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nolabballgirl · 3 years

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Im a white girl and im just learning here so forgive me if im slow on this. But i don't understand why druck is put on a pedestal with regards to how they've tackled race/developed their characters of color. Druck also tends to dismiss race entirely (Sam, David, Fatou and Abdi) or make the trauma of characher their whole character (Ava and David) or underdevelop characters when they've had space to do more (Amira, Sam & fam). So why is druck deemed better than other remakes in this area?

hi, Anon! thanks for your ask. okay, so for me to answer your questions, you have to accept two premises:

neither skam nor any of its remakes (including druck) are perfect.

when a remake acknowledges audience pain and admits that it has made mistakes, hires writers of color, and then greatly improves upon its mistakes, that has to be commended.

so, let's break down race and representation for the remakes. and as you will see below, the remakes are so egregiously bad when it comes to race and representation, that when you compare druck after jünglinge took over, it's on a separate level altogether and that's why i believe druck is deemed to be better when it comes to race and representation. (also, i'm skipping skam nl and skam austin from this analysis because who knows how those two would have ended up...and begoña owes me a heart to heart after she ruined by beloved skam españa, but let's be real, eskam had a long way to go too.)

druck -

well, from the list in your ask and from the hard work that skamofcolor put in, druck is a remake with one of the most racially diverse main cast members in both the old and new gens as well as the most characters of colors in side characters as well, so that's an improvement compared to the other remakes. but you're right, there were a lot of missed storylines they could have tackled with the old gen.

druck's sana season (amira mahmood) does not put their sana through weeks of torture or ruin the girl squad in the process. (and as a muslim, i will say their handling of islam was the best among the remakes but i digress...) however, amira did not get her full 10 weeks of screen time and the show missed a huge opportunity diving into shared microaggressions and racism that sam, abdi, etc. also faced. and druck was ripped for it! for cutting amira's time and playing it way too safe and not giving sam her fair due, among others.

now, here's where druck does something that no other remake has done and honestly, this is where i think most of the praise stems from. they listened to the criticism! wait, showrunners and writers can do that?! do you mean we are not just yelling into the avoid? not only have the writers said the ways in which they could have improved (even after s6 they discussed audience perceptions and overestimating how ava/mailin would be received, etc.) but they also hired JÜNGLINGE to bring the new gen to life. if you are unfamiliar, this is how they describe themselves:

JÜNGLINGE is a film collective of mid-twenties raised in the hybrid cultures of post-migrant Germany. We believe that young, European film needs to tell queer, diverse and most of all – specific – stories about growing up and living together in our societies.

so looking at that progress over time from druck s1 to druck s6, i can't help but give them them props for such a marked improvement. in fact, i don't think ANY single skam season covers race and ethnicity as well as s5 and s6 did. sure, they were not perfect (see point 1 above), but my god, the strides that these two seasons made. so much so that in s6, we had a non-white interracial couple as main, who were both unapologetic about their ethnicities and upbringing and culture (Gambia and Vietnam). and having fatou/ava's friendship be so prominent, listening to them talk about black hair, and referencing nazis in germany - yes to all of this!

and let's talk about ava! what an amazing character who was allowed to be angry, giggly, happy, sad, and express herself, without falling into tropes like imane from skam france, and so many people can relate to her struggles with white liberal mailin. there was a sensitivity there that's so rare in these remakes. and what druck couldn't do with amira/kiki, they were given room to explore here, and i really do feel that it was an important story to tell, especially in the age of whitesplaining, white feminist tears, and white liberals talking over women of color.

skam france -

eight seasons in and skam france is STILL mistreating its characters of colors and not given them their full due. now with bilal literally taking a back seat to jo (look at the YouTube header for crying out loud!) but ever since yann in s1, skam france has done such a horrible job with its depiction of POC, especially black characters. daphne is one of the most racist vildes and the treatment of imane (even beyond her season) has been vile and unfair.

and you would think that post s6 and after a new showrunner and writing team was hired on, that there would be improvements (similar to what druck did above), but no! look at how both aurélien and judith were treated in s7, and after a strong opening for s8, it looks like bilal is now taking a backseat to jo, and once again, skam france and its new team are prioritizing a white character over a character of color.

and has there been any acknowledgment by the skam france team of the criticism over the years? rather, david has often doubled down in the face of fan critiques - just an unwillingness to listen, and so we are left with this as a result.

skam italia -

say what you want about skam italia but when it comes to race?well, they certainly take the cake for the whitest remake, so much so that swaths of fans will refuse to watch this remake for the "wana" debacle, and rightfully so. (whitewashing of the sana casting) and remember how people tried to defend this casting decision? but don't forget that italy has a higher percentage of muslims living in the country than norway does! give me a break.

and how can i forget how hajar brown was dragged after she, as a woman of color, deemed to shade and criticize casting decisions for this remake?

wtfock -

do i even need to get into wtfock and its representation on race?! i mean s4 and s5 are arguably the two worst seasons of any skam remakes period. and the complete lack of acknowledgment from the showrunners after the torrent of criticism they received. the egregiously racist writing. i am a defense attorney by profession, and even i am struggling. there's seriously no defense for them here...

so given all this above, i hope this explains why i value the steps druck has taken, especially in s5 and s6, to tackle and improve their depiction of race and representation.

