Tl;dr Some Thoughts/speculation On– The Insecurities Logan Has Developed As A Billionaire Who Didn’t

Revealing the Hidden Patterns of Birds in Motion

Dennis Hlynsky, a film and animation professor at the Rhode Island School of Design, creates videos at the intersection of art and science. Hlynsky transforms ordinary footage of birds and insects into ethereal illustrations by digitally tracing the paths they travel. 

Hlynsky’s work is typically featured in galleries, where the video is projected on large screens with recorded sound. To see more videos from Hlynsky, please visit his Vimeo channel. 

GIFs by ARCHatlas Text + video via

when matsson took his hoodie off and casually flashed his abs and roman and kendall were just standing there like 🧍🏻🧍🏻 that was lgbt history

I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound insane but….

Anytime I see Logan touch Kendall it makes me wanna reach through the screen and throttle Him. Anytime it’s a shot where he puts his hands on his shoulders and his grip tightens, the scene where he caressed Ken’s cheek, god god GOD. There’s something abt it, that makes my blood cold and makes me physically ill. I mean I know what it is, it’s the physical manifestations of the grooming, the physical manifestation of the way Kendall is the son Logan is, to quote Brian Cox, in love w the most fiercely and yet hates so much. And the way he touches him captures this so well, OOO ITS SICK SICK SICK SICK

Oddly shaped lava formations look like a mass of twisted bodies in Hawaii shot by Laszlo Kestay (1996)

By Engraving Found Plastic Waste, Duke Riley Links Extractive Practices Throughout Human History

How to Decay Gracefully (ink redux)

did you hear they're gonna start publicly executing anyone with a glimmer of hope and a light in their eyes

‘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.

The Kaleidoscope of Political Depression

Staring vacantly at the clinical white walls of Dr. Cottril’s office, an emptiness blankets itself over everything. Like a damp sheet fresh from the dryer, not dry enough to keep you warm but not wet enough to warrant another tumble. She repeats the question back to me, aware of my obvious dissociation in trying to come up with an adequate response.

“But how does it make you feel” she repeats.

“You seem to complain frequently about the stifling nature of growing up in Canada, but I want to understand what about this country feels so suffocating?”

I take a moment to collect myself. It is almost a cliché of mine at this point to blame all my problems on the neo-liberal, late-stage capitalist, imperial, settler-colonial hegemony of 21st century Canada (a string of buzzwords I frequently strew together to invoke some sort of reaction from anyone who will listen). My parents see these complaints as just my brash undergraduate education rearing its ugly head. My sister sees it as a manner of escaping my own insecurities, blaming my personal mistakes on the larger system. “A nation-wide scapegoat,” she says.

“It feels like we are just set up since the day we are born, to be made so small that we eventually just allow this smallness to swallow us whole” I finally utter. “I mean it makes sense though, Canada is a nation whose entire human history has been near erased by the expansive colonial agenda. The only dominant history that remains is the one constructed by a capitalist narrative. Unlike countries with immortalised history, nations which have a record of their different forms of organisation, Canada erased everything.” Just uttering these words makes my palms begin to sweat.

I am quickly reminded of the fragility of my own discontent. How unlikely it is for things to change. I am reminded that Canada has been this way since its foundation and that the current state of climate breakdown is only the result of this system of inequality.

“Thank you for your honesty,” Dr. Cottril responds calmly. “I want to remind you that these feelings are not unique to you or your positionality. You are certainly not alone in feeling this way. I would say you are describing what is perhaps the consequences of a severe case of political depression”

Political depression? I ask myself. What on earth is political depression? I have never heard these two terms strung together before nor can I image the implications this combination of terms would mean to my psyche.

“As defined by Dr. Ann Cvetkovich, Political Depression is the feeling that systems of political action and critical analysis are no longer functioning to improve society or make us any happier. By examining where your depression and sense of ennui may stem from, it’s possible to create a more precise treatment plan that extends beyond typical medical intervention. Cvetkovich sees the current epidemic of depression not as a strictly chemical reaction in one’s brain, but as a symptom of the larger social and cultural inequalities ravaging the planet like racism, colonialism, homophobia, and capitalism. See, I don’t think your depression is entirely genetic or can be treated solely with talk therapy or medication, what your mind is reacting to is the need for social change.”

I sit with her comment, letting her words wash over me and soak into my past. Political depression: a feeling of helplessness and exhaustion in the face of social subjugation. Immediately, I think of Kant’s theory of the sublime. I think of how small it makes me feel to live in a world so grandiose and flagrant in its corruption and hostility. Yet where the beauty of the sublime should reside, I am instead confronted with fear and a sense of worry about where all this destruction will leave humanity. I find myself completely detached, unable to comprehend how to find art, poetry, or beauty in the outcome of our colonial past and capitalist future.

“How can I treat it? Political Depression?” I utter, eyes locked on the floor.

Dr. Cottril asks when I began to feel this way. Says the origin of these feelings will tell us where the best treatment lies. I respond that it was when I could no longer write. I had grown up with an active imagination, spending endless summer afternoons daydreaming along rocky shorelines, creating stories about magical forest nymphs and other creatures only my mind could conjure up. I remember seeing the world as a vast kaleidoscope, endless in its possibilities and combinations, ready for a new generation to discover all the wonderous symmetries and patterns that could be spun.

It was on these very same shorelines my fantasies came crumbling down. The Kaleidoscope stopped spinning. I remember the west side of White Rock beach, just past the train tracks where the landscape begins to curve, obscuring Salt Spring Island behind its towering trees. For the first time I feel my daydreams be punctured by the low rumble of churning engines and the stench of raw coal.

I spin the colours at random and discover anxiety. These trains which have rumbled my communities’ shorelines, sending ripples across our gentle bay, was killing us. Slowly but surreptitiously. I returned home distraught, crawled into my childhood bed, let the blankets crush me into the nothingness I felt on the inside. I wanted to scream but had no sounds to make. I wanted to cry but masculinity grabbed at my throat. The kaleidoscope became jammed in this pattern, unable to spin again. I tucked it away at the bottom of my junk drawer. Every once and a while, sunlight glimmers through and it shines once more. Coal trains are heavier than they look, harder to remove than a Prime Minister, especially when they come from America.

Why this impacted my writing, I’ll never know. Suddenly the words stopped coming to me. I left my journal under a duvet of dust for 5 years, only opened once again to document why I could no longer write for my future self to bring up in therapy. Like I am doing today.

I tell her this is what capitalism feels like. It’s the jammed kaleidoscope that keeps on shinning. The day you can no longer write. When self-expression becomes commodified, every move we make a form of productivity, all that survives is the dust covered journals of those who suffered before us. We study them. Name them the western cannon. If Ocean Vuong is right, and writing is a political act, I write to survive political depression. To cope with our politics in the hope that someone somewhere will read my words and find comfort in company.

“Then start writing again.” Dr. Cottril responds. “Write for yourself and no one else. Don’t just write about your emotions and feelings, but write stories, fables, tall-tales and fantasies! Revolution begins with a pen and paper. Resistance permeated by bleeding ink.”

Alicia Elliot wrote that her language, her voice, was stolen by both depression and colonialism, but that she doesn’t accept this. She writes as a radical act of self-preservation. Maybe writing in the age of anxiety, climate breakdown, and late-stage capitalism demands revolution of the personal kind. Sanctuary has never been more urgent. Writing becomes liberation in the face of adversity. I leave Dr. Cottril’s office and go to my junk drawer. I smash the kaleidoscope into a million pieces, rebuild something new, something unwritten. I build it to endure, I write us both back into existence.

Sam

succession + random glimpses into the roy's childhoods

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