When Trin and Tanwa are talking at the party, Tanwa tells Trin that even if he went to the moon he wouldn't be alone up there because of the rabbit.
In Thai folklore rabbits (and hares) are associated with the moon.
In Chanthaburi (moon city) you can find rabbit symbols all over.
This is likely due to the Buddhist Jataka Tale
The Old Man And The Rabbit
In this story, four animals decide to perform some charity on the night of the full moon to accrue merit.
They find an old man begging for food and a monkey, an otter and a jackal all manage to find something to bring to the old man.
The last animal was a rabbit and having nothing to offer except for grass he threw himself into the fire, (dramatic sacrifices are pretty common in the Jataka tales.)
Luckily for the rabbit the old man was really Shakra, the lord of the gods in Buddhist cosmology and moved by the rabbit's sacrifice, he saved him from the flames and had his image preserved on the moon.
Jade Rabbit
In Chinese mythology the moon goddess Chang-e has a pet rabbit named YuTu.
Tu'er Shen
China also has The Rabbit God, a deity who arranges love and sex between men 🐇
Lost in Translation
Tanwa uses word play to make a joke here, one that the english subtitles really struggle to convey.
There is a Thai idiom called "shooting rabbits" which refers to men going to wee behind a bush or something. The idea being that sometimes when a man finds himself in a rural spot and just has to relieve himself, he may startle some unsuspecting wildlife in the process hence "shooting rabbits" 🤣
So, when Trin asks Tanwa what should a man do if he finds himself stuck on the moon with a rabbit, Tanwa suggests he try "shooting rabbits." 🌚🌙
Why Shine Feels "Incomplete" to Some Fans and Why That’s the Point
Soon after the last episode of Shine ended, the fandom space on X erupted in dissatisfaction that quickly turned into anger, especially with respect to Trin's character arc and the Tanwa/Trin romance arc.
Although the showrunners consistently described Shine as a gay series, many fans accused BOC of exploiting MileApo’s BL fame and using familiar marketing tactics to lure BL audiences, only to deliver something that refused to play by BL rules. That tension between promise and expectation sits at the heart of this entire backlash.
A translator’s thoughtful thread about Shine’s artistic choices was met with anger and mockery, and soon the show’s writers, translators, and even production staff became targets of harassment. What began as a conversation about interpretation turned into a campaign of bullying. Watching that unfold has been disheartening, especially because the translator’s words revealed something vital about Shine’s artistic intent that many people refused to hear.
I’ve been thinking a lot about why that reaction feels so strong and why it also completely misses what makes this series so special.
To me, the backlash around Shine isn’t just about one ending. It’s about two different ways of understanding queer storytelling.
Heteronormative storytelling norms, especially in romance and BL genres, are the kind we’ve all been trained to expect. It demands that characters grow, fall in love, overcome obstacles, and end with closure in a very specific way. Even when the story is queer, we’re often measuring it by straight narrative rules: does it give us a happy ending? Is the arc complete?
But queer storytelling doesn’t always work that way. Sometimes it resists neat arcs. It lingers in tension, ambiguity, and longing. It values imagery, atmosphere, and emotional truth more than tidy resolution.
That’s what Shine does. It refuses to flatten itself into a BL fantasy. Trin’s story isn’t unfinished. His journey doesn’t follow a straight (literally and narratively) line from problem to solution. He embodies what the translator called queer aesthetics, which means he exists outside the usual rules of narrative progress. It is ambiguous, and so much of it takes place away from the eyes of viewers.
A lot of people are angry because they expected a BL ending: clear closure, emotional payoff, and fan-service catharsis. When they didn’t get that, they called it bad writing. But it’s not bad writing; it's a different kind of art that lives and breathes outside of heteronormative rules.
Shine was never a fan-service series. It’s political, layered, and deliberately queer. Its creators valued message and vision over meeting fandom demands. That’s not arrogance. That’s courage.
When audiences call that refusal flawed, what they’re really saying is, “I only recognize queerness when it behaves like heterosexual romance.” That’s the tragedy of the backlash; it turns queer resistance into an error.
The truth is that queer art often ends in deferral. Closure sometimes happens outside the frame, in the moments the story leaves us to imagine; in this case, between a kiss on the Pont Neuf and a long life of committed love. The ambiguity is in the story; the discomfort is in us. Shine refuses to explain itself, and that refusal unsettles audiences who have learned to measure queer stories by how neatly they resemble straight ones.
