The number one question I get asked on this blog, now answered better than ever. Today I am going to formally introduce you to Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint
To start off this recommendation: ORV might very well be my favorite thing I've read. Ever. If I could only reread one thing for the rest of my life it'd be this webnovel.
My elevator pitch is this: something with the cosmic-scale goofy video game nonsense and intricate setting comparable to Homestuck in its prime, paired with the deft emotional poignancy and emotionally-driven fights of Mob Psycho 100, topped off with the sort of compassionate and heartwrenching metanarrative of Undertale.
ORV is a love letter to it's own readers. ORV revels in the joy of losing yourself in fiction, even when it's the kind of fiction that tends to be considered lowbrow or worthless. It's something that dances the delicate line between recognizing the difficult nature of using media as escapism without condemning it. I've rarely seen anything else that accomplishes everything it sets out to do in its narrative with such remarkable precision. Frankly if you're reading a tumblr media recommendation post in 2023, I can almost guarantee ORV has the kind of meat you're looking for in a narrative, whatever that may be.
The story follow the antics of protagonist Kim Dokja, a 28 year old office worker on an expiring contract, whose only real joy in life is reading his favorite massively long and massively boring webnovel. One day, the novel’s events - worldwide deathmatches aired for the entertainment of mysterious higher beings called ‘constellations’ - begin playing out in reality in a sort of reverse-isekai. Kim Dokja, the only longterm reader of this webnovel, finds himself uniquely poised to succeed based on the advantages given to him by his knowledge of future events, but the webnovel’s actual protagonist, Yoo Jonghyuk, is a violent monster who will stop at absolutely nothing to complete his goals, no matter the cost to anyone else. Kim Dokja finds himself in a delicate dance of guiding the events of the story to play out more favorably than the version he read while trying to avoid being massacred in the fallout, all while trying to see it through to the story’s end.
Below the cut I'll go into a more in-depth (but non-spoilery) explanation of what exactly makes ORV so unique and worthwhile, and what you're in for if you choose to read it.
Clocking in at 550 chapters, and over 1.3 million words in English, ORV may seem incredibly daunting to dip your toes into, but I assure you it's worth every moment. I would read 1.3 million more words if they had them for me. Here are some things about ORV I consider to be selling points, not necessarily in any particular order:
The tone. Its funny, for starters. It is extremely funny, which is very high up on my media priority list. In ORV, there will be incredibly grim things that make you laugh, and incredibly cringe and silly anime bullshit that will hurt you as heavily as any other media you’ve seen. I always love this kind of tonal whiplash when it's well executed, and ORV probably executes it better than anything else I've seen to date.
It’s got fun and fascinating worldbuilding mechanics. the core concept being ‘reality now operates on the rules of a shitty novel’ means that the worldbuilding doesn’t have to function logically, it functions thematically. It’s explicitly stated in ORV canon that some of the internal rules governing this new reality are objectively really stupid and illogical, but they just have to roll with it because that’s what was in the book, and i think it’s a really enjoyable way to do it. This may at first sound like a copout to excuse bad worldbuilding, but I promise it isn’t. The worldbuilding is actually incredibly deeply thought out, but it doesn’t exist for the sake of rational function, it exists for the sake of furthering orv’s thematic arcs. The rules by which this universe operate do a magnificent job of strengthening the core concepts the authors are exploring.
It plays with the trappings of isekai/litrpg in a really thoughtful way. These are genres I'm not super familiar with, so I can't comment on this point too heavily, but with my limited knowledge ORV feels a lot less of a deconstruction of it's genre and more of a celebration/interrogation of it. Despite that, it's still accessible to readers such as myself who are not super familiar with these genre conventions.
It deals with morality in a really wonderful and nuanced way. there are almost no characters in ORV’s extremely large cast who are just explicitly morally condemnable, and almost every conflict allows you to understand exactly why the antagonists believe they’re in the right by opposing the actions of our protagonists. The central conflicts are never pure right and pure wrong; they’re always about contrasting goals, conflicting worldviews, and different priorities between ends and means. this makes the conflicts all feel so much more dynamic and engaging than those where the only stakes are physical harm.
The characters interpersonal relationships are some of the most interesting I've ever seen. ORV is very slow burn and it takes a long time for a lot of these to come out of the woodwork, by design, but by god once they do they fucking hit. Similar to the plot conflicts, the interpersonal conflicts also almost never occur where there’s one side clearly in the wrong. The characters are almost all genuinely attempting to do their best by each other, and the tension comes from the ways in which human communication is fundamentally imperfect and part of our feelings and intentions get lost in translation. it’s very heartwrenching and heartwarming to see unfold, in equal measure.
