#casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

shiv was not being altruistic nor intellectually self-interested when she voted against kendall. that was pure raw visceral desperation to maintain some semblance of dignity that she felt kendall being ceo would shred her of. sometimes people do not act in other people’s best interests or their own best interests. sometimes people do the wrong thing for the wrong reasons just because it feels like the right, the only, thing to do. shiv could not let kendall be ceo. she just couldn’t. not because she wanted to sacrifice herself to “stop the cycle,” not because she made a calculation and decided tom was her best interest — because the thought of kendall being ceo and acting like That the rest of their lives when shiv earned that job, she fucking earned it, that was too much to fucking bear. watching him sit in dad’s chair, conduct that vote, grin with entitlement and cockiness and certainty — seeing that elicited a visceral painful all-consuming sensation not dissimilar to overwhelming nausea that, summed up in two words, would simply be: fuck. no. she couldn’t live with that. she just couldn’t. it’s not kind. it’s not smart. it’s just human. painfully, destructively human. because sometimes, that’s all there is to it. not just for shiv, but for everyone. god knows roman and kendall have had those same feelings, made those same self-destructing yet necessary-feeling decisions throughout the show. why does it have to be different for shiv? why can’t she be painfully destructively human, prone to impulsive ill-conceived viscerally felt actions, like everyone else? why are we incapable of allotting her the same nuance and humanity (the good and the bad), the same trauma-informed self-destructive life-ruining hamartias, as we do her brothers? why can’t we fit a whole woman in our heads?

#very surprised to see so many ‘shiv stopped the cycle on purpose blah blah blah’ takes like that didn’t even cross my mind as a motivation #of hers #it wasn’t calculated — i mean kendall winning would be to her benefit in terms of power and respect. that would be best for her #it wasn’t just jealousy or anything either; it wasn’t a coherent thought or plan #it was just I Can’t Fucking Do This #i can’t sit there while he smiles like that when he sits in dad’s chair and hisses that’s fucking right under his breath when someone votes #his way. not when that job was fucking MINE. it was MINE. i can’t- i can’t fucking do it #it’s about preservation of emotional dignity #it’s about self-respect #it’s ironic though because there are few things more undignified and less respected than being a quiet betrayed trophy wife to a weak ceo #husband who earned his position even less than kendall #but she’s not thinking clearly. she’s not Thinking. she just acted because there was this visceral need to act #succession #succession spoilers #shiv roy #100 #500 #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #1000

[brookheimer]

not sure why people don't seem to understand that shiv being the victim of misogyny and vitriol from all the men in her life can and does coexist with the fact that she is not a feminist liberal hero fighting to save democracy. why is it that we never afford her any nuance? she's either the only good person on the show and deserves to kill every man in a ten foot radius (twitter) or a uniquely evil cruel sociopath with no heart fueled entirely by spite (reddit). is it not just so much more interesting for her to be a fascism aiding and abetting character like the rest of them who also views herself as more progressive in spite of everything else about her and who undergoes horrific treatment at the hands of the men around her yet has no interest in undoing the system that allows them to do so, only in ruling it herself? shiv is not any better than the others nor is she any worse than them. there's no Evil Olympics here guys, nor should there be. snook said it herself in the after credits sequence -- shiv was just lucky that her interests aligned with her sympathies. who knows what she would've done had mencken been her best personal option? yes she cares infinitely more about politics than roman, yes she is still very much interested in maintaining the capitalist, fascist structure and even strengthening it, so long as it ends with her on top (which either way would be a win for liberal causes bc Woman). fascism isn't one-size-fits-all. it's not just mencken and trump. it's also mattson. it's also logan. it's also roman and shiv and kendall. that's... kind of one of the main points of succession? but even so, that does not negate the fact that as a woman it is so hard to watch some of the scenes with her and tom/roman/kendall -- of course that misogyny will resonate with female viewers, as it should!!! but that resonance needs to coexist with a deeper understanding of her character -- if you want to root for a bad bitch fighting against misogyny go watch, i don't know, captain marvel or whatever. what makes shiv interesting is that she's so so so much more than that -- she is the product, victim, and perpetrator of misogyny and fascism, two concepts so heavily intertwined they're virtually inextricable from each other. tl;dr it's one thing to be like my god someone give shiv a gun and it's another entirely to say, entirely seriously, that shiv is the Good Liberal Feminist One and the rest are all evil. like i absolutely adore shiv but i would honest to god find her so fucking boring if she were actually the person these tweets make her out to be i'm sorry

