#is any relationship im in automatically queer because of my transness

[aceaceace144616]

How am I supposed to be bisexual AND trans?

Someone please give me instructions

[uninterestiing]

i liked your post on matteo taking his time to process things, so i'd love to know what your thoughts are on david being outed?

hhhhhhhhh well from what i’ve seen in the tag, i disagree with like 90% of youse and was gonna hold my thoughts till later… but since you asked… yeah i reckon its good writing actually.

(beware under the cut, this is long)

so disclaimers before people get big mad: i’ve actually been in the situation depicted. i’m a gay trans guy who came out in year 12 & to me, it’s extremely realistic. teachers in my last year of high school pulled me aside to say all kinds of nasty shit and the rumour of my transness spread around pretty fuckin quickly. it was a fucked time in my life but i didn’t have any issues watching the last clip, i enjoyed it and found it pretty relatable honestly, especially the teacher bit because its a really common thing trans kids go through to be harassed more by staff than students, but i’ve never actually seen it be depicted before… but i’ll also say, im really not easy to upset and almost impossible to offend when it comes to trans stuff. i work as an openly trans person in the media and my skin is very thick, 17 year old me who was experiencing it real-time would have probably been shaken up a bit.

that said, like i discussed in my other post about this, realism doesn’t automatically equal good storytelling! so what is good storytelling?

big subject obviously, but rn i’m gonna define it as a consistency of theme, tone, and character. (its also how well you tie all those things up at the end but i wont comment on that because… druck ain’t finished yet and we need to remember that!) plus, of course, it’s just… whether you like it? which is completely subjective, and something i can only comment on for myself!

so i think the main issue here is that people expect things from druck it never promised them, and from the very beginning was never going to be.

take the perspective issue for example, which effects tone & character immensely. i’ve seen numerous complaints that the show isn’t depicting the trans issues from an internal perspective. which is interesting, since from the very start, we’ve known that was the case. we knew it was matteo’s season, and we knew how very, very closely skam shows follow their protagonists. everything is from their perspective. so i knew it was never gonna be about trans issues from a trans perspective because david was not the main character, he’s the love interest. that was evident from day one ya’ll it’s how the show is structured. and that is Not Inherently A Bad Thing, it’s just not what some of you wanted.

however… druck has stretched the limits of perspective more than any other version. the texts, for instance, are not just the main’s, and do a lot for fleshing out the background characters. also (and this is thematically important) it showed the way outing / spreading of rumours actually happens irl. re-watching the last clip i noticed that they leave matteo’s POV for a second, and “switch” to david as he’s coming down the stairs, realising what’s happening. not so much as to break the consistency of the show’s structure, but enough to make the audience really understand the gravity of what’s happening. it’s done really fluidly and i thought it was a genius way to both keep it matteo’s story, but also, give that moment a much needed trans perspective, because i really don’t think all that ringing distortion sound was matteo’s panic. 

and really, i just don’t think a trans person needs to be the main character of the show for it to be good representation. i think they have done an exceptional job of not tokenizing david by making sure to establish his whole character & his relationship with matteo before his trans identity was confirmed on the show, in the exact same way they do with the other evens and their mental illnesses in every other version. and honestly, when it comes to trans men, there’s very little media stereotypes or negative tropes that they could have conformed to because there’s not enough representation yet for those to have actually formed. like, we know druck won’t kill david off, and i don’t really know any other tropes that exists for trans men in storytelling at the moment. a lot of the show is covering new ground subject wise, they don’t have a script to follow, so some minor blunders are to be expected.

over all, the fandom jumps the gun every damn time. the show decides to have conflict or deal with a social problem and everyone looses it, as if that’s not been the entire ethos of skam since the OG. skam / druck is a teen show that deals with identity issues. every season picks topics to educate on through the story, and they do it with a lot of care and research.that’s the whole deal, it’s why the show exists, fucking of course they aren’t going to brush over trans issues, it amazes me that people thought they would, and that there would be no conflict and it’d play out like fanfiction fluff. here’s another really good post about it.

so obviously, this season is about about being gay and being trans, but specifically about outing, and has stressed this theme all the way through, way more than any other version. so friday’s clip is what i’d call a natural culmination of theme and narrative. in terms of the queer experience, and the trans experience, i think it was a very good idea to take on coming out / outing as a central thematic and narrative through-line, because it’s one of the central things gay and trans people have in common. and then analyzing them both in comparison and contrast throughout the story, really works and makes for good fucking writing, pacing and - yup, you guessed it - consistency.

i find the choice to situate a trans man as the love interest, and therefore, an object of desire, incredibly subversive. and though yes, stories with trans protagonists are lacking, literally any form of story where trans people exist is lacking, and the creators of druck wanting to tell a story about what it means to love & be in a relationship with a trans person is just as important a story to tell as any other, and complaining about what “type” of trans story is more important to tell first, or which aspect of trans existence to highlight more, is ridiculous. at the end of the day, one story cannot cover everything, and the writers had to make choices as to where their focus would lie. and there’s literally nothing wrong with their specific choices in subject matter (being trans in the context of relationship & outing, mainly), other than personal preference.

so like i said in my previous post: wanting a comfort show where trans characters exist, but the trans experience is not plot-relevant, is fine & cool. i really want that too, but not here. getting angry or upset that druck did… exactly what skam shows do… is stupid. and then turning around and blaming your dislike, which is born out of judging a show by the wrong genre standards, on “bad writing”, is just plain wrong. this show is amazingly produced. just… c’mon guys. chill.

(also @ every weird cis person in the tag giving fuckin condolences & saying their askbox is open if someone needs to talk…… stop. literally nobody asked. its so weird. we didn’t put a call out for you to be upset on our behalf. its just a tv show. like its super important rep for us… but its also just a tv show that people can just not watch if its not your cup of tea.)

tl;dr the friday clip was fucking good and made sense because druck is well written, acted, researched and produced, is really not transphobic (in fact i’d say it’s pretty subversive), and it’s also not the creators fault when you’re disappointed by the direction taken in a show that was crystal clear what direction it was headed into!