#khondiao

[dramas-vs-novels]

The first 5 or 6 times I watched the show, I thought Yi was just in a chronic state of Gay Panic over his feelings for Diao, wrestling with his self-perception of heterosexuality.

But then I read the novel, you learn that Yi has been engaged to Diao since Yi was 16 or so, and absolutely loves every single hair on that boy's head.

The layers of grief and guilt between Yi and Diao are:

His arrogance and irresponsibility that led to Diao losing the memories of his childhood.

Being the reason Diao was sent to the other side of the world to grow up alone, away from family or friends, lonely.

The guilt he feels for killing Lele, for realizing a split second too late- as he pulled the trigger- that she wasn't attacking Diao and could be talked down (in the show, they sent her to a sanctuary, but in the novel he shot her in panic).

Again, Lele, her sister from the same litter is Lanlan, his father's puma, and every time Yi goes to see his father, Lanlan comes to greet him. It only reinforces his grief and guilt.

The situation between the Wongteerawits and the Chens, hating Diao's family for basically blackmailing the Chen's with the dog/puma/tiger incident.

Knowing the Wongteerawit's use Diao via the engagement- something Diao is aware of and also hates. Yi feels like cutting Diao loose might be what's best not for the Chen's (though, it would be good), but also for Diao himself. To free him from being used by his family.

So like, the man is carrying so much weight on his shoulders, it's amazing he can get out of bed in the morning. In the novel, he also has crippling insomnia and basically can only fall asleep if he's passing out from exhaustion.

Which I'm sure only feeds into his extreme temper.

[it-begins-with-rain]

Valid question

[kinnporsche-is-life]

Ok, so I finished Naughty babe and to tell that I love it would be an understatement of the year.

I’ll probably make a post or hundred about it later BUT

l've never seen Cutie pie. Never really speak to me and people said I can watch NB as a separate thing so I skipped that one.

But now I already miss the Naught babe universe.

Should I watch Cutie pie? Is it as good? Is there any Yidiao in it?

Should I watch Cute pie when I already watched Naughty babe?

OMG yes sooo good

Meh. Not that good and you already watched kind of a sequel so nope

Voting ended onOct 27, 2023

[dramas-vs-novels]

Interesting little aside (which totally negates my joke just now):

In the novel, Hia Yi genuinely does not know for 7 years that Diao has a bicycle.

Diao "hides" it by parking it neatly, out in the open, at the very back of Phayak's private garage full of insanely expensive cars. Yi never bothers to go to the back of the garage, and so he never sees it.

[dramas-vs-novels]

what is a scene you will never get over? for whatever reason?

I think... probably.... this one, from only the 2nd Thai drama I ever saw:

If you haven't seen Naughty Babe, the quick and dirty leading into this scene is that Yi (Left) and Diao (Right) have been together for seven years, actually dating for 5 years, and engaged for the past 3.

But Yi has only grown more and more distant over the years. Distant, yet fiercely possessive over Diao himself. He's always been incredibly controlling, demanding Diao text him wherever he is, setting curfews, and blowing up at Diao for missing them (Yi, however, does what he wants).

There is reason for this, they work through it, but in THIS moment, everything between them has come to a complete and utter fiery wreck.

Diao finally worked up the nerve to leave Yi, planning to hide in Switzerland for a year or two with the help of his best friend. Yi found out, and was in the process of chasing him to the airport when he lost control of the car (which was an engagement gift for Diao that Diao never touched) and was in a horrible car accident.

Yi currently can't remember anything beyond when he was a kid. Diao found out about the wreck as he was about to get on the plane, and ran to the hospital. He's waited there ever since, feeling like it's his duty.

And in this moment, Yi is questioning him about this supposed engagement he's in and all of that.

And then he hits him with this question.

Do we love each other?

And it's such an incredible moment acting-wise because you can SEE Diao trying to make himself answer, but not knowing what to say. All of the words getting jammed at his mouth at the same time.

Do they love each other?

Yes. No. Maybe once.

It's such a raw moment, and I think easily the most powerful in the entire series, even though it comes early in episode 2.

I still get goosebumps watching that scene.

[dramas-vs-novels]

Ok so you have done posts and answered questions before making mention of everyone in universe super shipping Kuea and Diao (kinda including Kuea and Diao in a way) but do Lian and Yi take this seriously? Like, they are aware of it and of the closeness, but is there ever genuine feelings of ‘he might leave me for Kuea/Diao’ from them?

YES, SO VERY MUCH YES.

It is CONSTANTLY on Lian's mind that if he doesn't fix stuff with Kuea, Kuea will take Diao and run off into the sunset with him.

Yi sees Kuea as a threat, but not too seriously of one. Like, he doesn't doubt Diao would happily run off with Kuea, but Kuea is small and Yi is big. He can take Kuea in a fight.

