Latest Posts by eunuch-besties - Page 7

Look, the only way out of this is to build a movement capable of stopping our politicians from funding genocide (through strikes, direct action, etc). This is currently possible. But here’s the important thing: it will not remain possible if trump is elected. the dude has openly said that he will “root out the communists, marxists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”. He’s talked about killing his political enemies. It’s not so much a question of choosing between evils as it is ‘do we want to give ourselves some more time to change things, or are we going to lay down and let the fascists take over because the current leader of our imperialist nation is imperialist’. The only ppl who have a leg to stand on in refusing to vote Biden are the ones who’ve gone to jail for conscientious objection, or self-immolated on the capitol steps. The rest of us have an obligation to keep extending the window of hope. A full-on fascist United States is not something the world can recover from

in which "lesser evil" is code for "evil that is less relevant to me" or "evil that is easier for me to ignore"

voicemail from my boss: your performance is so abysmal we're not even firing you we've skipped straight to sending the GHOULS unit after you. may god have mercy on you

landlord from outside my door: oouuhhh auuhhhh hnnnn uhh nnhh eeee heee heee (wheezing in pain from bear trap i placed for him)

me humminh to myself at my computer: iiii wanna rocking roll all niiight. and part of every day :) alexa google "hunter biden spit for sale"

As it apparently needs to be restated - race, ethnicity, and nationality are not themselves the basic drivers of history. Political-economic class is.

The European practice of placing African people into chattel slavery was not carried out on the basis of any innate characteristics of 'blackness' or 'whiteness' - those categories did not exist before the slave trade, they were created in support of it. Europe at the time found it would be beneficial to have a class of slave workers for its colonial projects, and it had the military, political, and economic might to subjugate Africa and African people to that end. Had you asked a Prussian and a Scotsman prior to the institution of African slavery if they were both members of a common 'race', they would have found the idea ridiculous - and yet, transport those two ahead in time, and perhaps to settlements in the Americas, and suddenly they were both Whites. Whiteness (and its necessary counterpart, blackness), then, is not some intrinsic quality based on the tone of someone's skin, but a political and economic category constructed to differentiate between those people that could be oppressed and made chattel by the slave trade, and those that could not.

This is true for all these systems of oppression - though they may be divided on supposed lines of biology or locality, they are not inherently based on biological factors, those are functionally coincidental, and are constructed as justifications for a system necessitated by purely political and economic reasons. Nazi oppression of Jewish, and Roma, and Slavic [and etc.] people was not fundamentally based on any inherent quality of e.g. Judaism, but on the economic needs of German capital under the burden of postwar reconstruction and 'war reparations' paid to the victorious powers. It was not blind hatred, but the inevitable result of a society built in pursuit of profit - one whose ruling class held a cold, calculated need to expropriate wealth, weaken worker organisation, and seize and depopulate land to strengthen the composition of capital. It was still necessary for this system to split the population into one group of 'legitimate targets' for victimisation, and one of reassured, protected accomplices, though there were no obvious physical, 'biological' features to base these on - so they were constructed, both through propaganda that exaggerated physiology, and through the appending of obvious badges and marks onto those targeted. Again, these were sets of features, and categories, created to support a system of oppression and exploitation, not the reasons it came into being in the first place.

Again, these are fundamentally political and economic categories, and can only be properly understood as such. If not properly understood as being based, first and foremost, on material interests of classes, then any analysis of them is unstable. For example: appeals to the supposed ancestral claim of zionists to the land of Palestine, and thereby to indigineity, can only be refuted with an understanding that indigeneity is a political and economic characteristic, of relation towards the oppression of a settler state, and not some characteristic of where one's ancestors were born. None of this is to say that race, nationality, etc don't function as axes of oppression - but that they must be understood as manifestations of the existing political and economic material interests of classes that drive the development of history, if they are to be fought against.

kendalling in oil

I love doing nothing, what I don't love is the inevitable overthinking that comes with doing nothing

Tomgreg

give an audience a canon gay ship and they will be entertained for one season. queerbait them and you entertain them for a lifetime.

