Details from the leaving montage that probably mean nothing? But also
Every girl is seen by a window—except for Misty, the only non-YJ girl (and Travis/Javi, who obviously are their own kind of outsiders)
Natalie is the only one to be looking OUT of the window—and the one dressed in the famous purple shirt
Laura Lee’s window offers warm, bright light; Lottie’s window is enormous, but shuttered with blinds
Van and Taissa are the only ones with actual lines (arguably the two least likely to speak freely with their teammates)
Taissa’s the only one to have a remotely healthy interaction with her parents, foreshadowing her obsession with a Picture Perfect Family Structure
Shauna starts in the attic
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◁ || ▷
Frances: You have it together. Any problem I’ve had, quickly resolved with a bit of advice. You always have a solution. What could possibly stress you out?
Icarus: A lot of things, actually.
Frances: Like what? A dog swallowed its chew toy again? Or a horse has fallen and it can’t get up?
Icarus: Is that all I’m reduced to?
Frances: Oh god, no, I-
Icarus: I’m sorry. I could have worded that differently.
Frances: Don’t apologize to me. What I said was cruel. I’m really sorry, that was so out of pocket.
Icarus: … You’re sorry?
Frances: Very. As I’m sure you’re aware, I can be a bit much sometimes. I know I can be insensitive and I’m working on it… [ mumbles ] Yet here I am, doing it again. To you.
Icarus: Frances-
Frances: Don’t try to downplay it, I crossed a boundary this time and I am so sorry. I recognize you’re a person as well, with feelings.
Icarus: …
Frances: Icarus…? Please say something.
Icarus: I’m sorry, I’m a bit taken back.
Frances: I said something wrong, didn’t I?
Icarus: [ shakes head ] No! No, lately a genuine apology is difficult to come by.
Frances: Well... I just think you deserve better.
Winona: Sooo… What’s going on here?
Icarus: Winona!
Winona: [ snorts ] Wait til grandma hears about this.
Icarus: Please go away.
[ clears throat ] Anyways… The piece you played-
Frances: [ flustered ] Yeah total shit I know!
Icarus: Jesus Frances! I was gonna say let’s have you play it again so we can refine it.
Frances: TRUE! I have this idea… What if I added a little vibrato?
Icarus: What’s that?
Frances: OH MY GOD, we studied this!
Icarus: I told you! Musically inept!!
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it's easy to read the situation between li tongguang, ruyi, and yuanzhou as a love triangle on a superficial level, but looking even one step further, it's clear that there's no triangle about it. li tongguang is obsessed with ren xin; ning yuanzhou is devoted to ren ruyi. ltg's obsession is fervent and all consuming, but it's not devotion. like ruyi herself notes, his feelings to her are on the basis of her as a mother figure in his life, as a replacement for what he never received from his mother. is there an element of romantic/sexual love/desire to it? maybe. more likely he's deluded himself into thinking that, because the truth is, it's doubtful that ltg even understands what love is (platonic, filial, familial, romantic, all of the above, etc), because he has no basis for understanding. ruyi's teachings and actions towards him are the closest thing he has to hold up as an example. what he wants is ren xin, is a replica of the master he had. he doesn't want ruyi, because he doesn't actually care about ruyi. therefore, he doesn't care if she's sad, angry, mad; he just can't bear her 'abandoning' him. we saw this way back when she first meet and left him, both at thirteen and seventeen. although he distrusts her first, she saves his life and cares for him in the way no one else has, hence her first being raised on a platform in his mind. when she leaves for good, ending their master-disciple relationship/training, even though it's for official business and she's not abandoning him, in his mind that's exactly what it is. so now that she's in his life again, he won't let her leave again. he was powerless before, a child with no proper name, but now he's a recognized member of the imperial family, a man who can meet her as 'equals' (even when that's far from the truth). as a child, he could only cling to her legs and beg her, but now he has the power to keep her by his side. it's telling that when he finally gets confirmation of her identity, it's not ning yuanzhou he seeks to harm (even though he detests him and their relationship), but yang ying. yang ying is ruyi's new disciple, and as ltg doesn't know she's a woman, he only sees her as his direct replacement.
