Chapter Text
Prefacing this before hand, everyone is gonna have different takes on a character's lore, someone may read a character’s action and see it as justified and another person may see it as evil. This is just my interpretation.
All-Kill has some of my favourite lore in dbd i’ve seen in a while for the sole reason that the killer and survivor could swap spots and they could fit perfectly. We also don’t have any Trickster or Yun-jin tome lore yet which basically means i’m starving for content and i’m pulling at straws for anything.
Yun-jin has this undeniable determination to survive and it’s something that we see really early on in her story. At the age of ten she was forced into this parental role of taking care of her sister after her parents started working day and night to pay off their debts.
And something that I find really weird, but also interesting, about this part of her base lore is that this is the last we hear about her parents. Despite the fact that she gains all this fame and money, something that we know she always wanted and is something her family likely still needs, we never hear any mention of them again. Nothing about sending money home, or even if her family got out of debt, they’re just kinda tossed to the side.
Now obviously from a ‘this is a game’ perspective this is because they’re not just gonna put all their eggs in one basket and give us all of Yun-jin’s family lore right off the bat, but i’m not waiting however long till they decide to give us her tome lore so consider this a ‘what I think will happen’ and then i’ll edit this later or something.
So with her family no longer being mentioned at all we are left with one of three outcomes. Her family paid their debts and are living happily somewhere, her family died sometime after she got famous due to debt collectors if they were the shady kind, or, what I think is the most interesting outcome, she cut contact with her family after she started working for Mightee One.
We’ve seen that status and wealth mean a lot to her, hell she was willing to ignore murders if it meant saving her career, so it’s not completely out of the realm of possibilities that she would cut off her family if it meant furthering her career.
Maybe, while still working as an intern, her being from a poor family was something she was ridiculed for and, in an attempt to further her potential career with the company, she disowned her family. If this is the case it would even further prove how cunning she is and how willing she is to not go back to being poor.
(I would just like to preface that I don’t know korean culture and have no idea if this is even something that could feasibly happen, but since dbd’s lore kinda bends the rules a bit we’ll just ignore it.)
Jumping forward in the story to the fire at the studio, we find out that Yun-jin just fully leaves everyone as she escapes the fire and makes no attempt to see if her band are following her. Citing her lore word for word, it specifically says, “As they were recording new tracks, the fire alarm suddenly blared. Concerned for her safety, Yun-Jin hurried to evacuate the building and left the dallying staff behind. Only when she bolted out into the street that she realized NO SPIN was nowhere amongst the coughing crowd.”
Based on the wording of the text we can assume that Yun-jin was in the room with NO SPIN (minus Ji-woon) when the fire started. She essentially just left her band to potentially die, not even bothering to look back or even just hold the door open while they left the room.
And then one paragraph later we see how she felt over the death of four of her clients. To quote it specifically, “ All members of NO SPIN perished in the fire except one: Ji-Woon. The album was ruined. The band was over. She would be shelved while Ji-Woon would rot away as an instructor for idol trainees. But she refused to be a victim who watched helplessly as vultures swooped in to take what was hers.” She seemingly never felt any sadness or grief over the four deaths, only this sheer determination to make sure that she, along with Ji-Woon, weren’t just shoved to the side.
And then we get to what I think is just the wildest thing in this entire story, which doesn't get talked about enough, Yun-Jin asks Ji-Woon (whom from now on i’ll refer to as Trickster) to write a song about the death of his four bandmates. See, we as the omniscient reader know that Trickster never felt any grief or sadness over the loss of his bandmates, but to Yun-Jin he was this grieving boy. And there’s the additional fact that she seemingly approached Trickster not long after the deaths, as based on the wording of the lore Yun-Jin likely asked him to write about his dead friends less than a month (if that) after they died and he failed to save them.
We then get to where Yun-Jin somewhat discovers what Trickster has been doing. She knows that he’s been killing people, despite trying to rationalize and ignore what is staring at her, she actively chooses to ignore and continue to work with Trickster for several months.
And then it all bites her in the ass when she is forced to watch the executives of Mightee One get killed in front of her. And when the Entity pulls her in, she chooses to welcome it. Unlike almost every other survivor she doesn’t fight back or attempt to stop the Entity, she actively chooses to welcome the darkness.
And then we get to Trickster’s just clusterfuck of a lore.
If you’re like me and you read both character’s lore back to back, there's almost this weird disconnect between the two stories. Despite the stories being so interwoven together there’s this almost stylistic difference between the two. With Yun-Jin we got a lot about her inner drive and why she does what she does, but with Trickster we really don’t get anything.
All we get for Trickster’s motive is “He likes attention.” Which really gives us nothing to work with. We don’t even get why he likes attention so much. It’s mentioned super briefly that his dad wanted him to become famous because he couldn’t, but it’s mentioned so briefly that it can’t be his main motive.
