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Thinking about Kendall becoming Logan for Roman and Tom becoming Logan for Shiv in Season 4

#this is everything #both roman and shiv look for anchors like their dad #even if they don’t realize it

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That “7 year old” line really opened my eyes to Kendall’s character. After that I completely understood why he was hysterical, and I think I now view his connection to the role of CEO in a different light. Of course, to the siblings the CEO is the ultimate way to gain Logan’s approval and therefore affection. But the way I see it, for Kendall it’s just a little deeper than that. He was a child when his universe of a father promised him the lead role of one of the most important companies in the world. He made his entire life around that. He studied business, went to Harvard, did what Logan wanted.. because he was told that it would be his. The entitlement breakdown of the finale is hard to watch but it makes sense, every single moment of Kendall’s life led to it. “I’m the eldest boy!” was his last resort. He was basically told as a kid that his purpose was to have the company, so ripping it out of his hands is leaving him empty and without a purpose. When he said he might die without it it’s so true because, in Logan’s own words (!!!!), he is a fucking nobody.

And fuck…. in the end, Kendall will never even be free; because he will always be that child who was promised something, built his whole life around that promise, and then simply never got it. He’s empty.

#oh god i fell to my knees reading this #succession meta #kendall roy

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I know in my soul Sue Ellen Ewing would be a Lana fan

#this is so real #national anthem is about her actually

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#MICHAELCORLEONE: doing something unholy

#al pacino #michael corleone #the godfather #the godfather II #edit #fancam

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how criston sees alicent and rhaenyra

just wanna add my two cents to the criston cole discourse and say that i think his pov of how things happened circa rhaenyra's wedding is very interesting #tome. i see the fandom reducing his view of alicent-rhaenyra to the madonna-whore complex for criston, and while there's some of it there, i think it's more complex than women having sex=bad.

beyond being one-time lovers, him and rhaenyra were close they bonded and talked about their upbringings, their hopes, anxieties, etc. and due to this she knew that honor was a big freaking deal to him. and she still "took" it. and then there's alicent, who by that point has barely interacted with him and has no real reason to care about him. she sees him at his lowest and yet she shows him so much mercy and trust to the point of making him her sworn protector.

is his pov regarding rhaenyra bad??? of course. he felt entitled to her so that he could save his honor (i do think his proposal was more about saving face than true love) and as much as there are a lot of power dynamics at play in their night together she didn't deserve his scorn for decades. but i still think it's interesting. for him rhaenyra was a friend that had no problem disregarding what was important to him while alicent was a stranger that could've have him killed without a second thought and instead gave him a second chance. of course he revers her, he sees her as the best humanity has to offer. and again, this is not a justification of his actions but just me trying to understand his motivations beyond lol incel.

#hotd #criston cole #alicent hightower #team green #im very afraid of the hotd fandom so im really putting myself out there just posting this

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this is probably not going to be popular headcanon, or for everyone in that matter, because alicole is pretty “vanilla” ship, but if you think about it there is possibility to explore a darker side of that relationship.

criston cole could be possessive and obsessive and his devotion towards alicent can turn really dark, we saw that with beesbury. and in turn, alicent could be manipulative when she wants to and there is power imbalance as well.

just a thought.

i love the ‘pure forbidden romance’ and ‘parents of four’ tropes but i also like dark and messy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#no no i see it i get it

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#RHAENICENT: let’s exchange the experience

wether you like them romantically or platonically you can’t tell me there’s not something special in how each of them thinks the other got a better deal at life than they actually had but they’re so far apart now that they don’t realize it.

#and i don’t even ship them but their dynamic fascinates me #so much pain and miscommunication and mistakes #hotd #rhaenyra targaryen #alicent hightower #rhaenicent #kate bush #running up that hill #hotd edit

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i just know that if in cold blood was published today dick and perry would be the biggest ship on ao3

#cmon tell me i’m lying i DARE YOU #there’s so much tension between them #in another life maybe #in cold blood #truman capote #true crime #literature

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Something something “don’t make me choose, Shiv, it’s a man’s right not to choose” but then choosing to leave work on his first day more than once to be with Shiv (despite knowing that this is going to hurt his workplace rep). something something Shiv refusing to actively choose to sacrifice Kendall on the yacht and yet still implicitly choosing him by refusing to sacrifice Tom. Neither of them are willing to make sacrifices boldly, both of them are trying to hedge their bets and play the field, but up until season 3, when the rubber really hits the road - when there is no way to choose both at once - they do choose each other.

