#casey shut the fuck up about roman roy

[brookheimer]

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.

roman will make sure of it.

[brookheimer]

these recent episodes in particular have been so endlessly heartbreaking and fascinating regarding not only how logan's abuse has manifested differently in each roy but also how the forms the abuse took as well as logan's motivation/emotion behind it varied so greatly from kid to kid. each kid is uniquely damaged, both because they're different individuals and also because the treatment they experienced wasn't uniform at all. i think kendall and shiv received the most similar treatment, just with variations based on their identities as Golden Boy and Woman (Derogatory) respectively -- i think logan's approach towards both of them was rooted in his desire for them to 'reach their full potential' in his eyes (which, again, probably means different things depending on what genitalia they have). connor, meanwhile, was subject to pure neglect. but despite the differences in the abuse experienced by kendall, shiv, and connor, one thing holds true for all of them: each one of them is obsessed with independence, be that through rebellion or self-sufficiency. they convince themselves they're over it, over needing dad's love, because they're their own people now, so everyone else can suck it. they're lying, of course, but they're trying to believe it so hard it's painful.

and then there's roman, whose abuse at logan's hands has had the opposite effect: it's nearly impossible for him to even conceive of himself as a real person with agency and value. while logan's 'tough love,' as he'd call it (although most psychologists would call it 'abuse'), towards ken and shiv was motivated by his desire to actually make them live up to their potential, and to increase their value by instilling (what he viewed as) 'positive qualities' into them, logan's 'tough love' for roman was motivated by his desire to beat the wrongness out of him. rather than trying to add anything positive or bring out the best in roman, logan's priority when dealing with roman was trying to get rid of (what he viewed as) the 'negative qualities' inherent within him. and when he couldn't, he sent him away to military school. ken and shiv were taught to live up to their respective potentials, connor had to teach himself how to live because no one else did it for him, but roman wasn't taught anything -- he was only taught how not to be. because while the others were lacking qualities logan desired, roman was innately, uniquely, entirely wrong. it wasn't a matter of making roman into the man logan wanted him to be so much as it was unmaking roman into something logan could look at without feeling sick. because roman is abnormal, unforgivably so. he's broken, fucked up. he's not made right. real people, normal people, don't act like this, feel like this. everyone else is a person and he isn't, so he doesn't count, not really. while logan shaped the identities of kendall, shiv, and even connor, all he did for roman was convince him that he's not enough of a person to have one, that all he is and all he'll ever be is Wrong.

(this got really long so the rest is under the cut!)

why did logan treat each of his children like he did, like he does?

logan manipulated kendall and shiv and tested them again and again because he saw potential in them and wanted them to prove their worth -- so, he constantly oscillated between showing them love and withholding it, hinting at acceptance before cruelly whisking it away. we see in the present that this incessant game of keep away has resulted in violent, emotional oscillation for shiv and ken, in that they are similarly constantly ping-ponging between two poles, depending on how logan treated them last. they only have two states of being: a desperate desire to win logan's approval, and a burning anger that can only be quelled by 'destroying' him entirely. right now, obviously, they're obsessively in that latter mindset, and even though they try to say it's not about logan, it sounds hollow even to themselves. then there's logan's neglect of connor -- i guess he never really saw connor as a true son, never really cared enough to love or hate him, which resulted in the connor we saw insisting he's able to subsist without love a la 4x02. connor's experience is also unique, as he's the only kid whose daddy issues stem not from logan's presence in his life but his absence from it. it's pretty opposite from shiv and kendall's experience, but clearly no healthier or easier to heal from. then there's roman, the disappointment. he's not a disappointment in the way that shiv and ken end up being, because logan didn't expect anything good from roman anyways. he's a disappointment from the get-go, before he even had the chance to become anyone -- we're told time and time again that logan's relationship with roman has always been defined been his conviction that there's something inherently wrong in his son. we don't know the origin of logan's disgust for roman, but it's not hard to imagine it has something to do with his deeply misogynistic beliefs and the fact that roman is not exactly what one thinks of when they try to picture Masculinity. he cares deeply, loves fully, and logan cannot stand it. shiv might be his daughter, but roman, roman's the girl, and somehow that's even worse than if shiv were. this distaste only strengthens as time goes on -- most of roman's issues stem from that distaste to begin with, so for a long time it's just a seemingly endless cycle of roman becoming 'worse' and logan despising him all the more for it, which, of course, leads to roman becoming even 'worse' and so on and so on. logan will never respect or like roman, will never choose him, because he thinks something is deeply, deeply wrong with him. logan's disgusted by him and uniquely cruel because of it; after all, there's a reason roman was the only one he ever hit.

this idea -- that there’s something uniquely and inherently wrong with roman, that he’s not a person the same way his siblings are, that he never has been or will be -- this exact thought is both roman's biggest fear and his strongest held belief, and the only reason that thought even exists in the first place is because logan made it the fuck up. obviously, it's not true; there's no such thing as Being Inherently Wrong And Bad, especially not for, what, showing emotion and loving your family? roman is not inherently wrong, inherently abnormal, but at this point he's so deeply convinced he is that it doesn't matter (and at this point, he's got enough issues to fill up an entire edition of the DSM, but that's due to trauma and abuse rather than some innate internal failing of his). roman desperately doesn’t want it to be true, desperately hopes no one else sees that in him, but he strongly strongly believes that everyone does anyways, and that's terrifying. that's why he's flippant, devil-may-care -- so what if i'm wrong? i don't care. fuck you. that’s why roman had such a strong reaction to kendall telling him point-blank “you’re not a real person” in ‘Too Much Birthday;’ whether or not kendall intended it to be, it was quite possibly the hardest-hitting thing he could've said at that moment. roman was on a high, albeit a painfully transparent one, and that comment brought him right back to earth — it doesn’t matter that dad’s favoring you right now, you are not a real person and you never will be. no matter what you do, you will always be broken, wrong, abnormal, incomplete.

