#anyways me falling in love with an overly-serious character with a basis in writing is like saying water's wet

[stillthewc]

It's Driven Betrayal fan art time, baby! I discovered this fangan a while back, but after reading the character synopsises on Twitter, Yoshimitsu won my heart enough for me to draw fanart of him.

Anyways, the character belongs to @tsunanami17, and info on the fangan they come from can be found here.

[nightklok]

TELL ME ABOUT HOW YOU WRITE PICKLES AND CHARLES PLEASE ;0; what are you inspirations for their dynamic? you write them so in love and it makes me immensely happy

Thank you firstly, means a lot because writing them happy brings me so much joy-even if I probably wrote more angst than fluff of them at a point-jkfl

I have answered Pickles here so I’ll write about Charles and why I write them together with the way I do! :D

Charles

I feel like Charles has a lot more emotions/feelings than the show tries to give him credit for (I like to think that by season 4, he learned to be a little be more emotional around the boys enough as he learned that it’s okay to be a bit emotional if he needs to around them BUT then Doomstar completely wrecked him) 

I really adore trying to write characters that are normally stoic in the show into more gentler/emotional people. I feel like the DVD extra of him taking calls and season 4/Doomstar shows he can be emotional! He has friends outside of Dethklok, his own hobbies/interests, definitely feels something and I don’t think my idea of him is really all that far fetched. He’s not just some asshole in a suit and while he has done questionable things, 9/10 it’s for the sake of Dethklok and not himself (Whoops forgot about Melmord here but even then I think Charles isn’t being selfish because he really does know he’s the only one that keep them in control-Melmord is just a snake oil salesman in a non-existent clown costume or something-)

I do keep in mind that he is a serious person and most likely is even when around people he completely trusts. He’s a person who can be a bit hard to read but he’s also not that hard when you actually get to know him and really know where to look when talking to him. Also I do headcanon that he is autistic but that’s for another story i think

He’s a character that even though I know is emotional inside, he does have to keep a stoic/non-expression look to him on the surface. He has the most important job in his life and he’s well aware of it. Being emotional/expressing anything but seriousness could possibly endanger him and Dethklok. It’s probably not by much because I do think even when he is emotional and can express himself, it’s still controlled to a degree. He can’t just let himself completely break in front of someone, he wouldn’t allow that at all.  I’d imagine he’d have to pretend that he only sees them as coworkers and nothing else or that the band would have to do the same to him or there would be kidnapping attempts. there probably is anyway on a yearly basis but thanks to him, it’s near impossible to do that as they do have highly trained klokateers.

But I still believe even regardless of that that it must get exhausting at times. A warm bed and wanting to sleep in is something that everyone desires to do at least once but they have to get up early and go to work or do whatever they need to do. Charles is human and he’s a human has needs like everyone else. I feel that he does probably have the days where just sleeping in sounds like a wonderful thing to do or that there are stressful days where he’d just need a long bath or something. Because of this, I don’t really seem him as aggressive or overly dominant when off work and in a relationship. Having to take care of a band and basically the world’s economy is exhausting. If he just wants to be taken care of, let him!!

Basically what I’m saying is let the guy take a nap

I do like to try and base off characters/writing off real people/situations so I think I gotta say Brian Epstein who managed the Beatles really helped in figuring out how Charles is like as a manager to Dethklok-I really began researching him around the time I got into the show because of class and it was interesting reading about him and I honestly think he’s one of the best band managers I heard of (next to Peter Grant of course-). I do also relate to Charles in some level though the patience he has I think is really almost inhumane because wow-

I kinda did write Chickles first before this so i might be repeating? So I’ll just leave this as it is but either way, I just like writing him as a little bit more emotional/down to earth. I get that it might be OOC a bit but I feel like the aggressive/dominant part is a little bit way too OOC-

Chickles

I honestly wonder why I write them so in love too if i have to be honest dsflkj

To answer what the inspirations; i feel like a huge factor into why I write them the way do (and probably any other ship) is because while i have had the feeling of falling in love before, i never really had the experience of being in a romantic relationship or went anywhere even close to that with someone. I feel like this is kinda obvious but its about the yearning I kinda do fantasize what it must be like but I do also take what I have learned/read/seen from either relationships I know of personally or seen in media and apply to them. I take both toxic and good relationships to see what I do/don’t want to write when it comes to relationships and what they would/wouldn’t do. I don’t use toxic relationships to completely shape a relationship but rather analyze it, see why it’s toxic in the first place, and see what I can do to either when I write relationships/pairings in general. Obviously I use Addams family’s Morticia and Gomez as a base for writing good relationships in general because who wouldn’t???

I also think writing terribly written Chickles fanfics and even ones with Charles probably help to in writing Charles. Are they near uncomfortable and make me wanna take a shower after reading them? Yes-but reading them not for entertainment/knowing what you’re getting into and then thinking about why you didn’t like it honestly helps in keeping a character in check. Not something I recommend for works that can potentially trigger you but for for those fics that just don’t nail their character right, can be useful in knowing how you don’t want to portray a character/relationship. It can be VERY easy to make Chickles a toxic pairing if you don’t know how to handle them right. Having a character like Charles be with someone like Pickles can be easy to butcher if someone doesn’t really study their characters. Charles doesn’t have to be completely dominant nor is he a Christian Grey-like character that doesn’t seem to know how to properly communicate with his partners. And Pickles is definitely not a weak, submissive person and is stronger/braver than anyone gives him credit for when writing those relationships. I like to think that while one may be a little more dominant/in control of the relationship, they are complete equals. If one needs to be taken care of, the other will step in and help them out.

Writing them that they had knew each other in the Snakes N’ Barrels era/80s has always been basically canon to me too! So I guess it just makes it also a lot easier to write them as in love when I set the stories in dethklok/present day; whatever problems that they had in the beginning that they fear the other might judge/yell/misunderstand for would be long since resolved/handled by the time the show aired. Whether they actually date or not by then kinda depends on the story but either way, they would have a strong relationship. They would have learned about each other, their problems and who they are inside and out. They fall in love with the little things they do and learn to handle any pet peeves with them but accept them as who they are. They have gone through so much together behind the scenes and their relationship to each other probably is one of the few that hasn’t changed when Dethklok got incredibly famous.

Season 3 and onward might be a different story. Though it’s not because of personal grievances but more of just the topic of keeping secrets & not telling the truth when they would’ve most likely been so honest with each other before. And honestly that’s what makes it REALLY devastating to write about; Pickles would know jackshit for at least a few years (Assuming that Season 3 & Season 4 took place within 3 years at best.)  and I don’t think watching someone you really love/care about die in front of you, then come back less than a year later and refuse to talk about why they’re here and give vague/cryptic answers is gonna put things back to normal.  (Maybe one day I’ll finish that fic I poured near 10,000 words in-).

And honestly it’s probably where I would like to explore on their relationship the most but it’s just so damn complex and detailed that I definitely need a lot of time to work on. They’d both want things to go back to normal but by Charles coming back, it signaled that things weren’t as what they used to be and that they most likely won’t be. What used to be a relationship based on comfort, familiarity, and a predicted unpredictability, has become something much more than neither of them have either prepared for. They’ll have to work hard to move past it and accept that like their relationship, things won’t be like they used to be. But with how much time they have spent together and that they still love each other regardless, they’ll be able to go through with this and get their happy ending!! (And I guess this is why I evolved from ‘definitely not the marrying type’ to ‘yeah they definitely get hitched after galaktikon’ because charles and pickles have probably signed a lot of important documents all their lives, so signing a marriage certificate that binds them to each other would be the most sentimental/important document he’s ever signed.)

All in all,they have such good potential writing because it’s just easy to write them for me. From their first meetings to first relationship to getting to be signed to Dethklok, I feel like they have something I probably won’t be able to replicate in other ships. They are an absolute joy to write and getting to explore.

God i could go on forever about them but im gonna stop dlfskj

[mariellewritesalot]

Notes on the Romantic Narrative

As an homage to my favorite film of all-time “Silver Linings Playbook” finally being on Netflix, and a coping mechanism to everything I’ve been feeling as of late: I am writing to you about some musings I’ve been making and breaking for the past few months. About love, or lack thereof, in my life. 

First, to give you an image of how I pay attention to detail in life and movies, I will start with a few reasons why I love this gem despite the huge changes they made on screen vis-à-vis the novel: 1) It portrayed mental illnesses in a way that didn’t feel pushy or overly-romanticized: healing is not linear, 2) Pat’s character development throughout the film was the epitome of his motto (and mine), “Excelsior”, 3) I love how the story sort of revolved around the Eagles and football to anchor the heaviness of the entire plot line, 4) The casting!!! I mean, wow, and 5) It makes you believe in silver linings, even in the safest sense of the idea, not too grand and definitely not perfect. Safe. Who could forget that scene where Pat runs after Tiffany with his letter? The relief we all felt knowing that her hard work and feelings were not for naught? If you haven’t seen it, I hope you have the time to. It’s a moving film, honestly.

Anyway, I digress. I am going to go personal in this bit and I might not like it, too. I am stating the obvious when I say that I am a hopeless romantic and that I tend to look at life in rose-colored glasses. Some probable reasons are because my parents have the kind of love story that really makes you believe in fate and second chances, plus the fact that I grew up with romantic films, songs, and books. I was sold to the fairy tale idea of happily ever afters despite the proof that it doesn’t apply to everyone in real life. I wanted my own story to tell. After all, I am a writer. I live for the things worth telling.

Nowadays, I also spend a lot of my time online where my timeline is bombarded with couples or romantic gestures, as if the algorithm is working against the realist in me. I can’t say I hate it, because one thing I get from this mindset is the tendency to highlight the good things, both in people or situations. The “too kind for my own good” complex. The only downside is that I may get disappointed more times than I should. It’s a tricky predicament if you think about it in my context: I grew up with mostly men in the house, in my own bubble, going through life thinking that somebody is going to sweep me off my feet, backed up by High School Musical films and the media pushing love teams down our throats...but then it hits me in real life as I grow older: movie moments do happen in real life, but they aren’t as common as they make it out to be, they’re the exception to the rule. They are as rare as they come. 

Some of us aren’t as lucky.

In reality, when the hurt runs too deep, it feels almost impossible to rise above it. The hopeless romantic dies out and is replaced by a semi-angry realist, tired of how the world consistently proves that it moves in circles. They become someone who occasionally relapses into that romanticized haze every once in a while because it gets lonely. When you’ve fallen in love a few times in life, it’s hard not to expect yourself to fall into a trap, any moment now. The withdrawals grow stronger just when you’re starting to get the hang of things. It’s an exhausting ordeal, if you ask me, turning numb but knowing that you can’t shake off the romantic within when it resurfaces in the most inappropriate of moments.