Let's get out of the way my lack of qualifications to talk about this, I simply enjoy the topic and have half a decent eye for details, but that's basically it. No fashion or design degree, nor history and definitely not the 2 combined, I just Like things and I felt like spending the week reading up on stuff and collecting references, that's it. I hope you enjoy reading this.
Shine: Accurate? Anacronistic?
Bit of both, really.
The silhouettes are very correct and accurate and that's usually what makes a piece of period media feel right and not costumy, but Shine gives a slightly idealised view of Late Sixties Fashion in which no loud print is clashing with the next person's own loud print, in which hip party people all dress in harmonious cool tones and where make up sparkles under the club's lights.
...Where's the Brown?
Honestly, the past is always browner than we remember, the Sixties were no expeption, but this is the same thing they did with the 80s in Stranger Things and all the 90s Fashion Moodboards that we see around so i'm not faulting the show, I can see that, for most scenes, they kept it to cool tones and brown would clash immensely.
The anacronisms mostly come from the cinematography's colour palette and given the gorgeous results, you simply can't fault it.
And Moira needs her glitter, you will not get a single negative comment on her from me, not even under torture.
Let's start with the direct comparisons that i spent the last few days making, PLEASE.
Party Outfits:
Mod dresses, plastic dresses, blue tux jackets with black silk lapels, Big Hair, ruffled shirts, embroidery.
And Moira.
She's in a spacey costume and I love every detail, from the actual dress that looks like a late 40s Dior strapless gown, to the added structured corset (that she sheds in the scene when Krailert is at the piano, together with her head-piece), the jewels, the hair, the make up (YES SHE CAN HAVE GLITTER, SHE'S ALLOWED).
Which brings me to
See what i meant about colours? If that gent in red was standing next to Cunty Ringo at the moonlanding party we'd have had Christmas in July. Anyway, look at the sparkly dress Punpun Sutatta is wearing and tell me it's not trying to be a Rabanne. It's also Thee Perfect Dress for the moonlanding, so i'm expecting her character to be a fashion girlie with impeccable taste in the next episodes.
But look at Cunty Ringo. Look at those biiiig lapels! Look at the ruffles! (AND THE POSE!)
I'll talk about business suits later, but trendy formal wear in the Late Sixties was, for a lack of better words, "shapey". Together with brightly coloured tuxedos, big, wide peaked lapels and ruffled shirts were a common combination. The overall silhouette of a suit was way trimmer than in the precendent decade, even double breasted jackets, which tend to look a little more boxy, still were cut to give more of a triangular shape to the torso, rather than a rectangular one.
Apo's suit is a very similar cut to Cunty Ringo's.
BUT! There's character work in this Outfit! So much of it!!! It's a solid black, which is both screaming "square" and the exact opposite! The suit is a modern cut, but apart from the shirt and pin it's styled extremely traditionally, HE'S WEARING OPERA PUMPS AND SILK CALF-HEIGHT STOCKINGS FFS (Apo you fucking nerd, I know this is all you, look at me in the eye. I KNOW.). The shirt is black which is uncommon, it speaks of being fashion concious. Proper, prepared to follow the rules, but with a definite eye on modernity.
CHARACTER STUDY OUTFIT!!!!
Now a piece that was a highlight for me
Hair and Make Up:
MOD JACKET!! Male mod fashion was sleek and essential, while still being working class. These jackets became very popular even outsite mod circles thanks to them being often worn by artists like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who (pleeeease go watch Quadrophenia for mod fashion. And because it's a goddam good film).
Khom's jacket is Perfect. Black velvet collar, 3 buttons, that specific shade of grey. Oh yes please.
*I added a Mr Steed (from the 60s Avengers TV show) as a bonus, because he's wearing a similar one, albeit way closer to the edwardian garment that inspired the mod jacket. I just wanted to include this dapper dapper man because I love him. And 1960s Diana Rigg was a smokeshow.
(I'm only showing women examples, traditional mens haircuts were rather, how shall i say, standard? I wanna have fun here XD)
A few dared the Pixie Cut, made famous by Twiggy, along with her iconic black cut-crease makeup, most women kept their hair long and teased it into gravity-defying oblivion. Or simply wore the 1960s version of a Bumpit. Beehives were big, both in popularity and dimensions.
