#and ALSO the idea that shiv went out of her way to save kendall as an act of like. altruism. like it was a sacrifice on her part

[clowndensation]

there’s a question to be asked i think about to what extent “getting out” can be conflated with “being saved” in this show, and what freedom actually means to any of these characters.

like you can argue that shiv saved ken by voting against him on gojo, but what if your intent behind saving someone is to inflict a worse punishment than if you’d just left them trapped? can a child weaned on poison survive on milk, or are you just sentencing them to a death by inches, starved of the only thing they know? and if you save someone specifically because you know that being saved is the worst thing that can happen to them, is that kindness or cruelty? at what point does a good thing become a malicious act?

and you can say that roman is finally free, but what exactly is he free from? the company? his father? does unlocking a cage mean saving a dog, or are you allowing him out on the street knowing there’s a kill shelter nearby? if the driving anxiety behind roman is that he’s an idiot and a failure—that he’ll never amount to anything, and trying will only lead to pain—and he’s finally cut loose once all of those anxieties have crystallized into cold hard fact in his mind, what has he actually escaped from? if the cage is in your mind, is it even possible for somebody else to unlock it?

the fundamental truth of a tragedy is that even being saved can be a death sentence, if the characters are incapable of escaping the thing doing them the most harm (themselves and their childhoods)

[catelyngrant]

it’s been *checks calendar* five weeks since my last damages crossover breakdown but I am back/still on my bullshit, same song, same verse, different fandom but a whole lot worse, etc!!! (absolutely no idea how I made it a month in the succession rabbit hole before this occurred to me honestly)

ANYWAY, Succession/Damages crossover, Patty Hewes vs. Waystar.

Post s2, Patty tracks down a handful of victims from the cruises and convinces them to file a civil suit against Waystar. She ropes Kendall into it. He is terrified but also in awe of her, she loathes him with every fiber of her being but plays him like a fiddle.

Let’s say this is set during s2-ish of Damages? Ellen still works with Patty but it’s post assassination attempt, so basically it’s them at their messiest. Anyway, Ellen is trying to play both Patty and Kendall and is trying to bring down both Patty and Waystar and it’s all very sexy.

So Logan despises Patty with the misogyny of a thousand white male billionaires and Brian Cox and Glenn Close get imaginary Emmys delivered to their doorsteps just from me imagining them in a scene together where Logan is basically foaming at the mouth but at least starts off pretending to be cooperative until Patty makes some charmingly condescending comment and then he storms out/breaks things/loses his goddamn mind at her while she just gives him a crocodile smile.

Gerri and Patty know each other - the club of super high powered female attorneys based in NYC is not a very large one - and don’t particularly like each other. Patty’s probably been sniffing around Waystar for years, and when Gerri finds out about the civil suit she goes home and drinks like five martinis in 30 minutes and considers moving to Bermuda.

Seriously though, Gerri “I don’t like mess” Kellman who at least pretends to play by the rules vs. Patty “I tried to kill my protégé to cover up my mess that involved at least one dead person and a dead dog but she survived and now she’s working for me again even though she knows I tried to have her murdered” Hewes??? In a situation where Patty is determined to not just win but to personally destroy Logan Roy, his empire, his legacy, and wipe him and his entire family clean of their fortune? Yeah, Gerri’s gonna have to get dirty or get out, and honestly I could see it going either way bc I think she values saving her own skin > winning, unlike Patty, but if Patty could take her down too, she might not have a choice but to get on her level.

Shiv is a disaster. She’s loyal to her dad but she also has always admired Patty, and they actually have a lot in common in that they sort of pretend to care about other people and in Shiv’s case she actually does think she has the moral high ground most of the time, I think? But they’re also self-serving and desperate to win. So Patty would be working the hell out of Shiv, and would probably enlist Ellen in that, too. Shiv would try to play both Logan and Patty and it would end very, very badly.

Patty would consider trying to turn Tom, but would decide against it because she wants to humiliate him and take him down, too. She does sic Ellen on Greg, who doesn’t exactly mean to end up on Team Patty but by the time he realizes how thoroughly he’s been played and how much essential info he’s given her he doesn’t really have a choice but to stick with her bc the Roys would kill him.

