Succession 4x03/cause Of Death: Fox News by Tony Hoagland

I found photos of those Pallas Cat kittens born this year and bye I'm deceased

Pat Perry - Millions, 2021

I will be honest guys, the Red portrait of king Charles is gorgeous asdfghjkl

it's a bad portrait. Like. Objectively. It does the opposite of what's intended. It looks like the painter is insulting him. If it was in a contemporary gallery with no context you would see it immediately as the ambivalent criticism of Charles's reign, how he fades into the overwhelming red background as a tiny little figure, small and insignificant, insufficient for the clothes he's wearing. It reminds my of Goya's portraits, how they were so 'realistic' that they ended up making these great figures look pathetic to the viewer. So these are our rulers?

the sheer novelty. the surprise and shock, the kinda cunt it's serving for no reason. I. I love it. It's an incredible portrait by Jonathan Yeo. By the sheer fact that Charles, the man, is impossible to portray as greater than man because he's just such a nothingburger of a dude. So a portrait made to make him look huge and interesting made him be swallowed in red brushstrokes. The butterfly, that reminded me immediately of " we will all laugh at guilded butterflies", draws more attention than him. It looks like an omen. It looks like a warning in all this red. Something is not right here.

This is the best royal portrait ever 10/10

‘You Have Been Weighed, You Have Been Found Wanting’: On Kendall as His Father (Or Not)

This is going to be another long post, so I apologise in advance, but as the world’s premier Kendall Royologist (jk), I had to give my take on where we are after episode four.

I want to start by saying that for me, when it comes down to it, ultimately, none of this is the fault of the Roy kids. For the siblings, whatever happens, wherever they end up, it’s not their fault. They are products of a lifetime of abuse, and I cannot stop having so much compassion (maybe too much, I’ll admit it) for them as they try and survive it, even though they do such heinous things.

I want to talk about Kendall. I say it all the time when it comes to him, but my poor boy. Oh, my poor babe. My heart aches. I spent the entire evening after watching ‘Honeymoon States’ thinking about all the new dark and terrifying avenues that have opened up, and feeling nauseous about it. None of it is satisfying for me, and objectively I don’t even find it to be a glorious, villainous volte-face. I can’t say ‘slay he’s in his villain era’, because it’s so sad to me. It’s just so sad. His behaviour in that episode shows how deeply rooted his trauma is, and how it might actually be an inescapable force. And that’s so sad.

This episode was about the two sides of Kendall. One, true Kendall; and two, the constructed Kendall. Both products of the abuse in different ways. Here they are, contrasted:

It’s so telling that we start and end the episode with these polar opposite moments.

The first, this is the real Kendall. We can see him. So broken, so bereft, so without identity, so lost without the person to whom he was trauma bonded, the person against whom he defined his entire being. What’s going to be easier, confronting that? Or - simply - just going mad? He’s going mad in the Othello and Macbeth sense, befitting for the end of a Shakespearean tragedy. And it’s Logan’s doing, even from beyond the grave. This is what I’m going to talk about in this post.

Kendall wasn’t born a “killer”. It’s not something etched into his soul. It’s something he’s learnt, an unnatural quality that he’s had to develop. When he ‘turns’ at the end of this episode, it’s not “Logan’s DNA showing through after all”. It’s not “he’s in his evil era”. This is a man who is so paralysed by the fear of confronting a life without Logan (due to their trauma bond) that he would prefer to become him as a form of coping, even though it will inevitably kill him.

His smile at the end is not one of liberation, it is the smile of a man who has been utterly psychologically broken.

Yeah, his initials spell ‘KLR’. But this isn’t merely a clumsy way of telling us that he’s a killer. It’s a way of signifying that his identity is so deeply entwined with Logan that he is (or feels as if he is) nothing without him. ‘Logan’ is at the heart of his name - right in the centre. He can’t be free of him, because the chain has been on him since he was named as a baby.

Who knows what was going on in that old man’s head when he edited that letter? I see that the underlined/crossed debate is going to dominate discourse for the week, but I think it’s utterly meaningless.

It does not matter at all what Logan INTENDED to write. It’s what Kendall perceives that counts. La mort de l’auteur, literally.

