PENELOPE LANE

Anyway. Read my crack ship fic from 2017 (written in world where Krennic and Mothma did NOT even meet in canon 🥹):

Thank you in advance for your answer.

Contrats for your writing.

Xx

Hello!

Thank you so much for reading!! I’m so happy you are enjoying it. As for music, there’s a slight Beatles motif in the most recent chapters. I also think of “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” and I’ll be extending the musical motif into upcoming/final chapters, but I don’t want to give away the songs yet 🫣

I’m slow to update, but I’ll be back to writing soon.

Ahhhhh! Thank you so much!! 😭 that little fic is very dear to me and I’m so glad you like it!!!

So some folks say Jess is out of character here. And that is valid—I can totally see it. But I think there’s room for another interpretation here (as usual with Succession’s writing!)

Let’s rewind a little bit and see where these lines end up in the course of the scene (because that was my first question when I saw this—“where does this happen?”)

Kendall has made it clear (“not going to let her up”) that they’re having this talk whether she wants to or not. But Jess has already made her decision. Like so many other instances, Kendall is too late. The die is already cast. This relationship has reached the point of no return.

She presents her speech that she’s prepared, trying to navigate this with resolve—and to end on a good note. This is not a “fuck you, I’m quitting speech.”

But what type of conversation does this end up being?

Kendall becomes increasingly desperate (all happening within an hour of his breakdown with Rava and the kids) but Jess is resolved. Throughout the course of their interaction, he tries different tactics, different appeals (access, liking one another, anger, truth; in this draft he specifically asks about Mencken twice and both times she chooses to not give him a true answer. He knows it’s Mencken.)

He wants her to answer his questions (Juliana Canfield has said Jess is not the type to speak up about things but that she’s “starting to pick up on [being feisty.]” — as she mentioned in the Vulture article right after America Decides premiered.

She’s making a tough decision, but she’s still avoiding “getting into it” while also not sugar coating and saying “it’s not Mencken! Don’t worry!” She’s toeing the line—and doing a fucking professional job of it.

Part of jess’ job is give Kendall answers, especially when he pointedly asks her questions. But here we see her dodge them repeatedly, with half or vague answers or she chooses to not answer them outright (like when he asks “what exact role” was she moving on to). Again, she doesn’t want to get into it, but she’s also not going to lie. She also now does not owe him answers.

Jess is navigating this extremely tough conversation because she does care about Kendall but she’s taking care of herself. (JC said on twitter:

She’s being careful to not answer questions and she knows Kendall is starting to spiral (because she knows him really, really well.) she’s reading the room; he is not (or cannot).

So here we are—we see him inquiring about whether she likes him (as he mentions he likes her three times) as a question in a long string of questions as he spirals and tries desperately to hang on to, as Jeremy Strong said, his “safe space” that he’s found with her. He’s doomed to lose her as his fights this mortal wound.

We also see her cite the “hard time” as something of a general reason for her moving on. Because her answer to “do you like me” is YES, but she knows she can’t say that now. If she does, he’ll use it as a way to try to convince her, to draw out this awful conversation minutes before his father’s funeral.

And he collapses into himself, throws his shades on to hide his emotions and lashes out at her for doing exactly what he asked her to that morning, which was tell him what the meeting was about 😩.