the apocalypse later on). he has had time to reassure himself and plan for it, and probably had yjh case test them all

but kdj's company had no assurance - they did not grow up with a book that confirmed their methods of bringing kdj back would work. they did not have any 'third plans', no 'ressurections', no 'restarts', that kdj had in the apocalypse. all they had was their own hope - something kdj didn't have when he was fifteen sitting in that hospital bed after that failed suicide attempt, feeling like the whole world was against him. Until he searched up those three words on his phone. Those three words that were probably 'Ways of Survival'.

And then he found his hope in twsa. he found his hope in yjh, the protagonist made just for him. he found hope in the story that he believed in for the next thirteen years. the story that got him through high school, the CSATs, the military. his hope was in this tangible book that carried him through the apocalypse.

kdj's company had none of that. they only had their hope in kim dokja - the man they survived the scenarios with. they could only put their hope in their memories of surviving with the man that saved them, even though there was no evidence he lived in their world anymore. they had to put their hope in the fact that they remembered he existed, even though they had to acknowledge that they didn't know everything about him.

sing shong touches upon this idea a lot throughout orv - does something really exist if no one knows about it? or, in a more modern saying, did a fallen tree in a forest really fall if no one heard it? what proves the existence of something? what proves that something truly happened? sing shong seems to make it pretty clear that the existence of something can be represented metaphorically like a 'story', and stories need a 'reader', some sort of spectator that witnesses it, for the 'story' to exist.

for kim dokja, his final sacrifice, where he split into infinite little pieces scattered across the universe, was to ensure that everything existed. that open ending, as tragic as it was, was meant to be comforting. that his sacrifice was supposed to be so existences like you and me, are real. no matter how lonely we may feel throughout our lives, a metaphorical 'kim dokja' is looking at our own stories, spectating our own stories, even living our own lives himself.

and what i hate to say sometimes is that kim dokja is not really a character - he is an idea. he is an idea of some being affirming our lives, that it's real, that what we do from day to day, even something as simple as getting up in the mornings and brushing your teeth, or thumbing through a store catalog, matters. and this is why kim dokja sacrificed himself. for all the stories that may have not 'existed' if no one was watching it.

and it's out of love. this tragic, terrible love for the world, that eats away at yourself until you are nothing. but at least you exist.

[bidokja]

I thought you kin kdj?

anon i hope this is a joke cause if this is a genuine question it is the singlemost scathing read i have ever recieved in my life 👏 bravo

[lee-hakhyun]

i see people thinking that the side story is the bad ending for kim dokja. and don't get me wrong, he doesn't come back after the door opens, but that is because kimcom CHOSE that.

they had the option to open a door where kim dokja woke up, but they chose to go through the door where he doesn't wake up because they know that first door is a trap (like 49/51), and they want all of kim dokja. and when they go through, kim dokja is gone, but he's left a note. he is STILL OUT THERE (and part of him is with lhh right now. it's complicated)

anyway this is just to say KIM DOKJA IS BACK IN THE SIDE STORY. he is just not with kimcom *yet*. i need to make this clear because i keep seeing people saying things that sound like people think he's gone for real in the side story.

[everyones-least-favorite-bard]

collector's item

[astoryofsuchwoe]

i like to hurt my own feelings

[cactus-juiceee]

ギラギラ✨

[metanarrates]

hi. i'm a little bit drunk on wine, but please don't mind me. i found your post in the wild about orv and how it portrays the passive suicidality and i kept thinking about it. i don't really remember the exact chapter, but near the start of the book, when kdj teaches sys to subjugate the beasts and she says, self depracting, how she has no talent for it, and then kdj's inner monologue which goes something like 'if she's not talented, i should just kill myself'. i seriously didn't think nothing of it when i first read it! and that appeared again. and then the deaths happened, his backstory was revealed, the whole OD arc... and i kept thinking about that one throwaway line in the first chapters. GOD

orv does this very neat trick where it reveals kim dokja's suicidality through a slow drip feed. that throwaway line near the start of the novel. a single death or even a handful of deaths. him saying that the novel helped him survive. those are easy to not notice. but as he dies again and again and you learn more and more about him... yeah. it's not a realization that hits you all at once. when you learn that he's attempted suicide in the past, it slots perfectly into the puzzle you've already assembled of him at that point. a man who considers his own death an acceptable solution to most problems is one who has DEFINITELY tried to kill himself before

[pttucker]

Wait a second.

Dokja's still wearing his new face at the Gourmet Association banquet? Is it permanent?

Oh.

Oh Dokja.

I know the novel (or rather, Dokja) always plays it off as being a bit silly, but man you can see that the constant ugly comments are getting to him.

It was a little uncomfortable when nobody in the Industrial Complex even knew what Joonghyuk looked like and thus wouldn't call him out on "you're not as good looking as Yoo Joonghyuk" (rude) but Dokja still felt the need to change his face because "shouldn't I be handsome to be a revolutionary?" but that could still be played off as a precaution specifically because he's been called out before and also the guy was literally leaking stories so one more added onto him wasn't necessarily a bad thing.

But the fact that he's literally just made it his new face?

Oh Dokja.

I looked in the mirror and smiled with satisfaction. 「 Kim Dokja thought: It isn't better than Yoo Joonghyuk but isn't this decent? 」 Then Aileen finished the procedure and muttered, "It seems a bit better. Well, I don't know. Why is the impression so fuzzy…?" …I guess it was fine. My nose was slightly higher and my cheeks more taut… [Chapter 201]

"Isn't this decent." Was your original face not decent? 😭 And that's not even getting into the fact that he considers himself so ugly that "decent" is enough to satisfy him. 😭

Ugh and he's at least happy about his new looks (even though you don't need them Dokja!) and he's immediately shot down again and his satisfaction morphs to "well I guess it's fine." 😭

People remembered my outfit and cheered. I felt a bit sad that no one realized I had changed my face. [Chapter 201]

He was looking forward to people to finally say something nice about his looks. 😭

Man, we've come such a long way from the guy who read "Yoo Joonghyuk is devastatingly handsome" and thought "well I can probably get away with playing Yoo Joonghyuk."

It has been a cruel, cruel path downward.

I had never been interested in what I looked like since I graduated from high school. Then I thought about the reactions of the prophets when I pretended to be Yoo Joonghyuk and it seemed that I was ugly. I didn't think I was ugly when I took occasional selfies in the bathroom. [Chapter 97]

[solcarow]

.

[nekofra]

Can someone please explain what is this

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

ok i might be talking complete nonsense here, but. the Strict Order as a metaphor for an author facing writer's block.

"the Strict Order abandoned the world," yeah if i wrote a sweet potato story where the main character just keeps suffering with no sign of resolution, i'd drop the story too (<- has actually done this with a tesilid fanfic orz)

"The world rejected the Strict Order's abandonment, so to keep the world going the Strict Order made Tesilid keep rewinding time." That's just like when you get stuck at a certain point in the plot and keep rewriting the events leading up to that moment to try to make it work. nods sagely i understand. i too make my OCs go through scenarios lots of times until we get it right. sometimes it takes months. sometimes it never works.

"The saintess only exists in timeline ~86," oh yes, the classic 'idk how to solve this problem so i'll introduce a new character' trick. i'm familiar

"okay but if time looping is the Strict Order rewriting the story, then why can Tesilid remember it" because the author already wrote those scenes and it'll be sad to throw them all out. and also it's a cool gimmick to have a regressor story. (<- has drastically changed the premise and worldbuilding of a story just to make an alternate timeline relevant before)

"what about ailette's existence--" same as muriel, where you insert a new character in hopes of solving a plot problem. except this time the characters write the plot themselves, because just this once you give priority to their character traits & goals rather than where you thought you wanted the plot to go. (tesilid has someone he can be himself around and who can do certain things on his behalf, instead of being fully constrained by his obligations. ailette gets insane buffs instead of being restricted by the world's difficulty.) therefore the chars now have more agency and are not only solving problems, but also taking the story in a direction you never would have thought of before. (whatever the hell tesilid and ailette are cooking rn, separately, which is surely going to result in interesting developments later on)

tldr; the strict order as a metaphor for an author who hit writer's block. their friend World Shaper inserts their OC Ailette in and their writing style is to let the characters run away with the plot. it works. world shaper and all their friends are co-writers working on the story together and reacting to it in real time.

[venomgender]

would be a lot more charitable to joongdok if it didnt make people completely dismiss han sooyoung

[bidokja]

posts about kim dokja kinnie antics are always funny as hell but they never really stick with me because i simply cannot picture anyone in orv knowing the word "kinnie" other than lee jihye and uriel.

[lee-hakhyun]

my current favoured ships for lee hakhyun being lhh/jhw and lhh/yjh... bisexual king

[your--isgayrights]

Wow I love writing romance <3

(^only wrote about a dozen pages of world building info dumps about literature and a metatextual scene of a character reading an excerpt of a novel that doesn't exist in order to realize someone is his friend. Romantic Interest hasn't appeared in 20 pages)