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waitmyturtles · 3 months

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Last Twilight, episode 12: final reflections

Wow. It took me all of this past weekend to process this finale, notwithstanding the usual life craziness that has dogged me lately.

Let me preface this whole thing by saying that I'm confused by what I watched. I'd say that, overall -- I actually quite liked this series, and I especially, absolutely ADORED JimmySea, Namtan, and Mark, and their acting. JimmySea kicked major ass, and I really hope they get another big and complicated show to chew on.

I also want to say that between episodes 11 and 12, I felt that I saw uncharacteristic editing clunkiness from Aof Noppharnach and his team that left a lot of necessary emotional and ethical processing on the cutting room floor. I think that's what's ultimately making me feel uneasy about the process of watching this, but -- funnily enough, I'm not nearly as "angry" about the ending as I was with other bad shows that fell apart in their last quarter recently. It was obvious that MhokDay were going to get together.

But I needed to walk a few more steps with them on their journey to that end.

Before I got my eyes on the finale, a few reactions on social media, from Tumblr to Twitter gave me the case of the jibbles. Namely: that the story of Last Twilight would have worked better if Day had stayed blind through the end.

I wasn't really understanding how that construction could work without walking through some sort of ethical minefield.

Now that I've seen the finale -- especially that infamous 4/4 segment -- I understand better what those arguments were saying.

Yet, I'm still dogged by a kind of ethical confusion here. And maybe that was one of the points of this finale, another one of Aof Noppharnach's perhaps now-famous-or-infamous emotionally inconclusive endings.

To me, there are two ethical potholes that this show stumbled on:

1) The ethics WITHIN the fictional piece itself for a character to not depict the process of considering the various fates he might face vis à vis a potentially reversible impairment, and

2) The ethics of a REAL audience ultimately wanting a different outcome for a fictional character to NOT have an impairment reversed.

TL;DR — I don’t think Last Twilight spent enough time having Day consider the permanence or impermanence of the various fates he faced, including permanent blindness. I don’t think the characters, and as such, the audience, spent enough time understanding that a corneal transplant was always going to be Day’s endgame.

Last Twilight was marketed as a show focused on disability, on a man going blind in a society that prioritizes the able-bodied, and how he would adjust to his disability, and of course (this being GMMTV), his falling in love. As fans, we were prepared to receive a whole show about a character with a disability, not as a side pairing, à la Heart and Li Ming in Moonlight Chicken.

It so happened that Day's visual impairment was corneal deterioration -- a condition that could lead to permanent blindness, and thus qualify him for a corneal transplant.

What I'm struggling with is the crux of the ethical dilemma that this show was ALWAYS going to have to deal with: that a corneal impairment of the kind that Day experienced, in the prime of his life, could very well be reversed with surgery, a surgery that has tremendous success rates.

As such -- as we got that clarification in drips throughout the series -- this show was actually not ONLY going to be about the newfound adjustment of a recently-impaired man to an ableist society. It was ALWAYS going to have this door of ANOTHER major change, the reversal of the impairment, just slightly cracked open. I'm not sure that I, as a viewer, was fully prepared for this, even as Night and Mae Mhon spoke about "eye donations" as givens in the middle of the series. I believe the show needed to be much louder, earlier, about the "hope" that Day could "go back" to "living a normal life," instead of framing the high majority of the show around his adjustments to his impairment.

As we went through Day's adjustment to life outside of his room, I believe we needed to hear, FROM DAY HIMSELF, that a corneal transplant was a conclusion that HE believed in, that HE wanted. A failure of this series was that we unfortunately only heard that from his family members, leaving us to only ASSUME that the conclusion of the reversal of his impairment was ALSO Day's intention.

For a story that was very much about an individual's developing agency and self-advocacy: I believe I needed to hear from Day himself that he was good and ready for the final surgery. I only assume that was the case, as I saw his own body and mind in the hospital. But I believe, for dramatic success, that I could have used a basic, "I'm ready," from him, to make segment 4/4 more complete and contextual, against the story of adjustment and resilience we had so far seen before then.

And what a story of adjustment and resilience we had gotten, as Day had established a full career for himself, without Mhok next to him, during one of the time jumps of episode 12.

For my sake, as I process what I watched this weekend, I want to come to grips with what I thought were the major themes of this show, and see if I can come to some sort of sensible conclusion about what happened here.