what’s ironic is that as much as roman wants to prove that statement wrong, he is literally incapable of allowing himself to do so. he’s internalized this abnormality and wrongness so fully that he cannot bring himself to do anything at all that he feels would contradict it. it makes him feel sick, viscerally uncomfortable, like he's doing something wrong; meanwhile, it's only when he's being 'wrong' and gross and abnormal that he feels comfortable. just look at his sex life. it’s not just that he doesn’t enjoy regular sex and only gets turned on by weird shit, but that he is deeply, deeply uncomfortable and disgusted by any attempt to have sex normally, to love normally. he feels like it’s something he’s not allowed to do, someone he’s not allowed to be, and it just feels wrong wrong wrong. he’s too wrong to have right sex. he’s too wrong to have right love. his identity is wrongness. being wrong, being seen as wrong, is the only thing he understands. anything else is inconceivable. it's so ingrained into him that he can't imagine any other way of being.

roman has been so thoroughly convinced that he doesn’t count as a person, not really, that he doesn’t even realize the fact that he has agency — when it comes down to it, he only thinks of himself as someone that things are done to, not someone capable of doing things, especially not to others. he thinks he doesn’t have an impact on other people because he’s not enough of a person for his opinions or actions to matter. roman is incredibly passive in every relationship he has: someone allows him to be in their life and as long as they do, he will never actually leave of his own volition, i don’t think he fully realizes that’s something he actually has the ability to do. people just begrudgingly let him stay in their lives until they don’t anymore. he’s just there like an ugly bauble on a shelf, unmoving until someone remembers it’s there and throws it out — and he always, always expects to be thrown out. it's the other person who decides what happens to him. he doesn't decide what happens to him, much less them. he loves unconditionally because he's been taught to think he doesn't deserve it in return. the other siblings have been taught that they need to fight for it, but even that is newer to roman; he's used to loving dad without being loved in return, and the others aren't. being loved in return is a bonus.

every sibling is so incredibly broken as a result of logan’s abuse, but roman’s the only one who thinks he deserves to be. because that’s what logan taught him: he needs the wrong beaten out of him. so anything logan does is fair game, because roman is the one who provoked it. roman is the one who came out wrong. he's not a real person. why would he expect logan to treat him like one?

[brookheimer]

roman is free in the sense that he is free from waystar, but he is not free in the sense that he has 'escaped the cycle.' roman realized everything is bullshit and left, but that's not what actual meaningful freedom would be for roman. what rome needs is for business and family to finally make a clean separation, for him to be allowed to love his family without molding himself into an image of logan that he isn't. waystar has always been the only way the roys know how to interact with one another, and it still is. in that sense, nothing has changed. roman's declaration about the nothingness of waystar is not actually a change, because he still marries waystar to family, and thus believes family is nothingness as well -- functionally, there's little difference between that and the opposite belief that both waystar and family have meaning and are 'real.' what the roys need is to realize waystar is bullshit and family is real, but roman went from thinking both have meaning (family has meaning thus waystar has meaning) to thinking neither do (waystar is bullshit thus family is bullshit). nothing changes, the cycle keeps on cycling. finally family has been severed from waystar (what he's needed all along -- he's never really cared about the business, only his family, and the business was the only way he could be with his family, so he tried and failed time and time again to mold himself into the businessman his dad wanted him to be), and while this is a good thing, it's coupled with his realization of the hollowness of the family itself. in hindsight, this was inevitable, i think -- if waystar royco was the beating heart of the roy family (which it was), there's no conceivable severing of the two that would allow the family to maintain functionally intact.

i do think that roman will have relationships with his family after the finale (shiv is definite, con is likely, kendall is also likely because roman is incapable of not being around his family and can't imagine a world in which they don't return to each other somehow), but he's aware for the first time of the nothingness of their bonds, something that everyone has already known except for him -- something, i think, that isn't even entirely fair. they do love each other. there is something there. and now that waystar is no longer part of the equation, maybe there's hope for real relationships beyond transaction, beyond business, beyond logan. but none of them believe that to be possible. roman always used to, but for the first time, i think he's not sure. he's free of waystar, but the roys never managed to functionally healthily uncouple family and business, so being free of waystar also means being free of family -- it has to mean that. he's convincing himself it's all nothing and he doesn't care, and that won't last. but, in my opinion, neither will the distance between the siblings. i think it'll take time, but they'll come back together, albeit in varying degrees (i doubt shiv and ken will ever have quite the same relationship again, for instance). roman is free of waystar but not because he realized it's not necessary for family -- because he 'realized' family is not necessary, that family is nothing too, that everything is nothing. it's an empty sort of happiness, unsustainable and hollow. but i do think there is hope. i think it'll be okay for rome in the long run (family-wise, at least). i just don't think nihilism is a salve capable of healing deep cuts, only a bandage allowing them to stay hidden for a little while longer.