I used to think that I’d be one of the lucky ones who meet the love of their life early on; someone who’s capable of being in a long-term relationship in college or maybe even after...and I still think I am, but maybe I haven’t met him yet. Maybe I have, but the timing is off or we just don’t know it until a little further down the road. Now I’ve been single for too long, and there is nothing wrong with it, just the fact that the trauma I went through has really soiled my chances of healing fast; more from the events than the actual person who did the hurting. Being here though, I am able to see how I am in a generation where #hugot culture is the norm, relationships are only as good as they are on social media, and 80% of young people are desperate to find love or at least a semblance of it. It’s nauseating, accidentally giving into the “sana all” culture and thinking I am incomplete if I don’t have someone who’s technically obligated to care for me, vice versa. I am not a fan of it, but it’s not exactly easy to exclude myself from a narrative I have been in for years. I wish it didn’t feel so off.

Because...hey, there are pros to being single. For starters: I am young. I don’t have to worry about it yet at least for the next ten years or so. I am not supposed to have the same timeline as other people. I can go to bed without worrying about somebody else. I don’t have to ask for anyone’s approval. I have more time for the things I love doing. I am not being emotionally abused or taken for granted or cheated on, which were common themes in my past relationships. It’s a treat, until I am once again hooked by the media I consume and made to think that there’s more to life than being alone.

Maybe it’s the fact that I spent half of this year trying to get over the one I thought was the love of my life, or how I’m spending the other half denying to myself that I may be having feelings for a person and consciously running away from them through various coping mechanisms I never thought I’d use. Love is a gray area right now because I don’t see myself being in a relationship anytime soon, but if I ever do, I’d want something serious. I love meeting new people right now, but at the same time, my comfort zone feels good. I find that it helps tone down my anxiety when I am in control. I’m proud of myself for choosing to navigate through life by my own right now, turning down people who want to become a part of it for my sake and theirs. I just have a lot on my plate. Although I do believe that I’ll never be ready. No one ever is, but I want to put my faith in timing. I just have to learn the ropes here first. I hate that everyone around me is rushing because I feel like I’m that person being squeezed into the middle of the crowd in a mosh pit. I am choosing to make sure I am a better person than I was first before I dive into it, head first.

So yeah. Lloyd Dobler is not going to blast In Your Eyes by Pete Gabriel on a boombox outside my bedroom window (though I’d love Closing Time by Semisonic more). Dylan Harper is not going to organize a flash mob to tell me he made a mistake. Patrick Verona is not going to hack into the school speakers and sing to me at the football field. Troy Bolton is not going to show up outside my window to apologize, armed with Margherita pizza and chocolate covered strawberries. Ted is not going to steal a blue french horn for me. Johnny Castle is not going to dance with me in front of everybody to prove our love. Chuck Bass is not going to buy me a ring and carry it around even when we aren’t together anymore, hoping for the chance to get me back. Augustus Waters is not going to show up with orange tulips and a trip to Amsterdam. Pat Soltano is not going to run after me with a love letter he wrote a week ago...and I’m okay with it. I don’t want to buy into the notion that I need saving, or that I can be swayed by gestures that can so easily be just a move to win me over with no follow-through. I don’t want to be put on a pedestal, anyway. Also...sometimes, it’s in the little things. We fall in love with the way people remember something we said to them months ago, the way they show up after a long day, and the way even the tiniest gestures feel so big it fills up everything else.

I feel like one day I’ll be given the love I deserve and I don’t have to yearn for movie scenes like the art geek I am. You see, what makes love stories unique is the fact that it happens when you least expect it. Grand romantic gestures are welcome, but they aren’t really the basis of how deep love could be. I could only hope to be with someone who speaks my love language or at least tries to understand it. Until then...I’ll keep relearning everything until I make sense of what I truly want out of love and its intricate mess of a web.

I’ll love; even without pretense, without hope or agenda, without expecting the universe to give me back everything like it owes me.

[lightsandlostbells]

Skam France season 3, episode 3 reaction

Alexia was the MVP of the episode. Daphne needs a restraining order.

Episode 3

Clip 1 - Three men and an obnoxious whiny baby they inexplicably let hang around with them

Lucas at his locker Monday morning. The locker next to him is #24, the words Amor Amor and #instalove are written on it. #24 is also the slot for the choco bars that Eliott got for them in episode 1. Is that going to be Lucas and Eliott’s version of 21? What’s the significance of 24 - maybe 24 hours in a day, a day meaning a full period of both light and darkness? If we want to get Biblical, Luke 24 is the last chapter in the gospel of Luke and describes Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, although I don’t know if they’re going to go heavily into the Biblical/rebirth metaphors in Skam France (they’re going with light and dark). Anyway, any significance will become more obvious later in the season.

 The boy squad shows up. Basile starts talking and when I first watched this without subtitles, my notes were “I don’t know what he’s saying but he needs to shut up.”

Watching with subtitles? I was right, Basile can fucking chill. He blows up at Lucas because he missed the party and he could’ve gotten laid. Even Arthur and Yann, who weren’t overly warm with Lucas when they entered, are telling Basile to calm down. Arthur tells Basile it wasn’t the party of the year. Yann, upon hearing the excuse that something’s up with Lucas’ mom, says who cares, the party’s in the past, diffusing the situation. Basile shuts up seemingly because the other two are chill.

I get that people aren’t perfect and that Lucas did something snaky on them, but Basile is so fucking creepy, Jesus. He’s not just peeved, he’s like ... seriously angry that he missed a chance to get laid, and he keeps up his tantrum after Lucas starts mentioning a problem at home, with his mom. Glad to know his priorities are fully aligned with his dick? It gives me the nastiest, skeeviest vibes, like this dude is going to end up frequenting incel forums in a year or two (if not sooner) and after his friends finally get sick of his shit and ditch him he’ll be railing against Lucas and Yann and calling them Chads or whatever.

The one good thing about Basile being terrible is that I think it made Yann and Arthur chill out, like they must have thought, “Holy shit, I need to not be like this guy.” Lucas explaining about his mom seemed to dial down their annoyance because they’re, you know, normal human beings with empathy that extends outside of their penile excursions. When Lucas hands back the weed to Arthur and offers to pay for it later, Arthur says not to worry about it. Man, this season is a lot better than the first two but I kind of hate Skam France for deciding that Basile was going to be the boy squad breakout and not Arthur.

Yann checks in with Lucas after the others leave and asks whether his mom is at the clinic, so I’m assuming that’s something that has happened in the past. I don’t remember hearing about Isak’s mom being in a clinic or psychiatric hospital. I mean, it actually might be a good thing, in that Lucas’ mom is willing and able to seek treatment - or it might be something else that’s concerning, like she’s a danger to herself or unable to take care of herself. I’m sure we’ll learn more about her condition later. Lucas tells Yann he doesn’t want to talk about it and Yann is a total pal and says the important thing is to be there for her. God, can we please get more Yann content? I know it’s coming later, I know Lucas has to go through some serious heartache and isolation first, but I need Yann’s presence like I need a cool drink of water.

Yann must have triggered Lucas’ guilt over not being there for his mom, because Lucas writes a text to her, saying he’s sorry for not answering her previous texts and that he’s been busy, but he’s thinking of her. Nice little moment of cause-and-effect, though I wonder how Lucas’ relationship is going to be with her later on and how he’ll describe it to Eliott. Because he doesn’t seem to be as totally alienated from her as Isak, though it’s still a rocky and distant relationship.

Clip 2 - Alexia loves unicorns

I see the Raptors’ logo on the wall so you know, nice that they still exist.

Lucas sees Chloé and Maria coming and runs away into the common room, lmao. Daphne, Alexia, and Emma are in there, and I have no idea why Daphne hides the broom behind her, like … you’re just sweeping the floor, girl, you ain’t pulling off a jewel heist. Although Lucas does suggest they’re burgling the room, heh. (I love Daphne’s rubber gloves, btw. She is taking this cleanup seriously.)

Lucas lies that he’s here to help them and Daphne is still weird about it, because it’s a secret and she doesn’t even want the girls to mention they’re moving the furniture. Emma “vaguely” says it’s so people can dance here. Lmao, that wasn’t really necessary, Emma, you could just have said they’re moving stuff out of the way to see how the room looks for their redesign or whatever. Lucas figures out that they’re throwing a party here, because he sat in on that last meeting and he’s not an idiot. Daphne complains that she doesn’t want anyone to know but she just blathers more about organizing an event. Errr, are you allowed to just throw a party at the school? Like … at night, on a Friday, with a bunch of teenagers, and no teacher supervision? I assume not. That seems like a huuuuuge fucking recipe for people to get drunk, make a mess, break shit, or in some way trash this room and possibly other parts of the school, and then you’ll never get your common room redone.

Lmao, at Alexia saying it’s OK because it’s Lucas and he’s not a snitch, and he and Emma just share a look like “Oh really?” Heh, that was a good (and subtle) inclusion. Well, it’s true that he is a snitch, it’s just that he’s also a self-serving snitch, and it’s not in his own best interests to rat out this party vs. ratting out Emma’s kissing Raptor Alex.

Alexia points out that Lucas is part of the crew now because he’s always gatecrashing, and Emma says he’s the new Manon, Alexis like, yeah, he even took her spot in the flat! They’re not wrong? He even took over from her as POV character! He just needs some bright red lipstick to complete the Manon transformation.

Daphne is like NO BOYS ALLOWED and I don’t blame her, she’s seen what kind of riffraff Lucas hangs with (starts with a B, ends with a go-fuck-yourself.)

Alex says Romain (her boyfriend who’s French Kasper) would love this ugly-ass table they’re moving and Emma points out she also has weird taste, indicating Alex’s unicorn shoes with little manes and horns. Yo, I don’t have an obsession with unicorns myself, but I applaud her wearing those shoes. Girl, wear whatever your technicolor heart desires.

Daphne is like, are those unicorns because you’re bi orrr … Alex says no, it’s because unicorns are awesome. OK, so she and Eliott are both into animals and attracted to more than one gender, that seems like a solid basis for a friendship. Let the Raccoonicorn brotp rise.

Daphne asks whether Romain knows she is bi, and Alex says no, but sexuality is fluid, anyway. Tbh I do find it strange that Romain does not know, not because she’s obligated to tell him or anything, just because in a long-term relationship (which it is, they hooked up like last June) I’d think you would share details like that? I mean, hasn’t she ever talked about her female exes or crushes or anything with him? Especially because she seems to be quite out and proud, she was openly talking about making out with Clara in S1, she has rainbow patches on her clothes. She also makes bisexuality-related posts on Instagram, like this one. I guess we don’t know much about her relationship with Romain and how serious it is, but is he like ... not paying attention at all, lmao?