Following from that, it’s a narrative that really meaningfully prioritizes non-romantic relationships over romantic ones as the central focus. Orv is about love, but not about romance. Obviously there’s shipbait and the ot3 is real and good and my friend but if you’re looking for deep complex platonic, (found or otherwise) familial, and antagonistic relationships that never get ruined with forced romantic arcs, we got em baby!
The pacing is unlike anything i’ve ever seen before. from a purely technical standpoint, it is genuinely a fascinating case study in how to execute a narrative that is almost constantly escalating without exception. there is very little downtime or breathing room in orv, which is insane for something that clocks in at over a million words, and somehow, it still works. i’ve never felt more like a frog in a pot of slowly boiling water than i did when i was reading orv and i can’t believe they pulled it off. it’s so interesting to read something like that.
It is a tragedy without resorting to cynicism and a very adult narrative that’s really steeped in childlike wonder. I’m a big fan of cartoons made for children. Cartoons made for children are some of my favorite things to watch, but of course children’s media will always be simplified and not very relatable to an adult audience. ORV is very much a serious and heavy adult narrative, and a deeply tragic one at that, but it never delves into torture porn. It’s a very compassionate piece of media overall, that holds a lot of reverence and sympathy for the ‘naive’ optimism of children that gets stripped down over time. if you, like me, feel more like a grown up child than an adult some days, I think it’ll hit for you.
It is extremely cathartic and meaningful. I am not exaggerating at all when I say that reading it gave me the closest thing I have ever felt to any sort of spiritual breakthrough. It helped unfuck my head a ton during some very grim times and i think the perspective it offers on the value of human life and our relationship to storytelling is a really really good one.
And if my word isn't enough, here's some reviews from satisfied customers. With that, I'll leave the rest to you, and hope you one day reach the end of the story.
So can non-disabled people stop doing that thing where they act like it’s morally righteous to force yourself to work while you’re sick and assume taking sick days automatically equates to laziness. Any time now. That’d be great
The leader of the scout group I help out at approached me out of hours while I was walking to work to tell me that people have been talking behind my back because I missed more sessions than I attended this term (on account of having Covid twice) and was like “We all show up when we’re sick because we take responsibility” and I felt really shitty and guilty and cried the whole workday then I got home and told my mum and she was like “So they want you to throw up on the kids? That’s dodgy. They don’t even pay you. Stop going” and a wave of serenity hit me like a bus
today in pedantry born of extreme annoyance and doesn't-anybody-go-to-school-anymore grumpiness:
the term "sound barrier" has absolutely nothing to do with how loud something is.
a powerful singer does not break the sound barrier. a loud crowd does not break the sound barrier. if you hear an opera soprano belt out an aria and you say she broke the sound barrier you sound like a fucking idiot. that is not what it means.
"but it's just a joke why should i car--"
no. sit down. THAT IS NOT WHAT IT MEANS.
"sound barrier" refers to the increase in aerodynamic drag that occurs as a moving object approaches the speed of sound.
it's called a "barrier" because when the first aircraft starting reaching high enough speeds, they would shake so much pilots were afraid they would get torn apart. it was perceived as a real physical limit, but that perception was false. there is no actual barrier. there is only engineering; it was the drag on the aircraft making them feel like they were shaking apart. turns out if planes are built well enough and go fast enough, they can break the sound barrier just fine without falling apart. the first time this happened was in 1947, in a plane flown by US Air Force pilot Chuck Yaeger.
this means that "breaking the sound barrier" applies to things that are moving very fast, not to things that are very loud.
please read that sentence again to make sure it sinks in. fast, not loud. read it again because tiktok has been lying to you and you need to unlearn what you have learned.
(that also means it applies only where there is a speed of sound, which is not everywhere in the universe. but let's not complicate things by thinking about a pure vacuums or the extreme low density of space.)
the speed of sound varies depending on the density of what it's moving through, but at sea level on Earth it's about 770 miles per hour. once an object is going faster than the speed of sound, it is supersonic--and, again, that refers to speed, not volume. bullets break the sound barrier even if they are muffled at firing. a bullwhip can be snapped fast enough that the very end breaks the sound barrier, even if the noise they make is a sharp crack and not unusually loud.
but people standing still and shouting or singing do not, because nothing that is standing still can break the sound barrier. so unless you are sharing a cool vid of a soprano getting yeeted out of an operatic cannon at >770 mph, she has not broken the sound barrier. and if that is what you are sharing, she breaks the sound barrier whether or not she's singing her aria.
there can be a very loud noise associated with objects moving so fast they have broken the sound barrier. that noise is called a sonic boom, and it happens because the object is generating shock waves as it travels. it's not a single boom; it only sounds like that because when you hear it you are listening at a single point. it is in fact a continuous, traveling shock wave that happens as long as the object is moving faster than the speed of sound. it's just that you only hear it when the shock wave passes directly over you, so it sounds like a finite noise. it's also not necessarily a boom. it can be a crack or a snap or a clap or whatever. it's just called a sonic boom because the ones generated by supersonic aircraft are big fucking booms.
in conclusion please stop saying loud noises break the sound barrier.