#druck #skamverse #anon #answered asks

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aimeegbbs · 3 years

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new interview with Jasmina Wesolowski (head writer) and Sarah Blaßkiewitz (director of the last four episodes of s6) about druck. it’s really long but i tried to summarize some of the things i found interesting and relevant to the plot under the cut:

all the new gen actors, the writers and the crew did an anti-racism workshop before they started shooting

they have bipoc on the social media team and in the make-up and costume department (especially about the latter part they are really happy) but they also said that they know that there's still a lot of room for them to further improve diversity behind the scenes

they knew fatou's character was gonna be a lesbian pretty early on (long before they started casting)

they said they wanted to cast queer actors for queer roles but they also don't want to force any of them to make a statement since it's a sensitive topic

they did say tough that there's queer representation in the writers room and on the actors side

they said they did it on purpose that they dragged out the conflict between ava and mailin for so long because they think only by showing the conflict in real time people realize how painful things like that can be (especially for ava)

with mailin they wanted to show what it means for white girls to educate themselves on racism

they are glad this conflict is so big with the druck community since it's an important conflict

they hope the audience gets the lesson that it's white people's job to educate themselves and to not ask their friends of colour about it

one of their favourite scenes this season was the clip between fatou and ilai from this week where they discuss their struggles with education

SEASON 7 IS NOT CONFIRMED YET they said "for now druck is completed and we have to wait how it'll continue" but they are hoping for another season

#druck

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illgiveyouahint · 2 years

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I think it happened early so that we can see isi’s grow after it. Like yeah he apologized but actions are more important. This way we can actually see that isi means when he apologizes.

Hello anon,

you're not the only one I've seen saying this. And the chats they released afterwards seem to suggest that maybe yes this is not yet done (I hope).

That doesn't change the fact that I still think they should have led up to it better. People say it's been building up since s6 but really we've seen one talk with Fatou where Ismail mentions something that suggests he feel sorry. And yeah okay now with Sasha we've seen Ismail clearly thinking about Ava more. But if they only added a few more scenes/chats where we would see the thought process. This is why we're saying we don't feel we're in Ismail's POV. Like if we for example saw a chat between Ismail and Fatou where Ismail asks what Fatou thinks Ava's reaction would be if he tried to apologize. That would suggest that he thinks about it. We could have seen (this can actually still happen later depending or whether they wanna actually build up on this storyline or not) Constantin saying something shitty about Ava and Ismail reacting to it. We could have seen these moments where we see that Ismail is remorseful and wants to apologize. A chat afterwards doesn't quite fix what we've seen (or more like haven't seen) on screen.

I do hope this is not the end of it. I do hope we'll see more of Ismail's growth. I do hope this season turns out to be better than what it currently feels like. I think the cast is so talented and I think this story is so important and I truly do hope Druck is gonna give this season the depth it deserves.

#druck

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canonicallyanxious · 3 years

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i’m v tired but i just started my first full druck s6 rewatch and i got through the first five eps tonight [hoping to get to the rest tomorrow] and just have a couple of thoughts i wanna jot down:

idk who it is but either sira or nhungi is lying about their height there is no way there is only two inches’ height difference bw them you cannot convince me otherwise [this is not a serious point i just kjnfksjnfsd]

character work in this season fuckin slaps, even the first five eps hit differently knowing where all the character arcs are going esp for kieu my and ava and mailin, also very gratifying to see some of the earliest foreshadowing - fatou’s first line in the entire season is literally her recounting the money!

for real tho kieu my in these first few eps i remember watching them live wondering what was going on in her head and to know now that she was overthinking things and not sure about anything that was happening bc she’s never had anything serious with anyone before makes scenes like when she answers the door in the fries/milkshake clip or sends the cat gif and proceeds to type and never send a message or encounters Fatou in the hallway and clearly has no idea what to say so she takes her first opportunity to bail Hit Different

Sira’s acting is phenomenal i cannot stress this enough she has even more solo clips than i remembered her having but she nails the emotions in every single one of them

i love the way fatou sees the world [actually still kind of gutted we’re not still seeing the world from her eyes :’[[[ maybe this is why it took me so long to start a rewatch sknfksdjfns i was in mourning] but she just exudes this warm and empathetic energy with everything she does and the things she finds delight in i too find delight in just bc of how she reacts to them, like Fatou with Maike never fails to make me incredibly tender, also her certainty in her own actions versus her uncertainty in how her actions are perceived by other people - the good shit!

Fatou being Known as the attentive listener to her friends but slowly losing focus as she herself becomes quieter and quieter about her own feelings versus Kieu My hearing everything she says and remembering all of it... relationships/listening are a two-way street and if you don’t let other people in then it’s hard to be there for them as well... the good shit...

one thing i noticed is they did a wipe cut b/w the matching on tinder clip and the next morning texting clip which??? idk if i’ve ever seen anything like that in the skamverse b/w clips???? i mean i guess i don’t hate it i just find it a bit baffling like why there and nowhere else lol

do wish we could have gotten more material with her family dynamic - it’s so fascinating to me! - but i think what we did get with her parents and Ilai is very, very good

watching fatou and kieu my fall for each other and remembering what it was like to watch this happen in real time and feeling myself fall for their love all over again :’] :’] :’] can’t explain how often that actually doesn’t happen to me

i thought about doing ep 6 tonight as well but i’m not strong enough to experience an emotional roller coaster like that right before i go to bed rip

#sarah.txt #another incoherent thought:#they really relied a lot on social media this season huh #guess i can't blame them #good lord i need to sleep #druck meta #story meta

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beepmeepmeepbeep · 2 years

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S6 was the first hint that druck does a disservice to their main (and apparently Ava) when they convolute the storyline & fail to adequately balance the major themes. But S7 created an even bigger obstacle by failing to do the most basic and important step: letting the audience get somewhat familiar with the main before the story's set in motion. How could they forget that? Sure theres time for the writers to slow down, correct & then progress the story, but will they do it in a timely manner?

yeah I suppose. there is definitely a tendency to view season 6 now as really really well done, and yes having a black lesbian as the main was really cool, but there were some clear issues (but not as many as s7 has)

i totally agree with you about not letting us get to know ismail. they did a great job of introducing us to nora (and it helped that we already knew about some of it because of kiki) and we were already familiar with fatou because of nora's season. s6 did allow us to become more familiar with ismail, but also the focus was not on their friendship, it was just a side thing, compared to how fatou (and the other cashqueens) were important in s5.

