Marsh

he literally said that he pushed all his emotions down bc he was scared that Sanho would hurt him

Wow tysm for this comment. I think you're right about Tak being autistic and it brings a new perspective to him not just being a bad guy but genuinely struggling with identifying his feelings. I was wondering why he was making things so complicated but now I realize that as a neurotypical person it might be harder for neurodivergents when it comes to aspects of romantic love. It's not something I had thought about before so thank you again for writing this!

Thank you for reading this! I know that there would be a lot of people who can't recognise the struggle Tak would be dealing with, and I was shocked everytime I saw an update and no one talking about how he's likely autistic, so I just got the point where if no one else was going to point it out then I figured I should.

If not for the sake of a fictional character, then at least to make people aware that there are people irl who struggle with stuff like him, and maybe have at least one other person have a change in perspective so if they run into someone they think is bad for acting like this irl, they can maybe treat them with a bit more empathy, since I've struggled with emotional stuff before (late diagnosis) and have been accused of being a horrible person just for not exhibiting emotions in a way they think is correct.

wow ykw thank you so much for this perspective like this take makes a lot of sense !

I understand this but I genuinely don't think that the author is doing it on purpose, if you've read their other stories a lot of them are... iffy? and with being upset that people call tak a bad person, you can be neurodivergent and be a bad person at the same time, it's a reason, but not an excuse to do bad things.

Thank you for reading and engaging with this comment!

I fully understand that, trust me. I disagree with some of the things done by all the characters in this story, main and side, because people are fallible however it's important to know that people have different circumstances for how they act. Me pointing out how Tak seems to be autistic, is not me trying to defend him or anything like that because that would be infantilising- and if done to a real person it'd be pretty disrespectful. It's just that people are quick to react to stuff when they don't have a full understanding of things, me explaining how he's autistic is just that: explaining.

I'm aiming to provide insight on the "why" behind what Tak does, because it's all too easy to just go from what's on the surface. It's easy to say "you should be able to do this" about anything, whether it's about academics, social interactions, personal-health, anything like that but just like neurotypical people, autistic people have unique difficulties which shouldn't be disregarded. The difference is when a person has an understanding of their actions, a bad thing can be done by someone but if they don't understand the effect it has then it isn't good to just say "they're bad" and move on. It's when someone does bad, KNOWS they've done bad, and do nothing to rectify it, that's when you can say "they're bad" from an informed point of view.

I think a good example would be the stereotypical highschool bully, where they get mistreated or abused at home and in order to deal with those emotions they can't express without punishment in their home, they take it out on other students. Does that make the bullying right? No, but it explains the reason behind why they do it. If they are removed from the bad home environment, they would likely have no reason to bully and could possibly stop acting that way in school, just like how when Tak processes and recognises his affection for Sanho in he coming chapters, he would be able to regard and treat him more lovingly if he is the type of person who can comfortably engage with people like that, and even if he isn't he'd still be able to understand that Sanho would be a special person to him.

I've read quite a few things done by this author, however Tak has stood out the most strongly as autistic to me due to his behaviour from an outsiders perspective and from the glimpses at how he processes things when the story follow his perspective. I don't like to slap labels onto everything as it feels disingenuous, but Tak really does read as autistic and if a reader has no knowledge or understanding on autism they would likely just see him as a boring and blunt character, just like how some people see some autistic people irl.

My view on some other readers' comments is just informed by my perspective as an autistic person, and that many seem to brush Tak off and say things to insinuate that he is undeserving of love or affection because he can't easily express himself in the same way. And that's the thing that doesn't sit right with me, not that they dislike his actions or even him as a character, but this idea that he isn't acting "correct" and thus is unworthy of being loved at all.

Honestly yeah I do understand that, I think for me it's also just from bad experiences, I had a friend who was nd and they would constantly do bad things and say that it was because they were nd, but never really tried to fix anything, just like you mentioned. But I guess I mightve misread a couple things you said bc I genuinely thought you were defending him it's just that a lot of the times the story made me super uncomfortable with how borderline rapey he was

I'm sorry to hear you had a friend who acted like that. It's an unfortunate side effect of umbrella terms used for groups of people, there will always be people within communities who use the label as a shield to avoid responsibility for their behaviour, and it ultimately gives people outside the community a bad impression. It can be seen basically everywhere, like neurodivergent people, disabled people, lgbt+ people, immigrants around the world, even online in places like fandoms have these issues too, everyone's heard the jokes about k-pop stans. It's just important that people remember not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which seems less common nowadays unfortunately.

I hope you were able to confront that friend about some of their behaviour, but from my understanding it seems like they were consciously acting poorly in which case I hope you managed to cut them out of your life, if not for the sake of your mental health and interpersonal relations then at least for them to realise their behaviour shouldn't and won't be tolerated.

And it's okay, I think it's good that we can help each other understand our points by communicating clearly like this. Just as you may have misunderstood my points, I likely didn't elaborate my points clearly enough in my initial comment. I too think that there have been points in this story and many others that depict things like that, sometimes they don't even intend to or try to show it as a good thing which is the most worrying (I remember hearing from someone that in a season of GoT there was a scene depicting rape and the directors didn't even recognise it was rape, truly scary) especially since I'm aware there are very young people with internet access who can get some warped ideas on how things should be, and I can only hope they understand to keep fiction in fiction and not replicate, enable or accept behaviour like that being done by anyone.