The cast of the webnovel Note
Ham Dan-i, a regular girl whose hobby is reading the webnovel "Law of Insomnia" suddenly wakes up to a webnovel like world where she is placed in the position of the Heroine's best friend turned enemy out of jealousy. Determined to leave the webnovel world and back to reality, Ham Dani is determined to not make an enemy out of the protagonists of the romance webnovel that she wound up in.
Except that things aren't as simple as Dan-i thought. Throughout her quest to return to the real world, Dan-i forms friendships with the characters of the fictional world, and the lines of what is her reality and what is her fiction starts to blur.
My Life as an Internet Novel (alternatively titled Inso's Law) is a webnovel written by Yuhan, with a webcomic adaptation illustrated by Ahyun. The series began in 2015, started out as a novel at Kakaopage before being adapted to a webcomic, which can be found in Kakao
.
The webcomic adaptation was localized by Tappytoons in English in 2019 and can be found here. The original webnovel has been translated to English in the Webnovel app under the title The Law of Webnovels.
Warning: A good portion of the Tropes elaborated here contains spoilers from the completed Webnovel. You have been warned.
My Life as an Internet Novel contains the following tropes:
- Amnesia Missed a Spot: In the Wham Episode, despite Dan-i being temporarily forgotten when she is forcefully brought back to reality, traces of Dan-i's presence and existence are still present. Jooin sees Dan-i's phone number registered in his contacts, and his photographic memory lets him realize that something is amiss. When Dan-i is later Ret-Gone from the memories of the main characters due to the author's actions down the line, the emotional impact that Dan-i had on them doesn't leave, and they end up feeling like something's missing.
- Becoming the Mask: For as much as Dan-i claims to not be attached to the cast of the fictional world, the Wham Episode shows that Dan-i is far more attached than she lets on and truly see the characters of the fictional world as her friends.
- Big Eater: Discussed Trope when Dan-i sees Yeoryeong eating huge servings and suffering no consequences. She mentions that Never Gets Fat is one of the tropes frequently found in webnovels.
- Cast Full of Pretty Boys: Discussed by Dan-i when she mentions tropes that can be found in romance webnovels. Played straight when she meets the four potential male leads who will interact with main character Ban Yeoryeong. Even support characters aren't exempt from this, with other pretty boys including Lee Ruda and Yeoryeong's brother, Yeodan.
- Childhood Friend: In the fictional world, Dan-i is set up to be a childhood friend of the original heroine, Ban Yeoryeong who eventually got jealous of her. One of Dan-i's objectives of survival (and hopefully returning to her original world) is to remain best friends with Yeoryeong, lest she follows her fated role in the fictional world: catching Yeoryeong's ire and suffering horrible comeuppance.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Dan-i briefly dates Yeoryeong's brother, Yeodan. This trope is later deconstructed when Dan-i realizes that she doesn't romantically like him as much as she thought, and only dated him because he's in close proximity to Yeoryeong. Yeodan eventually breaks up with her when they both decide that they're Better as Friends.
- Dude Magnet: The longer Dan-i stays in the webnovel world, the more she starts attracting romantic interest from several characters, including Jiho, Chunyoung, Yeoryeong's brother Yeodan (whom she briefly dates before breaking up), and Lee Ruda.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: The ending of the webnovel has Dan-i eventually choosing to stay in the fictional world, but it took a hell lot of turmoil to get there.
- Generic Cuteness: Dan-i is considered to be rather plain looking, but she's overall depicted as pleasantly cute. This is actually something of a plot point: her looks were improved by entering the web novel, and she explicitly had issues with her complexion and generally wasn't regarded as good-lookng. Even a side character needs to have a certain level of attractiveness, apparently.
- Genre Deconstruction: Of the Trapped in Another World variety combined with Media Transmigration. To note:
- In these stories, the protagonist often have enough knowledge of the setting they are in and use the knowledge to properly advance the scenario so they can quietly leave and return to their original world. Dan-i, however, has no knowledge of how the media transmigration happened due to actually being alive unlike the other protagonists of the similar genre, and only managed to move forward for as long as she did out of Genre Savvy-ness. Then the Wham Episode hits and it's revealed that Dan-i is always thrown back to her original world every March 2nd if she starts thinking that the people in the fictional world are real and had to persistently think and remind herself that she is in a fictional world out of fear that she'd leave the new friends she made in the new world behind so she is torn between wanting to stay in the new world or return to where she originally came from.
