i think about the royjamie hug in 2x08 every day

Tom's line about Shiv being selfish and "find[ing] it very hard to think about me" is actually so telling because while it's absolutely true that she rarely takes his position into consideration, Tom never once thinks about what he can do to help Shiv unless it also benefits him.

Every single time he makes a move or sacrifice that might help her, it's always something that he thinks will give him a leg up. He volunteers to take the fall for cruises, not for Shiv, who is in no way implicated, or even for Waystar, but because he thinks it'll ingratiate him to Logan, and the second it seems like he might have to actually follow through on that, he immediately tries to get out of it and even throws Shiv under the bus. Meanwhile, for all that Shiv disregards his interests, there are a number of things she does that only help him, and she's the one who actually sacrifices something and undermines her position with Logan to beg him not to let Tom go to jail.

It just makes it so clear that no matter how much he might love her (and I think he does, in his own compromised way), for him their relationship was always built on the underlying assumption that it's her job to prop him up, but it's not his job to help her.

I still think I can get Stewy.

3.04: Lion in the Meadow.

The first time Jamie stays over at Roy’s, they haven’t been together long, if you could call whatever it is that they have going on ‘together’ — it’s more like a series, a hotchpotch of bad decisions, Jamie pushing Roy, Roy pushing back, but then accidentally pushing so hard that Jamie falls into the nearest bed and, because he refuses to let Roy one-up him, manages to take Roy with him.

And sometimes they push and shove near a toilet stall. Or an alleyway. Or an empty supply closet. There’d even been that time where they happened to be right next to the door of the boot room, and it was one of the rare moments Will fucking Kitman hadn’t been in there already.

Needless to say, it feels very much like crossing some relationship-threshold when Roy rasps, “Yours or mine?” against the warm skin of Jamie’s throat and Jamie whines out, “Yours.”

It’s not, but it feels more damning than the boot room — definitely more personal, more involved — but still Roy takes him, and when it’s over, Jamie mouthing lazily at his shoulder, sated and sleepy, he doesn’t send him on his way like he knows he should, like he has all those times before.

In the morning, he’s torn from his sleep by a raucous clatter and a sharp gasp. He’s up and rushing to the ensuite before he’s even aware of his wakefulness. But instead of the gory scene he expects, what greets him is a perfectly safe Jamie, clutching a shampoo bottle and some of the shampoo splattered across the floor.

“Fuck’s going on?” Roy snaps, bracing a hand on the doorframe before stretching his leg, soothing the ache that’d started in his knee from his hurry.

Jamie waves the shampoo bottle at him. “You’ve actually got a decent product!”

He thinks he should feel more offended by Jamie’s shock than he does — really, all he feels is something like fond exasperation rising in his chest, up to his throat, threatening to choke him if he lingers on it for too long.

“Yeah,” he finally says slowly, as if speaking to a small child, “I’ve got to take care of my hair, don’t I?” What he doesn’t say is that he learnt that the hard way, but what Jamie doesn’t know won’t hurt him. (But Roy kind of wants to tell him anyway. But he won’t.)

Jamie pauses, looks between him and the bottle a couple times, before nodding. “Good, good,” he sets the shampoo back into the shower, “thought I’d have to teach you.”

Roy stares at him for another second, eyes narrowed, before he pivots and walks away, leaving Jamie to continue his apparent inspection. “Fuck you, Tartt!”