At one point in the Naughty Babe novel, Lian flat-out tells Yi to get his shit together, because if Diao becomes available, Kuea will leave him and Lian will have to settle for being Kuea's "mistress".

Even Diao and Kuea are both very aware they could have a happy life together, if they weren't both so stupidly stuck on their disaster-husbands.

And on a more serious note, like, looking at how neglectful and abusive his relationship with Yi has deteriorated towards, Diao frequently asks himself why he doesn't just leave to go be with Kuea (with kind of an aside of like, yeah, Kuea's taken now). He's so aware that he would be happier with Kuea.

[dramas-vs-novels]

How would things be different between Yi and Diao if Yi made it to the airport alright? If no one sabotaged the car?

I think... ... ... In the end, they'd wind up in the same place, but it'd take... Months, maybe years to get there.

But I'm also not very confident in that answer.

Yi is brash and knee-jerk, and that temper of his is what drives a wedge between himself and Diao. His self-loathing over the incident with the puma (tiger in the show) is also one of the major factors in his neglect of Diao.

For Diao, in the novel, he comes back from England to be engaged to someone he's never met, and then is dumped in a work apartment above a car showroom for 7 years. Kept under strict curfew, but the only time Yi deigns to speak to him is to criticize him or snap at him.

Yi's plan that night was to drag Diao's ass back home and lock him in. Diao's plan was to go into hiding until Yi stopped looking for him.

I think if Yi had reached the airport, he would have done and said things to only push Diao away harder and really twist the knife in the open wound between them, possibly even cauterizing it and leading to a permanent separation. Even if it didn't, I think it'd be months or years before they cooled down enough to get to a relationship phase, if they ever even did at all.

So the accident was kind of the best thing that could have happened to them. Those 2-3 days where Yi was mentally out of commission and forgot about Diao helped give them both time to calm down. It also reminded Yi of how much he'd loved Diao, and that memory being brought up to the surface made him re-evaluate and appreciate Diao more.

I'm also not sure at which point Makorn might have become involved. He loves Diao with his entire heart, always has, and I think as much as he says Yi's life is in Yi's hands, he wouldn't sit idly by. Even Nathee (Makorn's husband) thinks Diao is his 2nd son for a bit, all because of how proud Makorn is of everything Diao does and how much he adores the boy.

And don't forget- if Diao succeeded in fleeing, the Wongteerawit's lose everything, and there is no longer any leverage over the Chen family to hold Makorn and Yi by the throats. The Wongteerawit's would definitely cut Diao out of the family entirely, and at that point I think Makorn would kind of drag Yi along to fix things, or Yi would get that space to understand that the Wongteerawits and Diao are two very separate entities.

So yeah. I think they'd have ended up married in just about any timeline, but if Yi made it to that airport, his chronic Foot-in-Mouth Disease (sometimes called Head-in-Ass Disease) would have acted up and fucked the two over for a while.

[dramas-vs-novels]

Why do you keep saying Yi is trying to murder Diao with every animal in the petting zoo?

When they made Cutie Pie, they didn't know they'd be filming Naughty Babe.

The novels are very separate in that you only see Yi and Diao as they exist in Lian and Kuea's lives. As two separate entities (I think they appear together in like one scene, and even then it's visible that they aren't comfortable).

So to bulk them up to proper B-Couple status, they kind of speed-ran the plot of Naughty Babe, making everything less intense. So it became Yi feeling bad because his dog attacked Diao as a kid. That is the root of their issues, Yi is able to let go of that and see that Diao just very sincerely loves him, and understand that he was the one making it complicated. Yi embraces his love of Diao and they're together.

Then Cutie Pie does so well, they absolutely have to do Naughty Babe now, so they take it to Diao being attacked by Yi's tiger, and kind of bring that seriousness back into the trauma both suffered, and how that trauma kind of keeps re-victimizing them. Not so much directly on them individually, but on their relationship.

But in the novel, it escalates again, this time it's a Puma, which the Chen family traditionally raises as kind of a mascot of the heads of the family. And it wasn't that Lele mauled a keeper and was sent to a sanctuary, it was that she mauled a keeper, pounced on Diao's chest, and Yi shot her in the head as he ran around the corner, age 16 or so. Yi only realizing as he pulled the trigger that she wasn't attacking Diao and he could probably talk her down without her dying (though, Yi even now doesn't know if that'd work. There are so many question marks around what was happening and how far a dangerous cat might go without knowing its own strength).

So I like to tease YiDiao in Cutie Pie because of that speed-run of the Naughty Babe plot, subbing in a smaller dog to kind of show how little things can be a big trauma for children. But because they made that cannon to the television story, it becomes "Jesus Yi, how many pets did you try to kill Diao with as a child???"