Tom is the first to stop choosing Shiv, but he does it only after believing that Shiv won’t choose him, hasn’t been choosing him, even as - in his mind - he keeps giving her opportunities to choose him and she doesn’t. Shiv doesn’t realize that the choices she’s making are in fact choices. If Tom wanted something from her he would tell her, she thinks, not realizing that for Tom asking for those things is his own vulnerability, and he can’t ask for them in the same way she can’t express her own fears and desires and vulnerabilities. So she doesn’t choose Tom - but she also never consciously stops choosing Tom in the same way Tom stops choosing her.

On the one hand, Shiv would never betray Tom in the same way Tom betrayed her - but on the other, in Tom’s mind, she already has. The wedding night is a betrayal, accepting the CEO position is a betrayal, not standing up for him on the yacht is a betrayal. If she loved him she wouldn’t have done those things, if she loved him she would have seen how upset he was, if she loved him she wouldn’t have forced him to say it out loud. Each of those is, to him, an immense betrayal, two of which specifically involve choosing Logan over him. Is his betrayal really all that different? Of course, Shiv doesn’t know these are betrayals. The idea that to Tom, these are not just wounds, but fundamental betrayals of the very foundations he believed their relationship was built on, never once crosses her mind; and for his part he can never really tell her, not in those words. To admit just that he’s hurt is painful enough. So she goes to Logan for him, and she thinks that this has settled the score, that Tom understands now that she loves him, and she doesn’t realize that it hasn’t, that she needs to prove that she does love Tom enough to undo the pain of those betrayals or else her entire marriage will fall apart. (And even if she did know - could she? Is there really any length she could go to that would undo those hurts? Can the ‘score’ ever really be settled, or is she facing an audition she could never possibly win?)

#crap i need another cigarette #succession meta

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#JANCY: im in love with an uptown girl

#jonathan byers listened to this song once in 1985 and wanted to tear his hair out #also billy joel wrote this for them he told me #stranger things #edit #jancy #jonathan byers #nancy wheeler

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omg i’m also a hanleia and that’s how you do belligerent sexual tension right because their personalities clash and they’re getting to know each other. and you’re right about joyce needing to make the first move in s4. the first two seasons make it seem like something’s brewing between both of them and then s3 is all about hopper being pushy and treating joyce like a madwoman as if he wasn’t fully on her side the other times. joyce feeling anxious about jumping into a relationship because of bob would’ve been enough to create tension 😭. and like i said, im still firmly a jopper but i try to ignore most of their storyline in season 3. i’m glad they turned hopper into his more gentle self in s4. i think they worked together as a team in the same way they did before and their kiss felt earned after years and years. now let’s hope they don’t feel the need to mess with them next season.

my problem with jopper in s3:

first off, i’ve been a jopper soldier since day 1, i was seeing their potential since the first scene they ever shared and are in my top 2 stranger things ships. and that’s why i absolutely hated their arc in season 3. prepare for an essay.

hopper and joyce’s bond was so different from every other couple in this show because of their age. the teens and kids have angst and miscommunication because they’re hormonal and most ships are people getting to know each other. jopper doesn’t have that. they’re old friends who have known each other for decades. they came of age, grew up, built their own families and in the end life dealt them a bad hand. they’re hardened by life but within all that bitterness and resentment they feel they have a soft spot for each other. and they don’t need to put up a façade because they appreciate each other for who they are and trust each other the way two soldiers at war do. the trust that you only develop with years of knowing someone.

but come season 3 and the writers are finally going for the jopper relationship in a romantic way and and think that the only way to sell it is through belligerent sexual tension. and i love that trope, i love it when people fight instead of admitting their feelings. but that’s not jopper. i get that their dynamic gets a little more complicated when feelings are involved but we didn’t need to see them acting like teenagers to understand that they like each other. their build up was already there. they have always been a great team and all of a sudden we throw away two seasons of love and understanding for cheap jokes.

season 4 kinda salvaged their relationship by having them come back to that tenderness and trust from earlier seasons but tbh i did lose some love for them because of s3. i’m still rooting for a happy ending for the hopper-byers family but i wish s3 had been completely different for them.