Alex mentions the Kinsey scale and Lucas asks what that is, because this conversation about sexuality just so happens to be relevant to his interests. She explains what it is and mentions that many people have done stuff with the same sex. Just look at Emma and Daphne hooking up! 

I did laugh that they mentioned that again, although Daphne is like NO NO NO that was one time and Emma initiated it!! Daphne, don’t dash my dreams. Especially now that she’s got creepy Basile after her; Daphne should find a nice girl to love and SHUT THAT SHIT DOWN in every way possible.

Emma describes herself as very fluid when drunk and ahhHHHHHH I groaned, like this is not a judgment call on Emma or anyone who behaves similarly because hey, make out with who you want, but this is not the greatest thing to reinforce, the whole “drunk girls making out” cliche is used to minimize the concept of bisexuality for woman (because that’s what you mean when you say you’re bi, right, you like to get drunk and kiss girls?). I mean, that’s where the complaint about the Eva/Vilde moment in Skam came from. It’s certainly different here because Alexia is actually bisexual in canon as opposed to no canon wlw rep in Skam, but I kinda wish they hadn’t thrown in this line in a scene that’s otherwise positive and educational about bisexuality. 

Lucas is like, but it’s cool to be bi, right? Because Alex can kiss as many girls as she wants and date a boy, and everyone thinks she’s straight. Ohhhhh noooooo son. But at least that’s definitely in-universe ignorance that’s immediately refuted by Alex pointing out it doesn’t work like that. Do you choose who you fall in love with? Lucas considers that.

This is a big new scene so let’s go over it. 

First of all, massive props to Skam France for having Alex confirm in words on screen that she is bisexual, and for course-correcting from previous seasons. Because personally I had a problem with Alex bi by Word of God but that factor not affecting like … her dialogue or interactions at all even when it would be relevant. For instance, the whole thing about Daphne thinking Manon is a lesbian played out the same way as Vilde thinking Noora is a lesbian, even when there was an out bisexual girl in the same scene, so Alex might not react the same way as girl Chris, or it might influence how Manon or Daphne reacted. Didn’t the girl squad laugh when Daphne brought this up and Daphne was all “your laughter makes this an unsafe environment to come out,” like that’s the kind of situation that should take into account one of the girls is bi, and yet there was nothing different? I think they took some of the viewer feedback in mind and saw that people wanted confirmation of Alex’s sexuality on screen, and that it was important to the fans, so good for them. They also had her say the word “bisexual” and treat it as a legit concept, which is still rare in media, as many canons just dance around it (to the point where I was surprised when Skam’s boy squad discussed bisexuality/pansexuality as a real thing).

Also, excellent to have Alex correct Lucas’ perception of her bisexuality, where basically she can mess around with girls but have a more serious thing with a guy, and no one has to know she’s anything but straight. Very common misconception of bisexuality, unfortunately a very dismissive perspective, and Alexia got to educate the audience. It was a really good thing for the viewers to hear, so again, big props. 

I think Lucas made that comment about Alex kissing girls but dating a boy and getting to appear straight primarily because that situation seemed ideal to him. In his mind, Alex probably seems lucky because she can act on her non-heterosexual desires but not deal with the prejudice and judgment that comes with dating your own gender. Perhaps he’s thinking he can apply it to himself, like in a way he’s hoping he can maybe mess around with Eliott in secret but date a girl in public and not deal with any of the societal stigma that comes with gay relationships. I think it’s also possible he’s wondering if that’s how Eliott’s sexuality operates, like hey, maybe Eliott’s bi and he’ll date that girl, but kiss me. When really it’s not that simple. 

Additionally, thinking of bisexuality in that distorted, superficial way means Lucas might not have to confront his own sexuality to a degree that makes him uncomfortable. If bisexuality is simple as kissing girls but dating boys - or in Lucas’ case, kissing boys but dating girls - then he can maybe leave it like that, he doesn’t really have to think about it further, what it means to fall in love with a boy. Almost like it would be an easy gratification of needs like eating or sleeping, rather than anything deeper that would shake up his world. Alexia points out it’s not like that. Why would she date some guy if the person she loves is a girl? You don’t choose who affects you emotionally.

Honestly the lead-in to this conversation was pretty clunky, like they obviously wanted to bring up bisexuality (which is great!) but they could’ve done it in a more organic way, much as I appreciated a glimpse of Alex’s unicorn shoes. Like IDK, when they’re talking about keeping the party a secret, Alexia could’ve added, “Well I admit, I told Clara about the party, too” and have Daphne go “You talk to your ex-girlfriend? Doesn’t Romain get jealous?” and Alexia be like “... why would he be?” You know, throw in another little moment where Alex disputes the “bisexual cheater” stereotype or something like that. Not sure if that example’s any better, just that I felt the way Daphne brought up the topic sounded a little As You Know.

I feel like while this conversation might have done a lot of good for the audience, the talk about the Kinsey Scale might have done more harm for Lucas than good, which is certainly not Alex’s fault, and also not a flaw of the narrative, just an observation. Because while I think it’s good to hear that someone doesn’t have to feel boxed in by definitions of sexuality, I don’t think Lucas is sexually fluid for any reason other than societal pressure to like girls. He makes out with them but it doesn’t appear to be something he enjoys, rather it’s something he makes himself do (which is how it was for Isak, if they’re following Isak’s example). It’s way different than if he had some attraction to girls but was struggling with his attraction to guys on top of that. And trying to test out his level of gayness or whatever, when his actions say one thing and his desires say something totally different, is probably going to make it more complicated for him than it needs to be. 

Although one thing I want to mention is that Alex does know what Lucas had on his phone at the end of S1. We were shown in S2 that Manon and Emma must have shared it with her and possibly the other girls. So I don’t know if she cares about his sexuality to the extent that say, Manon does, but she is aware that he might be into guys. It’d be nice if she said her piece with that in mind.

Regarding Lucas’ relationship with the girl squad - it’s really sweet and of course nice to see him bonding with them, I just wonder if it isn’t cutting into the sense of isolation and detachment that he’s supposed to be feeling at this point in time. I’ve enjoyed seeing him smile and laugh with the girls as much as anyone, but they did make a point of detachment as a main struggle for his character. I mean, the opening clip of the season was literally called “Disconnected” and showed him distant from everyone. Sorry, Lucas, not that I like to see you have a hard time, but for that reason I kinda don’t want you to be buddy-buddy with the girl squad too quickly and easily. He doesn’t have to be downright frosty but I’d rather see this friendliness as more gradual, otherwise it cuts a little into the overall atmosphere.

I think these girl squad interactions are best used as a counter to the stress with the boy squad, and the differences in social pressure he gets from the squads, and also for some of the educational moments that he could get from Alex as a member of the LGBT community.

Clip 3 - Gay test

Lucas is at home at night, staring up at the ceiling while he’s on his laptop. Considering or psyching himself up for what he’s going to do. He googles gay test. The link he clicks on isn’t so much about personality/stereotypes, as with Isak but actual sexual actions, fantasies, and attraction, in the past, currently, and ideally. 

He checks all the “other sex only” options, and like … a) he is lying about some of that since we know he obviously had a crush on Yann and is attracted to Eliott, we know he’s not exclusively daydreaming or hoping for the opposite sex - not to mention he doesn’t seem to really want girls at all b) this quiz is kinda fucked up because past actions don’t actually determine one’s sexuality, like if you’re hooking up with girls because of heteronormative pressure rather than genuine attraction, that’s not an indication you’re bi, that’s an indication you live in a homophobic society. Which everyone does. 

I don’t get how he actually got a “bisexual” result, though? It looks like he checked the straightest answers possible, everything was about the opposite sex, so how would you get anything other than the most heterosexual possible score (in this case 7)? Did I miss something in translation? 

I do feel bad for him because he was probably looking for some verification that he wasn’t gay, and the quiz told him he wasn’t entirely straight. He searches for “how to make it so no one knows you’re gay.” OUCH. So he knows, just like Isak did, that these results don’t mean a damn thing about whether he’s gay.

Tangent but like when Skam Italia S2 aired, I saw a fair number of comments comparing Isak to his remake counterparts, claiming that Isak was in super denial that he was gay or flat-out wasn’t sure at this point, whereas Lucas knows but doesn’t want to say it (or Martino knew he was gay but was struggling with external homophobia so he couldn’t come out) and not to be insufferable but: Isak knew he was gay. He wasn’t in denial of that any more than Lucas was here, tbh. What he was struggling with was the label “gay” and all the stereotypes and generalizations associated with it, and how that reflected on himself, as well as the social perception of being gay and how people would see him. What happened with Emma was a result of him trying to avoid those associations. But he asks Google how to get turned on by girls if you’re gay, he knows what he is even if he’s not comfortable with all that label entails to him. 

He finds a forum where someone details their strategy. This sparked some theorizing because the person posting is “Tuturo” and Arthur’s IG handle is “monvoisintuturo” (which is a My Neighbor Totoro reference - I love that because Isak had a subtle reference to that film in the first season of Skam, with a poster on his wall). Coincidence? Is this a real post on a forum that they found or something they made up for the show? It’s dated 22/08/2017. Of course, they could have found that post, and invented Arthur’s IG around it...

Arthur being gay (or not straight, at least) would be one hell of a twist. Honestly, I doubt that’s what they’re headed toward, because the advice in the post doesn’t really align with what we’ve seen of Arthur’s personality so far. Sure, he’s not necessarily the most enlightened dude in every way, but we don’t see him lashing out with homophobic slurs and shit-talking gay people, we don’t see him with a hot girlfriend for cover. So he’s not taking his own advice. It would have been better foreshadowing if they’d set him up more along those lines, so we can see the hints other than his username. Then again, the post is from 2017 so I guess he could have grown away from that mindset or grown uncomfortable with it... But yeah, although I find the idea really intriguing, I’m not sold on it actually happening unless there are some bigger hints. 

The advice is stuff like talk about girls all the time, get a hot yet prudish girlfriend, use gay slurs and show how angry gay people make you. We get Lucas’ voiceover as he reads the post and tbh I wish they’d not done that, like it worked fine when Isak was sitting there and they just showed the message for the viewers, like I get that it’s a longer message and they want to make it obvious, but they don’t have to spoon feed it to us. I guess it helps to hear it in Lucas’ voice so we can sense him internalizing it, but it’s still unnecessary. Maybe they could have just shown closeups of the most important phrases.

Clip 4 - Daphne rules the world

It’s the dance chicks clip. Alexia is a dancer! We saw her doing some gymnastics in previous seasons so that’s a nice touch.