🚫 wrong kind of hyperbole: "wow that man shouted loud enough to break the sound barrier!"
✔ right kind of hyperbole: "wow that man ran fast enough to break the sound barrier!"
sick of hearing about "healing crystals" that "cleanse your mind and body of negative energy" i want to know which rocks can hurt you and fuck up your vibe so bad
everyone suggesting uranium isn't wrong but anyone who said "literally any rock if you're willing to resort to violence" are the only people who can get on my level. you're hired.
I love this post so much. “we used to make posts about loki on here” is the gentlest way possible to describe this website’s history. It’s like saying einstein dabbled in science
I know I've made that joke before but the Gyeol situation really can't be considered baby-trapping, Yoojin refuses to acknowledge that Hyunjae was involved at all even after the kid comes out a perfect clone of him. Hyunjae wishes paternity testing worked on Gyeol.
The one Yoojin actually baby trapped (on his deathbed!) is Song Taewon. And the whole "about to die" thing was very instrumental in getting that guy to agree to raising a lamb. Never back dow never what?!
Victor Frankenstein syndrome aka you spent nights over nights crying and bleeding over this work and now that it's finally done you're just like "nvm. it's trash" and go to bed
it’s actually fine and cool if someone prefers certain people use certain pronouns for them and other people use different pronouns for them for whatever reason
like sometimes i want people who don’t really know me to use they/them pronouns more than they use she/her for me, whereas im okay with family referring to me only with she/her because it feels comfortable and familiar (and “lived-in” in a sense). and sometimes it varies depending on my mood or the day, it’s literally fine and not a big deal. i don’t think it’s too weird or complicated at all. just use the pronouns someone tells you to use without saying “b-b-but you let these people use these other pronouns for you!” yeah and you’re not them. okay?
hope it’s okay to tag onto this because it truly resonates with something I’ve been considering for the longest time now: that society at large needs to start treating pronouns more like we do names and nicknames in the sense that it’s already quite normal to go by different names and accept different (nick)names under different social contexts (e.g., getting called “sweetheart” by your partner vs. by your boss – VERY different). after all, aren’t pronouns merely a way to shorthand somebody’s name? people generally understand when someone asks to no longer be called a certain (nick)name and to instead be called something else (at least where i live). the same ought to be true for pronouns. it’s a basic modicum of respect to refer to someone the way they prefer to be refered to in different contexts, be it their name or their pronouns.
Our team has been discussing our options, and we have decided our next step.
We don't want to end this project anymore than you all do. We love working on it, and we love providing to the community. However, we cannot tolerate disrespect of the very few rules we have in place. Once again, we repeat that our documents are not to be put on ANY public platforms, including social media and reuploading it to archives. This is to protect our team and protect this project. All downloads are meant for PERSONAL use, at the very least until our project is complete.
We have decided to try a middle ground for now. We don't believe there is an easy solution to removing the documents from the archive, so we will treat it as a circumstance we cannot reverse and will proceed as thus:
We will post Part 1 Volume 6 following our original plan. We will be keeping an eye out to see if this volume is also added to the archive. Pending what happens, one of two things will occur:
IF our wishes are respected and we see that no more reuploads of our documents have occurred, we will proceed as we have done until now. We will treat this as a mistake that came from us not being clear enough, and we will allow this to be the one singular slip-up for the community.
IF our wishes are not respected and we find any more reuploads ANYWHERE (but especially on the archive where our documents are currently at), or any of our other rules broken, we will be removing all downloading ability. We will continue to upload, but nobody will be allowed to download the documents and everything will be in a read-only format. If we find ANY further breaking of our rules, we WILL shut this project down.
Basically, this was the one (1) mistake we will allow the community. We once again ask to please respect our singular wish for the sake of this project and the ORV fandom as a whole.
WHILE THE PROJECT IS ACTIVE, PLEASE DO NOT REPOST/REUPLOAD OUR WORKS OR DIRECT LINKS TO THE DRIVE AND ITS DOCUMENTS ANYWHERE ON PUBLIC PLATFORMS.