Kendall, of course, would start out all self-righteous and Patty would let him think that he’s the crusader here, etc., but that would only play out for so long. At some point he’d probably turn to Gerri or Frank (not Logan) when she casts him aside and he realizes how contemptible she really finds him and give them insight into how underhanded her methods are.

Roman - idk man, he’d be loyal to Logan and Gerri but he’d also probably have to excuse himself from a deposition or three to jerk off after watching Patty and Gerri in action against each other.

Ellen and Willa went to school together, bc why not? So Connor tries to make nice by inviting Ellen over for dinner and they have a very fucking awkward evening together in which it becomes clear to Connor that a) his family’s fucked, and b) Willa might be rooting for Ellen.

At some point Waystar tries to settle (Gerri, Frank, Karl, and pretty much everyone threatens to quit if Logan doesn’t make the offer) but a la Frobisher in season one, Patty is like LOL NO, so idk how it plays out past that...I kind of feel like Ellen and Shiv definitely will sleep together at one point only for Shiv to try - and fail - to stab Ellen in the back; Patty gets blackmail material of some sort over Roman and Gerri’s dynamic (she bugs their phones or sets people on their apartments or something) and that’s, uh, Not Good, and she probably also digs up the details on the waiter in England; in response, Gerri starts poking around Ray Fisk’s death and also begins trying to work Ellen, because she can tell that Ellen has an agenda of her own and might not be entirely opposed to bringing Patty down herself (reader’s choice if that works); Logan probably has a heart attack or another stroke at some point and Patty sends him a giant bouquet of flowers and he might actually die at that point; in the end it probably comes down to Gerri and Roman as the functional defense against Patty, with Ellen as a wild card (she’s telling Patty that she’s playing Team Waystar and Patty doesn’t believe it but thinks she can manipulate Ellen to her advantage anyway; Gerri and Roman don’t totally believe that Ellen only cares about bringing Patty down, not Waystar, but they also think they can use her against Patty; basically no one trusts anyone); Logan, Kendall, and Shiv are all furious but are making everything worse; Tom kidnaps Greg and they flee to Thailand and tbh they’re probably the only ones who get a happy ending.

Did I develop this entire concept because I actually short-circuited at the idea of Patty vs. Gerri? YOU BET I DID, honestly that’s the only part of this entire thing that matters the rest is just lagniappe!!!

[hageny]

Succession Thoughts: Gerri x Roman

AN: The first point in this post was requested by @thinkingfixatingobsessing​, so credit goes to her for the idea. 

WARNING: Mentions of child sexual abuse in point one. 