I’m realizing that this clip is one of those things in the remakes where the production team needs to be careful, because the clip is about male gaze, but there’s also a line where the depiction of male gaze turns into an endorsement of it, if that makes sense. Like I want it to be clear that the boy squad is panting over and objectifying the girls, but you don’t want the show itself to objectify them. This clip stopped before it got too sleazy for me, so that was appreciated.

Instead of being disinterested like Isak was, Lucas is joining his bros as they drool over the girls. They’re watching through a window by the way, which is creepier than the boys being in the same room and the girls knowing of their presence - it’s a milder version of peeking into the girls’ locker room like it’s an ‘80s teen sex comedy or something. 

Arthur resting his chin on Lucas’ shoulder is cute, though.

Lucas is saying some bullshit about how not all the girls are hot, which is kinda funny because lol none of the girls are hot to him, and how he wouldn’t let that girl suck him off, which is also kinda funny because we know you don’t want that, dude, but he’s also trying to be a fuckboy which is not funny. 

It’s objectifying as fuck and not funny when you consider his internalized homophobia but I couldn’t help but laugh when he’s like “That girl is hot because she has big boobs” because it sounds like a robot trying to emulate human sexual attraction. Breasts, those certainly are things heterosexual men appreciate!

The other guys are like wow, even Basile isn’t as awful as you. I beg to differ. (Apparently Basile says something that’s relevant to #MeToo, like he wants to get laid but he’s also #MeToo, and get the fuck out of here with that shit, dude. Nothing about your dancing later in the episode says you’re against sexual harassment.) Lucas responds by calling them a gay slur. Lovely! The dudes are like, what’s up with that? Arthur calls it a “closeted homosexual comeback” which is a pet peeve of mine, the belief that homophobes are just closeted gay people, since it removes culpability from straight people (and you know, is not accurate). But he’s a teenage dude and well, Lucas is a closeted gay guy so I’m not gonna get mad about it. Though damn, if Arthur were gay and closeted that would be some good foreshadowing. Takes one to know one?

They get spotted by the teacher and duck under the window. Basile is disgusting. The boys ask what the fuck is wrong with him. Basile does not listen to them because he’s incapable of hearing anything over the constant buzzing in his dick and instead starts telling the boys about his BDSM dream about Daphne and the boys try to get him to shut the fuck up as Daphne appears behind him, but obviously he rambles about his boner until he turns around and does this slapstick-y reaction. I cannot stand him. I’m not as angry about the BDSM dream because he was telling the guys and not trying to tell Daphne on purpose, but this kind of content overall just reinforces him as the bumbling loser comic relief and he’s not fucking funny, he’s deeply creepy and is an actual sexual harasser as we see later in the episode. 

At least Daphne says it’s all a fantasy in his head and never going to happen. ❤️❤️❤️ FUCKING TELL HIM. DESTROY HIM. She continues to be the best character on Skam France. Daphne asks what they’re doing there and Lucas says they’re checking out the hot chicks. Daphne tells them they suck (❤️❤️❤️) before walking off. The other guys are like, seriously Lucas? “Hot chicks”? Well, I don’t see quite how what he said is any worse than what Basile says constantly, including to girls’ faces, so maybe it’s a translation thing? The “hot chicks” phrasing has stronger meaning in French?

Arthur asks if Basile is OK and he says, “I fucked it all up.” DUDE you had ALREADY fucked it up from the time you first opened your mouth around her. And as we see, this does not deter him at all. God!!!!! Please fuck off into the void already.

I’m glad they called out Lucas a little but again, don’t see how he was being any more disgusting than Basile is on a regular basis regarding the misogyny. They didn’t say anything overtly anti-homophobic about Lucas using slurs, like really call him out other than some shocked reaction at him using that word. So I suppose there’s a little more ambiguity over whether they’ll be accepting of Lucas’ sexuality. (I mean, I think they’ll accept him based on what we know about OG, but in-universe there isn’t as much of a tip-off.) I did miss that more educational moment, but I also think that because Lucas still has some Operation Hetero tactics to implement later that day, he might need to not be roasted for his behavior so strongly or who knows, maybe he’d back down. (The OG had Isak apologize to Emma and then the dance chicks clip with Jonas calling him out; this version switches the scenes around.)

Clip 5 - Love confession?

Later, Lucas sees the boy squad in the yard, then he sees Chloé and Maria. Prompted by the need to seem heterosexual in front of the guys and inspired by what he read the previous night, he goes over to Chloé to get himself a hot girlfriend. 

Lucas apologizes to her and he sounds more sincere than fuckboy-ish, which I think fits because the way he pursued her in the first place was not that fuckboy-ish. Slick, but he wasn’t negging her or anything. However, sounding sincere is not being sincere, because this is the biggest crock of shit I’ve heard out of this kid’s mouth this season. It’s so uncomfortably over-the-top, he’s telling her that he met a beautiful first year and he thought it would be casual but actually he’s falling madly in love with her, and OK, slow down. How long have you guys even talked to each other? 10, 15 minutes? Do you know anything about her?

I get Lucas is struggling but I also want to give him a kick in the nuts before he gets another word out and digs that hole deeper because oh my God this is fucking b a d, honestly, way worse than what Isak did to Emma - what Isak did to Emma was not cool, but he was mostly just giving her the indication that he was into her and had a crush, NOT that he had fallen in love with her and had all these deep emotions for her. It’s really cruel to her. (Although girl … are you really gonna fall for this dramatic monologue when you’ve talked to him like three times?) 

He talks about how he’s not handling these feelings well because it’s never happened before, thinking about a girl before he goes to sleep and before he wakes up, wondering what to say to her when he runs into her, and well, I sure as fuck buy it’s never happened about a girl before and that it’s not happening about a girl now. But of course he’s talking about Eliott. He’s just transplanting his feelings for a boy to this fake infatuation with a girl. Lucas blames his behavior on not wanting to seem awkward. Well, I can buy that, just not about Chloé.

Despite this load of floral horseshit, Chloé buys it, because well, she is a teenager. She kisses him passionately right there in the yard. The boy squad sees and approves (Yann’s reactions are particularly funny). Heterosexual mask, securely on.

Lucas walks over and he BETTER not be giving Basile pointers because the last thing Basile needs is encouragement, but nope, that’s what he does, he offered to give Basile lessons. This is like telling Tom Riddle about horcruxes. 

Eliott thankfully interrupts Lucas contributing to Basile’s dicktermination. Did Eliott see Lucas and Chloé kissing? I don’t think so, but man, I kinda wished he did just for the angst. He doesn’t know Lucas is pissed at him yet, he doesn’t know Lucas is gonna bro-zone him in a moment.

Eliott returns Lucas’ scarf. It’s actually Yann’s scarf and Yann seems very happy to have it back, awww. Lucas gets forcibly casual with Eliott. He’s not mean, not rude, exactly, just trying to play off their connection as nothing. They’re casual acquaintances and it’s gonna stay that way. 

Lucas volunteers that Eliott found it in the common room before Eliott can explain how it got it. The acting is pretty good. You can tell Eliott is kinda stung by this greeting, especially when Lucas is like “thanks dude” in an overly platonic way. Which Eliott returns. Eliott is like a warm, friendly guy and that makes it a bummer to see how Lucas reacts and how that makes Eliott deflate.

With Isak and Even, Even noticed Isak’s discomfort in the situation and covered for him, lied for him about finding the hat in the cafeteria. It was a moment that made me love Isak and Even’s relationship before they even got together because even though Isak wasn’t at his best, it was a mark of their connection that Even could read him so easily and didn’t press the situation. Here Lucas shuts out Eliott, he’s covering his own ass. And I’m not sure if Eliott totally realizes what’s going on or if he does pick up on why Lucas is suddenly dude-ing it up and lying. I think he might just be hurt. 

Arthur asks about Eliott, and Lucas starts talking shit about how he’s a stalker with no friends. LMAO. Lucas, the stalker is you, the creeper is you, you were legit just stealing classroom registers over Eliott, you were scouring the Internet for clues of his existence, you are projecting like an IMAX. 

They get invited to Daphne’s party via text, but Lucas is clearly distracted and looking off toward where Eliott went. What a contrast in assessments between Lucas telling us how he’s falling for Eliott by way of telling Chloé it’s about her, and him downplaying and trashing Eliott to his friends. I don’t feel like he can relax around his friends at all.

Clip 6 - Secret school party

There’s a giant group of people gathered outside the gates of the school at night, with the girl squad in front, lots of people in costumes. Time for Daphne’s party.

Ehhh … see this is a fun setup, breaking into the school to have a party, it really is, but in context it’s kinda contrived IMO. I guess Daphne got peer pressured into doing it, I know she wants people to find the common room the cool place to be, but I find it hard to believe someone who’s legitimately invested into fixing up the common room like she is would risk a) getting in trouble for trespassing on school grounds b) dealing with any damage/repairs to the room that happen during the party, like if your plan is to fix up the common room, isn’t the likely potential that someone could break stuff or trash the room worse for your ultimate goal? I fully realize teenagers do a lot of stupid reckless stuff, but I’d find this party more believable if it were thrown by people who did not have a vested interest in the repair and upkeep of that part of the school. For example, if it had been the Raptors throwing a party at school after hours last season, sure, I buy that.

I feel like they just had this because they had to have a party in episode 3 (like in OG Skam) that was related to the school group/project that linked the POV character and his love interest (like in OG) and something about them hosting the party at another character’s house didn’t fit, not when the project is centered around another location.

One way that I would have found this scenario more plausible: Daphne tries to throw a much much smaller get-together, maybe just invite the common room crew, keep it under wraps, nothing extravagant, but word gets out more and more people show up (because who doesn’t want to break into the school at night) and turn it into this big thing and it gets out of hand. We see it go from just a few people hanging around drinking to something wilder, she starts freaking out because it’s too much. Even with the “password” system it seems like she had something bigger in mind from the beginning and IDK, even with Daphne being a social climber, even with teenagers being idiots, it rings a bit off. Sorry to be a buzz kill, like I said, it’s an entertaining scenario in theory.

Anyway, they’re at the school, people are in costume and waiting outside. Basile is wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles costume. Do you think he wanted the whole squad to go as the turtles, but they did not? They give him weird looks, but dressing as Donatello is legit the least objectionable thing he has done so far this season.

Daphne is dressed as a cat, keeping that Vilde tradition alive.

Lucas has the paint streaks on his cheeks, which is a fun nod to OG and also fitting for the infiltration theme of the party.

Imane says they don’t need the password, Daphne says they do in case there’s a spy. Errr I don’t think a password is going to do you much good. If there’s a mole, I’m sure they got the details from someone else, unless like a 50-year-old teacher is hoping to sneak in unnoticed.

Lol at Yann’s face when he puts on his hood for the “infiltration.” He’s had some great background reactions this episode.

Daphne asks the crowd if they’re ready to infiltrate and they quietly cheer. Basile says “I’ll infiltrate YOU!” and FUCKING KILL HIM, I’M TIRED OF THIS SHIT.

Daphne tells Emma she’s so nervous she almost wore a diaper in case she wet herself and DO NOT LET BASILE HEAR THAT, I REPEAT, DO NOT SAY THAT SHIT WITHIN A FIVE-BLOCK RADIUS OF THAT GUY UNLESS YOU WANT HIM TO START HAVING DIAPER FANTASIES ABOUT YOU IN ADDITION TO BDSM DREAMS.

The gate opens and people cheer because apparently everyone’s an idiot who forgot about the request for discretion 10 seconds ago. Teenagers, man.

Yeah, this is fun in like a Hollywood teen movie way but kinda throwing me out of the story, like even the way the crowd is reacting feels too staged and TV-ish. You know IRL when there’s a group of teenagers rowdy and ready to party, they wouldn’t be super unified in their reactions like that, there would be some d-bags not listening, not paying attention to Daphne, they’d be fucking around and doing their own thing. Nothing inherently wrong with this style but not really what I like from Skam, just my preference!

Clip 7 - Giant neon costume party

There’s like a full-ass rave happening in the school and it’s fun but not to be repetitive, feels more like a Hollywood teen movie even in the scope of the party and the way it’s filmed. Especially - and I’m sorry for harping on this but also, not sorry at all - because Basile’s characterization reminds me of one of those stock characters from those films, like that typical obnoxious loser who’s desperate to get laid and ends up banging Stifler’s mom or something.

Basile slumps next to Alexia and says he’s gonna throw up, she says he’ll be fine. She’s a lovely person, but I want to be like RUN AWAY DO NOT ENGAGE.

She points out that Emma and boy Alex are making out and Basile positively jizzes in his turtle onesie, being like THEY’RE GONNA FUCK???? IN THE SCHOOL???? Is it that outrageous of a concept? What did you think was going to happen when you invited a bunch of drunk teenagers to party after hours? 

A girl who looks a bit like Elisabeth Moss walks by and makes eyes at Alexia. Must be Clara! Basile is like, a woman in the same room as me? Can you help me fuck her? Alex says no, it’s her ex, hands off, and that’s Romain’s cue to be like … OHHHH you are bisexual? Alexia cheerfully confirms this. You can see the boner popping in his pants already, let’s be real. Yikes, dude. Her attraction to women isn’t for your enjoyment.

Anyone else getting dancing old man from Six Flags commercials vibes from Arthur dancing in his costume?

Daphne is freaking out and looking out the window, trying to prevent people from smoking. Imane pulls her aside and says everyone’s having fun. Daphne says the smoke detectors might go off and they’ll be in trouble, Imane says she should’ve thought of that before throwing a party in the school. I mean ... yeah? That’s why I’m like, you’re freaking out about this now, you didn’t predict any of these blatantly obvious things that would happen?

Imane’s like “what’s the worst that could happen if they get caught, they won’t expel 50 students at once” and errr IDK, would they have to pay for repairs? Stay after school to clean up the mess? Would the school contact their parents? I can think of a lot of stuff that would suck.

Daphne and Imane go dance. Basile comes up and not only starts to force a dance with Daphne, but in a way that he’s thrusting his crotch against her, trying to touch her and get in her space. Poor Daphne grabs Imane and tries to swing out of the way to avoid him, literally swat him away with her costume’s cat tail. 

For fuck’s sake. I hate this guy, I hope Daphne eventually just punches him in the balls. Listen, I try not to talk like that, but this moment really pissed me off. It’s sexual harassment. Daphne has made it extremely clear to Basile that she is not interested in him. She has said it is never going to happen. And he still does not give up, and this was honestly the worst moment he’s done so far IMO because he’s actually physically bothering her, to the point where she grabs her friend as a shield, to the point where she’s having to swat him away. 

Tons of women have gone through this experience in real life. We’ve met those sleazy guys who would not take no for an answer. We’ve met those guys who wanted to press their bodies against you and grab you when you have zero interest in them. A lot of us have experiences of latching onto our female friends, or our trusted male friends, in an effort to escape these creeps. Imagine the nastiest guy you know in real life, the one who really sends red flags, and imagine him as Basile, yourself in Daphne’s situation. That’s why I don’t feel I’m overreacting here. 

What is the point of this? What is their primary goal with Basile’s character? Comic relief? Or is he meant to be a cautionary tale? Are they building up to a criticism of creepy guy behavior? Because the thing is, they have already established he’s gross. Daphne has rejected him, and he still wants to go after her. I don’t get what more she can do other than beat his ass or complain to the school or something. What, is it going to be like episode 5 when he finally takes a fucking hint? Why was it not obviously clear when she said it was never going to happen? When she tried to escape him at the party? If there’s a more substantial criticism coming, I am genuinely flabbergasted why made Basile 110% disgusting from the very beginning and had Daphne so openly hate his attention, because it feels like the lesson should have happened already. The point has been made. 

You know what could have worked better if they were trying to criticize toxic masculinity? Don’t start off Basile as super gross. Make him insecure, desperate, but not panting after Daphne and begging for her phone number. Have his creepiness escalate bit by bit throughout the season, directly encouraged by Lucas’ own fuckboy behavior. Show how those attitudes spread like a disease. Have Daphne show her disinterest, although she’s mostly just annoyed, until finally he crosses a line and then she blows up at him and says it’s never going to happen. Then that’s it. He leaves her the fuck alone. He learns from his mistakes, though he still doesn’t get with Daphne romantically. 

Lucas and Chloé are talking about music. Chloé happens to like old school rock like AC/DC and The Clash - coincidentally Lucas’ musical taste, as we learned last episode. I wonder if she actually likes them or she just stalked Lucas and found that information on like his Facebook profile. It’d be funny if she was trying to like what Lucas likes and Lucas was trying to likes what Eliott likes. Because suddenly Lucas isn’t a fan of The Clash anymore, he likes dubstep. Duuuuude, come on. I saw how you responded when Eliott put on that record. I’m just imagining Lucas sitting in his room, forcing himself to listen to dubstep because Eliott likes it, in the way you make a child eat Brussels sprouts.

Mika is at the party and lighting up the dance floor, Chloé says gay guys are so funny, they know how to party. Alexia and Imane who happen to be nearby react to that; Alexia says it was a stupid thing to say and Imane says it was a generalization. Chloé says actually it was a nice thing to say.

Okay, I wasn’t a fan of how they did this moment. The positive side: it’s nice that they made Alexia, a member of the LGBT community, react to that comment and call it out, and had Imane call it out as a generalization, because she as a black Muslim would also know about how generalizations affect marginalized groups.  

But no offense, I feel like both S3 remakes so far have missed the point of this moment as it pertains to our POV character. It’s not just a helpful educational moment for the audience. It’s meant as a lifeline to the Isak character. One of Isak’s greatest concerns is how he will be perceived as a gay man, in terms of stereotypes and generalizations. He fears “gay” is a box that will trap him in a certain image, he doesn’t want to be seen negatively as one of those flamboyant gay guys into tights and mascara. He associates “gay” with those generalizations and he fears the social repercussions of that label. We see that when he takes the gay test in episode 3, which is not a measure of attraction to men (as it was in Lucas’ “gay test”) but a collection of stereotypes about gay men’s personality and interests. When he puts down the dance teacher for acting too gay later in the episode, it’s because he wants to distance himself from that type of person. Which is why it’s really important when Even, the guy Isak likes, calls out Emma for using a generalization. Without even knowing the full impact of what he’s saying on Isak, Even provides a counter-argument to the idea that Isak can be summed up as a stereotype. He’s against assigning universal traits to diverse groups of people, and I think he recognizes the trivializing nature of Emma’s comment - gay people are funny to her, it’s like she thinks they’re there to entertain her, it’s this extremely othering remark. Emma is essentially doing something that Isak fears will happen to him if people know he’s gay - just stereotype him and lump him in with all gay people - and Even is there to shut it down. 

And you might say, well, Lucas isn’t Isak, so it doesn’t have to mean the same for him, and ... yeah, it doesn’t, but consider that Lucas’ struggle this week was not really about dealing with stereotypes and generalizations. His “gay test” had nothing to do with that at all. Instead, he was struggling with the exact definition of his sexuality, whether he’s gay or bi or straight, and he was trying to fit himself into a heterosexual box not by distancing himself from generalizations but by dating a girl and using homophobic slurs. Like there’s no moment where he calls out a gay guy for acting too gay. When he calls the boys a slur, it’s not actually a response to doing something perceived as gay. So for the “lesson” here to be the same as it was in the original series, and not tailored to Lucas’s specific struggle this week, is a missed opportunity. For example, I think it would have been better if Chloé used some casually homophobic language - not even maliciously, just in the sense that she’s ignorant and doesn’t realize she shouldn’t say some words as a straight girl - and Alex called her out for that. It would be a counterpoint to Lucas’ own behavior.

Also, I don’t think Lucas had a huge reaction to what Alex and Imane said, anyway; it didn’t seem spotlighted in the directing or acting so while it’s a good lesson for the audience to hear, it doesn’t mean a ton to his character’s state of mind. It’s one of those parts that I feel the remakes are recycling because it is important as a general idea, but I don’t feel like they necessarily get why it was there in terms of Isak’s characterization. 

Additionally, can’t lie, very disappointed that Eliott didn’t get this moment. I appreciate them giving Alexia a lot to do this season, but this part felt really big for Even in the original show, both in characterizing him and in showing how much Isak was affected by his words, because Isak really likes Even and values his opinion (you know, the whole Isak becoming Nas’ #1 fan in a week thing). This is the guy Isak has a crush on who’s shutting down homophobic stereotypes - that made it so important that this dialogue came from Even rather than anyone else. And on a personal note, that clip was the very first Skam clip I ever saw, and that specific moment where Even calls out Emma was not only the first part to impress me and grab my attention, but it made me love Even right off the bat. I loved that he could explain why positive generalizations are still bad because that’s a nuance I think plenty of people, both young and old, don’t understand. It just was a bit of a downer that this really powerful moment didn’t go to Eliott.

Lucas sees Eliott come in with his girlfriend. Eliott has a mask, covering the lower half of his face. How raccoon-ish? But very fitting for the theme of infiltration, and very fitting for his character to be ambiguous and mysterious.

Eliott’s girlfriend is named Lucille, lmao. Lucas and Lucille! Not weird at all! But what’s the significance of gving them both light-related names?

