#the recny ball

[balllikedepaul]

No one talks about how great Connor Roy is at planning ANYTHING!?!

[dreamsong-29]

Evolution of Stewy at RECNY

1. Posing with hot date

2. Holding hands with hot date

3. Leaving hot date to whisper to Kendall about buying his next house

4. Moving his seat and blocking aisle to be by Kendall’s side during Logan’s speech and comforting him.

[cagefreeromanroy]

this is from s2 btw, if you even care

[susiehunsecker-remade]

justin lupe describing willa as a sort of wolf den mother to connor is so funny to me. willa voice [growls] he asked for no cake .

[divorcedtom]

need tom to angrily point at greg and say “listen here bucko”

[peachypaddys]

the funniest thing is people being offended at tom wanting money and power when right after he asks if shiv would give up her money and power for him like.... she wouldn't. she loves her status more than she loves him. he loves her status more than he loves her.

[kellm4n]

waystar events are routine, they are occupational hazards, tools to be used when logan needs to get his claws in, pull his resources. gerri is rather good at that, smooth talking one political figure or another, investors who don't understand the legal jargon she explains as if they're actually listening. gerri is all soft spoke facade under the watchful eye of company peers. she does well here, in this particular version of social chess. but it is, as all things with waystar royco are, exhausting.

company is found by the bar when she comes to refill signature drink. martini set on the soft napkin, imprinting a circle just over golden embroidery. this game is far more refreshing.

what are you insinuating ?

“ i'm not insinuating anything, doctor.” she argues with no small degree of faux innocence, if the general counsel were trying, she could play it off well, but the gleam in her eye gives her away. the barest hint of mischief lingering in her expression. knowing gaze falls on @consumare , a smile playing on the corners of her mouth as she brings the rim of her glass up to hide the smile.

“ i think i'm more . . . outwardly stating it, actually.”

[timehascomeagain]

Kendall at the 2030 RECNY ball where he's just spent 10yrs living off the grid in stewys walk in wardrobe in prague and has suddenly re emerged like those getty heiresses who used to put their money into environmental causes as penance for their forefathers blood money & has started funnelling his leftover waystar money into arts funding for disadvantaged youth in a horribly run nonprofit where he's also a two bit sondheim at a bad but respected theatre startup in hell's kitchen

[raviposting]

Kendall + Connor’s mom: 1x02 | 1x04 | 3x08 | 4x02  (+ meta under the cut)

Something really interesting to see is that a lot of the references about Connor’s mother don’t come from Connor, but Kendall. We get tidbits of Con’s life here and there, alongside indirect references, but direct references to his mother? Save for him reminiscing with Logan in the RECNY episode and Roman’s comment about her “being sent to the booby hatch”, it’s usually Kendall who brings her to the forefront. It’s usually Kendall reminding people that hey, this was a person who existed, this was Connor’s mother. 

And it’s just so. Fitting, somehow, that it’s Kendall who brings her up the most. That it’s him who describes what Con’s mother wanted to do with the ball and calls her patronizing for it, only to turn around and call himself the People’s Fearless Leader. That it’s Kendall “Three years ago you were in the nuthouse” Roy who brings up to Logan that Logan locked Connor’s mother away. That it’s her story that’s mentioned first to Kendall, before Rose and before the waiter, as the first Roy family secret. That it’s Kendall, who has a mental illness and attempted suicide before, who brings up Connor’s mother, who we know had a breakdown and is implied to have died. That it’s Kendall, who wants to be seen and struggles with it so, so much, who remembers that Connor had a mom, that there was someone in this family, that there was a person who needs to be included in this remembrance video. 

For a woman we’ve never met, seen, even have a name for, there’s so many parallels there to Kendall and it’s just SO fascinating that we get a lot of these direct references through him. 

[pynkhues]

literally sooo fascinated by logan and caroline's marriage tbh. give us all your thoughts!! (if you want ahah)

Oh, man, I could talk about them all day, haha. I kinda feel like people can sometimes rob both Caroline and Logan of any nuance, because yeah, sure, they’re often the central antagonists of the series, and their abuse and neglect of their children permeates the series, but the show’s always also been careful to show that the cycle of violence never started with Logan, and Harriet Walter’s talked in interviews too about the cycle of neglect not starting with Caroline either. They’re victims and perpetrators in the same way that Kendall, Roman and Shiv are victims and perpetrators, and the fact that neither of them were able to break that cycle is the exact sort of tragedy that's at the broken heart of this series.

It makes it really fascinating to me in that sense that Caroline and Logan found each other at all, and I think really slots into what we know about his three marriages – namely, that he marries women who are in some ways as damaged by life’s cruelties as he is. We understand that explicitly with Marcia, who pretty much says out loud that their connection has been born out of the fact that they’re both survivors, but I think it’s implied in his relationships with both Caroline and Connor’s mother too. At least Marcia and Connor’s mother became somethink like partners for a while too – Marcia was a co-conspirator with Logan for the bulk of season 1, and the RECNY Ball episode I think also showed that Connor’s mother, for at least a while, was the sort of socialite who could lubricate and work politicians alongside Logan.

We don’t really know what role Caroline played in that sense, but she’s obviously intelligent and savvy enough to have worked to secure the kids real power in the divorce, something we see her give back to Logan in 3.09. We also know that her title gave Logan the class elevation that he wanted (even if its one he also seems to bitterly resent), and that his money gave her security, and in a lot of ways, that’s a strategic match that sees them both step forwards in power together.

I was actually listening to an old episode of Vanity Fair’s Succession podcast recently where they interviewed Dame Harriet Walter, and she talks quite a lot about Caroline’s backstory.

