#saraugust

[bluedalahorse]

posting fic snippets out of a desperate need to feel something (that isn’t stress)

There are more real things to be stressed about, and then there are also things to be personally stressed about, like the camping trip I will be away chaperoning from Wednesday to Friday. I do not particularly love to be away from home or disruptions to my routine.

I had hoped to finish the fanfic I was working on before I left, because then I could just avoid my email inbox and my AO3 account and not constantly refresh to see if anyone decided to read my fic. But! That did not happen. It probably won’t happen because I still have the last scene to finish and those always take me too long.

I still want to share a little bit of fic though, so I think I’ll post some of the raw unedited text from today’s work. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Anyway have some post-university pre-second-chance-saraugust, I guess.

Usually driving home—or in this case, driving back to the temporary apartment she’s renting this week—is a way for Sara to decompress after long days on set. She can put on music or an audiobook, or call Simon and Felice. Sara wants nothing more than to recap the last ten hours to one of them, just so they can reassure her she isn’t overreacting. But Simon and Wilhelm are catching up with Rosh and Ayub over pizza and boardgames, and tonight is one of the nights Felice works late in her food truck.

Mamma? Things are better with Mamma lately, but she’d still tell Sara to not read too much into the directors’ and writers’ decisions. Pappa might understand better, if he’s sober, but Sara doesn’t want to reach out unless she’s certain he is.

What is she thinking? It’s not like she can go too far into the behind-the-scenes details of Age of Liberty, anyway, since the production team made her sign an NDA, and that means no venting.

When Sara returns to her temporary rental, the kitchen lights are too bright. They’re the same lights as yesterday, so she must be overstimulated. She flicks them off and on a few times trying to decide if she can stand them, before she finally lets the square yellow light of the microwave faintly illuminate the room instead. Then, Sara scrolls through her phone as the starchy, comforting smell of pasta fills the air.

Instagram provides the usual array of photographic distractions: the girls’ football team Rosh coaches, the award-winning hibiscus cake from Felice’s dessert menu, the too many ads for hair care products and earplugs and soft clothing and tropey novels. That’s mixed in with occasional news articles about climate change, as well as infographics from other neurodivergent influencers with bullet points about masking or proprioception or social scripts. Sara lets the images blur before her eyes and the letters in usernames turn into meaningless shapes, until a familiar expression—one that habitually holds back grief—causes her thumb to finally stop swiping.

It’s the official instagram of the Crown Prince of Sweden. August’s most recent post shows him working at a desk, head bowed over a neat stack of papers. He’s gripping a pen and wearing glasses, but he isn’t writing on the paper. The glasses are new and make him look serious. To his left is a tablet-sharped therapy light. That’s even newer, and it washes August’s face in a muted silver glow. Sara wonders if anyone will recognize the light’s true purpose.

Then she reads the caption: As the hours of daylight grow shorter, many Swedes show increased symptoms of depression. Don’t forget to spend time outdoors, and reach out to your medical provider if you are experiencing persistent low moods or feelings of hopelessness. Take care.

The microwave beeps as Sara reaches the last two words of the post. She puts her phone away as she extracts her pasta and sits down at the table to eat. After an initial few bites, her mind fills up with questions. Is the post meant to be a simple public health message? Or is there a more personal meaning behind it?

She shouldn’t be ruminating this much when August is her ex, and for good reasons, but after a long day—one where Sara’s surroundings had her thinking about August anyway—can she really help it?

After Sara moves her empty pasta bowl to the sink, she returns to her phone. The photo has disappeared from her feed when she opens the app again, which doesn’t surprise her. When Sara navigates over to the Crown Prince’s official account, however, the photo isn’t there either.

Someone had it deleted. Probably some social media manager who works for the royal court.

The palace loves it when you promote sympathetic causes, Wilhelm once told Sara. As long as the sympathetic cause you promote has no connection to you whatsoever.

[realredbanana]

For the secondary character ask game: 6, 7, 8, 16

Hi, thanks for the numbers <3 (why does that sound so awkward when I type it 😭)

6. Character(s) you have ace, aro, or queerplatonic headcanons for:

　So, this is like 90% projection, but I kinda see Sara as vaguely aro-spec? I think there’s something about the way she talks about crushes that just felt relatable to me so she just kinda ended up vaguely aro-spec in my head. Idk. (Plus her friends seeming baffled that she could possibly have lived 17-18yrs without experiencing a crush (pre-August) was so incredibly real).

　(Others that I don’t really have much to say about: ace!Henry (because I read @sflow-er’s Supplementary facets fic series and it just kinda stuck), and I kinda liked aroace!Felice from @zee-has-commitment-issues’s Reckless Abandon).

