#Dalia writes

[oreganosbaby]

I love how by s3, when we get to "Romey time," it becomes so nakedly about getting a Kiss From Daddy. Roman gets Gerri to be (interim) ceo instead of himself and he's mainly preoccupied with monopolizing his dad's affection. His whole arc with Gerri starts because he asks her how he can get his dad to take him seriously, not how can he advance his position (lol). Kenny and Shiv have it in their head that they can surpass their father, but Roman sees his father as god. Roman could never become CEO and he'd be okay with it as long as his dad doesn't reject him. He has no "For fuck's sake dad, just tell them it's gonna be me!" sort of moment because he (correctly) never thought it would be him. He never resented his dad enough to want to surpass him— to kill God. He may be upset or hurt by his dad, but he doesn't feel wronged or tricked in the way Kenny and Shiv do. His delusion was never about his place in the hiearchy, but about the nature of his father's love.

#dalia writes #succ sesh #roman roy #i mean ppl probably said this a billion times but whatever

[oreganosbaby]

everyone's always ready to draw comparisons btwn logan and roman, but not caroline and roman. they're both so passive, but can stab the knife in the right place on the first try. for all their emotional constipation, they can read people well, tell them exactly what they would hate to hear and it won't even be a total lie. in a group setting, they're whole deal is just hanging back and making snarky or rude comments, but never actively contributing an opinion. that would mean taking responsibility for yourself, taking things seriously. the major difference is that despite having deep disgust and contempt for most, roman genuinely enjoys people and would like to keep the few he's close to because he loves them and it's hard for him to trust others easily. caroline is far more of a loner and is fine with having a revolving door of shallow relationships. people are around purely for her amusement. roman and tabs dated almost as a bit, like to fuck with tom, but there's a genuine fondness and emotional connection there. caroline would also date someone as a bit like that, but that affection shit would definitely not be there, at least not on her part.

#succ sesh #caroline collingwood #roman roy #dalia writes

[oreganosbaby]

Roman having no particular interests or hobbies makes sense actually. Firstly, it makes it easier to just become a hallow shell for Logan’s use. Secondly, i think that for a person so irony poisoned and nihilistic, everything is a joke, so he can’t take anything seriously enough to be passionate in a genuine way. Doing so would be lame and performing passion is even worse ‘cause that’s like, soyface try-hard shit.

#dalia writes #succ sesh #succession #roman roy

[oreganosbaby]

being a manic pixie dream girl is a genetic trait bc Julia passed that down to John.

#dalia writes

[oreganosbaby]

i love calling fully grown white men moe. kendall, roman, tom, greg, connor? all moe to me like anime girls. i could list off their moe points. i want a gacha game with cards of them. if we knew when their birthdays were i would buy cakes and feed them to their picture on a screen like a waifu date. i would have all their figurines there too because ideally, they would have figurines.

#dalia writes #succ sesh

[oreganosbaby]

succession s4 subplot: roman tries to convince jeryd to make abortion legal so the siblings cud somehow get kerry to abort the baby.

#dalia writes #succ sesh

[oreganosbaby]

ppl act like 1971 john was absolutely awful as if they do not want a bitter and pretentious trotskyist boygirlfriend.

#dalia writes

[oreganosbaby]

I think What It Takes shows how compared to Shiv and Connor, Roman is significantly more nihlistic. Since Logan is too, it works in his favour. Connor running for president as a fringe libertarian Republican shows he has some kind of desire to change things beyond his immediate circle. He's the most sincere of the Roy siblings even in his delusions. Shiv shows earnest (at least to some extent) concern about the power of the far right in America, but that kind of shit isn't what Logan goes for. She comes off to the others as an annoying sanctimonious liberal wonk pulling for the moderate Republican of Colour. Shiv thought she could work this out due to her political consultant background, but it seems she misunderstood what the point of this was. She was never gonna be able to get a moderate in unless he was extremely charismatic and entertaining. Roman, who isn't into politics, has few real beliefs and is indifferent to the consequences, can get what makes Mencken great for ATN. He knows the viewer demographic is a lot of racists (e.g. Ravenhead fans), that the current president is old and dumb, and that Mencken is young, charismatic and passionate. Shiv and Connor had their own goals that interfered with Logan's, but for Roman, it's only abt winning. He could see that this was all about finding a guy who would essentially be a TV star and for that, he got a "You did well this weekend, son," from his father.

#dalia writes #succ sesh #succession meta #hbo succession #sincerity and shit is weird in succession but i think it's important #also roman is very obviously the most irony poisoned of them all #that doesn't mean he's insincere tho rather the lines btwn sincerity and insincerity are very muddled #roman roy #shiv roy #connor roy #logan roy #succession #jeryd mencken

[oreganosbaby]

I think with Logan you can seperate respect, love and liking, so i think he loves all his kids, but whether he likes or respects them is another thing. Logan's abilities to respect others, especially his kids are a bit limited, so if Logan respects one of his kids, it's not gonna look like what a normal person thinks respect is.