In that piece of paper, Kendall sees a potential confirmation of everything he ever wanted to hear, and he articulates these desires explicitly to Frank: he needs to believe it was underlined, because that means he was wanted, he was loved, he wasn’t a mistake, he wasn’t a failure.

He pretends to have already known that Logan did sudoku, to kid himself and everyone else into believing that they were close. He’s going mad - like all Shakespearean tragic protagonists are. He’s being driven mad by his need to believe that Logan wanted him.

Personally, I think it was underlined. Not because Kendall was his favourite all along, but because he was the one Logan most wanted to control. The role of CEO is a chain to them, it’s an embodiment of Logan’s hold on them. By dangling it in front of him, Logan can keep Kendall chained and controlled and under his thumb, even after death.

As @kaiyashunyata on Twitter phrased it: it doesn’t matter if Kendall’s name is underlined or crossed out. What matters is the uncertainty of it and how Logan can taunt his children and spark their ruin even after death.

And it’s why capitalism and the family are so intwined, and why it’s admirable that the show does a great job of showing this.

Jeremy Strong articulates this entire dynamic so insightfully and elegantly:

Your father makes you a promise: this is your destiny, this is your birthright. Capitalism promises people the same thing. Both are completely empty and misleading.

But Kendall is so desperate to feel as if his life has meaning, so desperate to know he was loved, that he’s willing to chase the false dream anyway.

Because - ever since childhood - CEO has been held up to all the children (but especially Kendall) as the only thing that gives you worth as a person. And Kendall needs to believe that he has worth in the eyes of his father because, without that, he’s nothing. Or at least he thinks he’s nothing, that’s the impact of a trauma bond.

We know that he’s not nothing. Stewy knows it. Rava knows it. Naomi knows it. His siblings and children know it. But he has been trauma bonded to someone who made his love a rare and valued commodity, and without it, he doesn’t feel like there’s any reason for him to exist at all.

It’s the often repeated metaphor again of Logan’s love as the sun - when you’re in it, you are covered in light and feel invincible. Without it, you are left to die in the dark.

I think that’s why the hug scene is significant but also tragic. It’s the only other time we see Kendall as himself in this episode, and in the company of another person at that. And he only lets it show for a few seconds, before the brave face returns. Stewy is so right when he skeptically perceives Kendall’s run for CEO as “diving into work”. That’s exactly what he’s doing, to avoid confronting the dark realities.

If Stewy’s love could save him, he would be saved already. But only Logan’s love is enough for him.

One of the cruelest things about the will letter is that it makes it so clear that ‘CEO’ is a stand-in for love, approval, acceptance. The kids (well the Strong Dogs at least, Kendall and Shiv) are ready to kill each other over it - days after tenderly holding each other outside Teterboro Airport - because they have been so brainwashed into seeing it as the be all and end all of their entire existences.

Kendall, who loves his baby sister. Who held her hand when she was crying and succumbs to her puppy dog eyes in seconds. Kendall, who is willing - in an instant - to go back to war with Shiv, because that’s all they’ve been taught to do. That’s their purpose. Their reason for life.

And Kendall is severely mentally ill, I think that needs to be made very clear.

Frank sees the danger of it. “You seem so well…” Frank says, and Kendall is for all appearances, for that beautiful bit of time when he’s free of the war.

But of course, despite Frank’s advice and reservations, Kendall can’t help but be drawn back into the war. Because he feels it’s the only way to define his identity now that his trauma bonded abuser isn’t there to do it for him.

And when he blackmails Hugo? When he uses Logan’s style of violent sexual language? This isn’t a new era for him. It’s not villainy. It’s the same Ken we saw at the very start of S1, trying so desperately to ape his father, to be his father, taking ideas right out of Logan’s playbook. But he’ll fail.

And he’ll fail because, at the end of the day, he isn’t Logan.

Kendall manipulates people. He emotionally blackmails Stewy and his siblings (especially Roman). Out of bitterness, he demands that Frank spread lies about two women being sluts and junkies. He withholds important information for his own use later. He threatens to “burn” Greg after showing him kindness. He uses violent sexual language in business settings. He calls the vote of no confidence. He makes the groundbreaking press conference. He goes in aggressive.

These are Logan’s lessons, this is what Logan means when he says “he learnt it from me”. However, they fail. They’ll always fail.

