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squeakygeeky · 8 months

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Naughty Babe series vs novel

I enjoyed Naughty Babe more than I was expecting. I think part of that had to do that I binged most of it the day my mom went home and I wanted shiny nonsense as a distraction. Weirdly Naughty Babe is one of the only two BL dramas where I was familiar with the source material before the series instead of the other way around, since I read the novel a bit after Cutie Pie finished airing. I liked the series better. On a completely shallow level, visuals are definitely a strength of the franchise (CGI Tiger excepted), but a few of the changes worked for me.

I'd been wondering how they'd adapt the novel, since it had a bunch of stuff related to a childhood puma attack and various pumas being kept as pets, and Cutie Pie had replaced that with dog related trauma, plus Cutie Pie had Diao and Yi figuring things out, while in the novel they've been engaged but basically strangers for seven years.

But anyway we're just ignoring the dog stuff I guess and replacing the puma with a tiger, so that was that part taken care of. I think seeing Diao and Yi happy together before actually made the faked amnesia plot go down a little easier for me. As a ploy to start a real relationship it felt super uncomfortable, but as an attempt by a panicking fiance to buy some time to save his relationship it was about as silly as everything else going on. Yi came off as a whole mess in the series and that helped soften his character for me. The misunderstanding with the sisters seemed more ridiculous in the show though, given that the novel made it more clear that Yi was spending time with his family in secret after his dad forbid it.

There's this whole think in the novel where five years earlier Yi had gotten really drunk and Diao they had really bad sex, initiated by Diao, and just never talked about it or had any kind of physical intimacy again before Diao's attempt to flee to Switzerland. So I'm glad there's no way that would have fit the show's timeline, and the show had great intimate scenes in general. Yi always seems oddly surprised and grateful Diao is interested in having sex with him which is kind of endearing.

I'm especially glad the show didn't have Yi being a secret judo expert who could have beaten Diao in a fight because please narrative, let Diao have his One Thing. Series Diao also gets a few opportunities to stand up for himself in a really clear and firm way like with the student's dad who was flirting with him and with his own father at the end. Love that for him, I've always been team Diao.

The only thing I wish we'd gotten from the novel was the reveal about Yi's Dad having a male sugar baby...

#naughty babe the series #thai bl #i'm back baby #and by back i mean alone in my apartment with nothing better to do

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skloomdumpster · 1 year

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This is just example to my question, I saw the new HBO show “ the Last of Us” which based on a Video game and the media is saying that “ the show will break the infamous "video game curse" for adaptations.” To you what dose make a show considered a good adaptation from a source material like game or cartoon? Does it need to follow each scene like that show or create new ideas like Fate did to Winx ?

Anon it's so funny you mentioned TLOU, since just yesterday I was ranting about it. Anyway... This is long and nerdy.

What constitutes a good adaptation, should be the first question, right? And so we don’t have to tip toe around it, we're all grown ups who are aware that "like" is subjective and the product of your own cultural baggage.

However there must a place where we draw a line, what constitutes a categorically good adaptation, using what criteria? Most people will say how "faithful" it is, how does it stand to the source material. I, for one, disagree and recommend the read of “Beyond Fidelity: The Dialogics of Adaptation" by Robert Stam, which goes into excruciating detail of what is fidelity and how unattainable it is when we're thinking of different mediums. Television is not the same as writing, it has it's own set of challenges, from budget to people management to the simple obstacle that is the fact that all decisions are final. But I digress, since this is all about the literary medium versus the filmmaking one, which is not the case when talking about TLOU or Fate the Winx Saga. We're not adapting from a novel, we're adapting from an already visual piece of media.

Which begs the question, what is there to adapt? What does "adaptation" even imply? Adaptation, the word itself, implies change. Adapt. So it's impossibly funny to me when people go in long tirades about all the changes that an adaptation made, when the act itself of adapting implies changing. Otherwise, this would not be an adaptation, this would simply be the source material.

Yet, it would be facetious of me to harp on change without drawing a line. You'd present me a featherless chicken and say, behold an adaptation. We must then define something that must be its touching stone.

Here's where it gets tricky. Most people will say, simply follow the recipe of the original. In Fate's case, in particular, this is specially true, most of the criticism it received was about the show fundamentally misunderstanding the core of the cartoon, which is friendship, colorful adventures and magic. They'll say the original creator's intent was not respected, thus it is a bad adaptation.