Regarding make up, the winged eyeliner, popular ever since the 40s became bolder and bolder and more graphic. The red lip lost popularity, mostly replaced by nude colours, which brought more attention to the eye. Pastel, chalky eyeshadows were in fashion, with bright jewel tones as a slightly less popular, but still "in" choice, especially for people with deeper skintones. The eyelashes mostly followed the More Is More trend, even getting painted on (especially the lower ones).
And for the younger and more fashion-forward women, there were several bodypaint sets available, to paint flowers on their faces and bodies. Biba made an incredibly popular one. (I will not start nerding out about how cool Biba was, but please read up on it, Barbara Hulanicki is a fucking boss and a visionary).
The show went with winged liners and poofed up hair, mostly, i guess, out of scene colour palette and how dressed up/down is a character.
It's maybe a slightly idealised 60s makeup, seen through a contemporary lense, but i think it's working well.
I wish I knew more about southeast asian beauty products of the period, and by more i mean anything. I'll keep looking, but so far I didn't find much at all.
Btw, again, Moria. I see you in another Dior.
https://uk.pinterest.com/pin/70931762873312585/
(or like, ya know, something that looks like one on purpose)
Business Suits
Business suits in the 1960s were mostly pretty essential, with a sleeker cut than previously, they were mostly rid of the big shoulder pads and abundance of fabric, the trousers waistbands dropped to below the belly button and the legs were less roomy. To me they manage to both look boring AND stylish? There's nothing that jumps to the eye, but they look "efficient"? Gone are the remnants of the Zoot Suit that still echoed in the high trousers and the ties as wide as a bib of the 50s, we're streamlined now, no faff, kinda bland, kinda cool. Which is it? Yes. And the ties are skinny now. Sometimes knitted, sometimes square tipped, but mostly silk/polyesther pointy, slim ties.
Conservative suits today are not That different from the 60s.
I included some casual shirts, mostly because I couldn't fit them anywhere else and we saw a few in the show (Khom and Khun Director of PR Dept. aka The Soggy Man). Vertical prints were popular, as were Cuban or Cuban-style shirts. Plain colours but textured fabrics were also common.
Regular shirts usually all had a breast pocket. The collars were smaller than the in 1950s
So, apparently it's blue???? Do i need to check my screen? I saw it as grey, with a slight blue tinge. Or are the official photos edited so heavily that the colour is just different? AAAAAH.
Anyway. Another character study outfit, another chance to call Apo a nerd.
See what i mean about boring but cool? It's just A Good Suit. It's modern, but nothing stands out! Not a stitch, not a hair, not a single crease. This bitch is UPTIGHT.
And yet.
Chelsea boots, aka The Beatle Boots. That particular model (ok he could have gone bolder with a cuban heel, but we're still caring about what people think here!). They're a piece of Youth Culture!
I'm glad the camera panned down on them. I know it was because he was taking them off and shaking his feeties as he put them on the ground and it was funny, but EXTREMELY CORRECT CHELSEA BOOTS! They did that for me!
Also that Four in Hand knot on the tie. That's just Apo being a fashion nerd again, but as a very skinny knot, it pairs up really well with the cut of suit and it compliments the colour of the tie, so Trin is a fashion nerd too, someone who cares about looks beyond how he's judged by his peers and elders. Character Study Outfit N2!
Tanwa & The Beatniks:
Let me start with one shirt, then I'll do the rest all together.
Look at him looking. There's a reason I dubbed him Horny Gremlin.
There was this whole Minstrel Folk fashion thing going around, sometimes called Medieval Revival, or Renaissance Revival and this type of shirt was extremely popular, possibly because it was easy to pair up with clothes that weren't strictly in the same style.
If you're curious about Medieval Revival Fashion, i have a video essay by Kaz Rowe here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-EVWQGzxEwU
Now for "Mile Living His Best Life".
I feel like he went to production with a moodboard, did a big smile and then reminded them who the money is because...
Yes i formatted this differently because I wanted to be funny. This is what Mile went to the Costume Dept with. He made it through me, I was just a channel.
It's Jimmy and Jimi. That is all. He's even wearing white jeans in the promo pics, instead of the blue denim of the actual scene.
Now someone come here and convince me that Mile Guitar Nerd Phakphum didn't specifically want to look like Jimmy Paige (Led Zeppelin) and Jimi Hendrix. I don't think you can, but I'd be funny if someone tried.
