PoetryInMotion

Kudos to Da On - that boy is a smooth talker. It would have been very easy to, I don't know, just GO AND CHECK quickly if Sohee was still waiting, but she swallowed that excuse pretty easily. I can't blame her. When you like someone that much, you want to believe the best of them. To me at least, this answers the question of whether or not he's been sending mixed signals - he most certainly has.The parents thing explains why he seeks validation from every possible source, but that's just not a healthy way to live. I will say, I respect him for the close attention he pays to the people around him and how willing he is to be understanding and give everyone the benefit of the doubt. That reassures me that there's a good heart there if he can work on his shit.

This series is really a study in the pitfalls of different styles of communication. We have Da On who's charming but dishonest and conflict avoidant; Taekyung who's straightforward to the point of bucking conventions; and Shinwoo who cares deeply but is so defensive and prickly about it that his gestures of care don't come across. I feel like everyone here can teach each other something and become a better person in the process; and I'm really excited to see how that will play out over the course of the series.

If this episode showed me anything, it was to remind me that every character here is a teenager. While I have not been one for quite a while, I do remember how hard teenage emotions and relationships can be. I might not agree with some of the behaviours they display, but then again this IS a time in your life where you learn and grow a lot.

She's a very smart woman :D

Well, I'm glad :) I was trembling with rage when I wrote that, so I was worried I wouldn't manage to keep it entirely coherent

I have to admit I don't have anything terribly insightful to say about that yet, with the small amount of information available. It could be that he just doesn't bring home every single grade and was flustered by Tae Kyung wanting him to receive praise. It could be he doesn't have parents. Or maybe his relationship with them is tense for whatever reason. If it's the latter, I could see that being the reason he is so hellbent on avoiding any kind of direct conflict in other areas of his life, though that doesn't mean that his behaviour is acceptable. Like my therapist once said: Good reason, terrible excuse.

I'm sure your family is very interesting at dinner :D And Da On is weird to me too, but in different ways lol

Anyway. Idk, I just have a different opinion on this. I believe that a story is a window into a character's mind. If a person at the dinner table does something I don't understand, I have no way of knowing for certain what lead them to do that, because I can't look inside their head. But in their mind, I'm sure that person has a reason or a cause for why they did what they did. And if they were a character in a story, I would have access to the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions that led up to them making that particular decision. So even if the action doesn't make sense to ME, I can see why it makes sense to THEM. That's what I feel like is missing in this series so far, that's why I'm interested in a possible diagnosis, that's why I'm unhappy that I have to go to a forum to maybe understand something that is happening in a story. Because I think that the information should be accessible to me within the story. Maybe it's hard to spot, that's fine. But it has to be there.

Before I say anything else, I want to apologise if my tone comes off as aggressive. I promise it's not directed at you. This character just drives me up the wall.

Da On being nice by nature and good looking actually makes it harder for me to forgive him for the behaviour I reproach him with. He's the kind of person that can easily afford to turn people down sometimes. If he does it even just semi-respectfully, most people will still like and appreciate him. And I think he knows that. He knows how to charm people, he's a good talker. We've seen him use this to smooth over and take control of situations more than once. So from that alone, I'm already suspicious. I'm supposed to believe that this person isn't savvy enough in his interactions with others to turn down things he doesn't want to do without incurring ill will? Nope. Don't buy it. I think he genuinely doesn't mind helping in most cases, but he also likes that that affords him the persona of the perfect prince school president who smiles indulgently whilst admitting that this school just wouldn't run the way it does without him. THAT'S why he always says yes, not because he's actually incapable of asserting himself.

The nail in the coffin is the thing with the phone numbers. The setup was a blind date. That means Da On knew from the get go what the girls there are hoping for. So then he charms them all through dinner, and when they pluck up the courage to give him their number he accepts it, making them think that this thing could develop into something more. All the while, he KNOWS he's not interested in these girls. He's not gonna text them, he's certainly not gonna date them. He tells Tae Kyung that he accepted because he didn't want to hurt the girls' feelings, but that's BULLSHIT. Their feelings WILL be hurt, and worse, when their phones stay silent. He doesn't care about that at all, otherwise he would have turned them down immediately. He just doesn't want to hurt their feelings right there, in front of him, where he has to see it and deal with it. He's fake, he's a coward, and he's a liar. And that pattern repeats when he lies to So Hee to get rid of her instead of being open and honest, RIGHT AFTER he waxes poetic to Tae Kyung about how rare honest people are. Like, I'm throwing up a little here.

It might have started with a genuine impulse to be kind, but right now Da On is only kind when it suits him, or when he likes the effect. To be very honest, I think it's karma that he got saddled with someone like So Hee who won't leave him alone unless he takes a very clear stand. And if he loses something important to him because his sneaky conflict avoidance tactics land him in a situation where he doesn't have the courage of his convictions, then that'll be karma too. And hopefully he'll learn his lesson without others taken in by his aura of kindness being hurt.