Is it, though? Must an adaptation, especially when we're talking of a multicrew one as a TV show respect the intent of the original creator, seeing as creator's intents and believes change and are susceptible to the passage of time? What is more important when I am adapting, to tell an engaging story or to remain truthful to the source material, whatever the cost?

Would a tv show, rated for sixteen year old or older, benefit from presenting characters who immediately adore each other, such as is the girls’ friendship in the cartoons? Maybe, but the thing is, the large majority of the people who would enjoy watching this, are the people who don't want to watch a new product, they simply want to watch the same product with real faces to their favorite characters. And a TV Show, a Netflix show, must appeal to more than just the original fanbase. It has by obligation of its medium, to adapt to be more marketable and appealing for those who didn't watch the source.

Alright, backtracking, The Last of Us - TV Show. TLOU does what Fate didn't, it stands by “canon” and I use canon very purposefully as in almost its biblical sense, of “canonization”. I’ve played the games, I’ve watched the first episode of the show. Was it quality television? Yeah, absolutely, the writing was seamless, the characters’ motivations made sense, the framing was beautiful, the acting spectacular (xoxo Pedro Pascal), the soundtrack didn’t stand out but also didn’t do anything bad and it had a million nods to their original fans... And it was boring.

It didn’t adapt shit, because The Last of Us the videogame already uses its own medium (video games) very little, it is basically a TV show and I don’t need to watch the same thing again. If I wanted to, I could play the game.

And if I wasn’t this type of person, who likes changes and adaptations, if I was one of those fans who swear by the “canon”... I still wouldn’t have liked it. As many many original fans didn’t, because when you are in that spectrum, that level of preachiness, any change is a bad change. Joel no longer being a guns runner, a minor change that softens the blow of his character making him immediately more likable to a wider audience, is a bad change. One that would then take me away from the show.

My conclusion from TLOU is that when you adapt, without adapting, truthfully, you fall in this limbo, where it is simply boring for those who wanted to see something different (me) or you’re constantly chasing your own shadow, because the fans who want a “faithful” adaptation will never be happy with any change made, no matter how necessary for the existence of the product, aka to make it more marketable.

This is not to excuse FTWS on all of its faults, because we’ve talked at ad nauseum of all of its mistakes, from ignoring cool storylines that would’ve been engaging in a this new medium, to bending backwards to fans who will never be satisfied, to not exploring its own medium (really, you’re a TV show and you don’t explore cliffhangers? Really?), to bad writing, etc. However, it adapts, it proposes a new read of the text and it proposes new interpretations and it’s equally engaging for a new fan or for an original fan who wants to have their expectations subverted. In that particular criteria, Fate does its job.

Now if I can nerd out a little more, I want to point out one of my favorite books that had adaptations made. Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights has over 200 adaptations out there, I’d know, I counted. It ranges from soap operas, to Hollywood movies, to a Japanese niche movies and so on so forth. Anything that could be made out of this book, was made. So many many adaptations offer a completely different read from the source material, for the simple fact that the source is old, outdated and unpalatable for the big audiences.

Wuthering Heights is a gothic romance, that talks about incestuous, codependent and toxic relationships and it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, believe it or not. Therefore when adapting it, film makers must make a choice. Do they want their movies to be faithful or to be liked? Do they want to make an engaging story or not (which btw is not the same as being liked)? Both answers, are completely valid! What is your intent when choosing what to adapt? Do you want your audience to connect with the characters by showing them grow on screen (Fate’s choice when they decide the girls do not love each other at the very first meeting) or do you want to be stick by the canon?

The 2011 adaptation, out of the 200 ones, was the most faithful one. It was also the most boring one, ugly and simply disliked. No one wanted to watch 2 hours of mud, rain, and frankly unlikable characters. Even if that is the source material. Even if being unsettling, ugly and unlikable was the author’s intent.

So is being faithful something to be praised or simply one of the many, many choices that transforming requires?

#fate the winx saga #Fate: The Winx Saga #answered #mymeta #i refuse to put this under a read more bc i'm annoying sorry #take a shot every time i say medium and you'll die of alcohol poisoning

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