(sometimes) sadness

I worked on some fic today and intend to keep working on it as much as I’m able!

This is Young Royals fic, post-series. I’ve sent August and Nils to Georgetown for university, and Kristina’s come to see them in Washington DC. This may or may not be spoiler-free, so I’m cutting it just in case. Content note for some implied past struggles with disordered eating.

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I hope everyone is having a great evening, and I wish fruitful writing time to all who write!

This is just to say that I would like to respond to some comments on here.

And also I have a meta about adultism and class conflict and ADHD and the education system that I want to write and post.

But we were running a fever all day yesterday and now we have to plan for work tomorrow so we can actually be upright and functioning.

*flailing of disorganization and depleted hit points*

 I haven’t done one of these in a while, so here are some (non-YR) media updates for the last month or so:

• I read A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid and liked most of it. Very interesting worldbuilding, very focused dark academia horror fantasy, compelling enough protagonist. Some mid 20th century vibes, which I always enjoy. What I liked most about it was the way Reid conveyed academic passion and drive, and how she grappled with the questions of learning not-so-good truths about favorite authors.
• We’re currently reading A Tempest of Tea for my monthly book club and I’m having the most difficult time staying focused on the characters and what’s happening. Usually I like books that deal with colonialism in some way. (One of the jokes about me in my book club is I’m always the one who brings up colonialism in my analysis.) Maybe I’ll feel differently about this story by the time I get to the end of it?
• There was an African film festival playing locally and I went to see an Algerian movie (a historical epic) called The Last Queen. It was my first Algerian movie ever, and while I didn’t like it as much as I did say, Chevalier I did really get into the costumes and fights and cultural pieces and such. This movie also featured a number of languages—including, surprisingly, Finnish—and I do love a good multilingual film.
• heliza24  got me to watch the first two episodes of Extraordinary and it was cute, so I should probably keep watching.
• The roommate and I are watching a Cold War documentary on Netflix right now, and what you have to understand is that the roommate and I treat documentaries as an opportunity to make constant commentary. “Can’t believe we named our airport after the sketchy CIA guy.” “They’re going to embalm Stalin’s body because of fucking course they are.” “Wow, the Bay of Pigs was really the FyreFestival of covert operations.” Gaydies and gentlethems, why are we like this?

Those are my updates for the moment. What are the rest of you all enjoying right now? Anyone else looking forward to Interview with the Vampire and Heartbreak High coming back?

The other day I popped up briefly on the other site to let people know I was alive, but that I was trying to reevaluate my relationship to the site in question. I made a list of priorities that’s guiding me moving forward. I thought I’d list those priorities here, in a modified way, to make them “official.”

Here’s the list:

• I want to spend more time creating. The thing that has always brought me the most genuine joy in this fandom is writing fic. YRS3 ended in a place of possibility for so many characters, and I want to keep writing about them and learning about them that way. One of my goals is to cut down on browsing time significantly so that I spend more time writing, especially so I can finish Heart and Homeland. I think it’ll make me happier.
• I want to spend more time helping others create. Some of the most meaningful experiences I had in this fandom involved being a beta reader or hearing out another person’s fic ideas, and getting to live in that space of creation and collaboration. For that reason, I’d like to still make new YR connections on occasion, especially with people who wanna share their writing process with me. The other site may or may not be a place to do that. I’m still figuring out where that all should happen.
• I want analysis to be something I do as part of my creative process, and that’s it. I don’t know if this is fully true, but it felt like ten years ago there was more fandom meta focused on what fans wanted to write in their fanfics, and how their interpretations of canon led to them creating cool art. There was some meta that was about how to interpret canon “correctly” but that wasn’t the priority. Now, it feels like—and this is true even outside of YR fandom, so this is no reflection on YR specifically—there is more emphasis on having the “correct” interpretation of canon. About getting it right, and having the right predictions and interpretations. It feels competitive in a way that wears me down. From this point forward, when posting analysis, I’m going to ask myself, is this furthering my creative pursuits and my understanding of the writing process more generally, or am I just trying to win an argument? If the answer is just to win, then I’m not going to post my argument. That runs counter to my goals.
• I don’t want to engage in any space where anonymous discourse flourishes. Turns out one of the biggest triggers for my anxiety and shame are extensive, heated conversations where I don’t know who is saying what and who I can trust. Spaces where there’s a lot of anon conversation are probably going to be ones I block and unfollow first moving forward. It just seems like a good baseline for how I engage.