#me: shiv isn't evil! \ everyone: oh so she's the only good one? #me: shiv isn't good! \ everyone: oh so she's the only evil one? #NUANCE GUYS. IT EXISTS. #honestly i just don't get it. how are you all not just like bored by the versions of these characters you've created #all this being said. every man that called shiv hysterical tonight should be shot and killed. #<3 #succession #succession spoilers #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #shiv roy #long post #100 #500 #1000 #dude if i thought this would get notes i would’ve proofread it first. LMAO #like this is literally a word vomit ramble that i didn’t even read before posting . embarrassing 4 me #this time on posts i didn’t expect to get notes

[brookheimer]

shiv booking herself a room to grieve her dead father in because she does have emotions about it she is grieving she is crying but if she as a woman at waystar royco is seen showing them anywhere at any time she is ruined. the boys can boss everyone around can arbitrarily fire anyone who looks at them wrong roman can fire a longtime executive because she mentioned his dad kendall can be on the verge of tears when a set designer is unable to create realistic looking clouds in less than a day of work but shiv? shiv can't do any of that. shiv has to be stone. when men show emotion in the workplace, it isn't seen as emotion, it's seen as Man. anything a woman does in the workplace is seen as emotion and thus seen as Woman because the two are seen as being virtually interchangeable. shiv schedules her grief because it exists and she isn't actually the emotionless pinnacle of masculinist ideals (independence, self-sufficiency, pride, stoicism, distance) she tries to be but god is she fucking trying to be so she blocks herself out a twenty minute period of time to be a person because if she's a person in public then she becomes a Woman and that's untenable.

big fan of that specific choice from the writers' end because that was honestly a really smart way to straddle the modern 'conundrum' facing female characters -- it allowed her to simultaneously maintain masculinist respect and human emotionality, while very much drawing attention to the absurdity, cruelty, and inhumanity of both the expectations she's trying to meet and the degrees she must go to meet them. typically Strong Female Characters must be emotionless hard-hearted and cold if they hope to remain Strong. if they show emotion they are demoted from Strong Female Character to just Female Character. what a brilliant way to circumvent that -- it's not just Strong On The Outside Soft On The Inside or whatever, it's a character study moment while also being a metatextual critique of the absurd boundaries and forced emotion regulation placed on women not only in the workplace but on the screen. shiv hiding her moment of vulnerability shows that she hates it too, knows it's weak and bad and wrong too; shiv going out of her way to schedule moments of alone time to have emotions shows she won't let her emotions get in the way of anything important -- she's internalized the bizarre masculine emotional narrative deeply enough to be respectable in the audience's eyes, thus maintaining her position as a Strong character despite being seen acting like a "Female" one. but ! it's still framed so absurdly and painfully that it additionally works on the level of meta commentary, highlighting just how small and high the hoops female characters have to go through in order to be seen as respectable by a general audience while also retaining their humanity and emotionality (that male characters are free to express however they'd like)

#this is rambling idk if it makes sense outside of my head but i must say it #also if it needs to be said 'female' 'male' 'masculine' 'feminine' etc DO NOT EXIST obviously i'm talking ab their very very heavily #ingrained societal perceptions. like there is a distinct societal undesrtanding of Femininity vs Masculinity and the traits associated w #each. so. that is what i'm talking about. not being weird or essentialist #shiv roy #succession #succession spoilers #i haven't read this over but idc. Post #100 #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #500