ning yuanzhou, on the other hand, is devoted to ruyi. he wants to build a new life and future with her, instead of slotting her into a spot in the life he already has. he's someone who accompanies her on walks and makes her midnight snacks, who holds her when she needs to be held and lets her go when she needs to do things on her own. when she speaks her mind, he listens, even when it makes him discontent/it's not what he wanted/wants to hear. he sees her unabashedly as his equal, and though he acknowledges her skills and abilities, or points out her naivety, he never does it to belittle her; to him, she is his peer, deserving of the highest honor and respect. he trusts her to have his back, and she has come to trust him to have her. he did what she might have thought no man would ever do: he proved himself reliable, so she came to rely on him. yuanzhou gives her freedom and autonomy as both ren ruyi and ren xin. of course they run into problems, but they both learn and grow from them, as individuals and as a couple. yuanzhou's belief in her is unwavering, but adaptable, whereas ltg's is unwavering, but frozen in time, disallowing for any new information to be presented. yuanzhou works with ruyi to accept the changes thrown her way; he seeks the core behind her actions in order to better understand her. li tongguang cannot accept the changes in ruyi's character, because they run contrary to the master he has on a pedestal in his mind.
what li tongguang wants is to return to the past, but yuanzhou offers ruyi the promise of a future, even one that might never come to fruition. there's no triangle about it.
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how do you think the roy kids were in college? shiv’s dancing in 3x07, connor not seeing logan for multiple years, kendall the “king” of the lampoon, and roman being sent to military school all give such bizarre setups for their college years
I mean, y’know. Messy, on all fronts, hahaha.
Interestingly, Kendall’s the only one we actually know for a fact went to college at all (and did postgrad at that), but I do suspect all four of them went with varying degrees of success and levels of study. In a lot of ways, I feel like it probably contributed to the divide between them that’s being emphasised this season – the one that positions Kendall and Shiv as the unabused overachievers, and Roman and Connor as the abused and neglected underachievers – it’s a bullshit perception obviously, and one that only really seems to be felt fully by Kendall and Shiv.
After all, Roman and Connor aren’t underachievers, at least no more than the rest of them, and Kendall and Shiv aren’t unabused, but I do think this divide has contributed to the ways that they likely navigated the college experience.
Kendall & Shiv
With the way Kendall and Shiv seem to view each other as intellectual equals (I always find it kind of fascinating that their attacks of each other usually boil down to Kendall’s addiction and mental health and Shiv’s gender and inexperience in business as opposed to attacks on intelligence, which they both level at Roman and Connor), I do feel they probably have similar degrees of education, which makes me think that Shiv did postgrad too. I think she would’ve deliberately not gone to Harvard, since Kendall went there, but I do think she would’ve gone to an on-par Ivy League school, and I do think it’s pretty likely that she did political science given her career trajectory at the start of the show and her academic political knowledge in 3.06.
In a lot of ways, I do think Kendall and Shiv are mirrors of each other, so I do think they probably engaged similarly at school. I think they both probably partied harder than they should’ve, that they coasted on their assumed intelligence as the ‘smart’ siblings until they fucked something up and the shame of that likely had them either working hard or cheating, and I think they both did a lot of extra curriculars to pad their resume. I don’t think either of them would know what to do in a team sport, but we know Kendall worked in distribution for the Lampoon (one of my favourite jokes on this show will always be him equating working operationally for it as meaning he was default funny), and I imagine Shiv would’ve scoffed at that and differentiated herself by working like - - editorial at Yale Daily News or something. Something she thought their dad would respect (which I actually do think he would’ve liked, but I don’t think he would’ve respected, because at the end of the day, he’s never respected any of his children, but especially not Shiv).