7. Character you didn’t initially like/love but have now warmed up to:

　Honestly, August. I found him vaguely interesting at the start, but he annoyed me so much that I just avoided thinking about him, which it turns out was mostly because I just didn’t know what I wanted to do with him. But, now I have an idea of where I could go post-canon (thanks to some of your posts and our conversations), I like him a lot more.

(Insert seemingly obligatory disclaimer within this fandom that, while I do like him, I don’t condone lots of his actions)

8. Pairing you didn’t initially like/love but have now warmed up to:

　I guess saraugust? There’s a few pairings that I’d previously never considered but now quite like, but I don’t think there’s any that I’ve actively disliked that I now like (in fact, there’s only, like, one (non-creepy) pairing that I’m opposed to).

　I think I like saraugust now more than I used to, in the sense that I now think it’d be interesting to see them potentially get back together years in the future (like you’ve mentioned at some point), but I’ve always found their interactions to be pretty interesting (and they both bring out a quite different side to each other).

16. A song that reminds you of a secondary character or pairing:

　Truly, this was a mistake to ask me because I, quite frankly, do not shut up about songs reminding me of characters, so to list a few:

1. Somewhere In Ann Arbor by Anson Seabra vaguely reminds me of post-canon crown prince August pre-growth and stuff.

2. Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up) by Florence + The Machine reminds me of Kristina and the royal family as a whole.

3. Machine Learning by Janani K. Jha indirectly kinda reminds me of Sara in the sense that it kinda reminds me of autistic masking.

(this is very much making me realise how many songs I associate with Simon tbh, because I have a “reminded me of a YR character” playlist, and it seems to be like 90% Simon 😭)

Questions

[altruistic-meme]

you know that young royals is truly a work of art bc I was listening to a love song and immediately thought of August

anyway "Heavenly Kind of State of Mind" by Lewis Capaldi is so August about Sara that it's truly insane

[the-star-rigel]

girls when you’re not in love with me you’re in love with the person you become when you’re with me..

[imembarressedsohere]

Multicouple (Non-Endgame) Edit.

(Liv x Holden, August x Sara, Lucas x Maya, Mike x Tina)

also on instagram

[bluedalahorse]

I feel like there’s some meaningful stuff here about Sara and August’s relationship, so I wanted to reblog and lift those up here! Sara has traditionally been unfairly slammed by the fandom, even though her actions were meaningfully different from August’s in season 2. And a lot of times saraugust is held up as this ontologically evil foil to wilmon, even though both pairings juxtapose the capacity to be sweet and loving with some pretty intense teenage flaws.

Personally, while I understand why they happen, I’ve always been a little wary of discussions of “is Sara a bad person/is August a bad person.” I understand why this framing works for some fans, but it doesn’t work for me. Mostly because a while back, Omar was talking in an interview, and he talked about Lisa’s writing philosophy being that there aren’t good and bad people in her stories, there are people in her stories who are capable of good and bad actions. Now, authorial intent can only go so far, I get that. But I do think this is a theme that underpins the series. I think they did a great job of showing Sara’s complexity and growth over the season. I do think there were some fumbles to August’s writing in season 3 that led a portion of the audience to believe he never changed, ever, over the course of the series. I think the show would have benefitted from him and Simon having a chance to do restorative work outside of their relationships with Wille. At the same time, I don’t think season 3 was without growth for August. @sflow-er’s post on the Fleabag parallel does a great job of breaking down August’s arc. I’m not saying any of this negates the harm August does—far from it—but I do think the show is inviting us to envision a better future for August where he grows and changes, especially in our fanworks.

And that’s what I want to talk about in this reblog: fanworks. It’s been a long time since people were acknowledging the saraugust nuance in season 2, and ultimately how fascinating the pairing is, but there’s still only 96 fics tagged Sara/August on AO3 and only a few are actually about them.

I think, what I’m sad about most when it comes to Young Royals fandom, is that there is no fanworks community around Sara and August the way there is for wilmon, at least on tumblr. There are individual people who are interested in their dynamic, and some of them create fanworks from time to time, and some of us reach out to one another and have meaningful and wonderful one-on-one conversations in our inboxes. But there’s very few reblog chains about them where people are just expressing fun headcanons, there’s very little circulating fanart, there’s some gifsets and edits but they don’t circulate as frequently, no fandom events or challenges themed around them, no following and cheering on of Malte and Frida’s careers, (to my knowledge) no epic multichapter saraugust fics we discuss together and swoon over and make starry eyes over.