[brookheimer]

okay i think i’m alone in my shiv take LOL i’m going to hush up for a while and see what people are saying and think on the ending some but right now i just… do not understand the last 30 or so minutes from shiv’s perspective and the last 10 are downright baffling. trying very hard not to feel like succession just 180’d everything that’s been good about the shiv writing this season (and in general but esp this season) but every time i think ab the last tomshiv scene my stomach turns grotesquely

#literally the one thing they could’ve done to make me feel :/ on tomshiv #like maybe i just need to think on it some but the decisions shiv made re: tom/matsson but esp tom made 0 sense to me #just did not make sense as things she of all people would do #shiv’s key motivation has never been power it has been RESPECT. time and time again she has fucked up possibilities for power because she’s #felt disrespected. so why exactly did she- ok yknow what no i’m gonna sleep on it. i’ll talk later #don’t wanna say anything dumb #but. seemed like they wanted to make a point with shiv so bad they forgot her fundamental fear: not being respected or taken seriously #and boy oh boy did she willingly subject herself to the most devastating respect-less fate conceivable: trophy wife to the man who fucked #you over twice in a row and ended up being CEO despite that being the job you wanted and were somewhat supposed to get your entire life #and literally TWO SECONDS after the betrayal too. immediately going back to him #bizarre and very unshiv. she would rather die than publicly subject herself to that specific form of humiliation and interpersonal #powerlessness #ok i’ll shut up. agh #of all the things i feared in the finale this wasn’t even one #oyyyy vey #succession #succession spoilers #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

been seeing some weird takes ab the shiv pregnancy. like being ambivalent about how the writers will play it is one thing — it could end up being an incredible exploration into shiv’s internal life and her as a person beyond her relationships with men, but there are also a lot of ways to fuck up a pregnancy narrative and most are exercises in thinly veiled sexism, so it’s only natural to feel uncertain. we just don’t know how it’ll go yet!

…..buuuut. saying that pregnancy playing a role at all in shiv’s life/arc/character inherently reduces her to being The Woman just feels soooo like … rooted in internalized misogyny to me? that’s kinda doing the same thing as everyone always does — thinking less of a woman once she shows signs of, y’know, actually ‘being a woman’ quote unquote. a female character won’t stop being fully-fleshed-out, strong, independent, and interesting the second she get pregnant. pregnancy isn’t, like, just a sexist trope, guys. it’s a real thing with real importance in the lives of many, many people! pregnancy isn’t reductive to women, it’s just a part of life for some women! a lot of the time it feels like ‘good female characters’ are only seen as ‘good’ so long as you can almost forget that they’re female, so long as they act so ‘masculine’ it’s like they’re just a regular complex male character repackaged in a female body. but to be a complex female character, you’re going to have a relationship to your gender! that’s inevitable and necessary in order to actually create a good female character, rather than a good character who just so happens to be female. and this isn’t even touching upon the weird essentialism of being like oh womanhood = pregnancy & vice versa like…. y’all are complaining about the show ‘reducing shiv to womanhood’ but are you sure you’re not doing that? and besides what do you even mean ‘reduced to womanhood’? was she not a woman before? is she only a woman now that she’s pregnant? just some fucking bizarre takes all around.

the rest is under the cut because this got long, sorry !