Whatever he does, he’ll never convince.

The sexually violent language is especially interesting, because it never hits the same. Kendall threatens to fuck Lawrence “with a silver dildo”, very similar to the way in which he threatens to use “the strap-on” with Hugo. False penises, artificial implements, unnatural, not part of his body. He threatens to cut Stewy’s dick off, another emasculating act that doesn’t involve him personally penetrating anyone. The only time he physically involves himself in his sexual metaphors is when he viscerally describes giving Lawrence a blowjob.

Like Tom says so succinctly in season three, Kendall is always the one who is going to get fucked.

Kendall isn’t Logan, no matter how much he thinks that achieving that goal will heal him. Kendall wasn’t hardened by poverty, or the suffocating patriarchal norms of the 1940s and 50s. He is sensitive and lonely and emotional and weak and insecure and vulnerable. He is desperate to be none of those things. In trying and failing to be Logan, he’s unwittingly showing who he really is.

But he is a fighter. And that’s the thing Logan always feared. That is the person Logan raised - yes, “the best of all of them”, but also someone with the grit to potentially escape. And that is what was unacceptable and terrifying.

We root for Kendall because we know - we have seen - that he has to ability to break free. We also know, from Chiantishire, that his deepest desire is to be free. To be unchained. To be released from this never-ending cycle of abuse and pain.

We’re terrified of that razor-thin tightrope he walks, because we know that it could (and probably is) going to all go wrong. We’re scared of the prospect that some people are doomed, are beyond help, are beyond saving. As with the best tragic Shakespeare protagonists, we love Kendall, but we know deep down that he can never be free. That is the crushing reality of abuse as a metaphor for capitalism. It’s heartbreaking.

Logan chose Kendall as CEO not because he was his ‘favourite’, but because Kendall was the one he most wanted to control. CEO is the perfect means by which to keep him chained, controlled and enthralled to the empty dream, even from beyond the grave.

For Logan, and for capitalism as a whole, to love is to control.

Henry’s a perfectionist, I mean, really-really kind of inhuman — very brilliant, very erratic and enigmatic. He’s a stiff, cold person, Machiavellian, ascetic and he’s made himself what he is by sheer strength of will. His aspiration is to be this Platonic creature of pure rationality and that’s why he’s attracted to the Classics, and particularly to the Greeks — all those high, cold ideas of beauty and perfection.

shout out to everyone who participated in the january-february mass depressive episode

I read this too often

Raspberry Gummies

We arrived during the opener’s last song: lopsided indie rock. The backyard venue was buzzing with people I had never met, save for an oasis of familiarity near the middle which Tessa and I latched onto like a life raft—–rescued by smiling faces and friendliness. Eva, Aidan, Emily, Emilie… usual candied dynamics in a fun-sized portion.

We soon decided to both have another gummy––Are you feeling anything yet?

The sun slid steadily towards the earth­­––warm pink light clipping the top of the house––while an ambient glow trickled through the not-quite-blossoming branches of the Sakura tree to blanket us all in spring. A lull in the performance lineup left space for socialization. I finally learned the name of a person who I’d seen three times before on campus (all coincidences, and two of which was them complimenting me on my sweater), which I now know to be Sonia. I congregated with the band who was my reason for coming in the first place: Aidan, Micah, Isaac, Josh––when are you playing? will there be time? are you excited?

By the time the next band started I was feeling comfortable, things were a bit funnier than usual but otherwise I knew where I was. I was struck by the quality of the music; it was as if a professional rock and roll band had stumbled in from the alley in a drunken stupor, and had decided that the only way they would feel at home was by terraforming the unknown environment through the purity of their sound. The singer and lead guitar fancied themselves comedians, pausing between songs to tell stories and laugh at the crowd. One of the tracks featured a slow building lead-in to the chorus, where the singer led everyone to crouch down in a hushed conspiracy of anticipation; and all the while the drummer kept the beat pumping with a head-splitting veracity. The release into frenzy with everyone jumping up in unison was just as electrifying as you’d imagine. I realized during those bridges that drummers are the most moving musicians to watch; no other shows the life-and-death drama of their craft more clearly­––in every moment the body battles its physical limits with the lifeblood of the song on the line. There is something fatally attractive about it. It was near the end of their set when nighttime established itself over the yard, and it was under this cover of darkness that the gummies sprang their revenge.

