#yr fandom

[sflow-er]

Fandom New Year's resolutions...

I found myself thinking quite a lot about this fandom and my place in it over the holidays. It was already on my mind due to Faves Fest, and the hate anon I got on Christmas Eve and the general discussion on the confessions blog on whether shipping Wille/Felice was "allowed" made sure it remained there.

I've summarised some of my thoughts as resolutions concerning my presence in the fandom in 2025.

Keep writing and posting my "diabolical" and "deranged" thoughts here when I feel like it, and especially "dying on the hill of Henry and Walter's entirely made up relationship" on ao3. Sorry not sorry, anon. That's the corner of the YR sandbox that I have enjoyed playing in since August 2021, and I will keep playing until l run out of things to say or stories to write. .

Keep reblogging my friends' posts and posts by others interested in the non-Wilmon aspects of the show (when I come across them). Including gifsets etc! I'm not naturally great at paying attention to those because I'm more of a text post person, but they still deserve to be seen by as many people as possible. .

Spend less time scrolling tumblr as a whole. It takes far too much energy and headache-free time away from fic writing and keeping up with my friends. .

Make a safe and comfortable space for my more personal posts. Frankly, the hate anons scrolling my blog feels similar to that one time when someone broke into our basement storage and tried on some of my old jackets, leaving them in a bundle on the floor with the sleeves turned inside out. I washed them, but they all went to goodwill because I didn't feel comfortable wearing them anymore. In the same spirit, I've taken all personal posts except my intro off this blog and reblogged them to a new one that is currently set to private. When it's ready, I will make a separate post asking if anyone wants to follow me there. .

No longer allow anons. I have wanted to keep them on in the past to provide a forum for thoughts that people might be too shy to express on their own blog, such as the Stedrika debate a while back and some past anons about August's ED and accountability, but I'm done risking hate for it. If you want to discuss something with me, you are always welcome to do so in your own name. Whether in agreement or mutually respectful disagreement! .

Radically accept the state of the fandom at large: interest in our corner of the sandbox is what it is. My friend and I had made some plans to liven things up, but after recent events, I'm backing out. I don't want to spend my remaining time in the fandom feeling demoralised; I want to focus on what I enjoy. At the risk of sounding like an obnoxious brag, I can look back on my past contributions to the non-Wilmon corner with pride. Countless people have told me it was my longfic that got them interested and invested in Henry as a character, and it also started the Walty ship that has since become a fandom staple! (Receipts: my fic was the first one from Henry's POV, I added the Henry/Walter tag on ao3, and my readers coined the ship name. The fic was quite popular in its heyday, with 700 to 1,200 reads per chapter. It's still the fourth-most commented fic in the fandom, the most kudo'ed fic with a non-Wilmon focus [although Wilmon do feature prominently as side characters], and the 116th most kudo'ed out of the total 5,880 YR fics on ao3.) But the time for that has been over for a while now. Interest in non-Wilmon aspects and characters, which was always remarkably low, has waned as the people in the fandom have changed and new seasons have been added to the canon. Which is perfectly fine; everyone enjoys the show in their own way! Live and let live. Except... Even that seems to be a controversial opinion nowadays. The sad fact is that puritanical, fundamentalist sentiment has gained more and more ground in this fandom as time has gone by. There are people who feel the need to police others' shipping, opinions, and interpretations of canon. People who see all characters who either stand in Wilmon's way or represent the establishment that Wille is meant to break free from as rotten and unworthy of further exploration, and by extension, the fans who still want to explore them as morally dubious. People who see themselves as righteous warriors and anonymous hate mail to their "fandom adversaries" as a force for good. I never thought back when I was posting my longfic that I would one day be sent hate on Christmas Eve for making an analysis post about Henry and Simon's dynamic for an event that was meant to be about celebrating your fandom faves. Or that I would dread to publish said hate anon, because I was afraid people would either agree with it or more likely ignore it. But here we are. To reiterate, I'm not going anywhere. I'm just going to focus on enjoying my corner rather than trying to wave people over. .

Thanks for reading!

[youngroyalsforever]

...and while we are at it: a piece of unsolicited advice for the person/people running @youngroyalsanonymous — please never reveal your identity. This whole thing can only work with an anonymous admin. The moment Wizard of Oz or Gossip Girl take their mask off, magic disappears. That is exactly why the other confessions blog never became a space for actual discussion within the fandom — people must believe you are unbiased to go to you with their confessions.