He ignores Jamie’s cheery, “Already done that, haven’t you?” And if his heart squeezes in his chest at the thought of more mornings like this — a fucking lifetime of mornings like this — well, that’s only for him to know.

reading lobdell's writing is really confirming that I would take a thousand runs where jason is portrayed as the amoral incarnation of the devil even from age 12 over a single one where he's robbed of his intelligence and hypercompetence. any fucking day.

can't stop thinking about characters who are dogs. like characters who bark and growl. who bite the hands that feed them and that get mean when they're nervous like bad dogs, who can't help gnawing at a good thing until it bleeds. characters who are loyal and possessive and protective but reckless and feral and rabid. characters who wanna sit at the feet of their owners and characters that can't stop losing. characters who are kicked like strays and put in cages. characters who are muzzled and loud and obedient and mean. characters who are just foaming at the mouth for love and attention, characters who are hungry and savage. characters who are just. dogs.

no hate to people who are into that shit but I just saw a post that was like "how the succession characters would react to you having a panic attack", and um. well. they would do absolutely nothing

you ever think about when shiv said i hate you to lukas he said "you can't hate me you don't know me well enough" but when roman said i hate you to lukas he just took it. yeah

one reason I really wish we got to see the royjamiekeeley ot3 was so we could see Keeley fall in love with this new version of Jamie. She’s a large part of the reason he learns to trust others and be more kind and open. you can see it in all the ways she smiles at him in s3 that her heart was so full to see him finally be the best version of himself, jumping at the chance to help him when Roy asks. there’s such a pure connection between them that I wish we got to see come to fruition

I’m gonna try to explain this best I can please bear with me. But. I find it fascinating that tom usually gets grouped in with betty draper, carmela soprano, skyler white etc and shiv with their spouses (who are the critically acclaimed toxic male protagonists) because of their characterizations. I get that. but the audience reception of betty carmela skyler and SHIV are more similar (misogyny/people who can’t handle when female characters have flaws and are complex) while tom is getting praised and loved left and right like walter, don and tony (“oh my goddddd this complex deep male character and his angst and psyche yaaassss!!!!”)

It's 100% true that the Roy siblings did not choose to be Logan's children and Tom and Greg and the old guard did choose to work for him so their relationships to Logan are fundamentally different, and the degree of culpability they bear for their own moral degradation is also wildly different. But workplace emotional abuse is also very real and omnipresent in the way Logan treats the people who work for him. And one of the impacts of workplace emotional abuse is creating an extreme attachment to the abuser and becoming less cognizant and even defensive of their abuse towards yourself and others, and in cases where the emotional abuse is institutionalized and systemic it can also create a strong aversion to leaving because your whole sense of personal identity becomes wrapped up in the organization and so being forced to leave can cause an intense psychological crisis. I don't think the situation of working for Logan is at all equivalent to being his child but I also think that it's a bit misguided to imply that Tom and Gerri and Frank and Karl are operating from a place of pure rationality without any undue psychological influences when they make the choice to stay with and support Logan

connor is uninvolved with the company in comparison to his siblings, sure - he doesn't work there (though apparently he feels it's a back up option for him anytime he needs it - or he feels it should be anyways - based on him asking for a job in early s3 to help his campaign) and he has definitively opted out of the family power struggles over being heir. but he's also massively financially tied up in the company; he's a major shareholder and he is frustrated he wasn't told about the merger of equals because of how it will impact him. he rats the other kids out to logan in 1x04 and 4x02 when he realizes they're making moves against their father. and while his siblings don't feel obligated to keep him in the loop, i also don't know if they realize when they talk rather openly in front of connor in 4x02 about the sale he's going to go straight to logan to tattle. connor wants to act like he's completely divorced from waystar and neutral third party in the ongoing family conflict, but he really very much is not.

The thing that really kills me about Logan is that his kids are disappointing and ultimately unfit to be CEO, and it's not just that they're like that because he made them like that, but that they're like that because he wants them to be that way.

For all his talk about them being spoiled or coddled and his rant in the S3 finale that getting cut out of running Waystar is their chance to "be your own man" and build something themselves, he has spent the entire show actively undermining any attempt of theirs to do that. Shiv stays out and works in politics, but as soon as she joins a big campaign that could actually distinguish her from her family, he tells her he wants to make her CEO. He offers to buy Kendall out of his shares, but as soon as Kendall tries to take the offer and cut himself out, he refuses. He says he wants them out of the business and doing their own thing, and then as soon as they start actually doing that and buy Pierce, he tries to get Roman back.