Additional Propaganda #1: SHJ is like if you thought you were getting a SXY, but then it is soon found out that within the cold SXY exterior, he's actually TLJ - the super-powerful shameless malewife with tragic backstory. he even gets the sad widower wandering hours in the pre-reg timeline. if you like TLJ, read SCTIR! ✌️
*Mod Comment: SXY and TLJ refers to Su Xiyan & Tianlang-jun from SVSSS, respectively
Additional Propaganda #2: Sung Hyunjae has some of the best banter in the series, and is super dependable when Han Yoojin needs help outside his brother's guild. He can threaten someone with a smile on his face and total someone's car just because he finds it annoying. Before he met Han Yoojin he was super bored and now he's determined to hang around him because he's his main source of entertainment- and he's willing to pull out all the stops to protect him even though he's one of the biggest threats to Han Yoojin's safety. Sung Hyunjae even lets himself get threatened into things by the much weaker character simply because he finds it funny.
Additional Propaganda #3:
Okay propaganda time for the blond menace (affectionate):
world's first ever emotionally unavailable detached avoidant who'd also romantic and possessive
world's most sensitive alpha male poor little meow meow
despite being the world's best cook, he'll just eat bread (NO CORNERS) if he's on his own, because life is boring.
he doesn't get angry in traffic jams, because life is already so boring getting caught in traffic jams makes no difference
despite being the hottest man alive with the reputation of the world's biggest bisexual playboy (his code name in the US is literally Zeus and not just because of his lightning powers), he is a 39-year old virgin
He is the world's Strongest Man and his hobbies include fishing, knitting, cooking
He also loves being Domestic TM and roleplaying with his Partner and he never realized this until he met Han Yoojin
in his own words he was 'always domestic, just didn't have a family before' :ded:
despite having everything, he keeps stealing his partner's spatula from the kitchen
he got married to his dear partner and the novel isn't even BL
he won't let Han Yoojin forget he is Han Yoojin's 61st Wife. The number keeps going up and down, but he is always the Last Wife TM.
he thinks Han Yoojin deserves to be the top of the world and have the whole world at his feet and keeps trying to make that happen
world's best boss and also he made a 19 year old British teen his heir and successor because she saw him and immediately asked him if he was a dragon
Shang Qinghua (Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky) from The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System
Popular Danmei Character Tournament Submission: He’s just a little guy. A little birthday boy. He has committed no crimes. It’s his birthday 🥺
MXTX Side Character Tournament Submission: He's a sidekick and he's so sidelined that despite creating the universe he's treated as an afterthought - doubly a side character! But also? So relateable. He would absolutely have been on tumblr in his first life, he gets so excited about his blorbo who treats him terribly (until they finally get a happy ending in the extras - also! he has to wait for the extras to get his happy ending! very side-character of him). He holds the fascinating position of being mostly irrelevant to the story and yet without him the themes would totally fail. He deserves a win on something for once, okay?
Quarterfinals, Match 121
Sung Hyunjae
Shang Qinghua
See Results
Voting ended onApr 1
[Anti-Propaganda is NOT allowed. Please be kind & respectful.]
I've been using this tool called tumblr-utils to back up my tumblr blogs. it creates a locally navigatable archive of a given tumblr url's posts, which is more convenient than the post soup you get from tumblr's native blog export feature.
what that means is that I have a folder on my computer with the name of my url with an index.html file in it, and when i click on that file to open it in a browser I get a simple page with a list of years and months. selecting a specific month will send me to a list of the posts i made or reblogged in that month, similar to tumblr's own archive page. the contents of the post including images are stored locally on your machine.
It can also make a separate index file that organises posts by tag, which is great if you're a consistent tagger, but it will list every single tag you've ever used so it can take a while to find the tag you're looking for in the list if you're a habitual tag commentator. generating the tag archive also takes a while depending on how many posts have to be processed.
you can make it back up any blog as long as it's not set to private. I have backups of both my main and sideblogs and it keeps them in separate folders.
it's had some trouble going all the way back to the start of my main blog in 2012 just by sheer volume of posts, but by making it fetch posts from one month at a time I've been able to go back to 2015 (that's tens of thousands of posts), which was good enough for my purposes.
it might be a little scary to use if you've never touched the command line before, but there's both text and video instructions to set it up and using it is just a matter of typing the command and letting it do its thing in the background.
Shoutouts to characters that don't know the facade isn't their real self. Shoutouts to characters who put up a front so long ago that they have now forgotten it's all an act. Shoutouts to characters who no longer know who they are because they think they're being sincere. Shoutouts to performers so good they fool even themselves. Shoutouts to characters who fall for their own lies.
Eye of Dreams that Fall to the Distance @namika-saya - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