it's just so hard to figure ismail out. we genuinely don't know how they feel about consti and the other instas, if they're interested in lou or sascha, if they are genuinely remorseful over what happened with ava.

we still have seven episodes and this still could be a good season but so far I don't have hope

also i don't think ismail counts as nonbinary rep. eren is nonbinary and he dresses feminine/androgynous at times, but that's not enough for this to count as representation in my view which actually really sucks

i think I'm still holding out for an ava season next because ava loml ❤❤ but also because she's a cooler person at it will be harder to fuck her season up. i still really want to know about her family life.

the only reason sascha i think was introduced was to be a LI for ava. but then why would they give him a crush on ismail? I am confusion.jpeg tbh

#druck #messy messy show #frågor

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evakuality · 3 years

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The saddest thing for me in s6 is how fatou doesn't give a f**k about how ava must be feeling 😔 Ava is her closest friend and fatou didn't even think about all this situation at least once?? She is happy with kieu my and everything else doesn't matter for her. Hopefully it'll change somehow.

Anon, this is a tough one for me because I’m still not watching this season (due to the bullying stuff), and so I’m literally only seeing what the fandom is choosing to show.

However, with that caveat, I’d like to say a couple of things here. I don’t think Fatou knows just how bad it is/was for Ava? Again, I didn’t see the conversation, but what I heard from it was that Ava told Fatou that what Kieu My did wasn’t ‘as’ bad and so Fatou has sort of taken her at her word. Do I have issues with that? Yeah, a few but that’s not Fatou’s fault. And this latest conversation when they all talked about it, they reiterated that stuff happened and asked Fatou for clarification that she is still keen to see Kieu My despite that. Ava didn’t raise her concerns out loud there, despite presumably still having them, and so it’s not unlikely that Fatou doesn’t understand just how hard it is for her.

From Fatou’s PoV, yes she had a discussion with Ava and she took that into consideration but then she spent time with Kieu My and liked the person she’s getting to know. That doesn’t mean she didn’t think about Ava, just that the person she’s seeing is not the one Ava sees and Ava hasn’t been open about any hesitations that still remain. So to Fatou, there’s no reason to think about Ava in all of this. Ava has had chances to say something and hasn’t yet (I assume, based on what the fandom is showing me). That’s not Ava’s fault, but it’s not Fatou’s fault either.

Tbh, this is something that I do hope will be addressed. But we do have to look at it from both character’s angles. We know what Fatou sees in Kieu My and that she likes the person she’s being shown day by day, we know that she has thought about the things that happened and still chooses to be with her. We know this hasn’t been a lack of thought. But we also know that while we have a decent grasp on how Ava must be feeling, Fatou doesn’t necessarily. Plus, she’s all caught up in a new relationship; people are inherently short sighted in that phase. It happens to the best of us.

Ava clearly is still quite deeply affected by the bullying (and these kids are still quite clearly still being bullies in many ways), and she is entirely entitled to be feeling somewhat unhappy about the fact that Fatou is together with one of her bullies now. But no-one can read her mind and also that one conversation may have slipped Fatou’s mind. I know it’s uncomfortable to have these conversations, but if Ava wants to be heard then she needs to actually express her feelings about it. Now that things have moved on she may feel like she doesn’t want to intrude on Fatou’s happiness, but if she’s still got those feelings, they do need to be expressed. Otherwise, how on earth is Fatou supposed to know? I do feel like this may come to a head this week, because things seem to be being set up for these two differing PoVs to clash.

Anyway, while I personally have issues with the show’s lack of addressing of this particular plotline so far, that doesn’t mean we can’t see and understand where this character is coming from. Would I like more acknowledgement of Ava and how she’s feeling? Sure. But that’s on the writers, not Fatou. It’s easy to see why Ava would be feeling some sort of way, but it’s also relatively easy to see why Fatou wouldn’t be considering Ava in this.

#druck

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lucidpantone · 3 years

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I hope this 1st Q isnt intrusive. Are you Muslim? And if not, do you place a higher value over Muslim opinions to inform your views on the sana seasons? Also, do you think druck s6 holds up against the better skam seasons? I appreciated what they were trying to do, but I think they missed some targets. But Im neither a lesbian or a pic & i saw that those voices were being valued more in the fandom. From my observation wlw lovers were ok with the end result, while many poc weren't too impressed

Oh I hold the muslim opinion about the Sana seasons in super high esteem. Like why wouldnt I? I am not muslin and only the effected party can really tell me how well rounded a season is and how authentic it feels. Concerning druck s6 my issue wasnt the wlw storyline my issues is how much importance was put into it instead of Fatou learning disorders. I also don’t like that Ava took the BLM storyline I still think both girls should have carried that storyline but I would have liked the moment Fatou got fired from the fish store for her to finally make it very clear to Malin what the fuck is going on around her and to open her damn eyes. How of course she gets fired even tho she had the job for longer and brought her in. Also I would have liked Fatou to have more moments like the bench scenes where Fatou tells Mailin to stop making the race conversation about her because its not about her. We needed more driving Fatou plots to get to experience all of fatou’s flavors. I dont mind the love story I do think that last fight was kinda of dumb but whatever. Its just a black lesbian girl in germany will have way more issues in her life then “I cant find a gf or am fighting with my gf” and also she has a learning disability so she will live up to these racist stereotypes people create that well she’s black so she is obviously dumb (she isnt but thats how racist tendencies work). Like there was so many interesting topics to pull from in this season they were all on the table and they went with the love story and I was like I mean I guess..... Also they also introduced another amazing topic they never fully explored about kids who come from immigrant families always trying to connect with their culture but always struggling a bit. Like yes please lets talk about the cultural differences of your parents being immigrants. Anyways I give druck s6 a 6 out of 10. It was fine.

