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Who the fuck wants to be a Roy?
No one could have predicted in the year 2021, just as the TikTok kids are gearing up to sacrifice Bezos for climate change awareness, that a family of spoiled billionaire brats would capture the hearts and minds of the nation. But it has. Succession is the most exciting show on TV. Why?
If you’re reading this, you know the players.
Kendall, the spineless but sympathetic weasel who tried to kill Daddy and became America’s most hated #girlboss in the process carries the weight of being the “responsible” brother on his shoulders, but is too dysfunctional and too insecure to live up to his own aspirations. Is it better to be loved or feared? Kenny’s too coked out to know the difference.
Shiv, the chic, sociopathic Lady Macbeth that coerced her husband into becoming TV’s most beloved cuckold, is calculated and probably the smartest of her siblings, but too impulsive and blinded by her own ambition to actually get what she wants. Does she have what it takes for the top spot? Who knows! But no one can say she can’t rock a pantsuit.
If you get Roman, you might consider yourself the most traumatized of the bunch. Roman’s pastimes include courting fascists, working out his mommy fetish-frustration with his mentor, and cutting his siblings down to size with his acid-dripped zingers. He’s an asshole, that’s for sure, but he’s also the most honest of the Roy clan—and, in a family full of snakes, a little honesty goes a long way.
Connor, who no one who took the test had the pleasure of getting, is the symbol of nepotism, directionless and if anything is proven by an assignment to his coding, no wits and all heart.
They’re the most fascinating band of fuck-ups to hit small screens since The Sopranos, but God help anyone who actually wants to be a Roy. How much does the average person even have in common with the Roy siblings?
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According to this personality quiz, quite a lot actually. You can take the test yourself here. This uQuiz has been making the social media rounds by using a range of thorough and merciless questions to assign the user their own personal Roy identity.
Impressed by its thought and its craft, we got a few contributors, some SMACK-regulars and other guests with varying life experience, to take the test and evaluate its results. Their reactions range from denial to outright disgust, but all of which are a testament to the test’s achievement: a detailed display of evidence that when you strip away the drugs and private jets, the Roys are just as messed up as the rest of us.
The way the test works is that once you answer the questionnaire, you are assigned an x-coded and a y-girl.
Your x-coded is the character that you present yourself as to the world. It's the Succession character you appear as externally.
Your y-girl is the Succession character you actually are deep down. It's who you are internally and informs your x-coded personality.
Confusing? Get over it. You're smart, you'll figure it out.
Steven Marshall is the founder of IScreemZ and a horror aficionado. He also has 15 years of sales experience and is well-versed in C-suite jargon. In other words, he's an asshole.
"So I took this stupid quiz, only to be told (in both columns) that I'm Kendall. This proves how wrong these things can be. I have never wavered in the face of crippling anxiety and self-doubt, nor have I EVER locked myself in a bathroom and snorted copious amounts of cocaine to mask past traumas and abundant self-loathing. No sir. Not I.
However, I will neither confirm nor deny that I once flipped a car off a bridge…"
Thomas Desormeaux is a feature writer at Oakville News. He also is not and has never been associated with a "hippy".
"There's gotta be something wrong with me psychologically that deep down I knew I was fucking going to get Shiv even though I hate the idea of being Shiv.
All my worst qualities are now realized.
Most overrated sibling! She’s just Roman with less guile and more evil. Pinky’s got no shot against the number one boy or, my personal favourite, Gerri. I’d give the company to Cousin Ewan or Marsha before trusting it with Shiv. Also anyone who treats Tom Wamsgams that badly should really be the one going to jail.
To be fair, it is always fun when she beats the shit out of Roman.
p.s. ‘IM NOT A HIPPY SHIV’"
Aisling Murphy is the senior editor of Canada's premiere theatre magazine, Intermission, but don't let that fool you into thinking any of her opinions are credible. She once said Succession had the worst pilot she had ever seen. Now she watches it every Sunday. Guess she really is a Shiv.
"Sigh. I’m a shiv-coded shiv girl. I used to be… better, I guess, a shiv-coded kendall-girl, bitchy only superfluously to hide a deeply insecure interior. (That is better, right?)
In the weeks that have passed since my first foray into this awful, soul-clocking quiz, I have (d?)evolved. I am Shivvier than I once was. Be it end-of-semester burnout bringing out the most ruthless parts of me or something else, something more sinister, today, now, this quiz has seen me for the Shiv that I am.
And that’s fine, I guess.
The joke-cracking part of me has things to say about her ass, her pantsuit collection, her external confidence... These are the elements of Shiv I wish to take with me, the bits easy to stomach from a stupid fucking personality quiz. I’ll happily claim a Shiv designation if it means I get to embody these things.
But the parts that sting more are her insidious insecurities. The transparent ambition, no matter the cost; the evident, terrible loneliness.
This quiz says, “Aisling, you can’t girlboss your way to success.”
And to that, I say firmly: fucking watch me."
Brendan enjoys the simpler things in life. He thought he had to submit more than he was expected to.
Deciphering the explanation to the dynamic between a coded and Y-girl was one of the biggest accomplishments of my life. I think I read it over 4 times trying to figure out what the fuck the author was talking about. Now I understood the dynamic, I started to think how my life was like theirs. Firstly I am writing this while sitting on, literally, the second last row of a plane with some lady in the other seat bumping her elbows into me. I feel far away from the life of Luxury that the characters on Succession live. I mean I had a fucking pop-Tart for breakfast and I just turned 30. There is no private jet, or yacht for me. Just a humble 2005 Honda CRV and a secondhand bike for transport. I'm okay with that cause I don’t look forward to a life of riches, I prefer the simple things like Internet personality tests and being told I am like Macaulay Calkin’s less famous brother.
Who would ever want to be Roman? The kind of person who would go to the border so his immigrant jokes don’t go to waste. Shiv I feel more comfortable relating to, as the only son surrounded by daughters and she the only daughter surrounded by brothers. This allowed us to both grow up and develop high levels of emotional maturity. I've always been attracted to her dead eyes and natural leadership, something that I can now see inside me; though much to the detriment of my fantasies, the only person allowed to be inside of Shiv is Tom. I finally feel like for the first time in my life that I truly understand myself. What started off as a personality test, inspired me to take a step back and analyze my life. It’s comforting to know that I have these two on my side and look forward to carrying them with me for the rest of my life.
Jared Marshall is the co-founder of SMACK. It's literally the only thing he has going for him.
I take no issue with being compared to Shiv. I too am thicc as fuck and think I know everything. Roman, however, is where I draw the line. Here I thought I could have been propping up Kendall's rainbow-coloured soapbox–little did I know this quiz thinks I'm Edgelord Jr. and I'm honestly offended. Do I have crippling mommy issues? Yes. Do I have sex problems? Well, antidepressants do be like that sometimes. Do I use sardonic, downright morbid humour to cope with the black hole of my inner pain? Let's not open those 31 flavours of "fuck."
I suppose I may have a few parallels with our damaged short king, Roman Roy. But coming off of an episode where he backed an ACTUAL fascist to help further his agenda of e-girls with guns and Juul pods, it's hard not to be given a little pause.
This quiz really put me through it, man.
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