on ORV character ages, regression, and what is ageing in this story really?
age is a weird thing in this story because everyone ends up in their teens to 30s plus/minus four or five to a couple million years but nevertheless. there's a certain emphasis given to the ages of KDJ and YJH specifically that got me thinking about why that was.
Ways of Survival just so happens to end the year that Kim Dokja is 28, the same age that Yoo Joonghyuk is when he begins the scenarios. (To be clear, YJH has not lived 28 years at the start of WoS, but significantly more, since the story starts at his 3rd regression following 3 existing run-throughs, of which during at least 1 or 2 he trained for a 100 years in the time fault. Nevertheless the regressions always start by looping him back to a point in time where he is biologically 28.) Even if this wasn’t intentionally planned, it's a neat parallel that both of them are drawn into the scenarios at the same point in their lives.
KDJ's birthday is a few months before YJH's, and by virtue of that, one of the first things he tells YJH is to use polite speech on him because he's actually older than YJH. Makes sense, fair enough. It's notable that YJH is SHOOK by this statement because (a) why does this person know how old he is (b) the balls on him to tell him to use polite speech and (c) it's probably the first time in a long time that he's been confronted with the concept of his age at all, and being told that he's younger than some guy who probably hasn't repeated life 3 times or trained for a 100 years in the dark dimension has to feel jarring. Anyway. Later someone asks KDJ who exactly YJH is to him and he replies that he's like a frustrating yet endearing little brother (paraphrasing) who screws up a lot of things and causes trouble but you can't help caring about.
The thing is... as you read on you realise KDJ didn't always see YJH this way. In his teen years, he viewed YJH almost as a father figure (admittedly YJH is too young to be a father to a 15 year old, but if you consider the years of experience he has behind him, it's also more than possible?) Even as he grew older, it's evident that for much of his time spent reading WoS, KDJ looked up to YJH and saw him as a paternal/older brother figure - a protector, guide, guardian, someone to emulate and admire.
At some point, you can only imagine that this started to change. As KDJ grew older, he naturally matured and found himself able to look at YJH on the same level - even if YJH was gathering hundreds of years of experience in the meantime, he was still stuck in his tightly bounded recursive loop in a small fictional world, unable to grow past whatever his writing allowed him. And soon to KDJ, YJH was no longer the towering figure in the black coat to hide behind and unwaveringly respect; but something more like a friend - someone to cheer on, criticise, disagree with, empathise with and still become attached to. At some point, probably in the very last few months of serialisation or so, as KDJ approaches YJH's canon age and subconsciously realises he's not so different from this all-powerful protagonist as he thought he was: YJH becomes the naiive little brother who makes more mistakes and stupid decisions than he does good ones, who elicits more sympathy than admiration, and who goes from being the protector to one that needs to be protected.
It is also somewhere along this journey that KDJ's perception of YJH's sponsor and stigma changes. I might write a separate essay on this some day but I have a lot of thoughts about why "regression" was so important as the key ability of his favourite protagonist to 15 year old, suicidal Kim Dokja. I know it's a common trope in system webnovels but its framing in WoS is that of a character who, like his reader, fucks up and experiences tragedy and despairs and gives up, over and over again, except that his giving up turns out to be a drastic step forward, if not backward in time, and a hardened resolve to go through all of it all over again to achieve what he wants. it's a powerful inspiration to a kid that wanted to end his life and needed a reason to keep hanging on for another day. (When we find out about the Oldest Dream, it makes perfect sense why YJH's stigma is the way it is.)
Yet despite his younger self's overcoming of his own troubles through the regression of this character, the 28-year-old Kim Dokja thinks regression is cruel and hates YJH's sponsor (before he knows who it is) for putting him through the horrors over and over again instead of letting him rest. I'm still not quite sure what to make of it - whether the older Dokja is coming from a place of having made peace with his own life and wanting the same for YJH, or a place of growing tired of the endless monotony and the unending struggles he is still faced with, and wanting an excuse to give up on it himself as well. He approaches the epilogue, where we find out what would happen to a YJH that no longer needed to regress, with mixed emotions; he had no plan for what to do with himself after the story ended, either, and we learn from his conversation with Sangah that he might have even just decided to kill himself. Perfect timing for the real epilogue of both his and YJH's lives to start - the 1864th round - that gave both of them fresh motivation to finally see a happy ending at the end of it.
In conclusion, I like to think that the two of them aged together in some ways, even if one aged 13 years and the other several thousands. WoS begin with Kim Dokja, 15, in the shadow of his protector Yoo Joonghyuk, 28, both desperately fighting to live a little longer, full of motivation to save themselves and what they love; and ends with Kim Dokja, 28, fiercely protective of his naiive little brother, Yoo Joonghyuk, also 28, both worn down by the heaviness of life and looking for salvation or death; either way, an end to it all. Then ORV, the endnote to WoS, gives them an end that promises a happier end. And then they spend untold millennia chasing after that all over again.
Yeah I'm not very sure where this went but it definitely went somewhere. Oh also if you're bothered by the familial-sounding terms in this post and think that i can't still be a joongdok shipper, don't be. I'm too asian to notice these things.