Of course we have the two pairs dancing, Lucas and Chloé and Eliott and Lucille. Lucas stares at Eliott in a very obvious way, like Isak could at least glance at Even over Emma’s shoulder. Lucas has to blatantly turn his head to look at Eliott. He smashes his face into Chloé’s while making eye contact with Eliott, and Eliott obviously sees this and takes it as a personal challenge. He makes out with Lucille and then stares Lucas in the eye. Again, very challenging. With Isak it was more like this painful longing watching Even kiss Sonja, and then Even looked at him not so much as a challenge but to convey his interest in Isak; Isak didn’t keep looking back for that long before he shut his eyes and kissed Emma, probably imagining it was Even. Lucas kissed Chloé first; Eliott was not making out with Lucille until he caught Lucas staring at him with his lips on Chloé’s. Then it was to convey interest and almost a dare for the other to look away first. Very bold of Lucas, although IDK if he was actually trying to issue a challenge or a fuck-you to Eliott or he’s just bad at impulse control. I think the “fuck you” was pretty implied. In more ways than one.

Not gonna lie, the eye-fucking went on long enough that if it had gone on a moment longer, it would start to feel like a parody to me. I was glad the music got cut off and the lights went on when they did.

Everyone bolts and runs out of the school, Daphne seems to be behind everyone. Basile, do something good for once and distract the guard so Daphne can escape! Throw yourself on that grenade!

Lucas just stops and stands there like an idiot, like I know you’re distracted by your Eliott boner and all but move your goddamn ass, until Eliott grabs him by the arm and pulls him to the side. Eliott offers to walk him home.

Eliott really just left his girlfriend behind, huh? I know Even did it too, but he just left Sonja to go hang out and drink with everyone else, not get caught by a night watchman.

I’m not someone who goes gaga over height differences to the extent that a lot of people do, but that sure is a quality height difference between Lucas and Eliott, made very clear by them walking side by side.

As they’re walking, Eliott says it seems are moving fast between Lucas and Chloé. Lucas says it’s cool but then backtracks and says she’s super into him and it’s stressing him out. Eliott looks a little pleased to hear that. He asks Eliott how long he and Lucille have been together, Eliott says a while. Lucas says it shows - errrr, how? You’ve spent like 10 seconds and two words in her company and all you did was see him briefly kiss her hello and then make out on the dance floor, like Emma and Alex have done that much and they’re not even officially together. He’s bitter, I guess. Any girl with Eliott has been with him too long.

Eliott says he thinks his relationship with Lucille is at an end, though, they’re just going in circles, he doesn’t want that. Lucas is like, to be in a relationship? Probably thinking GODDAMMIT. Eliott says he does want to be in a relationship. Lucas is like, so you see yourself with a new girl straight away? Eliott says yeah, and then after a pause, adds not necessarily a girl, though. That pause is what’s important, tbh, the little moment where he’s perhaps thinking of just coming out and saying it to Lucas. Making clear that his sexuality includes guys, making clear that Lucas is on the menu. And of course Lucas kneejerk looks at him like OH SHIT HE SAID IT.

Lucas looks at him, Eliott looks at him, there’s a Moment. They arrive at Lucas’ place. With this music and the way they’re looking at each other, it’s not so much awkward, more like they’re daring each other to take the next step. Eliott says this is where they say good night. The way Eliott glimpses upwards makes me think he was hoping to be invited up (not even to bone, to be clear, just to hang out/make out), and they’re staring at each other when in the background someone’s getting out of a car and taking bags out of a trunk. 

They are hardcore staring at each other and it seems like Eliott moves in just a teeny tiny bit when Manon’s all HEYYYY GUYSSSSS. Lucas looks back at Eliott like, oh, never mind.

IDK how I feel about that ending moment. I feel like it lacks the punch of Manon arriving home, and weirdly downplays the Lucas/Eliott moment. Maybe because the music continues - I would’ve cut off the music when Manon said hello, to break them out of their little bubble, then show her there, cut back to Lucas and Eliott staring at her in shock, in silence. This just felt a little muddled and didn’t land as much emotionally for me.

I’m not like ... angry at Manon for interrupting, I think she could’ve just looked away and pretended to be busy with her bags instead of calling attention to herself. She seems pretty invested in giving Lucas nudges out of the closet, or wanting him to open up to her about it, based on her behavior in other episodes. Like I think she means well, it’s just intrusive. Did she want to interrupt them so Lucas didn’t out himself in front of her? That doesn’t seem entirely congruent with her repeatedly asking him if he’s dating someone or asking about Eliott in the next episode. 

The Lucas/Eliott relationship also feels way more of an inevitability at this point. Eliott isn’t saying he can’t break up with Lucille, his comment about “not necessarily a girl” could not be any more pointed. I’m wondering if they’ll bring as much drama with Lucille later on; if they do play out the part where Eliott goes back to Lucille after telling Lucas he wants to be with him, I think they should’ve kept in that part as it’s important foreshadowing. Not just for his relationship with Lucille, but his bipolar disorder and inner conflict. Like there were zero hints of a conflict within Eliott in this scene, he’s just like, yeah, I should break up with her, maybe I’ll have a relationship with someone who’s not a girl, hint hint. So Lucas really should not be doubting Eliott’s intentions at this stage, frankly. It’s Lucas who’s apparently the obstacle, and who knows how long before he gives in to Eliott’s Eliottness.

Social Media/General Comments:

Yann texts Lucas “Kisses bro” after the locker conversation so basically he’s a stand-up pal, it’s very cute.

Basile at least apologized to Lucas via text for blowing up at him because Basile didn’t get his dick serviced on Friday. He also said he’s not even into Maria anymore, it’s about Daphne now, siiiiiiigh. When he asked about Lucas’ mom, Lucas didn’t really answer, said it was nothing and he was handling it. I mean, if Basile has a mentally ill mom like Magnus, this conversation might take on more significance later, like he could’ve gotten Basile’s advice all along.

On a related note, I know I stroked that Basile hateboner so hard this recap that I’m chafed, and sorry if it got repetitive. But also - he’s bad. He’s really, really bad. And if my comments are repetitive, the show is also repetitive in giving Basile approximately one character trait that’s extremely exaggerated. I don’t think we’ve had one “normal” scene with this guy where he didn’t say something awful, like the closest was the first clip he was in.

Lucas is getting very chummy with the girl squad and taking pics with them. He’s also getting alarmingly cutesy with Chloé, posting a pic of her and using emoji hearts. Though that’s a good detail, of course, it’s him trying to act straight.

Is it just me or have they toned down some of the social media presence from last season? I don’t mind it, I think a lot of the SM stuff is more focused on things relevant to the story.

I’m not even getting into the Eliott puzzle stuff. It’s fun but I’m just gonna sit back and watch it happen, otherwise my brain will melt.

Everyone who attended that party is a total fucking dumbass for posting pictures and IG stories of themselves where they are clearly at the school and in the common room on Friday night. I know that teenagers are not necessarily the best at discretion, but LMAO at the theme of the party being “infiltration” and Daphne trying to have a password when everyone’s posting pictures where people are easily identifiable. If shit had gotten out of hand, then they’d all be screwed. Although this is an obvious consequence of throwing a party in the school, you know some people are going to plaster it all over social media. Not hard to predict. IDK, maybe I’m just a worst case scenario type of person, but imagine if shit got really out of hand, like someone started a fire or there was major property damage or who knows, something even worse, and there had to be an investigation. All of you idiots are fucked. 

Being honest, in some ways I thought this was the weakest of the three episodes so far - not that it was bad, there were certainly good moments. I think they did a solid job with Lucas’ internalized homophobia, as unpleasant as it was to watch, and Alex’s talk about bisexuality was a strong addition to the story. There were some good acting moments. But I felt more of the weaknesses that Skam France had in its previous two seasons. Things like reusing certain moments from Skam while not really fitting or understanding why they were there, more like feeling they had to be there, or some parts that I thought didn’t quite make sense, some moments that were rushed or didn’t have much impact due to the directing.

I’m thinking that this episode is going to be a particular challenge for various remakes to adapt. Some of it might be that it’s very internal, in a way, with what Isak is going through, and that’s not always the easiest to portray. I also felt like OG had a clear thesis statement of sorts with what Julie intended to accomplish with this episode, in terms of the overall story, and it’s something where you can lose the subtleties if you’re not careful.

This reaction probably seems more negative than I actually felt, because overall I did like the episode and still enjoy the season, it’s just that breaking it down and thinking about it more critically, there were more little things that bugged me this week than in the first two.

I’m not French so feel free to clarify if I missed something.

If you got this far, thank you for reading!

[fanfictionconnectionwordpress]

Hello~~♡ Uuh , can you please do rfa+minor trio dealing with overly depressed mc ? *whispers* ///i really love your writings!♡///

***Ah, a rough topic that not all our loves may be able to handle T_T I’d also like to make note that *professional help is really important* even if the MM characters don’t know, that is the case. ~Let’s Connect! FFC***

Characterbreakdown: Good ending canon characters, Secret ending 02 Saeran, V from theoriginal routes with an operation to restore most of his sight, my version ofVanderwood as seen in my VanderwoodBackstory Fanfiction

Jumin:

For the past few weeks, you have felt so down and you spend most of your time in bed

You just kind of wake up to find him sitting on the bed and watching you sleep. Before you have time to really process that or even blush, “MC, you sleep far too often. I’ll be taking you to see a doctor today.”

He’ll make sure you get the best doctor/therapist once your diagnosis comes in, but beyond that, he will have Jaehee do some research on how best to care for a depressed individual and proceed to follow these to the letter

Anything that you have seemed to enjoy before, he will do often and as a daily routine: i.e. reading to you as you fall asleep, having breakfast together, cuddling on the couch

Super snuggly jujubean even takes time off just to be with his woman

-

Seven:

You seem to be shutting down on him, so he does the most logical thing and starts to joke around like a crazy person, catching everyone in a massive prank where they end up locked in his garage while the two of you watch on the cctv like it’s a reality show

Once you’ve broken out of your funk somewhat and are laughing and enjoying yourself, he lets the others out and then his serious side comes into play. “MC…if there’s something wrong or you’re hurting, please tell me, so I can help you through it.”

Anytime you’re down, he works tirelessly to cheer you up and break down your walls, so he can get to through to you

If joking doesn’t help, expect to have him quietly in your presence 24/7, just sticking around to make sure you know someone is there for you, simply playing on a game device or tapping away on his computer as he sits by you

-

Jaehee:

She thinks at first you’re on your period, she often feels down when she is on hers, but you can’t be on your period this often

Jaehee decides the best solution is to ask you to join her for movie night. You refuse, too disinterested to bring yourself to leave your room

Her solution? Bringing you baked goods and lattes and then just sitting there with you until you open up and the two of you can have a little girl talk

This becomes her go to method to make you feel cared for when you’re having a particularly down day

The other employees are thankfully able to cover your workload, so she has time to be there for you when needed

-

Zen:

He doesn’t understand why you’re so mopey and upset on such a constant basis, but he does know you need him around

Zen develops a habit of finding you wherever you’re holed up and wrapping his arms around you, reciting lines from his current pieces just because he knows you like to hear his voice

His life will revolve around you when you aren’t feeling well, this includes missing rehearsals, so eventually he’ll (somewhat reluctantly) get Jumin’s help in finding a good doctor, so that you can start to feel better on a more regular basis

-

Yoosung:

He tries to convince himself that everything is fine when you keep brushing off his date plans

Yoosung starts to come over for ‘In home’ dates, but when he asks what you want to watch or eat, you don’t give very committed answers ‘Whatever you want to watch, I don’t know, I’m not hungry’.