Whenever I’m too high I tend to freak out, desperately grasping for continuity with every moment bringing a fresh wave of disorientation. I look at the person beside me singing along with the band, I search in my mind for what I should be doing, I try to copy them. I notice how the muscles of my face are being held, I am too aware of how air is hitting my arm right now. I swallow. It feels weird––my adam’s apple moving with its own agency. Someone catches my eye to the left, a guy around my height, wearing a denim jacket. His hair looks like mine did before I cut it, he nods coolly to the beat. The sporadic flashes of light illuminate his profile so I can see some of his face, and a numb horror washes over me as I realize that he is me. I feel foolish for having thought I was here as a person––no, I am a floating observer, a dreamy film camera here to capture my life from a few months ago. The more I look at myself the clearer this becomes. How strange it is to see yourself as others do––have I always looked that rigid? I’ve usually despised looking at myself in pictures, and while the hatred remained in person at first, it is starting to subside. Seeing myself in motion adds an element of sympathy that I could see people getting used to; a mouse face that announces its self-consciousness through animacy. I wonder what is so special about myself to get a filmic adaptation, but I make sure to frame the shot elegantly nonetheless. My trance begins to intensify, a dolly-zoom spinning sparks of parallax across my vision, when suddenly a hand grabs my shoulder and I whip around to see Tessa with an alarmed look on her face.

She said “what’s going on?” through wholesome giggles, and I immediately fell back into the evening as I previously knew it (back to past tense––thank god!). I told her that I saw another version of myself over there, and about my momentary freakout, and she laughs and I laugh, restorative light-headedness. She questioned me on it further, so I point him out to her, and he still looks exactly like me, but she says she can’t see him (wait wait, back again?). I’m quite a bit taller than her so she can’t see over the people between us and him, I lean over to give her room, and he turns away just as she looks at him. She says she can’t tell: it’s too dark.

We stood there gob-smacked and slack-jawed for a while, talking about how we couldn’t believe how high we were, before giving up on listening to the music and shuffling over to Kat––when did she get here? She was standing with Eva and Emily; we communicated our dismay to them and were met with amusement. Suddenly, in a non sequitur of consciousness, I found myself surprisingly deep into a conversation with Maggie about how her hair was shorter than it was last year, and I did my best to say what a normal human would in that situation. Returning to the druggy solidarity of Tessa and the others, we found enjoyment in saying the things we were thinking and marveling at how ridiculous they sounded out loud. Someone tells me to look down and before I know why or how, my vision becomes nothing but purplish white––an ocean of rods and cones crying out in pain. I exclaim and press my palms into my eyelids, the purple edges of the ocean start to recede and I finally realize that it was a camera flash: someone had taken a group photo from below of us all looking down. I can only imagine how goofy I must have looked. I open my eyes to find Tessa equally pained, waving her hands in front of her eyes––ohmygod ohmygod, and once again we are spurned into inescapable breathless laughter.

I noticed at some point that the bands had switched, now an alternative indie group whose name has slipped my mind. The camera flashes continued their assault on my retinas, but once I got used to them I found the beauty in their spectacle. Along with each one came my own personal snapshot from the moment of the light, a Polaroid negative printed in blue and green over my eyes. A figure with outstretched hands, a paintbrush hair-flip, Josh’s smiling face; a chemical slideshow of jubilation viewable by me and me alone. I felt a rush of gratitude for the magic of my sensory experience, that the illusory system produces beauty even when it is momentarily broken.