To be clear: I don’t think I’d ever expect saragust to have the same size of following wilmon does. There are many factors that make wilmon more popular, first and foremost being that August does real legitimate harm and is annoying and kind of sucks. Like, hey! I get it! Not everyone is going to like him, and that’s perfectly okay. And then there’s the fact that not everyone who’s drawn to an m/m show is going to feel excited to ship a f/m pairing. As @crownedwille points out, fandoms sure can do some stuff when female characters are involved. Of course saraugust will get smaller numbers.

But as someone who’s been tracking the saraugust breadcrumbs in fandom for a while, and has been following their tag on AO3, what I’m noticing is not exactly a natural absence of interest in the pairing. It’s more like I see a lot of people who have an interest in the characters and the dynamics, but something about the way YR fandom interacts socially reinforces the notion that you keep your saraugust feelings to yourself. Or, for a while if you were expressing those feelings, you were encouraged to express them in ways that are full of apologies and disclaimers. When you’re spending all your time doing that, it becomes a lot harder to create fanworks. Like, even in the tags of this post, I see a lot of people saying they liked them or found them interesting or cute or they’re hooked in by the drama or whatever else! Clearly the enjoyers exist and are out there. I think the discourse (and the harassment of actors/writers/creative team on social media) has died down a lot since the finale and there’s more space to like the characters, but I also think that some of the patterns of fandom interaction that sprung up post-S2 have had a continued impact on how people express themselves.

And yes, it’s important to be mindful of the morally dubious sides of this pairing, but we can do that while creating space for people to openly enjoy it through fic and headcanons and edits and such the way that many people in the fandom openly enjoy wilmon, even if it’s a smaller group of us. (Heck, some people enjoy saraugust because of the moral dubiousness and that is part of a Valid Fandom Tradition of enjoying morally dubious pairings.)

As someone who’s currently feeling a little burned out on wilmon by itself and doesn’t really have a desire to read works centered on them, but who’s still in love with the broader YR world and its characters, especially my two favorite characters—I am desperate for a little bit less saraugust discourse and a little bit more joyous fannishness about them. I’m not entirely sure how to make that happen. I’ve been writing fic, blogging about the characters, creating ask games, posting pictures of the plushies, and also doing some other stuff behind the scenes. But I often don’t post or reblog as much as I could for fear of discourse returning, and I feel disconnected from fandom most of the time, even though I have some strong individual ties to individual people. (I also feel like I may have burned some bridges at times when I was upset.) It’s a bit of a sisyphean conundrum, isn’t it? I wish I could wave a magic wand and make more fanworks and community happen around this pairing in particular, but also around other pairings and characters on the show for the fans who want those other pairings and characters. I just wish there was a little more variety in the characters and pairings talked about.

Anyway, I don’t have any answers and it’s time for me to acquire groceries for the week, so. Blue out.

There's so much discourse around Sara and August. Whether they were good together or not. Whether they loved each other or not.

What we tend to overlook is the fact that they talked to each other. Enough that they knew each other.

He wanted someone to talk to and he thought about her. So he went to find her and he knew to find her in the stables. Then he immediately proved to her that he was someone "safe" by petting her horse. She misunderstood his invitation that evening but he didn't make her feel bad about it. We know she talked to him about the Felice Horse Selling Thing™️ because when she comes to say that Felice was officially selling the horse, he just said "I thought you already knew that" because she had already told him.

Sara talked to August. The same why August talked to Sara. He opened up about the drugs and why he used them. He opened up about being Wilhelm's back up. He opened up about his guilt and about feeling like a horrible person.

She talked to him about her horse and about Felice. Two things that she considers the most important in her life. She also opens up to him about wanting to fit in. Wanting to "be like him" meaning that she wanted to be like the Hillerska crowd.

They talked to each other.

So like, yes, they did horrible things. They are bad people. But they aren’t incapable of caring. And they aren't entirely self centered. That's what makes their individual betrayals even more heartbreaking. Because we know they're capable of caring and they made the choices they did anyway.

