Korean manhwas and webtoons are slowly gaining popularity and I can’t think of anything more worthy of attention that Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint.
Fans of ORV have likened this webtoon to Solo Leveling. But why compare ORV to anything? It’s honestly an entity of its own.
Kim Dokja, the main character in ORV, finds that the world of his favorite webnovel, Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World, has become reality. He is the only one who has read the novel to the end, and is thus the only one who knows how to survive the new apocalyptic world he finds himself in.
Who wrote the Ways of Survival novel in Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint?
In Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint, our protagonist Kim Dokja reads the webnovel Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World, written by the pseudonymous author tls123. In the end, tls123 is revealed to be Han Sooyoung, one of Dokja’s trusted allies in the ORV universe.
Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World, or Ways of Survival (WoS), is the webnovel within the webnovel ORV. Apparently, Han Sooyoung (HSY) doesn’t even know she is the author until it’s too late.
By virtue of being a “character” in the novel that is now reality, Author characters like HSY in this world have the exclusive Avatar skill. This ability allows her to make clones of herself.
She is able to split herself into multiple clones, each having some of her memories. She unintentionally gives away 50 percent of her memories to one of the avatars, leaving two autonomous halves who are neither real nor clone. It is implied that one of them writes WoS from the past.
So, let’s look at it in a simpler way. We’re currently stuck inside a crap novel. Since the original was crap, this is the end result.
Han Sooyoung is initially revealed to be the author of SSSSS-grade Infinite Regressor, a novel that is very much like WoS. Dokja even accuses her of plagiarizing WoS. In reality, it is WoS that is written first, and her future self’s memory of writing WoS prompts her to writing the former.
What happens is this: after a series of events that take place in the 1863rd round of scenarios, HSY asks the Dokkaebi King to take her to the past, when the WoS world became reality. She realises the file hasn’t been uploaded yet, and she continues to wait – until Dokja lands up in the hospital after trying to commit suicide.
Dokja had previously mentioned that WoS saved his life; not wanting him to die, she decides to write the first chapter of WoS under tls123, with the help of her memories of the book from the future and the events in Infinite Regressor, that were copied from WoS in the first place.
It is from this causal loop that WoS is written.
The author of Ways of Survival is stronger than most other entities like Incarnations and Constellations in the universe of WoS/ORV, but she is not omniscient nor omnipotent. Since the story of the novel has already been written, the author no longer has authority over it.
HSY has multiple abilities and skills like Predictive Plagiarism that gives her the ability to know how Stories are created in the Star Stream, how Scenarios will unfold, and how Incarnations and Constellations will act. She is forced to write WoS because she is stuck in a stable time loop, but the story itself is out of her hands.
Normal Constellations are not able to view to text file that Dokja has of the novel, but it is the Dokkaebi King that edits, proofreads, and kind of publishes the novel so it can become a paid service that triggers Scenarios. The entity with the highest authority and the power to overwrite the story is the Oldest or the Most Ancient Dream.
What are the three ways of survival in the novel?
The official three ways of survival in the webnovel Ways of Survival, are Regression (of the protagonist of WoS, Yoo Jonghyuk), Return (of Isekai characters in the form of disasters), and Reincarnation.
Reading might be considered another way of survival since if you have the knowledge of what might happen from a previous life in a timestream, you can survive the world.
How does the WoS world function?
The WoS world is controlled by the Star Stream system, where individuals must face Scenarios or challenges that they must overcome to survive. When the world of ORV caves in to the world of WoS, it adopts the Star Stream.
Scenario participants include Incarnations and Constellations, the latter being ascended Incarnations. High-ranking constellations watch the Scenarios in the Star Stream like shows on a streaming platform. The facilitators of Star Stream are called Dokkaebis, headed by the Dokkaebi King, also called the Story King.
Corrupted constellations become Demons or Demon Kings. There are also Outer Gods that are non-entities from other worlds who can enter the Star Stream and participate when all the Probability laws in a particular Scenario are expended.
About Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint
Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint is a Korean metafictional apocalyptic fantasy webnovel penned by the author-duo Sing Shong. It was adapted into a webtoon by the same name in February 2020, one day after the end of the webnovel.
It follows the story of Kim Dokja, an ordinary salaried contractor, who one day, finds himself stuck in the world of his favorite fantasy novel. The webnovel is called Three Ways to Survive in a Ruined World, written by an anonymous author who goes by the name of tls123. Dokja was the sole reader who finished this novel to the end.
When the novel suddenly becomes reality, Dokja is the only person who has unique knowledge of this apocalyptic new world. He knows how the plot of the story ends and therefore has the best chance of survival.
But will he actually survive? Not without changing the course of the story as well as the world as he knows it.
No Comments on Who wrote the Ways of Survival novel in Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint?