tatrinwhitewolf

[tatrinwhitewolf]

the audience knows why yjh was the one who killed kdj but the characters in the story including yjh 100% thinks kdj loves yjh. imagine you're trying to beat the allegations but your companion declares - on intergalactic tv - that he loves you the mostest. i just wanna know what was going on inside yjh's head after the shock of kdj's death wore off

[tatrinwhitewolf]

The official English using "allies" of all the possible terms for Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyuk, let alone the entirety of KimCom, is such a dogshit choice. And while yes some of this is frustration from a JDer, I'm mostly pissed as a writer because WORDS MEAN THINGS and "allies" is the WORST choice.

"Allies", on the surface level, hits all the marks. That's essentially what Kim Dokja and Yoo Joonghyuk are. But there's more to it than just "two people who share common goals and work together for a purpose."

Think about it this way: What do you call Kim Dokja and Anna Croft when they are temporarily working together? Allies, right? Temporary allies. Are you telling me THAT RELATIONSHIP is EQUAL to the relationship between KimCom, let alone the [Life and Death Companions]? KIM DOKJA DYING REPEATEDLY for "just an ally"? NO.

Using "allies" both minimizes the depth that comes from Yoo Joonghyuk labeling ANYONE his companion while ALSO calling ENEMIES WHO ARE TEMPORARILY ALLIED WITH THEM equal in status because they chose a word for its surface level meaning without any consideration for the future plot of the story. On top of that "allies" is such a neutral term. No real positive connotation. It's the social equivalent of someone asking "Is that your friend?" and you just responding with "We're just coworkers". Yeah, you're "friendly" because you work together, but that's the extent of your bond.

Literally any other word would have worked better. Teammates. Partners. ANYTHING other than allies! I'm so infuriated by it. [Life and Death Allies] I'm spitting blood. I could take everything else, but I'm at my fucking limit with this one. It's just a word, but as a writer I'm so burnt up.

WORDS MEAN THINGS MORE THAN THEIR SURFACE LEVEL DEFINITION. GOOD WRITING ACCOUNTS FOR CONNOTATION. GOOD TRANSLATIONS ACCOUNT FOR THE STORY LATER ON. GODDAMMIT.

[tatrinwhitewolf]

Early scenarios joongdok dynamic 🔥🔥🔥

[tatrinwhitewolf]

the relationship between kim dokja and lee jihye is one of my favourites honestly. she jokes around and insults him a lot, but shes also consistently absolutely devastated when he dies, looks up to him but will never admit it, and even takes on some of his self sacrificing tendencies in the demon castle arc. he's like her loser step dad she makes fun of all the time but still gets really excited when he shows up to her baseball game

[tatrinwhitewolf]

[tatrinwhitewolf]

ok so. the thing about jang hayoung is. her being transgender is explicitly meant to represent her autonomy as a person, and show how limited kim dokja's understanding of twsa is. like jang hayoung as the character kim dokja knows from twsa is perhaps the character who brings up the biggest questions re: character's personhood because kim dokja literally designed her, she's his oc. so we are forced to question her the most - are her traits and personality more attributable to her own choices, or are they entirely kim dokjas, for example. kim dokja knows everything about her, she was entirely his idea, and it leads to all sort of ethical dilemmas about exactly how much she can be considered her own person and what exactly their relationship to each other is.

or it would, if jang hayoung doesn't neatly sidestep all that 'does she even truly exist outside of kim dokja's perception of her' nonsense by looking firmly into the camera and saying yes, obviously. he doesn't even know im girl! so her gender is used to establish both her autonomy as a real human being AND demonstrate that kim dokja really doesn't know as much as he thinks he does, because hey it turns out even if you create them yourself people are sort of unknowable. i wonder if that relates to any of jang hayoung's themes about communication or something

anyway. these are two ideas firmly shoved into kim dokja's face by jang hayoung's gender identity, and they are two ideas he is deeply uncomfortable with. they force him to confront some thoughts he's been deeply suppressing and conflict heavily with his worldview. and unfortunately, sing shong decided to represent this discomfort with what jang hayoung's gender establishes by showing it as discomfort with jang hayoung's gender itself. that is not to say that kim dokja isn't being organically transphobic when he misgenders jang hayoung, just that that distaste for a conflict within his (gendered) worldview represents his distaste for a conflict within his (reader) worldview.