Thanks for reading, reader friends. Watch this space for… well. Hopefully some creative work and or creativity-oriented analysis. And maybe a fanmix! I am close to be done on a fanmix. We still do those, right?

It’s almost here! Tomorrow we get the first five episodes of the final season of Young Royals! I don’t know if I’m ready, but I don’t know if I ever will be.

I want to be able to do one of those beautiful, descriptive posts about how I found the show for the first time, and what I felt like watching it. The kind of post that transports you back to that first moment of realizing something matters to you, that you’ve fallen in love with it a little bit or even a lot.

I don’t know if I have that post in me, today. In part because work has swamped me with paperwork and preparation for classes, in part because it’s daylight savings time, in part because the hormones are doing things and I feel a bit like a wrung-out washcloth right now. Attempting such eloquence in these times isn’t always easy, and even if I manage it, it isn’t always authentic. On Friday night, I could feel my capacity to speak was pretty diminished overall, so I’ve been spending the weekend trying to rest up enough that I can hold onto that.

There’s also a part of me that wants to talk about how watching Young Royals has become important to me, but that’s not half so important to me as doing Young Royals. Some of this doing involves actual life stuff, like how connecting with Sara Eriksson’s character gave me the confidence to finally get the AuDHD diagnosis I missed in childhood. Or the way Young Royals drove my interest in looking at nuance and justice and flawed characters as part of my MFA research.

But there’s also the usual fandom things, like talking about theories, and making friends. Getting to connect with sillyunicorn6154 and margotdanslebois and some other, safer people on the other site. Getting to send post cards to one of my friends on the other site. (I miss sending post cards.) Getting to know starvalisedham here. Getting to read sflow’s fanfics and talk to them about their work. Getting to be a beta reader for BriseisGotAway with Freedom Drafted and talk a lot about how individual lines and voice and dialogue work. I loved doing that!

And then there’s writing my own fics, and deepening my already existing friendship with heliza24 and knowing that we have become better writing partners over time. We really created something special when we wrote Heart and Homeland. I know it made me a better writer, and that it made me try things I wasn’t bold enough to do. We’re still going to finish our epilogue chapters—we’ve plotted it all out and have been writing our final scenes—but I know I need season 3 as that final nudge to get me over the finish line. I am planning a longer retrospective post when Heart and Homeland is done that goes into all of this, so I’m saving my words for that moment. In the meantime, know that my heart is full with the joy that creating that story has brought me.

Now, as for season 3? I find that I’m going into the new season with a lot of hope and curiosity. I don’t really want to say what the curiosity or hope is about because it changes, and I find I want different things for different characters by the hour. I also find that I’m going into it with a feeling of yearning or longing for something impossible in the past, or in an alternate universe. Or maybe it’s a different feeling, one of those ones they label with non-English words like hiraeth or saudade. It’s a feeling that’s heavy in my stomach, and perhaps a cousin of grief. Whatever happens, though, I’m glad Lisa pulled us along into her story and that we get to see the end she envisioned for it. As someone who almost has my MFA in youth lit, I’m so interested to see what this show contributes to the tradition of writing about teenage characters. I know a lot of people who don’t watch Young Royals, and admittedly I imagine that after season 3 drops, they will still not have watched it. But I also imagine that ten years from now, we will be seeing the influence of YR in so many new works.

