#anyways fucking love being excluded from part of the mlm community.

[inmyarmswrappedin]

There’s something that I’ve never really been able to square in my mind and I’d love your thoughts on it. I should start by saying that I’m not from Norway and I wasn’t around when Skam s2 was airing. But from what I have heard, the season was wildly popular locally and that sexual assault reports actually went up after that storyline aired (which is a really good thing, obviously). Since then, however, the general consensus across the fandom has +

become that s2 was really problematic and that it depicts a toxic relationship. So I guess the thing I have a hard time understanding is how that seemed to be missed in Norway in 2016? Are viewers there just not as “woke” as the wider international audience? Or do the people now looking back on it just have the advantage of hindsight, not to mention how much things have changed culturally over the last four years? Not that four years is a great deal +

of time, but we are post-‘Me Too’ now and things like misogyny and sexism are called out much more freely and loudly in the year 2020. I definitely feel that I’ve certainly become more attuned to the problems with the way that female characters are portrayed in recent years. Anyway, if you feel like it, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Hi anon! ✨ This is a really good question, and while I will try to answer it to the best of my knowledge/educated guessing, I have to say that I’m also not from Norway nor did I live there in 2016 to be able to speak about the nuances of feminism.

I do think that, to a certain extent, Norway has a very casual approach to safe sex. As far as I understand, girls and women are expected by their sexual partners to be on the pill or some other kind of birth control. As a result, condom use isn’t great. Community transmission of chlamydia is so common that Norwegian 7-11 made an advertising campaign advising tourists to buy condoms, because having sex with locals would likely lead to getting it yourself. Hence the Skam girls constantly talking about chlamydia, William and P-Chris gave them chlamydia, Vilde is afraid of getting chlamydia in the eye, Linn has had chlamydia tons of times... One of Josefine’s (Noora) projects after Skam, Dear Condom, was meant to promote condom use, and lack of condom use in lovleg leads one of the characters to need an abortion.

So, to start with, someone like William who goes around pressuring naive girls into condomless sex and then discarding them (someone who might have even given chlamydia to half the school, as the Rad Girls speculate about him), can still be a romantic lead in Norway, because the attitudes are different. Like, he’s not the problem, Vilde is the problem because at 16 she’s not on birth control, you know?

I also know that the reaction to William was mixed even in 2016. Julie Andem once gave an interview to an (I believe Swedish) outlet, sometime after Skam aired, and she mentioned that in Sweden, where Skam was also available, William was not popular and she’d get very negative feedback about him after certain clips became available.

But ultimately, I think the reason that Norway was more receptive to William in 2016, than fandom has been of him subsequently, is that international fandom became aware of William once Isak’s season started airing. And the thing about Skam is that both NRK and Julie were willing to do a very different show with each season. Eva’s season is less romantic and more rooted in self-affirmation, a self-help show if you will; Noora’s season is a Wattpad bad boy/good girl enemies to lovers romance; Isak’s season is a LGBT escapist fantasy; and Sana’s season is more concerned with Russetide and who it excludes and how, than the romance storyline. So when people found Skam during Isak’s season, they thought the entire show was like Isak’s season, but it’s not, really. Isak’s season wasn’t going to necessarily appeal to straight Norwegians, just like Noora’s season wasn’t conceived to appeal to sad gay people worldwide. The thing is, NRK/Julie weren’t afraid of switching gears with each season, because rather than make a show with the most mainstream appeal (like some remakes), they were trying to make seasons that would appeal to the people who they felt needed to heed the messages therein. (Of course they fucked it up in s4, but you know.) 

And essentially, the people who needed to heed the messages in Noora’s season were girls who weren’t woke. Who didn’t know what had happened to them was not normal, or their own fault for blacking out or not being on birth control or because they had sex too young or not saying no when the guy got too rough or... The list goes on. And how do you get those girls to watch the show? You give them a bad boy/good girl enemies to lovers storyline that rivals even the American TV shows Gossip Girl (it’s not a coincidence that Eva namedrops it), One Tree Hill or The OC in plot twists and good-looking people making out. Cause if you remember, NRK asked Julie Andem to develop Skam because older teens were watching American TV shows instead of Norwegian ones.

In stan language, Isak’s season appealed to (white, mlm-centric) fandom because it was about two white dudes in love. But Noora’s season was made to appeal to locals. And it did. Even in 2020, bad boy/good girl borderline toxic/abusive storylines are popular (see: Euphoria, Nate/Jules shippers), because regardless of #MeToo or public consciousness struggling with sexism and misogyny, these dynamics keep appealing to women. (Same with Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, etc.) Both because not every woman is part of this conversation, and because sometimes people just want to turn off their brain and enjoy some trash. 

As for Noora’s season, while I get all of this, my personal issue is that by mixing the fun trashiness with the educational messaging, while it did do good and led to an uptick in SA reports, Skam ultimately couldn’t keep the trashiness outside of the messaging. That’s why Nora’s season is the only good Noora season to me.

#ask #skam #Anonymous

[cyberghost-catboy]

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#vent post #only here bc it is nblm/mlm related #anyways fucking love being excluded from part of the mlm community. #i kinda hate being a enby man now like i guess i cant get a fucking middle ground. #either the enby part is ignored and im just a man #or bc i was fucking tired of that i cant interact with part of the community. #i do my best to respect some mlm blogs dont want nblm interacting. #i do. #sometimes i accidentally follow a few because i forget thats a thing i need to check for. #but i do my fucking best. #maybe im just doing to stop following mlm blogs as a general rule. #i think id not be as upset if it didnt exclude all nblm #because like by doing that you *are* cutting off part of the mlm community. #i dont expect a response to any of this. but especially dont tell me im being unreasonable with being upset with it. #i get that enough about myself. #also like can all mlm blogs actually tag their posts as 'mlm only' because that can stop accidental interaction if the tags blocked #which is exactly why i blocked it #i am stupid i dont read a whole post through if its more than like 2 lines before interacting.