What is orv? Iāve gathered that itās some kind of korean novel but ???? It looks interesting so. Sell me on it and tell me where to read it please!
oh dear i've no clue why you'd come to me for this LOL but ill do my best.
omniscient reader's viewpoint (orv for short) is a korean webnovel written by sing-shong (they're a married couple actually, not just one writer). here is a link to the epub file (all in one place, conveniently!). it also has an ongoing webtoon adaptation here, which is a great place to start if the novel seems daunting.
here is a list of content warnings. rest is under the cut!
the premise of orv is that the plot of a webnovel about the apocalypse is becoming reality, alongside its characters and rules, but... only one person in the entire world has read the webnovelā our main character, kim dokja, a 28 year old salaryman with no other hobbies (i say this lovingly).
the webnovel, titled "three ways to survive in a ruined world" (shortened to ways of survival/WOS), follows the story of yoo joonghyuk, a regressor who gets sent back to the beginning of the apocalypse every time he dies. it was a vastly unpopular novel, but kim dokja had been devoutly reading it ever since the very beginning. when the apocalypse rolls around, he teams up with yoo joonghyuk, who has only regressed three times at this point, in order to save the world and reach the novel's epilogue.
this is only the PREMISE of orv. orv is actually fucking bonkers. don't get fooled by the power-fantasy-wish-fulfillment-esque premise because i cannot stress enough how much More orv is. i didn't even mention 90% of the cast, for gods sake. and yes some of the cast includes gods. the rest of this is going to be very jumbled and incoherent, good luck..! i love love love love it sm it is unbelievable. please read it it will rearrange your neural bridges.
1. it has wonderful worldbuilding and power mechanics that are really unique and interesting, despite taking on a game-like interface similar to a lot of other "normal people suddenly gain power" media. most of these mechanics rely on the idea of stories to functionā literally, the "probability" of something happening is what allows people to use their powersā so even the fantasy setting contributes to the narrative themes.
2. oh my god the characters. you will like them. you have no choice. they will make you smile and cry and laugh and throw your phone at the wall. there's no blatant romance in orv, which gives a lot of space for really wonderful and natural relationships to form between characters. and the relationships that characters have are so so so complex, especially those that are loving between friends or family.
3. i said there's no blatant romance but people do behave in a gay way that pisses god off
4. back to the characters: the character development is also really natural and soooo important to me. i won't elaborate because id have to delve into some amount of spoiling but there will be characters who get your heart in a vice grip and you won't even realize it's happened until it's too late.
5. orv is funny. orv is incredibly, unbelievably funny.
6. from a literary standpoint (im an english major, sorry) orv unravels my brain like a spool of thread. the foreshadowing is crazy. the parallels, the themes, the symbols. it has it all. i could write a thesis on orv. i have done a lot more orv analysis than id like to admit, and i have a Lot of fun doing it!!
7. the pacing is amazing?? if you think it starts out slow, then buckle up because it gets fucking crazy before you know it. and it does it so naturally and seamlessly that you'll be 200 chapters in and you'll have to sit down for a moment and go "uh, hey, what the fuck? when did we get here? how did we get here??" and you won't be able to pin down the turning point because it's been so damn smooth <- speaking from personal experience
8. it will genuinely change the way you view and approach reading and stories (or consuming any media tbh) for the rest of your life. i wrote a 500 word email to one of my professors recommending orv to him because he left a note on one of my essays talking about "stories as lives that resonate strongly with readers". we're besties now btw
9. it's a very reassuring story. if you have a complicated relationship with your parents, if you used stories as an escape from reality when you were a kid, if you're not sure about your purpose in life, if you're scared of getting close to people because you don't want to lose them, if you feel like you're always meant to be on the outside looking in, and on and on. it's relieving. and the ending feels like a first breath of fresh air
10. if you enjoy found family, gay people, girlbosses, gaslighters, gatekeepers, reading, pathetic men, pets, history, milfs, those who walk away from omelas by ursula le guin, short kings, tall queens, men with swords, women with swords, subverting tropes, weirdly homoerotic internal dialogue, cephalopods, kinning, internet rivalries, irl rivalries, cool worldbuilding, gundams, the wizard of oz, astronauts, twitter discourse on a multiversal scale, chibis of really hot guys, couple's outfits, isekais, isekais x2, the myth of orpheus and eurydice, accidental or on-purpose child acquisition, ouroboros-es, romcoms, the sacred institution of marriage, angels, demons, both at once, prophecies, preventing the events of prophecies, accidental parent acquisition, unreliable narration, libraries, divorcees that have never been married, The Desire To Reach Out To Others And To Have Others Reach Out To You, twitch streamers getting their asses kicked, or, of course, single fathers: please read orv.
11. orv will change the way you see the world. when i say everything is about orv i mean it.
The Hunger Games movie ending scene was bad, and hereās why
Yes Iāve been thinking about this for years, no I am not done being annoyed.
Iām just going to list things off.
No scars. In the books, Katniss gets caught in the fire from the bombs dumped on the Capitolās children. The scarring is so extensive that not even Capitol plastic surgery can fix it. She explicitly says that she looks like a half-human mutt. But the movies wonāt let her be ugly, so sheās smooth-skinned here.
Katniss is wearing a dress. Throughout the narrative, Katniss only wears a dress when the Capitol is forcing her to, be that at the reaping or during the many photoshoots and interviews. Even her mockingjay wedding dress was originally something sheād been forced to wear by President Snow, and the mockingjay details were added last-minute by Cinna, after Snow gave the order. Whenever Katniss gets to pick her own clothes, even if itās the options presented to her by the Capitol, she goes for practical trousers, and never a dress.
Sheās too young. In the books, it takes over a decade for Katniss to be in a mental place where she wants kids, and adding the age of her oldest child to that, she would be in her late thirties at the youngest in this scene. But god forbid that our heroine is allowed to age.
No leg hair. You might think Iām nitpicking here, but in the first movie, they had a scene when Katnissā legs get waxed by the beauty team, so the movie writers definitely knew about it. In the books, Katniss explicitly says that she likes her leg hair, because the longer it grows, the longer itās been since she was under the hands of the Capitolās beauty standards. But women in movies arenāt allowed to show leg hair, so sheās shaved smooth here.
Losing the nuance. In the book version of this moment, Katniss and Peeta are watching their children play in the meadow. But what Katniss and Peeta know, but their kids donāt, is that the children are playing on a mass grave of those who died when District 12 was bombed. Just presenting it as a perfect golden meadow completely removes the horror from this scene.
the philosophical razors section on wiki is fascinating ā¦. iāve known Occamās razor but itās the first time Iāve heard of the other razors today ā¦.
Occam's razor: Simpler explanations are more likely to be correct; avoid unnecessary or improbable assumptions.
Hanlon's razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Hitchens's razor: What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Hume's guillotine: What ought to be cannot be deduced from what is. "If the cause, assigned for any effect, be not sufficient to produce it, we must either reject that cause, or add to it such qualities as will give it a just proportion to the effect."
Alder's razor (also known as Newton's Flaming Laser Sword): If something cannot be settled by experiment or observation, then it is not worthy of debate.
All of these are crucial to online discourse. Iād put Hanlonās Razor at the top because gods! people out here like to assume everyone else is trying to destroy stuff
