The Player With a Hidden Past - Chapter 5

Okay, everyone seems confused on how the MC and his character “persona” are meant to function. I don’t think it’s that complex. Like, really? It’s pretty clear it’s like he’s in a forced roleplay. Sometimes the execution is a little odd, but the actual mind of the MC controls things like movement and choosing actions as long as they don’t break the character persona. In other words, he can’t act OOC.

The thoughts affect the main body, but they’re put through a characterization filter, hence the way of talking. And if the MC wants to eat junk food or (for some reason), not fight a demon, the character is likely to rebel. The only thing that seems a little out of place is when the MC praised his persona for having a cringey but useful skill (being able to copy magic after seeing it once) and the character responded with “rude.” That was out of place because it was a more direct response to a thought that was directed towards him rather than information in those thoughts. Otherwise, most of the “conversation” between the MC and the persona could be seen as one-sided from the MC’s perspective and analyzing information from thoughts in the persona-filter from the character’s perspective.

Sometimes it seems as if the personas are different people, which…yeah. They kind of are. But the character is acting according to how he was written by the MC over a decade ago. The reason why the persona is so dominant is because he was in a time of his life where kids are particularly imaginative and immerse themselves more-or-less fully into these characters they create for themselves. Most people probably created characters like most people would, without getting too mentally immersed in a clearly fictional background and persona.

And since the webtoon has already established that becoming a player kind of feels like “being yourself, but more” or a more-or-less even combination of character and real-life person, it makes sense to an extent. Being a player means linking the character and the person together, which brings the stats and personality. But again, most people tend to play a variant of their own personality in their characters. Or, there’s at least more of a barrier between them and their characters. But at the time, the MC basically *became* his character, or was at least attached to it enough to want to emulate at least some of its qualities. So having such a retroactive transformation into a player means that the MC probably has to contend with what is probably 2/3 of his personality being totally different to his current self. I imagine there will be a more even meld eventually, but for now, the MC is more-or-less forced to roleplay his cringey middle-schooler idea of a “super cool” character.