in life and in death, waystar royco and the roy family are eternal partners, inextricable from each other -- and so long as the two remain conceptually married, it'll be hard for roman to find legitimate happiness: if one is dead, then the other must be too. he ends the series the same as he started it, believing fully in logan's conception of family as a business unit (meaning now that both are bullshit), people as economic units (meaning now that both are bullshit), and roman himself as the son who couldn't be the heir and thus was never much of a son at all. logan dominates his worldview just as much as it always has. sure, roman acknowledges that everything is bullshit now, but that's even more logan than his previous viewpoint which was a naive sort of belief in family. now, it's all just bullshit. everything's bullshit. it's logan with nihilism as the dominant frame (rather than capitalism), but regardless of roman's thoughts on the meaning of things, the structure of the world is the same one that logan taught him. he is free from waystar, but he is haunted by its ghost and always will be.

[brookheimer]

"The idea that Shiv and Ken have that Roman's apprehensive about -- it's a good idea, it's a good pivot, if it was just a good business decision. But I think it's for emotional reasons which you're not supposed to, like, mix up, and I think that's why we end up with the number that we end up with at the end of the fucking episode because they just get carried away, they lose sight of it. It's no longer a good business deal, it's not smart business, it's just "Beat him! Win!" and I think Roman doesn't want to do that for a number of reasons. I think he likes The Hundred, he likes having this separate from Dad -- don't want to go toe-to-toe with Dad on anything, 'cause he's probably gonna lose -- but also, I think by sticking with our own thing, just the three of us, there's no conflict, there's no enemy, there's no fighting. It's actually just us. There can be in-fighting, but that stuff is kind of fun. And also that gives us a way of, like, possibly -- at least for Roman it's important, I'm not sure about the other siblings -- it's important for him to keep up a relationship with Dad. He loves his Dad and I think that he still holds onto this idea of family that, y'know, since childhood -- whatever was there, I feel like he holds onto more so than anyone else in the family, this just idea of family and keeping it together... Maybe, maybe [his fear of fighting Logan] is in there, but it's, it's in there because, not like I'm scared of Dad or, y'know, like, we're gonna lose or anything, but more like, you know, that's our Dad, I kinda want to hang out with him. Like, y'know, it's his birthday today and we're not there, and I don't like that."

— Kieran Culkin on Roman's apprehension about the Pierce deal, for TVLine

[brookheimer]

roman roy + “waste sonata” by sharon olds

[brookheimer]

i am genuinely so happy with how they did the roman betrayal. like i was worried it was gonna be like just rome being wobbly and cowardly and incompetent but it was not . at ALL. they are doing him such justice in a way that feels so true to his character and not just taking the easy way out by making him the caricature so much of the fanbase makes him out to be — or MADE him out to be, past tense, because no one could possibly see him that way after these past two eps. it’s just so blowing my mind bc im so used to having the characters i care about completely bastardized and ruined and it’s just so crazy seeing how in line all of s4 has been so far with the way i read roman, and i used to be a complete minority in how seriously i took him as a character!!! like this is everything i could’ve hoped for and more — when i said i wanted i good roman szn i didn’t mean like yay happy roman sunshine and rainbows blah blah blah, but that i wanted him to fuck up and do shitty things and suffer the consequences, so long as it’s in a way that makes sense for his character and continues to elucidate his specific issues, traumas, etc. and it does! so well! like obviously no one wants him to turn back to logan but it’s not like we can’t understand why he did it, and that’s all i wld want, yknow? this is so rambling but man i’m just so pleased w this season so far. i thought j was gonna have to write up essays of meta justifying roman’s behavior to try to make ppl take him seriously as a nuanced character with real emotions and all that a la “too much birthday” (an episode i fucking loved n think is an all time roman episode too yet so many ppl took it at face value like my entire twt timeline was people saying shit like ‘bro you can tell roman never got his ass beat as a kid. needed a beating fr’ as if his entire character isn’t revolving around the trauma of being beaten as a child) but no!!! i don’t need to write shit!!! the show did it for me!!!!! at least i think lol i haven’t seen takes yet but man. you can’t watch that and not understand what drove him there. agh. so good

[brookheimer]

"I think [Roman's relationship with his siblings at the start of the season] is actually something close to healthy for once, y'know? I think we've been sort of competing with each other and just been sort of under Dad's, y'know, spell a bit -- we love each other but have no means to sort of express that or show that with each other. We're not gonna, like, get together and hang out. Like, we always needed the business to hang out with each other. I think Roman doesn't really have anyone else. I think he has the siblings and the people he works with. I don't think there are like friends, he doesn't have a- a partner, there's nobody else, so he needs the business in order to have relationships with people, including the ones he loves. So when he gets cut out, he at least gets cut out with the siblings, and it's like 'well, we have each other, but we can't just hang out, we need something.' So we form a business together, we're puttin' this thing together just, I think, I think it's a good idea and it's good to, y'know, have our own business and be our own people and be separate from Dad, but I think it's more so that -- for Roman anyways -- it's more like so I can keep hanging out with you guys and we can have a relationship, because otherwise if we don't have anything we're never gonna see each other.