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my problem with jopper in s3:

first off, i’ve been a jopper soldier since day 1, i was seeing their potential since the first scene they ever shared and are in my top 2 stranger things ships. and that’s why i absolutely hated their arc in season 3. prepare for an essay.

hopper and joyce’s bond was so different from every other couple in this show because of their age. the teens and kids have angst and miscommunication because they’re hormonal and most ships are people getting to know each other. jopper doesn’t have that. they’re old friends who have known each other for decades. they came of age, grew up, built their own families and in the end life dealt them a bad hand. they’re hardened by life but within all that bitterness and resentment they feel they have a soft spot for each other. and they don’t need to put up a façade because they appreciate each other for who they are and trust each other the way two soldiers at war do. the trust that you only develop with years of knowing someone.

but come season 3 and the writers are finally going for the jopper relationship in a romantic way and and think that the only way to sell it is through belligerent sexual tension. and i love that trope, i love it when people fight instead of admitting their feelings. but that’s not jopper. i get that their dynamic gets a little more complicated when feelings are involved but we didn’t need to see them acting like teenagers to understand that they like each other. their build up was already there. they have always been a great team and all of a sudden we throw away two seasons of love and understanding for cheap jokes.

season 4 kinda salvaged their relationship by having them come back to that tenderness and trust from earlier seasons but tbh i did lose some love for them because of s3. i’m still rooting for a happy ending for the hopper-byers family but i wish s3 had been completely different for them.

#in s1 and s2 it felt like such a lived in relationship #these people have seen each other at their worst and are still there for each other #leave the fighting to the teens #i also miss how tender he was with her kids #anyways i’m still a jopper girlie #stranger things meta #jopper #jim hopper #joyce byers

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it speaks volumes of this fandom’s media literacy that the conversation around jonathan is focused on him not being “worthy” of nancy and how she should drop him because he’s a bad boyfriend instead of the fact that he’s clearly going through a crisis and is depressed.

jonathan hasn’t always been like this and the show has made it very clear that he’s basically spiraling and pushing people away so it baffles me that everyone is ok with his character arc being him starting the show off as a loner with trust issues who slowly starts to let people in and to follow his aspirations only to go back to being a loner with one (1) friend who will essentially give up on his aspirations.

maybe him and nancy will break up but that’s not even the main point. the main point is that so many people seem ok with letting him drift away when as far as i know he’s one of the good guys, so why aren’t y’all rooting for him to get out of this rough patch the way you are rooting for the other characters??? i know it’s mainly the writers’ fault for sidelining him so maybe people don’t have a lot of reasons to care at this point, but still, you think the endgame for him is being back to square one???

#y’all seem so ok with an ending where he abandons his dreams to make up for the home his dad left broken #and like i said maybe him and nancy will break up #but even then you don’t want him to get out of this cycle?? #jonathan byers #stranger things #meta #jancy

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THIS IS IT, this is the love triangle summed up. I’ve never bought the argument that Nancy would take Steve back if she just saw how much he grew because she fully dated reformed Steve™️ (but pre-babysitter Steve™️) for a year. We’re talking, monster-hunting, monster-fighting, life-risking Steve. He wasn’t perfect but he was caring and loved her and guess what??? She still couldn’t love him, at least not the way he did.