I think that he loves and likes Shiv the most, but has no respect for her because she's a girl and shouldn't be able to overpower him. He likes it when she's in his corner and can get on his wavelength, but their differences sometimes make this difficult and ultimately strain this aspect.

As the heir apparent, he used to respect Kendall the most, but now he doesn't. I think his disapointment in Kendall causes him to dislike him and it undermines the one potential point of bonding they have: work. I think he finds it hard to understand Kendall because he's so emotionally intense.

I think that Logan didn't respect or like Roman for probably most of his life. Roman was closer to his mother and couldn't bond with him in a way that would make Logan like him. I think Logan does have a unique sense of pity for him occasionally, but that's it. It might be because he still sees Roman as a child or similarly helpless. In S3, he was begining to respect him, even liking at times. He appreciated Roman's loyalty and that he could get on his wavelength, but after the dick pic, Logan reverted back to not liking or respecting him.

I don't think he likes or respects Connor. He may have liked him a bit before the divorce, but not after. I'm not sure if he even pities him the way he does with Roman. He probably loves him the least as well. He's part of the past to him— a very real reminder of something that he wishes were made up.

#dalia writes #succ sesh #succession meta #shiv roy #kendall roy #connor roy #roman roy #logan roy

[oreganosbaby]

if he weren't groomed to take over the company, Kendall wud probably go down the Harvard Lampoon to SNL pipeline to write sketches that no one except the other lampoon failsons think are funny.

#dalia writes #succ sesh #kendall roy #succession #like god he wants to do comedy so bad and it's so embarassing

[oreganosbaby]

I guess the bathroom is the perfect room to associate with Roman. It's both clean (sacred/purity) and dirty (profane/corrupted). There's a privacy and intimacy in there, but it's not the kind of room you can relax and linger in (unless there is literally a bath, but that's more Kendalls thing). Get off and eat the shame for desert or rather, take a shit and wash your hands. I know other characters have their Bathroom Moments, but it's just very prominent with Roman. In the context of business meetings and negotiations, it's good because of the intimacy. It makes the other person more vulnerable and they're more likely to give if they feel closer or like they need to posture less. It's what leads Roman to suggest that they have a "thing." Of course, Roman doesn't give much and it's mostly half-truths or straight up bullshit, but he has a way of making things seem fun. He doesn't deal in formalities and jokes around a lot. It's disarming and makes him seem more trustworthy. By contrast, Shiv is usually too closed off and you can tell she's trying to do power moves. It's either intimidating or desperate. The one time she really seemed to do well in this regard is with that witness/victim during the cruise hearing. Similarly, Kendall is quite obvious in his attempts at power moves and does come off as desperate. Unlike Shiv, he obviously isn't half as confident and rarely, if ever, comes off as intimidating.

#dalia writes #succ sesh #succession meta #is that what im doing? what im doing is talking out my ass #roman roy #shiv roy #kendall roy #succession

[oreganosbaby]

finding out jesse armstrong was abt to make a movie abt the Beatles/Apple corp. and and then a while later hearing abt this new john lennon biopic by the guy who made bohemian rhaposdy...... sad. jesse armstrong wud not be afraid to pull punches and show the beatles at their most pathetic, vulnerable and disgusting!

#dalia writes

[oreganosbaby]

roman's so the obvious target for the gay rumors, but ken's the biggest tabloid/gossip magnet for sure. 2000s ken with his messy cokewhore moments on tmz every week. you wish you could see it. ofc this makes him the most famous one and therefore the one who has the widest variety of gossip topics. roman would just get like multiple blind items written about him on cdan (especially in his Hollywood era) abt either him having Sex Issues With Women or flirting with men and then like a rumor might be entertained in a tabloid once a year or so. shiv always comes across as put-together at first, so i think she wouldn't attract much tabloid attention. that comedian called her "the nice one" and she's the family confirmed lib. she's also a political consultant or whatever, so i feel like she'd try extra hard to keep a low profile. there'd only be real gossip about her in shit that covers like New York society and all that. it'd probably be shit abt who she's seeing and just her being kind of a bitch to people. otherwise, she'd probably be portrayed as the successdaughter to her brothers' failsons which y'know... lol. connor probably used to get mild tabloid coverage when he was younger, but now less so. it was exciting and kinda funny when everyone saw Logan's son turn out to be some kind of hippie freak with a ponytail, but now he's like 50 and lives on a ranch in New Mexico. no one's schlepping their ass out there just to see him do what? hyperdecant his wine? no lol