And if we have our own business and it's successful and we do that, then there's potential to have a relationship with Dad, now that we're not working for him. We can actually, like, -- I think for Roman anyway, I don't if the siblings feel the same way -- it's like yeah, Dad hurt us, but also, y'know, I think I want to- I'd like to get to a place where I see him on his birthday and Thanksgiving and stuff. I think I'd like to get back to hanging out with Dad. And if we have our own business, then maybe we can get together and have a Scotch and talk about our different companies and ask for advice here and there."

-- Kieran Culkin on Roman in S4E1 for Rotten Tomatoes TV

[brookheimer]

i too am on team ‘roman roy’s emotional acumen.’ i don’t care who wins but i’m like a white dad screaming on the sidelines at a little league game every time roman awkwardly tries to comfort someone

[brookheimer]

do u think kenrome can come back from this 😭

honestly i think any sibling relationship with roman can come back from just about anything as long as the other sibling wants that relationship still. so long as rome’s the primary ‘wounded party’ or w/e, the relationship will probably return to ‘normal’ (not ‘heal’ but return to stagnancy). roman is a kicked dog who never leaves no matter how much he’s kicked, and really, that hasn’t changed. remember when ken betrayed the entire family and tried to kill logan in the s2 finale and then next season rome immediately comes to ken’s apartment with a gift of airport pastries he knows ken likes? i don’t think any of his family could ever hurt roman beyond reproach — i don’t think such a line exists for him. if it did, god knows it would’ve been crossed by at least a few of them by now. sure, he’s realized everything’s bullshit, but his nihilism does not negate his lifelong yearning for genuine connection, a yearning that’s intensified ten-fold when it comes to his family. he might know it’s bullshit now, he might think genuine connection is bullshit and waystar’s dead so they are too, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t still want it. honestly, a ‘healthy’ ‘free’ outcome for rome would probably be one in which he untethers himself from his family and only returns to them by choice rather than this sense of devotion and secretly embarrassingly love-fueled obligation, but that’s not how things end. he’s as haunted by logan, by waystar, as any of them. yeah, everything’s bullshit including waystar including them, but so long as he continues to view his family and the business as inextricable, he won’t be ‘free,’ not really. (i talk about that in this post a lot, so i’ll just link that so as not to broken record myself into infinity here lol.) i mean, he’s drinking gerri’s martini in the last shot. how bullshit are things really if he’s still consuming the remnants of his stand-in father/mother in his last scene? roman hasn’t changed, none of them have; that’s jesse’s entire thesis for the show. and so long as roman hasn’t changed, there is pretty much nothing that his siblings could do to lose him. the issue is that none of the siblings know how to interact with one another outside of the business, and honestly, i’m not sure if they’d even try to if not for roman who will inevitably awkwardly come around to ken’s place with pastries in a few days making sure he hasn’t killed himself yet. things won’t be good, and neither of them will know who to be or how to act or what it means to exist outside of waystar especially in terms of each other. but i do think this isn’t an end for them, largely, again, because there’s no end when it comes to roman. kick him as much as you want and watch him crawl back with a gift in his mouth. it might take him longer this time or it might be shrouded in even more irony and flippancy because he’s now newly convinced of the meaningless of their bonds, but that doesn’t change the fact that his love for them is real (as much as he might wish otherwise), and that he doesn’t want kendall dead. so i think there’s still something there, but not a good thing or a healed thing — it’s just roman continuing to lack a sense of worth or a sense of self. maybe things will get better, maybe they won’t, but i find it hard to imagine kendall and shiv ever really alienating roman for good unless they decide they no longer want him in their lives. so in that sense, i do think ken and rome will still have a relationship, but what form it takes (and if it can ever heal from the wounds not only of this fight but of the abuses that have always defined their relationship and will likely continue to) will be unclear even to them — what are they without waystar, after all?

[brookheimer]

“roman roy’s emotional acumen” being #2 on vulture’s succession power rankings after this ep… is this how sports fans feel after their team wins a game or something

[brookheimer]

Do you think the Logan abuse allegations might go into CSA territory? Unlike a lot of people I’m not 100% convinced roman experienced this, but people are speculating on Twitter that accusations of Logan’s physical and emotional abuse will snowball into CSA territory. If that’s the case I’d certainly imagine Logan was complicit rather than an abuser himself (if anyone probably uncle Mo?), but nevertheless shocking if it does come out

oooh i have a lot of thoughts about this actually!

personally, i'm with you -- i'm in the minority of people who don't think roman CSA is as good as canon, primarily because i don't think it needs to be in order for him to make sense. i think it's definitely possible and would certainly fit with his character, but a lot of people frame CSA as, like, The Explainer to roman roy which i just find kind of silly and cheap. people act like that's the only possible way he could turn out the way he has, and not only is that just blatantly untrue, it's also a pretty strange, diminishing narrative -- the way people talk about it really sounds like they're saying Well If You Have Sexual Dysfunction You Only Make Sense If Someone Molested You As A Child, which is just... not quite how things work. obviously, it's a reason someone might have those issues, but it certainly isn't the only one. i can write another post later on why i think rome makes sense outside of CSA if people want, but rn i'll just focus specifically on why i'm not convinced that CSA will become explicitly relevant to roman's character, especially not in relation to logan (and why i personally kinda hope that isn't the direction they take)

more under the cut!