I might eat my words next season but Steve could take a bullet for each character in the show and a Nancy still wouldn’t love him that way because that’s not how love works. Meanwhile Jonathan spent an entire year avoiding her and she still couldn’t shake him off her mind. The minute they reunited she felt drawn to him and it happened once again in s4. From her pov Jonathan was emotionally distant while Steve was right there and the minute he set foot on Hawkins she was drawn to him once again even if things are awkward. You can’t earn someone’s love and I don’t even think Steve is trying to earn it. There’s no “intention” to his kind-heartedness, he’s just like that. But that’s not what wins Nancy’s heart because no one is winning it through merits. It’s a matter of feeling a connection.

Said this on twitter and you know what? People here are gonna have to look at it too

#stranger things #meta #nancy wheeler #steve harrington #jonathan byers #jancy #stancy

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this x1000 because they not only sidelined the byers again but they also made a left turn in nancy’s character that will be very difficult to fix and might just make her get more hate than she already does. at this point nancy has made three choices regarding this love triangle. she has chosen steve while having tension with jonathan, then chosen jonathan, then chosen jonathan again but now with tension with steve. the first two times it’s a regular love triangle where she backtracks the first choice she made because her heart was not in it. it’s messy but also what teens do so we don’t give her a lot of flack. but s4 turned her from a normal teenager who learned about emotional intelligence to a girl that’s basically flip-flopping and whose eyes start wandering when she’s not getting the attention she wants.

and if that’s the characterization they’re going for, go ahead!! i love it when characters have those kind of very human flaws, if nancy is indecisive by nature i’m all for it being one of her character flaws. but the show doesn’t seem to be self-aware of that element. it doesn’t come off as the script letting us know more about her but as them just adding some poorly justified drama. i don’t need nancy to be a saint, i appreciate her for her character flaws, but right now it doesn’t seem as a way to make her three-dimensional, she just feels like a pawn to get more social media interaction 😪

maybe s5 will prove me wrong and whatever the outcome is it will feel organic and justified, but rn i don’t have a lot of faith.

I HATE how Stranger Things season 4 made the conflict between Nancy and Jonathan dishonesty and a love triangle and not a continuation of their more complex conversation/argument in season 3 that was just settled with a simple sorry from Jonathan and nothing from Nancy since she got a pep-talk from her mom instead.

Season 3 spends so much time emphasizing how this small town is dying due to the mall coming in. We’re shown shops closed down and people protesting out in front of the mayors office after losing their jobs. All of Joyce and Hoppers earlier scenes together show us the store she works at is struggling to get by, the sale signs and discount pricing just to get people to come into the store. It’s emphasized again that the Byers/Joyce are struggling later when Hopper reveals Joyce is going to sell the house. It’s implied she’s doing that to escape the history they’ve experienced there (should’ve been a thought after season 1 happened…), but it can also be implied through these other elements that if her store closes down too she’ll be out of work, how will she support her family with no job?

That’s where elements of Jonathan’s story through the season picks up. Because he lands that newspaper internship along with Nancy, taking pictures for the paper. He’s mostly shown in the developing room, alone and just doing his own thing until Nancy comes in and tells him to come along.

Jonathan got a lot of flack from this season because the older men who work at this place are assholes, they’re sexist and awful and look down on Nancy ‘cause she’s a woman and an intern, not a reporter. She hates it but also not enough to quit because she wants to prove herself, and even after she’s told to let it go she doesn’t care even if it leads to getting fired because she’ll just move on to the next thing. She states all this to Jonathan who wants to support Nancy (hence why he goes with her every time) but is also cautious because he doesn’t want to get fired, losing his job while in the background his mom’s work is crumbling would be hard for their family (Jonathan wanting to help out financially is how season 1 started…)

Their entire argument boiled down to the fact that Nancy didn’t feel fully supported or trusted in her intuition that ended up being correct, while Jonathan felt Nancy didn’t consider him in regards to losing work, and therefore money, and how that effects both of them differently. Because Nancy ended up right it was Jonathan who apologized and the matter was over by the end of the season, but Nancy went on to have a whole conversation with her mom where she literally starts it with “maybe he has a point” because he DID have a point. But at no point in the rest of the series do we see them even talk about that argument from either side. But it was actually one worth diving into more? 

