I've been hurting myself with this thought that just won't leave me so I'm sharing it so others can suffer with me, hi

But

The one who suffered the most from the group regression was Yoo Joonghyuk.

Let's look at it this way: When 49!kdj collapses, the party ends up with the knowledge that someday, the Kim Dokja in front of them will just disappear. He won't wake up, and will remain as he is until that time. So, they band together under Yoo Joonghyuk, who has evolved his skill into allowing a group to regress, and they go back to save the rest of him. At this time, Yoo Joonghyuk regains his memories of his Turn Zero, and he realizes his sponsor - that silent force that has been watching him all 1864 rounds - was Kim Dokja all along, likely observing from that train.

Then they get there. They reach him, they dig him out of that subway car....and they have already failed. The end result is Kim Dokja in a coma, now looking younger as well.

To the rest of the party, it really is a zero sum, or maybe slightly better even. They started with a comatose, incomplete Kim Dokja who would never wake up and would someday disappear. They ended with potentially even less of Kim Dokja, still in a coma never to awaken, but without the surety that he would disappear. Essentially, nothing was gained, but also nothing really was lost.

Except for Yoo Joonghyuk.

To Yoo Joonghyuk, he intended to rescue Kim Dokja - to complete his own original desire to finally meet the person who led him through his first life, to face the one who has been watching him since then, and rescue his life and death companion.

But what he is left with is so much worse. Not only does he fail, but after they return, that sponsor, that gaze that had been watching him - a gaze he had come to hate but now no longer could - was also gone. He has to live with the knowledge that Kim Dokja had watched him sink into hatred for him, had sworn to kill him, and then in the moment when he had returned at last, intending to save him, he instead fulfilled the dark wish he had made for countless lives instead. There is a black stain on his sword he can't get rid of that is proof of that.

If he had not regressed, if he had not gone to save Kim Dokja, then Yoo Joonghyuk would not have been the one to strike down the last remnants of him. The gaze of that sponsor would have simply faded away with the system, and he wouldn't know what happened to Kim Dokja. He would probably believe he would just keep living to watch over the world lines forever.

Instead, he has to live with the knowledge that he rushed Kim Dokja to his death, and cut him down at the last. The comatose Kim Dokja he has now is a cold reminder of what he truly lost, and the sky that used to be alive with that silent gaze is now wholly empty. For the first time in 1865 rounds, he is alone, and that fact is not a celebration, but a dirge.

Hi, did you read all of omniscient reader's viewpoint? I've hit the transphobia bs (with the pink kids) and i can't tell whether it's gonna keep going (the fact they keep misgendering the character and the whole "he can be rehabilitated" bs is not a good sign), and I'm sorry for asking you but idk anyone else who might have read all of it 😅

Btw i am SO intrigued by astielle, those quotes you asked for were extremely effective. Also i would die for your excel fic. I show it to all my friends. I have romantic feelings for it.

there is a lot of weird gender stuff happening in orv but the final layer of gender weirdness through which all else must be filtered is that, if you are reading a translation from korean into english, the translator picked gendered pronouns based on vibes. even when it made no sense to use gendered pronouns. it often seems like they default to 'he' unless something happens that would make that gay. sometimes they would go back and change the pronouns based on what happened later. i think one time they gave an angel 'she' pronouns just long enough to no-homo before going back to 'he' for what i must assume are also no-homo reasons. their determination to use 'he' pronouns for gods, eldritch horrors, little girls, and anyone kim dokja happened to find confusing was. well. it was something. spoilers after the cut

the stuff with the pink kids is cringe as hell BUT. iirc by the end of that little mini side arc it becomes pretty clear that while the pink kids are basically a video game catfishing gang, kim yongpal wasn't there to catfish or do crimes, she just wanted to fit in and they were the only ones she could fit in with. by her last appearance she's referred to as a woman and the translator gets their shit together wrt pronouns. kim yongpal's last appearance is in chapter 161 out of 551 so my memory isn't GREAT, and i'm pretty sure hsy and kdj continue to call her 'ahjussi'. which sucks but so do they. regardless of whether i'm giving that segment too much leeway due to translator issues, it's thankfully relatively brief.

anyway. this is not the last time gender fuckery is going to come up, but the character who is introduced later on is MUCH more obviously trans. in that case it's sort of a plot point that kdj, despite literally everything that has happened up to that point, cannot stop himself from thinking that he knows what people are really like because he read the novel.

there are other things on account of the constellation who likes to change gender exists, but i don't recall anything else being as egregious as the pink kids