etoks21

Oh, I recognize you! You're one of the frothing fangirls from the KP thread. Kidding!

First you say " it's okay to make changes, take directorial liberties, and interpret any way you want," and then contradict yourself by saying it's NOT okay in the KP case because you didn't LIKE the particular changes, liberties, and interpretations that were made. "Any way you want" means "any way you want."

I'm not saying you have to like the adaptation, but the hysteria and outrage in that thread was so over the top as to be unbelievable, like a K-Pop fangirl page gone mad after one of its idols changed the color of his hair without permission from them.

I only liked about three episodes and saw the rest as the usual Thai garbage. The funniest scenes were of Vegas supposedly torturing and raping Pete for his perverted satisfaction, except that it appeared to be staged and acted out by a middle school troupe. The fake whipping, badly faked whip marks, and fake blood were outrageously amateurish.

KP got a 4/10 from me.

It's MDL. Black is white. Up is down.

It's a fascinating aspect of human perception and memory that ten people can remember an event they all witnessed in ten different ways. This was one time I got it right on first viewing. I've learned during these two years of interacting with you on MDL, that my first impression is very often not accurate.

To anyone who still thinks A-kun did you-know-what on purpose.
Watch the scene and pay attention. The camera, in crucial closeups, gives us all the information we need to know it was an accident, not the least bit deliberate.
I was surprised to find people thought otherwise, as even on first watch, there is nothing there to indicate it was anything other than what it was, a horrible accident, caused by drunkenness and an unstable, loose you-know-what that gave way under pressure.

There is no need to rely on the Manga to reach this conclusion. For the hundredth time, numerous important changes are OFTEN made during adaptations from print to live-action. What I describe above is made clear by the fine direction, staging, props, and acting of the production crew alone.

Mangas are one thing. Live-action is another thing. The latter is not intended to be a frame-by-frame reproduction of the former. It cannot be, as they are two entirely different mediums. Some live action versions try as hard as possible to go frame-by-frame with a Manga, and others use the Manga merely as the inspiration for the story as told in the Manga, often with major changes to the plot and aspects of character. Either way, it's never wise to see a Manga as a mere storyboard for the adaptation, because that's not what it is, nor can it be.

This is why I most often do the opposite of what many movie/series viewers do. I read the source material AFTER I've seen the adaptation, if I'm intrigued. In this way, I go into the adaptation with zero expectations that it will be anything other than exactly what it is.

I do sometimes enjoy efforts made by a director to give a show the feel and look of the Manga on occasion, as in creative camera angles to evoke the Manga drawings, or even casting actors who sort of LOOK like a Manga character, but that's as far as I go in how I see the relationship between source and adaptation.

The most entertaining example of this phenomenon of audience expecting a frame-by-frame reproduction of a Manga in a series was the comment section under KinnPorsche. Week after week, legions of hysterical fangirls predicted with drooling anticipation, how the series was going to switch focus and become the PeteVegas show, with this and that plot development, because THAT IS WHAT HAPPENS IN THE MANGA. And week after week, as that continued to not be the case, their certainty turned to doubt, then confusion, then anger that KP was not an exact duplicate of the KP novel.

Actually, it was scary, the viciousness with which they lashed out at other commenters who called attention to the fact that the series and the novel were two different things. Eventually, I blocked 17 MDL KP commenters in one go, as the spittle-flying rage had turned from entertaining to disturbing and distracting. The comment section quickly started making sense again, and seemed significantly less like an insane asylum and more like a BL thread. :)

End of rant.

Comments sections are for sharing thoughts.
If my thought is inaccurate, why take it personally?

A lot of homophobic people don't see themselves as being such. Perhaps you're one of those people.
Just a thought.

I've only watched episode 1, but I wanted to drop in here and say that the casting director should receive a huge bonus. "Chemistry" is an overused word here, but that ephemeral magic that flows between two people and not between others is still oozing out of my computer screen ten minutes after I finished.

These two actors have that magic.

