#has someone made a post yet about the names mame chooses for her characters because i have THOUGHTS

[secriden]

there's something so tragic about tongrak's name meaning "must love". you must love. like a imperative. like a command.

because 'love' meant his mother's devotion to a man who wasn't worthy; because love doesn't discriminate (and sometimes that's a terrible thing).

because 'love' meant being treated like a piece in his mother's bid to keep his father close. his existence and name a sacrificed from a women whose obsession reduced her children to living tokens of her desperation.

because 'love' meant that his mother kept a man in the house who was a drunk and prone to violence and verbal abuse.

because 'love' meant his sister being abandoned by the man she trusted, left to pick up the pieces of her heart while he tried to hold her life together.

because 'love' meant giving his father an added target his cruelty and new a way to enact power and control through fear.

every time he hears his name, tongrak's being told that he must love, but how could tongrak ever love when this was what love brings?