HOTWHEELS SISYPHUS

This scene where Penelope chooses Callisto over returning home is SO important. For the entire story, Penelope has been focused solely on getting back to her body at all costs. She's discarded, hurt, and ignored so many other people in pursuit of this. Then, she has it within grasp and Callisto is telling her to leave him and grab it, but she can't.

It is so in character of Penelope to not believe that Callisto will be able to reach her. Everything she has gained, she gained through her own hard work and sacrifice. It's so fitting that, in the end, she is still someone who will grab what she wants.

She can't wait for someone to come find her, and she chooses Callisto.

Dani needed to see that not pursuing what she wanted or even recognizing what she wanted would hurt people she cared about, and also needed to recognize herself as someone people could love regardless of some unnameable force compelling them to.

However, Jiho has shown he understands Dani 16 times which is followed behind by Jooin at 9. Jiho has also been the one to put her at ease and comfort her the most at 17 times with second place going to Cheonyoung at 11.

In the beginning, Cheonyoung definitely has many many significant and weighted moments with Dani in the early chapters of Inso's Law, but these are actually far outnumbered by the ways Jiho supports her in the background by changing the topic when she's uncomfortable, taking care of her and Yeoryung, and comforting her through jokes and teasing. If you pay attention, he's also just kind of there at every chance, lurking around and worrying while Dani and Yeoryung flirt.

Cheonyoung is the beautiful main male lead at the start, but this is to his detriment. It pushes Dani away as he becomes someone unattainable in her mind. His desire to change to pursue her comes too late. He's too passive and too quiet and is often literally missing from entire conversations between the 4HK. Meanwhile, by the time they graduate middle school, Jiho has become someone Dani is uniquely comfortable around in a way she isn't with anyone else INCLUDING Yeoryung. She often confesses things to him she is too afraid to say to Yeoryung for fear of hurting her. His dedication to Dani has made him an obvious facet of her life. Jiho is the first person she asks to pretend not to know her at school, the first person she texts when her parents fight with her, and the friend who seems most at ease in her home.

Inso's Law is a series of arcs that force Dani to deconstruct her own fears and prejudices about the world as a story. Of course, these fears are fed by the fact that she's right about everything. Key in all of this is Dani's deep fear of anything changing because change could mean losing everything. Over the course of the manhwa, Dani slowly comes to realize that the change she inspires in those around her is actually a powerful and good thing that leaves a mark for the better in the people around her.

With this in mind, while watching the videos, Cheonyoung is the one who comments, "Isn't it okay to stay the same? I like that." This comment is framed as a promise that gives Dani hope. It provides her with temporary stability and, at the time, it's what she most desires. The promise that things will stay.

However, this is not what she benefits from as the narrative goes out of its way to show over and over through each consecutive arc. Dani needs to recognize her own agency in the world to change and be changed. Examples include her choice to stay with Yeoryung disrupting the webnovel, Choi Yuri's entire kidnapping arc, and her relationship with Yeodan.

Then, there's Jiho. In reaction to the video from middle school, Jiho is described by everyone as someone who changed. He was "more handsome," "expressionless," and "better." In sum, he was the unattainable main male lead. The dramatic change he went to from someone cold and aloof to someone able to read the room, protect others, and allow himself to be made fun of and look silly and vulnerable all pushes him out of the role of main male lead. Dani herself thinks to herself that she was too quick to assume he was the main male lead or that he acts "like a protagonist" rather than "is a protagonist" (which is how she often things of Yeoryung, Cheonyoung, and Ruda.)