I Have The Head Canon That Kim Dokja Starts To Avoid Reflective Surfaces At All Times, But Especially

i personally love when kim dokja fixes his problems with suicide. he puts a gun to his head and im clapping and cheering along.

Kim Dokja had the chance to give himself a happy ending to his story. At the beginning of ORV, there would've been no happier ending to his life than being alone reading TWSA without any bodily needs or any responsibilities forever. The end of ORV was a book ending for Kim Dokja's character arc.

But he didn't take it. He didn't take it because he loved his companions too much. In the 9th scenario, Kim Dokja referred to love as being the farthest thing from him. By the 99th scenario, he's been so loved and he's loved in return. And so, that love corrupted his ending. His perfect ending was no longer perfect because of the 50% of him that had been irrevocably changed from his time in the scenarios.

It was that 50% he just needed to cut out of himself. He was quite literally half a man before he became Kim Dokja of Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. If he had simply cut out that part of him and gave that to his companions, he could've returned to who he was at the start of the scenarios. He could've been happy and content with being the Oldest Dream. And eventually, he would have been found and picked up Secretive Plotter and the 999 crew. We know this, because we saw it.

But he didn't do this. Kim Dokja could not let go. To properly be the Oldest Dream, he had to only love one particular story. But Kim Dokja had more to love than just one story. He loved so many more stories. He loved THEIR story where he had existed with them. And, selfishly, Kim Dokja held onto a little bit more because he did not want to forget his companions. He didn't want to forget his friends, his children, his relationship with his mother, his adoptive parents, and the life they'd had.

And in doing so, he unintentionally created ripples in the happy ending. He poked a hole in that story. Because 49% was not 50%. 2% of a difference meant that the Kim Dokja that the others kept was never going to survive, as he was still an avatar and could not live without Star Stream. And Kim Dokja in the train could not be content in his isolation because he longed for those he could no longer see even as he denied himself his own omniscient powers to look in on them whenever he wanted.

The Fourth Wall berated Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk for ruining the ending of the story, but that wasn't entirely true. It was, as everything was, Kim Dokja's fault in the end.

Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint's greatest tragedy is that Kim Dokja was loved. Because without that love, he could've been the ideal god of that world, and eventually everyone would've been granted the "happiest ending" (even if, as we saw with World of Zero and with Han Sooyoung and Yoo Joonghyuk's discontent, that's not necessarily true). But because he felt love, Kim Dokja could not be a god. He was just a human.

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

assorted orvs again :]

i think the near-extinction of people making fun, deep and/or unique interactive text-based browser games, projects and stories is catastrophic to the internet. i'm talking pre-itch.io era, nothing against it.

there are a lot of fun ones listed here and here but for the most part, they were made years ago and are now a dying breed. i get why. there's no money in it. factoring in the cost of web hosting and servers, it probably costs money. it's just sad that it's a dying art form.

anyway, here's some of my favorite browser-based interactive projects and games, if you're into that kind of thing. 90% of them are on the lists that i linked above.

A Better World - create an alternate history timeline

Alter Ego - abandonware birth-to-death life simulator game

Seedship - text-based game about colonizing a new planet

Sandboxels or ThisIsSand - free-falling sand physics games

Little Alchemy 2 - combine various elements to make new ones

Infinite Craft - kind of the same as Little Alchemy

ZenGM - simulate sports

Tamajoji - browser-based tamagotchi

IFDB - interactive fiction database (text adventure games)

Written Realms - more text adventure games with a user interface

The Cafe & Diner - mystery game

The New Campaign Trail - US presidential campaign game

Money Simulator - simulate financial decisions

Genesis - text-based adventure/fantasy game

Level 13 - text-based science fiction adventure game

Miniconomy - player driven economy game

Checkbox Olympics - games involving clicking checkboxes

BrantSteele.net - game show and Hunger Games simulators

Murder Games - fight to the death simulator by Orteil

Cookie Clicker - different but felt weird not including it. by Orteil.

if you're ever thinking about making a niche project that only a select number of individuals will be nerdy enough to enjoy, keep in mind i've been playing some of these games off and on for 20~ years (Alter Ego, for example). quite literally a lifetime of replayability.