[andthatisnotfake]

Young Royals Community

Friendly reminder that I have a Young Royals community here on Tumblr for anyone who's interested. You can join via the link: https://www.tumblr.com/join/jlgW42eb.

The community is private, meaning posts aren't visible for the general public. Unfortunately that also means that the community isn't discoverable, but I wanted to prioritize our privacy and our freedom within the community, so that status won't change unless they change it to make a community discoverable while still keeping the posts private.

Hope to see you there!

[bluedalahorse]

YR Secondary Character Ask Game (for joy and connection 💜)

Hi everyone! I’ve created an ask game focused on the “secondary” characters in Young Royals. The way this works is that you can answer the questions with any character or combination of characters except for Simon and Wilhelm (for the single character answers) or wilmon (for the more than one character answers.) We’ve had a lot of excellent wilmon-focused games over the past few weeks that have been pretty enjoyable, so I created this game to open the floor up for other characters and keep the joy going.

Send me an ask with a number and I’ll answer:

Favorite secondary character

Favorite secondary romantic and/or sexual pairing

Favorite platonic friendship

Favorite triad or polyship

Favorite familial relationship

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

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

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

Favorite non-Edmar actor

Favorite s1 scene centered on a secondary character

Favorite s2 scene centered on a secondary character

Favorite s3 scene centered on a secondary character

Secondary character you think should have had more screentime

Any ships (crackships included) involving Simon or Wilhelm that break up Wilmon? We won’t tell!

Adult character whose teenage backstory would make the best spin-off series

A song that reminds you of a secondary character or pairing

Secondary character or pairing that needs more fanart

Favorite fic centered on a secondary character or pairing

Shout out a fanfic author for their writing of a secondary character (or characters) in a subplot

Dream fanfic about a secondary character and pairing that you’d love to read but don’t want to write yourself

Most underrated character/ship/actor overall

Reblog to play along yourself!

[purplehoodiesandclementines]

Happy birthday :)

Thank you! ☺️

[young-royals-confessions]

It’s more of a fic reader confession- I feel like a failure. Everyone in this fandom is so good and consistent at making comments on fics. I see the same people commenting on every chapter in many stories. I comment but not nearly enough as I would like. What is the secret to being a good commenter or at least consistent one, because our authors deserve all the praise!

📖

[sflow-er]

Hi! 3 and 7 for the ask game?

Hello! Thank you so much for the numbers!

3. Favorite platonic friendship

I hope you don't mind me giving several answers here!

My number one is Sara and Felice. It's not only an amazingly written, genuinely character-driven friendship that evolves through the seasons and fuels both of their own story arcs and individual growth...but also something kind of subversive to see in a story about teenage girls. In so many stories, the popular girl would have also been a mean girl, and Sara would have got the blame for August kissing her in S1, but instead, they made Felice a sweetheart and the girls stick together. In so many stories, their falling out would have been treated as lesser than a romantic breakup, but instead, it was explicitly confirmed as equal or even more substantial in S3. There's just something really beautiful, relatable, and validating about how Sara and Felice's friendship is written throughout the show.

My runner-up is Simon and Ayub, who as you said are just so soft and funny together. Love to see such a sweet, non-toxic, emotionally intimate portrayal of friendship between teenage guys!

And I can't resist adding that I'm partial to the dynamic between Henry and Simon, which started out as starkly antagonistic in S1 (controversial opinion maybe, but Simon did attack Henry's family first) and softened from S2 on. As a politically active leftist who has seen the divisions deepen in real life, I'm nostalgic for a world where those on the opposite ends of the political spectrum could still come together as people. I get that it wasn't necessarily the message the show wanted to leave us with, but even in S3, I did read Henry as having accepted Simon as "their very own soap-box socialist." He seemed sincere asking how the labour movement celebrated on 1 May, and he included Simon in "we're brothers" when interrupting Wilmon in the library. I love that Simon had won him over.

To some extent, Henry seemed to have grown on Simon as well. I would've liked to see an explicit reconciliation between them (and I also wrote one in my post-S1 fic), but Simon didn't seem to need it. I do think there were too many differences for him to see Henry even as a casual friend, but their interactions were amiable towards the end. Hell, he was nowhere near as snarky as he could have been about Henry offering money for the half-eaten lollipop!

So yeah, I think their dynamic is intriguing and something that can definitely be explored further in fic.

