#the complexity

[paperclips37]

I am a Frank Langdon apologist.

I love him your honour.

[spirit-pyrite]

Good fellow! My good fellow! Have you considered the complexity today? Yes, yes! I know well of your arguments and your theories on this, our most controversial topics, but my good fellow! Have you considered the complexity? Have you considered it? PLEASE?

[thetardigrape]

Me after my first OFMD watch: lol this little angry gremlin man with a pain kink is fucking hilarious, suck it bro, you lost

Me now: I WILL PROTECT THIS POOR LITTLE MEOW MEOW WITH MY ENTIRE BEING

[pynkhues]

i've just finished succession based on you talking about it and omfg that ending. do you think the 'you're not a killer' line directly inspired kendall's actions?

Oh my gosh, anon!! I am absolutely delighted by you watching it, and also yessssssss, that s2 ending is wildly earned and so shocking at the same time, I was a mess the first time I saw it and it's lived rent free in my head ever since.

Yeah! I definitely think Logan telling Kendall he's not a killer inspired that last coup.

One of the things I really love about this show is that nothing's ever one thing – there's so much history, so much complexity, so much nuance to every sequence, scene, beat – and what it creates is this sense that scenes are in conversation with one another. They're pushing forwards at the same time they're harking back; and in that sense, the scene with Logan and Kendall before that moment means a million things, but I think nothing so much as I love you, but I don't see you.

I think Season 2 walks this incredible line of balancing all the ways Logan genuinely loves Kendall, but also uses and manipulates him. He's really protecting Kendall throughout the season, but he's also using that protection as leverage to protect himself and to control Kendall. He shortens the leash so much that it chafes, but at the same time, he worries about him, and tries to give him structure, is empathetic to what Kendall needs, tries, in his own way, to love him.

The power dynamic leans entirely back in Logan's favour, and the brief glimmers of life we see in Kendall are not when it comes to himself, but when it comes to others. He leaps between Logan and Roman when Logan hits him, he connects with Naomi, he, most importantly, thinks they should be accountable for the deaths on the cruises.

The last of which is, of course, tied to Kendall's guilt from the season one finale, but it also feeds into a raw, bare-minimum morality that Kendall's had since the first season (not wanting his date to feel pressured in 1.04 being the clearest example). Kendall's goals have, at the heart of them, always been pretty simple. He wants to build something good off his father's legacy, but it's the weight of that legacy and the baggage of family history that drags him down.

For most of s2 though, Kendall isn't trying to do that. He's in survival mode; slipping close to his father's protective warmth for the winter, and he loses himself to that for most of it, but love isn't being seen necessarily, and love isn't respect.

Logan telling Kendall he's not a killer isn't just about diminishing who Kendall is, but about diminishing what he did. Kendall is a killer. He committed vehicular manslaughter; something Logan's been protecting him for the entire season, and so those words aren't just about not seeing Kendall as a businessman, they're about not seeing the whole him as a person. He doesn't embrace Kendall, he chooses what's relevant to him and his needs, and he loves that.

To add further weight to that injury, killer takes on an extra meaning again as a type of businessman, one Kendall's been trying to be since 1.01, and Logan tells him he's not, but then, worse, doubts the very idea.

You're not a killer. You have to be a killer. But, nowadays, maybe you don't. I don't know. OK? Are we good? Are you good?

Logan doesn't even know what the job requires anymore, and he admits that, but in the process of that, he admits that whatever he might think the job entails, Kendall doesn't have the capacity to do it.

Logan doesn't see Kendall as his successor, at least not then, and in the process of that, I think we see this complex relationship that Logan has with Kendall. He can't love and respect him at the same time. Naomi was right – Logan loves the broken Kendall – he loves the child, the wounded bird, the one who does as he's told, when he's told, and so he creates situations that make Kendall that, and then brings him close. At the same time, Logan can't respect Kendall when he's like this.

As Roman says way back in s1, he'll only ever respect Kendall if he tries to kill him.

I think in that moment, in that conversation, Kendall knew all of that to be true. He felt his father unsee him, he felt his father unsee the boy he killed (NRPI, RIP Soph), he felt exactly the way his father loved him, and he decided that it wasn't enough.

In the moment, Kendall was seen, he was accountable, while also being able to parse some of the judgement for his own actions back onto his father, which further perpetuates this dynamic of toxicity and oh god, it is just so rich, I love it a whole lot.

[alittlewarlord]

I just read dawnshard in one session and holy FUCK bro

the whole last chapter I was just sitting there completely shell shocked and thinking "IVE CONNECTED THE DOTS." and I just kept getting blown away by how incredibly complex the cosmere is

[millertastic]

I have to stop watching Seinfeld, It’s melting my brain.

[forepop]

THE WAY SHINEE’S MUSIC HITS DIFFERENTLY THRU GOOD HEADPHONES