1. What In Here is Real?

A lot of fans tie Roman’s ‘dog cage’ experience to his adult need for degradation, and certainly there is a valid reason. The murky circumstances surrounding the incident(s) in his childhood--Roman remembering being forced; Connor and Kendall remembering him liking it; Connor remembering what their father said about “two fighting dogs” in relation to the incident--make it difficult to say how much of what Roman remembers is real and how much is his emotions skewing his memories. What is totally overlooked is the scene above, which takes place in Austerlitz. The family has just arrived at Connor’s ranch for the not-so-optional family therapy session when Roman says something very interesting to Connor, telling him that he plans to tell Alon Parfit, the group’s therapist, that Connor molested him as a child. Given Roman’s ‘dog cage’ revelation only one episode later, it struck me as very interesting that Roman makes a joke about what is for many a deep, childhood trauma. Now, I should clarify, I don’t believe Connor in any way abused Roman, and it seems fairly obvious Roman was just doing this for shock value, but there is a point to be made here. It seems pertinent to ponder whether Roman’s ‘dog cage’ experience could tie into a deeper, darker truth in his childhood. Maybe it’s possible that Roman actually did go into the cage willingly, and to some degree submitted--as much as someone who is emotionally/mentally abused as a child can--to his siblings’ game. All of them being children themselves, they wouldn’t have had the insight and maturity to understand his behavior was abnormal. What we do know of Roman’s experience is that it caused him to start wetting the bed, and he was eventually sent away to St. Andrews; again, he thinks this occurred against his will, Connor says he went willingly. What is interesting his Roman’s description of the effects of the ‘dog cage’ incident closely aligns with what may happen to a child who is molested. As Roman puts it, “Kendall locked me in a cage, I went weird, I started wetting the bed, and that’s why dad sent me away to St. Andrews.” Now, I should be clear, I am not a mental health professional of any sort, so all of what I say here is gleaned through years of reading about crime stories and second-hand research, but re-watching this scene caused me to remember that when Jon Benet Ramsey was murdered, many wondered--and still do--whether it was possible she was molested as a child due to her still wetting the bed at the age of six. From what we can gather, Roman would have been probably around the same age, if not older, when the alleged ‘dog cage’ incident occurred; his mentions of ‘going weird’ could be his best way to articulate what could have been a mental breakdown suffered during his childhood. His parents, having no clue what to do with him, would have naturally sent him to a rigorous, regimented school that, they believed, could have righted his ‘abnormal’ behavior. There are many signs children can possibly exhibit as a result of sexual abuse, but a few of them struck me because they describe even Roman’s adult behavior:

Regressive behaviors or resuming behaviors they had grown out of, such as thumb-sucking or bedwetting

Overly compliant behavior

Decrease in confidence or self-image

Change in mood or personality, such as increased aggression

We notice Roman’s lack of confidence constantly over the course of the series. In Sad Sack Wasp Trap, we see him studying his body carefully in the mirror, obviously displeased with what he sees, and then quickly buttoning up his shirt when Grace enters. As an adult there’s no question that he is--around his father, especially--overly compliant, going along with what Logan says and most of the time unwilling to buck him. While Roman is certainly not aggressive in the sense of being a danger to others, we do notice that his temperament borders on the aggressive quite a lot of the time, and he has a sadistic side, taking pleasure in tormenting others for his own amusement. We also know that the infamous Lester McClintock--Mo-Lester--was a friend of Logan’s; while it’s not stated that he abused any children, if he was a family friend, there is a possibility he was around Roman as a child. Connor, in Safe Room, does tell Willa that Logan wouldn’t let his kids get in the pool with Lester, so the possibility of his being a pedophile is there. Maybe the abuser was someone else. Maybe Roman wasn’t abused at all and I’m way off base. But I bring the point up for discussion only because as I pondered it, I myself began to wonder. 

2. Patrick Bateman

SPOILER ALERT: The ending to the movie, American Psycho. is discussed below. 

In I Went to Market, Shiv makes a quip when Roman tells her he has a hobby, saying to him, “Killing hobos isn’t a hobby.” Anyone old enough to remember--or old enough to have watched American Psycho or read the book--will remember that Patrick Bateman, the novel’s famous protagonist, descends slowly into violence as his disgust for society deepens, and begins literally killing homeless people on the streets of New York City, using homicide as an outlet for his uncontrollable rage. For the sake of convenience, I will discuss the movie a bit here, as I read the book years ago and do not remember much. The end of the movie is open to interpretation, leaving the audience to decide whether Bateman did actually kill anyone and it was cleaned up for him because he was wealthy, or whether he simply fever-dreamed the experiences. It’s interesting that the show draws a tie to Patrick Bateman and Roman, but having considered Bateman’s behavior there are some similarities. Roman, like Bateman, has a total disregard for the lower class, no more openly displayed than in the pilot episode where he tears up the check in front of the little boy at his family’s baseball game. He also, as noted in the previous point, has a temper, sometimes flying quickly off the handle when things don’t go his way. He is tightly wound, constantly agitated by the world around him, and driven by impulse. Where Bateman’s impulses lead him to murder, Roman’s take a different path, leading him to push the envelope of appropriate behavior for shock value, or drop and pick up girlfriends like objects. While Roman certainly would never kill anyone in a literal sense, he is not afraid to destroy those beneath him without a second thought, obliterating Vaulter simply because he wants to, manipulating the staff into admitting they want to unionize--which  might’ve saved them--and then handing his information over to his father so as to leverage himself and his desire to shut Vaulter down over Kendall’s desire to keep it open. The point is is that the show, by drawing a link between these two characters, could perhaps be suggesting to the audience that Roman’s behavior, like Bateman’s, requires an understanding of nuance. Bret Easton Ellis, who wrote the novel, grew up in an environment similar to Roman’s, coming from a wealthy family, deriving much of his literary material from what he witnessed as a child and an adult. It could perhaps best be said that both characters are a study in how environments shape people: what they bring out in them, and what they create that, for better or worse, can be left to bubble just below the surface. 

