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Seeing the recent development of season 8 finally enabled me to pinpoint what went/goes wrong with Druck season 7 and 8.

Both Isi and Mailin engage in multiple questionable and sometimes objectively bad actions. This is not the problem, since every SKAM main has done this so far. The problem is, that some actions do not get called out as bad, or do require an apology from the main, but do not get one.

For Isi we have for example: stealing at your friend’s workplace, irresponsible behavior with drugs and alcohol, lying, and letting your friends down (I’m also thinking about Zoe and Kieu My here).

For Mailin we have: destroying school property, kissing without consent, attacking someone for their values/beliefs in a passive-aggressive way.

These behaviors do not get resolved, because there is an escalating order of the characters problematic behaviors, which makes the older ones seem unimportant compared to a huge ‘main mistake’ the character makes (in Mailin’s case it is the nudes getting leaked and in Isi’s case it is not showing up to Sascha’s gig). In Isi’s season, this behavior ends up being the only one with a resolution and apologetic actions, and it would not surprise me if Mailin’s season is centered around the nudes from now on.

Also, in past seasons, the character’s behavior was somehow always linked to their struggle, therefore putting them in a dilemma situation and making us understand why they could possibly do such stuff, even though we objectively regard it as bad. It makes us feel empathy for the character, and in the end, when the character tries to make up for their mistakes, we root for them. To illustrate this, I have written down Matteos problematic behaviors with certain characters, how it is linked to his internal struggle, and how he makes up for it:

Matteo and Amira: Matteo hides weed in Amiras backpack, gives an absolute shit about their biology exam and attacks her for being religious; reason: Matteo feels insecure about his sexuality and possible homophobic reactions and also is not able to concentrate on school at the moment resolution: Matteo invites Amira for a coffee, shows actual effort for studying, apologizes, and also has the talk with Amira about biology/Islam and homosexuality which puts him at ease about homophobia

Matteo and his friend group: is uninterested in engaging in activities with his friend group, and ends up yelling at them after his break up with Sarah reason: Matteo feels pressured by the heteronormative expectations of his friends, and feels like an outsider for not being straight, and feels like he cannot talk about his actual problems with his friends (David leaving him alone) resolution: Matteo comes out to Jonas and explains himself, thereby receiving support for his situation, later meets up with his friends and apologizes

Matteo and Sarah: Matteo is a horrible boyfriend to Sara, rejecting her when she wants physical intimacy without explanation, and cheats on her with David reason: Matteo is not ready to come out and wants to fit in into the heteronormative image of society resolution: Matteo visits Sarah at her home, explains his situation and apologizes

Matteo and Hans: Matteo is a horrible flatmate, very messy/dirty, and attacks Hans for being openly gay reason: Matteo struggles with internalized homophobia and being heartbroken, and with these struggles he is not really able to take care of himself and his surroundings resolution: Matteo has a whole cleaning session in one clip, and later asks Hans for his advice twice, acknowledging that he is his ‘Gay Guru’

I could list even more examples, but you get the idea. Matteo makes up for almost everything he does in his season. He properly apologizes. Multiple times. And we can link almost every behavior of Matteo to his internal dilemma situation (being a closeted gay teenager and falling in love with a boy for the first time).

In Isi’s season, their mistakes were almost never connected to their internal struggle (gender identity crisis), but to the affection they felt for Lou. And since the two of them do not even end up being lovers, it is hard to make that a believable reason for Isi to commit all these mistakes, and ultimately to ‘forgive’ them for their mistakes or feeling like we understand them.

In Mailin’s season I don’t even recognize one distinctive internal struggle (except for being unexperienced maybe, but that is not a good reason to do any of the stuff Mailin does??). Her behaviors lack a proper explanation for me which makes it hard for me to feel empathy towards her.

Plus, both Isi and Mailin seemed to get the most perfect, ‘clean’ Love Interests. I’m sorry, but I never saw any major character flaws in both Sascha and Finn. This even exaggerates the contrast between the ‘bad’ actions of Isi and Mailin and their ‘innocent’ love interests. In combination, all of this leads me to think that neither Isi nor Mailin deserves someone like Finn/Sascha. The relationship seems ‘unbalanced’.

In conclusion, the new DRUCK writers do not seem to have understood how the show used to work. And how to portray a main as likeable. And this is sad, because it could have been fixed with a few more honest apologies, the characters internal struggle as the link between all of this, and a steady building up of conflicts instead of a tendency towards escalation.

#druck #druck s8 #druck s7 #isi inci #mailin richter #character flaws #druck s3 #matteo florenzi #i miss him so much #i miss season 3 #i miss honest apologies #they are so important #long post

"My thought capsule is the feeling of not being alone with you. I'm very stuborn, but you don't mind that. And even when you did, you always honest and told me your opinion. You don't even know how grateful I am for that. That you were just there, even when I didn't ask you to, and that you didn't leave, even when I wasn't mentally there or make mistakes. You make me so much stronger, and only through you do I really get to know myself. I'm infinitely happy to have you as friends"

— DRUCK GENERATION 2 (Season 5 - Season 8 / 2020 - 2022)

looking at the comments under the latest clip rn and there are a lot that are really cool

but some are just... eh

there are people saying that every victim of SA should decide for themselves how to deal with it, whether they want to go to the police etc.

and yes, that's true, but it also misses the point

because most victims are scared of going to the police, of what the police might say to them, of having to go through the traumatising events again, and then not even knowing that the abuser will get any consequences

but that's exactly the reason why we should show characters successfully reporting their abusers to the police, especially characters that are praised for "being strong" by their friends

we need to show young victims that going to the police can work and that it doesn't make the situation more traumatising

if we show a charcater not going to the police, even though they are "strong" and have the help of a big friend group, then victims will feel even less like going to the police, because if this strong character with lots of support can't do it, how could they?

#druck #druck mailin #tw sa mention #druck s8 #druck season 8 #skam germany #mailin richter