We then get to Trickster’s side of the murders and it’s honestly just a whole lot of nothing. His writing is just paragraphs upon paragraphs about how he’s so desperate for attention but up to this point we haven’t had any reason to care. By this point in Yun-Jin’s lore we’re either relating to or hating her actions and emotions, but with Trickster we’re just reading begrudgingly as he kills people.
It’s almost like he was made with the intention of emulating this Joker esc idea, but he wasn’t given any of the interesting traits those characters have. Meanwhile Yun-Jin is given so much personality that she arguably is one of the most well written characters in Dead By Daylight on base lore alone.
And Trickster’s lack of anything could almost be forgiven if it weren’t for the fact that his lore is so interwoven with Yun-Jin’s that you can’t read one without the other.
We then get to the only really interesting part of Trickster’s lore and that’s his relationship with Yun-jin. She sees him as a pawn, someone she can use to further her career while also helping him with him, but Trickster sees her as this force determined to make sure his dreams come true.
And this becomes super clear at the end of his ‘show’ where he kills the executives at Mightee One. He makes sure that Yun-Jin is watching before killing everyone, after which he approaches her. The wording of this is something that i find really interesting, to quote is specifically, “ Covered in sweat and blood, an exhausted Ji-Woon looked to Yun-Jin and bowed. Curtain call. He had attained perfection. With blade in hand, he made his way to Yun-Jin, prepared to tie up loose ends before the credits rolled.”
It specifically mentions that, to Trickster, his show is over. As he goes in to kill Yun-jin he isn’t planning on torturing her like he did to everyone else, he seems to only want to kill her out of a need to tie up loose ends. And, based on how he approaches her with only a single knife, it seems it was planning on making it just a quick mercy kill.
So after that long ass lore, what are we left with? A survivor who could easily fit as a killer and a killer with all the potential but none of the execution. And while I’m perfectly happy with how the chapter turned out, I can’t help but wonder how it could’ve been if the Entity decided that Yun-Jin could play killer over Trickster.
We would get this super interesting story about Yun-Jin finally getting the upper hand after trying so hard to fight for success while also getting this cool idea of a survivor being a straight up murderer! We’ve had survivors who’ve killed a person or two before but never one who’s killed at least well over a dozen. It could’ve been a really interesting dynamic to explore with us having a killer with no kill count pre-entity and a survivor with a kill count in the dozens.
As I said though I do still greatly enjoy the chapter, I just wish we would’ve gotten a bit more. It’s just a fun chapter, nothing more nothing less. And that honestly seems to be the common opinion on All-Kill. Yun-Jin is fun to play but not very good, Trickster is fun to play but not very good, and the lore is fun to read but also not very good. It’s just a good, completely average chapter in every way.
Small little headcanons/random thoughts cause this chapter is very funny to me:
Conspiracy theory that shouldn't be taken seriously please don’t sue me time! Back when the chapter was first announced I remember someone saying how people actually involved in the kpop industry were helping Behavior so they could make the chapter more authentic. Here’s the theory, what if the original idea for the chapter was to have the kpop star be the survivor while the producer would be the killer but, due to how kpop stars in the real world are treated, someone helping Behavior out may have told them to swap them. Since, y’know, having the chapter’s lore be “This producer abused their client and now the producer continuously kills said client over and over again” may not be the best. It could also explain why Yun-Jin’s lore is so ‘original dbd killer’ like while Trickster’s is more ‘i’m the joker baby’. Again, probably not true, please don’t sue me.
Yun-jin had Trickster do a lot of interviews post-fire and it was so common for him to just say the most sus shit ever. Like the interviewer would ask him something like “What’s your favorite type of music?” and he just goes “The sounds of people screaming.” with just no emotion. Yun-jin immediately is like “He’s a really big fan of metal music!” and tries to get Trickster to talk as little as possible during interviews. Because of this, Trickster was always seen as this lowkey intimidating but endearing guy who says random shit and has a pretty dry sense of humor.
Just imagine your listening to the Trickster's new song, there’s a pause, the sound of blood curdling screaming out of nowhere, and then the bass drops. The fact that nobody caught on to how his music all has someone screaming in it is amazing to me, but also I would absolutely stream his songs across all platforms.
And you know someone on twitter would be like “does anyone else find it weird how all of tricksters music has screaming in it :/” and then twitter user TrickstersBigToe comes out of nowhere with a 20 page long google doc about how “The screaming in Trickster’s music represents his inner turmoil and grief over losing his bandmates in a tragic fire. As we can see with the evolution of his music, the screams start to become more overt and louder, almost as if it’s a cry for help.”
It’s me, I'm TrickstersBigToe.
Alternate Universe where instead of Trickster killing people after his bandmates die he is overcome with grief and Yun-Jin becomes his abusive producer who forces him to continue performing despite him not wanting too. Then Trickster becomes a survivor and Yun-Jin a killer after Yun-Jin accidentally kills one of the executives in a fit of rage after they hated Trickster’s final performance. Let my boy have some personality I can’t write about only his looks I need more.
Anyways stan Trickster