looking at the 'midseason trailer' and seeing roman fighting his siblings, roman shitting on gerri, roman working for fascists, roman walking proudly through ATN like logan did just two days prior... it's not surprising, but it is fucking sad.
logan's death will not free roman. instead, it will reforge the chains he's worn all his life, casting them in iron -- that's what roman deserves for thinking, for the first time in his life, that maybe he wants the chains off. that's what roman deserves for killing his father by not loving him enough, by not loving him correctly or at the right times. logan's death will not free roman at all. if anything, it will imprison him.
(as always, this got very long, so keep reading under the cut!)
this was the worst case scenario for roman. not just logan dying, but the exact way everything played out. he betrayed his siblings, he fired gerri -- for nothing. he could have been on the plane with his father in his last moments -- he refused. his last interaction with his father was leaving logan a voice message that called him a cunt -- the first time roman has ever, ever, questioned or stood up to his father, and also the last. we don't know what killed logan. we probably never will. but god if it won't feel awfully coincidental to roman: the one time he fought back against his father or even showed the slightest hint of doing so, his father died. is it likely that logan heard roman's voice memo and keeled over because he called him a cunt? no. but is it just as possible as anything else? entirely. roman might have killed his dad. roman murdered logan when he could've been on the plane with him holding his hand, if he were a good son. he didn't even tell logan he loved him. not that he needed to, it fucking oozed from his every pore and the desperate nature of that love was one of the reasons logan could never quite stand him -- but that's not the point. roman's one attempt at agency, at setting boundaries, at standing up for himself killed his fucking father.
logan dying would never have been good for roman, at least in his current state, no matter how the actual death came to pass. people often talk about abusive relationships as if the end-all-be-all fixer to abuse is independence, and it's not. independence isn't always enough to heal, especially not when it's forced upon you rather than something you choose. this is especially true for roman, i think. what roman needed was not just to gain his own independence, but to realize that independence and love are not mutually exclusive, that gaining one does not mean losing the other. logan's always hammered in roman's weakness, his wrongness; roman was never someone who deserved to be loved on his own terms. roman's never considered himself to be someone with agency and authority in his relationships -- he's been told over and over again that he isn't a real person, that there's something deeply wrong and unfixable in him, and he believes it. he's never set boundaries with his father or even his siblings because i don't think he really realizes he has the power to do that. he's simply there until people decide they no longer have use for him or want him around, and he'll always come crawling back after a kick because he doesn't realize he's not on a leash -- that he doesn't need to be on a leash. independence has been unreachable all his life, he isn't normal or real enough to be a real normal independent capable person, but if he grovels and shows his use enough, then maybe he can be loved. but his dependence and loyalty is all he's good for. independence means no love, no family, no relationships. and roman desperately wants, needs, those relationships in a way that none of the other characters do (or at least can admit to) -- he wants his father in his life, no matter what; he wants his siblings in his life, no matter what. but independence, being his own person, separating himself from logan's side means he'd lose everything else, everyone else. he's not good for anything anyways. it's not like he has other options.
...until the start of season four. that's why this is all so tragic -- more than anyone else, it seemed like roman was on the road to healing. it seemed like he was finally realizing that independence and love might not be as mutually exclusive as he's been made to think: maybe he could be independent while still having a relationship with his siblings and even his father. maybe he could have his cake and eat it too. he's realized that he's capable, that he has his own worth, and that he can be successful without living under logan's thumb -- and, more importantly, could still text him on his birthday and try to rebuild a relationship, this time outside of business. outside of "that room" in waystar royco. an actual fucking family relationship. that's what escaping the cycle would look like for roman — not complete separation, not a metaphorical killing of his father, but the ability to live alongside him, to have a life outside of him, to love his father without living for him. so simply removing logan from the equation wouldn’t help roman, not when what he needs most is to realize that self-respect is not mutually exclusive with love, that being your own person isn’t a betrayal, that family and love aren’t dependent on how low you can kneel and won’t be whisked away the moment you stand up. and for the first time in his life, it seemed like he was on track to discovering this. maybe he and the siblings could have the hundred, logan could keep going with atn, and in a few years down the line they'd all get together to talk shop and joke around and coexist -- for the first time, he had started to think of himself as enough of a real, okay person to be allowed to coexist with his family, rather than naturally subordinating himself in every interaction.