#lucidpantone anons #could have been great but was so fine #ughh

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orionfalling · 3 years

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regarding ava getting very frustrated or angry with fatou for missing things, and us seeing it from her POV - I honestly highly highly doubt we’re gonna see that. taking into consideration how their story was written in s6 and trying to ‘get into their heads’... first of all, ava now knows that this is something fatou struggles with due to her LD, something she’s working on, but also something that is way more difficult for her than any other person. fatou deserves understanding & grace too and ava knows that. and, going the other way, fatou now is more aware that ava reacts strongly to perceived abandonment or being ‘forgotten’, that it was a huge source of conflict for them in the past that negatively impacted & hurt both of them. she knows that ava needs that reassurance so much too, that she doesn’t always want to take on the role of the person taking care of everyone and everything. so, i think (& hope lmao) that this is gonna be handled carefully and with consideration - that we will see them working around it and learning how to be even better friends to each other. making fatou’s learning disability a reason for major conflict yet again, where fatou is blamed and ava is angry at her, would be really unfair to both of them - especially seeing as ava was also put in that position by the writers with nora. like... ava should be able to voice her complaints & state boundaries without being portrayed as ‘the angry one’ or it being a major argument in the plot. i hope this makes sense sfjdj! i feel really strongly about it, still kinda upset that ava was excluded from the diagnosis scene and that we didn’t get to see ava & fatou talk through things a bit more - @kieu-tou

here’s the thing: i agree with u on the whole, absolutely i do. i don’t think ava is going to get mad at fatou willy-nilly, and i definitely don’t think that it’s going to be anything related to fatou’s learning disability. i really agree that ava should have been excluded from the diagnosis scene, that was SUCH a missed opportunity for growth and their friendship (because i’m of the camp that, yes fatou messed up with ava, but ava was not a perfect friend either). hopefully the beginning of s7 gives us some strong ava/fatou friendship moments like we got s5 because i didn’t get NEARLY enough best friend ~~vibes~~.

all that being said, the hell week format still exists.

and it’s still leaned on pretty heavily. there are loose threads in fatou’s season (the mention of the gym teacher in the ping pong bar, kieu my’s thing with the police, c*nstantin’s breakdown) and i think some of those might arise in the background of ava’s season, two of which involve kieu my. part of fatou and kieu my’s journey was learning how to be good supports for each other as well, and i’m worried there’s going to be a conflict of interest there, where ava and kieu my need fatou at the same time. how and who fatou chooses depends on what each person is experiencing, obviously, but in terms of hell week, that would sure as hell isolate ava and reinforce the themes of abandonment, forced adult responsibilities, and the burden of her parents divorce. and since we’ll be in ava’s pov, we’ll see how much she’s hurting and how much that abandonment isolates her, without very much context for what kieu my/fatou/the others are going through.

i definitely don’t Want to be mad at fatou at all Ever, but thinking logically, mailin and nora’s abandonment will hurt, but not as bad as fatou’s. and ava’s pov is gonna make us feel that.

((bonus points also if zoe is also occupied by whatever insta-disaster is going down, so that hell week can fully isolate ava to the point where all of her friends are going to help out her childhood bullies as she sits in the wreckage of her parents marriage haha ://))

#druck #ava pereira #fatou jallow #kieu my vu #kieutou #zoe machwitz #nora machwitz #mailin richter

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inmyarmswrappedin · 3 years

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So, because Fatou’s season ends today and, as far as we know, Druck hasn’t been renewed yet, I want to go over the things I feel the team did well in this season and the things I hope they take with them when they sit down to write the next season (which I’m manifesting will be Ava’s).

I think that s5 and, perhaps to a bigger extent, s6, were the team’s attempt to address fan feedback for and criticisms of s3 and s4. So I have hopes that, after possibly the most scrutinized season of any Skams, they are still willing to read even more feedback and sit down once again to craft a couple more seasons (possibly even 3 or 4 more seasons!).

So, without further ado, things that were done well! (Do I have to add “in my opinion”? Do I??)

I liked that for both s5 and s6, the thorough-line for the season wasn’t made obvious or shared in a press release, but rather it was up to fans to connect the story threads for themselves.

I loved that the team sought to address one of the biggest criticisms of s3, that is, that Matteo was given so many symptoms of a mental illness, but it ultimately went unaddressed in the narrative. They did this by giving Nora a dissociative disorder, and Fatou dyscalculia. (Matteo has been headcanoned as being mentally ill and having a disability.) It allowed the teams to develop both fan theories into full-blown seasons and give each of them the importance they deserved.

I have said this already, but I really appreciate that the team chose misunderstood, misrepresented and underrepresented mental illnesses and disabilities. I feel like s5 and s6 will be referents for many years, because they really took the time to portray a dissociative disorder and dyscalculia in a down-to-earth, unhurried way that isn’t meant to shock and awe, but simply allow us to understand why and when Nora and Fatou will struggle. Druck got the viewers to anticipate when Nora and Fatou would struggle, and that’s the first step in being able to anticipate and accommodate the needs of the Noras and Fatous of the world. I really can’t overstate how important this is and what a difference it makes in a real, tangible way. These seasons aren’t meant to be enjoyed for voyeuristic reasons, but they will legitimately help people.

One of the biggest criticisms of s4 was that Amira and Sam didn’t connect as women of color. In fact, it seemed like in s4 Sam was treated as another white friend, when in s2 both she and Amira were the victims of Kiki’s racism. The team addressed this by giving us Ava and Fatou’s friendship, which I want to say might be the first friendship between main characters of color where their race is a substantial reason for their bond. (There are the Sanas with their Jamillas, but the Jamillas aren’t main characters, and then there are friendships like Jo and Megan and Zoya, or Imaan and Liv, or Luca and Yasmina, but iirc in every case their bond as women of color isn’t made explicit.)

