The truth about our characters is trickling in and everyone seems to be super emotional. Whether that emotion is love or jealousy depends on whether we are in the stage or in the shadows.
Jealous Baek Kyung
I feel so bad for Baek Kyung. Not only is his setup to be emotionally abused by his family, but he is losing the female he has feelings for. Of course, he should have realized that before and maybe had some anger management counseling. He also discovers that He, Ha Ru, and Dan Oh are recycled characters from a past comic series. One where they were the love triangle. Talk about a messed up existence.
Recycled characters equal lazy writing
We learn, through the non-evil (yet still annoying) Squid Fairy that the writer of the comic is a bit lazy. Not only does he/she write in the tropiest of tropes, but he/she just uses the same phrases and characters for his/her various books. Hence the characters starting to become self-aware as well as repeating their past battles in the stage and shadow world.
Dan Oh just can’t seem to stay out of the hospital
Most of Dan Oh’s storylines this week revolved around two things. One is Ha Ru, which we will discuss soon. The other is her ever-increasing pain and weakening heart. She gets blipped to the hospital constantly and is forced to stay long term in the hospital as her health worsens.
Teenage romance
For those of you who are Team Ha Ru, the writer gave you all the feels you could possibly want. Ha Ru and Dan Oh are nauseatingly in love and oozed romance everywhere they went. Visually it was very romantic although I do wish I felt there was more depth to the romance.
Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!
Dan Oh makes a date to see Ha Ru at a special anniversary of a 300-year-old tree. It is no great surprise that this tree probably has its roots in the previous manhwa novel. Due to Dan Oh’s poor health, she is forced to miss their meetup because she spends a whole month blipping in the hospital. Even worse, anytime Ha Ru tries to run to her he also is blipped back to the school. Someone really doesn’t want these two to hook up. Despite the writer’s best efforts, our two lovebirds eventually connect at the tree and declare their love. This, of course, leads to a super sugary romantic kiss.
My Thoughts
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still really enjoying the conversation that history is repeating itself and the OTP is destined to have a tragic ending. I also wonder if it was really Ha Ru that got the girl the first time around or whether he was only a second lead. That would explain the really odd dynamic between him and Baek Kyung.
Now to the part I am really struggling with. What happened to the spunky Dan Oh? Now she literally can’t go a whole conversation without spouting out Ha Ru’s name a million times. Her only thoughts revolve around Ha Ru and she has kind of lost her identity as it becomes that of a leading lady. All of the cutesy couple stuff was adorable but the only moment that really gave me any real feels was the ending when they were trying to get together. Can’t we have layers to our characters or do we have to settle for the tropes that the story was trying to break? I’m hoping for a little bit more depth next week.
Til the next glitch,
Kmuse
Dramas With a Side of Kimchi
I found it really interesting that Dan Oh is only half aware. She doesn’t remember the previous story and is literally just repeating lines from that story, albeit to different people sometimes. So while she is aware that she is a character, I would not call her fully aware like Ha Ru or Squid Fairy because they remember the other incarnations of their characters. That explains why she has lost some of her layers…in a way, she has become just a different version of Joo Da. It makes me sad for her, instead of the annoyance I have toward Joo Da’s flatness because Dan Oh is so close and still not quite there.