for one thing just personally really doubt succession would make anything that explicit, that clear cut. like, i really don't think there's going to be a scene confirming or denying whether roman experienced CSA. and, as you said, i don't think logan was the abuser himself but i could see him covering it up for mo. maybe. i don't know. i don't know! it feels a little weird to me, honestly, just knowing logan's obsession with having power over his kids, his disgust at roman's grossness, and his blatant homophobia, it feels somewhat hard for me to conceptualize him not giving a shit about a colleague of his assaulting his son. i don't think he'd care for the right reasons, but i think he'd view it as either a) an attack on him and a disturbing power play -- you think you can take my kids out from under me? you think you can fucking control them? you?], b) absolutely fucking disgusting like the most sicko-ness of sickos -- not only are you attracted to m*n you're attracted to my weak little fuck of a son? what the fuck's wrong with you? are you not a man?, or c) both. like, idk. i just find it really hard to imagine that's something he would take lying down -- not out of protectiveness for roman but out of personal offense or pure disgust. i don't think he'd out it to the world or anything, he has his company to protect, but i think mo or whoever would definitely be cut out and shushed with hush money or something. which is still complicit, sure, but it isn't like i think logan would have actively turned a blind eye, which seems to be the prevailing opinion. it just... it doesn't fit from what we know of logan.

also, CSA is like.... it's inarguably bad. like, obviously. but succession thrives in realms of nuance. logan is abusive and horrible but you understand him. if you try to, you really can understand him. it doesn't excuse or justify anything, but he has a very human mindset that stops him from being, like, straight-up Evil. every succession character is a human before anything else, no one's a caricature (except maybe for s4 greg, but i'm withholding judgment there for now). succession fails if any character's deeds outweigh their humanity. no one is hitler. everyone thinks they're doing the best that they possibly can, including logan. that's why brian cox says logan's issue is he loves his kids too much -- he gets shit on for saying that, because i mean it does sound batshit, but i do get what he's saying. logan does not like his kids but he does love them. the reason he's so awful to them is because he loves them -- not in the sense that 'love is abuse' or whatever i'm about to get angry asks yelling ab, but because the only reason logan can't just let them go off and be disappointments is because he loves them. his abuse is not out of pure malevolence. it's because he wants them to become people they fundamentally aren't. that's what it comes down to. it's not just Evil Dad Hates Kids. logan wants so desperately for his children to become real people, people he can like and respect and trust and rely on, but they aren't those people, and that's something he's been entirely incapable of accepting. his abuse is an attempt to mold and to change and to fix, not just to punish. that's why the "i love you, but you are not serious people" was such an important line -- in some senses, it kind of was the end of logan's arc. it made a lot of sense for him to die there. where else could he go? he finally admitted what he'd known deep down all along: his children will never be the people he wants or needs them to be. no amount of pressure or competition or carrot-dangling will change that. he loves them, but they are not serious people.

that's why Logan CSA Committer/Allower feels really hard to imagine, both from a character standpoint and from a succession one in general — making logan an official CSA Allower would make it really, really hard for him to maintain the same kind of humanity and nuance he has as a character, which is rooted in the fact that logan doesn't hate his kids or want them to suffer. he wants them to become the peak of masculinist capitalism and none of them are capable of it. so if anything, he'd be furious at anyone who assaulted his kids because it would push them further from that ideal -- it would make them Wrong. if a boy were to be forced into sexual submission at a young age by an older man, they'd never be able to become that capitalistic ideal of masculinity; they're already fundamentally wrong. logan's anger would be directed both at the boy (roman) and at the man who forced it on him. but, to me, it seems like much of logan's anger with roman stems from his genuine lack of understanding as to how the fuck roman ended up like this -- how could a son of his end up like this? it's a personal failing for logan, one that he can't puzzle out. what did he do so wrong for roman to become the antithesis of literally everything logan stands for? i feel like if roman were a CSA victim and logan knew, he would probably... i don't know, try less to fix him. it's fucking awful, but i kind of feel like logan would find roman to be Tainted already and want to just shove him somewhere he doesn't have to look at him. but we see time and time again logan genuinely trying to squeeze the wrongness out of roman -- that's where his abuse of rome stems from, not so much molding him into the Right person as it is unmolding him out of being Wrong (bc only then can he do his ken/shiv tactics to mold him into being an heir) -- and try to understand in his misguided, cruel, offensive way what exactly is wrong with roman. i think if he knew, he wouldn't bother. he wouldn't ask, like "are you scared of pussy, son?" and "are you a sicko?" and call him gay slurs and all of that, because i think that would be too close to the truth he can't bear to acknowledge. just like how he pretends he had never and would never hit roman, even though he has, multiple times, both as a child and an adult. he wouldn't directly address something that brings shame to him, and having his son be the victim of CSA would indeed bring him a great deal of shame (not guilt, but shame). so, like, while it's true that logan's relationship with roman could be founded primarily in CSA-driven misdirected anger and victim blaming, i just again don't think that's necessary for their relationship to make sense, and that the nuances of their relationship almost make me feel like that's not the case either.

