u/May-Marzo

A bit ago I saw an apparent list of all the songs that would be in V1 of the reboot of hypno's lullaby mod and I was wondering, are they all supposed to be set in a disjointed but linear timeline, or will be? For reference, my understanding is that the song list is all reboot versions of the songs from v2 plus an known king song and pico remixes of the three hypno songs.

This mostly gets asked because some of the songs like pasta night, isotope, missingno and the 2 shinto songs being a little impossible to fit into the same world as the three currently in the mod due to the songs I mentioned very much playing into the world being a game.

I know very little about the actual plans, I can speculate somethings like reboot boyfriend encountering buried alive. Frostbite takes place before monochrome. Unown king song either involving pico or red.

To ask simply, are all the songs a disjointed but linesr continuity, or are they like v2 and only some are in the same world as others.

Yesterday, another post discussing how Regression and reincarnation killed creativity and in some ways they are right but there's somethings more fundamental to it. A root issue that is so commonly seen that they did briefly touch on but didn't go further into and that's the very simple idea:

An MC that knows everything until the plot says otherwise.

That, in my opinion, is the core issue of manhwa and every trope feeds into this. The gameification and system tropes, transmigration into a book or video game, Regression. All feed into the very core idea that has killed creativity because it touches on a very simple escapism idea. And to a reader, the idea of "knowing everything that is going to happen means i can plan for it. And when things dont happy as I expected, things will still turn out good for me because those unexpected things are a boon."

With that prefaced, I'll explain why each trope links back to the simple idea of it. First the key perpetrator, Regression.

Regression is simple, MC dies, goes back in time with all memories and maybe even abilities kept in tact. We all pretty much know this if you've read webtoons for long enough. The problem with this trope is what happens after because it falls into two categories usually differed by the main genre of the series being either historical romance, or action fantasy. Those being "get all the boons of the past I conveniently know about" on the action side or "avoid my fate by making things better for the people that will kill me" on the other.

For the first one of those things I've mentioned, you will see it that often the MC will somehow just get everything they need with little to no struggle and find themselves able to get whatever they need using knowledge of their past life one after the other with little resistance from any enemies. You'll see it happening where theres 'Macguffin A' in 'Location B' that got up by 'Cool Guy from the future C'.

Somehow, the MC will know everything there is to know about getting this artifact and being able to show off to whatever rabdom party member is with them at the time. After which they may show off the new Macguffin and move onto getting the next one

The problem about this, theres no mystery or stakes. The MC knows too much that there is no reason to be engaged cause you know the MC will get it without issue.

It's worse in my opinion in historical romance regressions in that until a certain point, the MC will know that a specific person will kill them and want to avoid that fate and so they manage to avoid it, in like the first 5 chapters. After that, whatever might have lead them to die is pretty much dealt with yet they are so utterly convinced that they will still die, even when it's glaringly obvious whoever wanted them dead in the first place no longer does. So now you had an MC that knew too much, that once that knowledge is no longer useful, they just look like a bumbling idiot whos afraid of being killed by a guy who is so utterly enthralled by them.

Regressions problem to me get exacerbated by a trope I like to call 'Revenge regression' which is as such. A situation where individuals from the future betray or ruin the MC before they regress. My big problem of this trope is that the person the MC wants to have revenge on is not the same person that betrayed them because everything that lead to the betrayal didnt happen in that timeline, so any idea of revenge feels stupid as the joy and stakes are not there. The timeline the MC originally came from likely still exists so the version of that character or characters deserving of revenge still get everything they wanted and more. In fact, this highlights Regressions biggest issue to me in how do you resolve the original timeline and what was left there because most Regressions no longer seem to care about what was left, only trying to fulfill some certain feeling of undoing regrets while ignoring the world those regrets were built on.

Moving on, when you replace Regression with transmigration, I think the idea of an "MC knowing too much is even more infuriating". In action fantasy, not much has changed beyond survival which is like eh. You're a guy in a world with no one to love and nobody who really thinks much of you, you're basically an entity designed to kill giant monsters and look cool. At least Regression ones usually have stake with family surviving.

But for historical romance, it's issues remain around an mc from modern Korea being so stupidly blind in thinking that a story is so predetermined that going from knowing everything, to looking like a complete buffoon when things obviously change is sad. But hey, don't worry, the hot MC who would have killed you in 3 months if you didn't do one oddly specific thing can save you.

What this essentially boils down to is an MC with complete knowledge of the plot and knowing where things are, until they don't and then the author checklists the next trope of an MC completely lost in the face of a love interest who they still think hates their guts or is for some reason too dense to realise their love (looking at you sashimi knife and extras academy).

This "MC knowing too much in one moment" is a Fundamental part of the gameification of manhwa with the systems in this way. Systems and status windows allow for easy narrative knowledge to be given to the characters and being able to understand the opponent they are fighting, removing any surprises that the MC might face, boiling any high level fights to simply a numbers game. The only time their might be surprises is the cliche phase shift but even thats just another numbers game and once the MC removes that initial surprise, just read the statis window of the enemy and you have everything you need to know.

This is just what I think the problem is. Not transmigration or regression as a whole. Simply that authors paradoxically want the MC to know everything and somehow retain knowledge over many years of ecerything they need, until they need to fulfill a certain cliche and somehow the MC no longer knows anything. And it's always just some regukar schmuck who happened to hace this one hyper fixation on the thing they've been playing or reading in the case of transmigration.

Despite how negative I was here, I don't actually always hate the tropes here. Hell I called out two webtoons earlier I do kinda enjoy. Even some really tropey ones can be fun if you just don't try to think critically of it.

Anyway, rant over. That's that.

Please check out the post that inspired me to make this here: https://www.reddit.com/r/webtoons/s/v831Aslz7Y