It's amusing that you imagine I am "pissed." I assure you I am not. I am annoyed by ignorance and homophobia.

I don't see any comment of yours above beginning with "my opinion." it doesn't matter if you did say "my opinion," you'd still be mistaken in your lengthy summation of AFF's plot.

How do you know the chief never "interacted with" women? Even if that were the case, a straight man does not turn gay simply because he hasn't talked to many women. He saw them all the time around the palace, as he has for nearly 20 years of his relationship with the king. If he were attracted to women, he would have felt it and known it.

I see your opinion as a blunt refusal to acknowledge what you clearly see in front of your face in the film. People who believe gay love is "less than" straight love come up with convoluted, twisted language to explain that black is white, as you have done here.

I neglected to add that it was the queen's plot against the fem, sparked by jealousy of the king's obvious infatuation with him, that "ends them all."

Wrong. He saw being at the palace as a secure, permanent means of employment for the entire troupe. The captain would never have left either, if he wasn't in love with the fem one and insanely jealous over the king's attentions to him.

Did it ever look to you as if the fem was enjoying his time with the King? Even when he performed little plays and such for him, he was nervous as hell, and ill-at-ease. He was acquiescing to all of that, as he had acquiesced to other wealthy patrons, for the sake of work and thus money for the entire troupe.

Did you miss when he attempted to freaking kill himself? Is that what one does when one wants to "stay" with someone or be somewhere?

The king LOVED the play you refer to, and was so moved by it and what it symbolized, that he killed the women who poisoned his mother along with his step-mother, indirectly. The troupe was FORCED to perform that story, if you recall.

Finally, it is the queen's scheming, in having the anti-king posters that were popping up forged in the fem one's handwriting to frame him as having written them. Then the captain claimed to be their author to save the life of the feminine one, because he had learned to write from the fem and thus his handwriting was identical to his.

Formula 17 is hysterically funny.

A 13-year-old does not "groom" a 9-year-old. There was NOTHING during the scenes showing them when they were young, or in their interactions as adults, to indicate the Chief was under the King's magic spell, or being coerced into a relationship or having sex with the King. Nothing, nada, zilch. He bonded with the younger chief because he was enthusiastic in training, cute, and engaging.

The problem is that YOU have "heard of grooming" far too much. It's one of those pseudo-scientific terms that moves from being a precise definition of a specific behavior to being almost meaningless because it gets thrown around by people like you who start using it to describe situations where it does not apply.

Grooming has a precise definition. Google it. An ADULT, knowing exactly what they are doing, inserts themselves into the life of a particular child, with the aim of gaining their trust and wearing down boundaries, over time, to a point the kid will accept the adult's sexual advances.

Do you think the King, in the early scenes, was anything more than an adolescent? He has a little peach-fuzz mustache that boys in adolescence sprout when their pubes start to bloom. Educate yourself.

This was made in Korea, not China, and at the time it was made, there had already been a number of feature films made featuring gay main characters. As much as the captain loved GG, he could never bring himself to tell him so. And I think if he had, GG would have been his for life.

Please don't compare this excellent film to the pile of garbage that is the Untamed, which is nothing but bad gay-bait in silk pajamas and robes.

Gong Gil did NOT want to stay at the palace. Have you forgotten toward the end when he was begging the king to "let me go?" He wanted to leave with Jang Seng and the troupe.

Trans. lol

Bored. Out at about 40min.

Some lame scandal. None of anybody else's business. Weird how Puritannical many Asians about stuff like this. You'd think they were fundamentalist Christians from the U.S.

You're not intelligent.

I'm with you. Just watched it for the fourth time a few days ago and was profoundly moved once again. I love rewatching good movies as it's fun to discover details that escaped me the first time.

When, exactly, in the film is it shown that the king is a "grown person" while the chief is a "kid?" Their age difference, as indicated from the opening scenes, was no more than 5 or 6 years. I'll be waiting for the time stamp on where in this film the king is an adult and the chief is a kid. lol