#mork methas

[rikotin]

"Are you smiling?" "Mhm."

LAST TWILIGHT (2023)

[puppy-phum]

— Kavya Dixit

[chalkrevelations]

Ohhhh, my god. Yeah, I have only myself to blame for the way Last Twilight played me in regards to the MorkDay relationship. Because the Night & Day relationship was right there as foreshadowing. And I realize that I've harped repeatedly on the way the narrative framed the accident that damaged Day's vision, but now I realize that it provides a (unintentional?) parallel to the trainwreck of Mork and Day's relationship as it actually plays out vs. the way the narrative treats it.

Day never, not once, accepts any culpability in the accident that damaged his vision, even though he was the one driving the car. None of the other characters challenge his framing that the accident was Night's fault. The narrative, itself, doesn't challenge his framing that the accident was Night's fault. Yes, his reckless driving is shown to be in response to an action of Night's, but not once is Day made to take ownership of and accept responsibility for his own actions and how he responds, which includes driving with his head practically under the dashboard, at night, with other cars on the road. Nobody made Day do that except Day, himself. Significantly, we never hear anything about anyone in the other vehicle or how they may have been injured (or killed?), and I have to wonder how much of that is down to Day's privileged socioeconomic status. (If it had been Mork driving that car, how likely is it that he would have ended up ... well. In jail?)

Neither does Day accept any responsibility for the damage to his relationship with Mork - or the emotional damage he deals to Mork, himself - when he unilaterally breaks things off after figuring out Mork lied about the job opportunity in Hawaii. None of the other characters challenge his framing that Mork has committed the cardinal sin of pitying Day. The narrative, itself, doesn't challenge his framing that Mork has committed the cardinal sin of pitying Day - in fact, it doubles down by making Mork apologize for it in the final episode. Yes, Day's response to Mork lying about the job is in character for him, but Day is never made to take ownership of and accept responsibility for how he responds, including 1) jumping to conclusions about Mork's reasons or 2) withdrawing emotional support from his boyfriend in the wake of Mork's admission of ongoing trauma. Given context clues we get prior to Day jumping to his conclusions, it's clear that Mork had unresolved trauma from his sister's death. But Day mows him down for supposedly pitying Day as surely as if he'd hit him with a car, shuts down any explanation Mork tries to give and withdraws any hope of a mutually supportive relationship by refusing to do the least bit of emotional labor on Mork's behalf, instead banishing him from Day's life. We then get an upbeat montage of Day living his best life without Mork, but significantly, we see nothing about what Mork is going through or dealing with during this same time period.

Day treats both of these men in his life - men who are in some of the closest relationships he can have: a brother, a lover - terribly, while shrugging off his own part in the physical and emotional injuries he blames them for. He never apologizes to either of them for hurting them by lashing out. Instead, he magnanimously forgives both of them for how they've hurt him and expects the relationships to pick up from there as if everything is fine. And indeed, in neither case does the narrative seem to think that he needs to do any work to make up for how he treats them.

Which also leads me to: Maybe in some ways, the accident stands in for the way that Day - and his mother - hold it against Night for not being the supportive big brother they think he ought to have been. But Mork's storyline shows us that it never would have mattered how supportive a big brother Night was, because Mork was repeatedly, exhaustively supportive of Day, and all it took was one misstep for Day to kick Mork to the curb and literally block him out of his life for three years until Mork, himself, came back and pushed the issue while accepting full blame onto himself. Sure, Day wrote that editor's note in the book, but he also doted on that gd fish that Night got him, while at the same time being the most heinous asshole he could possibly be both to and about Night. So if he's going to treat Mork the way he did, why should I think he would treat Night any differently than he did the minute Night made a single mistake, no matter if Night had been (in his eyes) perfect in the past?

I think I'm supposed to believe that Day has learned and grown during his time with a disability - I guess that's one thing I'm supposed to take away from his little speech at the beginning of the finale and maybe from him helping that dude across the street in the surprise gotcha in the last part of the ep? But if I look at what the series actually shows me of how he treats the people in his life, I have no proof that he's not just the same self-centered asshole he started out as - the self-centered asshole he admits to being at one point. Which would be fine - no disabled person is required to be a saint, purified and exalted into inspiration porn by their disability. It's just that 1) the show seems to be trying to sell me on the idea that he's not the same self-centered asshole he started out as, and 2) the show seems to be trying to sell me on the idea that any relationship Mork has with him isn't going to be toxically imbalanced.

And I'm not buying.