Because fundamentally that’s at the heart of the issue for Jonathan at the start of season 4. No idea what happened to Jonathan’s dream to go to NYU but based on what we’re give Jonathan and Nancy originally wanted to go to the same school, but it’s the school Nancy wanted to go to, but Jonathan ended up applying for other options, specifically the local CC. Why the local CC? For starters it keeps him close to his family, and secondly community college is cheaper. Do we even think for a second the Byers have any savings for Jonathan to go to college? Do we think he worked long enough at any of his past jobs to earn enough for college? Do we think Joyce makes enough money currently to afford to help him go to college? I think the answer to all of these questions is no. At this point he’d have to get a scholarship to even attend. Did he get one to the college him and Nancy applied to? To any other college? We don’t have that information.

I think the only thinking that was skewed was this idea that if he told her this truth, that he can’t or doesn’t want to attend the school she chose, she would want to attend CC with him and “throw away her dreams” but since they haven’t even talked he doesn’t know what she actually would choose to do. It’s obvious long distance is hard, hell that’s true for real life couples, but college is only 4 years, it’s a matter of whether or not they would make it work, or make different choices. They don’t necessarily have to go to the same school, it’s just better for their relationship, and they don’t necessarily have to break up if they choose different schools, they just have to be willing to work out the details of communication and making time for the other when they can. 

But it really boils down to two major things; 1: Jonathan is always going to prioritize his family, the last thing he wants is to abandon his mom and brother (and now sister too) and be a fuck up like his dad. Thanks childhood trauma! And 2. Finances/money/class. The Byers are poor, hell they’re still poor even in s4, Owens gave them that house to protect El, all of the money Hopper had was for El that was put into savings, Joyce went from a single mom of 2 to a single mom of 3! El literally wears clothes she gets from Joyce and Will, and we’ve seen that Joyce even wears clothes Jonathan has worn, so basically they’re a family of hand-me-downs. That has been showcased through all 4 seasons. We see Jonathan needs rides from Argyle ‘cause his car broke down and they couldn’t afford to get it fixed, etc. 

These are things Nancy just does not, nor can she truly understand because her family and financial upbringing and circumstances are much better. Her family is so well off her mom has been a stay-at-home mother their entire lives, they live in a two-story house, their family of 5 is well taken care of.

But that’s where I get the most annoyed because she COULD if they just let these two characters TALK to one another about literally anything for the last 2 fucking seasons. But the Duffers refuse, and by the time they might talk in season 5 it’ll be too damn late because the series is over. Robbing them of what could have been an actually interesting display of how two characters in love overcome these types of conflicts based on aspects of each of them that aren’t bad or wrong, just different. Nancy’s not bad because she’s from a wealthier more stable family just as Jonathan isn’t for being poor and from a less stable family. Nancy isn’t wrong for being ambitious, just like Jonathan isn’t wrong to want to support his family. Nancy shouldn’t have to put up with sexist bullshit or be held back, just like Jonathan shouldn’t be disrespected or devalued for prioritizing money when living through poverty. 

But no, we got a season of a love triangle instead :) very good, wonderful writing :) just *chef’s kiss*

#nancy wheeler #steve harrington #jonathan byers #jancy #stancy #meta #stranger things

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Been thinking about succ character "thesis statements" and it occurred to me that "Don't make me choose, Shiv, it's a man's right not to choose" and "I took the wrong drugs in the wrong order and I can't get happy" are in fact intimately connected... You've never been able to choose because that involves making a sacrifice and you're afraid to do that. If you'd just taken one drug it might've made you happy but you couldn't choose so you took all of them and together they made you miserable. You wanted to have a happy loving marriage and you wanted to have a successful and illustrious career, and when it turned out those two things might be at odds with each other instead of making a choice you tried to play both sides. You told your fiance that you "iced out her dad" right before giving him a thumbs up from across the room. You supported the vote of no confidence but not enough to stand up for anyone when it all went wrong. You agreed to deliver your wife's message of dissent to her father but you were so afraid of the fallout that you had to warn him in advance that you didn't mean it. Your wife is making some really good points but also you jive with Delgado. You're going to prison because you love your wife but also because you want to gain brownie points with her dad. Which one is the real motive? Do you even know? Does it matter? Shiv would be a great interim CEO but so would Gerri and Roman, you're not sure you could really pick one. You'll support your wife's bid for CEO behind closed doors but you won't go to bat for her with Logan. You don't want your wife to tell you about the man she slept with but you're upset it took her ten days to tell you. You hedge your bets and make compromises and now your marriage is falling apart and you might be the scapegoat for your company's crimes, but it can't be your fault. You didn't do anything. You didn't make any choices, so why are you suffering consequences?

