#failure test

Reading it, I felt like they had way to much informations and stuff happening in it to not be a real world somewhere and then Raon kinda said he sorta remember Dodam so it can't really be another earth because I feel like Raon would not be feeling Dodam either so maybe another timeline ?

Do you think they'll come back at some point ?

That's an excellent question! I've given it a lot of thought, myself.

Personally, I think the twist is that instead of all tests being illusions, each one worked on completely different mechanics: it was to fool the people undertaking the tests to make them stuck for as long as possible, if not indefinitely, and absorb their despair at being trapped.

The first test was an extra one: unofficially called "test of despair", courtesy of Clopeh.

This test was an "illusion of conditionally alternative reality". The world itself was fake, however, the God of Despair had limited influence over it, due to it being heavily based on the TCF reality. I imagine the God of Despair used up a lot of his power for that one.

That reality was altered in two key ways: one, Cale Henituse did not exist. As in, he wasn’t a member of the Henituse family and was never born there. Two, the White Star was replaced by an avatar of the God of Despair, who made himself look like Cale Henituse. It was to trick Cale's group into fighting an "evil Cale", then display the footage in the real world and present it as "Cale's group betraying him". This scheme ultimately failed, because of the God of Death's cintamani. I am not sure what the passing requirement actually was in that test – because the Sealed God himself destroyed that test before it was finished. He probably figured he had a better chance of tricking Cale into using Embrace on him and using it to control him, somehow. Another scheme failed because of the God of Death – who had Cale use his Divine Item to seal him.

The rest of the tests followed the "standard format" of the Sealed God's temple: sadness, sloth, failure, indignity, and wrath.

The test of sadness was based on a person's memory. That was all there was to it. No alternations, no changes. Pretty simple. To pass it, you needed to "accept your sadness" – the same way Cale had to "accept the despair yet to come" in his test back on Earth 2.

The next test was a lot trickier. It was still based on memory, but it had specific properties: indulgence and numbness. It made the person gradually forget that they're in a test at all. It might seem simple on the surface, but in my opinion, it was the most dangerous test of all. Because once you forget you're in danger at all, how can you defend yourself? Luckily, it seems all of Cale's friends managed to pass that one somehow, even thought the passing requirement was never quite made clear to me. I suppose you just needed to "let go of indulgence" and move forward to face the difficulties of the real life.

The test of failure is where things get interesting. It was intended as an "impossible task" kind of test. As Choi Han's case with Harris Village had shown, it was a test where you experienced a failure of your past in a continuous loop. Try as hard as you can to correct your failure, it was an illusion where reality was actively against you. Choi Han should have no problem returning to Harris Village on time, knowing there was an attack coming. And yet the test made him fail over and over. Choi Han was implied to eventually out-stubborn the test, which is truly impressive, as Clopeh believed such a thing was not possible, and the solution was to "accept failure" in order to proceed.

The test of indignity is the strangest of them all; because all signs show that it was the only one where an Actual Alternate Reality was involved.

From what we know about Single-Lifers, such as Choi Han, they’re the only ones who are able to travel between dimensions in their own bodies without issues – of course in Part Two (slight spoiler alert!) we are introduced to Cale's mirror, another Divine Item from the God of Death. However, even with the mirror or the Hunters, they're all required to pay a price for such travel. Even during their travel to the murim world, Cale and his group needed to change appearance in order to "fit in".

That's because regular people are not meant to dimension-travel. Such things seem to be usually only for Gods, Wanderers or other divine beings. For Variables, such as transmigrators, it's necessary to change bodies to "native" ones when they change dimensions.

It is no coincidence that while Choi Han just got dropped into the TCF universe out of nowhere, Cale's soul was placed in the body of a local. That's because he couldn't be simply transported in his own Korean body. Notice how in each test, except the indignity one, Cale and the others were in their own bodies. Only in this one they were all temporarily transmigrated into someone else – although with how 20-year-old Kim Rok Soo was still inside Cale during the Sealed God's test, it's clear that the God of Despair doesn't switch souls, but temporarily places a second soul in another person's body.

That's why I'm 100% sure the indignity test was the only one with a real other universe involved. There were also differences Cale noticed, such as the absence of the Super Rock in the villa. It wasn't an illusion world based on his memories. It was a different world entirely. But it was still similar enough for the Sealed God to choose it his test target, as the same thing happened with Earth 2.

And finally, we got the last test: wrath.

While the extra test was an illusion of an alternate reality, sadness was a memory, sloth was a mind-numbing trap, the failure was a time loop, and indignity was another world… wrath is the only one which is 100% fiction.

It is a world crafted by a sneaky temple AI for one purpose only: to piss you off.