i mean, why are we acting like the decision to explicitly explore shiv’s relationship with motherhood and femininity is bad writing and rooted in misogyny — like, not even the way it’s done, just the decision to make shiv pregnant? like, making a female character pregnant is not sexist in itself, at all! that is just part and parcel of some women’s lives! the only reason you would think pregnancy as a concept for a woman is sexist is if your internalized misogyny makes you think that pregnancy weakens or devalues a ‘strong woman’ !!! why are y’all acting like pregnancy is this terrible emasculating trope that puts the curse of Woman on characters like you sound like the roy men

and, like, maybe the storyline will suck! maybe it’ll be shitty and weird and not-so-secretly misogynistic. maybe the way they end up writing it will be yet another Career Woman Grows Heart And Has Kids or the equally bad Career Woman Feels Forced To Reject ‘Womanhood’ Entirely And That’s Supposed To Be Empowering narrative. but maybe it won’t. maybe it’ll be fucking great. maybe it’s fucking needed — maybe it will try to unravel to undo this exact centuries-long prejudice against pregnancy, against women who ‘act like’ women, whatever that’s supposed to mean. we just don’t know yet. so, like, while it is so fair to feel ambivalent about this development, maybe try to figure out what the root of that ambivalence is — is it fear that the writers will fuck it up, or is it your own pre-existing biases about pregnancy and stereotypically ‘feminine’ experiences and traits? because, yknow. it just feels kind of weird to act like the mere existence of pregnancy in the arc of a female character is inherently diminishing and reductive to her — after all, what you’re saying between the lines is not only that pregnancy diminishes and reduces independent powerful women to just being women, but youre also literally reducing the entirety of womanhood to pregnancy and the entirety of pregnancy to womanhood, and all of that feels just, like. a strange stance to take, maybe

#this is not about anyone or anything in particular!!!! i’ve just seen a lot of random weird posts and tags that just have these undertones #of internalized misogyny and judgment towards pregnancy and a lot of things that i just like… don’t think people really meant to say #if that makes sense. like it’s not purposeful there’s just some really weird language being thrown around that just feels very like… judgin #a woman for ‘acting like’ a woman #which is inherently a weak bad thing #like womanhood and strength are not diametrically opposed guys. you don’t have to choose between self-respect and femininity #actually this is getting into another arg about the unempowering nature of a lot of abortion plotlines these days but that’s for another #time so i digress #might delete this later i’m not trying to like start drama. i’m just thinking thoughts ab shit i’ve seen on reddit twitter sometimes here #sometimes articles…. idk. just thinking thoughts here fr #succession #succession spoilers #shiv roy #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #100

[brookheimer]

honestly, if the shiv pregnancy plotline is done well, i feel like it would end up being kind of, like, revolutionary for female characters in prestige television? 'revolutionary' is a strong word, but even so! just... prestige television is obsessed with the whole Strong Femininity-Rejecting Career Woman archetype and it's a trope that's often been lauded as empowering, as allowing women to be complex like male characters. except... often they're not complex like male characters, they're complex as male characters in that they're treated basically like a 'complex male character' stuck into a female body. the explanation is a legitimate one: the female character rejects classical femininity. sure. the better shows will depict the lengths these women will go to be perceived as 'masculine' in order to survive, to thrive in their patriarchal world. but regardless of the show, the vast majority of Strong Female Characters are never allowed a lot of things that their male equivalents would: namely, love and sometimes family. it's like we think that if a Strong Complex Female Character falls in love or wants a relationship/a family, she's no longer a Strong Complex Female Character, she's just a Female Character. that is so incredibly detrimental! it reifies the belief that love/family/etc are inherently 'feminine' things and that inherently 'feminine' things are inherently weak, and any woman who displays 'femininity' is no more Strong or Complex than a 1950s housewife.

so for shiv, a Strong Complex Female Character who admittedly has spent the majority of the series surrounded solely by men (she's had maybe three conversations without a man present?), ensconced in the 'masculine' defense she's created for herself... for that shiv, girlboss shiv, Strong Complex Femininity-Rejecting Career Woman shiv, to get pregnant and have to reconcile the version of herself she needs to present to the world with whatever she actually is or actually wants (because frankly, we as an audience have no fucking clue what shiv wants in life outside of logan and waystar royco) and her own fear of anything remotely approximating 'femininity'... well, assuming shiv remains shiv, remains manipulative and calculating and angry and machiavellian and 'masculine' and everything else she's inherited from her last name -- everything else that makes men on the internet call her a sociopath -- while also being allowed to explore her relationship with femininity, to maybe want kids or a family because that isn't just a Woman Trope that's also just a natural human desire for connection that many people experience, to be not just the woman or the anti-woman but a fully fleshed out person... i mean. that would kind of be huge, i think.