- Later on, Dan-i is revealed to be at risk of being erased from the memories of the fictional characters due to meeting the author who wind up in the fictional world as well, as she told Dan-i that not only was Dan-i not supposed to be there, the author's "editor" can still influence the story to a degree. Unlike the rest of the cast and contrasting similar stories where a person who reincarnates as an extra in the original story end up becoming part of the major narrative on their will, Dan-i is at risk of being axed and doesn't have the same plot protection that Yeoryeong and the boys had.
- Genre Savvy: Dan-i, due to her avid reading of webnovels, is savvy and recognizes at least some of the tropes and cliches in a common Korean romance webnovel. However, that doesn't mean that Dan-i is always 100% savvy, such as when she mistook Lee Ruda for being a girl in disguise when the other characters knew that Ruda is a boy.
- I Choose to Stay: The end of the webnovel has Dan-i eventually choosing to stay in the fictional world due to her growing attachment to the characters, whom she start to see as real people, and pursues a relationship with Jiho.
- Lady Looks Like a Dude: Discussed Trope that is ultimately a Defied Trope. Dan-i assumes that Lee Ruda is this trope due to genre conventions, but he actually is a man.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Due to Dan-i being Genre Savvy, she'll often note and lampshade tropes that are commonly found in Korean romance webnovels in her own inner narrative.
- Metaphorically True: The closest to the truth that Dan-i can tell her new friends of what plagues her early on is telling them how she had a dream every year about being in a world where they don't exist. Though what happens was the opposite, it still remains the closest to thing that Dan-i can tell her new friends in the fictional world without compromising them with even more existential crisis about how they're fictional and that Dan-i wasn't supposed to be here.
- Morton's Fork: The Wham Episode reveals that Dan-i's existence runs in this trope. If she gets attached to the fictional world and it's characters, she'd get sent back to her original world, but even after she starts consciously making the decision to think that she's stuck in a fictional world and had to get back to her original world, it would leave her stuck in the fictional world. No matter the decision, Dan-i ends up suffering from it mentally and emotionally.
- Never Gets Fat: Discussed at one point by Dan-i as one of the "rules" of webnovels, prompted when she sees Yeoryeong eating a lot without suffering any repercussions from it.
- Next Life as a Fictional Character: Dan-i starts out being placed in a typical webnovel scenario. However, unlike the common examples in this trope, Dan-i is not only still alive, she was later revealed to have been sent to the webnovel world by accident due to the author's Reality Warper powers.
- Reality Warper: The author of "Law of Insomnia", No Ari, has this power, which is how Dan-i ends up trapped in the fictional reality: No Ari accidentally magicked Dan-i and herself into the fictional world that she created.
- Trapped in Another World: A Deconstruction of the genre. The story starts with Dan-i waking up in a world that would better fit a romance Webnovel, but her immediate concern is trying to leave the fictional world and return to reality. But things aren't as simple as that, and Dan-i ends up stuck in the fictional world for years.
- Uptown Girl: Gender-inverted. Due to the boys being rich and having a higher social standing, their relationships with Ban Yeoryeong and Dan-i come off as inter-class romance.
- Ship Tease: Dan-i has heavy Ship Tease with both Jiho and Chunyoung over the course of the story with Jiho ultimately being the one that Dan-i falls in love with. Meanwhile, Ban Yeoryeong has Ship Tease with Eunhyung.
- Wham Episode: A year after getting used to life in the fictional world, Dan-i is forcefully returned to the real world and realizes that her sense of reality is getting blurred. When Dan-i disappeared, everyone in the fictional world forgot about her until she came back half a day later. The incident forces Dan-i to remember that she is stuck in a fictional world, and if she started to see any of her new friends as actual people rather than characters from a fictional work, she'll disappear and be forced to return to reality.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Played for Laughs regarding Dan-i's assumption of Lee Ruda's backstory. She assumes Ruda is a crossdressing girl who had to enter the school as a boy to protect herself, but in reality, he is male. The misunderstanding lasts for several chapters.
