Work Text:
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SEODAEMUN PRISON
CONFIDENTIAL TRANSCRIPT LOGS
INMATE: LEE SOOKYUNG (XX XXXXXXXXX XXXX)
VISITOR: KIM DOKJA (15 FEBRUARY 1991)
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LOG DATE: 18 November 1997
KIM DOKJA: Are you okay, Mom?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Mom?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Did I come at a bad time?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Are you sick?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: I’m sorry, Mom. I can come back later. C-can I?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: I… The social workers told me to visit you and tell you how I’m doing. I’m staying at Father’s sister’s house. I’m fine.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: I’m sorry. I’ll come back at a better time.
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LOG DATE: 24 November 1997
KIM DOKJA: Why did you write that story, Mother?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Stop acting like a mute character. I can clearly hear you say yes to the warden.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Mother. Mother! Just answer me. Why did you publish that book?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Say something.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: SAY SOMETHING!
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LOG DATE: 2 January 1998
KIM DOKJA: I guess you’re okay. School is hell for me.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: The streets are hellish too. I keep getting hounded by reporters.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: They won’t stop camping out of Aunt’s front door.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: I don’t understand why they’re making such a big deal out of it. Domestic violence is the most common story ever.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: You’re hardly the only person who ever hurt or killed someone for their child. As long as it’s not a yandere motif, don’t people always root for that type of parent?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: You don’t care at all, do you?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Back to the press. What am I supposed to say?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Can’t you just tell me why?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Can’t you just tell me a lie?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: They keep asking me questions about us. You always said we should keep quiet about everything. Do I still have to do that?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Why won’t you talk to me anymore?
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LOG DATE: 20 March 1999
KIM DOKJA: Did you ever take a picture of us?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: They said I should have a picture stand with a family picture to heal. I’m pretty sure it would just do the opposite.
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LOG DATE: 10 January 2000
KIM DOKJA: Will you talk today?
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: See you next time.
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LOG DATE: 11 May 2001
KIM DOKJA: You look strange without Father’s bruises.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 2 July 2002
KIM DOKJA: If only the world can ignore me like you do.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 16 October 2003
KIM DOKJA: I don’t know why the fuck I’m still visiting you.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: I can’t even guess why you even still accept my visits but don’t do anything.
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LOG DATE: 29 April 2004
KIM DOKJA: -
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 16 June 2005
KIM DOKJA: Hello, Mother.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Goodbye, Mother.
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LOG DATE: 3 August 2005
KIM DOKJA: Yoo Joonghyuk.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: Have you ever heard of him? He’s the protagonist of this story I’m reading. It’s a web novel written by tls123. It’s called Three Ways to Survive the Apocalypse. It’s really really new. It’s about a regressor who time loops to the first day of the apocalypse every time he dies. The apocalypse in this story is really interesting. It’s like the tower climbing concept but the author twists it to scenarios commissioned by higher level beings who want to be entertained, so the quests aren’t as randomized or based on just kill numbers like in the related genre, though that’s still a common request. The higher level beings are antagonists of the story and they’re called constellations, based on popular lores like the creatures in Christianity or gods in Greek mythology. Yoo Joonghyuk, like the meaning of his name, has the goal of killing them. Even when he fails and dies and regresses, he doesn’t give up on that. Even though he returns to the first day and is all alone, he keeps moving forward. The story is interesting. (Read more…)
WARDEN: Time’s up.
KIM DOKJA: —till a myst—oh.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 24 December 2005
KIM DOKJA: The other readers don’t like TWSA. They keep bashing Yoo Joonghyuk because he keeps regressing. I don’t understand why they’re complaining about that. They shouldn’t read a regression story if they hate the concept of regression that much. They don’t even bother giving arguments that make sense. They hate Yoo Joonghyuk because he has too much strength and luck to hoard pretty much all the rare items that can be obtained in the early scenarios. But the regression trope is meant to justify that type of fast and unfair growth rate since the protagonist is just redoing things with better knowledge and experience. Most regression stories, especially ones that forced them to travel through time or dimension and into a child’s body, had to waste ten or twenty chapters just to rehash disbelieving scenes, goal resolution moments, and training montage arcs. TWSA doesn’t bother with that since Yoo Joonghyuk regresses repeatedly to just the first scenario. He also has an attribute that allows him to retain the skills he had gained in past loops, so there’s no need to suspend disbelief for long training montages when he had already trained for 100 years in the second regression. It’s less luck and more that he works really hard to make sure that he can create the best route like his previous runs. (Read more…)
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 4 February 2006
