ugh

i'm really tired of some of the creative decisions being taken by the art direction team for ORV... maybe i'm nitpicking, maybe i'm being entitled, maybe i'm ungrateful — but it feels beyond awful to watch moments where the characters display emotional vulnerability flattened out and traded for the sake of aura farming, for lack of a better term. for this chapter, it's only a very small scene of yoo joonghyuk looking back quietly at kim dokja (who yoo sangah is supposed to be holding?? idk where he disappeared in the final page...) that's been removed, but it's not the first time something like this happens.

it can be traced back to as late as when yjh first appeared in the demon realm to bring kdj back to earth. if you go back and read that webtoon chapter, when read alongside the excerpt from the novel, it falls flat in comparison. not to even MENTION the massacre that was the end of the 10th scenario. in the webtoon, yjh looks mildly constipated but otherwise unaffected; he's thoroughly devastated at the prospect of a regression turn without kdj in the novel, very obviously grieving. shit, i'm not asking them to paste the text from the novel directly into the manhwa. i'm aware there will be details lost in the transition between mediums. i know how adaptations work. what i simply cannot wrap my mind around is pruning these scenes where either kdj or yjh are more sensitive, open, or otherwise actually expressing some form of despair, love, and deep companionship. yjh has ironically become the very trope his character is created to subvert.

actually, i know why. it's because the ORV franchise needs to be palatable shounenslop to sell, and for that to happen, there can't be anything "too woke" such as men feeling things or women being strong, big, and buff (lol, i'll never not be mad about the punisher's design). it's so fucking frustrating watching people's ideas about these characters being sculpted into something wildly OOC because the webtoon is their only source for Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint. for a cast so lively, for dynamics so intimate, for a relationship that the entire narrative literally revolves around, seeing them stuffed into unfeeling boxes by webtoon naver is a heartrending sight.

i generally am grateful for the manhwa. the action is beautifully illustrated and it has introduced countless audiences to ORV, for better or for worse. i just can't handle seeing my favourite story be cannibalized, milked for money, and erased of all emotional nuance. because adherence to source material is often out of the author's control, i feel that i am right in this indignation. as this adaptation grows into an unrecognizable form divorced from the original novel, it only confirms my fears that there will likely never be a faithful ORV depiction anytime soon. it is impossible in a world where franchising wins out over love for stories.

almost hilarious for a story about the pain of being misunderstood to be marred in this way.