#so its always cool and interesting whenever his Reader traits are reproduced in others as explicitly heroic!

[metanarrates]

the scenarios require an endless raising of stakes, playing games with people's lives until they paradoxically cease to have impact. a dokkaebi's life depends on playing this system well. in certain ways, constellation lives depend on it too. there is a necessity to create an endless churning of content no matter who gets crushed under the wheel.

but in kim dokja's wake, something changes. we have constellations who will continue watching an unpopular story, despite it losing a lot of what made it exciting. and we have a dokkaebi who will continue facilitating that unpopular story, despite the fact that its influence is waning. they have come to care about it regardless.

a lot of orv's situations and characters reflect kim dokja in some way, which makes sense considering that orv is a million words long character study in the form of a fantasy novel. but something I find interesting is that when kim dokja changes people, it doesn't make people any less a reflection of him, despite how much he often hates himself. instead, so many the positive changes he enacts are ones that make other people more like him. the ones who come to love the story will act more like the reader who loves the story above all!