I'm thinking about a canon adjacent au here okay hear me out. what if pre-scenarios hsy actually thought/knew she had DID?

with the blank spots of memory and lapses of time and tiredness and weakness etc hsy started to worry she had a brain tumor or something. went to a doctor & all the scans came back clear so she was directed to a psychologist instead. she learns of DID and is kind of excited to meet this apparently other person living her life (she's maybe 20 yo atp) yet her hopes are shattered bc her alter is apparently the most. uncomunicative bastard in the world. ignored all her sticky notes saying hi, all attempts at journaling or deligating tasks or following appointments on the shared calendar or working together on anything. radio silence from them, except for throwing the notes in the trash so she knows they saw them.

hsy is annoyed. the therapist suggests they don't feel safe or secure enough to talk yet and hsy begrudgingly accepts that.

its not like the other hsy is actually putting them in danger, as far as she can tell, they spent all their time on the computer doing who knows what (browsing data is always deleted after)

their body was literally collapsing under the weight of stress though, so even if the other her wouldn't help, hsy had to start managing this shit somehow. she's forced to be the responsible one and plan her day around the other her. has to take care of things like cooking and cleaning and eating and bathing in her own limited time awake, on top of things like friends and events and of course writing for work. has to choose to rest sometimes when she wanted to go out because of the other her.

she resents the other hsy for this at first - this is one of the things she spent a long time working out in therapy (among other issues besides the DID. apparently her childhood had fucked her up more than she realized) the therapist suggested the alter may not speak directly, but they're still communicating through their actions - to try to understand them and what they might be feeling. hsy does, even though she didn't want to.

the other hsy didn't seem to have any friends or leave the house, they didn't feed themselves or drink water on their own - hsy often woke up ravenous and thirsty and they were paranoid- han sooyoung found knives under her mattress once.

hsy knew these things, they were annoying, but looked at them in a new light now. for her to act like this, her other half must be damaged and cautious - the therapist had expected it, says these conditions don't develop on their own. it was a sobering thought. hsy can deal with a couple of inconveniences if it means she can stay the carefree and extraverted person she is, not miserable and lonely like the other her. maybe that's selfish but she deserves to be selfish sometimes doesn't she?

in the beginning, she tried to force the other hsy to come out - they spent a lot of time on the pc, so she took a weekend and went to the countryside, hiked to a camping spot and set up. she had her phone but no internet and wanted to see what the other her would do.

she woke up at midnight, dirty and sweaty, muscles screaming, in the closest bus stop with her phone at 2%. she could still feel the panic and adrenaline in her trembling arms, the way she had ran here. it scared her, she didn't try to force the issue again.

as for 1863, when young hsy tried to talk to her through notes she thought "oh shit oh fuck" but then realized its not like she can get kicked out (probably?) so decided to ignore her until she gave up. she tries not to interfere with her life more than necessary.

one time she woke up in a shrinks office, freaked out, threatened to stab the therapist and fled out the door. in her defense, she hadn't talked to a real life person in a month and really hadn't expected this. (for young hsy this was actually a breakthrough in therapy. she was very excited, gave her weeks of material to work on. after apologizing profusely.)

I just love this dynamic of twitchy, very maladjusted survivor who cares about very few things in life and herself is not on that list, and the exasperated young writer who wants to enjoy her life but has to deal with bullshit at home. frustrated, but at the same time curious and sad for the other her.

How this ends is. han sooyoung wakes up at the train station, looks around, and sighs with exasperation. the other her must have left her somewhere again. there is an odd hollowness in her chest that she writes it off and then the apocalypse happens.

hsy gets the avatar skill and wryly thinks its like it was made for her. she had always wanted to talk to the other her and now after so long she finally got the chance. she creates her, sees her for the first time- older than herself, skin tight around the eyes and a hard twist to her mouth like she hadn't ever smiled. shoulders hunched, she's got a confused, lost look in her eyes.

hsy says "hey, calm down, it's okay- well. things are crazy right now but you're mostly safe, I can explain."

the other her looks at her own palms, drags them up her forhead to clutch her hair, shaking her head and groaning. she stumbles away. "what have you done?"

hsy's throat feels strangled. "I- wanted to talk to you. what- what's wrong?"

the other her doesn't answer, looking blank, and then she bolts. hsy shouts and gives chase but eventually loses her, panting for breath and holding her knees in the street. "Fucking damn it!"

canon proceeds as usual. epilogue happens and hsy remembers everything, or more accurately, the other her comes back but this time without the walls dividing them. hsy feels complete for the first time in her life, and the hollowness she felt the day the scenarios started is gone.

post epilogue domestic bliss ensues where they actually get to know each other and talk openly about their experiences, after so many years.

ORV as textposts 82/???

A KimCom pantheon and their domains according to Dream Brain:

Han Donghoon: shadows

Lee Gilyoung: insects

Lee Seolhwa: healing

Jung Heewon: retribution and also fire

Yoo Sangah: beauty and also thread/weaving

Kim Dokja: illusions

Yoo Joonghyuk: sword

I feel that there’s something about the fact that so many orv fanfictions start with that same subway scenario, it playing near verbatim to the original story, ending with no blood being put upon Kim Dokja’s hands.

Everything always comes back to the subway, be it Yoo Joonghyuk’s regressions, the Most Ancient Dream, Surya. And so many fan works start there. So many significant things happen there.

It is the beginning and the end of so many, an ouroboros in its masterpiece.