and this is bad. this is clearly a very transphobic and specifically trans misogynistic way to demonstrate this idea. its genuinely very distasteful to me that they decided to use a trans woman character like this. it casts a dark cloud over her character and the interesting things her transness represents - as well as one over the entire novel, not helped by the many other instances of transphobia we see. and i want to clarify that i do see it as bad and distasteful before i draw the following comparison, because as much as i love reclaiming homophobic and transphobic parts of the stories i like, i am deeply cautious of doing so without clearly acknowledging the harm they cause. also, i am a trans man, so i want to tread carefully when it comes to transphobia against trans women specifically.

but i do think its notable that sing shong clearly establish this link between transgenderism and autonomy and struggling to be understood within the story, and then give us a main character who's entire life has revolved around chasing those latter two things. a character who spends the arc jang hayoung stars in either in an opposite-sex-transformation or learning a 'woman only' sport as a 'man'. yoo joonghyuk, just like jang hayoung, is a character who challenges kim dokjas ideas about what it means to be a person vs character. yoo joonghyuk's entire arc is about chasing that autonomy that jang hayoung so clearly establishes through being transgender. yoo joonghyuk spends multiple arcs trying to get through to kim dokja that he does not understand yoo joonghyuk just because he happened to read about him in the way that jang hayoung clearly does when she declares herself a woman. this is a line that the story draws for me, not one im drawing on my own - this is a link between the autonomy yoo joonghyuk wants and the gender identity jang hayoung has that orv has already firmly established (although in a frequently transphobic way). and i think thats extremely interesting to acknowledge and explore, i think its a very clear part of yoo joonghyuk's character in this arc that never really goes away. and thats (part of) why yoo joonghyuk's end is [transition]

[tatrinwhitewolf]

Kim Dokja and the concept of dying (major spoilers)

Warning: mentions of suicide, abusive acts and bullying, though it's only mentioned and not specified.

Okay, I've had this idea in my head since last night and probably a few days ago. But I think we all make fun or joke about how much Kim Dokja dies, and I sure as hell ain't gonna read 500+ chapters again just to count how many times he has died and reference what other characters felt towards Kim Dokja dying.

So, why did I bring this up?

Well the reason is simple. I think that Kim Dokja dies to show his love. I mean, it was practically his go to, he'd rather sacrifice himself than let others do it, even though they were 100% willing to die for him, Kim Dokja time and time again breaks his promises just to let them experience a new day.

Lee Sookyung, his mother, kick-started this whole affair. While she didn't die when Kim Dokja killed their abuser, she did ruin her life and made it unable for her to go back to living a life with Kim Dokja. Effectively, to Kim Dokja, the mother he knew died at the same time his father died.

He also had a shitty life and none of his classmates nor relatives were sympathetic nor empathetic at all, hell when he moves in with some relatives I bet they don't even care about him or just abuse him. His classmates hurt him, his teachers turn a blind eye to him and reporters hound him for their money source. The whole world was telling him he was "useless and unimportant" and even Lee Sookyung couldn't comfort Kim Dokja as a mother anymore, I think she knows she lost the right to be Kim Dokja's mother the moment she let her book out, effectively not only ruining her but her son's life.

To both of them, they both died on that same day.

And when the Alter Han Sooyoung saw Kim Dokja's comatose body after he jumped and realized just how much the book she roasted was the only book that made Kim Dokja get up to live another day, even when the world told him "Die, you're nothing but a murderer's son" she kept giving him that awful story she hated "Three Ways to Survive a Ruined World" because deep down, she wanted to have a reader like Kim Dokja who talked to her, read her work and became the only thing letting him live.

Then the dying part.

The first time we see Kim Dokja die was during that King fighting where he managed to become a Salvation King(?). He died the first time and told no one he would come back or maybe assure them he would, because at that time he was living in the world of his novel. The novel that was created for him, and the people in his life and in the novel blend together making him unaware where his reality started and ended. He told no one because, as much as he can admit, he didn't or couldn't trust them, because the people back then would hurt him and tell him to die. Why else would he have committed suicide?

And as the book continues, we see Kim Dokja starting to piece together that people genuinely care for him, that he saved someone even for his own personal benefits and sees that even though they know, they still want to prove themselves. He sees how his mere existence impacts people to be stronger, to be better, and he feels, for the first time, wanting to protect.

During 45th turn (was it 45th..?) Shin Yoosung. Kim Dokja wouldn't let her die and kept doing the impossible to free her and give her a second chance, maybe he saw himself in her and wanted her to have a chance of happiness and freedom that the young Kim Dokja desperately pleaded. Kim Dokja found respite in his novel and now he wants to free Shin Yoosung.