[more under the cut! like, a lot more. be fucking warned]

really, Strong Career Women were created as the antithesis of the television housewife. the housewife displays every emotion except for anger and deeply desires love and family. therefore, the Strong Woman will display no emotion but anger or pride (because those are the only masculine emotions) and have no interest whatsoever in love and family (because men don't have interest in love and family). and that, obviously, is horseshit -- men experience the entire human spectrum of emotions and desire love and family and all of that, because that's literally just part of being a fucking human. but while prestige television frequently explores the interiority, humanity, desires and dreams, etc etc etc of their complex male characters, they very rarely do the same for their women, at least not outside of the bounds of career and/or other areas where the woman in question demonstrates her power and masculinity (such as relationship power plays). we can't explore the humanity of Strong Female Characters because then they'd show emotion and desire love and connection, which would out them as women, as housewives, not Strong Female Characters.

we think emotion and yearning deepens male characters and lessens female characters, because we 'expect' that from women but not from men. when a woman cries on television, we think 'here they go again.' when a man cries, we think it's a shocking and meaningful display of vulnerability. both in-universe of the shows and in real life, in the writer's room and beyond, Strong Complex Women are only taken seriously so long as they reject 'femininity' as much as humanly possible. Strong Complex Female Characters have to be one-note, because if they show any other notes, they stop being seen as strong or complex. their lives begin and end in the office, in the presence of men, in the persona they've created for themselves. if there is a self beyond those boundaries, we never see it. we're not allowed to. Strong Women are uniquely forbidden from those basic aspects of human life, even more so than men, i'd argue, because to display any of those qualities would be to out yourself as A Woman and prove everyone right, to lose any and all credibility you've ever gained in your entire career because now they now you've been A Woman all along. but that's not realistic, that's not human. yet because they are still women and on some level do still want to be seen as women, but that's impossible to balance with the need to be seen as a man. there are almost no female characters that are allowed to simultaneously embrace 'femininity' and desire 'feminine' things such as love and family while still prioritizing their careers, being cold and manipulative and calculating, and presenting 'masculine' in the way they handle themselves.

i'm not saying shiv has been poorly written so far, or that succession has been, like, enormously sexist by keeping a lot of her interior life private. i think in large part this has been purposeful and makes a lot of sense -- after all, shiv is notoriously most resistant when it comes to self-reflection, possibly more than anyone else; kendall obsessively introspects, roman hates it and deflects but that's largely because he already knows what he is and can't bear to be reminded of it, but shiv is... well, a little delusional at times. forcibly delusional. she has to delude not only herself but everyone else around her in order to survive as a woman in a man's world, a liberal in a conservative company, a hardcore capitalist in a bernie sanders campaign. kendall wants to be a good person but knows he isn't, roman doesn't believe it's possible for him to be a normal person let alone a good one, but shiv clings onto these label of Good Person and, i don't know, Essentially A Man, with such intensity and desperation that any actual self-reflection would literally be suicide. it would burst that bubble entirely and then what's left?

well. what IS left? because, i mean, something would be. she's still a person. she's not a robot programmed to imitate men and show no emotion or desire (god knows she's not even good at pretending). but shiv would never take that step of her own volition. she'd never just sit down and think "hm, let's actually dig into what i really want from life and from myself" -- and even if she did, she wouldn't be honest about it.