roman could’ve been his own person, could’ve escaped the cycle, could’ve started a business with his siblings and tried to heal, but now he won’t. he can’t. roman can’t become his own person now, not when his first attempt to do so is exactly what killed logan. it’s his fault. he fucked up and now there’s no dad. he gained his independence, but at what cost? love. that’s the cost. it always has been and always will be. nothing could be more detrimental to roman roy than the exact series of events that occurred in this episode, because just as he started to see a world beyond his father, logan dies -- proving once and for all that the only world beyond logan is one without him in it at all. that’s been roman’s fear all along and why he’s stuck so close to his side: roman loves and loves and loves and is terrified, terrified, of death. of loss. but in a moment of 'weakness,' roman wobbled (he tried to stand up to logan rather than just taking the kicks as he's supposed to, as he always has), and his father paid the ultimate price. there’s no more dad. there’s no reviving him.
…unless, of course, there is. unless roman can undo his error by choosing his father again, and again, and again. becoming logan is the closest roman can get to resurrecting him, after all. and besides, doesn’t he owe it to dad after killing him? after calling him a cunt, choosing not to be with him on that plane he ended up dying on? after forgetting to even say “i love you dad” before the end? roman needs to fix things. needs to make it like dad's still here. needs to make it like he didn't kill his own father by refusing him for the first time in his life. so roman will be the firebreather logan wanted -- he'll do ATN, he'll push for mencken, he'll do whatever it fucking takes to try and make things right. if it's his fault logan's no longer here, then he needs to do everything he possibly can to fulfill his dying wishes, to do what logan would've done, were he alive.
"dad can't die, he's dad." he can't ever die. he's immortal, and his immortality was solidified by the circumstances of his death -- logan will not die. he’ll live on in roman, as roman.
Sorry for Succ discoursing on main, but Succ isn’t saying that queerness is decadent bourgeois degeneracy just because it’s implied of amoral wealthy characters. It’s actually one of the few points where the audience can sympathize with the Roy siblings, and reading the characters through that lens deepens understandings of them because their emotionally and physically abusive father is so homophobic (and the characters who knew them as children did nothing to intervene on their behalf).Â
Roman’s alleged affair with his male trainer was brought up by Gerri in s2 and Shiv in s3, and that relationship, whatever it may have been, and the fact that something is “wrong” with him, are framed as threats to him and the family, and are constantly weaponized against him or used to belittle him.
With Kendall, there’s whatever went on with Stewy, and also the cruising subtext with the waiter: their conversation sounds like a pick-up, they get into a car, and then “Uptown Girl” plays, which is arguably about both the waiter and Kendall, and Tom and Shiv. The idea of a pick-up is bolstered by the fact that the waiter also took Greg home with him the previous night. The fandom likes to joke about Logan being like, “Fellas, is it gay to kill someone in a car crash?,” but yes, of course it is! Logan asking if Kendall tried to fuck Andrew Dodds wasn’t out of nowhere. If Dodds was a waitress, even if nothing happened, people would be like, oh, the mistress? It’s the classic fiction trope of a powerful rich man’s partyboy lifestyle killing a disposable working class lover, and it happens in real life as well! This was assumed to be the case in the fictional Myrtle Wilson’s death (though it wasn’t), and also in the death of the real Mary Jo Kopechne, which inspired this plot line. There’s additional weight to Logan holding the waiter’s death over Kendall’s head because there’s the implicit threat of Logan outing Kendall in addition to everything else.
