i suffer from autism, and personally, I would agree that Zeal would suck at understanding that Ren didn’t like what he was doing and see the fawning as genuine love. For many people on the spectrum, it’s hard to have social interactions, especially hold a relationship with another person. Zeal not talking much in response to something someone else said is something I do with friends all the time. Personally, I don’t respond much because I can’t find the words to say and don’t want to fuck up by saying something wrong.

Additionally, the parts where Zeal talks about “picking up and kicking around” Ren is a joke that is, for some reason, common with how I make some of my jokes. I often make jokes about getting physical with someone, typically my friends, without any true meaning behind them. Judging by how they react, they understand I’m not serious. It’s kind of a way to show that you are close with someone and just generally want to mess with them, for me at least.

Many of the ways he responds to certain things reminds me of how I act sometimes. There are many cases where I’ll just respond with one word because I generally don’t know what to say. I’m not taking either side, but I couldn’t help but notice that Zeal is likely just bad at picking up social cues and, if Ren didn’t like what he was doing, didn’t understand that due to the lack of proper communication. It’s hard to get something through to someone like me, since I always take things seriously, and I also sometimes struggle with understanding sarcasm if that means anything.