then boom. pregnancy. "oh fuck i am a woman. oh fuck what if i do want a kid and this is my only chance. oh fuck" etc etc etc. it's not reducing shiv to being a womb (crazy take, by the way) but it's actually expanding her from being the lack of one. rather than simply being a Woman with a distinct set of qualities and no contradicting ones or an Anti-Woman with the opposite set of qualities and not a hint of anything that could be construed as a former, she'd become a person. obviously, you can be a person and a woman without being pregnant or wanting kids or a family, but we don't even know what shiv wants! she hasn't allowed herself to consider it seriously, because that would be betraying her Anti-Woman Survival Method! it's not saying that pregnancy/family/etc are necessary for a full and happy life, but rather, spending your entire life terrified of showing interest in anything perceived as 'feminine' and thus weak, of showing emotion or desire or love because you know how the men in the room will receive it -- that isn't satisfying! that isn't a happy life! that's a life lived in fear, denial, and repression masked as Masculine Self-Sufficiency to such an extreme extent that men don't even do that. the only thing worse than a man displaying 'feminine' characteristics is a woman displaying 'feminine' characteristics -- the feeling men talk about when displaying emotion is the disgust, judgment, and dismissal women (particularly those trying to perform masculinity/live in masculine spheres) experience on a day-to-day basis. while a man displaying emotion is met with shame in the moment, a woman displaying emotion is seen as a confirmation of what the men around her have been thinking all along: she's weak, she's not up to it, she's a 'woman.' men can shake it off. women can't. the reason displaying emotion feels uniquely hard for men is because it's their first time being treated like a woman.

anyways. i digress. succession has been hinting at things all along -- moments that show she genuinely loves tom, the conversations with her mother, etc -- and now that throughline can actually, y'know, follow through, and it might be fucking great, guys. that's what i'm hoping for with the shiv arc -- her trying to reconcile with the fact that she's a woman, and the show using it as a way to explore the bizarre and arbitrary way we assign 'femininity' to natural aspects of human life and desire, making those things impossible for women to ever even consider wanting or earnestly caring about if they want to be seen as people rather than as capital-w Women (and what is a capital-w Woman anyways?), and just, like, idk. i think it's idiotic to act like women like shiv aren't allowed to want kids and families -- and that narrative is so deeply ingrained in society that the presumably largely female/feminist/progressive online succession fanbase has been constantly reiterating that same trope as a genuine criticism levied against the writers' decision to make shiv pregnancy!

i said in another post that this plotline feels to me like... high risk, high reward. yeah, it's high risk, it could go terribly in so many ways, but to me personally as someone who has been endlessly endlessly fascinated with the internalized misogyny within so many 'feminist' narratives and the apparent belief that strong women aren't allowed to 'act like women' if they want to continue being seen as strong, as someone who has unironically written a multitude of papers and articles on this topic for college and for journals, the reward is just SO fucking high. like, this could be a fucking GAME CHANGER. if they pull this off it might genuinely alter the way prestige media writes 'strong female characters' which is something that has been needed for years. there will always be risk in storylines as historically ridden with misogyny as pregnancy/abortion/etc narratives are, but if there's any show right now i trust to approach this with care and deftness and real thought, it's succession. if it flops, it flops, and that will genuinely suck. a lot. but even if there's only 1% chance for success, that's still, like, 0.9% more than any other show i can think of. so fuck it. full speed ahead, baby. do this shit right

#jesus motherfucking christ this was a doozy #my blog is so funny bc it's like: 1min succession shitpost (5000 notes) 234298498k word essay about a character (12 notes) #perpetually in awe of people who can be concise. that is not me but godbless #if even a single person reads this entire thing i'll eat my hat. christ #hopefullyyyyy this makes sense and has value for some people. lolol yall must think im insane huh #look i'm in bed with a fever what else am i gonna do? my work? no #whatever. might reblog later if like Really really nobody sees it bc it's 4 pm on a tuesday but meh #succession #succession spoilers #shiv roy #succession meta #i guess. honestly more like prestige television meta LOL #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #< new tag. have one for roman but clearly need one for shiv too #long post