[lettuceish]

i can die happy now

[theaviatorthatcouldnotfly]

e6 predictions (they get more unhinged the further you go)

lake scene is NOT the final scene or a breakup scene

the wilmon car scene is the last scene

elias song!!

wille won’t abdicate (just because you can’t abdicate before you’re even on the throne)

BUT he does tell his mother that he’s leaning towards not wanting to be king

felice and sara will start to be friends again (during the neon party?)

hillerska closes down

fredrika and stella are temporarily pissed at felice for the closure

wilmon will get a “let’s stay together, we love each other and we can try to make it work” endgame

saraugust won’t be endgame

we get to actually see one of august and wille’s mediation therapy sessions and what they talk about

vincent and august are on not-so-great terms at the end of the show

the first year’s letters to their future selves come back into play

as per usual ludvig does nothing significant or useful to help wille or the plot

wille looks into a mirror and gives himself a tiny smile

music room redemption scene

simon writes/sings a song for wille for his real birthday present

wille learns the truth about where his orange sweater really went

by some miracle there is enough time in the episode for simon to go see boris himself

someone actually remembers that rousseau exists (even better, we actually SEE rousseau)

someone accidentally starts a fire during the neon party

august and vincent try to throw punches at each other during the table scene

marcus shows up at graduation for whatever reason and malin kicks him out

simon jumps vincent while everyone else politely applauds

felice gets to yell at the headmistress for her casual microaggressions

linda delivers a bitch slap to august’s stepdad

someone says “i’m proud of you” to wille

[bluedalahorse]

I’m going to go for an unconventional one here. I love all the other ones people are mentioning too, so I’ll sign on to those as well.

But. Can we acknowledge all the situational humor leading up to Sara and August’s first hookup in 2.3? August being like “omg I’m so messed up right now, I need someone to talk to, can you come over” and Sara internally being like “I have done the research on how this is Neurotypical Code, and coming over to talk means we’re gonna have sex 100%” and August is like “no but for real I wanna talk, I’m just also very sad and brooding and very shirtless, so the messages, they are mixed” and Sara being like “ok Sara play it cool play it cool LOOK I have managed a TOTALLY PLATONIC ARM PUNCH we are gonna be FINE” but then they’re making out oops?

Maybe not everyone else sees the same level of comedy as I do in that scene but to me Malte and Frida’s acting choices are all A+++++ no notes.

God I miss Sara Arrhusius’s intimacy coordination work every day of my life.

What do you think are the funniest moments in Young Royals?

[summerscaries]

i kinda wanna ask................... saraugust for the ship bingo?

Oh saraugust…. I love how crazy August was about her, but she made the right call in the end :( almost went for “they’re fucking the same guy (Felice)” that’s not canon but it is to ME

[bluedalahorse]

some fic written pre-s2, posted for your personal enjoyment

@frogprincesnowglobe mentioned a headcanon about little!Sara teaching herself etiquette and practicing various graceful exercises and… oh! oh! I have an excerpt from an unpublished fanfic about that! Because I have thoughts about that and they break my heart.

I’m giving this fic snippet its own post so it doesn’t get lost in the reblogs on the already very lovely Sara chain, but here’s something I wrote between seasons 1 and 2 when I was trying to figure out what Sara and August falling in love would look like. (I had a gut feeling they would after season 1, so I was trying to work it out in a fanfic, like you do.)

THE CONTEXT: Sara knows August did the video, so she’s trying to get closer to him to figure out how to get revenge (but also she thinks his hair is cute and grabbable so lust factors into about 50% of her decisions.) August knows Sara knows he did the video, so he’s trying to be nice to her as possible and so she doesn’t snitch (also when she looks at him it makes his knees weak, so lust factors into about 50% of his decisions.) They’re talking on the phone (like ancient millennials who actually use their phone as a phone!) and August has noticed how fascinated Sara is with Hillerska and its traditions and everything that makes it work. So, he says he’ll give her tips on how to become a prefect her third year and such, even though he knows she’s unlikely to be chosen.

I wrote this back in November 2021, so please accept this Early Installment Weirdness of my YR fanfiction career.