The thing is, if Cale hadn't thought that nonsense of how "kids complaining about food" et cetera are things that "make him angry", his test would probably be a little different. Because, let's be clear here: if the White Star truly had won over Cale, he would never let him live peacefully with the kids. Especially not comfortably enough for them to complain about such mundane thing as food.

The temple took Cale's absurd suggestions and meshed them all with the vision of what truly pissed Cale off: the White Star winning and doing whatever the hell he wanted. If the White Star had won, he wouldn't leave a single one of Cale's allies alive. …Especially not Raon, whom that bastard threatened to cut his heart out of and feed it to Cale.

The point is: logically, the wrath test made no sense. There wasn't any internal consistency to it – even illusion!Eruhaben himself pointed out it did not make any sense. Clopeh's version of the wrath test was seeing Cale and his group in jail and awaiting a trial, as if that would ever happen! If Cale got caught, they would have tortured and killed him, not involving any legal procedures. What would even be the point?

From my observation, the only way to pass this test is to cool off – so unless you're able to defeat whatever it is that "makes you angry", you'd be stuck. Which, honestly, doesn't seem like a very effective trap to me… but I suppose making someone pissed off enough makes them reckless (as seen by Cale bleeding and all over the place and beating up the White Star with a rock like there's no tomorrow…), which is quite dangerous in itself. And if a person manages to pass all the previous tests without issues, it would make sense that anger could be their final weakness.

To answer your final question - do I think Dodam!verse will come back at some point?

Yes. Absolutely.

I want to do a small series of posts looking at some of the most important trading patterns I’ve used over the years. Rather than go in-depth with multiple examples, I’ll keep these posts as a high level, introductory overview and will focus only on the most important points of the patterns I’ve found most useful in my own trading. Today, let’s begin with the failure test.

There are many names for this pattern. Victor Sperandeo immortalized in his excellent books (here and here) as the “2B” pattern, and many other authors have since used that name. Wyckoff used slightly more confusing terminology, calling a failure test below support a spring (prices “spring” back above support) and a failure test below resistance and upthrust. (The latter term is confusing, but prices “thrust above” resistance and immediately failed. Furthermore, if you’re interested in Wyckoff’s work, this little volume is an excellent introduction.) In The Art & Science of Technical Analysis, I used the term failure test for trades both at support and resistance, in the interest of simplicity.

Figure 1

The failure test is a simple pattern. Take a look at Figure 1, which shows a theoretical market bouncing around in between support and resistance. At point A, prices poked above resistance, and immediately failed back below in a classic failure test or Wyckoff upthrust. (Don’t worry about exact triggers or entries at this point, just understand the fundamental concept.) At point B, the market traded briefly below support, and quickly recovered back above, triggering another failure test (or a Wyckoff spring.) Note also that the short trade at A would have probably been very profitable, while a long trade entered at B might have been a loser. It’s always important to build awareness of how patterns can resolve—both for and against the intended direction. In other words, study many examples of losing patterns.

Figure 2

The best way to enter these failure test trades is often the simplest. Look for a point where price trades above resistance and immediately fails back below on the same bar, and enter short on that bar’s close with a stop just above the high of that bar. (See figure 2.) It is also possible to enter on the following bar (i.e., a bar closes above resistance, but the next bar reverses and fails back below resistance); in all cases, the stop must go at or just beyond the new high set on the movement. For long entries, simply flip everything to a test below support and close back above.  Conceptually, one of the main reasons markets exist is to create trading activity. Think about that for a minute–markets exist to create trading volume, so they will naturally seek out levels where there may be orders clustered. (This is also tied into the reasons that markets are essentially designed to cause traders to make mistakes.) Many of those forays to find volume will discover nothing more than a few stop orders with no conviction beyond the level. This pattern lets you take this potentially treacherous market tendency (to seek your stops) and turn it to your advantage with a tight entry against a clear risk point.

One final, and perhaps the most important consideration, is risk management. I tend to trade failure tests in two main contexts: in trading ranges, on pure tests of support or resistance; and in trends, as counter-trend entries—essentially an attempt to catch the reversal off the high of an uptrend or the low of a downtrend. Both of these situations are potentially risky: liquidity can be low in trading ranges, so it’s not uncommon to have a gap opening against your positions. In trends, “gap and go” beyond the trend extreme (and, ahem, your stop) is also a possibility, and these are gap openings that do not tend to reverse. You must be prepared to accept larger than expected losses on some subset of these trades, so I suggest trading them on smaller size and risk than most of your other setups. Also, if you have an adverse opening against your position, be prepared to take action, as things often only get much worse as the trading day goes on.

I’ll follow up with a post tomorrow looking at some examples of this pattern in action.