Consider our young man panicked. He reads up on your symptoms, and it becomes clear to him that you are depressed

He’s already lost one important person in his life to mental illness, and he isn’t about to lose you too!

Yoosung will take time off from school just to help you get back on a positive spiral if you’re stuck

He wholly dedicates his life to you and making you feel better with his snuggly and generous little self, because you’re his precious girl and matter most in his life

The others will recommend getting a doctor involved if he’s taking off too much time from school, which he will absolutely refuse at first until he realizes that it only makes it worse for you when he’s giving up his entire life to take care of you

-

V:

He is no stranger to mental illness, and once he realizes what is going on, he heavily encourages you to see a therapist

V will be incredibly wary and careful not to say anything that might support your illness or romanticize it in anyway, thanks to his past mistakes

There is a possibility that he will pull away from you, unable to keep himself from slipping into old habits and trying to ‘Happy the pain away.’

I just in general do not recommend a relationship between V and a mentally ill person thanks to his unconditionally worshiping and romanticizing personality

-

Saeran:

You pushing him away causes him to have a panic attack, which in turn makes him push you away rather violently as he is afraid of abandonment, making you more depressed in a vicious cycle of what is clearly an unhealthy relationship

He would try to cuddle you, you’d end up saying something along the lines of ‘you need to go, I don’t deserve you’ and he would shout at you ‘well if you want me to go so badly, I will’ and go…so…it just seemed to get worse and worse

The two of you, with the help of Saeran’s therapist, decide to get you into therapy as well

It’s a really difficult decision, partially because of how obsessed Saeran was with you in the beginning of your relationship, but you take a break from your relationship until the two of you are more mentally healthy and able to take care of each other rather than triggering each other into negative spirals all the time

In the end, it’s better for the two of you to remain as friends and you each find love elsewhere, though you’ll both be a large part of each other’s lives forever

-

Vanderwood:

When you started not wanting anything really to do with him, he turned inwards. Did you not love him anymore? Wasn’t he enough for you? Were you abandoning him like everyone else in his life?

It suddenly clicks one day for him as he walks in on you mindlessly staring at the fan, watching you for a solid ten minutes before he realizes you aren’t sleeping but are just totally catatonic

He slips into bed with you and just holds you for a while before he starts to cry, apologizing profusely for not noticing sooner, his heart utterly breaking over how much inner pain you must be in

Vanderwood knows what it’s like to be depressed. He’s been there, done that, and thanks to you he was able to break out of his unhealthy coping method, his sex addiction

As a method of making sure you avoid unhealthy coping methods, he gets a therapist/doctor involved and makes sure you’re getting the care you need

When you’re having a particularly hard time, he will sit with you, holding you from behind and humming softly as he rocks back and forth

This man loves you and you are his whole life, if it weren’t for his forethought of getting a doctor involved, he would work himself to death caring for you. Thank goodness for professional help

-

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[okay-lets-not-panic]

I am writing this in an attempt to make sense of, or rationalise if you like, the mess that the Kings have made of Diane and Kurt. I spent the better part of a year filled with rage about the way the end of The Good Wife left the characters but when The Good Fight was announced I decided to withhold my judgement, for the most part, and see what the writers were going to do. Well, I’ve now seen the first season and had a few weeks to think about it and I can’t say I’m entirely happy. That’s not to say there weren’t things that I loved, because it’s Diane and Kurt we’re talking about; even with horrendous and unfathomable writing decisions the characters and relationship are still evocative. (Basically, if the end of TGW didn’t destroy them for me, then I think they’re probably untouchable.) However, since I believe that they deserve better than what’s been written for them thus far on TGF I felt I had to write something, a rant perhaps, whatever ‘this’ is, to try and understand exactly what the problems I’m having with the relationship are. I can see though, that for some people the events of TGF could have been a balm to the serious wounding McHart shippers suffered in 2016, and so if anyone wants to avoid reading this because the ship is in a relatively good place right now and they don’t want to think about negative stuff anymore, I completely sympathise and understand. (Although I do talk about the good things too!)

I want to make clear though, that regardless of how things have played out on TGW or will in the future on TGF, I’m actually really grateful for this ship. They are so lovely to watch and I adore both characters intensely. So while I will have a bunch of negative things to say, I want to make sure that anyone who reads through this overlong and aimless post realises that whatever I end up saying, I really love Diane and Kurt and am grateful to the Kings for creating them.

Now to preface my (already) obvious bias upfront: before the last episode of TGW, I really thought Diane and Kurt were perfect. Just something about their contrasting personalities really clicked and felt right; his intensity and her poise; his stoicism and her mannered speech; country versus city; rustic versus elegant, Kurt’s willingness to throw his lot in with Diane relatively early on in their relationship while she was far less committal, and, oh yeah, liberal versus conservative. I almost forgot that last one, seriously. There’s just so much to point to and go ‘look how different they are’ but it never felt like these things would or could ever be a problem. That’s how right for each other they are. The political differences were like the sweet glace cherry on top of a gorgeous sundae: a grown up relationship for a grown up world. The inclusion of McHart was also one of the more feminist decisions in a show that was often touted for its feminist credentials. Gosh, it seems silly that this should be so but the fact of a mature woman at the top of her profession having a stable, drama-free but undeniably hot marriage is really fucking rare in fiction. I would love to have other examples pointed out to me but I really can’t think of many comparable fictional relationships.

The passionate certainty (which seems an odd phrase but it’s the best I can come up with) at the heart of their relationship, even from the earliest days, was one of the many things that made me fall so hard for them. So many ships I gravitate towards tend to be angsty couples with huge personal obstacles to overcome before the relationship can work, if it ever can; so McHart was a welcome change of pace. I had no doubts about them. Even from season one it was very hard for me to envision Diane with anyone else. Rewatching ‘Bang’ now makes me laugh because during their initial meeting they are so completely made for each other and it’s so obvious in retrospect, once the viewer is more familiar with the characters and how they interact, the way they act at this point is incredibly telling; Diane is hilariously unprofessional and off-kilter and Kurt not only puts up with it but he actually seems to enjoy this behaviour in a sort of bemused fashion even though despite his usual unflappability it clearly gets under his skin. Let’s not even mention the Sarah Palin picture in a frame thing and Kurt’s little ‘on the phone’ performance later in the episode because does anyone really think this falls anywhere on the spectrum of typical behaviour for him? Anyway, suffice to say – you can totally see them meeting ‘the one’. I know that the writers probably never intended any of this and the relationship actually grew organically from episode to episode but… I don’t know, maybe it’s just Christine and Gary’s impeccable chemistry at work but the longevity of McHart seems almost inevitable now. When they introduced Jack in season three I was genuinely confused because what was the point? Despite the fact that Kurt was hardly ever in the show, I couldn’t fathom the prospect that perhaps McHart wouldn’t be endgame. Diane and Kurt would assuredly end up together; this fact was never in doubt, even if Diane hadn’t quite worked it out at that point.

Sadly, it was this faith in the relationship that caused me to be so blindsided at the end of TGW. I have spent years stressing over other will they/won’t they ships on other shows but I barely had a moment of anxiety about McHart, because how could it ever end badly? Especially once they were married. After that point it made no logical sense from a character or overall plot point of view to break Diane and Kurt up. Once they’d finally, finally, got to the place where they were both emotionally ready to commit fully to one another, it would be totally unsatisfying to mess about with their relationship considering the kind of people they had always been depicted to be. Well boy, was I wrong! And it’s not even that I had any particular trust in the Kings as writers for that matter. I’ve been screwed over by the majority of shows I’ve watched at some point. Hell, I’m a Buffy fan. And I know that many people in the wake of TGW finale made comments about how the Kings are incapable of keeping an untarnished good and solid relationship on their shows, and looking back at TGW in retrospect, this is true, but you see because I wasn’t overly interested in the other relationships on the show I was never particularly affected when they got gutted, it was just unconnected passing drama to me and not part of a disturbing pattern. I obviously underestimated the writers desire to push cheap drama at the expense of well-drawn characters.

However, the cold truth is, the writers wrote the ending that they did and so now I have to make sense of canon and make it fit with my understanding of the McHart relationship. But I find that I just CAN’T! (Even with the added information from TGF.)

Now I realise that it is quite possible to point out various issues Diane and Kurt could have that they never properly dealt with. Obviously. But I don’t see how those issues translate into random infidelity. Of course, we can extrapolate that Kurt was unhappy that they didn’t spend more time together and maybe even that Diane had a tendency to prioritise work, especially after they were married. There’s more than enough textual evidence to make an informed guess about this. But couldn’t the writers have done something else with that idea? Okay, I get that it had been decided that Diane desperately needed to be left with nothing at the beginning of TGF (even though wrecking Diane’s personal life ended up being basically irrelevant to the setup of TGF in the end. I don’t see why she couldn’t be broke and jobless but with a support system at home; that would still be devastating for her? Anyway, I digress…) but even if they were dead set on splitting McHart up couldn’t they have used a more organic reason? Perhaps the fact that Diane’s ambition or professional life was driving a wedge between them; hell, they basically did that in season 7 anyway when she asked Kurt to compromise himself on the stand for her. They could have gone further with that, at least it would have been in character. Or they could have written about how difficult it is for two people as different and as set in their ways as Diane and Kurt to change their lives enough to accommodate another person on a full time basis. I mean, hesitation to commit because of other priorities was a factor throughout their entire first five years of knowing each other. It would make total sense that the issue didn’t just magically go away once they were married. Honestly, almost anything would have been better than the plot the writers went with. I would even have preferred Diane to have the affair (if the writers were so convinced one needed to happen) not because I think the idea is any more palatable or likely but because Kurt’s constancy was such an important part of his character. He made his feelings clear to Diane pretty early on in the show, he sort of asked her to marry him in ‘Silver Bullet’ for God’s sake, and when she shows up on his doorstep after a year in ‘Gloves Come Off’ he is… pretty happy about it I’d say, if taken aback. By that point he’s fully realised any relationship he has with Diane is going to be on her terms but he’s totally willing to go along with it because y’know… he loves her. And that feeling ain’t going away.

