Randomwilmonfan - Whimsical Longings

I feel like I’m walking on eggshells. I can’t breathe. My anxiety and “always needing to know how things end or else I can’t truly enjoy it” is really kicking in. My heart genuinely has a faster resting rate this week than it usually does. I just need to know how it ends… And I need those boys to be happy (ideally together). Damn. Help me please.

“There are probationary employees who are new in government service and those who are labeled as probationary because of a job switch but who have continuous government service prior to their current job. If you are in that latter category and are fired as a probationary employee in these category terminations taking place now there is a good chance your termination was illegal. And it is illegal in a way that courts will vindicate. Obviously there are details and nuances about how this works. But if this applies to you you should at least speak with an attorney who knows this area of law. There’s a good chance you have a case and can receive compensation and/or reinstatement. Needless to say I am not a lawyer and I am certainly not your lawyer. But I say the above after conferring with someone who has relevant expertise and experience in this area of law.”

—

Important Note for Federal Civil Servants - TPM – Talking Points Memo

Signal boost.

Chapter 9 of: Almost Is Never Enough is up now

💜______________💜

And then suddenly, shattering the quiet and hushed peace that lays over their vicinity Wille charges forward, brimming with a bright infectious joy as he spins a bit in the snow and looks back at Simon with the widest grin he's ever seen. Simon watches as he runs around a bit, feeling torn between wanting to join him and just enjoying the picture he makes running against the dark backdrop of snow flurries.

“Admit it, Simon!” He calls across the distance between them, waving at him. “Snow is amazing!”

Simon has to laugh, Wille looks so ridiculous in his sweatpants and the jacket he had hastily pulled on and boots that aren’t even laced up. He’s wearing a fluffy hat that is most definitely his sister Sara’s, purple with a fluffy pom pom at the top.

“Admit it!” Wille calls again and then he’s charging at him and Simon’s eyes widen, scrambling away and running in the opposite direction a wild laugh caught in his chest escapes him breathlessly when Wille runs squarely into him, arm around his waist nearly toppling them both to the ground.

I already wrote this on Twitter and Reddit, but I like what I wrote, so I’m posting it here too. Meh. So sue me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

After sitting with Young Royals S3 for a few days, I have a new main takeaway, after letting myself feel the initial rage & grief & hurt & disappointment.

New takeaways:

While Seasons 1 & 2 were primarily a love story, S3 is a very serious, thoughtful, and important meditation on trauma + the impacts of abuse & neglect on kids.

I hate almost every single adult in the YR universe. They emotionally abandoned these kids in general life + during moments of severe crisis & trauma, both past & present. They set these kids up to fail. And when those children did inevitably fail, the adult washed their hands clean of responsibility and pinned the blame solely on the kids.

Very few of these children have any coping skills or communication skills at all. Even the ones who WANT to show up for each other properly, and who don’t want to hurt each other (one example being Wille), end up hurting others anyway because they’ve never learned any other ways of interacting.

Here's a "brief" list of some of the traumas (that we know about) these kids have endured:

Revenge CP sex tape

Online & in-person harassment (esp. Simon)

Homophobic hazings to terrorize, demean, & publicly humiliate them

Violence (related to #3 above)

Grief & loss, including death (but not limited to death -- see #s 8 & 10)

Familial betrayal

Familial substance abuse & possible DV (related to #6)

CONSTANT invalidation, dismissal, minimization, & victim-blaming (esp. with the Royal Family)

Emotional neglect & abandonment (closely related to point #8)

Even being on the receiving end of outright contempt & disdain from one's own family

Control & surveillance from the Royal Court

It's no fucking wonder these children are so messed up & don't know how to navigate life & relationships.

Of course, they're still responsible for their actions. Accountability still remains extremely important. (Which is where introspection, taking corrective action, & pursuing repair come into play.) I'm in no way arguing that this excuses anything. *And* simultaneously, the adults in their lives have failed them so badly -- leading us to arrive here, at S3.

It reminds me of one of my favorite adages that I use in my mental health line of work all the time: "It's not our fault what happens to us. But it is our responsibility what we do next."

Realistically, I don't know how kids are supposed to manage this on their own. Being wounded so much, surrounded & overwhelmed by so many pressures, with very close to ZERO adult supervision, support, or help. It just wounds my soul to see the impact it's having on them.

I'm thinking about all of this in the context of several characters... but in particular (obviously) Wilhelm & Simon. And truthfully, especially for Wille, because I had such a hard time empathizing with him this season. I felt so deeply hurt by his obliviousness to Simon's pain, as well as both offended by and disappointed in his "all queers" comment and dismissing the opportunity to value Simon's politics or opinions on how he could use his position as Crown Prince to do good in the world. I was angry with the writers, too: like, how dare they? I wanted Wille to show up as a more evolved version of himself. I wanted his besotted-ness to translate into being a "better" person.

But, then I got to thinking... like, how in fact would he know to do that? Wille isn't trying to be cruel. In fact, I think he is in all actuality trying his hardest with the tiny amount of social skills he has to demonstrate the care he feels. (That does NOT excuse his actions, of course. I mean, poisoned cake, anyone??).

However, he is a child who is EXTREMELY overwhelmed and wracked with guilt... and with no way to realistically handle this. He has ZERO parental or even adult support (the best he's got is Farima; he doesn't even appear to have individual sessions with Boris anymore). There are exactly zero adults helping him to navigate this. I actually don't know how a child should or could know how to do better with all this pressure, especially because it all comes back to decisions he's made (to not conform to family+royal pressure, to come out, to publicly challenge traditions, etc.). The overwhelmingness of it must be enormous.

