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bloody-f4g · 3 years

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i actually kind of like whatever’s happening with adiray.

if i were writing it, yes, gray would still be alive, BUT, given that he is dead, I don’t think it’s the immediate bury your gays we all thought it might be, and a good thing?

the trans experience is full of loss. loss of your past identity and the trimmings that come with it, and for many people loss of others in their life because they’re trans. being trans is loss of nights spent worrying about who you are and those around you. loss of many experiences, memories you feel you cannot truly relive or share because they represent someone you wish you didn’t appear as or embody. the same goes for being queer in general: loss of expectations, life no longer fitting into the heteronormative timeline, loss of friends and family members. and the queer community as a whole is still overshadowed by the effects of the aids pandemic.

on the other hand, the trans experience is full of joy. joy at finally finding yourself, joy at finding others like yourself, joy at love, joy at transition (gender euphoria is imho just as important to the trans experience than gender dysphoria, if not more so -- and you don’t need dysphoria to be trans). joy in the face of loss, as an act of defiance. joy that a lot of trans and queer people don’t get to experience.

I don’t think that being queer is fundamentally an experience of loss, but rather one of underlying joy that is often overshadowed by the loss associated with it within our society. in the futuristic utopia of star trek i hope the inherent ideas of loss shouldn't be associated with queerness, but these ideas of loss are still so closely tied to queerness in our own world that it is very much in the vein of science fiction and star trek specificially

so. star trek: so far in discovery we have five canonical queer characters, three of which (jett, paul and adira) have had their partner die soon after (or before) we were introduced to them. In both Paul and Adira’s cases, we get to see them grieve, with attempts to reconnect and attempts to reconcile this loss.

I don’t think that this truly fits the model of the “bury your gays” trope. That trope relies on the Hayes’ Code’s standard that queer characters should be shown to suffer or otherwise be reprimanded for “indecent behavior.” Although the partners of these queer characters do die, we see their grieving and reconciliation, as well as a return (in some form) of hugh and gray. The queer characters’ narratives aren’t defined by loss: they are fleshed out characters whose queerness isn’t shown as a progenitor of loss. The loss isn’t a way to shove away their characters, but rather a way to show development in the face of loss.

I think this development in the face of loss is actually defiance of the trope of killing off queer characters as a way of punishing them. Queer joy in the face of loss is an act of rebellion.

I mentioned the aids pandemic earlier and this needs expansion: the queer community is used to experiencing profound loss, and the idea of Hugh and Gray “coming back” from the dead because of Paul/Adira in some extent is really interesting. because it underlies an idea that the love and bonds between the characters reaches past death. the queer community’s strength is so much created by death and loss; bringing back Hugh and Gray is an acknowledgement of that history and understanding that in the future, we don’t need that loss to have that strength.

i don’t think it was intentional by the writers, but i think there’s some element of queer liberation to existing in a relationship outside of expectations in society

I really have no idea where Adiray will go. Will Gray stay as a ghost? Will the rest of the crew know about him? Will he be treated as Adira’s quirky head rooomate or as a living breathing character with hopes and fears? But I have hope it could be a strong statement about the power of love and queer strength in the face of loss.

Also: all five of these characters being open (we know that Gray and Adira will be explicitly trans later in the season via an interview with Blu) is honestly a really good step forward and yes, i know that fact isn’t that much, but it gives me a lot of hope. i wish i had that kind of representation when I was first coming out.

((this is just my pov, and other queer people are totally valid in their take on this, please add on if you have any thoughts))

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skamamoroma · 4 years

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The disappointment for me is simple when it comes to this introduction to Eliott’s part of s6...

Obviously I’d have preferred an Eliott POV season or chunk of time. We aren’t going to get that so it is a trade off to seeing his experiences through someone else’s eyes. I’d have preferred to see him through the eyes of someone we know better but, again, we can’t have that.

So it leaves it to a character we don’t know well to see his experiences through and that’s... it’s difficult to get into for me because these things are so personal. Mental illness (which I know they’ve said they will cover) and Eliott’s issues around lying etc are personal and it isn’t ideal to see that through someone else’s eyes with little depth.