I think it would. I'd definitely like it!

Oh, that's interesting! I didn't know that. I remember there was an autistic character in It's Okay to Not be Okay, so I figured it wouldn't be the first time autism comes up in Korean drama and there shouldn't be a taboo, but that character couldn't function well, so maybe that's why they couldn't NOT diagnose him.

It's not even that I want to label Tae Kyung, it's just that some of his decisions genuinely confuse me if I don't view them through the lens that you and @vampysaab have provided. If I had watched the series without reading commentary on it, I would have thought that it's just bad writing. So in that way, it is important to the character, at least to me.

But I'm curious; wouldn't it also be validating/affirming to find out a diagnosis? In my case, it comforts me when a character specifically says "hey, I'm bisexual" instead of the usual "oh you know, I don't usually like my own gender, except for THIS dude!" But maybe that's not comparable?

Considering he accepts phone numbers from people he has no intention of seeing again and lies about how he'll go to meet someone when he knows he won't, I'd say Da On is quite capable of giving mixed signals. I'm not saying So Hee's behaviour is right, but goddamn.

They were released each week on YouTube for 2 hours only. I think they're still available on AIS Play, but that's unsubbed and restricted to Thailand AFAIK. Your best bet is probably DailyMotion.

Do you remember the early days of dating sims when the sprite for the main character didn't even have eyes? Those were weird times.

I like him too. That's why I'm frustrated the series hasn't been giving me more or more explicit information about him. Of course that's not all there is to a person, but knowing his diagnosis would, I think, go a long way in explaining his personality. I'm not a mental health professional and I haven't, to my knowledge, met people who have autism or ADHD, so I don't necessarily know what to look for unless someone tells me. Though from what I've read and what people here have been saying, it seems like there's a really wide variety of symptoms or combinations of symptoms out there, so maybe personal experience with one autistic person wouldn't necessarily mean I could recognise another form of autism. It's fun to learn about a character by watching their behaviour and interactions, but I feel like this is one area where it would be cool to be outright told the information about the character within the series. As I said, I don't think I would have been able to figure this out if I didn't have this forum to come to to discuss things.

I'm *this* close to printing out a picture of Nuea and using it as my daily affirmation. That's the kind of icon energy I need in my life.

then it's official! :D

We were taught in school as well, but I think that's one of those skills that you need to practice regularly because you can do quite a few things wrong if you're not used to it, especially when you're panicking

Yeah….now that you point that out I can see why Tae Kyung might be hesitant to call Da On out. But I do hope someone confronts Da On, and soon. That behavior NEEDS to stop.

Thank you for explaining that! I understand better now. Though it does make me sad that they won't just say in the series that he has autism/ that autism can look like that. If I wasn't on this forum, I wouldn't have known.

If you don't mind me asking - and if you do, please go ahead and tell me to shut up - what kind of neurodivergency do you see in Tae Kyung? I don't find him boring at all, quite the opposite, but I'm stumped by him. I want to figure him out and I can't so far. I even read up on the autism spectrum again just to make sure, but he doesn't seem to fit there. Neurodivergency is obviously a wide field, so maybe I'm not looking in the right places?

I enjoy the relationship building. I do. Every episode, we get to know everyone a little better through how they behave towards one another and it's genuinely lovely. That aspect of character building is really top notch in this series.

But - and I hate to bang on about this, but it's because it's really, truly bothering me and impeding my enjoyment - this is episode 4 now and I STILL don't really understand Tae Kyung beyond how he is in personal interactions. Nothing about his interests or his motivations beyond his style of communication and how he relates to others makes sense to me. He says, again, in this episode, that he was never interested in friends before - why is that? Did something happen to him? The way he communicates now, he's clearly interested in people. He says it suddenly changed - suddenly is right, because the change is monumental and the catalyst wasn't and I just. don't. get. it. and they won't explain it to me. Like, I WANT to know! I want to understand him! I like him, I want to get to know him better! It's honestly SO frustrating. And he doesn't show any signs of being on the spectrum outside of having difficulty in social interactions - no special interests, no stimming, OBVIOUSLY no difficulty with changing routines, he holds eye contact just fine... so that can't be it, right? Am I just dumb? What is going on here?

ALSO, I'm gonna say it now, I was right about Da On and you can't change my mind. The sheer AUDACITY of that boy to compliment Tae Kyung about being honest and straightforward and complaining about how people aren't honest enough and IN THE NEXT BREATH lying to Sohee promising her that he'll meet her in the council room when he knows full well he's going to spend time with Tae Kyung? What a spineless little weasel. People get hurt because of this bullshit and I'm mad.

is that....is that the official shipping name we're using now? can we all agree on that? because I am ON THE FLOOR