Latest Posts by manyspoon - Page 3

Oldest dream would have loved his elder self no matter what.

Kim dokja might hate his younger self terribly, but I think OD must have fantasized about being a good grown up, unlike the others that were around him.

So as long as it is Kim dokja we are talking about, he fulfills the category of someone trustworthy, kind and reliable. (even though a bit mentally unstable)

[so why "monster"? Well, if it really is Kim dokja, then isn't self hate a trait he's always had?]

I'm a firm believer that if Kim dokja had reacted kindly to the revelation of oldest dream, OD would have cried that at least there will come a time when he wouldn't hate himself as much.

kim dokja

ORV is so fucking funny because it introduces that in the world of Ways of Survival there are 10 evils and the very first one is a landlord

kim dokja and bihyungs dynamic before they get used to each other is so funny. me and the guy i keep trapped in my torture dungeon for entertainment (he keeps torturing himself and the others in new and creative ways i hadn't thought about before. hes actually kind of better at this than i am. im kinda scared)

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.....

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?

thinking again about kim dokja's face censor and how its such a good mechanic. foreshadows the most ancient dream reveal. shows how his desperate wish to be a normal child effects him still to this day. functions as an extension of his reader-self-insert status. and most excellently shows exactly how much his disassociation and distancing from everyone and everything in his life affects him, to the point where his loved ones can't even recognize his face. that when they think of him it is with his back turned and expression obscured because they never knew anything else. no one can recall his features, be reminded of them when they look at his mother or see his familiar facial expressions in his kids. he's perpetually a blank slate, someone neither we nor his loved ones can see anything distinctive in because thats the point of his character and i so deeply adore it. someone needs to get sing shong out of the kitchen because they cannot keep cooking like this

A writer and her reader <3

Ty to @/princess-of-purple-prose for writing the alt text!

salvation is written in blood

outfit swap :~)

Happy birthday Kim Dokja! Thank you for your story.

the text is the poem "If I Can Stop One Heart from Breaking" by Emily Dickinson

beginning sweetness never stays

EPIC: The Musical - Ruthlessness

Been rereading the httyd books lately

☆ The Stupid Scarian Fantasy Divorce AU Quick Intro Post ☆

Based on a epic dream I had once. It went out of control and now I'm kinda a bit insane about it. Anyways, they're super old, and also divorced, we love to see it.

Masterpost

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

"i can fix him" ok well i will try to make him realize how loved and cherished he is outside of the narrative he created for himself

Demon King of Salvation

Part of my desert duo design :P grian!!!!

〜⁠(⁠꒪⁠꒳⁠꒪⁠)⁠〜rock amnamnam

Seeds

The loneliest boy in the world learns how to survive

There's nothing you or I can do

so let the stars fall

'Cause from up here the sky's my thoughts

and we're all so small

Literally where would be as a society without the soup store video

so... wild life, huh?

life series textposts i made while bored

1 / 2 / 3 / 4

my favorite customer service slip ups