4th image courtesy of @blue-grama, thanks for letting me copy your homework
Do I really need to say more?
Actually yes i do.
Time to call everyone involved a coward, because if they had any courage they'd put him in something like this
Just one Zeppelin to the left. It's period accurate.
Sure, maybe Mile wouldn't be living his best live anymore with a denim seam bisecting his scrotum, BUT I WOULD BE.
And to be clear, this is because i find gooch cutters funny. This looks incredibly uncomfortable.
But also? Amazingly slutty, and if you know me you know how much I appreciate a Tarty Man.
(damn, i started this post almost seriously, what is happening. Oh no, right, there was Cunty Ringo at the beginning, yeah this was doomed from the start)
Now, the last thing I have enough steam to talk about
Another rather idealised group costuming. It's accurate, but extremely cohesive. The ensemble scenes are beautiful to look at, because the colours are curated to look good next to each other and honestly, fair enough!
We're seeing a lot more textured fabrics, brocades and prints. And hairstyles that looks like they were left to grow and flow freely, maybe then adorned with beads and fabric strips.
This scene was definitely on a warm colour palette, with blues contrasting the reds and (finally!) browns and golden yellows, all surrounded by the rich green of plants.
Basically, nothing looks wrong in here, I was actually rather pleased with the costuming in this scene, and honestly too busy laughing at Trin.
I think I wish people just looked a little more unkempt? But all in all solid. Maybe some of the bathing suits weren't perfect, still the scene was a joy to watch and I'm pretty sure the "hippy" kids were meant to be mostly Good Looking People From Good Families anyway, so, it was possibly even more accurate than what i'm giving it credit for.
Little not-worth-a-whole-paragraph note:
Apo in Paris. Him and Claire both in black turtlenecks because we needed to see that they're late 60s intellectuals in France. I bet they whispered sweet Camuses to each other.
Conclusions:
Fairly accurate recreation of Period Fashion, the VibesTM were correct, i can tell that the costume department (of which I'm pretty sure Apo is part of, either officially or unofficially. I mean he's gonna give his opinions anyway, might as well, right?) really cared and did their homeworks. A few things were "smoothed out" to look more palatable to a contemporary audience and others were dependent on the Photography. All in all I found it satisfactory from an accuracy viewpoint and beautiful to look at from an "ah! pretty!" viewpoint.
I'm really curious to see more regular people in everyday clothes in the next episodes, because since those stand out less, they're easier to get wrong.
...I'm not gonna do another one of these though (maaaaaybe a short post here and there if there's anything that stands out. Or if Moira.)
Alright. I'm done. Sourcing images when you first have to Find Sources is tiring. Writing the post was a breeze, but i don't wanna perceive Images for at least a week XD.
Thanks to @pharawee for writing a post about the show's costuming and making me think "oh! i actually wanna do that too!" and to @blue-grama for letting me use a screenshot of theirs right when i was in the middle of going apeshit as i opened my downloaded copy of the episode for like the 4th time that day. You couldn't know, but I was full on Oliver Twist asking for food under that post XD.
and why not, i'm also tagging who i tag for my liveblogs
The way I see it, with the use of lighting etc etc, Shine has positioned TrinThanwa and KrailertNaran as symbolic for progress and stasis, respectively.
As it's been noted in @how-to-be-a-tree 's post , the lighting and colour contrast between Trin and Thanwa's scenes and Naran and Krailert's is pretty stark, with Trin's romance bathed in sunlight, open skies and flowers, while Krailert's is confined to dimly lit rooms and hidden messages.
I think this indicates Trin and Krailert's positions in their respective institutions and how their attitudes and circumstances affect their understanding of sexuality. Trin is new, and believes in the possibility of change and renewal within the NESDC as he discovers new things about himself and as we go on, his surroundings and their limits. He's afraid of radical change and disruption to established order, but ultimately curious and open to it.
Krailert, on the other hand, is weathered by the years he has spent violently repressing his true feelings for survival, and judging by the way he conducts himself (playing the piano in the dark at the hotel instead of at home, writing anonymous music reviews, meeting Naran exclusively behind closed doors), he cannot see a way out or forward, choosing to settle for the meager moments of self-actualisation he can achieve within his circumstances. He is so tied to the military by the sacrifices he has had to make, to cling to the privilege it affords him, that imagining life apart from it has become impossible. He would lose everything. His social standing, his income, any semblance of community he might have gathered, should he stop playing the part assigned to him.