i also just personally think roman would maybe be more interesting were he not a CSA victim -- if it's confirmed that he is, everyone will be like Whelp Roman Solved! like, that would be all that's needed to explain him (or at least that's how people would act). and that would be such a fucking shame, man. i just think that there are a decent number of people in the world who have dysfunction not dissimilar to roman's who also aren't CSA victims and really, really struggle to figure out what exactly made them this way, especially when the entire world is acting like the only possible cause is CSA. and there are portrayals of CSA on television and in media. but... i can't think of anyone else like roman. i think him not having CSA and his dysfunction stemming instead from less obvious, more subtle-ly debilitating power dynamics and narratives of masculinity/sex would just be much more interesting, as even if succession handled his CSA with care, the majority of people would just see it as well, case closed, finally we understand roman. as if he isn't already perfectly understandable without it. maybe i'm just really biased as someone who thankfully did not experience CSA but seemingly inexplicably ended up quite similar to roman in a lot of ways, as someone who actually gets to feel a little more normal for once because of roman's abnormality. i just think there's a lot more to sex and sexual dysfunction than media often presents, because many storylines and characters are just very easy cause and effect relationships (CSA --> sexual dysfunction, rape --> hypersexuality, etc etc etc) when in reality there are so many ways that even tiny things could build up over time and end up manifesting in really detrimental ways. you can have a bad relationship with sex before ever having it, because sex is about soooo much more than the actual act of sex. and succession is about life and mirroring it, not creating easily understandable characters and narratively satisfying conclusions. so, yeah, i guess i don't know if succession will go down the CSA route, because that just feels... a little easy to me, maybe, when it doesn't need to be. not saying CSA is a bad plot point or anything, but that it is something depicted (and unfortunately often sensationalized) on television a lot, whereas characters with inexplicable sexual hangups are not.

i definitely hope this season delves further into roman's sexual dysfunction, but i'm kind of hoping it doesn't just explain it all away as Well He Was A Victim Of CSA, bc i think a) roman makes sense without it, b) the logistics of it happening relating to logan feel murky and confusing, c) succession isn't the type of show to outright Explain Things (and thank god), and d) there are a lot of people, i think, who have issues with sex they don't understand or that they don't 'deserve' to have, and i've never seen another character in any media that's depicted like that, although i have seen explorations into CSA.

sorry this was so long, but as i said, many fucking thoughts!!

[brookheimer]

truly do not understand how people are JUST NOW seeing roman as a geniune character with depth and not just "haha funney man mommy issues sexual problems lol!!! 🤪" like listen i started watching succession like. 3 weeks ago. and people that were watching this from the second it came out couldn't see the importance of his character until now?? fucking eleventh hour??? anyways hes the queen of my heart 4 ever and ever

no literally like i genuinely just... cannot conceive of someone watching multiple episodes of the show and still not taking him seriously or seeing how tragic he is. it's one thing to think he's an asshole -- he is -- and it's another entirely to think he's a one-note sex-freak funny-guy who isn't written just as carefully and tragically as kendall and shiv. and it's not like this is new news either -- in the second episode, when logan was in the hospital, everyone was trying to figure out who would run waystar and roman was like can you guys shut the fuck up and worry about our dad? and then roman made greg go back to the penthouse to get him something that smelled like logan?!?! this was, again, EPISODE TWO!!!! and somehow people are only saying just NOW that, like, 'turns out roman roy is the most caring/empathetic/family-oriented/etc of them all'! like oh wow turns out logan roy is a bad father. turns out kendall roy is an addict. turns out shiv roy is not the best feminist activist. we have known all of this for a very long time and none of it contradicts the other parts of the characters -- logan is a bad father and a good businessman who is honestly not wrong about his kids, kendall roy is an addict and he is trying so hard not to be and to escape the cycle of abuse, shiv roy is a bad feminist and entirely the product of a family and an environment that refused to value her for her entire life simply by nature of her gender. why could everyone acknowledge these things for the other characters but not roman? why couldn't roman be both an asshole and a deeply tragic character like everyone else?

like, just bc you can't reconcile the unlikable aspects of a character with the nuances of their backgrounds/psyches/etc doesn't mean those depths don't exist, it just means you fundamentally missed the point of his character for at least 3 entire seasons. crazy how articles are really out here saying shit like 'improbably, roman roy shows emotion' like that is actually so incredibly embarrassing ? like, you're a cultural critic at a well-known magazine, your job is literally just getting paid to watch and analyze television shows, and it took you until the final season of succession to realize that roman roy is an interesting character and not just perverted comic relief? why would you admit that to the world for real

[brookheimer]

Thank you for saying that omg!! I’ve seen so many posts calling Kendall a killer in a good way. Kendall knows exactly what stories Hugo wants to leak. He mentioned physical and emotional abuse and Kendall immediately looked at Roman uncomfortably. Obviously abuse is abuse no matter the form it takes and we can’t say anyone one sibling and it worse. But when someone leaks to the press that someone physically and emotionally abused his children, it’s the physical abuse the press will latch onto and will stand out in the public imagination. Ken knows by doing this he’s selling romans trauma to boost his position as CEO. The leaks also will support Kendall’s previous accusations against his father. Kendall won’t look like a liar who overcompensated his fathers involvement in cruises if Logan is exposed as a child abuser. Kendall will look once again like the fighter of the good fight

