There are three ways to survive in a ruined world and they are reading writing and living

Sometimes i think about hsy making yjh go through unspeakable horrors™️ like an average oc haver

This is a very very late Happy Birthday Han Sooyoung post because I just thought about the context of this post today.

In TWSA, one of it's defining sentences is "There are three ways of survival, I've forgotten some of it, but i know that if you are reading this, you will definitely survive." And I don't know about you but sentence gave me the vibe of a dying man recording down his last words, perishing while clutching his most valuable information in his hands, in the hope that someone will pick it up and use it to secure a better future.

It reminded me of that Doomed Hero Trope Talk I was listening to. How a doomed hero can send a spark of hope into the future for the future protagonist to grasp onto and use to save the world.

And it resonates so well with ORV. TWSA is essentially the doomed (not exactly)hero Han Sooyoung's final words. The moment she finishes letting them out she draws her last breath and disappears. And it's the exact spark of hope that Kim Dokja uses to survive and later save Yoo Joonghyuk and the world with.

I just really wanted to share my thoughts because the TWSA summary always gave me chills when I read it.

Also Happy Super Belated Birthday Han Sooyoung.

my preferred webnovel site: got some primo shit. this batch is called Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World

me: psh. too much exposition. derivative. it’s all the same shit nowadays.

5 minutes later: 🔪🩸FUCK. SHIT. IM SO SORRY BRO. THEY SAID. THEY SAID I NEEDED. I NEEDED TO PROVE MY WORTH BRO🔪🩸🩸😵

the normie lookin motherfucker (who literally until two seconds ago was just a wage worker blending into the background on the subway next to me who is in the same situation as me but is somehow calm and knows how to survive, who just saved me for no apparent reason and who i now trust implicitly and will try to follow and protect until the end), pacing: the star stream is lying to us

an orv reader saying "i would survive the twsa universe" is the same as a hxh fan saying they would pass the hunter's test

big fan of bad novels, which i obsess over for 10 years

SSSS-grade infinite regressor and three ways to survive in a ruined world are lightners.

There are 3 phases of #orv (yes obligatory twsa reference)

1 (pre-orv): this novel looks kinda generic, oh well might as well read it since I have nothing better to do 2 (during orv) damn this novel is interesting 3 (after orv) deiguebfkfjeh *profuse crying* https://www.instagram.com/p/CeQL0_pOCBT/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

I have crafted the perfect shower routine.

I turn the water straight to the left, drowning myself with blistering hot water until my scars burn and the pain seeps itself back into the present.

I wash my body with soap.

I scrub it, roughly until the crumbs of skin tumble down the lines of my back, hoping one day I will scrub hard enough to make the memories disappear.

I wet my hair.

Lather it with shampoo and soothe my split ends with thick coconut conditioner.

I exfoliate before I shave to open every pore before slicing something sharp against my skin.

Sometimes I brush my teeth in the shower hoping to erase the taste of disgust that seems to live permanently

In my vessel.

I wash my face.

Wiping away my worry lines and the salty tears off my cheek.

When I get out, maybe I'll feel refreshed.

Maybe my legs will brush smoothly against my warm sheets and for once, i will feel clean.

But no matter what,

Never will I ever feel as clean as i did the day before you destroyed me.

One moment and I’m back to younger me. Me, who was powerless against you, scared and desperate for help.

Day 1 – New Story

I found a new novel today! It’s called Three ways to survive the Apocalypse, or TWSA for short. The protagonist, Yoo Joonghyuk, is strong and cool… It’s a shame that there’s few readers for this web novel.

I was told to start writing a bit everyday by one of the nurses, although I would much rather read instead. ㅠㅠ

I’m Kim Dokja [김독자(獨)], as in that's my name although I am an only child.

Ive been avoiding commentary yt bc the community and how they always turn out, so I'm late learning about boyinaband. Uhg. Ofc.

there are a LOT of things you can speculate about regarding what twsa was actually like as a novel but what's most interesting to me is that you can make the argument that twsa was an "unpolished" version of what orv is. it's a version of a similar novel that likely dealt with a lot of similar themes but was seemingly bogged down by poor structure, pacing, expository handling, and focus. (all of which are things that orv is shockingly excellent at.)

and of course, han sooyoung's novel, sssss-grade infinite regressor, is the "polished" version of the idea. it's well-written, probably well-plotted, and was successful enough to make han sooyoung rich and famous. we don't know what sssss-grade infinite regressor is like as a novel either, but we sort of get the impression that it's not very emotionally rich even if it is good on a technical level. han sooyoung herself doesn't seem intensely attached to it despite being proud of her work, and kim dokja of course doesn't hold it in high regard. (though of course he's a gigantic unreliable narrator and also a hater.)

