Show Of All Time

Night

FUCK

There's something to the picture that all this season and the release of the first three seasons' scripts have painted of Logan and Caroline's divorce not as one of maternal abandonment, but one of maternal dislocation and suffocating abuse that's ruining me right now.

The way Caroline tried to take her children and flee in the dead of the night to Morocco, the way Logan took meetings with every worth-its-salt law firm in the city to cut off Caroline's access to them, wielding the legal system like an axe to an umbilical cord, the way Caroline's one recourse was to try and keep their position in the company, to keep them with something even if she gave it away later as they rejected her in adulthood. The way she stayed for their adolescence in New York even as Logan froze her out, the way she had to bargain for Christmas even in their adulthood, the way she sat in the pews with the rest of the women Logan loved and hurt and discarded while her children cried, with no tools or ability to comfort them, the way she sat as her son wrote her out of her own motherhood as he gave their father sole credit in creating them, stood opposite her daughter as she told her she wouldn't see it, i'm just gonna do it the family way like it was on Caroline and not their father, that she never got to see them.

Something about the way it feels like Logan trained them how to bark at her scent, to make sure she stayed away from the door.

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.

the flesh will persist (graphite + digital, 2023)

connection

here’s a balloon animal of an insect parasitized by Cordyceps sp. fungus

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