Another criticism of s4 was the way Kiki turned into the world’s most understanding white friend offscreen. The team addressed this with the Ava and Mailin storyline, which I think was wonderfully and subtly set up in s5, then built on with the biology test leaked answers.

On the topic of race, I think a major criticism of s3 was that David’s ethnicity wasn’t acknowledged (to the point where a white actress was cast to play his sister gvhvhv). The team has made up for this with Josh (more in the s6 sm than in s5, but I still count it) and with Kieu My. Fatou and Kieu My bonded over being first/second gen children of immigrants, and in doing so, they acknowledged that these characters aren’t white and have different experiences than white Germans.

The first 6 episodes of this season were some of the finest writing in the Skams. The storylines all connected and built on each other. The motifs were just so good and beautiful and fitting. The themes were all clearly defined and easy to follow.

The tortoise plot was one of the most fun and imaginative storylines in any Skams, it connected Fatou and Ismail in a believable way. And not to rave about a fucking tortoise, but animals can be really uncooperative and that tortoise delivered every fucking clip. Druck has a reputation for being one of the most depressive versions of Skam, but the Maike/Burger plot was just plain fun.

I feel like some of the old gen’s instas were a bit self-indulgent. I’m thinking specifically of Matteo’s memes and how they they weren’t necessarily the kind of memes a gay dude born in 2001 would pick, but someone a decade older. I think this is much better done with new gen. Fatou’s memes reflect her age and her sexuality, and not just that, but Ava, Mailin, Kieu My, Josh, etc. all pick memes and even focus on different aspects of recent news, based on their gender, race, personalities, interests, etc.

I appreciate that the team found a way to fit a sex scene between Fatou and Kieu My to add to the small catalogue of wlw sex scenes on Skams (I’m including the scene in lovleg or we’d only have two lol). While I understood the reasons eskam opted not to include one, I thought there were ways to feature a sex scene that didn’t sexualize the actresses and didn’t require nudity. Cases in point: the lovleg scene, and this scene in Druck.

And it also needs to be said. This is the first original season with a main of color, and the third season overall (after Liv and Imane) where 10 episodes are given to a character of color and no one else. Of the three, it’s certainly the season that loved and respected its main the most. The bar is so low it’s in hell, but Druck did clear that bar!

With all that said, let’s talk about the things I would really want the team to address in following seasons:

The thing I most want them to fix might be small or unimportant for a lot of people, but I think it’s at the core of why the season has been unenjoyable or certain plot points haven’t come across the way the team wanted, for many people. I am talking about the overly expositional nature of the writing. It appears as if the team approached the writing of the clips with the intention of hitting each beat as noted in their agreed upon outline, and absolutely nothing else was to be added. This is an issue both in s5 and s6. It’s just less noticeable in s5, because s5 is setting up stuff for Fatou’s season, and possibly even seasons that haven’t been written yet. The fact that absolutely every second counts makes for a stressful watching experience for me, because the narrative tension is always heightened. Whereas with Skam, the narrative tension would build throughout the clip. Take the Pride scene in Skam, for instance. The clip allows for Isak and Eskild to get increasingly more agitated as they butt heads. I feel like if this Druck team had done the Pride scene in s5 or s6, the clip would’ve started with both Isak and Eskild already on edge, and cut much of the dialogue that got them there.

On the topic of naturalistic dialogue, this season doesn’t have it. Here is an example from ep 10 clip 2, Wieder vereint/Reunited 11:37.

Fatou: I’ll get a certificate too and bring it over to you. And I checked it, I only have to change one course and my schedule will work.

Teacher: Miss Jallow, you are not the first one to come to me with an epiphany. We could fill entire school weeks with the lessons you missed. In addition, Doctor Steinberg told me about your, well… activities. You don’t have a lot of arguments on your side.

Fatou: But I’ve spoken to all of the teachers and they said they are okay with it.

Teacher: You seem to have friends among the teaching staff. Mrs Pavlovic put in a word for you. Okay then, do it and go before I change my mind. [translated by @kieu-tou! Thank you!]

Like. This is the bare bones version of a dialogue. This should be the first draft, not the final version. The coordinator goes from absolute no to yes, with just one line from Fatou. The coordinator gives reasons that would necessitate more than one sentence of counterargument, like Fatou’s absences and the Biology test leaked answers. The coordinator even says Fatou doesn’t have a lot of arguments on her side, and yet it takes Fatou one line to change her mind!

And of course we viewers don’t want or need a lot of time with the coordinator. And particularly at this point in the season, no one would enjoy a naturalistic dialogue with the coordinator of all people. But my point is that this is an issue with the dialogue all this season (and last season as well, but this season has been more scrutinized), the reason I picked this example is because of how easy it is to see here.