If you want to win over a girl with gifts and favors, you have to cater to her interests. It’s not that August didn’t know that. He’s just never put it into practice like this before. He went too generic, with Felice. All that insufferable talk of restaurants, when he didn’t even know he was broke. Putting Sara on the headmistress’s radar costs August nothing, and when they’re on the phone the evening before he returns to Hillerska, she actually says it’s thoughtful of him to include her like that. Thoughtful. She’s got to be fucking with him. Unless she isn’t? As August folds clothes and stacks them carefully in his suitcase, Sara explains on speakerphone about how she wants to be a prefect too, someday. She wants nothing more than to help out with Hillerska events. When she was younger, her mother used to take her and Simon to the public library all day—Sara doesn’t say why—and she used to sit between shelves and read the horse and school and etiquette books. She knows the right way to serve coffee and tea in multiple countries, the correct wording for invitations, every last thread of proper dress codes. She has been training for this her whole life. “Those details matter,” Sara declares. “They’re so much work. And if they’re done right, everything runs smoothly, but no one notices. If they aren’t, everyone notices, and it’s a disaster.” August laughs. There’s a sudden lightness in his chest. “Did I say something funny?” Sara asks, after a moment. “Not at all,” August says. “You’re just the only one who gets it. Finally.” He means it. Everyone calls him annoying behind his back, but they’re the ones benefiting from the events and rituals he’s organized. Hypocrites. “If you want, I’ll let you help me out with prefect work.” “Are you trying to get me to do all your work?” Sara asks, deliberate as a lawyer. “Or are you trying to be alone with me?” “We’ll do my work together. Promise.” This isn’t that cliché where the popular boy manipulates the quiet girl into taking on his homework and responsibilities—that shows a lack of control, and August is too much of a control freak to let Sara complete his entire checklist. “That way you’ll know what to do, so you can be in the running for prefect your third year. It really should be you, you know?” Except that she lacks the family connections—but August keeps quiet about that. “The headmistress has to know that.” “Where and when would we do this, exactly?” “You’re the one who said something about us being alone.” He lowers his voice, even though he’s in his room and no one else can hear him. “You’re the only girl I can trust, Sara.” Sara giggles, maybe in a nervous way. “You’re saying that to make fun of me.” “I need you. I mean it. Besides, it gets boring doing school mailings by myself.”

Anyway that’s it that’s the snippet. I miss them I miss them I miss them and with the minimal fic that’s been written about this pairing sometimes it feels like I’ve never even gotten to hang out with them.

[realredbanana]

Totally random but, in a way, I wish there were more soulmate AUs that explored the dark side of them?

Like, say, a Young Royals soulmate AU where nearly everything is the same, but, Linda and Micke are soulmates. This doesn’t change Micke’s addiction. It doesn’t change how terrible he was to his family at times. It doesn’t change how uncomfortable Linda, Sara and Simon feel around him. But, it would definitely make divorce significantly harder and more complicated.

Just imagine how taboo divorce would be in a universe where soulmates exist. Imagine how hard it might be to get people to believe that your soulmate is abusing you. All the “no! he’s your soulmate! he’d never do that!”s (albeit probably with much less blunt wording).

Idk. I just think that, as much as I love the idea of there being someone out there who’s the ideal person for me, the idea that society would be almost entirely built around that just makes me think “oh, it would be so easy to get trapped in an abusive relationship”.

[maleficent088]

August and Sara are adorable and I love them. Sue me.

[bluedalahorse]

imagining a world where they met under different circumstances or different decisions were made

Anyway I miss these jerks. If anyone has any brain glue to send me so I can finish my fic about them by next week, I’d be indebted to you for it.

[bluedalahorse]

hi indulge me for all of two minutes

angsty saraugust historical AU (late 19th century? early 20th?) where micke is a portrait artist and piano tuner. simon has always been his assistant when it comes to tuning pianos, while sara has assisted him with the portrait work. as micke struggles more with addiction and such, sara and simon end up taking on more of his work for him, until they’re basically doing his work to keep the family afloat. micke’s getting the credit.

at some point meanwhile august’s father takes his life and the family covers it up to avoid scandal. august is the new heir to årnäs (which is like, falling apart) and as part of the family public relations game, they decide they’re going to get a new portrait of august painted? like to launch him to the public, I suppose. but the family funds are limited and they end up hiring the erikssons through whatever narrative contrivances I can come up with to make this work.

the point is, sara is painting august’s portrait. and they’re both closed off with one another at first but then they begin to thaw out. talk about their grief and their dad stuff a bit. maybe (definitely) there is kissing.

and since it’s an au fic, august does not have to do the worst things he ever does.

IN SHORT LET ME HAVE THIS

good night tumblr

[bluedalahorse]

For the drabbles!

Sarah

Reunion

Backup: Fear

Thanks for the request! You’re my very last drabble for this year’s challenge. :) Couldn’t resist doing reunion as a future saraugust drabble because one must create what one wants to see in the world. Enjoy!

Tagging @youngroyals-events since this event was their brainchild.

Close Harmonies (link to AO3)

In their twenties, Sara and August cross paths at Christmases and stray birthdays.

Sara works on the opposite coast and visits family when she can. August starts living his apology to Simon after some initial halting conversations.

When Sara turns thirty, a concert celebrates Simon’s choral compositions. Sara drives across Sweden to attend and discovers August in the audience.

“You don’t have to…” August starts when Sara asks.

“It’s alright. Sit with me.”

From the choir: an unguarded melody, weaving around dissonant chords, persisting toward change.

Sara sees tears glint at the corners of August’s eyes. She catches his hand.