Good times

remember when we had succession and the next day you'd have to get up and go to work like you hadn't just experienced all 5 stages of grief simultaneously the night prior

the flesh will persist (graphite + digital, 2023)

Me in the shower thinking about my wife: i think one of the big reasons why het culture "wifey/hubby" "his/hers" "tiaras/mustaches" matching sets other than the cis binarism of it all is that it reveals the thought process behind heteropatriarchy wherein ideal love is a product of inversion; two puzzle pieces that fit together but are separate and made functional solely by the utility of their differences. Heteropatriarchal love retroactively redefines a person as a half of a whole, their functions and idiosyncrasies only valuable when curtailed by another's. But more than that, heteropatriarchal love is so divided. My "hers" towel and your "his." Married on a friday because saturdays are for the boys. Your woodsmoke-scented deodorant and my lavender. We cant possibly hope to understand each other and that's what lends our partnership value, somehow. But the love i cherish--the love that nurtures me--is inextricability. Not the teeth of your personality spinning the cogs of mine but the blend and blur of our edges together. The further in the tide rolls the better. The love that nurtures me is accepting everything about you into my life even if i dont feel the same way about it that you do. Its a becoming. Becoming you, becoming myself, becoming us, again and again. There are no puzzle pieces to snap together, and im no more or less of anything with or without you. But no matter what happens i carry you with me now. Even in the small ways like how we wear each others jackets and deodorant and hats. I wear your mannerisms, and your jokes. I have your interests. You have my music taste. We subsume and consume one another. We explore each other by exploring ourselves and vice versa. The process of loving you is a mapping of a vast expanse and it is the creation itself of that expanse, ad infinitum. Loving you is a fluidity of the self. I try out new ways of living through you. I see through your eyes. My life doubles by virture of sharing it with you. We finish each others sentences and joke that were the same person but its truer than we have the language to describe. My selfhood blurs into yours; Im not half of a whole, but together we are a whole. You could draw a straight line from one end of me to the other end of you, no breaks. And why shouldnt we travel that line? Step inside my head and get comfy. Mi casa es su casa. Youre me and im you.

What comes out of my mouth when she walks into the room: id let you wear my skin if i could

the whole point of life is just knowing a bunch of weird stuff and being kinda flirty

a good dog stays in its place

"Mysterious Skin" Scott Heim // 1X08 Prague // Introduction "The Odyssey" Emily Wilson // S3? lol // Things I Can't Tell My Therapist "Conversations Over Sanguinaccio Dolce" I.B. Vyache // What Can You Do? Ruth Stone // // 4X10 With Open Eyes // Where to begin? Sue Zhao

connection

did this last night

Life is difficult, isn’t it, Charlie Brown? Yes, it is. But I’ve developed a new philosophy. I only dread one day at a time.

A Boy Named Charlie Brown (1969) // dir. Bill Melendez

it does not matter if you have a genuine desire to do good (kendall) or a deep capacity for love (roman) or have comparatively progressive politics and are a victim of the misogynistic environment your father created (shiv). because if your sense of self is so intrinsically tied to oppressive capitalist structures, what good are your best impulses, your love, your decency? waystar is them and they are waystar what does any kindness they possess actually matter if they are only capable of acting upon it within the framework of the fascistic, patriarchal corporation that they have no desire to escape?

As we come up on autumn I must say that the pumpkin is a magnificent creation. Both tasty flesh and seeds and can be even made to have a silly face

kendall is logan's biggest paradox. he hates and loves kendall the most. kendall is his least favorite child and his favorite child. and it's all for the same reason: he recognizes kendall's potential and admires his ambition. as a father, he is proud of that. that's why kendall was the original successor in the first place. but as a narcissist, he can't take it.

kendall's not afraid to make bold moves, and he will step out of line to do so. kendall has huge flops of course but he also has good ideas, and logan can't handle it. he can't handle, for example, that kendall was the one who solved logan's debt problem. he can't handle that vaulter was modernizing the company. he can't handle that kendall came dangerously close to voting him out of his chair.

that's why logan only reconciles with ken after shiv's wedding--when he has the ultimate trump card to force ken's obedience and love. logan is openly affectionate and admiring of kendall only when he knows he has control. he loves kendall this way and wants to be close to him, but he only respects kendall when he fights back. he wants a successor with whom he can do both at once, whom he can love and respect, but he necessarily never can. because he simultaneously despises all weakness and all dissent.