KIM DOKJA: TWSA has around 40 chapters now but the reader count really plummeted. It just went from 27 to 18 in the last update. A lot of the other readers just drop off after leaving a comment that TWSA’s boring. They don’t like that Yoo Joonghyuk keeps repeating the same things to not change the future too much. They’re just carelessly reapplying that trope from other regression stories. Those stories’ protagonists are crap because they made resolutions about not changing anything but then they change it anyway when they decide to save another character that’s supposed to die in previous timelines. Or if the plot forces a change by some stupid misunderstanding or accident and tries to pass it all off as comedy. If the character says one thing with so much confidence and belief but then does another thing entirely contradictory, then they’ve betrayed the readers. If Yoo Joonghyuk were like that, then I’d buy them quitting because of that sustained misunderstanding trope, but Yoo Joonghyuk never does that. His early turns have deviations which are done on purpose to find the best route for the ending that will save the most people. He doesn’t say the exact same things or do the exact same things once he knows for certain some characters are more useless or trouble than they’re worth. The only reason he’s repetitive is because the scenarios are often the same with very little variety prepared by the dokkaebi, and since these scenarios often have just one or two actions to solve them so of course Yoo Joonghyuk has to reach the same solutions. If he was just repeating the same words and actions for more than 20 regression turns already, TWSA wouldn’t be a novel but a stack of creative story school assignments full of copy pastes. (Read more…)
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 20 June 2006
KIM DOKJA: Yoo Joonghyuk’s going on a downward spiral right now. Lifetimes ago he would pick up his companions to make sure that they can be stronger and survive longer. But losing his whole world and all of his loved ones repeatedly almost broke him. He didn’t break, but he’s regressed 41 times now and he’s completely focused on just the goal rather than his companions. He doesn’t even think of them as companions. He doesn’t use the word “companion” anymore. He only thinks of them as tools. It’s not an uncommon characteristic these days, I suppose, but he doesn’t bother hiding it. Lee Jihye died and he only said that “naval warfare will be slightly more inconvenient now”. Did this bastard really have to add “slightly”? That really horrified Shin Yoosung when she heard him say that to her big sister who drowned in the ocean. I told tls123 that despite their narrative of Yoo Joonghyuk suffering so much in this regression, Shin Yoosung had it a lot worse than him. She had to watch Lee Hyunsung disintegrate to ashes by the iron-blooded dragon’s breath and hear Yoo Joonghyuk say that it was a shame that he lost a convenient shield. She was the one to find Lee Seolhwa's mangled body after the 32nd main scenario and hear Yoo Joonghyuk say that there was nothing more to say to the dead. She couldn’t do anything as Kim Namwoon gradually succumbed to his wounds and chose to die in a blaze of glory than in his bed and hear Yoo Joonghyuk say that she had to pull more weight from then on. When she finally lost any use of her limbs and couldn’t be healed anymore, she had to hear her captain demanding that she leave the worldline and travel back through time to pass information to his early regressions. Her big brothers and sisters were left behind due to their deaths but because she didn’t die immediately she was abandoned by Yoo Joonghyuk to save humanity. The last chapter is the worst so far. It never mentioned any of his companions. The Yoo Joonghyuk now doesn’t even mourn them or want to think about them. (Read more…)
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 3 August 2006
KIM DOKJA: I’m the only reader of TWSA now. The last other reader to read it had dropped at chapter 99 sometime ago. He’s infuriating! He just shamelessly copied TWSA to create their own gooseshit webnovel. The title is insanely generic! ‘SSSSS-grade Infinite Regressor’? Did they have to waste five spaces for the same letter in a row every few paragraphs? L for legendary grade would have been more than acceptable. TWSA already has sub-grades from common, heroic, fable, etcetera. He could have used M for myth, not something as arbitrary as SSSS? At least there’s a clear marker between S and SS-grades, with the triple being the glass ceiling. This plagiarist never even bothered to differentiate SSS, SSSS, and SSSSS. The fact that their caricature protagonist Yoo Joonhyun STILL regresses means that there are antagonists who kill him who are stronger than him. What, are they SSSSSS? He never clarifies! He just leaves the designation as a permanent plot hole! How can people even stand the protagonist’s one-dimensional personality? Yoo Joonghyuk is slowly shutting off his heart because he can’t stand his companions’ death over and over. It’s like stages of grief, with 41st regression being the worst. Yoo Joonghyuk is the one variable that changes in every regression and as time goes on he starts to find better ways to unearth his companions’ potential. This bawdy Yoo Joonhyun just goes straight to a psychopathic level of mindset as if he was born like that. How come people harp on Yoo Joonghyuk calling him repetitive when Yoo Joonhyun who literally knows nothing but how to swing more legendary swords than I can count and nothing else gets this elephant dung voted as number one in Textpia?! ‘Three Ways to Survive in the Apocalypse’ as a title is an interesting foreshadowing on how they incorporate the three popular tropes in light novels that are typically used independently. That undigested lump can’t even be consistent between regressor, returnee, and reincarnator. There’s no effort at all to differentiate their protagonist’s or any character’s thought processes. Stories as power in TWSA are copied like poor school homework without effort. Missions? Gold rewards? Star contracts? Interstellar clouds? Chances and devils? He just Googles synonyms for TWSA’s glossary, he doesn’t even care about meanings of names! Lee Hyungsing, Lee Jiyae, Lee Seulhwi, Kim Nangoon, and yet people still refuses to acknowledge that that clotpole fucking copied TWSA! I hope he gets signing psychosis!!! (Read more…)
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 15 August 2006
KIM DOKJA: They told me to visit you again because the new counselor thinks it’s weird that I’ve been using up all the visiting time talking at you.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: They’re under the impression that I was finally airing out my grievances when I looked like I kept yelling out my heart the other day and that I shouldn’t “lose the momentum”.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
KIM DOKJA: I figured it’s for some sort of psychology research.
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LOG DATE: 3 August 2007
KIM DOKJA: TWSA has well-passed the two hundred chapter milestone by now. I don’t think it will ever be picked up by anyone else. Every time I open the chapter list, all I see from the preview is the viewer count and comment count being 1. (Read more…)
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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LOG DATE: 3 August 2008
KIM DOKJA: (Read more…). That jerk, he’s a complete psychopath. He knows nothing but how to use people. And he’ll do whatever it takes to reach his goal. But the story won’t progress without him. The ‘Ways of Survival’ is that kind of novel. I wish this story never ends.
LEE SOOKYUNG: -
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INMATE LEE SOOKYUNG RELEASE DATE: 2 July 2009
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