#like her choice in regards to gojo is one of the meatiest most harrowing bits of character work i've ever seen

[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)

#'what about shiv' if i think about shiv i'm going to kill myself. she needs her own post. there's too much there to get into. #anyways seeing a tremendous amount of At Least Roman Is Free <3 tags that have me going. right. for sure. free from what? #because it's certainly not the intense amount of self disgust that has driven him in circles this entire time. #i fear he may feel the weight of alienation on his soul for the rest of his life. and he won't even try to alleviate it anymore. #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 #which i feel is a very toothless perspective on shiv and the psychological torment that's been weighing on her essentially since birth #like her choice in regards to gojo is one of the meatiest most harrowing bits of character work i've ever seen #and while of course there was love inside that action (because nothing these characters do is entirely divorced from love) #i don't think it was necessarily a kind or forgiving or sacrificial love #like this was an intense vitriolic snapping from a dog that has been kicked by her dad all her life. #and who absolutely refuses to accept that from her brother (because that would mean acknowledging that kendall takes the mantle of Dad- #and that she's subservient to him. which is the one thing she absolutely will never do #because it's a level of degradation that's finally a step too far) #anyways. um. insane season that i still can't look at directly or i'll perish on the spot. #succession