Compounded with that, no adult in his life has ever modeled to him how to properly talk to another human being about emotions. When he had emotions, he was minimized, dismissed, shut down, ignored. He has zero idea of how else to handle it, even if he wanted to handle it differently. Where & when would he have learned these skills? So, of course when Simon brings up his online harassment, he really doesn't know what else to do besides sigh and say "ignore it." I don't think he's actively trying to minimize. I think he has absolutely no other language that he's aware of to use. He just has no skills, support, or role modeling when it comes to this. He's in WAAAAAAAAY way over his head and never previously learned how to swim. I do really think Wille is trying his absolute best. (Which is not good enough, and he does need to learn to do better -- not an excuse, just a building up of context.)

In an ideal world, someone at this point would hand him a book on Reflective Listening skills so he could learn to validate, normalize, and properly attune to emotions. I think he probably wants to -- I see how concerned his expression is every time he looks at Simon after the window-rock incident, and after they overhear their classmates mocking Simon's revolution love song. He probably feels totally helpless, confused, disoriented, frustrated, & self-critical in his process of trying to figure out on his own how to listen to & validate others (I mean, he literally does say his attempts are always "clumsy").

I imagine his internal shame at being terrible at attunement & communication must be immense. He makes it clear that he's aware he's terrible at all of this, but doesn't seem to know what to do about it. (And again, there are NO adults to help him figure this out! Except for maybe Boris's mediation sessions...?) I wish someone would hand him the Nonviolent Communication skills book & workbook. He'd probably be able to heave a big sigh of relief, knowing how to talk to & be there for the people he loves. He'd probably feel more empowered, too, as a result, and therefore less anxious. Win-win-win.

In summary: I just feel so freaking heartbroken for Simon, Wille, & a lot of the other kids, too. They are CHILDREN. Adults are supposed to be role modeling for them, guiding them, helping them cope & navigate the pressures of life. INSTEAD, they just heap on *even more* trauma.

So... yeah. I think it's intriguing that the writers chose to shift to make Season 3 a meditation on trauma and its consequences. And now that I'm reframing the season through that lens in my mind, I'm able to sit with the content more easily and understand it better.

I really really wish everyone would get SHITTONS OF THERAPY in the YR universe (and also in real life, ha). Even better: go back in time and put all the adults in therapy, so their kids don't have to emotionally handle + figure out everything on their own! It's really not the kids' fault that they wound up with no skills or tools, and just confusedly trying to fumble their way through things in the dark. My heart really breaks for a lot of these kiddos, just trying their best and fucking it all up.

WILLE AND FELICE YOUNG ROYALS | 3.06

Then vs now:

Gif by @youngroyalscentral

The important stuff hasn't changed :)

Thinking about how Wille has made loving Simon his whole personality, and how it’s a little bit hilarious, extraordinarily sweet, yet heartbreaking and predictable at the same time. 

The scene where he puts up their selfie in ep1 is so endearing and lovely and really triggers my cuteness aggression. But although it’s a quick scene, it really distills how this can also be a lonely and isolating thing; he’s at a complete loss for what to do with himself when Simon doesn’t pick up his call immediately. 

I mean boy literally has three hobbies:

Love Simon

Throw Ball

Grieve Dead Brother

So when Simon suggests Wille quit rowing and do something he actually enjoys, he’s originally completely stumped. No one has ever told him that he’s allowed to do things because he actually likes them, but rather that everything he does must fit the narrative, as Wille says himself, of being a ‘serious, traditional, smart, strong, young man’ - the model of (white, heteronormative) masculinity. He’s hyperaware of this happening, yet he’s still not bothered to try to figure out for himself what he likes, because it’s just not worth the fight with the Court. What a revelation it is for Simon to say that he can actually allow himself to do things just because he likes them - and stop doing things he doesn’t.

But Wille has spent the last several months alternating between pining for Simon, and grieving his brother, hemmed in by the expectations from the Royal Court and his parents. When has he had the opportunity to do soul searching on top of that? Where does all this pent up energy go except to focus even more on Simon? 

So of course the new hobby he chooses is ‘Listen to Simon Sing’. Look, I don’t blame the boy, I would do the same. And my god the way Simon pounces on him right after, we can see just how much it means to him too. I would personally have melted into a puddle next to the lockers at such a gesture (I mean I do kind of melt anyway when I watch this scene). 

It’s so romantic, it’s so beautiful. Yet it’s absolutely not tenable for the future of their relationship - it’s A Lot to for Simon to shoulder on his own, in fact it’s too much. ‘I can be your revolution/ Protect you from the others/ Let’s be a revolution/ We who have each other’ - a beautiful sentiment, and yes it’s great and wonderful that they can offer each other support, that they understand each other in ways no one else does. But that is too much pressure to put on Simon, on a boy who already sacrifices so much of himself for the comfort of his loved ones. A boy who is now losing himself entirely to this pressure. He just can’t be the Only Thing in Wille’s life, particularly when Wille is incapable of seeing past his own monumental pain. Which is why the breaking point in ep 5 absolutely needs to happen.

But I strongly believe that Wille and Simon are in a position to turn this around. Wille has his tunnel vision Simon goggles on most of this season, but he needs to be able to take them off from time to time - only then can he appreciate the bigger picture. He needs (among other things) to invest more time in his own hopes and wishes and desires beyond Simon, to be able to help rebuild their relationship on much stronger and equal foundations. Something he realistically can only do by stepping away from the monarchy, by disrupting this all-encompassing narrative they’ve driven for him his whole life. And I have to believe that he can 💜

capitalism will never steal the passion i have for doing fuck all from me

director: “as soon as i saw them together i knew it was them” 😭😭😭😭😭