#class differences

However, this could bring about its own set of problems. Specifically, at least in my hyper fixed mindset, for Dunk. Because in a Westeros where you can be openly gay, EVERYONE is all over that man and it's not even close.

The first night they meet, Lyonel actually asks Dunk to marry him. He says it whilst placing his antler crown on Dunk's head, giggling to himself as he blushes.

"Would you marry me, hedge knight? Cause I'd take you to husband in a heartbeat."

And Lyonel's actually serious about it because he wants to find the nearest septon and be wed to Dunk. He 100% wants to take that big, beautiful man home with him to Storm's End as his husband. He's only just met the man, but Lyonel knows what he wants.

Dunk, for his part, just laughs awkwardly, thinking it no more than the ramblings of a too drunk lord. Sure, no one would seriously desire to have him as a companion for life, especially a highborn lord. He, in his own mind, has nothing of value to offer because of his status in life.

He'd be lucky if a smallfolk girl would want to wed him, never mind anyone else. Let alone someone of a high station.

Ser Arlan always told him that people, even small folk, don’t wed hedge knights because they offer nothing. Neither in profession or in life.

So like many things in life, Dunk puts his complete trust in Ser Arlan’s ‘wisdom’.

It’s due to this that Dunk takes any and all offers of marriage from anyone as a joke at best and a hurtful jab at worst.

Even Baelor who is already married to Maekar in this AU (because why wouldn’t they be) is thinking about sending a raven to his father asking if he could write a law that says people can have more than one partner.

He still wants that hedge knight cookie bad even in this AU.

Maekar is annoyed that his husband is looking at some lowly hedge knight rather than him. He proceeds to get even more irritated when, after the whole thing with Aerion and Dunk in the puppet tent, Aerion says that he would accept compensation in the form of taking being his husband.

Dunk thinks it’s a jape while Aerion is thinking about how miserable he could make Dunk as his husband. He’d never be rid of him then.

Maekar, sitting at the table as Dunk awkwardly stands before them, looks at the hedge knight and just says,

“What the fuck is going on?”

‘What sort of temptress is this man?’ Maekar thinks, watching the way his brother-husband and son both look at Dunk. ‘He’s bewitched half my family’

Raymun and Daeron also ask Dunk somewhere along the way. But that’s neither here nor there.

Egg is just along for the ride in all of this, realizing that he’s surrounded by morons who all want a piece of his Ser. He’s not amused.

Wage Differences

So I’m doing another rewatch of Jane the Virgin, and I really love how the show displays class differences with the exact same phrase: “It was an mistake”

Xiomara was apologizing to Jane and said that what she did was an mistake. Jane’s response?

“A mistake is loosing your keys,”

Whereas at the Marbella with the Solanos, Petra says she made a mistake, and Rafael’s response is “A mistake is a parking ticket”

Because in the show, not once does anybody say things or act in a way that's homophobic.

Not even Stella.

NOT ONCE.

Stolas is only ridiculed, not for being with a guy, but for sleeping with an imp. It's a class difference problem.

ASHCOMBE is now live on AO3!

Prologue + chapters 1 and 2 are up now.

A 1990s-set original queer boarding school novel about first love, repression, class, and the slow education of wanting.

If you like: 🌕 queer boarding school stories 🌖 dark academia with actual emotional consequences 🌗 class tension and institutional rot 🌘 slowburn 🌑 longing, repression, and increasingly terrible decisions

Updating weekly.