3. Only Good?

This point will be fairly brief, but I did find it pertinent to comment on how many people in the fandom--maybe younger people who don’t understand the show’s nuances--seem content to constantly cast Gerri as an artless bystander to the cruises situation when this is simply not the case. It could be that some don’t recall, but in the above scene from Pre-Nuptial, Shiv demands that ATN lay off Gil Eavis by blackmailing Gerri, telling her that if she doesn’t get her way that she will blow the lid on the scandal that centers around Lester McClintock. What’s most important is the fact that when Shiv mentions the “cruise division horror show”, Gerri never asks for clarification regarding Shiv’s point. This, obviously, is because Gerri doesn’t need it. While I am not suggesting Gerri knew all along about the scandal, her lack of need for Shiv to clarify what she means by “the cover-up” is an indicator that Gerri not only knew what was going on before the audience did, but perhaps also had a hand in hiding what was happening. There could be many reasons she did so, but I felt compelled to make this point because so often people believe Gerri was caught off-guard by what was occurring at Brightstar, when in fact our introduction to her in the show was intended to serve as an indicator of her character. The phrase, “stone-cold killer bitch”, used flirtatiously by Roman, was not only intended to amuse, but also to give insight into her character. In order to survive and thrive in Waystar, Gerri would have had to have been anything but an artless child, and her reputation as a ‘stone-cold killer’ is apt, as it describes the sort of character a person generally has to take on in order to climb the ranks of the corporate world. Gerri’s panic as the cruises situation unfolds is not due to the nature of the incidences (nor is Shiv’s for that matter)--it is due to the panic she feels at having to take the fall for what occurred. What actually happened, the facts of it, don’t really bother her. That’s what makes a killer. 

[mermaidsirennikita]

That succession finale omg!! tell me all of your thoughts!

UGH YES OKAY.

I think it was SO GOOD first off.  

People are kind of deluded, in my opinion, if they think this was all some Grand Master Plan of Logan’s.  Firstly, he is definitely kind of proud of Kendall and has more respect for him at the end.  Kendall may jumped out as the potential successor, even if his resentment will override his logic and he won’t move forward with it.  (Conventional wisdom, and Roman’s showing in the finale, would say that s3 will be the season of Roman+Gerri.)  But people vastly overestimate Logan’s abilities and see this show as like, a Game of Thrones type piece in which everyone is trying to outmaneuver each other in chess.  No.  Logan is a good businessman, and he is smart, but this season more than ever has hammered home that he needs to step down.  He is overly protective of himself; he would have looked better had he just copped to his own issues and stepped down willingly.  He showed real fear after that phone call in which he was told to step down, and there was no one for him to act for there.  He’s an old man, outdated yet still in power, which is one of those things the show is trying to make a point about.  I feel that Logan thought that Kendall was past his sell-by point; he’d given him chances to bite the hand, but he hadn’t...  So he assumed that he wouldn’t.  There’s no way Logan knew that Greg would flip with the documents.  