that's why kendall is the number one boy. he puts up the biggest fight but he's also the most vulnerable to logan's influence. he reaches the highest highs and the lowest lows. and that's why this show makes me absolutely unwell.

i think i genuinely need attend a support group for succession fans still thinking about the series every day and struggling to cope under the weight of its absence. like every day i am agast the succession writers showed me all that, opened my mind to thoughts hitherto unthunk and then ended it and i am supposed to what? move on? i've had my standards for television and storytelling, perspective on myself and society irrevocably changed and afirmed all at once and i am just meant to go back to normal life?? anyways, who wants to join the support group? haha kidding!!!!! unless-

anouilh's antigone / rosanna warren / antigone / i'm thinking of ending things / jun cen / harry styles' sign of the times / t.s. eliot's four quartets / unknown source / tom stoppard's rosencrantz and guildenstern are dead / richard siken's war of the foxes.

GOD the facial acting is unreal. And it’s also HILARIOUS, like I can’t help but laugh with them every time. but it’s only possible in a show with characters as well-realized as this. like, it’s a simple interaction, but you can follow each individual beat so clearly, and the comedy arises so simply from the circumstance, and the insane history of their relationship. this is my favorite relationship in any show ever

SUCCESSION ▸ 4.06 living+

Tom would be a they/he if he was born 30 years later, this is not up for debate

Well, it was nice knowing you, then. Yep.

my least favorite family sitcom

ok but stewy being canonically bi really makes everything about his relationship with kendall so much funnier like imagine being a beautiful bisexual stallion and your fate is to become best friends with and develop a 30 year crush on logan ‘homophobia’ roy’s prodigal son like. imagine having to do deal with kendall’s ‘no homo but my tongue is down your throat’ repressed bullshit for 30 years whilst also dodging the beam of mixed flavor racism homophobia his father directs at you every time he sees you within 5 feet of said prodigal son but also you feel a strange solidarity with this old man because he at least has also accurately clocked and acknowledges that his prodigal son is queer

Average succession fan

Is the music from Kendall’s point of view?

So I’ve had a thought. Throughout the show, I noticed that whenever it’s talked about that Kendall would inherit, these moments are underscored with music that is often absent during the equivalent scenes with the other siblings. The most obvious example of this is in Dundee, when Rhea is trying to court each of them individually by telling them they ‘have what it takes’––with Shiv and Roman this kinda falls flat, but when she says to Kendall that “it’s you, it’s always been you”, there are these dreamy piano chords which inherently lend more weight to the idea. Initially, this seems to be a foreshadowing device meant to signal that Kendall WILL one day be the successor. Similarly, more dramatic chords are played when kendall talks to Frank about his name being on the piece of paper in Logan’s office. And later in Season 4 the new composition Allegro Bellicoso––which is initially played during Logan’s terrifying ATN speech––becomes paired with Kendall during scenes when he starts to behave more like his father (blackmailing Hugo, assembling cronies after the funeral). This again feels like the show is trying to foreshadow the whole tragic ‘kendall winning but only after he becomes the thing that he hates’ ending which we are meant to expect. 

HOWEVER, knowing how the show ends, and the cruelty of the fact that kendall becomes the thing he hates (and loses all of his loved ones + what was left of his soul) but STILL doesn’t inherit.. these musical motifs start to take on a different meaning. Rather than being a meta-narrative device which we look back on and say Ah! they told us the ending all along!, these moments seem more like a reflection of Kendall’s interiority––his belief that he IS the chosen one, that he CAN become his father––than a confirmation that such things could ever be true in reality. Then I started thinking about how many of the score’s most pronounced appearances in the show come when kendall is experiencing some emotionally significant event: the press conference, the near suicide in the pool, the final walk with Colin...and I realized, is Nicholas Britell’s music basically just from Kendall’s point of view?

‘course I’ll admit I might be generalizing a bit here, because there are strong compositions with other characters (particularly Shiv). But at the very least, this has made me very curious about how they went about scoring the show, and the discussions they must have had about perspective; and who’s emotions they chose to reflect in the music.