#which feels to me like a very pointed way to convey how 'beauty' is commodified. how audiences like 'attractive' characters more

[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.

[celiaelise]

Saw a post talking about a live-action adaptation of a book, and how op understood that the cgi budget was limited, and there were other more important elements that it was going to, but they were still really disappointed that certain aspects of the source material were being left out.

And I feel like I've seen so many similar posts about so many things!! Especially fantasy-flavored things. It really just once again begs the question: what about 2d animation??? Like, these limits are being artificially imposed!!!

Or not even only that? CGI that's more stylized, or a combination of live-action and one, or more, forms of animation. Like, I know we tend to read live-action characters surround by 2d cartoons as goofy and silly, but they don't have to be! The beauty of art and storytelling is that you can use the tools at your disposal to convey literally any emotion, if you know what you're doing. I know all of us here on tumblr, at least, have found ourselves moved by ridiculous-looking comics, or short stories based on the jokiest of premises.

Which isn't even getting into the possibilities of puppetry and practical effects!!! 😭 Ugh!!! Like...some colored lights shining on an actor's face and a miniature in the foreground of the shot could absolutely have as much emotional impact as a painstakingly-rendered digital dragon breathing fire. I feel like we all know this??? Or at least we used to?

I know I'm really not qualified to talk about this, given that I almost never watch anything anyway, and film is certainly not my medium. But storytelling and art definitely are, and they are so, so important to me, and it's upsetting to think about just how much corporations have commodified them and boxed them in.

You know how we did fight scenes in one of the plays I was most recently in? (At my community theater with no budget, where ticket sales don't always even cover rent.) We used toy swords, which I bought at Spirit Halloween, and all of which I returned for a full refund once the show done, except for the one that fell apart while I was using it. Our fight choreographer set it up so the audience wouldn't hear the plastic blades hitting each other, more for the sake of eliminating the distraction than actually hiding that they were, very clearly, plastic.

And I'm not saying the effect was blockbuster-worthy, but I will tell you that many people gasped and at least a couple got misty-eyed when my character got "stabbed", despite the cheap weapons, and the lack of fake blood, and the fact that we didn't even bother to use a spring-loaded knife, and just slid the thing under my arm. (the ones we can afford always have a very audible rattle anyway, so that's probably for the best.)

And honestly, I'm still unlearning the need to cling to realism myself! (but community theater has been an excellent teacher for that) Also, I think I'm getting off topic. My point is, people have always been able to create compelling stories without the need for anything fancy. But we want to create stunning and immersive visual spectacles now, too, right!? There are literally countless ways to achieve that goal, but our culture seems to have latched onto, like, two of them. I'd love to see mass media produce the kind of imaginative innovation that I've seen webcomic creators produce out of their homes for free.