[brookheimer]

sooooo much to say about tomshiv fight oh my god. holy fuck

#succession #succession spoilers #my mind is 48 essays mixed together all at once #little heavy handed at parts but still i just love shiv this season they like wrote her to specifically appeal to the kind of portrayal i s #desperately want to see #like… the scorpion…. the incapable of love…. #yes it’s on the nose but something’s gotta be. v necessary meta commentary imo #i could honest to god write a dissertation on this i mean it. vocalizing the Strong Female Character boundaries and disproving them all at #once. like that’s exactly what everyone online says ab shiv — she’s a scorpion she’s incapable of love she’s unfeeling #that’s what her character needs to be in order to be respected both in show and out #it’s the fact that tom said that to her while she was crying because he called her unlovable…. he didn’t know her and never could. #like the contradiction is right there in her reaction #she’s as much of a person as anyone else but people can’t view her as one bc then she stops being Strong and turns her into just a woman #not phrasing this well i’m like half watching half typing rn #but #much to say #fem theory shiv readings my beloved #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #(in the tags this time lol)

[brookheimer]

still iffy on shiv reconciling w tom but i can get behind her choosing kendall now at least in part because i’ve seen so many terrible takes about it that i feel the need to defend it from the perspective of someone who likes it when female characters act like human beings rather than symbols or role models or whatever it is y’all want to see in her lolllll

#succession #succession spoilers #funny bc this is exactly why i’m :/ on her ending bc it feels like it prioritizes the thematic symbolism of her return to tom over shiv’s #current characterization. she’s terrible at deciding in her own best interest if it results in loss of dignity #and esp being seen as a man’s kept woman #ok i’ve said this a million times i’ll shut upppp #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

i think right wing women by andrea dworkin could be a great text to understand shiv better

NO AGREED i haven’t read it in its entirety yet but i’ve read a few chapters and it 100% helps inform my shiv understanding. highly recommend to anyone interested — here’s a pdf of the book for anyone who wants it!

#succession #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #anon #asks #dworkin

[brookheimer]

what do you think would be the best way for the pregnancy to be handled? pure personal opinion

hmmm i'm honestly not sure, especially given that this season is rumored to just take place over a span of ten days, each episode spanning a day. but i'm gonna go unpopular opinion here and say i would be pretty fucking disappointed if it's just, like, an immediate abortion??? like idk what tv yall are watching but i feel like abortion plotlines are a fucking dime a dozen these days and maybe like one in every ten is anything approaching 'empowering,' even though all ten are framed that way. i think abortion vs pregnancy is often framed as a, like, sophie's choice for women -- do you choose to be a person or do you choose to be a woman? -- and it honestly just reinforces the exact same dichotomies they're claiming to break in my opinion. not every abortion narrative but, like... too many of them. so i'm wary lol

rest under the cut cuz it got soooooo fucking long!!

it's the same as with Strong Female Characters: it's not actually a well-written, empowering female character if her 'strength' is dependent on her complete and total rejection of her identity as a woman and every trait associated with it. we've created these, like, anti-feminine career women girlboss warriors whatever as a balm to the terrible hyperfeminized mother-before-all-else classic caricature of womanhood, but tbh, both narratives are equally harmful -- they're not only both still reinforcing the same dichotomy of, like, family/love/emotion/empathy/interdependence etc vs self/respect/rationality/intelligence/independence, but even reinforcing the valuing of the latter (the 'masculine' traits) over the former! by defining strong female characters as those who reject femininity, you're literally just reinforcing the idea that 'femininity' and 'feminine traits' are bad, weak, etc -- the only 'empowering' thing is that hey! women who act like men can be respected! except not really and they'll always be viewed as a woman anyways!