Which brings us to the pacing of the clips, and specifically the Friday clips. Because the script goes straight to the information the team wants to convey to the viewers, skipping the build up to it, many Friday clips have fallen flat, felt abrupt, and have been, tbh, unsatisfying. Again, I had this issue in s5, but as that season went on, I felt like the team had a better grip on Friday clips. But then they did it again in the first Friday clip this season, and so I think this is something the writers really should work on. The first Friday clip in Isak’s season closes on Isak being sandwiched by Emma and Even on a bench, visually setting up the love triangle, or more accurately, the personifications of who Isak should want to hook up with and who he really wants. But in order to get there, we’re shown a good amount of info, from the way Vilde, Eva and Sana are handling Noora’s absence, to Chris and Kasper, Even hovering around Isak, Emma trying to impress Isak, Isak escaping and, like, draping himself on the walls because he’s so over it all. Isak playing a game on the bathroom to stall for time. The paper towel maneuver to immediately give us a sense of what a weirdo Even is. A conversation between Isak and Even that gives us some clues about Even’s shame, as well as establish interests in common (like weed), and this is all before Emma even joins them! Just think of all the stuff we learn about who Isak, Even, Emma, Eva, Vilde or Sana are as people, before we get to the point of the clip! Fatou’s season simply didn’t have that. Compare it with the first Friday clip of Fatou’s season where the cashqueens quickly talk about the leaked answers, one of the major storylines this season that only gets a couple lines, before Fatou says she doesn’t want to talk about school (Fatou’s struggles with school, another major storyline), and then we’re onto the point of the clip, which is that Kieu My likes girls too. AND FADE TO BLACK. When people say they want longer clips, what they mean isn’t artificially inflate the clip length or add more plot stuff. Just let us watch the characters interact with each other so that we get a feel for how they relate to each other. I know I wish we’d have gotten more of Ava and Fatou interacting with each other before things turned to shit, and Ava with the other girls, so that I know why they all like and value Ava so much. I wish we’d have gotten more of Kieu My talking to the cashqueens about, like, why she didn’t make use of the biology test answers, instead of getting it on a chat. Or food combos they don’t like. So it makes more sense that later on Kieu My actually thinks she and Fatou are friends. And every line doesn’t have to count. In Skam España, the characters are constantly talking and not everything they ever talked about ended up being relevant. When one of the characters lied about her house undergoing renovations to hide the fact that she was poor, the characters joked about Italian marble and put on bad Italian accents and made that Italian hand gesture. None of this was important to the plot because those renovations weren’t real to begin with, but they made viewers feel like these were real friends joking around, instead of characters needing to hit every storyline beat in a clip.

I have this joke with my friends about Druck always going 🤪🤪 in the last third of every season, in which a season that was very tightly written and cohesive suddenly pulls something inexplicable and pretty much impossible to resolve in 1-3 episodes. Hanna’s season suddenly switching to Mia, Björn creeping on Mia in episode 9! of a total 10, David getting outed in episode 8 and then disappearing for a whole week, Amira’s season pivoting to Mia and Hanna. It has happened in every season except Nora’s, so I thought the team had learned its lesson, but then the forgotten date with Ava happened. To be clear. It really makes no sense that Nora would have hung out with Ava several times since Tuesday, and the topic of the cashqueens being officially introduced to Kieu My wouldn’t have come up. it’s just not realistic.gif I feel like at that point the writing for the rest of the reason became super contrived to keep Fatou miserable and apart from Kieu My and Ava to artificially delay the reunions until episode 9 and 10. Why add a cheating insinuation and the main checking her partner’s messages in episode 8 if you know you won’t be able to properly resolve it? Why make Kieu My mock Fatou’s “uhm” if it’s not going to be addressed in their reunion clip? Kieu My had taken the initiative for a lot of the relationship, so it’s okay for Fatou to take the initiative when it comes to making up. You don’t have to add things that can only be resolved through an expositional info dump. (Please no more exposition than it’s necessary! I think we’ve established that at this point lol.) In the case of Fatou’s season, this is even sadder because I feel like Kieu My’s intimacy issues could’ve been the reason to drive them apart for two weeks, rather than the Maya/uhm stuff. This could’ve also been resolved through Fatou and Kieu My explicitly negotiating their boundaries and how they want to be comforted and how they want to comfort each other, which I thought was the issue with Fatou rejecting Kieu My’s attempts to help while wanting physical touch, while Kieu My didn’t want to be touched but rather seen.

There are going to be many thinkpieces on why a myriad of stuff didn’t work for people, so I’m going to keep this simple and address one last thing. I think that choosing to focus on Nora’s mental illness and Fatou’s disability is a great choice that doesn’t complicate the themes too much, but Druck (and all the Skams, but I’m invested only in Druck succeeding at this point) still struggles with being intersectional. This is the major reason why the Ava/Mailin storyline ended not with a bang, but a whimper. There just wasn’t enough work done to connect Fatou’s struggles not just to her disability, but also to her race (and even her sexuality). I think that if people really want (and lbr, it’ll be mostly poc who will put in that effort and work), they can see how Fatou’s race affected the way other people and especially adults reacted to her, but this wasn’t made explicit. If Ava and Mailin are going to argue about racism all season, why not connect that with Karin firing Fatou from Aquarius? As it stands, Karin fired Fatou because of a disability neither of them knew Fatou has, and that was the resolution to that storyline. Why not make it explicit that the Physics teacher had preconceived ideas about Fatou because Fatou is black? Why wasn’t Fatou’s disability addressed in the meeting with the coordinator? Why didn’t Fatou express to Mailin that Fatou, too, had issues with how Mailin was acting wrt racism? It felt like, with the way the season was putting so much emphasis on racism, all these threads were going to be connected. In the end though, it almost felt as if only Ava is affected by racism (aside from Mailin mentioning Fatou in the last episode). It’s not like talking about how racism affects Fatou is going to make the topic redundant for Ava’s or Ismail’s season. As a light-skinned black lesbian with a disability, Fatou’s life is going to be impacted by racism in a different way than Ava’s will, as a dark-skinned black fat straight cis girl, or Ismail’s, as a Turkish-German possibly Muslim possibly non binary person. All these experiences are specific enough, and different enough, that they can be touched upon in different seasons without becoming redundant. The fact that Fatou’s season almost seemed to forget at times that she is a black lesbian, doesn’t bode well for Ava’s and Ismail’s season to acknowledge all their struggles.

The bottom line is that this season really was great and did a lot of good, and I feel like the writing just needs to be tweaked a bit for further seasons to be even better and more enjoyable overall. I am very pleasantly surprised by how the team took s1-s4 fan feedback to heart and worked to implement suggestions, and so I really trust them and hope they keep working on the show. It’d be a shame if Druck wasn’t renewed, with this team at the helm.

