#justice for mhok

[nozunhinged]

I need to get this list off my chest so I can move on and it's so long that I'm gonna mark it with a spoiler line because holy fucking shit (in no particular order I ain't rewatching that ever again)

- THE FUXKING TIMESKIP

- the mislead that pohrjai is going to marry mhok

- the fact that they never talked but night and pohrjai still trying to play cupid

- day blocking mhok on everything

- and still them playing cupid

- mhok reapplying for his visa, knowing full well he will see day at their wedding and also knowing full well he wants to pursue him again

- how mhok snuck up on him to guide him, don't make him an amazing caretaker just to have him be predatory in the last fucking episode

- and day said NOTHING about it

- same in the bookstore fucking tell him it's you

- "are you dating anyone" followed by just touching him like that I— 🤢

- mohk literally BABYING him even though this man is running his own business now

- he spent the last TEN episodes being an excellent caretaker just to turn into a clingy overprotective fuckboy for the last 30 mins??? PLEASE

- days fucking smug face when mhok groveled at his feet I wanted to smack him

- mhok groveling like he fucking killed days entire family WHAT THE FUCK MAN

- mhok flirting like that spoiled fucker didn't shatter his heart into a million pieces and ignored him for three years

- and didn't even apologize or explain

- the second chances bullshit and apparently even his parents reconciling???? Bro

- the "second chance" pohrjai described was so fucking forced just for the narrative I almost puked

- also I was totally with day if I hear the word second chance one more time I'm gonna riot

- day being scared HES GONNA DO IT TO HIM AGAIN HE DIDNT DO ANYTHING TO YOU YOU LITTLE SPOILED BRAT

- his mom (I'm not gonna elaborate)

- the fucking SECOND eye donation

- and it worked

- day still not telling mhok he's handsome

and last but not least

"thank you for breaking up with me"

You know what?! I'm out

[impossiblekittylady]

So... I will be just waiting here for some fix-it fics for Last Twilight, I guess?

Can't believe how they did my boy Mhok dirty.

Where's my dealing with trauma? What's with these time skips? Da fuq am I watching?

[supesucowboys]

ARE THEY FOR REAL

[waitmyturtles]

Last Twilight, episode 1: reflections

TW: suicide

ALLLLLLLLRIGHT! Aof Noppharnach began our year with Moonlight Chicken; interjected it with Our Skyy 2 x Bad Buddy x A Tale of Thousand Stars, and bookends it with Last Twilight. I've got my cha yen ready (not too sweet), here we go, Last Twilight, episode 1.

Some quick notes on random stuff first, then themes I'm picking up on:

1) Yes, we had to have Doc Jimmy start a new series with a new fight, huh (and always in these bowling shirt/jackets, too)

2) Ajahn Pichai with the gold chain, sheeeet! (Listen. It's my OGMMTVC Bad Buddy Meta Month. Just about everyone working on this show on the screenwriting and directing team are BBS alums. The comparisons will be unavoidable!)

3) Why do I know Sea Tawinan? It’s not because I watched Vice Versa (I stayed away), but because he was great in a small role in 55:15 Never Too Late, AND, more importantly, homeboy wore an off-shoulder Fendi sweater WITH a blazer (CLAP EMOJIS) to some GMMTV event, which warmed my couture cockles. Much respect for the taste! (Poor @lurkingshan has had to literally hear about my fashion obsession with this get-up MULTIPLE TIMES, sorry Shan, palms together!)

4) Of the few episodes of Midnight Museum and UMG that I watched earlier this year, I was not impressed with Namtan Tipnaree, but I appreciate that she's starting off quite strong and moodily here. (Also, UMG's script did literally no human being any justice.)

@twig-tea has gathered the ragged and burnt out (oh, is that just me, lmao) Ephemerality Squad from the Only Friends meta circle to join them in a Last Twilight Liminality.... what should we call ourselves, the Liminality League? The Liminality Legion? Someone choose! Anyway, I am super down, and ready to start chewing on some themes. Twig captured the big theme of liminality, of time purgatory, and I totally agree with what you've gotten down in your post, Twig.

In the preview episode for this series, Before Last Twilight, we learn that Day has 180 days -- six months -- of vision left. At the same time, Mhok has 180 days -- six months -- to earn enough money to buy back his late sister's car.