You meet this dumb kid and you want to hold power over him because he's technically a Roy and you're sick of feeling small and powerless, but also you want to be his father and you want him to look up to you, but also you want to be his friend and you want him to love you. You want him to love you but you also want him to respect you, so you mock him and yell at him and put him down and then you take him out to dinner and buy him nice expensive things and make him feel important. You make him dependent on you so that he has to stay because you can't let him leave, but also you want him to want to stay and you get upset when the things you do to keep him here make him want to go. You tell him that you'd castrate him and marry him in a heartbeat and then you go and try to have an intimate conversation with your wife. You kiss him on the forehead and then make fun of him at a party. You tell him you'll take care of him and then you try to scapegoat him for your crimes. You could stop lording power over him but then he might not stay, you could stop doing nice things for him but then he might not love you anymore, so you do both and you settle for the unsatisfying mix of love and loathing you get in return, and you get upset when he's happy because you're supposed to be happy. Maybe if you hadn't tried to love him you'd have his respect and that would make you happy. Maybe if you'd let him freely choose you instead of keeping your foot on the back of his neck he would actually love you and then maybe you'd be happy. But now you'll never actually know because you've made him who he is and you've defined this relationship a certain way and it's far too late to go back and change that.

And then one day it all catches up to you and now you have to choose. Your wife and her father are about to go head-to-head and now you absolutely have to pick a side. To do nothing is to pick one side, and to do something is to pick another. And the truth is this is a choice you could have made a long, long time ago, and maybe if you had made that choice a long time ago the cost of the decision would have been a lot cheaper than it is now. Maybe you could have chosen your career and spared yourself the heartbreak of your slowly dying marriage, or maybe you could have chosen your marriage and avoided the soul-crushing agony of your career, but now you've suffered both and only half of it is going to pay off. And because you've waited so long the victory is only half of what it could be; if you choose your wife now she's not likely to forget all the times you chose Logan, and if you choose Logan now you may curry favour but Logan historically has a long memory. Will he really respect you the way he would have if you'd chosen him all along? Will he really trust you?

And if you have to make a choice, then so does Greg - except you can't really let him make the choice. You need him to come with you because you need a consolation prize so you put him down again and remind him of what he owes you, and then when he agrees you consider that to be love. And maybe it is love. It could be love. But can you ever really be sure, when you were trying so hard to not give him the chance to leave? He's not your partner he's your Gregweiler, he's your attack dog, and you're going to have to keep him on a leash and you know by now that a dog can't love you the way that a person can because the dog doesn't have any choice but to love you. Maybe if you'd actually given him that choice way back when you first met he would've chosen you and now you could be happy, but it's too late now and this is what you're going to have to settle for.

And even still. You make the choice but you still need to try and have it all. You throw your wife down the stairs and then you walk down to the bottom of the stairs and try to comfort her. You hope that she didn't see you do what you did because actually, you do still want to have it all. You've made a choice but you don't want to suffer the consequences of that choice. You've spent your entire life making compromises and settling for the lukewarm results of those compromises and maybe you can do it again. You've never really taken a risk because you've always hedged your bets enough to make it work for you, and you'd really prefer not to start now. But it's too late because you made the choice and she knows you made the choice, and the consequences are coming whether you like it or not. Are you ready for them?

#thanks for wrecking me #succession meta #tom wambsgans #shiv roy #greg hirsch