#druck #this post is 3K+ words in word I'm so sorry #but I really hope it makes its way to the writers and is helpful

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vlindervin7 · 3 years

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okay prev anon, and yes! I would love an ava season too and if they mingle in the instas it could be a good transition to a kieu my season. but I'm selfish and I love fatou so I'm going to continue to hope that her season is next bec I feel like the whole kieu my and fatou thing would be dragged otherwise. and we've barely seen any huelk talk on screen so I'd rather the reveal be left until s6 and then transition that way? if that makes sense

That does make sense! I’m gonna be honest and say I would also prefer fatou to be next bc I just love her sm and the thought of getting to see her nearly every day for ten weeks just sounds like a dream.

If I had to decide how it goes, I’d want it to go:

- S6: fatou : she gets with kieu my and that way we also get to know the diva squad better and hopefully they redeem themselves

- S7: Ava. Get to know more abt her past with the diva squad, getting the huelk reveal too! Which you’re right, could wait one more season as it’s still v offscreen

- S8: maybe Ismail. I’m not a fan of them atm but I think it would be really cool to have a nb main so I’m just hoping for that.

I feel bad leaving mailin out but I feel like for now she’s the one we know the least abt but I’m hoping that’ll change!

#ask #anon #druck

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nolabballgirl · 3 years

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Hello, I'm just curious abt about how Ava performs at school? Druck made it very clear that Kieu My excels in school, Fatou was struggling in school (due to an underlining learning difficulty), Nora is maybe a avg student in general - and then there's Mailin? who I imagine from the minimal cues is also an avg student. But what about Ava? From the looks of it, at least in math, she's enthusiastic and hard working but that still results in an avg student. Is this your impression too?

hi, Anon! thanks for your ask! your questions definitely prompted me to do a quick re-watch of ava's scenes from the last two seasons. so i agree - bottom line, ava cares about school. it's hard to describe someone being so adamant about the abiball committee fundraising (s5) and being upset at mailin sharing answers/committed to school storeroom cleaning (s6) as being an apathetic student. so like you have mentioned, i definitely think ava is both enthusiastic and engaged at school. not that it translates automatically into "high grades" per se (i don't recall from the chats how ava performed on her report card), but you have to admire ava for her commitment to school given all the external factors on top of her normal courseload (bullying, family issues, friend circle woes, etc.) and ava has made it clear that she wants her abi, hence her displeasure with mailin post-cheating fallout (texts s6e4).

as to how she is in the classroom, in the english class clip (s5e9), ava is the first student to respond to the teacher's initial question. not only has ava completed the assignment (or at least watched the movie in sharp contrast to ismail lol), but she's internalized the subject and has complex thoughts (whether you agree with her or not, that's a separate issue). similarly in the next season, we see her immediately raise her hand and offer an answer in friedel’s physics class (s6e1). even though she was incorrect, the clip shows ava’s engagement in school and willingness to participate.

in law school terms, i would describe ava and kieu my as being two different types of "gunners" - in any case, students who (for better or worse) try to participate and stand out in class. most subjects come fairly easy to kieu my and she seems to be at or near the top of her class. i wouldn't put ava on that level, but i do think she's an above average student generally. granted she had a lot to deal with over the years from extreme bullying to the breakup of her parents' marriage, so you wonder if we control for these factors, whether ava would have been up there too.

anyway, hope to learn more about ava and her arc this season.

#druck #ava pereira #anon #answered asks #sorry this is so late but better late than never hehe

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sotorubio · 2 years

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I am 100000% agreeing with you and the other commentor on everything including on why Arthur and Tiff failed, but shouldn’t that apply with 6 also? Lola was unknown except for 2 seconds in Arthurs finale but didn’t flop and I doubt the millions views are all from Elu and Daphne fans. I think topic matters also. In this example interest in white wlw is above white deaf straight boys, which is why I think Drucks new team are bringing in more white queer characters when the ex team werent interested in focusing on whiteness, and also doing a season on the light skinned bully over the fat dark skinned black victim. I saw posts last season saying how Fatou’s race was erased by white fans and seen only as gay and posts now on how characters like Ismail get to be queer when characters like Ava aren’t even headcanonned that way. I know Druck cares about telling important stories above all else, but there’s a new team and nobodys immune to racism. Just my 2 cents, really loved your answer to that ask.

hi! again a rly long answer but i thought u brought up very important points so i tried to answer w enough care for the topic, then the length always gets out of hand but i hope u don't mind

i think it can absolutely extend to lola's season too. the reason why i didn't think of adding that was probably bc lola is the first new gen character n if we think of how main characters' stories tie together it makes sense that an original character "comes out of nowhere" kind of like nora in druck did. however it's worth noting that it's not like they were incapable of including small bits abt lola in arthur's season.. after all they did know she would get a season so it's again skam france's problem of prioritizing the element of surprise over realism n impactful storytelling so yeahh based on that lola's season should absolutely fall under the same sort of criticism

but yeah ur explanations for why lola's season still got so much traffic feel very spot on. even just comparing the interest in lola's season (with mayla) vs fatou's season (with kieutou) it paints a pretty clear picture of the bias in the fandom. the point abt white fans erasing fatou's race also reminds me of this ask that i got around the time s6 was still airing. it's such a huge issue in the general skam fandom, there r so many ppl who either don't care abt the stories focused on characters of color/even more specifically black characters or then they only care when they can relate to one aspect of them (like being gay). it feels like it goes all the way back to the original Bench Scene w isak & sana n has been ongoing w the attention lola's season got as opposed to fatou's, the girlbossification of tiff n the mess w aurélien, now w the waves of empathy toward ismail as opposed to the treatment ava has received.. seems like the list just goes on

it's rly disappointing to see druck enable this path too w the change of the team. they seemed to do a pretty good job w the previous NG seasons, at least the feedback from poc in the fandom was more positive than now. feel like fans of color have already said it all better than i could so i'm not gonna discuss the issue w white queerness in detail here but i do rly agree w those points. it's already so shitty to tell the bullying storyline from the aggressor's pov n sideline the victim but the fact that the bully is light skinned n the victim is a black girl makes it all worse bc not only did they pick the light skinned bully over ava they decided to do their best to make the bully's season even whiter w all the new characters. the point abt ava never even getting headcanons like that is what rly hits :( ppl will talk their tongue off defending the fandom from the accusations of fatphobia n racism n say it's just vibes but it truly fucking isn't when it's a clear pattern

