i wanna get into ORV but i still don’t understand it 😭😭
CACKLES SO FUCKING LOUDLY (Caps: cackles so fucking loudly). Ahem. [cracks knuckles]
Okay so ORV (Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint) is a webnovel which is currently being adapted into a webtoon, and I really enjoy both!! But if I had to pick one, it's the webnovel no question <3 I talked about accessing both here!
I went into it completely and entirely blind except for the main character's name, which was probably the best thing I've done for myself all year, but my summary for you (which I had to stop myself halfway through and cut down for size THRICE):
ORV follows Kim Dokja, an isolated and lonely office worker whose contract is expiring and whose only (and I mean only) joy in life is a massively long, horrendously convoluted webnovel called "Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World". He is the only reader in the entire world of this novel, as everyone else had long since fallen off about ten chapters in due to the fact that it fucking sucks-- but that means that when his subway ride home is interrupted by the world ending in exactly the way it does in his favorite story, he's also the person with the best chance in all the world to see the apocalypse through to a happy ending.
The novel, as indicated by the title and premise, is SO meta, and never in a cheesy or grating way-- ORV chews you up and spits you out with how incisively, brilliantly, and beautifully it works its themes, and every single character and character dynamic will grip you by the motherfucking throat. It is the funniest thing I've ever read and I've almost cried about it in public multiple times and I keep zoning out and staring into the middle distance during dinner because I keep having new belated realizations about its ending. It may look long and intimidating, but it doesn't FEEL long because the pacing is incredible, and also it constantly lampshades itself by acknowledging that the in-universe apocalypse is incredibly stupid and by having multiple scenes where the characters lay out past plot points in great detail and then go "wow this sucks and is stupidly overcomplicated." ORV is complex and beyond intelligently written, but it never takes itself too seriously, and it's better for it <3
ORV is hard to explain because it is so much all the time. In the best possible way, half the time it sounds like a fanfic-y fever dream. Kim Dokja IS bisexual and he IS autistic and he IS INSANE. It is impossible to encapsulate because everything I could say about it would fall short of its actuality, and Tumblr functions on recommending things through hyperbole but ORV is literally just like that. ORV is about the power of fiction and it's about meeting your blorbo in the flesh and immediately annoying him so bad he tries to kill you and it's about staggering, world-defying love of every kind and it's about your friends kinkshaming you and it's about learning to live with the fact that you deserve to live. I will, very genuinely, never be the same after reading it. This is the worst rec post in the world and I sincerely apologize. Please read ORV