Now, how is this going progress in the narrative?
I am inclined to believe that Trin and Thanwa will ultimately be okay. They both have a chance to grow as individuals and as a unit; Trin learning to challenge preconceived notions of correctness and propriety, Thanwa finding purpose and worth in fighting for something bigger than himself. Their scenes so far have rooted them in the world, literally among people and the elements, and they will overcome the challenges before them by staying there together, choosing to move forward through hardship instead of succumbing to its weight. (I do not want to be wrong about this 🥺)
Krailert and Naran could go a few different ways, but I'm sure that Krailert is going to be faced with a reckoning. He will have to choose a side: Naran and the exposure of corruption within the military and his involvement in it, or submitting to the status quo. I feel that Naran will find out just how sordid the dealings within the military government are, including Krailert staying and choosing to advance within the ranks despite knowing that they disappeared (let's be real, murdered) his lover. He will be disgusted by Krailert, but hesitant to throw him to the wolves, because he has fallen in love with him.
Krailert will very likely reach a breaking point, which will make him act. I think that he will end up sacrificing himself for Naran's safety, resigning and losing everything, or even dying. He will most certainly change, but whether he gets to progress like Trin will, is another question. Naran will stick with his principles, leading to their separation. Their arc will serve as a symbolic device to communicate the damage wrought by enforced normativity and the human cost of upholding an oppressive system. (Not sure I want to be right about this)
Regardless, I'm so happy to be blown away by the thematic richness of Shine being realised in such a well-rounded way!
trin and tanwa having sex now, finally, feels more grounded and real than the passionate, fiery love we see from krailert and naran.
lert and ran are a bright flame, full of passion but destined to burn out quickly, and they don't talk to each other face to face, they dont shoulder each others burdens. the only times lert and ran can talk honestly to each other is through prose, through metaphor, through their column in the newspaper. even their newspaper column they aren't speaking as themselves, they're speaking through the mouth of a persona, they're communicating as klai rung and sarasawadee. when they talk face to face there's always something someone is holding back. so though their sex scenes are lit in golden hour brightness, they're a flame that will burn out.
meanwhile trin and tanwa are lit in blues and whites, half dark, but steady, dependable, like the cycle of the moon or the tides. there's no farce between them, theres nothing hidden, they're an open book to each other, so even though their relationship is lit with moonlight with nighttime at its edges, the dark of night shields them.
The three books about homosexuality and the three origami figures, the red one matches the red book about the cure but the red one is also the heart and there is a moon and a swan and so much to learn but it's better to make, don't you think?
"Every system has its own flaws." Shine, episode 3
For anyone interested, Victor's father, Ivan Stalenko, and his manuscript about Stalin seem to be based off real life historian, Robert Conquest and his book The Great Terror: Stalin's Purge of the Thirties published in 1968 (later followed by The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine in 1986). On the historian's death in 2015, Stephen Evans, raised in a devoutly Communist family in Whales, described for BBC News magazine how it impacted Communist discourse in the West:
It was a book which changed minds and dispelled doubt (mine included) when it was published in 1968, the year of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in response to the liberalisation of the Prague Spring.
It laid out facts without adornment so they could speak for themselves, spelling out in clear language the detail of the purges and the executions. Fellow travellers of the Soviet Union sneered - and perhaps still sneer - but they couldn't find factual errors because Conquest's research was so meticulous.
Even into the 1960s, it had seemed to many like there was a battle of equal ideas. But then came Robert Conquest's descriptions of Soviet reality.
We were told clearly how hundreds of thousands of people were shot by the Soviet secret police in a matter of months in 1937 and 1938. We learned how the purges of officers by a paranoid Stalin were so fierce that the fighting ability of the Red Army was jeopardised.
Conquest described how on a single day, 12 December 1937, Stalin and his henchman, Molotov, personally approved death sentences on 3,167 people - and then went to the cinema.
The detail was unanswerable.
While wikipedia goes into some of the debates around the exact numbers Conquest arrives at--the mass murder of up to 15,000 people--there's no argument about the book's impact as the first of its kind to detail a devastating regime under Stalin.
The historian, Conquest, had no ties to Thailand nor was he Russian, himself. Shine, instead, seems to fictionalize another version of him and this publishing event to illustrate the Cold War tensions Thailand and its people were intellectually and politically navigating leading up to the real student protests and military crackdown the series depicts.