In addition to liminality/time purgatory (this is only my coinage, btw, a way in which I can understand the moment in life this show is capturing), we clearly have a theme of cars and movement. Mhok is a mechanic. He wants to keep his late sister's car. The Bimmer that Night is driving is Day's car. Mhok has to get Day home on the back of a motorcycle as Night had to drive away while Day was wandering in the middle of the road. A car can move backwards only very temporarily, and will HAVE to move forwards at any point in time in order to get to another location (..... unless you're a driver from New Jersey, ayooo!). The car belonging to the late Rung is very much in purgatory at the moment.

We have a theme of sibling rivalry between Day and Night. Day was the success of the family, knows it, and hangs it over Night's head. And we have a theme of opposites. Day, Night, blind, seeing. I can play badminton, I cannot play badminton.

(BY THE WAY! We know we'll be reading more into badminton, AND in the rivalry of Day and Night, AND in the rivalry of Sea and Mark in this series, yes? Mark Pakin and Sea Tawinan are both national-level Thai badminton players who chose acting as their careers. They're facing off in some GMMTV BL sports tournament at the end of the year. I hope it's slightly aggressive! In Before Last Twilight, Sea actually made reference to his rivalry with Mark. Ooooh, TESTY!)

While I'm watching closely the tension between Day and Night, I'm also watching for the stress and pressure that caring for Day will put on Mhok, as well as Night and his and Day's mother. As many of us are watching Last Twilight very closely for accuracy and authenticity in reflecting the experience of a disabled person in an unaccommodating environment; I'm also looking to this show to hopefully capture stories of caregiver stress, which is an incredibly real and important phenomenon (relevant articles here and here).

As I always, always harken to in my posts: behavioral change is very real, and very difficult -- especially when behavioral change is forced upon an individual AND/OR a group, all of which contain very different emotional constructions. Day and Night's forced behavioral change, based on Day's vision condition, has very naturally and automatically caused stress in the group dynamic of Day's family system, as we saw in the outburst in Day's car. I wonder how Mhok will deal with that stress, and how he'll manage his own stress vis à vis caring for Day.

Last theme for now, and then some concluding thoughts. Mhok's emotional distance from his sister's suicide. He can't bring himself to connect with it directly.

I'm eating this up. It's certainly Mhok's way of grieving at the moment. He's also talking with his ex-girlfriend in both of these scenes. There's emotional space between him and Rung, between him and Porjai. And certainly there's simmering and unresolved anger as well -- honestly, the whole emotional circle. But Mhok, at this point, is not toeing the line of getting close to those emotions, and is engaging with the memory of his sister with distance, which is bound to be addressed vis à vis his connection with Day.

There's a lot of anger, a lot of regret, a lot of avoidance, a lot of dancing around the honest truth. Mhok and Day are likely conduits of emotional openness and steadiness to each other; we will see how it plays out.

What do I think of JimmySea? I'm not you're average Wai hater -- I really liked Jimmy as Wai in Bad Buddy. Because I didn't watch Vice Versa, I honestly don't know what I think about him in a lead role. So I am going in REAL fresh, knowing nothing about JimmySea's chemistry, and I like what I'm seeing so far, particularly with Jimmy's emotional control. I appreciate having seen a bit of the work they did together in Before Last Twilight to get to this series premiere.

Aof has done this before: he's recognized potential in pairings (specifically in Dark Blue Kiss with TayNew and Still 2gether with BrightWin) to come up with fabulous shows. So I have trust that he knows what he's doing with JimmySea. Let's see. I really like this so far, but Only Friends did indeed burn me out to a crisp, so I'm allowing myself the slightest touch of hesitancy as I get into a new and big GMMTV show.

[iguessitsjustme]

These shows hurt me in different ways

[butterflyeffectiooon]

I am so conflicted about whether day actually matured and whether the break up was actually out of character….. on one hand it HAD to be because he readily forgave others for SO MUCH WORSE without them ever explaining or even really apologizing!!!!! August really truly did pity him and toyed with his heart and he went soft on him and forgave him after saying some nice things????? HIS MOM first of all enabled him to rot in his bedroom for a year but then later punished him for something he definitely decided to do but she could have EASILY blamed on mhok even tho it was very much a joint decision by sending him BACK to his room and cutting off all means of communication with the rest of the world!!!!! And all she had to say to be forgiven was “maybe I wasn’t the best mother”….. I understand there’s a cultural difference here that I will never get but I also have had (different) cultural ideals and expectations drilled into me since birth and maybe it’s the autistic sense of justice but I am not going to allow anyone to treat me that badly just bc society says it’s ok…. Or at the very least I’m not going to forgive them that easily just because society says I need to. It’s just. this man has forgiven A LOT when it didn’t seem deserved.