The fact of the matter is that as much as he might claim to want a "real" heir, what he really wants is to never need one and for his children to stay children: incomplete, incapable, and under his thumb.

everyone talks about the fear of a legit tomgreg betrayal in s4 but like. greg's got a pretty solid track record of needing the promise of someone who could love him (in whatever way) on the other side anytime he's ever "left" tom. kendall, comfry, the duchess, etc.

only way i see it happening is if tom winds up taking several steps back into the deep part of his closet AND if directly after, greg faces the promise of someone playing sugar daddy to him more overtly than tom ever has. even then i'm sure they'll fix it in the next episode

what do you think would be the best way for the pregnancy to be handled? pure personal opinion

hmmm i'm honestly not sure, especially given that this season is rumored to just take place over a span of ten days, each episode spanning a day. but i'm gonna go unpopular opinion here and say i would be pretty fucking disappointed if it's just, like, an immediate abortion??? like idk what tv yall are watching but i feel like abortion plotlines are a fucking dime a dozen these days and maybe like one in every ten is anything approaching 'empowering,' even though all ten are framed that way. i think abortion vs pregnancy is often framed as a, like, sophie's choice for women -- do you choose to be a person or do you choose to be a woman? -- and it honestly just reinforces the exact same dichotomies they're claiming to break in my opinion. not every abortion narrative but, like... too many of them. so i'm wary lol

rest under the cut cuz it got soooooo fucking long!!

it's the same as with Strong Female Characters: it's not actually a well-written, empowering female character if her 'strength' is dependent on her complete and total rejection of her identity as a woman and every trait associated with it. we've created these, like, anti-feminine career women girlboss warriors whatever as a balm to the terrible hyperfeminized mother-before-all-else classic caricature of womanhood, but tbh, both narratives are equally harmful -- they're not only both still reinforcing the same dichotomy of, like, family/love/emotion/empathy/interdependence etc vs self/respect/rationality/intelligence/independence, but even reinforcing the valuing of the latter (the 'masculine' traits) over the former! by defining strong female characters as those who reject femininity, you're literally just reinforcing the idea that 'femininity' and 'feminine traits' are bad, weak, etc -- the only 'empowering' thing is that hey! women who act like men can be respected! except not really and they'll always be viewed as a woman anyways!

kind of got off topic but, like, that's often what abortion plotlines come down to in my experience -- housewife or career woman? man or woman? and i'm just fucking sick of it, man. like, it's one thing, obviously, for the world of a show and the characters inhabiting it to enforce these views and be judgmental etc etc etc, but it's so frequently driving the writing and narrative itself. i think that abortion plotlines can be good, but honestly? usually only when the character in question genuinely has no desire whatsoever to have kids, like diane in bojack horseman. because if a character is unsure, what typically happens is they'll get bullied into a specific outcome, and it's then framed as 'empowering' and about 'the right to choose.' if a career-driven woman maybe wants to have a baby but gets an abortion because she knows it'll ruin her career, that's not empowering! that's so fucking sad! why are we calling that empowering! that's just as tragic as having a kid because you fear the ostracization you'll receive if you abort! so. i don't know. i think abortion plotlines are really hard to do well because they always just end up oversimplifying everything and turning it into proof of how Strong the woman who got the abortion is -- like, sometimes strength is not getting the abortion. it's not like being a mother actually makes you weaker or lesser. so why do so many of the shows who claim to criticize that notion end up perpetuating it?