But, for me, lying as a topic is something I don’t need to see with Eliott. I feel I understand him well as a character and I entirely understand his lone wolf ways, his healthy need for freedom and expression and time to pursue stuff alone and I understand his ingrained insecurities about rocking the boat rolling a relationship.

But this is the third season where the topic Eliott is given is lying. Season 3 is characterised by Eliott’s lies, his story in Season 4 is entirely focused on his lies and now in Season 6 we have his main story around lies.

Characters have ingrained issues. Some things are very difficult to get over or to sort out in your head. For Eliott as a parallel of Even and in his own right, was so understandable in s3 and we understood why he lied. Even for s4, this was their first test as a couple and Eliott’s lying wasn’t really necessary by show runners (it didn’t follow Even’s story) but the point was that it was supposed to be showing him and Lucas reaching an understanding about talking more and being better at communication, managing their expectations about honesty and openness. That would have been great if it was handled better but the conclusion was a good one.

Now in s6, we’re seeing the same topic again. We were told in s5 that Lucas is concerned that they need to be more open about stuff because he’s worried a little about Eliott leaving him. It’s disappointing because there doesn’t seem to be growth. We’re not a few months past s3, we’re way past that and if they are unable to communicate and Eliott is still lying - what are the writers intending with that narrative?

We ended s3 with them both learning huge lessons about honesty and openness and their own worth. Are we to believe that a year later after already going through issues about lying that those issues haven’t been improved at all? Is that healthy? We don’t see their experiences and certainly don’t get any focus on Eliott’s internal workings so we must theorise that he doesn’t trust Lucas to handle the truth of his life. That’s really sad to me. That’s not what Isak and Even opitomised and so we must set Eliott and Lucas aside even further and consider that they perhaps have so much good in their relationship but so many fundamentals about trust are just not functioning correctly. They’re humans and flawed and I want flawed but this is just repetitive and it feels entirely inorganic to me.

For this to be resolved, it needs to be recognised as a long term trait for Eliott and he needs to understand his mistakes himself. We need to be given his viewpoint and some focus because otherwise we are left as an outsider viewing these things without any understanding of how HE is experiencing life. Maybe if we saw more of what his day to day is like we’d understand his actions a little more. It’s one thing to need your space and hobbies and that’s an important thing and it’s another to lie continuously to your partner about a fundamental part of your life while telling other people you barely know.

Also, the problem with seeing Eliott through Lola’s eyes is that we don’t see any of Eliott’s life. I want to see him outside of Lucas! I want to know what he does at Uni, what work is like and if he has made new friends. I want to see Urbex and does he have any buddies he does it with. What is his family like? What other kind of art does he do? Is he still into film making? Does he go to therapy? How does his art impact his mental health? All of this is interesting and you could pick so many topics to cover for Eliott even if we only have him for a while. But we can’t. We must see him through Lola’s eyes and she’s a sixteen year old girl... so Eliott, a 20 year old man is framed through the eyes of a 16 year old girl. Which is fine if that all we can have but if you want to go for the big brother thing, the mentor in mental health and well being, someone she can look up to in terms of his expression and art... awesome, but don’t introduce topics though Eliott’s POV that fundamentally need his POV to work. Without it, we get a 20 year old dude opening up about lying in his relationship to a 16 year old stranger and it... it just doesn’t work for me. It feels odd and forced as a means to and end. Not to mention that you have Lucas entirely oblivious. And I’m not even considering what I imagine will be the worsening of this as we go on aka that spoiler.

So that’s my issue with it. I got 5 asks about today’s clip and I already made a post a few days ago but I don’t really want to continuously talk about it... I guess I have my issues with it, it’s a disappointing approach for me and when I wanted to see Eliott, I guess I genuinely would rather not have his POV if this is how we have to have it. I hope they do afford him his own moment of POV and that it makes sense and honours him as a character because Skam France writers aren’t kind to their characters and I cannot watch them treat his character like rubbish. I hope they don’t rely on the fandom’s love for him for us to just overlook uneven writing. He deserves more than that.

#skam france #eliott demaury #thoughts etc

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