#Roy means everything to me

[roykentschesthair]

Sooooo…..I realize that you can’t base character age off of the actors age, but, there’s a significant age gap between Brett Goldstein and Sofia Barclay, who plays his sister.

Does that gap exist for the characters? Because if it does, that opens up so many possibilities for the family dynamic.

There’s 18 years between the actors, if that translates to the characters (which it might not) then Roy was already professionally playing when his sister was born.

Was his ability to be financially secure and therefore take care of his family a factor?

Did he take care of her in certain ways because he was independent and could?

They obviously have a solid and loving relationship if for no other explanation than his intense love of Phoebe and her idolization of him.

Was she an oops baby? Change of life baby?

Is there not meant to be a huge age gap between the characters?

I dunno. But I think about a young Roy Kent, angry and self conscious and doing the best he can and it makes me want to cry. A Roy Kent who was sent away at 9 (which is insane and not at all typical no matter someone’s talent)

Roy Kent, young and grieving his grandfather and feeling so alone.

Roy Kent, who now has money and fame and people he doesn’t know smile when they see him, say his name with joy and admiration and buy him a pint.

Roy Kent, who feels just as alone in that crowd of people as he did as a boy who never learned to ride a bike.

Roy Kent, who looks at his infant baby sister and rearranges his entire life to be able to be the solid, stable family that she needs and he never got.

I just cry about Roy Kent a lot.

[akajustmerry]

"You grew up with an uncertainty in mind and morals. I hoped initiating physical intimacy with you would give me the influence to correct your shortcomings. That failed. I apologise to you for what you have become." - Lady Demerzel, Foundation: 'Long Ago, Not Far Away'

"I could have got you there. But no. No." - Gerri Kellman, Succession: 'Tailgate Party'

Brother Day and the Lady Demerzel in Foundation / Roman Roy and Gerri Kellman in Succession (2023)

[shivroy]

i love you and i'm sorry, sadegh

[ladystoneboobs]

no of fence to jon snow fans who for some reason care about his exact age, but these discussions just annoy me no end. not only bc there's no way any weirwood flashbacks bran has to rhaegar/lyanna will come with time/datestamps, but also bc there's always comments like this:

SEVERAL turns of the moon (ie, months)?! have these people never seen a human baby before or just have no concept of their ages? even if we take into account travel time from the toj to wf, meaning jon was not a newborn too fresh out the oven when catelyn and robb arrived, there's still a difference between a newborn and a 3mo and an even bigger difference between those infants and an older baby 5-7mo. there's very good reasons these lines were cut. whatever birthdates can be worked out internally for jon and robb from when they're first mentioned as 15 and 16 don't matter in the end, bc grrm doesn't care about a consistent timeline and the actual text of catelyn's pov and ned's convo with robert about cheating on her should outweigh any guesstimates about jon's official nameday wrt robb's. catelyn may not have cared for jon, but she would sure as hell have noticed his nameday if it came before robb's and made him ned's firstborn. if jon's birthday canonically came before robb's then either ned's cover story would not involve adultery (not impossible for him to sire a bastard before his wedding), or he'd just give jon a new nameday along with his new name to fit the adultery lie. it makes no sense for him to lie about one and not the other, undermining the big lie with a little public clue of his story not adding up. whatever else she was as a stepmother, cat wasn't stupid and a bastard who was actually the eldest son being raised alongside her trueborn heir could be an even bigger insult than whether he was born of adultery or not.

BUT, the unknowability of jon's true birthday is not the only reason this annoys me, it's bc this is all based on the assumption that jon must be older since rhaegar/lyanna ran off together before ned married cat, as if both boys must have been conceived asap as robb canonically was when his parents consummated their marriage. and that's not how human reproduction works! even if you don't understand how fast babies grow in the first year, you should know that people who get pregnant do so through ovulation cycles and a lucky sperm finding an egg and all that, not just immediately getting knocked up as soon as one has p-in-v sex for the first time. not unless you only know mean girls sex ed where if you have sex you will get pregnant and die. (even tho lyanna did die, there's plenty of canon examples where pregnancy did not lead straight to death. also examples of people who did not get pregnant right away and even some who are/were sexually active and childless without always having moon tea on hand.) we can't know how long lyanna was having sex before that sperm+egg match happened or even how long she was with rhaegar before losing her technical virginity. if they were married, doesn't it make sense to think they didn't consummate their relationship until the wedding night either? that's the only leverage there is to ensure a status as wife rather than just mistress.

and while i just said grrm doesn't care about exact timelines and a lot is still foggy surrounding the rebellion and esp rhaegar, there is one timemarker wrt robert's rebellion he voluntarily threw in, time and time again: that stannis was besieged at storm's end for almost a whole year. that siege, which mind you, did not match the duration of the entire war. it only started after robert won his battles at gulltown and summerhall, returned to storm's end, and then went out and lost the battle of ashford, leaving his homeland open to the reachermen. the same siege which only ended when ned made a detour there after the sack of king's landing, before going to the toj. even if lyanna may not have given birth that exact day ned found her, she could only be waiting in that bloody bed for weeks at the most, not months. so if rhaegar knocked her up the very same night he carried her off and jon was still a newborn when ned found her after the siege of storm's end had ended, wouldn't that mean lyanna was pregnant for well over a year? that's not how human pregnancy works either! so, maybe that's proof that jon and robb, whichever order they were actually born in, were actually very close in age as babies, much closer than if they were both conceived asap.

and really, jon's actual birthdate does not matter imho, when he was raised not just as the bastard to robb's trueborn heir, but with robb also known by catelyn and the world as ned's firstborn (which he was, in any case, as jon was ned's nephew by birth). what difference could a birthdate before robb's make (even were there some means of discovery) after ned, cat, and robb are all dead? if one is looking only at his birth parents then he's only a firstborn child on lyanna's side, but definitely a second son on rhaegar's side. maybe he was always meant to be a second son with a not much older half-brother! even if the aegon fka young griff is not in fact rhaegar's son, he'll still be known as aegon vi targaryen, meaning jon will never be known as any father's elder son. if i may reference mean girls again, it's not going to happen.

