#also this parallels lee sookyung really well…

[dreadark]

orv epilogue talk

initially the explanation behind the fourth wall bothered me a bit because I was fine with it as is… a literal fourth wall the dokkaebi king isn’t really much of a character so like why should I care about this idk…

but then I realized. the point isn’t what it is but rather why

the dokkaebi king only became the wall because of han sooyoung’s wish to protect kim dokja. during orv the [fourth wall] skill saves his life countless times, but at the same time it dulls all his emotions so he can't fully connect with everyone else

that’s just the literal events that happened. symbolically, han sooyoung’s wish was expressed through her writing twsa for him, and by escaping into the fiction of that world, kim dokja was able to survive. at the same time, using fiction to cope with reality like that has him feeling disconnected from the world and everyone else in it… and that’s what led to him making the 49/51 decision he sees his place as just a reader—an outsider to everyone else's story. because that's how he survived

so maybe han sooyoung’s desperate wish to save him back then also doomed him..? but that really was all she could do then...

[your--isgayrights]

Outside of Lee Seolhwa and Lee Sookyung, do you have plans for any other character outside of Kim Dokja’s primary companions (like Gong Pildu or Han Doonghoon) for your soulmate fanfiction? Constellations like Persephone or Uriel or Sun Wukong probably wouldn’t make sense to exist in real life but maybe characters such as Han Myungoh/Han Dareum or Jang Hayoung could fit? If I recall correctly, Jang Hayoung in particular is the one responsible for the title of the fanfiction, right? I feel like she alongside the Unidentifiable Wall and the Fourth Wall would be so thematically appropriate but I couldn’t imagine how you would do it if at all. I also want to say that I’m impressed how you managed to seamlessly incorporate so many references to the original ORV into your work. It must have required you to reread and recheck the wiki.

Yess, I'm glad you asked this anon bc literally I just threw in a little reference to Han Doonghoon and Lee Sungkook in the 4.4 update and got worried people would think they had to remember the characters well to understand the surrounding plot point better than Kim Dokja does. But I think I should trust the reader a bit more lol.

Unfortunately my inclusion of Aileen and Jang Hayoung isn't going to be as big as the other kdjco members, but they're sort of already set up in the fic and have a role in chap 5. I think JHY doesn't appear directly bc to me the relationship between her and KDJ is harder to make 'real,' though I have some ideas depending on how much I decide to include in chap 5. In my plans 5 will have a gaming tourney featured, so other big 'wos players' may be referenced further there as well.

Of course like you mention the fic title and many of the chapter titles are coming directly from the mouth of Jang Hayoung, so in that way she is constantly being referenced, haha.

Han Myungoh and his daughter are referenced earlier in Chapter 4. It's sort of a drive by.

I do make use of the wiki (bless the editorsn🙏), though mostly just to check dates, numbers, and spellings of names. I like to think of myself as someone with a pretty decent memory tho, so a lot of the more specific story references are definitely just me pulling in stuff I remember from my novel read throughs. Like I might have to look at the wiki to remember Han Dareum's name, but I'll never forget Han Myungoh's entire Male Pregnancy that he had like that was a crazy random W to me on my first ORV read through I was like hello??? Also that being around when JHY was being confirmed trans haha. I think I was only out for like a year or so before reading orv so the little gender fucky moments really stuck out to me.

Sometimes rereading my old work I also remember things I forgot happened in ORV. I think part of the reason I'm struggling so much with chap 4 and onward is that now that the wall fic characters have sort of developed to where they are some of the scenes I had in mind are less 1 to 1 with the OG. For instance, I'm trying to rewrite a scene I have of YJH and KDJ having a rooftop chat that like parallels the one back before the seoul's strongest incarnation arc in the novel, but it's a bit difficult. At first I wanted to include a lot more of KDJ interacting with the rest of YJH's team, but the rooftop Scene makes more sense to put a cap on the themes explored in chap 4. But when I first wrote this scene it was less specifically addressing that theme, because it was in the outline of like right after I wrote chapter 1, so it was kind of just the OG ORV scene with the flavoring of my AU on top. A lot of the little things they do and say in the OG novel would have to be quite finagled to fit anymore, so reworking it is the big task rn.

Anyway I'm really appreciative of people like you who take note of these small details <3. it's kind of helping me remember and appreciate a lot of the parts of me that were behind a lot of Wall fic originally if that makes sense? I am like reintroducing myself to him and giving him a hug instead of running away cringing just because it's me lol.