"Do you know what I want of life? That I can be with you. You, you, all of you.
And If life repeated a thousand times. Still you, you and again you."
— Forough Farrokhzad
“I just want to live my own life. I want to live as the Eun Dan Oh who says and does what she wants. (...) Let’s change our fate together.”
She was supposed to die
There is much to say about Eun Dan Oh, but there are two things I want to discuss first. Number one, I feel strongly that she was not supposed to live till the end, and that there could be no other protagonist of the show other than her.
To start the first one off, here is the character sheet for ‘Secret’.
Here, Eun Dan Oh is right down in the really extra characters, whereas Kim Ae-Il is actually right beside Baek Kyung. In contrast to this, over the course of the story, Dan Oh gets a lot of screen time (page time?), with her heart disease, Bake Kyung’s changed feelings towards her, the healing of her heart, and the ‘happy ending’ for them, whereas Kim Ae-Il barely has any lines at all.
This means that Dan Oh, by constantly changing the stage and bringing herself to the author’s attention, added to her importance in the story. It is possible that Baek Kyung’s changed feelings in the shadow also impacted the stage.
Secondly, is this line by Dried Squid Fairy. When Lee Do Hwa asks him if its possible that Eun Dan Oh might die.
“It is only possible because she is an extra.”
This hints at the fact that if she become more important to the plot, i.e. not just an underdeveloped extra, she might live. Now as we know, by changing the stage constantly, and sometimes becoming a part of them, she became more important to the plot. If she had not, she’d have still been an extra, and possibly died.
My third argument is the storyboard that Eun Dan Oh sees of her surgery before she dies. The doctor shouts out her name in despair, a teardrop falls from her eye, and most importantly-- she visibly flatlines in the storyboard.
When Haru switches the medical papers, this surgery goes to Ju Da’s grandmother-- as per what we already know, she must now technically face the same fate as Dan Oh in the storyboard.
That however, does not happen. When both Lee Do Hwa and Oh Nam Ju talk about the surgery, they express that the surgery went ‘well’. Of course, flatlining during a surgery is not great, and definitely causes complications, so the fact that Ju Da’s grandmother doesn’t face much means that not only were the roles switched like they are every time, but the basic story in itself changed.
It makes a lot of sense to me that initially Eun Dan Oh was destined to die. She would be an extra that could be killed off without much pain to the readers, but the incomplete love story between her and Baek Kyung would force the readers to now look for, and root for, a reciprocated one-- Nam Joo and Ju Da. This trope (unfinished love story of the second or third leads) is often used in romances and many k-dramas, and it makes sense that this is what the author wanted to do.
However, Eun Dan Oh becomes more than just a love-bridge, and forces her way into making more and more pages for herself, allowing her character to develop fully.
Her Philosophy
The second thing I wanted to talk about is her way of looking at things, and why it means she is the only person who could have been the protagonist of Extraordinary You.
"Because my life belongs to me.”
This is one of the first things that Dan Oh says when she finds out she’s a comic character. In fact she also says something similar later on when she loses her self-awareness. Even in that state, Eun Dan Oh is adamant on writing her own story. It is this persistent need that pushes her and all the other characters to change the stage. She is the one who pushes Do Hwa to go to Ju Da, and the one who pushes Baek Kyung to find his real self too.
“I’m going to change it (the stage) until the end.”
Like Soo Hyang had said before, people’s version of happiness or fate is different for everyone. While Ju Da thinks she’ll be happier following the fate of her character, it is only Eun Dan Oh who is confident that a happy ending is one which she writes on her own. She believes that changing the stage i.e. taking the narrative of the story under her control, and rebelling from the writer is the most significant thing to do. While other characters eventually cave in to the author, it is Dan Oh who rises time and again to change the stage.
"I chose to like Haru and I choose to change the stage.”
One of her most powerful beliefs is the faith she has in the power of choice. It is what helps her overcome the fear of the previous novel, and of dying-- that, in the shadow the actions and feelings and motivations she has are the real ones, because she chooses to have them everyday. It also helps her deal with the consequences of her actions-- that they’re due to the choices she made, rather than the ones that were thrust upon her.
“They all have their stories, and the things that are precious to them, but they have no choice but to do whatever the writer wants.”
In the world of comics, everyone has their designated positions. There’s the male lead, the female lead, supporting roles, and extras. The time you get, the character depth you have all depends upon this hierarchy. Eun Dan Oh is the one who discards this completely, treating each person, not as their role, but as real people. “In Eun Dan Oh’s world, you (Haru) are the male lead.” Her wish of being more than an extra is not to be the main character in the author’s story, but to get more depth and justice to her personality and character.
“They are cliches, but we’re the only ones who know how cruel and sad this is. Because we’re just Dan Oh and Baek Kyung before our characters.The Dan Oh of ‘Secret’ wants to thank you, and the Dan Oh of ‘Trumpet Creeper’ forgives you.”
Eun Dan Oh, by viewing characters as people first, puts into motion the thought process that finally ends the cycle of pain and hatred among everyone. She forgives him for killing her, Jimichi Fairy forgives him for killing his lover, Baek Joon-Hyun lets go of Trumpet Creeper too. This lets the characters let themself develop into breathing beings, instead of just their roles, and break free from the author’s constraints.
My favourite of course, is her take on why they keep on repeating lines, which I’ve spoken about in the post about the Trumpet Creeper here.
Eun Dan Oh is one of the most incredible characters, for her determination, persistence, and her way of thinking. She emodies the butterfly, the smallest flutter of whose wings brings about the biggest typhoons.