This show was focused on:

1) the romance between Day and Mhok, 2) Mhok's caretaking and companionship being the lever to help Day out of his room and back into the world from which he had retreated after the onset of his visual impairment, 3) Day slowly learning how to function again in a society that prioritizes the able-bodied vis à vis his visual impairment, 4) Day learning how to self-advocate for himself in the face of those who condescend to him and/or keep him trapped in compassion bias postures,

and more that I'm sure I'm missing, but those are the themes that resonated the most with me.

I think the general feeling on Tumblr is that, save for the romance, that themes 3 and 4 were contradicted out of existence in the face of the sudden flip to the surgery of segment 4/4.

I think not hearing from Day himself that he was ready and willing for the surgery was a lost moment. I don't believe Day was ever acting as if he would choose anything else OTHER than surgery throughout the series. BUT, AT THE SAME TIME: what we had watched prior to 4/4 was his story of adjustment.

My biggest ethical concern here, vis à vis the audience reactions that I've read, is that NO ONE -- in fiction or in real life -- owes me a story of heroism. If there is an individual who has been impaired since birth, or is dealing with a degenerative condition later in their life, and has the opportunity to address or reverse the condition, who am I to say that that individual SHOULD NOT address their condition?

For me, this is huge. I believe this is a huge ethical dilemma that Last Twilight ultimately does not face. I wish this series had been much more centered, earlier on, about the utter REALITY that Day could have his condition reversed by surgery, in words he'd say himself, rather than assumptions made for him, on behalf of his family, who.... I presume were established to be some sort of legal conservators for him, as Mhon continued to be the one to receive eye donation text messages.

(I concede that I don't know if this is a more common set-up for disabled individuals in Thailand, as I would assume in the States, that Day himself would have been the one to receive that message directly.)

For this show to have seemed emotionally and artistically complete: I needed to hear from Day himself that surgery was an endgame that he was banking his hopes on. I also needed to understand, much more statistically clearly vis à vis the show, of the absolute risks that Day faced towards having permanent blindness for the rest of his life. Because the show ALSO needed to focus on the establishment of the romance between Mhok and Day, we missed out on the show taking time to explain to us, the viewers, of the absolute risks that Day faced in any of these scenarios -- and thus, we would have had MUCH more context into the nuances of the resilience that Day needed to establish for himself as he re-adjusted to society, with his numerous fates lying before him.

I'm going to borrow the words of @hallowpen in their final review here, to say that this show at the end needed much more "breathing room." I think @hallowpen is so right in saying it like this, because these two factors that I just laid out, geez -- the first 7/8ths of the series being about Day's social adjustment against the utter suddenness of the successful surgery and his sudden jump back to what's been translated as his "normal life" -- just clash so tonally. (I do wonder if we're getting as nuanced a translation on "normal" as we could be.)

I think this is about the most confused final review of a show that I've written. There is an ethical heaviness to all of this that's weighing on me, that I think I still need time to comb through.

I also feel that I simply do not know enough, by way of my lack of cultural competency into how Thai society approaches issues of public and private health, if Day’s unseen choice to get the surgery would have been a given among majority Thai audiences, AND that majority Thai audiences would not have asked for the kind of internal debates that I think the show could have used.

I feel thrilled that Day can see Poomjai/Mee, after making that wish in episode 11.

But I think, if this show was about a journey for someone to learn how to successfully advocate for his own agency -- that, at the very end, I needed to see that agency exercised, by him, to get to the part of the reversal of the impairment that I assumed he wanted.

Again: Day doesn't owe me his story of heroism. If fiction doesn't want to give me that, from a character with a recent impairment, I don't have the right to ask for it.

But the missing bits of artistry to get me, the viewer, to only an assumption, has led me to surprising ethical places, that will leave me wondering about what happened in this series for a long time.

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vrag-veshtica · 3 months

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charlie dead mhokday broke up had to watch toes getting sucked in hd

#last twilight the series #last twilight #mhok x day #day x mhok #mhokday #pit babe the series #pit babe #playboyy the series #playboyy

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serasennatonen · 2 months

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Listen.

Day was second guessing himself. He KNEW Mhok was there, he just ain't wanna believe it.

He felt him up when Mhok made that arm switch with the concierge. Then he tripped down the steps on purpose.