i think there's a lot of really fucking interesting stuff that could be done with shiv's pregnancy, and honestly? most of it isn't even fucking related to what happens with her pregnancy. it's just using that as a vehicle to explore layers of her character that we haven't been able to before, largely because she's been so vehemently obsessed with obscuring them. i've been wanting to delve deeper into shiv's relationship with her gender, with caroline, with gerri, with notions of femininity, etc etc etc for YEARS and this is the perfect fucking opportunity. i want to know what shiv actually wants. who she actually is, beneath the 'hypermasculine' veneer she's had to adopt to even be allowed in the room, let alone respected. like does she actually want children, does she actually want a family? has she only been against it out of fear for her career? or is it genuinely something she desires? how much of her relationship with gender is rooted in spite? who is she outside of that spite, and how far will she go to achieve it? will she have a kid to prove to caroline (but really to herself because caroline doesn't actually give a fuck she's gallivanting in europe with peter munion) that she can be a good mother? what does she even think motherhood should look like? does shiv want to be seen as a woman? does she want to be seen as a man who happens to be in a woman's body? does she want to be seen as a man? like, there are so many fucking interesting avenues to explore, and i mean, she's not gonna fucking have the kid in ten days. i hope they actually make the most of the opportunity this could present -- with the exception of, like, one scene, we've only ever gotten to know shiv through her relationships with the men around her. we literally know nothing about what she is outside of roy masculinity. is there anything outside roy masculinity? does she even want there to be? honestly, i've been a little frustrated in past seasons with how surface level a lot of the shiv stuff has been -- the others get so much internal depth, whereas shiv's characterization has largely been reactionary. like, she's usually just reacting to things people (read: men) have done to her. we know so fucking little about her life before the show! she has the potential to be like kim wexler level if they dig into her more and part of that is digging into her relationship with her gender because, like it or not, she fucking IS THE GIRL. like, that's her defining fucking feature: being The Girl. so let's dissect that!!

i know this was such a long rambling, like, non-answer lol but basically i guess i don't actually care what the outcome is of the pregnancy arc so long as it's handled with care -- so long as it's used as a means to explore the shiv we already know, rather than creating a new problem to understand instead. i think an abortion plotline is the riskiest because they're so frequently done poorly, i have no idea how a miscarriage would go but i do think there are interesting ways it could be done, and i can't imagine shiv actually being a mom but i think there's a lot to unpack with shiv even just considering motherhood. idk what the end outcome will be, but as long as the pregnancy plotline is used to expand upon shiv rather than punish her for her femininity or make some grand moral claim about The Correct Way To Be A Strong Woman, i think i won't be too upset. and i have faith that it'll be decent, honestly. this show -- both the writers and snook herself -- cares too much about shiv to do her that dirty. ....i hope.

I feel greedy asking for more when you’ve already posted so many snippets, but if you’re okay with it…🌧️

🌧️Share something angsty from your WIP.

The pasta hit the water with a satisfying sizzle. Even though it'd been two years since Roy had been personally victimized by a meal plan, the novelty of eating pasta was one he'd learned to treasure. He turned down the heat. As the bubbles dispersed, the sound of Jamie's voice again picked up from the living room, where from the sound of it Matilda's parents owned quite a nice house. Roy snorted as Jamie pitched his voice higher. He was really going for it now, trying to sell the dialogue of the little girl and landing somewhere in the vicinity of Rebecca Welton with a sore throat: "'I don't see how sawdust can help you to sell second-hand cars, Daddy.'" The next voice was gruff, sloped lower as if it were stolen from Roy's own vocal chords, "'That's because-'" The voice ground to a halt. Roy opened his eyes curiously. Before him, the water simmered in a contented roil. From the living room, the rustling of someone adjusting themselves on the couch. Jamie cleared his throat, and it was uncomfortable, strangled sound. "You alright there, Phoebe?" "I'm fine," Phoebe answered. A question mark lingered under her words. "We can keep going." "Right. Right," Jamie agreed. He cleared his throat again. Coughed. When he picked back up, his voice was flat and matter-of-fact: "'That's because you're an ignorant little twit.'" He stopped again, or Roy thought he did. It was hard to tell over the sudden ringing in his ears. "Matilda's dad's a bit of a prick, ain't he, Phoebe?" "He's awful," Phoebe agreed eagerly. "Didn't you see the movie?"