yeah exactly!!! like he certainly is pulling a logan move and it is exciting to see his little rabbit-like I’m Evil Now smile again but i haven’t seen like anything talking about the possible implications that action could have on the other sibs…. like the criticisms of it i’ve seen have all been focused on the fact that he betrayed rome/shiv but not so much the actual content of the betrayal itself and how much it could genuinely like ruin roman’s life in particular. roman who can’t even admit his father’s abuse to himself especially not right now when dad just DIED suddenly being thrown to the fucking wolves where every tabloid in the world will be like Roman? More Like “Oh Man!” This Woman Who Babysat Roman Once Spills All The Torrid Details Of The Time Logan Punted His Youngest Son Across The Room! like it will be fucking AWFUL !! ken will be a hero shiv will be pitied (altho she’ll fucking hate that fr) roman will be dragged through the fucking dirt and turned into a prop against logan and his legacy. roman would literally never be anything else in the eyes of the public. wouldn’t matter what he did going forward, he could fucking cure cancer, and interviewers will still ask like “what would you say to your father who beat you if he could see you now?” “how did your father’s abuse make you decide to cure cancer?” “are you still in touch with your other siblings who your dad didn’t hit? did your resentment of them spur you to cure cancer?” “did you decide to go into healthcare because you spent your childhood in hospitals from your dad’s beatings?” ….. dude not to be dramatic but i would fucking kill myself

[brookheimer]

what do you think of kieran saying he thinks roman has some sort of eating disorder?

dude. kieran saying that was literally my fucking joker i mean it. i don't know how he does it but every single time that man gives an interview about roman he somehow always says the thing that will appeal to me specifically the most out of, like, anything. i was already a romangirl by then (that interview was mid-s3 iirc) but if i wasn't i definitely would've considered becoming one

putting the stuff about why i think rome having an ED makes sense underneath the cut -- DO NOT READ if discussion of eating disorders is harmful for you!

as far as roman himself goes -- well, i think it makes so a lot of fucking sense, honestly. for one thing, as early as like ep2 or ep3 we see him pinching his stomach in the mirror and frowning and just whenever he's around a mirror, ever, he's constantly fussing over his appearance and trying to 'fix' it or just generally being frustrated with it. also a lot of the time eating disorders have to do with control, which i think really tracks for rome -- while obviously he has a lot of power in the grander scheme of things bc of his money and privilege, he has little to none in his interpersonal relationships, largely bc he doesn't think he's capable of having any. people keep him around until they don't, he'll never leave on his own. every action is dictated by logan, whether it's logan himself or logan's voice in roman's head telling him he's wrong, he's bad, he's worthless. he has no control over anything in his life. he can't even control his own brain, can't even make himself less wrong, less bad, less worthless, less fucked up. the only thing he can control is his body. that's the only thing he can make 'normal.' so... there's that.

i also think that a lifetime of being told how abnormal and wrong and bad he is has made him really believe he's not deserving of a lot of basic human kindness -- why would anyone treat him like a normal person when he's so clearly not, when he's so clearly weak and bad and fucked? i think he feels at ease when he's being denied kindness and severely uncomfortable when shown any (and replace 'kindness' with 'love' or even 'desire' to get his sex life). so i think it also makes sense that something feels right to him about denying himself food -- he feels like he's doing something good, something right, in denying himself. that's how logan's always treated him, always taught him that's how he should be treated, so it feels like he's following the rules and doing the right thing. there's a sense of satisfaction in it, i think. i say all this in part bc i also think that's how his sexual dysfunction has manifested -- this feeling of 'not deserving' or even being capable of experiencing normal desire or love or affection. i don't think he's, like, purposefully self-flagellating himself or anything, but more that there's this sense of Wrong whenever he's doing something he's been made to think he doesn't deserve or isn't capable of, this sense that he's breaking some sort of rule or code, that he's betraying something. honestly i feel like whatever satisfaction he gets from having Wrong Gross Bad sex or whatever is not dissimilar to whatever satisfaction he might get from not eating -- he's correctly denying himself the things he's too fucked up to have, and is therefore doing what logan would want (even though those are some of the exact things that make logan think he's fucked up in the first place). idk . i just think he's severely averse to treating himself like a normal human person in general but doesn't have the words or self-knowledge to really understand that's the cause of a lot of his dysfunction, so he just thinks of it as dysfunction, which in turn makes him feel even less like a normal human person (bc normal human people do not have those dysfunctions), which means it feels even more Wrong to treat himself like a normal human person, and so on and so on ad infinitum.

tl;dr i think having an eating disorder lines up really well w all of roman's other issues and isn't even, like, a Separate Thing so much as another manifestation of the shit that causes everything else for him. he would never think of it as an eating disorder though, or as a disorder at all. it's just a Thing He Does ya know? i don't think roman's very self-reflective in that sense he just kinda Feels Things and can't put words to them especially not therapy words -- self-aware without being self-reflective if that makes sense lmao

[brookheimer]

reading the reviews of this episode and remembering that most people are fucking idiots with very very strange takes

[brookheimer]

while i agree that love for logan is the main reason, i do think that fear was a big part of why roman didn’t want to engage w the pierce deal. but i totally disagree with people considering that to be cowardice. i think it makes a lot of sense for roman to feel fear towards logan bc his dad has deliberately cultivated an atmosphere of terror and he has clear abusive tendencies. idk i find that calling roman a coward devalues what seems to be a pretty rational response/emotion towards an abusive man. i liked that quote you shared from the tvline interview w kieran but was wondering do u have any further thoughts?

short answer: check out this other kieran quote ab rome in the premiere! it builds on the other quote and is once again very validating for my roman take which is always fun.