[content warning: discussion of fascism and mention of Nazism]
The fascist minor character Jeryd Mencken (played by Justin Kirk, best known for his lead role as Prior Walter in HBO’s Angels in America miniseries) isn’t gay-coded just to make him seem more villainous. Rather, he embodies the idea that homoeroticism is almost an inevitability (unintentional, of course) of hypermasculine homosocial spaces like politics and business, and also of his fascist ideology. Fascism is inherently misogynist and homophobic, but by glorifying a specific masculine ideal (body types, facial features, behaviors, style, professions, etc.), prioritizing male-male relationships in workplaces and leisure activities (friendships, business partnerships, friendly or unfriendly rivalries, uni drinking buddies, etc.), and relegating women into subservient roles at home in the domestic sphere, it creates homosocial spaces that also become accidentally homoerotic. (Jack Halberstam has written about how gay iconography of virile masculinity and homosociality paralleled Nazi iconography. Similarly, monuments erected under Mussolini’s regime, most notably at Foro Italico, also glorified ideals of virile masculinity.) Business and politics are similarly mostly homosocial (and women, if they even make their way into such spaces, have to perform “masculinity” in specific ways and “femininity” in others for even a modicum of respect). Roman, who expresses interest in fascism, has business dealings in men’s bathrooms, in what is either a conscious or subconscious manner of excluding Shiv. It’s also no coincidence that these meetings also have connotations of bathroom hookups. (Tangential but important to note: rich and powerful far-right men who experience same-gender desire or engage in same-gender sexual encounters may consider themselves above proletariat notions of sexuality (see the Roy Cohn clout speech in Angels in America).) There is a distinction here between queer-coding an unambiguously evil fascist to make him more villainous (which Succ is NOT doing), and having homoeroticism be an accidental byproduct of being in a misogynist homosocial environment reinforced by a similarly misogynist homosocial ideology.
Mirandy commissions this month !! they all made my very very very soft
last one is a scene from not everyone: “ Miranda Priestly, head of the world’s fashion empire was currently stalking backwards and forwards in her boxy apartment, clad in a pair of Prada heels, light stockings, a high waisted Oscar de la Renta skirt, and then nothing but her bra. “ for @theofficeghey
oh, man. he never even liked me. hey, sorry. you know what? i'm sorry. i'm sorry. i don't even know what i mean. he did. he did. i just - i never got the chance to make him proud of me. he's dead.
they were all a bunch of jerks!!! a bunch of pretentious ass jerks and i hate the ending of the movie so much because even if she didn’t stay at Runway crawling back to her bf and her stupid friends was the real defeat there. why was it such a crime for her to realize there’s more to fashion/fashion journalism than she previously thought and begin to mesh well with the fashion world on the basis of embracing it through her talents as an aspiring journalist? it hurts to even say because i really like all three of the actors (Tracy Thoms is amazing and the guy friend, not the boyfriend, is a recurring role on Elementary that I love) but the way it was written to make andy the bad guy just makes them look like a bunch of assholes.Â
a true friend and ally on the other hand? stanley tucci’s nigel!
he never once told andy what she wanted to hear, but what she NEEDED to hear. and his monologue about the importance of runway to a young closeted boy is second only to miranda priestley’s verbal pimpslap a la cerulean. he got my girl andy all the way together with the quickness and when she finally decided to put in the effort he pulled out all the stops and had her looking couture as fuck. and later he empathized with her personal life (HER GOD DAMN FRIENDS AGAIN) going up in flames and even correctly deduced that it was because her professional life was so on point
And apparently the happy ending is her getting back with him and presumably moving to Boston for HIS job. Because you know, chefs never have long unpredictable hours. But that’s okay because he’s a man and men are allowed to want careers.
okay but do people realize that Andy did choose Miranda over Nate? like she went to Paris. it was ANDY who told Nate that they should go on a break. and then it was ANDY that picked up Miranda’s call right after. Nate even said himself that the person that Andy answers calls to is the relationship she’s in. and i know he meant that in a “you’re chained to your job way” but it goes way beyond that. the only reason that she ended up quitting for good was because of her anger over Nigel getting snubbed. but at the end of the day Andy still chose Miranda over Nate in every possible way
by the end of the movie Andy had completely and emotionally outgrew her stagnant petty boyfriend who was jealous of her success in an industry that he doesn’t respect due to his own internalized misogyny and that is a canon fact
titsay
stormborns
gummygunk
