Whispers

These men just stole the personal information of everyone in America AND control the Treasury. Link to article.

Akash Bobba

Edward Coristine

Luke Farritor

Gautier Cole Killian

Gavin Kliger

Ethan Shaotran

Spread their names!

feeling totally normal about their matching rings! (i am feeling insane)

Too busy to write a 5k essay it deserves but neither the audience nor Wilhelm saw the actual monarchy as an institution worth fighting for or at least worth considering it.

The monarchy was completely absent from the show. You could replace it with a billion-dollar publicly traded company and it wouldn't change the plot. Concerns about public image? Check. Out of control sense of privilege? Check. Spoiled children of rich parents? Check.

No one from the unrealistically small royal family was given a chance to demonstrate or explore the gravity and the positive influence a thousand-year-old institution can have. Does the queen have causes she particularly cares about? Does she invest her time into fundraising for them? Does she think certain problems are overlooked by the society and does she use her celebrity status to draw attention to them? We have no idea, we only have been shown her caring about the public image of the institution she represents.

Same with Wille: in the show he was never given a chance to explore how his status could be used for good. Were there young people for whom his coming out meant a lot? Definitely, but we never heard about them. Would it be equally important for others if the crown prince started openly talking about his struggles with anxiety? For sure. This list is potentially endless but the creators were never interested in showing anything positive about the monarchy.

NOT THE CASUAL SEASON 3 CLIP????

White MAGA is massively unqualified.

sometimes i remember lisa saying simon isn’t a jealous person, so during the s2 ‘on the table’ scene he was more mad about wilhelm being celebrated for making out with felice (a woman) rather than him being mad cause he was jealous.

but i don’t even care that boy was jealous as fuck and you can’t change my mind. you cannot tell me that him pelting a dodgeball at wilhelm during gym came from any other place than pure jealousy. cause it’s not wille’s fault the forest ridge boys celebrated wille making out with a girl. so that throw was definitely a “oh so you wanna make out with other people now?? ha we’ll see about that ☄️🥊”

especially with that smug and pissed off glare he gave wille after hitting him. that boy was seething with possessive jealousy I DONT CARE LMAOAO

quick summary of young royals

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.

i didn't mean i'm hoping we'll get a 10 minute kissing montage, just that i'm hoping we'll get lots of happy wilmon in s3

I think we will get happy moments for sure. It's very much needed at this point and I feel like we need to see them be happy together for their relationship to deepen further.

Even if I also expect angst and drama I hope we get to see them being very carefree too. And that they get to comunicate more and support eachother.

I WANT TO BE WITH YOU, SIMON. | YOUNG ROYALS 3.06