CW: SA and Suicide Mention and Discussion
Damn, it's been a hot minute since we've done one of these lol. Anyways, this is a discussion of the scenes spoke about in Discrepancy #59, so please read that first in order to get the full context.
As I mentioned in that discrepancy, pretty much everything we're seeing in the novel and webtoon are from Dokja's point of view which means he has a level of disassociation from the characters. It does not stay this way because at some point in the story, he starts to actually care about them like people. But for now, in the beginning, he still sees a firm separation between himself and the characters of the novel. Heewon is one of those characters.
Dokja is viewing these characters as what they are. Characters.
If something bad happens to a character, yeah it sucks that it happened, but it was just a fictional character. A good example would be Dokja's suicidal thoughts/actions. That's great angst fodder. I eat that shit up. I love angst. But as a psychology student and a decent human being, I wouldn't wish that upon anyone. I know what it feels like to have those thoughts running through my head.
To me, Dokja is a fictional character so there is a certain disconnect between what is actually happening to him and how I feel about it.
Dokja is currently in a similar situation.
As much as the empathetic side of me wants to say that Dokja is being insensitive, the reader side of me understands that Dokja has literally qualified Heewon as less than human in his mind. Again, this changes later, but for right now in this moment, Heewon is just a character to him. She's less than human so when he realizes what these assholes are implying to have done, he's filing it away as a plot point for her character.
As such, he treats the situation as an outside reader.
[ORV Webtoon, Episode 16. He says pretty much the same thing in the novel, but this isn't a discrepancy post and the webtoon is just easier to pull up rn]
From a purely reader standpoint, from Dokja's standpoint, he is kind of right is saying that the SA theme is overused in stories as a way to say "hey look at this guy, he's evil." Especially in post-apocalyptic situations where there is no law. There are other ways to show that without resorting to such a horrible violation of a crime.
But I think that's why it's used so much. It’s a disgustingly common crime that many evil people would take advantage of if there were no punishment. Hell, depending on the sponsor they have in ORV, they might have received coins for it which is disgusting and horrible, but that’s a speculation. It’s not realistic that it would happen every time there is an apocalyptic event, but it’s also not realistic to say it wouldn’t happen at all. And Dokja also acknowledges this at the end of the scene where he says this:
[ORV Webtoon, Episode 16]
That’s why I like ORV so much. I like how this event doesn’t define Heewon. SA can very easily be misrepresented and, as someone with those experiences, I think ORV does a good job of making it known that it happened but not making that all of Heewon’s character.
I do still think he is separating himself from the situation like he always does this early into the story. I think the reason this specifically is different and seems to disprove my point is because Heewon is a new character to him.
Remember, Heewon should be dead. He's never met her character before so all of this is new to him. That means that somewhere in the original novel, there is a character he had never read about where this happened and then she just died. End of story.
I think at this point in the novel, despite how early it still is, I think he is subconsciously trying to keep his total separation but realizing that he can't do that. He's actively changing the story. He can't keep thinking of these people as characters. There a difference between reading about this stuff happening in a book and listening to gross men talking about it right in front of you.
I think that Dokja's brain is fascinating and I would give anything to pick at it. I wanna see how he files things away and how he processes things. Like obviously I get more of that as I read the novel which is in first person point of view, but there are some things that I'll just never know.
But, to summarize, yes what is happening to Heewon is horrible and I still don't like how it's implied in the webtoon. I don't like that it happened at all, but that's a human reaction to that. But I don't think Dokja is being entirely insensitive. I think it has to do with how he is processing the things going on around him. He at least has enough sense to keep it to himself, but if he starts saying this shit out loud, I'm gonna post up-