beta
Just to be clear, firstly, I am not using this to justify her current behavior. She is a full grown adult now, grown ass woman. But I feel like a lot of people here are jumping to vilify Doyeon's childhood self for trying to be a people pleaser. She was being what she thought everyone wanted her to be and I really wouldn't jump to calling a child starved for parental love the devil. She wasn't evil as a child, she was desperate to be loved. As an orphan, she is bitter that she had to watch all these other kids get adopted while she was thrown to the wayside and expected to be the mature one, taking on the role of the adult as a child. Being forced to grow up early as a child is proven to stunt your development in other ways. Doyeon's story of being a people pleasing child is NOT a new one, it happens to a lot of older orphans, and I don't appreciate you guys calling her an evil child for having abandonment issues at that time. She wasn't getting adopted and I'll be honest she probably left immediately because she thought he'd change his mind because NO ONE SHOWED INTEREST IN ADOPTING HER! She was a desperate child at the time!
Not to mention she's an unreliable narrator on her own terms, so I think she was intentionally framing that behavior like that to reinforce to herself that she is a bad person even as a child. I think that if she was properly placed into therapy after being adopted, she probably could have unpacked some of those problems instead of continuing to cork all her emotions and stunt her own emotional development to a dangerous degree. As an adult, she is responsible for her actions, especially if she is becoming a danger to someone else in her life. Just because someone had a bad childhood, does NOT mean that they're justified to become abusive to the people who they covet in adulthood. Her actions are evil and even if I understand on a clinical and psychological level why she is the way she is, it doesn't justify those actions in her adulthood. I don't want you to take me explaining that "what she was doing when she was like 12 years old shouldn't be taken as evil" as "what she is doing now is okay".
I just don't think we should put "lying about how happy you are as a child in hopes adults will like you more" on the same level as her current actions even if she insists on framing it like that herself to justify to herself that she has always been evil and broken even when she was just a vulnerable child.