[cuethe-laughtrack]

Dancing

[romanroy-co]

HUGE DAY FOR ANNOYING BITCHES (ME) ROMESTEWY NATION WAKE UP !!!!

POSSESSIVE HAND ON BACK WE ARE SO FUCKING BACK!!! ROMESTEWY ALIVE! ROMESTEWY THRIVING! ROMESTEWY WINNING! ROMESTEWY REAL!!!

[thesummerstorms]

Okay, but I do have an AU version of that AU in my head where Dick Grayson returns to earth and manages to find Annabeth (and Thalia and Luke) living in the streets before they make it all the way to Camp Halfblood.

We can explore the implications of that for Thalia and Luke in a different post, but basically Annabeth still has to go to CHB for large portions of the year, she attracts too many monsters, but when she isn't there, Dick Grayson has unofficial custody for quite awhile while Bruce gets his shit together.

The crack fic version of that AU of an AU has Annabeth trying to manipulate her way into arranging a meeting between Chiron and Roy Harper because her brother's friends have been kind to her and if one of them is going to be an archer, they should be the BEST archer so that they can keep Dick alive longer.

No one is more surprised than Chiron when he actually agreed to give Roy some "pointers", although he trained fully human heroes in the Ancient Days.

And to be fair to Roy his brain is stuck trying to work its way around fact that his friend's little sister staged an emergency to introduce him to a man who's half horse. He's kind of mad, which, fair. That said, once the actual archery lesson starts and he realizes that Chiron really is that much of an expert, he immediately gets into it.

Which is how a panicked Dick Grayson bursts into the scene a few hours later, expecting something terrible has happened to Anna & Roy because Roy isn't responding to comms.

Only to find his best friend arguing with a centaur about some obscure fact of aerodynamics while Annabeth is perched nearby watching, legs swinging, eating way too many popsicles and occasionally calling out questions when her curiosity gets the better of her.

Dick isn't sure whether to be pissed, relieved, or just plain confused, but he for sure isn't letting Anna OR Roy live that one down for years.

And if he also gets distracted and listens in to some of Chiron's archery explanations, well, it's always good to know your teammates' full potential.

[sighonaraa]

Sid I can't stop wondering about how you see Roy dealing with the hardest parts of taking care of a small child. Kids get sick and have tantrums and whine and have accidents and embarrass their parents/caregivers unintentionally all.the.time and on top of all that Roy is (as far as i can tell so far) not super experienced in looking after his little brother and presumably still very much mourning the loss of his mother? Its a lot to have to deal with all at once

the bad news: you are correct. roy is incredibly inexperienced in looking after baby jamie, and he is still very much mourning the loss of his mum. he is also refusing to ask for help, and unwilling to receive it whenever someone does reach out, for a myriad of reasons that essentially boil down to. roy kent is furious that he's got this much love inside of him, and he's not quite sure what to do with it, but he promised georgie he'd protect jamie and he'll be damned if he breaks that promise. he is going to make mistakes, but jamie is going to be loved through it all, and soon there will be people there to get down in that dark hole with roy and guide him out.

the good news: we are all going to learn how i see roy dealing with these hardest parts in chapter 3! stay tuned! :-)

[cakebatteronabrickwall]

In the end, the ending is not so tragic, so dramatic or destructive at all. The trick succession pulls, has always pulled, is making it seem so, making you feel about it the way its characters do.

But when the script (and i'm not the biggest fan of refering to something outside of the actual show) says there's something here, maybe it's okay, calls Ken a man followed by his particular history- that's just it. Or, to rephrase: it just is.

[mitchmarner]

Me in theory: A weekly release of episodes is way better. The binge watching model is ruining the way we experience television.

Me when I actually have to wait another week for the next episode: What the fuck. What the fuck is this injustice. Where the fuck is the next episode of my program.

[chuchayucca]

Discussions of implied fictional CSA & SA

I recently been wondering if there’s a chance Richard thinks Roy’s aggressive and distant behavior is normal and not a sign of CSA because he acted similarly to Roy when he was younger

Reasonings in the tags

[goldlightsaber]

the truth is i don’t even think kendall was becoming “like logan,” i think he was just becoming his own version of terrible

[sangue-dolce]

it's so interesting how differently people perceive Roman's ending. he got out of the cycle. he's still in it, there's other cages to lock oneself into. cages patiently inviting and deliciously enticing even. schrödinger's salvation of the soul. it's all optics all the way down.

[gulski2]

an edit a day:

[staticxlace]

should’ve KNOWN tom was going to win the crown the second he skipped the funeral to focus on the business—the very thing logan had wanted kendall to do in the series premiere, the very thing that kendall had failed at.

[sighonaraa]

Sid! I’m already obsessed with your 17 year old Jamie goes to Richmond fic! Does it have a name?

ash! i am so happy to hear you’re already obsessed with the 17 year old jamie goes to richmond fic! it’s one of the gift fics for @asteria-argo bc once many moons ago the two of us tossed a brain cell back and forth about the ripe potentiality of such an au (also inspired by @altschmerzes’s absolutely stunning “wriggle up on dry land”) and i’ve simply been chomping at the bit to write it for eternities since.

it does NOT have a name yet i am sorry to report :(

HOWEVER. it may end up being saw something they can’t take away from taylor swift’s “you’re on your own, kid” if only because that one particular song makes my heart hurty in the most jamie specific way.