One Of My Favorite ORV Headcanons Is That TWSA Has As Much Practical Living Advice As It Does The Metaphorical.

One of my favorite ORV headcanons is that TWSA has as much practical living advice as it does the metaphorical.

There's a 3-page long description of lsh dressing and bandaging yjh's wounds in the early rounds, intimately describing all the bruises and cuts and scrapes and the way they were handled. Kdj saw this as a humanizing moment for yjh and shipping fuel, but the next day he gets beat up by bullies and decided to dress his wounds himself since the school nurse isn't around (and they were getting tired of him anyway). It's sloppy and he had to rebandage himself after it unravelled, but it prevented an infection, and he got better over time.

In another chapter, yjh notices ljh having panic attacks in the middle of battle and teaches her a few tricks to steady your breathing and center herself faster as part of combat training. The description feels like text you'd see in a training handbook and completely breaks any sense of pacing. Kdj remembers it the next time he has one and was able to calm himself down before his relatives find him and punish him like they did before.

There was a chapter that came out around the time kdj was job hunting, where the party gets tangled in a subscenario involving securing a position through interviews. It felt contrived even with kdj's tolerance to TWSA shenanigans, but he takes note of what everyone does anyway and tries some of them in his job interviews. He comments that some of the actions felt unrealistic with his own experiences in job interviews; tls123 replied with a lighthearted apology (she's never had to bother with interviews, and she doubts she'll ever get to; she's grateful that it was still useful.)

In yet another chapter, yjh avoids the eyes of fellow incarnations and picks his words correctly in a game of three questions with nosy constellations. They were oddly dry and mundane for an apocalypse setting with superhuman powers. Kdj remembers them the next time he spots paparazzi lurking around the corners.

A chapter has yjh instructing knw, ljh and yma on how to make do with instant ramyun and add a few things to it to keep it somewhat nutritious (yjh isn't happy about it but it's the least he can do since they're gonna split for a multi-day scenario and he can't cook for them). Kdj remembers it when he tried to make ramyun for the first time in his new place after moving out of his relatives'. He remembers curling his hand to chop the scallions because knw got scolded for improper knife handling, and he remembers when to put in the egg because ljh got sternly corrected for confidently shouting out the wrong answer. Kdj didn't injure himself, and it was the fanciest and most delicious meal he ate in a while. (He remembers yjh patting his sister's head for getting everything right, and almost brings his own hands to his head before stopping; no one's gonna praise a college student for making ramyun right.)

(Kim Dokja, rereading TWSA over and over again in the train, feels the love and has no idea what to do with it.)

(05/06: added the food segment because i loved all the food-related notes <3)