Buuuuuuuut at the same time it took him OVER A YEAR to forgive night for *checks notes* actually fucking nothing. Night literally did not make day crash the car and this idea of him trying to take day’s spot in the family or something feels like a way for day to justify his misdirected anger. He’s angry at himself for causing the accident but in what we now see is pretty typical day fashion he can’t take responsibility so he uses night as a scapegoat. It gives me the feeling that he is unable to own up to his mistakes even tho the only other time that was demonstrated was the single time mhok ever got mad at him when he pretended he lost the book on the beach. And this was pretty insignificant but it still contributes to the idea that day never did any emotional labor. And he got mad at mhok for giving him a taste of his own medicine after but I know some people saw that as an abuse of power on mhok’s part so I’ll let it go (I’m not gonna say it wasn’t but he didn’t actually leave him and NEVER EVER would so overall harm done was like 30 seconds of distress to day. Which I’m actually so surprised that even happened bc mhok would also never ever purposefully cause day distress…..) anyway day did admit ONCE to mhok that he knew the accident wasn’t night’s fault and honestly my recollection of the events and timeline of the show is getting blurred bc of how bad the breakup and ending are making me spiral but I don’t THINK day ever admitted the “night’s taking my place” thing was a front. Ok so when he “forgave” night it felt a little forced or undeserved to me for reasons I couldn’t figure out at the time but I understand now. It was very much played as day FORGIVING night instead of admitting he was wrong and apologizing or something else he wouldn’t do but should have. Yeah day admitted he was wrong one time but not to night. So to night this is gonna feel like forgiveness for something he believes he did. So even if he knows day has forgiven him he still has to live with the guilt that he caused the accident (which he didn’t but he believes he did bc day has always said so and never told him he doesn’t actually think that) like why are we making the most loving and caring characters suffer like this. Night shouldn’t feel forgiven, he should feel assured he didn’t cause his little brother any harm in the first place.

[isbelevans]

I hate that we will probably never deal with Mhok's trauma one episode isn't enough anyway to do that but we know there is going to be a time jump so at best I expect a scene referencing it if we are lucky maybe a montage who knows I know the series is mainly from Day's perspective but justice for Mhok and his very real trauma

[nozunhinged]

This post by @waitmyturtles is what finally, finally led me to the conclusion what bothered me about the series so much (not just the ending) and I'm seriously wondering if this a cultural difference that I misunderstood which geniunely makes me question if I got the whole eyesight-storyline wrong or if it really was bad writing.

(and I didn't wanna mess up all the smart reblog-additions with my personal 2 cents so I made a new post for it)

It's the fact that Day never says himself that he's ready for the surgery/wants the surgery.

From the first episode on, every time they talked about the "eye donation" (which is the first problem imho, he's keeping his eyes and corneas are a tiny, vital part of them), I understood it as a plot device to show how the people around him make the decisions for Day and how he doesn't get the chance to make them for himself.

I felt like I was conditioned to think that way, every time the donation came up I had the reaction of "that's not the point here, deal with the situation at hand and not potential futures!!" and I thought Days lack of a response to the whole topic was meant to inflinct that reaction. Meant to be a sign of Days lack of autonomy and how he slowly, slowly gains it back.

But we never get to hear his own opinion about the possiblity of getting his eyesight back, even with him gaining autonomy and growing as a person, nor do we get a proper explanation by the doctors how his options look like and what a deteriorated cornea even MEANS. We aren't all doctors, we don't know the million different ways sight can be impaired and if it's temporary or not.

Which lead, in combination with Days ongoing lack of a response, to my (!) impression, that this storyline is not relevant to the message the show wants to put out, and that it's a story about how he learns to grow into his this new state of being. Which made the surgery feel like it came completely out of nowhere.

And now I'm wondering - in the context of this being a thai show and family playing a very vital role - did we not need Days explicit approval to learn that he wants it? Was his approval that he let his mom take care of the whole surgery process? Was this why he forgave her so quickly, and always turned to her, was that his approval? Because she stood for the chance of getting his sight back?

I'm not gonna discuss how Day is still a spoiled brat, the absolute obliteration of mhoks character, the unnecessary introduction of august or all the other loose ends of the story...

But with this particular point, I feel like I geniunely misunderstood something and maybe didn't do the story enough justice.