The historian's books had a powerful effect on communists in the West.
From the start of the drama, Tanwa seemed to be a happy-go-lucky rich hippie musician with undeniable charisma. He is always smiling and attracts a following wherever he goes, the second one being that as he returned to college, everyone started to greet him, even the one who is a cleaner, and his former junior who works as a professor in his college. It pretty much indicates that he was very popular in college before dropping out. However, this happy-go-lucky and smiley persona is all a facade. Tanwa holds deep wounds inside, which he later reveals to Trin that the reason why he does not commit is because he lost his mother to suicide. Mind you he actually was there when her dead body was present, even though his mother's friends were attempting to prevent him from seeing her body. Glimpses of his trauma were visible to us as the audience before this, for example, him arguing with his father in which his father tries to stop him from smoking weed, asking if he really wants to go back to his mother, and that scene where he gets a nightmare where there was a flashback of his childhood with his mother that suddenly transitions to her drowning, or when Trin recites a lyric from The Beatles and then Tanwa envisions his mother singing it. It was visible to us as the audience, but not to the characters. Undeniably, before things took turn for the worst, Tanwa was really good at hiding his past scars.
His father was abusive to him as well, as evident that he would not even hesitate to slap him on the face multiple times in public, or condemn him from playing music in the same event, saying that he doesn't want hear "hippie music", to which Tanwa, as usual, would intentionally rile him up and even insult him, and even in the start, Tanakhom told Trin that "father and son damn hate each other to the guts" which indicates their strained and sour relationship that probably started after his mother's death, where his father used his influence to close the case and call it off an accident.
But initially in the series, Tanwa used to cope with his trauma by escaping it. He wouldn't open up to anyone about it, and always resorted to drugs and his hippie companions as to escape what he went through. He always said ,"People leave in the end". His mother's death lead to his fear of abandonment, and hence his inability to commit that frustrated Trin. He always thought that he is okay with just being happy in a relationship, and didn't want to be a burden to Trin by adding his misery, something that frustrated Trin, who always thought that in a relationship, you feel sorrow as well. But after he chose to commit to Trin and get into a serious relationship, all was good till Victor died. Tanwa, under Victor's orders, didn't tell Trin about the protest, and Trin, repeating a vicious cycle of blaming the wrong people, punched Tanwa on the face and blamed him for Victor's death, not knowing that Tanwa was the one to warn Victor, and that Victor was the one to tell him that Trin doesn't need to know and to stay with him, and we could see the fear and shock in Tanwa's face at the sight of his lover being like this. This all lead to Tanwa spiralling into depression, drugs, and loads of guilt over not keeping any promises he made to Victor, and for Trin abandoning him again. He didn't say "people leave anyway", but rather he wasn't able to accept that Trin left him, and this made him relive his trauma. AND YOU GOTTA APPRECIATE HOW AMAZING MILE'S ACTING WAS!!! He, IN ONE TAKE, efficiently showed the pain, guilt, withdrawal symptoms, visual and auditory hallucinations of those who confronted him, and him screaming for all of this to go away
But this time, it was when his father finally showed his care for his son. He went to see him in his downward state, and gave him his mother's last, unfinished novel, which Tanwa read out and decided to complete. Both of them reading out the novel with Tanwa's dad remembering each word, line by line, turned out to be a bonding moment for them, and hence Tanwa decided to complete it in his own style. No more running away, Tanwa faced his own trauma and this turned out to be a healing experience for him. Under the name of Rimtara, Tanwa published the novel, part of it revealing what actually happened, about Victor finally accepting Trin and Tanwa's feelings for each other.
Tanwa did chase Trin again, after two years of their separation. He was always the one to chase Trin, but the difference is that he was his healed self when he surprised Trin in Paris, with no signs of resentment coming from him. This was a huge part of why both of them were able to stay together even in old age.
This is what I love about this drama, and I share this with many other fans. There was no trope of "love saves all", rather the only person who saved Tanwa is Tanwa himself, as well as community involvement. Sure he got the support from Sucha and Podeum (community), but then Tanwa did most of the work, i.e, completing and rewriting his mother's last novel that was unfinished. As we see him about to write in his mother's room, he remembered him seeing his mother write and then looking at Tanwa, indicating that he finally was on the verge of coming to terms with everything that happened.