The light behind the band was steadily cycling through all the colors of the rainbow, and Tessa and I became transfixed by a pressing scientific discovery. We noticed that the leaves of the tree in the distance became more sharply detailed when the light was near the red end of the spectrum, and murkier on the blue end. I stared at those branches for way too long, riding the marry-go-round of visible light, running my imagination along the tactile crimson buds and stirring the indigo soup. It had been who-knows-how-long before I noticed the music building in the background, keyboard arpeggios dancing higher and higher, tickling my ears. I turned to Tessa to say “wait this sounds amazing!” and she nodded her head enthusiastically—Right?? The singer with dyed-red hair stepped away from the microphone to focus on their guitar solo, singing with metal rather than breath. Closing my eyes, I could feel the physical presence of the music, a rainbow orb spinning above the yard. Everything reaching crescendo, fierce melodies piercing my soul, I felt a white-hot ball of euphoria rising out of my spinal cord, before it was sling-shotted by the resolving note into my skull where it bounced around inside for longer than I thought possible. Vegas bulbs igniting with every supercharged pinball bounce, I made a noise halfway between a laugh and a scream, and I had to steady my dizziness against the tree, a floaty high made from the overwhelming distillation of the music and the people and the life into my brain. I told Tessa I couldn’t believe how good I felt at that moment, that I had no idea such a feeling was possible. And the best part about it was that the gummies weren’t what gave me that high; sure they might have helped a bit, but I had a confidence within me that it was produced by my environment, and the inconceivable effect it has on me when I’m able to truly appreciate it.

This is not to say the experience wasn’t scary. Early on, the host of the party grabbed the microphone and said his neighbors had called the cops for a noise complaint, which did wonders for my paranoia. From that moment on, any passing flashlight or unexpected movement was a SWAT team with guns drawn. Also, I would frequently fall back into my retrograde amnesia–whereamIohgod mindset, a sinkhole of unreality that came and went unceremoniously. All I had to do to trigger it was look across the yard at myself, unable to suppress my curiosity in this past version of me. Tessa later called my experience ego death, which seemed right. It certainly felt like dying––like this was my last opportunity to kiss my earthly body goodbye before pledging allegiance to the great nothing. There was so much I wanted to say to myself. And yet––like an estranged father on the run, I was condemned to make silent amends from a distance… observing my creation in all his damaged solitude through a one-way mirror, unable to salvage our relationship with words––I love you; I know you; I’m sorry. I made sure to keep my distance from him; it was hard to picture us interacting without one of us trying to kill the other. Tessa did well to diffuse my situation, repeating that the guy didn’t actually look like me at all, and approaching random friends to ask “are you nate? are you nate?” in a demonstration of my ridiculousness. She was right: when I eventually got close to him the effect vanished. But nothing could convince me that this wasn’t just another malevolent trick by whichever god was responsible for our meeting. There is strange part of me that refuses to recover from the existential test of that experience; some arcane allure to the idea that I am not the only version of myself in the world. Maybe it’s because it makes me feel less alone. It’s comforting to believe that there’s other ‘me’s bumbling around out there, making the same mistakes for the same non-reasons, who could join in on a collective shrug at our own expense. But then I remember that all of us––you and me––already have that in each other; all we need to do is cross the unknowable gulf that lies between us and have a chat on the dancefloor.

I was beginning to come down when Aidan’s band started their set. I had seen them play maybe eight times before, and this was up to their standard level of magnificence––no amount of complication could change my love and appreciation for them. To be in such close proximity to a creation so enlivening is enough to make me feel like the luckiest person in the world. They generate a sacred space at all their performances, one in which you can go bananas with your closest friends and give in to the insanity calling your name. Not only is it amazing to know a band so closely, but each of their concerts have been a gift—free of charge. They’re really out here making us all happy one weekend at a time, out of the kindness of their hearts and the strength of their art. The whole project has been oddly validating, as if it confirms the quality of our community. Part of me feels that the creation of something great from our friend-group was an inevitability; like a chemical process in which colliding enough interesting atoms together is bound to produce something beautiful––social alchemy.

By the time they finished, it was nearing eleven o’clock. Some people began to head for the alleyway exit, others shuffled forward in a congregation of thanks––this was when we’d ask for pictures and autographs if we weren’t already friends. After hugging everyone and doing my best to convey my appreciation, I noticed how fried my brain felt and decided it was time for me to leave as well. Of course, it only made sense to leave with Tessa––my comrade in the terrifying experience. I am endlessly thankful that she was there to keep me sane. As we were crossing the wooden threshold out of the yard, I couldn’t help but throw a glance back at myself, secretly hoping he was looking at me too. I saw him gazing up at the stars with a little smile on his face, breathing in the evening while it lasted. The smile was contagious, and I turned back contentedly to Tessa, ready to skip off into the darkness.

Nate