Of course, since it’s not like the writers spent much time developing his character maybe it was just presumptuous of me to draw these conclusions? And this is the crux of the problem for me; it’s not just that a relationship I liked got ruined by some leftfield infidelity (although that’s bad enough), it’s the fact that they had to basically assassinate Kurt’s character, as the audience understood him, to do it. For example, a decent part of the humour and tension in Diane and Kurt’s relationship came from Kurt’s friendships with his students and what Diane perceived this to mean. Which is all well and good when the truth is that the whole thing is totally innocent, because then the plot serves to highlight Diane’s insecurities even though we, and she, know that she should be above feeling like that and has no reason to anyway, and it also serves as an interesting character point for Kurt. Why are all his friends young women? It doesn’t have to be a negative thing. And I think it’s this that sticks in my craw most of all; it’s not only that they used his student relationships in the most lowbrow and predictable way possible (one of the few facts we actually knew about him keep in mind) but also simultaneously forced the older guy cheats on his wife with a younger woman story on us. It’s such a fucking cliché I could choke. I would hate that they did this to Kurt’s character enough on its own but honestly they did this to Diane too and just… WHY? On the most shallow level Diane is hot as fuck and smart as hell and basically WHAT? OMG I’m never going to stop being angry about this am I? Their story went from being really quite progressive to incredibly regressive in the span of one episode. One. I can still feel the emotional whiplash.

From the moment Kurt was introduced to us we were battered over the head with the fact that integrity is his defining feature. He will only testify on behalf of people he believes to be innocent. Whenever one of Kurt’s current or former students was brought up, the resolution was always that there was nothing dodgy going on. Diane directly asked him if he had slept with any of his students (or, at least, the ones she met in the bar) and he said no. He doesn’t lie or prevaricate on the stand, not even to protect himself. He agreed to help Alicia with a case because it was the right thing to do for the client despite the fact that Diane was unhappy about it. The only times we have ever seen him compromise himself then Diane was always the deciding factor; showing her the demonstration in ‘Running’ because of his feelings for her, and then later on, in season seven, agreeing to testify the way Diane wanted him to. (Interestingly enough, both of these incidents backfired on him spectacularly.)

Now, Kurt may only have been a supporting character of a supporting character on TGW but it still amounts to seven years worth of consistent characterisation down the drain for the writers to then say ‘oh actually he was a total hypocrite all along’. Because where does it end? If he lied once, then it’s feasible he lied a million times. And not only does this go for the affair itself but why did he not tell Diane about it immediately after it happened? Expecting me to believe that Kurt slept with Holly is almost beyond my comprehension but to then take it further and expect me to buy that he kept it a secret is just… madness. Keeping quiet about it is both completely out of character and really, really stupid; he knows Diane is whip-smart, it’s one of the reasons he fell for her after all, so why wouldn’t she be able to work it out? If we in hindsight say that Kurt was willing to lie on the stand when she asked because he was feeling guilty about the affair, then wouldn’t this be relatively apparent to his wife, if not at that moment then at some later point? He would realise this. He’s not an idiot. And not only was she bound to find out about it, considering the world in which these characters live and Diane’s position in it, there was always a strong possibility that it would happen in a really public horrific way. (Another reason I hate the writers btw is because Diane and Kurt had so many cute moments in court during their relationship and now that’s all tainted. And it also plays like a kind of nasty bizarro symmetry, considering the fact that Diane and Kurt’s relationship was initially outed in court when Kurt was testifying. I can’t even imagine deciding to write something that on the nose and crass.) I’m not saying that Kurt should have been expected to know that Alicia would be able to make the assumption of an affair having occurred and then stoop low enough to use that hunch in court, but I never got the impression that Kurt liked or trusted Alicia AT ALL. So again, I ask, why wouldn’t he consider this as a possibility? The only conclusions I am able to draw from this is that he’s either stupid (which we know he’s not) or callous, which is ridiculous because we know that he loves Diane. So… what am I supposed to think? Don’t the Kings realise what they’ve done? The affair plot completely undermines the entirety of Diane and Kurt’s relationship and by extension Diane herself somewhat. And considering they were planning a spinoff featuring Diane at the same point when they were writing the end of TGW, it seems insane that they would want to damage her character like this. Why did she marry him? Was she just wilfully blind to what he was really like? Did she not see it? Or was the affair supposed to be a random moment of weakness in reaction to a kind of emotional neglect and therefore more understandable (if still utterly ridiculous)? Wasn’t their attraction to each other based on the fact that despite their many ideological differences they each found many admirable qualities in the other person; Kurt’s Tea Party Republican schtick didn’t matter to Diane in the face of what a good and honourable man he was. Right? But if he doesn’t have his integrity then… what is the relationship based on? Sexual attraction? I don’t know. I genuinely can’t understand why the writers would want to throw it all away in the manner that they did. Was it really because of TGF? Or was it because by late season seven of TGW Diane and Kurt’s marriage was the only healthy and beautiful thing the show had left in it with any depth, and the Kings had run out of things to burn? If it’s the former, then it’s annoying, because as I’ve already pointed out, Diane’s situation in the TGF didn’t really require the sacrifice of her marriage. If it was the latter then I don’t know what to say other than TGW was ending and there was more than enough drama that could have been created around Alicia, who was the star of the show, without involving Diane. It’s not like the writers devoted that much time and energy to her in the last couple of seasons anyway and I think it was incredibly disrespectful to mess with Diane’s character just so the weird slap framework could play out. I genuinely believe that Diane would have been above all that shit anyway. I also think that if the writers had bothered to spend more time developing Diane’s character, and by extension Kurt, then maybe they would never have had to resort to such a poorly planned storyline in the first place. But obviously this was never going to happen on The Alicia Show.

Now, talk of character development leads me to the state of McHart in TGF. Look, part of me is just grateful they wrote Kurt into it, I was half-convinced that they were going to give Diane a clean romance slate for the new show. But now that they have actually allowed a situation where we could, and should, get some resolution to the affair storyline, they’ve basically done the exact opposite. Having said that, yes, I admit it: I loved seeing them together in ‘Inauguration’. I was ready for it but I wasn’t ready for it. Seeing him waiting outside her house, being almost unbearably Kurt-like, filled me with joy. (It’s a weird phenomenon but when I think about McHart in my general life, post TGW, it really stresses me out because of what was done to them, but then when I see them onscreen I can barely remember what bothered me so much; the way he looks at her, so intently, like he’s constantly trying to figure her out and the way Diane changes in Kurt’s presence, the way she emotionally opens up like a flower - they are just meant to be.) And while I knew the conversation they were about to have wouldn’t be particularly pleasant, in a lot of ways it felt okay, he was there for her, she kind of allowed him to be, she let herself be vulnerable with him despite everything. It was definitely better than many of the scenarios I had envisioned during the hiatus. The fact that she wanted Kurt to be the one to initiate divorce proceedings was a positive sign, clearly she wasn’t ready to let go of their marriage entirely despite her insistence that the relationship was over. I was interested in Kurt’s assertion that in his view he’d never left Diane and also his reaction when Diane pointed out that he had because of the affair with Holly. He actually seemed kind of… annoyed? I don’t know? Was he tired of having it thrown in his face? Does he think it’s an unreasonable thing for her to say at this juncture? Weird, because it’s really not, even if it did happen a year ago. Diane just seemed resigned and tired, and this could indicate that they’ve talked about the affair endlessly with constantly diminishing returns, but it’s more likely that it was a reaction to all the other bad things that had happened to her already that episode. We’re not told how often they’ve seen each other since the end of TGW, if they have at all, although the nature of their interactions in this episode suggests that they have at least spoken from time to time. It’s hard to tell though, they’ve always been able to fall seamlessly back into casual intimacy after a long time apart. Nor do we have any idea as to what the confrontation that they must have had after the scene in court back in TGW was like. Did she ask him why he did it? What did he say? Did he give her an explanation for anything? We don’t know because the writers chose to tell us exactly nothing. Kurt wasn’t exactly remorseful, but again, it’s been a year, he can’t make his whole life about a mistake he made. The problem is, since we haven’t seen these characters since ‘End’, the affair is fresh in the audience’s memory and it seems like we’re only getting half a story. I mean, if McHart is going to carry on being Diane’s primary romantic relationship in TGF then these are pretty important problems to be glossing over.

After this Diane and Kurt seemed to fall back into their old pattern; he reaches out to her, she gets swept up in it, and then she pulls back. Of course, it’s different now, she has an actual concrete reason to be hesitant with him. But they didn’t discuss it, of course! I’m not even saying this is out of character behaviour, but it is frustrating to watch.

Which leads me to ‘Chaos’, and this is where my problem actually lies. I know, I know, they reconciled; and it was lovely, and Diane was adorable in the hospital, and Kurt told her he loved her, and ‘Wild World’ played but… I’m sorry, the set up for the reconciliation irritated me. Juxtaposing Kurt’s ‘everyday heroism’ with Diane being morally compromised because of her job is pretty dreadful, especially if this incident is what leads to Diane deciding that she can now be with him again, in whatever capacity. For starters, I don’t see how Kurt rescuing a baby gets him off the hook for the affair; one has nothing to do with the other. We already know Kurt’s generally a decent guy (or at least we thought we did), this is not some shocking revelation. Or is the carjacking supposed to prove to us/Diane that Kurt really is a cowboy after all? Secondly, of course Diane has to make compromises as a lawyer, she’s been doing the job a long time, and therefore has probably come to terms with and found a way to compartmentalise most moral qualms she may have; I don’t see why Kurt putting himself in danger selflessly would make her feel bad about what she does. And thirdly, I can totally see why Kurt having to go to hospital and Diane not knowing the extent of his injuries would lead her to put the feelings she had for him in perspective; he may have betrayed her but she doesn’t want to lose him forever, obviously. However, was it necessary for the writers to artificially rush their reconciliation with this? They haven’t worked through anything as far as we know; Diane clearly still seems incredibly hesitant about moving forward with their relationship, she tells him he hurt her and he says ‘it won’t happen again’. Umm… okay? Is that it? Why won’t it happen again? I mean really why should we trust this statement? It would help if I knew why the affair happened in the first place, and what Kurt feels about it. But since I don’t and the show doesn’t seem inclined to tell me, the only thing I know is that Kurt had an affair and then lied by omission about it for an unspecified period of time. I want to trust him and I want Diane to be able to trust him again, but the writers have to give us something to go on other than his previous good character and unrelated acts of heroism.

Interestingly, writing this has made me feel better about McHart than I have for a year, it’s still much harder to ship them now though. If anyone has anything to add to what I’ve said or wants to take issue with something I’ve written then please feel free to say your piece.