I think they both probably had messy college hook ups and experimented more than they’d ever actually admit, and I think they’d both absolutely feel they were the little prince and little princess of their respective campuses. Something to front annoyance at, but secretly relish in the security and familiarity of, and - - yeah. I think college probably felt safe for both of them. Far enough away from their father to feel like they had freedom, while still close enough to feel protected (and leashed), and I think they both probably did well enough to enjoy coming home for their gold stars and their pats on the head, just as I think they both probably spun out when they realised Logan was never going to be the father who gave gold stars or pats on the head (if they just do better though, y’know, maybe - - )
Connor
I’ve looong had the headcanon that Connor went but never graduated.
I kinda feel like he would’ve bounced around a bit? If he was 15 when Kendall was born, and if Logan had snatched him back up at that point (which I do kinda suspect he would have), he was likely in college when Roman and Shiv were born. I can see him potentially trying to stay closer to the family as a result of that, especially if he had already bonded with Kendall who would’ve been, what? Three? When he went to college? So he might’ve started off at a university in England, or been content to be away in the States during the semesters (especially if his mother was still alive), but spent holidays home with the Roy side of the family.
In that sense, I could see him at somewhere like UCLA? Connor would’ve been in college in the early 1980s, and I think he would’ve been into the college lifestyle of chill parties and a bit of activism here and there, depending on who he liked, and following bands around, but I also think he was a traumatised young man who was torn between feeling like an usurped heir to an empire and a boy forcibly separated from both parents desperately trying to establish himself in an expanding family back home. The fact of that alone I think means his perspective was off, and without the family unit the golden trio find in each other and him, he would’ve been an 18, 19, 20-year-old man trying to figure himself out with siblings so young strangers likely mistook them for his children.
I don’t know how likely it actually would be, but I will say that I kind of like the idea that Connor’s the only one of the four of them who’s kind of good at team sport? He canonically horse rides, so maybe he does polo, haha, but I also kind of like this idea that maybe for a hot minute he was good at football? I like the idea that maybe he briefly was good enough at something Logan valued to form a bond over, and that it maybe fell apart as he was never quite good enough, because god, isn’t that just Connor’s life story?
Roman
In terms of college, I actually find Roman the hardest to pin down? I do think he graduated, just because I don’t think he could’ve handled that level of disappointment from his dad if he hadn’t, but I don’t think he did postgrad. I think he probably went to an Ivy still though? Insider and Wall Street Journal tell me that Brown and Dartmouth are usually ranked lowest of the Ivy’s, so I kinda think he probably went to one of those.
I actually think he probably worked harder than Kendall and Shiv did, at least in his first year there, and maybe even performed better in some classes, but that it wasn’t treated as such because the school ‘wasn’t as good’ and because he was already relegated to the fuck up son slot with Connor, so he just thought fuck it and coasted enough to graduate. I think he probably experimented with the idea of experimenting – that he flirted with people across spectrums and got close to having sex with a few of them (maybe even did with one or two), but that the experiences were uncomfortable enough for him that he never really lost himself to them like Kendall and Shiv did.
I think he made fast friendships that didn’t last, and that was probably because he was torn between his dad and school and I imagine he at this point was also starting to really face the realities of having a brother who was an addict (everything about 1.07 makes me think Roman’s experienced a Kendall overdose before, and timeline-wise, I imagine that would’ve been likely around his college days), his dad and Kendall being two factors he’s canonically protective of when it comes to outsiders, so likely impacted his ability to form friendships and relationships with others.
Yeah, he probably had a token girlfriend or two to save face, but I think in many ways, college probably felt like being sent away again for him as a result of military school (or, well, not military school, given St. Andrews had stopped being one and was instead just an outdoorsy boarding school by the time Roman would’ve gone, and the show’s attention to detail feels too specific for that to not be relevant) in a way that it didn’t for Kendall and Shiv. I don’t think he felt like the prince of his campus, I think he probably tried to get through and do well long enough to get home and give his father something that would make him happy. When he experienced the same dismissal Kendall and Shiv did though, I don’t think he spun out, I just think he probably expected it.
I don’t know though! What do you guys think?
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