The problem is, DAY AINT DO ENOUGH. BABY I WOULD HAVE ROLLED RIGHT ON OUT THAT CAR the second it pulled away after I heard his voice! Lawd, you ain't keeping me from my man 😭😭😭

#jimmysea #bl boys #bl drama #thai bl #last twilight #last twilight the series car #vice versa #vice verse the series #jimmy jitaraphol #sea tawinan #mhok x day #mhokday #mhok last twilight #day x mhok #day last twilight

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vegasthehedgehog · 4 months

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Sometimes, I watch a scene, and it leaves me with a pit in my stomach and an ache in my heart. There is something about two people finding solice in each other when both of them have felt so alone for such a long time. The way he kissed Day the second time means so much because Day went for the second kiss with August, and August walked away. He showed Day that someone wanted him, actually wanted him. And that there was nothing in the world that he wanted more than Day in that moment. Mhok has never pittied Day, and that sure as hell wasn't a pitty kiss. Also, as someone who has had people do something very similar to what August did, honestly, f*** August.

#last twilight #mhokday #mhok x day #daymhok #day x mhok #episode 6 #last twilight episode 6 #thaibl #thai bl #thai drama #thaidramaedit #I'm so glad that they didn't pull out a guitar

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pickletrip · 4 months

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Be a little selfish Mhok. You are allowed to be just a little selfish in such situations.

Thank you August for fucking up, because Mhok deserves Day and loves Day just as he is.

Thank you Mhok for kissing Day and showing him how you truly feel.

#last twilight the series #last twilight #day x mhok #jimmy x sea #sigh Mhok finally stood his ground #FINALLY

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myarcadiandream · 3 months

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IM SCREAMING. Okay so I feel like there’s so much fucking stress in this episode. Day clearly has insecurities when it comes to feeling like a burden. He LOVES Mhok so much he doesn’t want to hold him back. BUT Mhok has trauma from his sister- and it’s a very real fear that drives him to be near Day.

They NEED this time apart. Day needs time to realise that Mhok did not pity him and Mhok needs time apart to gain confidence in Day and get that security that Mhok can let his loved ones out of his sight and nothing bad would happen.

I also feel like this can either bode well for their relationship or it will crush Mhok into a pit of despair- because what value does he provide other people if he doesn’t keep them safe?

#I’m ugly crying #it’s fine #thai bl #thai drama #last twilight #last twilight ep 11 #day x mhok #mhok x day #mhokday

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ppeonppeonhan · 4 months

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It's a little weird to me that they're acting as though Day will never have a life again after he is fully blind, so he needs to complete his bucket list within 3 months. He'll be blind, not dead.

But I'd be lying if I said my immediate thought when the doctor gave him a deadline wasn't: You should go have sex with Mhok immediately. Straight from the hospital. Run every light girl.

He basically requests this in next week's preview, but first they're going to go look at a mountain. The mountain on the cover of the book. And I'm like...bitch focus. You know what a mountain looks like. 🙄

#bl drama #bl series #thai bl #thai drama #last twilight the series #day x mhok

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appleswithhoneyarethebest · 4 months

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I'ts me i'm girls

#unholy screams the entire episode #i love them so so so much #please marry and have childrens #and they're going to see the mountains in the book🥹#bye i'm emotional gonna cry in the corner then i will be back later #thai series #bl series #asianlgbtqdramas #gmmtv #thai drama #thai bl #gmmtv 2023 #bl drama #last twilight #gmmtv 2024 #mhokday #day x mhok

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watchinglikeafangirl · 4 months

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When Day falls into darkness (I think it's what it feels like for him) he obviously panics. It's truly heart-wrenching but what also touches me about this is the horror in Mhok's face as well. Day panics and Mhok does too. They are connected, they are in love, so whatever strong emotion Day feels, Mhok mirrors it because he deeply understands Day. Mhok instantly hugs Day to console him a little bit, but he's still so terrified and my heart dropped as well. Day is deeply disturbed, Mhok tries to be there and I felt so many emotions rushing through them, truly the best scene even though it's the saddest.

#last twilight #day x mhok

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delusionalblfan · 4 months

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The 9th episode of last twilight is a masterpiece

It has been years since anything made me cry the way this did. It made me...love. With the fulfilling and with the aching parts of love. It was so deep it made me miss my self. It is surreal how uncontrolled i was

The words 'gradually' and 'first time' were always on my mind. Like love that is built gradually and there is no love as the first true one. Trust and confidence too (for the first time we saw Day lead - lead the way, the confidence, the imagination).

Like the twilight metaphor. You have to wait to see it, it's something that is worth it and the first time you experience it is overwhelming. And adding to the fact that it is the first time, it was also the last. The last time Day saw a glimpse of a twilight and his first true love. As sad as it can be, if you accept your condition it can be so delightful to realise you can actually 'see'. And you can save that moment in your heart and live there forever. And that was a realisation beautifully led by Day.