#very valuable 2 cents thank u for sending!#inbox #anon

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anicocat · 2 years

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I think the bullying plot is a particularly sensitive one bc Ava has been vilified by fans bc of it. She became an object of contention in both s5 and s6 and some fans began to turn on her and invalidate her feelings. S7 w Ismail as main, seems to depicts a shift in tone for Ava. she appears to be more open to clearing the air between her and her former bullies. Thats fine and all, but since this plot has been in the making for a while I hope it doesnt fall flat once directly confronted

It’s a really complicated matter. I think no matter what they did there still would be disappointed people because they’ve spent two whole seasons building up this plot, giving people a lot time to make big expectations.

Anyway, what are you thinking now? Are you happy with the outcome? I think anyone that has been through something like this knows that this conversation it’s only the beginning of healing and becoming a better person. It’s rare people can change toxic/negative behaviors out of nowhere, so I guess that’s what we can expect from now on... Ismail is going to fuck up badly again and he’ll probably realize that it isn’t about feeling nostalgic about childhood friendships, regretting what you’ve become or trying to make feel better a person you’ve hurt in the past, it’s about doing something now, with yourself and your relationships!! I think he’s def truly sorry about what happened and finally saw a chance to apologize and took it, but that’s the “easy” part... the hard part will be changing his present. he has odd, not so nice dynamics with Constantin and Sascha and he’s probably going to hurt Lou in the way because it’s not clear if he’s pursuing her for the right reasons... Is he confused? Curious? Does this has something to do with his tension with Constantin? I feel like the Ava apology is only scratching the surface and some stuff it’s going to blow up in his face. Or who knows, maybe I’m just making up stuff in mind that’s it’s not even there.... 😂 I wish Ismail talked with Kieu My or Fatou before the Ava clip, that way we would fully understand his motivations.

**Using he/him since I don’t still even know what pronouns I should use lol.

#druck #druck s7

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inmyarmswrappedin · 3 years

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I don’t know if anyone mentioned this yet but last week an interview with Paulina Lorenz and Raquel Dukpa was published where they also talked about Druck. The author also specifically asked about the conflict between Ava & Mailin and the viewers’ reaction towards that (e.g. the lack of understanding or hate towards Ava). (1/2)

They acknowledged again that they made mistakes and that there should have been a black woman in the writers’ room. (They also mentioned the viewers’ racism). I really hope that they can use that knowledge for future seasons! (2/2)

Hi anon! 🪁 Thanks so much for sending this in. I generally rely on people who understand German for interviews, and I didn’t see anyone translating this one.

I appreciate that the writers have noticed the response to the Ava/Mailin storyline and keep talking about it. Now that it’s been a few weeks, I feel like we’ve kind of put it out of our minds how bad it actually got? To the point where the Druck youtube team had to answer to people who didn’t get and didn’t want to get Ava’s pov. They had to make a community post to address the issue. People had... really bad reactions to clips that featured Ava, esp when they’d been expecting a Kieu My/Fatou clip instead. They still keep saying Ava wasn’t the issue, but like... There’s a pattern of this backlash happening specifically in response to Ava-centric clips, and most particularly clips fandom wasn’t anticipating. So I appreciate Paulina and Raquel aren’t sweeping it under the rug, but keep discussing it.

I definitely hope they hire a black woman writer for s7, but I also feel like... For me, the major issue was simply that the season was heavily whittled down due to budget or the cast being tired or whatever, and as a result we only got the shortest version of the season we could possibly get. I really believe that if we’d gotten to see more character-driven content on the show proper (outside of social media), people would have been ever so slightly more likely to want to see Ava’s perspective, because they’d also have seen her in situations other than friend drama. As it is (and I say this as an Ava fan who wants Ava s7 and enjoys trying to figure Ava out), there are few moments I can point to on s6 to say, “this is why the girls like Ava so much.” Whereas Kieu My/Fatou shippers have a whole album of reasons to like Mailin and Nora and even Zoe and Ismail.

Of course, all these characters are neutral to highly positive about Q2. And we knew going into s6 that Ava wasn’t going to be here for Q2, since the ganggang ganging up on Ava conflict was introduced as early as Fatou’s crush on Kieu My (in the second clip of s5), and that Q2 stans weren’t going to be there for Ava not being there for Q2. (Made even worse by the fact that some jumped into s6 without watching s5 at all.) But like, I really wish the writers had given viewers more reasons to like Ava. Ava’s storylines in s6 aside from Ava/Mailin and Ava/Fatou/ganggang were the music producer sl (which was shown to add to Fatou’s stress) and the Ava/Marc sl (which people were turned off by because of Marc’s age and Ava’s obvious misgivings).

I’m lowkey concerned that the conclusion the writers have gotten to is that they should’ve shown more of Ava’s pain, because people already see Ava as whiny and grudgy, and I’m not sure how showing more of her pain is going to help with that perception. And, if you notice, people really started to like the ganggang more when they were shown as supportive to Sporty Spice (undeserving though he was) and outwardly friendlier. People started to like them when they were shown in a more positive light and a positive influence on each other and people outside their group.

#ask #druck #Anonymous

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