Do I still wish the narrative would've explained the whole eyesight-thing better so we understand the status of days disability better? Yes, absolutely yes.

But I also need a flagpole of signs to understand things so maybe I missed some nuance here and I really really want to know your opinions about this so please comment your thoughts!!

[iguessitsjustme]

Last Twilight - Music

I wanted to do a music analysis of Last Twilight for a long time and I thought about it quite a lot. Every week I was blown away by the music and every week I thought, “I need to talk about the music or I’ll explode.” The problem is that I do not have time, nor do I really have the skill, to talk in depth about the music in this show. The show’s soundtrack is so good that I genuinely do not think I can do it justice. Maybe one day I will have time to go back and go episode by episode, scene by scene, and do the research and everything that I would need to do in order to fully analyze what the show has done. So I will not do a full music analysis (also my mental health right now isn’t really in a space to do all of that but catch me probably months from now down some rabbit hole to do it properly), but I did say I will explode if I don’t at least talk about the music so this is going to be just a rambly mess of my thoughts about the soundtrack in this show.

I will say that this is the same team of composers that did A Tale of A Thousand Stars and truly they do good work together and I hope we get more from them. They’ve both worked separately and done good work, but both times (that I am aware of) that they’ve worked together has been truly phenomenal. I think the choices they made really tie the story together and enhance the feeling we are supposed to be feeling in each. and. every. scene. Would each scene still have the emotional impact it does without the music? Maybe, these actors are all absolutely killing it. But the music is just bringing home what they’re doing. 

The music is setting the tone so beautifully. And it’s not the kind of soundtrack that hides in the background and does its work subtly behind the scenes. There are moments when the music is loud and in your face. But never, not once, is it overpowering. It never distracts from the scene or the story or the actors or the visual elements. It works cohesively with everything there. Every element is working in harmony (ha) with each other and that’s part of the magic of this show. 

But there is something else that this show is doing beautifully that a lot of other shows fail to do and that is utilize silence. It’s never a silence that takes you out of the show. It’s never a silence that’s so loud that you’re left wondering what happened to the background noise. The silence is there and it is purposeful. It typically reflects pauses. Pauses in conversation. Pauses in thoughts. Pauses in feelings. But it’s always brought back and we’re eased into the sound once more. Never once has a musical transition not worked. I said I wasn’t going to get specific but this is still on my mind from episode 10, so I’ll mention it, in part one when Day’s mother (do NOT get me started) is confronting Mhok with Day, the music seamlessly transitions throughout the scene. As the charged emotions ebb and flow throughout the scene, so does the music. A lot of shows struggle with this (thinking of a recent show that had so many soundtrack choices, all strange, in one scene that my soul yeeted itself into the stratosphere but I shall not name names). But Last Twilight transitions. It doesn’t just plop a song down and go “that’s it time for the next song in the next scene.” There is thought there. There is intent. How are we supposed to feel when watching this scene? Does the music add to that feeling? Does it take that feeling away? Does it do nothing? What should the music be doing? Should there even be music here? These emotions changed during the scene, how should the music reflect that? Those are all questions that I ask myself when I’m doing any sort of analysis of a scene, music or otherwise. Because all of those questions are important to figure out what the scene is telling us. They’re all important to what the show is telling us.

The last thing I want to mention is the theme song. I love it first of all. Now, it’s not my favorite opening and there are definitely other theme songs that I think are better BUT and this is a huge: in ten episodes, not once have I felt like I was slammed in the face by a sudden theme song. The music has transitions smoothly into the opening in every single episode. Like it’s a natural progression to the story. Like “of course it’s opening time. Take a breather before we settle in.” I can think of one show specifically that was the worst at that and I felt slapped in the face by the opening each week because it was such a sudden and sharp turn in the music. But not Last Twilight. 

The soundtrack here takes you by the hand and gently leads you to where the show wants to take us. It will hold you carefully and safely in its arms and keep you warm while your heart is being torn to pieces by Mhok and Day and Day and Night and Night and Porjai and all of the love between all of these people. It will even hold your hand as Day’s mother refuses to accept the reality in front of her. I’m not sure where this story is going. I’m not sure how I feel about that ending and preview. But one thing I do know: no matter how the story turns out, the music will carry us there as gently as it can.

Bonus thought: I would like to thank Last Twilight for being the only BL show to use Christmas background Christmas music appropriately. During their little date. On Christmas. Praise bless.