Too many emotions and not enough eloquence? Perhaps. This is really just word salad at this point. We’ll see what new feelings and ideas season 3 brings up in me.

I just left heliza24’s house.

Next time I return to her house, WE WILL BE WATCHING YOUNG ROYALS SEASON 3.

How is that even REAL.

Here’s a less stream-of-consciousness thought about YR S1E3:

Something I know from the private school world is that a parents’ weekend (or an event like it) isn’t just for visiting your kid and seeing some of the activities they do and maybe taking them out to dinner or home for the weekend. Yes, the rhetoric of these events will always focus on the great education and experiences at the school, and how these will shape your kid into a responsible adult who will make you proud and carry on your legacy. Dig into the subtext a bit, however, and the school principal’s polite cough at the end of her speech is a reminder to dig out your credit card. Events like these are ultimately fundraisers—even though they may not be called that in a direct way—and focused on getting donations from wealthy stakeholders.

What’s interesting about this fundraiser atmosphere is it puts both Simon and August in an outsider position, one where they feel threatened and act in ways that are erratic and dramatic.

With Simon, it’s more obvious as to why he feels that threat—he’s a working class, POC kid with an immigrant mom, and he doesn’t live on campus. The car his family pulls up in sticks out right away, and it’s clear that when Linda sits down with the Ehrencronas for lunch that they’re all used to different social cues as dictated by their class background. Simon, according to the Hillerska code of values, however, has “earned his place” there through merit and hard work in the choir, on the rowing team, during classes, etc. While this hard work is very real on Simon’s part, we also know that he isn’t 100% pure moral diligence. He’s been reaching out to the math teacher for tutoring (a system highlighted as corrupt in earlier episodes) and not telling his mom about it, for instance. He also secretly helped August to acquire alcohol for Wille’s welcome party by reaching out to his estranged father. If I remember correctly, August names Simon’s place on the rowing team as payment for the alcohol, which also makes Simon’s role on the team a troubled one regardless of how diligent he is about showing up to practice. Simon does work hard and takes pride in that, and the barriers he has to overcome are real ones, but we can see Hillerska grinding him down and forcing him to betray his values behind the scenes. Rosh and Ayub even bring this up to him.

August, meanwhile, has his position at school threatened by his family’s financial situation—they’ve run out of money and August may have to leave Hillerska because he can’t pay his boarding fees. August’s nobility and closeness to the royal family still gives him a lot of social power, which he gleefully abuses, but ultimately when it comes down to dollar signs (or in this case, kronor) the school doesn’t care if he can’t pay what he owes. And what better event than a fundraiser for throwing that reality in August’s face and causing him to panic? What’s also interesting is that the episode also puts August’s own hard work on display, however problematic (in the academic sense) it may be in its depiction. As a prefect he’s working to advise the school staff on seating arrangements for the parents’ weekend lunch, and when he’s at lunch, he’s talking very animatedly about his plans to modernize Årnäs and make it run well again. August does seem to enjoy organizing people and places, and I find myself wondering what that could look like in a different context, and not our current one of him being the heir to Årnäs and getting caught up in power games. Could he be successful—or perhaps even happier—as an event planner, or a museum director? As it is, though, we can also think about how the show is sort of like… making August’s work visible in a way that almost feels like a faux pas to people of his class. You aren’t supposed to think about how the tables ended up in the right place, they should just be in the right place when you arrive for lunch. Årnäs isn’t supposed to need repairs or modernizing or maintenance because the point is preserving a timeless legacy that never changes. The visibility of the tasks needed to maintain the class hierarchy calls attention to the class hierarchy as a social construct, and therefore something that can be deconstructed, too. Blah blah blah Blue stop being a Marxist.

There’s a commentary worth exploring here on the nature of work itself. How to some extent the type of work you do feeds into your social class, but then the social class you’re in dictates what work is “acceptable” for you to pursue or be seen doing by others. And I’m just going to leave this here to see if anyone else has thoughts on it, because I’m distracting myself.

