#don't even get me started on how western viewers keep centering themselves as they critique a thai series

[everyforkedroad]

Genre romance, bias, and Kinnporsche

I know I'm asking for it, but I feel like I have to get this off my chest.

The bias against the romance genre is one of the constant elements across all media that I consume and Kinnporsche: The Series is no exception. Kinn and Porsche are given a classic romance arc, complete with a meet cute, the end of act crisis, incoming black moment and resolution. And yet, despite the series being marketed as a mafia romance people are still out here complaining about...the romance? Like, did they not get the memo that they are watching...a high concept romance between Kinn and Porsche set in a mafia world? Do they realize romance has conventions like any other genre that need to be followed? If viewers came for the mafia stuff and were disappointed by the lack of gore, angst and trauma wrt the main couple, and are rebelling against the fluff that KP has been serving up, it might simply be that they are shopping in the wrong genre.

I realize a lot of the blame for the disparity between expectation and what the show delivered is also the fault of the novel, which did a piss-poor job of, well, basically everything except for the plot (which, together with the sex scenes, is why I suspect it became so popular despite its numerous and egregious defects). However, the show does a phenomenal job of taking the best elements of the novel and leaving the chaff on the cutting room floor.

Even with this fact in mind, the novel itself is presented as a romance and though it has some moments of grit, it doesn't make it any less of a romance. As such, the romantic elements, including the fluff and showing the couple being in love, are strong because that's kind of the point. It's a convention of the genre to show the reader/viewer why the two love interests should be together. The only way to do that is to show them in full, unabashed love. And that's going to include fluff, sex, and even the kind of rom-com humor that is, coincidentally, also a part of Thai storytelling conventions as well.

We should be grateful because Kinnporsche actually does something very clever, reserving the classic romance arc for KinnxPorsche, while serving up dark romance with VegasPete (very well done, I might add) and even giving us a little traditional BL/yaoi fix with KimxChay. There really is something for everyone, and they manage to make it work.

So when I see people complain about the fluffier elements of Kinnporsche, all I can think is, how do you say you hate romance without saying you hate romance?