Are You Any Different?

HSY

YJH

KDJ

He'd never admit it out loud but he cares

good morning today we have orv esque poetry, eat well (first two are yoohan to kdj, then od/kdj)

I am not an emotionless monster It's so hard for me to push a knife in your heart but I know, I am the only one who can do it

spoiler rambles under the readmore

This line from the play stuck with me a lot, and I know its not particularly in the novel but I still enjoyed it because it makes you think about her being the one who wrote in dokja's death, in a way also dealing the final blow along with yjh in this moment, death by story, includes her as the killer too

Am I getting a good grade in tumblr mutual?

Yoo Joonghyuk being broken by everything having gone so well. It's never explicitly stated, but it's very heavily implied that someone always dies from Yoo Joonghyuk's team by the time the Seoul Dome is broken. Either that, or something terrible in general happens (Seoul being wrecked, etc).

In Kim Dokja's round, he had everyone. They were alive. Nobody was seriously hurt. Everything was going so well. This man who appeared in this round only was creating miracles, even if Yoo Joonghyuk doesn't like the self-sacrificing stuff (because he's realized he's come to care about Kim Dokja a lot. Enough so that he doesn't want to have to continue the scenarios without him, and the only reason he's willing to do so is because Kim Dokja told him that he had to. And Yoo Joonghyuk is good about following through on what his companions ask of him, even if he pretends he won't, and that's putting aside how deeply Kim Dokja's words impacted him) but Kim Dokja's actions had created the best story for them yet.

And then, seemingly at random, the Outer God descends and destroys everything and everyone.

It's like an unfair glitch in a game destroying all of your progress. Everything you had worked for, gone in an instant. But it's worse because he loved and cared for all of them. And the final straw was his worst fear coming true: Kim Dokja does not exist in this round. He doesn't exist in the next one either. He can't find him, and he can't do the things that Kim Dokja did. He never knew the man's plan. He lost his guiding star. Kim Dokja was the one person who had understood him, and that was someone he had been looking for for so long. Between the two things, he was broken, and desperate, and made many, many more mistakes than he would have.

It's a bad ending, plain and simple. And though the story doesn't say it, end game readers who understand the context also know that that Yoo Joonghyuk would be doomed to never reaching the end of the story and never getting the answers he wants. Because the man who had the key to reaching the epilogue was taken away by the cruel twist of the Star Stream.

rereading early orv is like. wow kdj is so detached from the rest of his companions. he still believes ysa's close to him because she's nice to everyone and he counts as everyone. he still talks about the end of the scenarios as if he expects a peaceful, happy ending to this story because he hasn't planned it out yet. he still judges yjh as if he were only a character he would utilize to get to that end. and every time i feel uncomfortable reading kdj be so heartless i remember that he hates himself exactly because of this in the later scenarios

(voice of a guy actively reading orv) i miss kim dokja

it's salty