ANYWAY. When it comes to the showdowns between Simon and August in this episode, I’m struck by what these scenes reveal. They show us how Simon has already become messily entangled with the quid pro quo of Hillerska culture, even if he doesn’t always do so 100% willingly, and how he’s starting to lie to his family to cover it up. Meanwhile, August gatekeeps Simon and lashes out at him not from a place where he feels secure in his status, but from a place where he’s feeling insecure about it and will do anything to feel some sense of stability. And both of them are desperate, scrambling boys who run into one another at the worst possible moment, leading to their fight. It’s a beautiful fusion of character arc and pacing that makes me so excited to watch them every time.

In conclusion: this is part of why the chemistry between Simon and August slaps so hard in this episode.

But also: get a job, August. Preferably one at that horse farm where Adam Groff worked in Sex Education. You can bring Rousseau.

Here are my stray thoughts, in a bulleted list:

•  I think I’d like to do more beta reading for fanfiction. Not spelling and grammar check (I’m bad at those) but helping people with story structure and development. I love writing my own stories but it’s just as magical to play midwife to someone else’s. Maybe this is something I can seek out more.
• I have this half-formed post in the back of my head about how it feels like meta in fandom used to be something that fed into the creative process, but now it doesn’t feel like that as much anymore. Maybe I’ll find the words for it and maybe I won’t.
• I have entirely too many grades to do over the next 72 hours.
• It is better to be Here than There, but nonetheless, missing people sucks. This could be a theme of multiple chapters of my life.
• Missing people sucks but eggplant and lebne spread on rice cakes doesn’t. At least there’s eggplant and lebne spread.

Good night, Dreamwidth. Sleep well!

Long before season 2 aired, I was trying to figure out what form sargust would take, and what Sara and August’s arcs would be like. So I did a whole lot of writing about it—just trying to figure out their brains and what they think of one another.

I also had this one idea where it turned out August’s mother was Kristina’s unfortunate romance from her teenage years, and that ended up playing a role in the cover-up of the video. And meanwhile Sara is on an elaborate self-assigned spy mission to make August fall for her and get revenge on him. August doesn’t know it yet.

There’s some weirdnesses and some inaccuracies. I assumed middle names were a thing in Sweden when they aren’t, really. At any rate, it’s an interesting study in what I wrote early, early on before I was ever on social media for this show.

Content note for toxic masculinity and disordered eating, I suppose. And the usual YR subject matter.

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Thank you for joining me on this journey through my early fandom days!

 Here’s some stuff going on this weekend:

• I made curry yesterday. I used coconut milk and Thai red curry as the base, and added sweet potato, broccoli, red pepper, and cashews. I could still improve on the recipe (it needs ginger) but I’ve got multiple servings in the freezer.
• Spices from the brand I like best were on sale, so I got all three curry blends that I saw, an Italian herb blend, and more salt-free everything bagel sprinkle. One of my favorite ways to self-accommodate is to get spices and herbs pre-mixed, because it vibes more with how I cook and saves me time. My goal is to gradually bring together a selection of regional blends from around the world.
• Between recapping YR and writing more of our fic, I made heliza24 both laugh and cry yesterday. Truly proud of myself. It’s inspiring me to recap YR S1E3 (my favorite s1 episode!) and write more fic today…
• But also, I have grading and planning to do. And I do not want to do it. Ever. We’re going to have to work out a system to give myself motivation. Why must teaching involve so much stuff outside the classroom?

The most exciting news of the day is: I am doing my first ever paid tarot reading today! This is a chance to try it out and see if I like it. I am now at a point in my readings where I feel confident enough that I can do them for money, but I haven’t set up a full side-hustle yet because of the way it involves so much self-promotion and social media marketing and all that nonsense. Also the word “side hustle” gives me hives. But getting to connect with people and talk them through their various Things with the help of my friendly cards? That’s always been fulfilling for me. I like that part.