#night x porjai

[namtan]

LAST TWILIGHT | Ep 10

[petrichoraline]

porjai reminding night what her situation is by rubbing her belly and forcing him to think about what he's signing up for before they even go out for their first meal.

"pregnant women usually eat a lot" as in "you'll have a lot on your plate", "will you be able to treat me?" as in "do you have what it takes to treat me right?"

mork says that she moved on so fast after they broke up and she did that after leaving her ex as well. porjai's been hurt over and over again in many ways but she always takes a deep breath and then keeps going with a smile and her head held high.

[waitmyturtles]

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.

[isbelevans]

the old married couple vibes in this scene >>>

LAST TWILIGHT EPISODE 12

[hummingbirdsinjune]

Kicking, screaming, dying.

How many kids will Mark raise in BL series'?? The count is two.

[aliceisathome]

Who's not watching ep 11 of Last Twilight until next Friday to save herself a week's pain and suffering?

I remember Bad Buddy - I'm not going through that again Aof.

[miss0atae]

It's a bit sad to say that I found the last episode of Last Twilight the series a little underwhelming.

I like a happy ending so it's not the problem. I just thought the end would be different. We spent time on things that didn't matter and some other important topics were left without any answers.

I'm just happy that Mhok got what he wanted even if I believe he deserves more. He was one of my favorite characters and I felt so close to him because we had many things in common.

At least I was really happy for Porjai and Night. Mark and Namtan had a small role in this series but they were killing it. I loved their characters and how they interacted with each other but also their relationship with Mhok and Day.

I also have to admit I didn't appreciate Day as much as I wanted. I sometimes felt I didn't understand him at all.

The story was beautiful. I just didn't like the end. I wanted something different, but with a happy ending. I guess, I'm a bit demanding. 😅

[nomerrynolife]

I just need to rant...

This episode my heart bleed for Night and from a mere dislike, I am now fully enraged with Day's and Night's mom.

looking down on other's because they're poor? Ma'am, your own son remembers that you used to begged for food after your husband ran off, get off your high horse.

if anything she should empathize with Mhok's situation, not feeling like a queen vetting and reviewing Mhok like some kind of a liability to the state. I can understand a mother wanting the best, but you obviously too busy to be home to realized that Day had started smiling and living like a normal person again.

if it wasn't for Mhok, ma'am your son probably has gone mental talking like a guppy coz the only friend he has is the fishes in the tank.

if she care a bit about Day at all, she should know how miserable Day is being locked up in a room for an entire year. Not learning how to bring Day back to society nor learning how to handle a blind person and treating him like everybody else, like a son he always has been. This reminds me of that scene in Moonlight Chicken, when Heart's mom had to rely on LiMing to translate coz she didn't even bother to learn sign language.

what rages me the most is that the mom also implied that Night is responsible for Day's condition. Ma'am please, your job is to make sure BOTH your son is taken care of, not drive a wedge between them! At the very least not make Night feel even guiltier, and that's also so that Night doesn't feel guilty and burdened to help Day. It's obvious that Night did try his best to help (letting Day go to Songkhla, slipping the new phone with his meal, changing the soggy noodle soup with Day)

Idk about anyone else, but favoritism among kids is not uncommon in South East Asia household (at the very least my country) so seeing that framed picture of Mom hugging ONLY Day makes my heart breaks further for Night. It shows that mom already favor Day to Night, and when the accident happen and she further blames Night I can only imagine how awful it is to be Night.

Night calling their long lost father to confide and pour his heart out because he has no one in the house to turn to... help me I'm crying.

even your blind son can see that favoritism bullshit you're pulling during the Christmas dinner, MA'AM I CANNOT HELD MY ANGER AND MY TEARS SEING NIGHT BROKE DOWN LIKE THAT.

Anyways, we'll see next episode if she redeem herself. I sure hope so. Night still got that rizz staring down on Porjai knowing her legs has turn jelly (well, at least I know I do) and not hesitating to be a father that stepped up, A MAN. I just know he's gonna be a great father since he's gonna pour all the love he didn't get to that child.

[adorablesunshinefour]

I know there is already a lot of criticism about the finale, but I also have one and that is: VERY LITTLE NIGHTPORJAI SCREENTIME IN THIS ENTIRE SHOW 😡😡

🥺What do you mean they had meaningful conversations and make each other feel seen and we never saw one of them?!?! 🥺

[vrag-veshtica]

night and porjai I'm okay I'm okay

[namtan]

LAST TWILIGHT | Ep 7

[petrichoraline]

smitten - deeply affected with or struck by strong feelings of attraction, affection, or infatuation

awe - an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admiration, fear, etc., produced by that which is grand, sublime, extremely powerful, or the like

Night was so smitten he couldn't keep his eyes off Porjai for too long. Wondering how she could (and if she should) jump and yell like that, he realised he couldn't help but be in awe of her.

[chainedupgirlsblog]

Night when a beautiful pregnant woman start flirting with him:

I’m ready to be a dad now.

[isbelevans]

LAST TWILIGHT EPISODE 12

[the-therapist-needs-therapy]

Haha... My dreams coming true.... Pls make them end up

It's a good day to be a Phojai x Night shipper!

Go get you a rich boy, girl! He is in need of a hug or twelve.

[peachandpinwheel]

i've had Porjai x Night for 3 minutes and if anything happens to them I will kill everyone in this room and then myself