[athousandbyeol]

💫:

@a-slut-for-vegaspete @seatawinans @first-kanaphan @daymork <3

the video premiere starts in less than 15 minutes. have fun watching <3

[ruanbaijie]

🍑 art

[x] hualian by @mmagurro

[x] mo xuanyu by @kkarmin

[x] nightless city by @ann-mauriii

[x] betrayed...? by @bxbxbx0

[x] it hurts by @juicedpeachy

[x] xianle trio in battle wip by @mooncakebun

[x] hua cheng new sketching style. by @mooncakebun

[x] jjk 251 panel by @innaillus

[x] jjk season 2 by @sonialiao

[x] shi wudu by @mariauri

[x] wangji-xiong. wangji. lan wangji. lan zhan! by @apothecaresa

[x] to die for you in battle is my greatest honour by @roremy

[x] one of my favourite panels from another angle by @obliviani

[x] hua cheng by @kuropii6

[x] when our eyes meet by @kuropii6

[x] a commissioned illustration for "no water is enough" by boomchick by @auchrauch

[x] start and end of a blue spring by @xo-romiiarts

[x] oh, starboy by @mochipong

[x] hualian by @ghironda7

[x] the boy who swallowed a star by @tamberella

[x] "... and broken dreams" by @blackwhitefeatherart

[x] shuangxuan by @cruelnemothesis

🍑 edits

[x] a tribute to mork methas pankhamdee, the last spark of hope in a world gone dark by @morkofday

[x] pov: you just asked your friend who's still on tumblr about... the untamed by @itstrikesback

[x] jabami yumeko by @izuku

🍑 gifsets

[x] the days are coming that she'll never forget by @buzzcutseascn

[x] nam seonho + first light by hozier by @pondsphuwin

[x] game of thrones characters as taylor swift songs by @reputayswift

[x] percy jackson by @jakeyp

[x] seasons by @jakeyp

[x] good omens by @maines

[x] regina george by @gloriapritchetts

[x] in turning divine we tangle endlessly like lovers entwined by @tommykinrd

[x] itadori yuuji by @cal-kestis

[x] this is jujutsu kaisen by @cal-kestis

[x] jujutsu kaisen by @queenrojpag

[x] the han joo won 'seasons 계절' collection: out now! by @khaotunqs

[x] i ought to stick to another man, a man that surely deserves me…but i think you do by @khaotunqs

[x] "run boy run! this world is not made for you." by @black-dread

[x] omg it's blorbo bleebus by @chinzhilla

[x] an eight word story by @eddiediaaz

[x] I owe her a love worth sixty thousand years by @baifengxis

[x] lilacs by the sea by @kimtaegis

[x] you wanna know how I know your daddy, don't you? by @speakviolence

[chalkrevelations]

So how long do you think Mork made Porjai practice dancing with him to prep for this wedding?

Cannot believe Aof robbed us of those scenes.

[chalkrevelations]

I'm still occasionally feeling my way through my reaction to Last Twilight, and I guess one of my key questions now is, do the creative team understand the blueprint they created for an abusive relationship with MorkDay?

Here's the thing. Something poked around in the back of my brain for a long time about the appropriateness of Mork's behavior with Day as a caregiver, given the potential for abuse in that kind of relationship, and I was really hoping that somebody (probably Mom) was going to take the bullet for expressing some kind of concern about whether Mork had abused his position once their relationship was found out, just so we could at least cover that base and lay it to rest. We never got that - instead we got the sadly predictable "oh no, not A Poor" reaction from Mom. But I think that concern might have distracted me enough that it took me longer to start really sussing out the balance of power(s) in the MorkDay relationship, and to see the extremely concerning pattern being laid out. And so now, in hindsight, I'm left looking at the end of the show and the projected future relationship, and all I can think is "Mork, you have to get out."

Because I've called out Day's behavior toward Night as abusive in the past, and I've linked the parallels between the Night-Day and MorkDay relationships. But it just hit me how insidious and disturbing the creep of an abusive dynamic is between Mork and Day, and what crystallized it was remembering something that I've actually called out before, after Day goes off on Night at the start of the trip to Songkhla, and I questioned if Mork was going to call Day on his treatment of Night. That answer turned out to be "NO." And it's only with hindsight that I realize - doing that to Night in front of Mork is a test. It assures Day that Mork will let him get away with treating Night that way, and it makes Mork complicit in that treatment of Night, and maybe most importantly for an abuser, it's a step toward the next test - of whether Mork will let him get away with treating Mork that way. Will Mork let Day get away with this?

And the answer is yes.