long answer: not only do i have further thoughts, i actually have so many further thoughts that i'm gonna put a read more here so as not to clog up the dash lol !!!!

if anyone wants to read a veritable fuckton of thoughts on roman and his relationships to love, fear, and family - it's under the cut!

totally agree re: fear nor necessitating cowardice especially in the case of roman whose relationship w his father is absolutely defined by fear ! i think rome’s fear of logan played a role for sure, but people have been misconstruing his fear of his father (which is the core of their entire relationship and by extension roman’s relationships with literally everyone, honestly) for fear of, like, “losing.” and while the fear of losing to dad is definitely there — who wants to get their ass kicked?! (and rome knows they def would get their asses kicked) — i think his main motivations are more like emotional, instinctive, and visceral than the fear of just losing in a business battle. it’s all about family and love for him, always is, always has been.

the reason i emphasized love rather than fear as his motivation for not fighting dad is because i think his fear of his dad is so deeply interwoven into his love for him — i’d argue it’s a defining feature of rome’s understanding of love as a concept. there’s no love if there isn’t the constant fear of loss, of being thrown aside, of abandonment. love for roman is always a matter of punching up, of proving to someone that doesn’t care about you that they should care. if the power dynamic were ever to even out, if the fear of abandonment and the feeling of inferiority were ever to dissipate, i don’t think roman would be able to comprehend it. love for him has been defined by logan and his relationship with him, which has always, always been rooted in fear. any love that isn’t is not a love he understands. fear is simply part and parcel for love. one is almost unimaginable without the other — if you don’t care about someone, you wouldn’t be afraid of losing them; if you aren’t constantly afraid of losing someone, then you don’t actually love them.

so while roman’s fear of logan plays a huge role in any and all decisions he makes (esp regarding family and business), if i had to choose one motivating factor, i’d say love. he’s afraid of the harm logan could cause him, but more than that, he’s afraid of losing him. that’s the difference between roman and shiv/ken — despite everything, roman still wants to have a relationship with logan. he holds the ideal of Family close to his heart and almost delusionally clings to it. he still thinks they can rebuild their relationship and be one big happy family. if they start fighting logan, then they can’t, and they won’t.

i’ve seen some people say stuff about how roman is trying to make the emotionally healthy/mature choice for himself, in that he knows what going back to logan would do to him, he knows how easily he’d fall back into the same patterns that are so detrimental, and he wants to keep pursuing this new version of himself he’s been discovering these past few months in LA. but i don’t think he’s making the decision out of self-preservation — he’s trying to preserve something, but not himself. he’s trying to preserve his family, or at least his hope for it. he could never admit that to shiv and ken because that’s not something the roys are ever supposed to think or do, but that’s his core motivation, i think: family and preserving it. that’s all business was ever about for him, after all; originally he only cared about the business as a means of maintaining relationships with his family because that’s the only love language they speak. even now, although he knows a lot more about the business and has stronger opinions on how it should be run, i don’t think he cares about it in the same way the others do.

i really think that nearly everything roman does is about family and his desire to maintain relationships within it. i think this holds true even (and almost especially) for the times he betrays or hurts his siblings — if he’s forced to make the impossible choice between his siblings and his father, he’ll almost always choose his father, because that’s the relationship he’s at most risk of losing. there’s something unconditional about the siblings’ relationship — i don’t think any of them would ever call it unconditional love, but there’s always this sense of ‘no matter what happens, i’ll make fun of your dumb hairstyle at thanksgiving and you’ll kick me in the shin.’ it’s logan he’s at risk of losing. if you have to bring scissors down on one of two strings, you’d probably choose to bring it down on the thicker one — that way, there’s most chance of both being left intact, even if one is damaged. that way, there’s no total loss. fear is still a key part of the way they love each other, but i think it manifests differently because they are the only people on earth who understand the fear inherent in being a child of logan roy. i think roman is still afraid of losing them, but bc his relationships are so defined by him being the one without power in them, he can’t imagine anyone (sibling or otherwise) would be so hurt by him that he would lose them.

tbh i don’t think he gives himself the credit of being a full person in his relationships — he is just there to be affected by others, but he doesn’t have enough weight to affect anyone himself. i think he kind of believes the only way any relationship would end for him is the other person deciding he’s boring/useless/not worth their time/annoying/etc. if they hurt him, he won’t leave, he never would — his role in a relationship is to get kicked and stay put, and he’s had practice doing exactly that his whole life. he doesn’t think his own actions would have consequences for other people even those he loves, not real consequences, because a lifetime of not being taken seriously has convinced him that yeah, he is not to be taken seriously. no one cares enough about roman to be hurt by him or to be afraid to lose him. this is (one of) his fundamental blind spot(s) in relationships, and why he keeps hurting loved ones while seemingly not understanding the hurt he caused. we see this with his siblings in Too Much Birthday and with gerri in their… incident. he doesn’t think he’s enough of a person to people to actually cause harm, he doesn’t think any of his actions could actually have any long-term consequences on anything. but he is, and they do. (actually i wrote a whole post about this after Too Much Birthday came out if you for want to hear me ramble about roman even more for some inexplicable reason)

at this point i'm probably barely responding to the original ask but you opened the roman meta floodgates so here we are. but as i said, i always have further thoughts and... well, if i’m asked to share them, who am i to deny the wishes of the masses?