kio

This webtoon could have been better. I think the author has talent and is trying their hand at writing a romance like this, but they seemed to have stumbled to the finish line. From the beginning, people already called out that Joy and Yuna were going to break up because their relationship was rushed. Now Yuna's relationship with Dahye is rushed. There was so little build-up for either relationship that it makes this GL especially underwhelming. I rushed through the end because I just wanted to get the reading done and over with.

I think what's most annoying is Dahye's behaviour and how it is rewarded at the end. She lashes out at Yuna and Joy at every instance the moment she finds out that they used to date. Even when she knows they broke up, Dahye snaps at Joy. It's pretty disappointing, knowing that Yuna ends up with Dahye who has shown herself to be irrationally jealous. She's a 26 year-old woman acting like a teenager and I got embarrassed the more I read her side of the story. She doesn't have to act perfectly, but her inability to sit down and talk to Yuna like an adult is what throws me off. The worst part is that Yuna just tolerates it when she realizes that Dahye likes her back.

I don't say this because I wanted Yuna to end up with Joy or something (I didn't care who she ended up with since they wrote Jooyoung out of the story), but because so much could have been done about the characters: Joy could have been better fleshed out, Dahye could have learned that she doesn't OWN Yuna's affection and attention, and Yuna could have grown a spine and told Dahye that her behaviour was harmful. Instead, we got two rushed, half-baked relationships, neither of which are as compelling and passionate as they could have been.

Hoping that the author of Unrequited Love Skill writes more GL. They have a knack for building suspense and tension. The art is quite beautiful and I loved to see butch rep. It's their romance that needs work. Because this could have been much, much better than what we got in the end.

I'm seeing a lot of comments complaining about Dahye being selfish and possessive of Yuna. I'm not writing this so much because I feel people should like her more--everyone has a right to like or dislike Dahye--but to set the record straight about her character and motivations.

I'd like to start off by saying that those who call Dahye selfish, cruel, insensitive, etc. are not wrong. In fact, they are correct in saying so. Dahye is all these things. However, I would like to argue that these traits make Dahye more fascinating a character.

As we have just confirmed in the latest chapter (Chapter 34), Dahye has been trying to process her own feelings for the past ten years. Ever since she was in high school, she gravitated to Yuna for reasons not even she fully understood. Perhaps it was curiosity at first or she wanted to know once and for all if Yuna was purposely stealing boys from the other girls in their grade. Dahye learns that Yuna has a strange power over boys and that she, in fact, does not care for their attention. When Dahye's crush harasses Yuna, Dahye barely hesitates to defend Yuna from him. From there, they forge a powerful friendship where both Yuna AND Dahye's feelings have flourished into something else.

However, where Yuna immediately understands her own feelings and realizes that she is in love with Dahye, Dahye chooses to ignore this development. Again, this is not because she wishes to harm Yuna but because the possibility of having feelings for Yuna is terrifying to her. We know from previous interactions that Dahye is very heteronormative. She may accept other people being gay (as we saw when she caught Jooyoung kissing her girlfriend after work), but NOT for herself.

That being said, when Dahye slowly begins to notice the signs (such as Yuna reading GL comics, having no interest in men at all, saying she prefers Dahye's company over a man's), she begins to more aggressively pursue men. Herein, we start to notice something very interesting about Dahye.

At this point, this is a theory of mine and it is never fully confirmed by this comic: Dahye does not have much interest in men either. Indeed, she has had crushes on them and dates them quite often. However, we slowly start to get the impression that Dahye is dating men because she feels she HAS to.

So, she tricks herself into thinking that her friendship with Yuna is special because Yuna is the litmus test every man must take: if the man she wants does not lose control himself around Yuna, he is Dahye's soulmate.

I am quite convinced, if not certain, that if Dahye were to finally find the perfect man who passed this test, she would not be happy with him.

Not because she doesn't like men, but because her feelings for Yuna will always be stronger. But she has tricked herself for ten years into thinking that she only likes men. She has spent a good portion of those ten years wanting to believe that Yuna is attracted to men. Now that the truth about Yuna being not only gay but in a relationship with another woman has come out, all these illusions she had painstakingly built around herself are crashing down. And she has realized, in the chaos of it all, that her feelings for Yuna are, ultimately, romantic. They might have always been romantic.

When she realizes she is jealous of Joy, she just as quickly realizes she would rather Yuna was with her. It's terribly selfish reasoning and it is insensitive to Yuna's feelings.

Dahye knows this much, but also knows that she has cheated herself this whole time. Her methods are wrong, but they are indicative of the chaotic state she now finds herself in. It's not right, but it's human.

TL;DR: Dahye is only learning about her sexuality now and is acting on instinct at this point. It's messy and ugly, but that makes her all the more interesting. Not likeable, exactly, but definitely relatable.