She says that Caroline was born into a neglectful aristocratic family, an only daughter who due to the social structures of British aristocracy, wouldn’t have inherited her father’s estate as a result of her gender. Instead, his estate would’ve gone to a distant male cousin, which ties into what Connor says in 1.09 to Willa about the house being the ancestral home Caroline didn't inherit.

She was disregarded by her family but encouraged to marry rich, and she sees Caroline as having gone through a bit of a wild child phase, that she partied, used drugs, tried to escape herself. That she was probably featured frequently in the social columns ‘in disgrace’, and then married young to a rich British man who bored her. She sees Caroline as having escaped to New York on a trip, and met Logan who dazzled her. Who was the opposite of the men she’d grown up with, the men who’d cut her out of her own inheritance, and that he was exciting and creating something and married too, and that they likely left their spouses for each other. That he married for a title, but he also married her because he found her fun and funny and different from the other women of her class and station.

I actually love that backstory a lot, and in particular I think it feeds into the themes of cycles on this show, both with Shiv, but also in Caroline being cut out by her own family, and then cut out by the one she tried to make for herself, and the damage that likely caused her. It also I think really beautifully depicts this idea of legacy and succession which is so crucial to the show – that Logan can spend a childhood brutalised by a man who’d give him just enough to build an empire on and that Caroline can spend a childhood in luxurious neglect with parents who will leave her with nothing.

What that meant for their relationship - - I think they did love each other, as much as they could love anyone, and I think that vulnerability between them was something that probably allowed them as true an intimacy as they’d ever have for a while. I also think that that vulnerability and that intimacy gave them power over one another that they’d use often and likely cruelly, and that the final years of their marriage were probably torturous for both of them.

After all, at the end of the day, Logan had the wealth Caroline could marry but never inherit, and Caroline had the title Logan could marry but never inherit, and what is that if not a reminder of the poisoned soil they sprung from?

[aspirateur-killeuse]

The woman Stewy comes to RECNY ball with, do we think it's the same 'girlfriend' who organises sex parties and has panic attacks? If so, what the hell does she think about her 'boyfriend' leaving her alone at a table, dragging a chair to go talk with his 'best friend'? I mean... Or is she more of the understanding kind? What are the common headcanons around her?

[doctorqueensanatomy]

I think Greg is a bit of a kleptomaniac and he knows it's bad and he's really apologetic when it happens and he gets caught but otherwise the boy just takes shit from the offices to big balls he's taken pens and staplers and champagne flutes and someone's diamond hairclaw tom will be over and see that he has a bunch of really nice and really mundane shit at his home and next to none of it is Greg's. "and where did you get this from?" "RECNY" "oh. and this?" "cyd's office"

[tomwambsgans]

during the recny ball of 2017, a year before the events of 1x4, tom was "trapped in in hong kong, scoping out theme parks." but also, prior to 1x3, tom had been a regional parks manager - "managing resorts south and central." going all the way to hong kong is an odd task to put on someone managing a group of parks in a specific part of the US, isn't it?

of course it's been pointed out before that logan sent amir to hong kong when marcia had been pushing for him to move up, so it's possible that HK is a thing that logan does as a punishment or trial of sorts. so i wonder if there was a similar situation with shiv trying to get her dad to move her new bf up, and maybe HK for tom was prior to advancing to regional manager and basically the test he endured in order to get that position.

[dumbbitchawards]

Kendall being nervous about taking an ATN employee to the RECNY ball because he's her boss vs Tom taking Greg to literally everything despite being his boss

[stewykablooey]

top 3 most embarrasing stewy moments

1. team ken baby im a no visible boner followed immediately by ken doing That

2. him and kendall being cringey old men at that concert

3. 40 years old at the recny ball with his model girlfriend and scooting his chair to sit next to kendall like they’re 6 years old at a cousin’s wedding

[lyinginthesnow]

Among the Roys and those close to them, there seems to be a general impression that something is wrong with Kendall and Roman, and while this is used to constantly demean them both, it is approached in two very different ways. Kendall’s issues are medicalized (“hey, ken, may we please step inside your mental disorder?”, “he’s taken his medication”, “insane”, “disordered thinking”) while Roman’s are discussed in extremely vague, almost dehumanizing terms (“sick puppy”, “you’re so gross”, “what the fuck is wrong with you?”, “a revolting problem in your head”). This is linked to the nature of their perceived wrongness. Kendall’s addiction and time in rehab is common knowledge and is associated with some idea of Official Diagnosable Mental Illness TM, so others tend to think of him through that lens, whereas Roman’s taboo sexual comments, submissiveness, and brutal sense of humour lead to a knee-jerk reaction of disgust from those around him and a label of undefined pervertedness.

However I think their roles as possible heirs to Logan also have some relevance here. Kendall was assumed to be Logan’s first choice successor, always under the greatest scrutiny and pressure, while Roman was backup. Kendall tends to be taken seriously. This can sometimes be stifling and detrimental. The joke he was going to tell in his speech at the RECNY ball was immediately interpreted as a genuine takeover attempt. Roman, on the other hand, tends not to be taken seriously. Multiple times he says something completely true that is assumed to be a joke by those around him. It is hard for him to gain his family’s respect (“Just ‘cause i like a joke doesn’t mean I’m a fucking clown”). Kendall tells Roman “you’re not a serious person”, “you’re not a real person” — and the implication is you’re NOT, but I AM. So, in the casual cruel comments that these characters love throwing around, whatever is seen to be wrong with Kendall is referred to with medicalized language, as something serious and real. You’re messed up in a way we all know, in a way we can define. You will never be who you are supposed to be. Your wrongness is a fact. And whatever is seen to be wrong with Roman is referred to with vague language, as something not serious and not real. We don’t even know what’s wrong with you. It doesn’t matter. You’re messed up in a way we don’t care enough to define. Your wrongness is a feeling.