And Mhok wanted to describe that twilight to Day but wasn't seeing it. And Day has an incredible imagination and a will to 'see' so he led the imagination. i was mesmerised but so uneasy as gradually got the understanding they would imagine the twilight, they and us would see it and the last image in Day's eyes would be Mhok. It was poetic - beautiful and astonishing but full of sorrow.

The way Mhok more generically described the twilight, and Day proceeded to make it more incredible. And it was so impactful that there was not an actual twilight. They imagined their twilight. The one that was part of their memories, their own concepts of beauty and love and the parts of their selves that were buried deep. It's ravishing.

And then Day admits Mhok is the last image he wants to see and proceeds to touch and look at him. And Day wants him to smile, because Mhok makes him smile. Made him realise he is loved and worth it. And gradually Mhok for the very first time cries in front of Day. And the love is not there, because it is everywhere. The love between them is pouring. And as much love has been the conductor of Mhok's behaviour, this specific moment it is overflowing. And then comes this perfect acted scene, where we can see love and pain from Mhok, the realisation the love of his life lost completely his sight, but then he himself was the last thing he wanted to see and that is love, and how can someone keep that inside without crumbling?!

This series is about love for yourself, for others, for life, for your worth, for your happiness, for your losses and gains in life, for what you get of yourself by keep living. i am wow. Hands down. i give up. Need a lifetime to get over this

#congrats to every single person that made this possible #staff. actors. producers. director. screenwriters. assistants. editors. cinematographers. EVERY SINGLE PERSON #this was a masterpiece #last twilight #mhok x day #day x mhok

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heretherebedork · 4 months

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I made a choice, Day.

(In which Mhok is choosing his love for Day and his want for Day's independence and freedom over his job as Day's caretaker because he will never be able to be free to love Day the way he deserves if he is working for his mother, if he is caught up in the family dynamics. He must be able to love Day as himself, on his own, without that holding him trapped in painful patterns.)

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waitmyturtles · 4 months

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Last Twilight: Episode 6 reflections

Welp! Once again! Aof Noppharnach! Thanks, buddy! Fist bump. HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO LIVE AFTER THAT.

I'm gonna live, because we get ANOTHER flirty episode 7 next week, woop woop. But let me review what we've all been screaming about today.

Anti-August rhetoric is abounding, yes. I would argue that the narrative themes that the character of August presented during this episode were set up in episodes well before this disaster that August created happened.

This episode demonstrated Aof's mastery of dissecting interpersonal engagement and relationships, as well as offering an examination of chosen vs. unchosen familial bonds. The examination in particular of the nature of nuclear (unchosen) family bonds -- especially in the face of the impact of a traumatic event like Day's sudden blindness -- is subtle and exquisite so far. I'll get more into this in a moment.

The show's been laying all of this down for us since the start, paralleling the impact of the unchosen bonds Day has with the world he has left around him, with the chosen bonds he's made with Mhok, and vice versa. That is all happening alongside Mhok's continued internal emotional journey of change and stablization, which again, I'll touch on in a moment.

In episode 5, we heard Day describe his sports partnership with August as akin to an "arranged marriage."

Day showed us in the last episode that he did the majority of the lifting of the partnership he had with August. Day HAD to be the emotional stabilizer of the partnership in order to win championships. Akin to the Asian practice of arranged marriages -- it certainly takes two to tango. But if the CULTURAL expectation--

(THE HUGE AND ENORMOUS AND ASSUMED CULTURAL EXPECTATION IN ASIA, mind you, which we are reading between the lines here) --

of the OUTCOME of an arranged marriage is to 1) have children, and 2) not get divorced -- well, if someone isn't pulling their weight, the partner has to clock some overtime shifts.

Day did overtime, and boop, fell in love with his badminton partner. I don't blame him. All that work to get to know August's ins and outs? And the way August looks, mmhmm? Yeah, I get it. August may have been a butt, but Day doing that all that work to accidentally find himself on the attraction path wouldn't be surprising to me.

We get to episode 6. We see that Day is being failed by his unchosen family. We still don't know what the deal is with Night, despite Mhok's inquiries. (I apologize to @respectthepetty for not finding their theory post that Night was behind the wheel of the car accident that first affected Day's eyes -- shout-out, Senpai.) We see Day's mom sort of failing him prior to his birthday. We see that Day was sort of expecting his mom to fail him anyway.