But all of this has been seeded.  I don’t think Kendall had a master plan; I think that he decided to snap in the moment as he realized that this accidental killing he’d been wracked with guilt over never mattered to his father.  His father would literally not respect him unless he became an even worse human being, and Kendall has been trying to be BE A BETTER PERSON lmao.  So he went all in.  You want me to be a killer?  CHILL.  His metaphorical deliberate murder of his father paralleled, of course, his literal accidental killing of an innocent.  I also feel that when we saw Kendall beg Shiv to look out for him, that seeded it to.  That was his one request, and she would have been smart to keep him on her side--he has value.  Shiv’s fatal flaw is that she deludes herself into thinking that she’s sO DIFFERENT, so much smarter than her “dumb brothers”, but she’s not.  All the Roy kids have their strengths and weaknesses and probably work better together a a cohesive unit, as seen when Shiv and Kendall teamed up to make Rhea look bad.  But Shiv wanted to keep Tom close, as he was slipping away, more than she wanted to keep her brother, someone who is much more potentially dangerous, in the fold.  Tom would have taken the hit and walked away.  In fact, I think it would have borderline been something of a relief for him to have an excuse to leave.  Shiv knew that, and in a sick way she does love him--though I also think that it’s about control, about needed that “safe” person with her. Tom has so much less power than Shiv, and she likes that.  Shiv’s downfall of the season was in this blunder, and in the fact that she revealed herself to be a daddy’s girl through and through.  Please save him, getting all emotional right before Kendall motherfucking axed her lol.  Her downfall was not as dramatic as his, but when you see her watching Logan, you know that he couldn’t be less impressed with her in that moment, and more comparatively impressed with Kendall.

We also, of course, had everything seeded with Greg.  Greg is a somewhat normal-ish person still, and he can see, like any outside person can, that Kendall is being abused in the worst way by Logan.  I think he could also see that Logan was probably going to feed him to the wolves, and almost did...  Whereas if he gets in good with Kendall from the start, he may have more longevity.  Now, I am a believer that Greg will Bran Stark this shit and win the long term, but I’ve also thought that a beautifully complete arc would be Kendall shadow mastering Greg’s reign on a level.  Like, for whatever reason he can’t be the public face, but he’s lost his soul completely and is maneuvering shit from behind the scenes for Greg.  Similar to Logan with Kendall, tbh.  This only solidified this being a possibility, which I loved.  Kendall knows that Greg has the documents; Kendall has also, intentionally or not, done things over the season to draw Greg in.  He may have thrown Gatsby parties in Greg’s penthouse, but he’s still casually letting him stay there.  He and Greg probably do coke together now lol.  It lines up.

I’m excited to see where Roman goes.  He’s fully with Gerri now--I was impressed to see him throw down the gauntlet for her, which I didn’t fully expect.  Roman is still too close to his father, and too vulnerable, to really have that “killer instinct”.  I think that he’s a creative guy, a big picture guy.  The interesting thing too is that he is the only one who really stood up for Kendall--which BROKE ME, those two really do love each other--but Kendall kinda fucked him, and knew he would, I think, as Roman pushed against “killing” him.  Roman just got a promotion from Logan, and he’s more in this company now than ever, just as Kendall puts a dagger in its heart.  So though Kieran gives Roman a bit of a smile as Kendall flips, it’s bittersweet.  He’s happy that his big brother DID SOMETHING, and deep down all the Roy kids know their father deserves it.   But they’ll be adversaries on the business end of things, for sure.

Other little things--beautiful moment between Shiv and Tom as he expressed how little her love really made him happy.  It’s toxic.  He’s a pet to her.  She’s leaning on him, he’s a crutch, but she doesn’t care for him.  A lot of people don’t seem to realize how abusive their relationship is, and Tom finally called that out.  “You told me you wanted an open relationship on our fucking WEDDING NIGHT”.  That was so calculated and emotionally abusive.  Matthew was amazing with his material in this episode.

Marcia really is fucking pissed, huh?

I really have no idea where Kendall goes from here.  The show has opened the door for a lot of possibilities.

Shiv could definitely rise from the ashes, like Kendall, but this was a huge blow of an episode for her in a way I don’t think people get.  Like.  She basically looks like a clown in front of her father right now, and is very much in his power.  But what does his power even mean anymore?  She backed the horse that got shot crossing the finish line, too--what now?