Don't get me started when Yoo Sangah had to die, Lee Sookyung became desperately ill due to her ability or Lee Hyunsung's soul being yeet off to the Land of Oz. He kept going to them and basically screaming "IF YOU SAY I CAN'T DIE! THEN YOU CAN'T DIE NO MATTER WHAT!!!" challenging the impossible, fighting constellations and gambling with his life at stake for his companions.

As the series progress so does his self destructive habits. He will continuously kill himself if it means that the people he starts to love will have a chance to live in this fucked up world. He's been twisted and hammered down by life ever since he was young and no one ever cared for him... Except for the author of the novel, tls123, Alter Han Sooyoung. That extends to the novel.

Now that he has people he cares for, Kin Dokja doesn't know how to say "I love you", doesn't know how to show affection and that just baffles him so he pushes away those emotional needs and quickly tries to ruin the Star Stream. For me, if he destroys the Star Stream, this will be his saying of "I love you" to his companions because by then, everyone is free, nobody needs to die or hurt themselves over a scenario.

Nobody will be strung along for the amusement of constellations.

And since Kim Dokja always dies...

That's his way of saying "I love you" even when it guarantees giving his companions trauma and fears for him. Because Lee Sookyung's final act of motherhood for Kim Dokja was her ruining and killing herself as Kim Dokja's mother and becoming a "murderer", lying to not only everyone in this world and her son, but to herself. This was her final saying of "I love you" to Kim Dokja as she was dragged away to prison.

Kim Dokja, deep down, believes he is unimportant even though he assures himself he is with his knowledge. But when he sees a situation where even he can't find a solution, he will die for them. He won't hesitate to jump into danger if it means saving the only people who loves and cares for him.

The most telling is during the Demon King Selection. Where Kim Dokja's prophesied demise is by the hands of his "most beloved/loved person" and when Kim Dokja found out and when he saw Yoo Joonghyuk ready to sacrifice himself.

I wonder, if he ever felt the flashes of guilt pass through his eyes, because even back then he knew that Yoo Joonghyuk suffered 1863rd turns to keep one reader alive, and that's why he tells Yoo Joonghyuk to live even when Kim Dokja is the most hypocritical person in the world.

Because, to Kim Dokja, Yoo Joonghyuk was the only person who gave Kim Dokja a reason to wake up and not jump.

When he became the Demon King, he didn't attack. He would watch his party cry and kill him and even then he seemed happy. He would eventually come back but in that moment, this incident must have finally shot a bullet in his head that people would cry when he died.

And that led him to want to live. Live and be beside his companions, his family.

This then shows in the Remake of Journey to the West where he made a deal with the Wenny King or Secretive Plotter to become an Outer God if he could not fulfill the requirements in exchange for him living. And when he finally became an Outer God, you could see how much he wants to be with Lee Gilyoung, Shin Yoosung, Yoo Joonghyuk and everyone else. He keeps pursuing such dangerous options so that his companions won't have to do it. He'll step on thorny roads so that his companions can live.

And that even extends to the very final scenes in the book. Two key points:

A.) Kim Dokja splitting himself up and leaving himself behind in the subway.

B.) Kim Dokja going in a coma.

Both are the same in the prospect that the world where his family will live in is going to collapse if nobody dreams for them.

Why Kim Dokja was ready to give his family an avatar with 49% of his memory so that even in spirit, he could be with them. And he was selfish because, as heavily stated before, they were after all, the first people that cared for him. So he held on to 2% of their journey close to his chest as he headed to his death in that lonely subway.

Why Kim Dokja split himself far and wide just so that his companions wouldn't destroy the world together. A suicide mission. He must have been shocked that they loved him that much to disregard the entire universe for him and felt helpless. Because even when they managed to get a hold on him... They would perish and he would be alone.

What was his final moments as he rapidly split himself up, his guilt as he imagined their faces one last time and his helpless laughter as he couldn't believe how preposterous his companions were.

His happiness that someone cared for him which then turned to fear that they would die.

His sadness that he couldn't stay with them and his anger at them for not being satisfied with 49%... His shame when he clung to 2%... His promise he keeps breaking.

He wants to live, even during those days in the scenario where he stayed with Kim Dokja's Company, wants to live with them and live in a world that's slowly healing.

So he'll take any chances to let them live and maybe hope, in this twisted world, he can live with them.

