Pe Ru So Na

Save my life When I’m too far gone Be my savior And don’t let go ©

Me: *makes a httyd books post*

The post: *gets 20-30 notes*

Me: Wow the whole fandom saw this one!!

rereading the lee jihye cinema scene is really making me think about the parallels between kim dokja and lee jihye in ways that are so evil. like the point of this scene is lee jihye grappling with her trauma from killing na bori with kim dokja's help, with him telling her that its true she did a terrible thing but that all that matters now is she lived, and that she has to continue living. "Atone for the rest of your life or live a garbage life. Just somehow survive!"

lee jihye did something horrible to someone who loved her deeply in order to survive. the fact that na bori gave up her life willingly doesn't ease lee jihye's guilt - she still feels as though she doesn't deserve to be alive. and kim dokja feels so much compassion for her in this moment! he sees her for what she is - a terrified kid who just wanted to live - and fights for her to survive. he encourages her and empathizes with her and generally does his best to ensure she can live on even with all her guilt because he doesn't see her wanting to survive even at the cost of others as an unforgiveable crime.

which makes the fact you can see the clear parallels between lee jihye and the oldest dream here so much more heartbreaking. the oldest dream is an extension of the message that kim dokja passes onto lee jihye here - no matter what, you must somehow survive. thats what the oldest dream's existence is, a kid trying to somehow survive. that desperation is what his all powerful dreams are born out of. he pushes orv's message about living having a cost, and having to bear that cost, to its extreme - oldest dream's survival was very expensive indeed, causing incalculable suffering across universes and taking 1864 of yoo joonghyuk's lives. this is something kim dokja has to bear to keep living - its something hes unable to. orv forgives him for this, but he does not. both lee jihye and oldest dream are kids who want to live, both hurt those closest to them in the process, both are unable to live with that guilt even when absolved of it by the very person they hurt.

but where kim dokja empathizes with lee jihye, where he cares for her, where he sees her as still deserving of a future, he is unable to do so for himself. even in this very scene he is chastising himself for 'using' her, for doing what he has to to survive in an apocalypse, unable to see the irony. all of his companions have made horrible choices to survive in the apocalypse, all of them have chosen to live at an inevitable cost of someone else. and yet kim dokja holds only himself accountable for the crime of survival. it really exposes this supposed accountability for what it is - a deep self-loathing disguised. if it had been any other child sitting at that subway station, kim dokja would have understood. but because it was himself? of course he reacted with disgust and violence - look at the entire book. he's never been able to do anything else when it comes to himself! even when he cares so deeply for the others....oh kim dokja.....

my friend had a vision.

Disciple Shen Yuan during the Qing generation. SY is on Qing Jing and is loved and well liked by (most) of his peers, even the ones off-peak! He only has two problems: 1: Him and Shen Jiu are at each other's throats constantly. It's like worse than a rivalry. People are convinced they legit want to kill each other. While expected from SJ, people are always surprised it's equally instigated and fought by SY. He's normally one of the sweetest people on his whole Peak!

2: SY, even while trying his hardest from his FIRST puberty to stop it, has a TERRIBLE ugly duckling phase. Poor kid has ALL the problems a teenager would feel embarrassed about except like tenfold. He got beat with the ugly stick till it broke. This is something that SJ picks at constantly, too, to try and make him self conscious. (SY is more upset that SJ doesn't even have breakouts, that prick.)

The Ascension of the current gen of Peak Lords is coming up in a few years and their Shizun is trying to pick a successor. It's between SJ and SY. SJ proves his tactical mind and engineers a plot to ensure that SY will be off Peak for at least five years; that way he won't be an obstacle! His plan works and SY has to leave the mountain to chase some maguffin. SJ is made SQQ and everything is peachy keen! He won! Fuck you, SY, you ugly cunt! The five-ish years pass. SY comes back. SJ is there to greet him and subtly mock him. Except. When SY flies in on his sword.

He's hot.

SY is like the hottest man that SJ has ever seen in his life and CQM is FILLED with unnaturally attractive men. SY looks better than a damn succubus. If SJ had less decorum and control he thinks he would explode right where he stood just by looking at him. SY's face, his lips, how his robes cling to his body, even the sloppy tousle of his hair. SJ instantly knows two things:

1: SJ has GOT to get this man under him like ASAP. From the looks of some of the people around him (other Peak Lords, Disciples, rubbernecking strangers) they are all having the exact same thought. That CAN NOT be allowed to happen.

2: SY, from the look he gives to SJ and how he's somehow rude about being polite to him, still absolutely fucking hates him. Which is- SJ doesn't wanna think too deeply about why that makes SY hotter to him for some reason. Some stones are better left unturned.

When Luo Binghe comes to the Sect, SJ is too busy fighting off rival suitors, trying to court SY, and (most importantly) trying to get SY to even LIKE him to start with. So LBH never gets the shitty Shizun experience.

TY for coming to my TED talk.

throughout the story both kim dokja and han sooyoung define themselves in opposition to yoo sangah. kim dokja defines himself as a reader in contrast to yoo sangah as a protagonist, and han sooyoung defines herself as a villainess in contrast to yoo sangah as a heroine. outsider vs insider, evil vs good. in doing so, they dehumanize themselves and yoo sangah. kim dokja denies himself the agency that he gives a protagonist, positioning himself as merely an observer in both his life and others to cope with his mental health issues. han sooyoung denies herself any emotional or moral complexity, assigning herself a simple role she feels most comfortable in due to her own self worth issues as a way to conceptualize how her 'genre' as changed around her.

as coping strategies, these kinda suck ass. they hurt themselves in doing so, and they hurt yoo sangah. the overlapping roles they assign to her - protagonist and heroine - make unrealistic demands of her, project a perfection that isn't real, put her in a box and ignore all attempts to escape it. they distance themselves from her and damage their relationships in the process. and a large part of yoo sangah's character and arc is her either fighting back against this dehumanization or just refusing to play ball as a way to deconstruct the heroine archetype. when she is dying she uses what seem to be her final moment to make one last escape attempt of kim dokja's idolization of her, reminding him of the pepper incident and forcing him to recognize her as not just a person but a friend. and during moments when she and han sooyoung are at odds, their different attitudes towards it are so stark - han sooyoung regards it as almost a battle of good and evil, whereas yoo sangah sees it as a more personal argument. han sooyoung's discomfort comes from a clashing of philosphies, whereas yoo sangah's comes from the fact han sooyoung is kind of a fucking bitch who has killed people she cares about and might again.

when kim dokja and han sooyoung categorize the world in this way, they dehumanize themselves and their loved ones. and yoo sangah refuses to play along, recognizing both her own and their humanity and forcing that same recognition onto them. when kim dokja and han sooyoung build a wall between themselves and yoo sangah, defining themselves by that distance, yoo sangah climbs it. yoo sangah doesn't just expose the dangers of the small box she gets shoved in, but exposes the others as well. she's an incredibly important character for orv because she does exactly that - it's an extension of her larger role in the narrative as someone who challenges roles and tropes of the genre, who reaches across the divide caused by these expectations we create for ourselves and others and says hey, im just a person, just like you. so maybe we should hang out sometime and just be that, yeah?

laaate but happy birthday crys! ⭐

For context, Grian was doing wordle

made another batch of these

[part 1] [part 3] [part 4] [part 5]