YMMV / This Is A Wild Game Of Survival

• Arc Fatigue: Simply put, despite the large number of fics in this series, storylines are dragged out for much longer than they need to be. Ji-min and Na-yeon’s conflict gets the worst of it, being an important conflict for the majority of the story, and it’s still ongoing.
• Captain Obvious Reveal: Ji-min being a lesbian is pretty much spelled out in the third fic in the series but not outright stated for a long time after.
• Crazy Is Cool: What else can you call Park Mi-jin starting a fire to save her group?
• Harsher in Hindsight: Reading Ha-ri's lack of care towards any of the other Class 2-5 kids aside from her brother in the face of I-sak's death somehow becomes even worse when you learn that I-sak had a crush on Joon-yeong... who had feelings for Woo-jin, and promptly got together with him the day after she confessed to him.
• Idiot Ball: Several characters hold it throughout the series.
  • Joon-seong, when he sees Gwi-nam murdering a girl in cold blood, decides to take a picture of it with the phone they were going to use to call for help in front of the mad man. This leads to his group having a psycho killer after them and specifically after their means of getting help. As a result, the library scene happens, they lose the phone, Gwi-nam is seemingly killed but actually turned into a Halfbie, and he now wants revenge on all of them but especially Ha-ri.
  • Ji-min, desperate to keep her sexuality under wraps, does not have a calm discussion with Na-yeon, also a queer woman who was clearly nervous about the bigotry she’d receive from coming out, about her parents’ beliefs and why she can’t date her or let anyone else know the truth. Instead she insults and berates Na-yeon, ruining their friendship by the time the outbreak hits. This also would have given Na-yeon more incentive to out Ji-min than if they had an honest discussion, though luckily for her, she wasn’t so low at that point.
  • Ha-ri, of all people, gets this too. After witnessing her brother kiss his boyfriend, thinks long and hard about what she’d do if their parents found out, clearly showing that she’s thinking about his sexuality and knows how bad their family is. But by the time Woo-jin confronts her about what she saw, she somehow managed to forget about it and apparently didn’t consider that he might fear her reaction given their family life. She then berates him about a more silly grievance and manages to come across as homophobic as possible, thereby upsetting him greatly.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Ji-min is quite spiteful, taking glee in ruining Gyeong-su's chances with Na-yeon, and then insults Na-yeon after she reciprocates her own feelings, unknowingly striking a nerve by calling her 'unlovable'. She is also a gay teenager in a conservative family who risks losing her parents, who she's incredibly close to. What's even worse is that she sees her parents dead from the drone feed, and she blames herself as they came to the school to save her. And then there's her abandoning Hyo-ryung, which she did in a hysterical state.
  • Na-yeon as well, though less so. It's true that she likely earned the distaste her classmates have for her with her past classism, but she also has two parents who care little for her, had to learn that her older sister figure died through eavesdropping, has few genuine relationships before Gyeong-su, and is unfairly called unlovable by her best friend.
• Mood Whiplash: Having a flashback to Hee-su's backstory as a victim of rape as an opener for the fic where Cheong-san leaves a drunken voicemail for On-jo, one of the funniest moments of the entire series, was certainly... a choice.
• Narm: The author reeaaallly likes Dramatic Irony. The amount of times a character in one of the prequels will bring up ‘zombies’ or ‘the apocalypse’ or how absurd it would be if Na-yeon and Gyeong-su became friends or started dating or anything else that’s a Foregone Conclusion gets old.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Little focus is put on the main class throughout their time at the zombie-infested school, which is mostly justified given that the bathroom kids have a much more divergent plot thanks to Na-yeon and Gyeong-su's added presence. However, the vastly different backstories could have provided more content involving Class 2-5 and other changes (such as Ms. Park's survival) could have been worth exploring.
• Seasonal Rot: After the kids make it to the survivor’s camp, and with nearly forty fics in this series, the storylines are reaaaaallly wearing thin.
• The Woobie:
  • Woo-jin, whose parents neglect him and are so homophobic, he's actually terrified of his own friends learning of his sexuality. The fact that he was a Surprise Pregnancy and almost aborted, which his parents decided against due to convenience and later joke about, do not help matters. He has had nightmares about everyone in his life rejecting him, his sister being the person he's most scared of losing, and to top things off, when he thinks Joon-yeong likes someone else, he spends the night sobbing.
  • Also, his sister Ha-ri. She's also going to be disowned once her sexuality comes out and knows it. She loves archery but her talent is exploited by her coaches and parents, to the point she's not allowed to do anything fun that might take away from her training, leaving no room for fun. She tried to explain how stressed she was but no adults listened. Her very loving bond with her brother is damaged because she doesn't communicate her struggles to him and he doesn't tell her about his. She is so stressed that she fails the tournament that she'd been training for her entire life, and is berated by her coach, all the while knowing her parents would blame her for it and take away the few fun aspects of her life she's allowed to have. Not to mention, all her teammates besides Min-jae are jealous of her and hate her. She also spends most of Arc 2 terrified about how younger brother's fate and makes it clear that for all she's lost, she'll be completely unable to keep going if he dies.
  • I-sak as well. She has genuine feelings for Joon-yeong, and is excited to ask him out. In his panic, he responds poorly and I-sak is left devastated by the rejection. Even though she starts to feel better towards the end of the field trip, the line she uses to comfort herself 'I'm sixteen, I have my whole life ahead of me' is simply... not true, because she dies quickly after the apocalypse starts.
  • Hee-su. Bullied, neglected, the original victim of Myung-hwan. She is sexually assaulted before he loses interest in her. Still not having any friends, she finds solace in the arms of a classmate... and gets knocked up. She has no choice but to hide the pregnancy for fear of her parents' reactions, and knows she'll have to give up her son despite wanting to keep him... Ironically, when the zombies attack, things start looking up for her, as she can now start anew with her child, though as of now, she's trapped in Cheong-san Chicken.