So he sleeps as the Most Ancient Dream and dreams them to be happy and waits to wake up.

That's why the ending is so bittersweet yet beautiful.

Because the Most Ancient Dream woke up to the dreams of his loved ones crashing through the door and turning to reality.

Because even Kim Dokja can love someone. He's no longer Alone nor a Reader.

He's at home.

[tatrinwhitewolf]

Making a come back in Ao3 with my new ORV fic.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/62823925/chapters/160850209

Summary: An ORV reaction where Dokja's suicidal ideation is a bit more obvious from Day 0. Where Kim Dokja's company watches Dokja's past and doesn't take dozens to thousands of pages to realize that Dokja had intended to die during that fateful subway ride after reading the final chapter of his favourite novel. Slowly discovering that the truth is even more devastating.

The current 18k (2 chapters) covers from the Prologue to Joonghyuk throwing Dokja off the bridge.

[tatrinwhitewolf]

One of the most subtle ways that SHJ and HYJ show they matter to each other is that their words are never forgotten. Call them petty bitches if you will (which they totally are), but HYJ asked SHJ to make one promise to him once, and SHJ brings it up for the next 700 chapters. One offended comment of “I’ll give you about a day to hide” is brought back up like 500 chapters later as they’re in the middle of an intense fight.

They remember every little petty snark because everything the other person says is important to them.

TSCIR is like an essay on how to love someone without saying “I love you”. “I remember the promise”. “I’ll keep my word.” “The things you say are important to me. Even the most inane, trivial ones.”

[tatrinwhitewolf]

LOL I like the fact that in Yoojin's official character bio, it mentioned that he finds Hyunjae annoying TWICE. The second statement is in bold font.

Who is he trying to assure with the same statement twice? It was as if to make sure everyone knows. Maybe he wants to make sure Sung Hyunjae knows.

Or is it to reassure himself? Who knows LOL.

[tatrinwhitewolf]

4:35 PM LONDON TIME: I MADE IT 49/51 FUCK YEAH

[tatrinwhitewolf]

16:00 UK time: Constellations might see the 49% & 51% and think 'ORV barely won' but it's Dokja's plan all along

[tatrinwhitewolf]

Decay Belonged to Izuku

Here is my two cents.

All for One being Hisashi Midoriya would not be enough to break Izuku nor Tenko. Tenko doesn't feel like he was replaced, like how Touya feels. He feels used. Like a puppet. Izuku has more father figures than he knows what to do with. I like Dad for One, don't get me wrong.

But it's not powerful enough.

The only thing that would hit every box of everything the story has been about is if All for One and Dr. Garaki gave Tenko Izuku's original quirk. If Izuku was meant to decay.

"Face it, Deku, you'll never have a quirk stronger than mine."

"Even you could become a hero."

"Perfect quirk for a villain. Even I started to believe it."

"These things aren't gifts, they are curses."

"I can take and give quirks, but I can't just throw them away!"

The absolute worse thing to Horikoshi isn't merely good or bad things. If it was, All Might would be dead. But he's alive because the worst thing in the world is for him to watch his legacy burn and be helpless. If it was, Endeavor would be in jail. But he's free, and expected to re-explain and re-affirm to every citizen and journalist who asks him that this is all his fault. The absolute worse things to Horikoshi are the bittersweet things you are expected to be grateful for, even as they eat away at your will to live. The worst things are the awful truths you must endure. Congrats Hawks, your childhood hero is worse than your parents. Congrats Overhaul, you accidentally put your father into a permanent coma....

So wouldn't the worse thing Izuku could experience from "Hisashi Midoriya" be him expecting gratitude for protecting Inko from the ticking time-bomb that is Decay? Wouldn't the worse thing be the guilt Izuku would have for everything Tenko had gone through? Not simply because "I know the guy that did it to you."

But "he did it to you to spare me."

Someone is going to explain to me why Inko was doing the Upset Woman pose BEFORE Izuku was declared quirkless. And then the next thing is her bland "shocked" performance with the nonsensical test results and exposition provided by All for One's personal doctor... then she's crying and apologizing to Izuku...

[tatrinwhitewolf]

So this gorgeous story what is a gift? (what is a sacrifice?) by @cywscross gave me feelings and here you go

[tatrinwhitewolf]

VENTI’s idle animations

[tatrinwhitewolf]

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i had to think this so now u ppl have to see it

[tatrinwhitewolf]

by アナ