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

Stella! I strongly disliked her mean girl ways in S1 - her dig about welfare scammers with a totally unprovoked glare at Simon and Sara, and the meaningful look between her and Fredrika when Sara said she might have to leave Hillerska. In S2, I found myself just waiting for her to turn against Sara, which she very quickly did at the end. Despite putting on a thin veil of female solidarity earlier in the season, she was immediately ready to cast Sara out for (she assumed) getting with Felice's ex, and she even said that thing about secrets when Sara had kept hers. In S3, I liked her little flirtation with Rosh, but then she went and acted like a total asshole at the neon party so...yeah, I did not come out of the final season liking her.

But then. Then there was some discussion on here about the disproportionate amount of hate that Stedrika and Felicia got after S2, which I always found disgraceful even though I didn't much care for Stella or Stedrika. After answering a couple of anons about it and defending the point of having them in the show and even shipping them, I had a sort of epiphany. I realised my own past experiences with mean girls were seriously clouding my view and making me withhold the same grace from her that I readily gave to the male characters. At the end of the day, I still think she is objectively meaner than Henry, but she is a compelling character all the same. I'm even writing her into a fic now!

(Also, it definitely helped that someone on here managed to catch a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of her and Fredrika kissing at the party before Rosh even gets there. That doesn't excuse her behaviour but does explain it.)

Wow this really turned into a ramble...! Thank you again for enabling it haha.

I'm still open to more asks if anyone wants to send them! (Already answered: 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 15, 16, 20, 21)

[piggyinparadise]

Is anyone part of the YR Discord? I don’t quite understand it, but I’d like to interact 🥲

[itsmadreia]

Hi lovelies, I hope y'all are having a very relaxed Sunday wherever you spend it! I just came across the most amazing yr edit and have to share it with you!!! Ok so, here it is:

[bluedalahorse]

Hey, YR fandom!

I created a YR ask game. Can’t post it tonight or tomorrow or Tuesday but I was thinking I might post it later this week.

Anyone interested in playing an ask game? Just to liven things up a bit.

[youngroyalsconnections]

Does someone know how to upload pictures onto ao3 👀

Anyone?

[purplehoodiesandclementines]

Hi Hannah! 🌼

Heard somewhere that it's your birthday!! 😆 I hope you had the best day and cheers to another year!! 🥳🧁💛♥️

Maria! 💜 Thank you so much!

Yeah, weird how that kind of news travels huh? 😆

[young-royals-confessions]

To people wanting an 'actual confessing blog' - good luck to you creating a new one!!! Twitter had it for some time and it turned so gross and nasty. This confessing blog was a breath of fresh air

💜

[sflow-er]

Hi friend :) For the ask game: 11, 16 and 21 Thank you!

Hi hello! Thank you for the numbers 💛

11. Favorite s2 scene centered on a secondary character

The combined sequence in S2E3, of August coming to see Sara at the stables (and petting Rousseau's muzzle which absolutely supports my thesis that there used to be horses in Årnäs) and Sara subsequently coming to August's room. Those scenes are incredibly sweet and realistic, gorgeously shot, and full of chemistry, vulnerability, and tension.

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

Full disclosure: I seem to lack the ability that most people in fandom have, to connect songs to characters & ships! I think it's because I usually like songs that either resonate with me on a personal level or can be approached as stories in their own right. Somehow it's just very hard for me to make the connection to something completely unrelated...

So I'm afraid the only way for me to answer this is to toot my own horn and name a song that a few people have said reminded them of how I'd written Henry & Walter in Other people's secrets: a song by Leith Ross called We'll Never Have Sex. I had never heard it before so now it's forever associated with Walty in my mind too.

21. Most underrated character/ship/actor overall

My answer to all three is August/Sargust/Malte. Of course I understand why the fandom hates August, but he is easily one of the best-written and best-acted characters in the show. It's rare to see an antagonist with such deep, complex emotions of his own, and casting a sweetheart like Malte to play him was an incredibly successful choice. The same goes for Sargust as a ship. Malte and Frida's chemistry was off the chart, and Sara and August's relationship which could have just been a Plot Twist was absolutely integral to both their character arcs and the show as a whole.

Haha who knew this would become such a Sargust-heavy post...

Thanks again for the ask friend, and if anyone wants to send more, I'm still up for answering them!

[piggyinparadise]

Has anyone read andyscreations fics? And has anyone become as obsessed with their fics as I am???