what's interesting is that despite orv very strongly emphasizing the ways these works are flawed from the outset, orv itself functions as an argument in these works' favor. both twsa and infinite regressor are stand-ins for the "mass-produced" genre of webnovels. they are popular fiction, relying on a very familiar pool of tropes and clichés in order to deliver on a relatively predictable story to appeal to a wide audience. it's not a coincidence that they are so similar - both literally and in a meta sense, they are drawing on the same exact story-building and genre material. twsa is just the unsuccessful version, and infinite regressor is the successful one.

orv is what I would consider the most "impressive" version of the genre. it's well-structured, thrillingly plotted, interestingly written, has fascinating ideas and characters, and is even "literary" - that is, it has deeply considered themes and is often drawing from the realm of literary, postmodern fiction in order to express its ideas. a less sincere story would disavow itself from its pop-fiction origins and claim to be the best version of its genre. nothing else could be like it, so the worst versions of its genre wouldn't be worth considering.

but orv, while technically functioning as an argument that the genre can be "good" simply because it's a great novel that is deeply rooted in its genre, goes much further. it argues in-text that any sort of story, even those that are bad on a technical level or those that were somewhat cynically produced for a mass audience, are worth finding value in, simply because stories have meaning to their readers. the most uncritical reproduction of a genre's conventions can still mean something to someone who likes it. twsa, if it existed in our reality, would still probably be considered a very bad novel, but it wouldn't need to be polished up and turned into infinite regressor or orv in order to have value. orv itself is telling you that you should find value in twsa as it is, and by extension, every badly-done work of fiction that twsa could be a stand-in for!

ever think about 3rd twsa revision yoo joonghyuk being so broken without kim dokja that he went all

cuz i do. constantly

One of my favorite ORV headcanons is that TWSA has as much practical living advice as it does the metaphorical.

There's a 3-page long description of lsh dressing and bandaging yjh's wounds in the early rounds, intimately describing all the bruises and cuts and scrapes and the way they were handled. Kdj saw this as a humanizing moment for yjh and shipping fuel, but the next day he gets beat up by bullies and decided to dress his wounds himself since the school nurse isn't around (and they were getting tired of him anyway). It's sloppy and he had to rebandage himself after it unravelled, but it prevented an infection, and he got better over time.

In another chapter, yjh notices ljh having panic attacks in the middle of battle and teaches her a few tricks to steady your breathing and center herself faster as part of combat training. The description feels like text you'd see in a training handbook and completely breaks any sense of pacing. Kdj remembers it the next time he has one and was able to calm himself down before his relatives find him and punish him like they did before.

There was a chapter that came out around the time kdj was job hunting, where the party gets tangled in a subscenario involving securing a position through interviews. It felt contrived even with kdj's tolerance to TWSA shenanigans, but he takes note of what everyone does anyway and tries some of them in his job interviews. He comments that some of the actions felt unrealistic with his own experiences in job interviews; tls123 replied with a lighthearted apology (she's never had to bother with interviews, and she doubts she'll ever get to; she's grateful that it was still useful.)

In yet another chapter, yjh avoids the eyes of fellow incarnations and picks his words correctly in a game of three questions with nosy constellations. They were oddly dry and mundane for an apocalypse setting with superhuman powers. Kdj remembers them the next time he spots paparazzi lurking around the corners.

A chapter has yjh instructing knw, ljh and yma on how to make do with instant ramyun and add a few things to it to keep it somewhat nutritious (yjh isn't happy about it but it's the least he can do since they're gonna split for a multi-day scenario and he can't cook for them). Kdj remembers it when he tried to make ramyun for the first time in his new place after moving out of his relatives'. He remembers curling his hand to chop the scallions because knw got scolded for improper knife handling, and he remembers when to put in the egg because ljh got sternly corrected for confidently shouting out the wrong answer. Kdj didn't injure himself, and it was the fanciest and most delicious meal he ate in a while. (He remembers yjh patting his sister's head for getting everything right, and almost brings his own hands to his head before stopping; no one's gonna praise a college student for making ramyun right.)

(Kim Dokja, rereading TWSA over and over again in the train, feels the love and has no idea what to do with it.)

(05/06: added the food segment because i loved all the food-related notes <3)

the 1864th turn can only get past the final wall because of the fourth wall kim dokja has

and that’s not the only one—every piece of the wall at the end is held by someone who’s only there because of a choice kim dokja made

the “wall that divides good and evil” is held by jung heewon and lee gilyoung, both people kim dokja saved personally

the “wall that decides samsara” is held by yoo sangah… kim dokja did indirectly save her in the first scenario, and he’s also the reason she has this specific wall since he saved her again with his plan to have her reincarnate

finally, the “wall of impossible communication” is held by jang hayoung, who’s a character apparently created thanks to a comment kim dokja left

and doesn’t it make sense, that someone like the “oldest dream” would dream of a world where he’s absolutely necessary to its conclusion…