#need to see kenny in a von dutch hat #succ sesh #dalia writes #kendall roy #roman roy #shiv roy #connor roy

[oreganosbaby]

I'm thinking about Roman at military school and it's interesting how military culture overlaps with the workplace culture at Waystar Royco and generally, how Logan raised his kids. I guess it's well known tho, that sometimes the upper echelons of the business and finance world could have these aspects bc the guys who work there used to be in all-male university clubs and stuff. It's really just the extremes of homosocial group culture— all hiearchies, conformity and competition. The abuse and bullying is excused because of loyalty to the group, respect for hiearchy and the idea that suffering makes you stronger. Going back to Succession, you can see this behaviour in Tom with the human furniture and then with Boar on the Floor. Both are punishments that involve (somewhat) public humiliation and dehumanisation (NRPI). I also think the reason for there being witnesses to these punishments is to make an example of them and/or to have them be complicit in the abuse. This method of binding people through their complicitness in abuse is something we see with the cruise cases of course. In the Season 2 finale, Gerri likens the process of choosing a sacrifice to Soviet show trials with Logan's inner circle being members of the politburo. It's a fairly accurate analogy except that Stalin didn't have his own children in the politburo. This makes it so that Logan blurs the lines between his family and his employees. It instills fear in his children that like his employees, he thinks they are unstrustworthy and that they too can be disposed of. At the same time, he expects them to be willing to sacrifice themselves for the company and by extension, their father who sees the company as synonymous with himself.

#dalia writes #succ sesh #succession meta #logan roy #succession #I'm talking out my ass kind of but still #its interesting that logan was so disatisfied with roman that he sent him to military school to do what he thinks he failed to do

[oreganosbaby]

that one pq2 convo where ryuji and yosuke talk abt their ideal dates is kinda interesting and in-character. ryuji's a really casual, rough around the edges kinda guy. he's moreso guided by his emotions rather than actual concious thought, so i can see why he'd pick the ramen place. he likes going for ramen and he wants to show that to his date in hopes that his date will like it too. if they don't, then that's just smth they don't have in common. it's rly that simple. Yosuke, on the other hand, is very neurotic and desperate to impress. He thinks Ryuji's idea is bad bc it's not "what girls like." Yosuke is trying to think about what his date wants rather than what he wants because he thinks the way to get ppl to like him is to do what they want. Ironically, given the amount of detail Yosuke put into his date concept, I reckon that it's more Yosuke projecting his own desires onto his hypothetical date. It's basically an extremely corny movie scene and this is kind of exemplary of Yosuke's childlishly romantic tendencies; it shows how he wants to live a life worthy of a protagonist in a movie bc Yosuke's understanding of what a good life is supposed to be is (partly) frm popular media.

#dalia writes #p4 #p5 #yosuke hanamura #ryuji sakamoto #theyre both dumb bc their ideas arent mutually exclusive and if anything they're compatible bc u get to walk off the ramen

[oreganosbaby]

I'm thinking about the sore spots that the Roys tend to exploit in each other.

Connor: His mother and not being included/respected in the family, especially by his siblings who he feels like he raised to some extent.

Shiv: Her womanhood or more specifically, being reminded of the fact that she isn't exempt from misogyny no matter how hard she tries to avoid it or overcome it.

Kendall: His drug addiction, mental illness, failures in both family and career, complicitness in his father's misdeeds/being like his father in a bad way and the manslaughter incident.

Roman: His psychosexual issues, genuine and open affection for his parents (particularly for his mother), and percieved lack of intelligence or seriousness.

Logan: His waining health/inevitable death, most things about his past and that he's a shit father, or rather that he failed his children.

It's interesting that Shiv only has one thing, but i think it encapsulates a lot. It's such an easy thing to pick at because it's not hard to see that it upsets her and it's something that is so common in a lot of other women. With Shiv specifically, I think it's something that contributes to her need to be taken seriously. By reducing her to just her gender, it shows that they don't think she has any other qualities, that she's not a real person. I would imagine that growing up in this household being raised by a right wing media magnate, she'd witness ample misogyny directed at others from Logan, his colleagues and her brothers. It would be so frustrating and painful to think or wonder whether her own family genuinely sees her the same way. I also think Shiv believes in meritocracy more than any of them. She feels she works hard to prove herself to be strong, powerful and intelligent, but the way sexism puts her in a rock and a hard place means she can't really win. If she can't win, that just makes her a loser by default and in the Roy family, there's nothing worse than being a loser.

#dalia writes #shiv roy #succession meta #succ sesh #i didn't mean for this to turn into a shiv analysis but.... 😑 #i love her... my emotionally constipated queen