I wanted to capture Day's mom's emotional reaction here because... we know past stuff is percolating. Day's mom's career comes first and has come first. The wins come first, as they should have been for Day when he could still see and could still play badminton.

Day was prepared to be disappointed. That hug at the end of this scene with his mother was a sigh of relief for Day that his mom came through, but we don't know the extent to which his mother hasn't come through in the past, except by way of having kept Day inside for a year after the onset of his blindness.

And then Day was failed, again, by unchosen family.

August says, "I'm willing to do whatever makes him happy," but, just like nuclear/unchosen family -- you have to KNOW the people around you to KNOW what ACTUALLY makes them happy. Nuclear/unchosen family can't just clock in and clock out of family work. It takes more zhuzh than that.

For example: changing diapers might be a role a parent performs. It'll make a baby happy to feel clean and dry. But are the babies happy to actually wear a diaper? No. They don't know from diapers. The babies will be happy with loving, caring, and attentive parents showing them attention. From there, emotional growth will flourish.

Love, here, is not exactly about roles and tasks, as August is defining happiness above. Love is about something different -- it's about paying attention, at all times, to the people you love, and responding accordingly.

Unchosen family can very well fail you, because at the end of the day, they're still "family" by blood and sometimes bond. That's why it's important for so many of us to have CHOSEN family that shows up for us.

REMEMBER: BETWEEN DAY AND MHOK? DAY CHOSE MHOK. THAT'S A CHOSEN RELATIONSHIP FOR DAY, FINALLY, FOR ONCE IN HIS LIFE.

And Mhok comes into Day's house, starts to take care of Day like a partner, starts to get to know Day's ins and outs, and boop -- Mhok has found himself falling for Day. Quite the different paradigm from August, who did and does shit.

And in episode 6? Here comes Mhok, barreling in from the start of the episode, re-shifting the paradigms in Day's life that were created by the unchosen people that preceded Day in close proximity. I love how the VERY first scene of this episode started with Mhok announcing himself to Day in Day's room -- very unlike the way that August had silently slunk away from the bar in the previous episode.

And all the ways that Mhok is right behind Day as August engages through the episode, checking in, vibing. And respect to Mhok for taking some time away from the birthday party at the end, too. Did it break my heart to hear Day calling for Mhok before August's final arrival? For sure. But Mhok needed some space to process --

-- and then he came back, watched what was happening, and you know what struck me? We again saw a moment where Mhok has changed, as I mentioned last week.

Mhok could have pummeled August! Imagine if that shit went down at the start of the series. Lil' August wouldn't have any damn teeth left. Remember that Mhok pummeled that m'fer that Porjai was with, TWICE.

Mhok didn't kick August's ass this time around. Mhok held himself, he asked August questions. Day also knew what Mhok was capable of, but Mhok held himself. FUCK. Exquisite!

And then.... we got the rooftop, we got the rooftop.

This is a great series. THESE ARE GREAT EPISODES.

Couple other quick notes:

1) JIMMY AND SEA! JIMMY! THOSE LOOKS ON THE ROOFTOP! YOOOOOOOO.

2) I just want to acknowledge all the sensualness of this episode by way of scent and touch, and trust the family on posting about it.

That being said:

I've been known to be intrigued by scented things emanating from Aof's shows in the past. He had posted on IG a few weeks ago about a perfume company he likes, I went to check it out, and bloop, I got myself a sampler for the holidays.

I clocked the cologne that Day gifted Mhok.

As far as I can tell, this specific bottle called Tiwa doesn't exist -- although I love that the fake brand is "UNTOLD STORIES," written at the top. Tee-hee.

Coincidentally, a scent called "Tiwa" was created by a company called Parfum Prissana, out of Thailand (they look great, I want to smell them one day).

A website reviewing Prissana's Tiwa notes the description of the scent that came from Prissana itself:

Atmosphere of the day time in a countryside of Thailand. The smell of local cooking herbs and spices and there is fruits orchards and precious woods near by. Tiwa means day time in Thai.

Well, well, well.

#last twilight #last twilight meta #last twilight the series #last twilight the series meta #aof noppharnach #backaof noppharnach #jimmysea #jimmy jitaraphol #sea tawinan #mhokday #mhok x day #day x mhok #morkday #mork x day #day x mork #mark pakin #namtan tipnaree #film rachanun #ohm thiphakorn

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