So where does Mork draw the line? We literally have no idea. We never see it happen. He tells Day in that same ep, on the beach, that Day can be inappropriate, and then we get some horseplay, and then it's like it never happened, and it's never spoken of again. And then we have that wretched finale where Mork apologizes for "everything" and takes the blame for everything onto himself, and that has now become even more uncomfortable for me, because wow. I guess Day wouldn't have had to treat Mork like shit if Mork hadn't made him do it, and you see where I'm going with this, right?

And I don't know that the creative team, with their deeply entrenched protagonist-centered morality, actually realize what they did there and how disturbing it is.

[chalkrevelations]

I need to poke through my dissatisfaction with the last couple of eps of Last Twilight and see if I can articulate the issues I'm having - beyond one of the clearest, which is my continued irritation at the way the narrative continues to frame the car accident as Night's fault, with Day taking not the slightest bit of responsibility for driving in a criminally reckless manner. I realize the accident is acting as shorthand for all the ways in which Day (and Ramon) perceive Night as falling down on his job as older brother in the past, but it is not the same, and anyway, I have my own questions about how overly parentified Night may have been in the past, in concert with viewing both Day and Ramon as unreliable narrators.

MY POINT, THOUGH, for now, is that I will say that as much as I loathe the way it hurts Mork and invalidates his trauma over his sister, the decision to have Day break up with him the way that he did is airtight characterization. We've known from jump that Day is a mean motherfucker when he feels threatened and that he excels at nothing so much as pushing people away. Done and done.

It remains to be seen if they can successfully resolve this in an actually emotionally satisfying manner with only one episode left, though. Particularly with the apparent requisite time skip we're going to have to deal with.

I'm really going to hate it if this show chokes at the 11th hour.

[chalkrevelations]

Mm. About 2/3 of the way through the first part of Ep 12 of Last Twilight, and I have yet to encounter anything that makes me happy about a prospective MorkDay HEA. What's the bait-and-switch you're going to pull on me, like the ~surprise~ that Pat and Pran never actually broke up, Aof? Because if there's not one, you're going to have to work really fast, at this point, to make me not want Mork closing that car door in Day's face to be the last interaction they ever actually have.

Particularly as you only have 20-30 minutes to also deal with Mork's issues over his sister's death in any kind of satisfactory manner at all.

Is it possible for Day to do any of the emotional labor in this relationship? At all? (Not to mention that we clearly are never going to deal with the fact that the car accident was not Night's "fault." I suppose if we never take Day's culpability in the literal car accident into account, it'll at least match the complete failure to recognize the way he figuratively mowed down Mork that we seem to be heading toward.)

I cannot believe I'm going to have to watch the slow unspooling of this show into an unearned ending only a few months after watching the slow unspooling of Only Friends into a trashfire of multiple unearned endings. I'm almost afraid to go back and watch the rest.

ETA: Also, lol at everyone who's spent previous eps indignant on Day's behalf that Ramon was always traveling so much instead of being Super-Supportive Stay-Home Mom. Apparently, she can't even make it to Night's wedding, so the fact that she cooked Day a birthday dinner at all apparently cements his Favored Child status.

ETA2: Yeah. Probably a good thing they put Porjai and Night in the preview for part 2, or I might actually be done with this, at this point.

[athousandbyeol]

we can't go back; oh, how sad. [morkday fanfic]

there's something so uncannily endearing about day's calmness. the peculiarness of his gentle smile doesn't match the brightest glint in his darkening eyes—awaiting tears hanging onto the last thread of manufactured composure—and mork wonders if day isn't crying because of him.

or a retelling of episode 10 where mork and day don't get back together.

[puppy-phum]

When did you start seeing the light, Day? — Ever since you came into my life, I guess.

a tribute to mork methas pankhamdee, the last spark of hope in a world gone dark.

[ quote | insp. ✦✧✦✧ ]

[chalkrevelations]

Coming out of Ep 8, Part 3, of Last Twilight, and I see we're all being little shits who take things too far today, but this is closely followed by a change into the 'fits from the dancing scene, so all arguments are invalid.

(Maybe I'll talk later about how Mork seems to calculate Day's distress at him walking away as being equivalent to his own distress about seeing Day unhappy, and what that might say about how high on the distress scale Mork "Simp" Methas ranks seeing Day be unhappy. But not right now, because I have to go watch some dancing.)

(Also, don't get me started on the fact that Day threw a tantrum over Night telling him the layout of the bathrooms so he could go pee for his own self, and meanwhile, he has zero objection to Mork opening milk bottles for him. Your fingers work fine, boy. Mmhmm.)