kind of got off topic but, like, that's often what abortion plotlines come down to in my experience -- housewife or career woman? man or woman? and i'm just fucking sick of it, man. like, it's one thing, obviously, for the world of a show and the characters inhabiting it to enforce these views and be judgmental etc etc etc, but it's so frequently driving the writing and narrative itself. i think that abortion plotlines can be good, but honestly? usually only when the character in question genuinely has no desire whatsoever to have kids, like diane in bojack horseman. because if a character is unsure, what typically happens is they'll get bullied into a specific outcome, and it's then framed as 'empowering' and about 'the right to choose.' if a career-driven woman maybe wants to have a baby but gets an abortion because she knows it'll ruin her career, that's not empowering! that's so fucking sad! why are we calling that empowering! that's just as tragic as having a kid because you fear the ostracization you'll receive if you abort! so. i don't know. i think abortion plotlines are really hard to do well because they always just end up oversimplifying everything and turning it into proof of how Strong the woman who got the abortion is -- like, sometimes strength is not getting the abortion. it's not like being a mother actually makes you weaker or lesser. so why do so many of the shows who claim to criticize that notion end up perpetuating it?

i think there's a lot of really fucking interesting stuff that could be done with shiv's pregnancy, and honestly? most of it isn't even fucking related to what happens with her pregnancy. it's just using that as a vehicle to explore layers of her character that we haven't been able to before, largely because she's been so vehemently obsessed with obscuring them. i've been wanting to delve deeper into shiv's relationship with her gender, with caroline, with gerri, with notions of femininity, etc etc etc for YEARS and this is the perfect fucking opportunity. i want to know what shiv actually wants. who she actually is, beneath the 'hypermasculine' veneer she's had to adopt to even be allowed in the room, let alone respected. like does she actually want children, does she actually want a family? has she only been against it out of fear for her career? or is it genuinely something she desires? how much of her relationship with gender is rooted in spite? who is she outside of that spite, and how far will she go to achieve it? will she have a kid to prove to caroline (but really to herself because caroline doesn't actually give a fuck she's gallivanting in europe with peter munion) that she can be a good mother? what does she even think motherhood should look like? does shiv want to be seen as a woman? does she want to be seen as a man who happens to be in a woman's body? does she want to be seen as a man? like, there are so many fucking interesting avenues to explore, and i mean, she's not gonna fucking have the kid in ten days. i hope they actually make the most of the opportunity this could present -- with the exception of, like, one scene, we've only ever gotten to know shiv through her relationships with the men around her. we literally know nothing about what she is outside of roy masculinity. is there anything outside roy masculinity? does she even want there to be? honestly, i've been a little frustrated in past seasons with how surface level a lot of the shiv stuff has been -- the others get so much internal depth, whereas shiv's characterization has largely been reactionary. like, she's usually just reacting to things people (read: men) have done to her. we know so fucking little about her life before the show! she has the potential to be like kim wexler level if they dig into her more and part of that is digging into her relationship with her gender because, like it or not, she fucking IS THE GIRL. like, that's her defining fucking feature: being The Girl. so let's dissect that!!

i know this was such a long rambling, like, non-answer lol but basically i guess i don't actually care what the outcome is of the pregnancy arc so long as it's handled with care -- so long as it's used as a means to explore the shiv we already know, rather than creating a new problem to understand instead. i think an abortion plotline is the riskiest because they're so frequently done poorly, i have no idea how a miscarriage would go but i do think there are interesting ways it could be done, and i can't imagine shiv actually being a mom but i think there's a lot to unpack with shiv even just considering motherhood. idk what the end outcome will be, but as long as the pregnancy plotline is used to expand upon shiv rather than punish her for her femininity or make some grand moral claim about The Correct Way To Be A Strong Woman, i think i won't be too upset. and i have faith that it'll be decent, honestly. this show -- both the writers and snook herself -- cares too much about shiv to do her that dirty. ....i hope.

#as always sorry for the length and rambling etc #i might be a romangirl for succession but above everything else i am always ALWAYS a Complicated Female Character girl #perennially obsessed with characters who don't 'do gender right' to quote judith butler (eugh i know sorry yall) #thats part of why i love roman and shiv so much - both as charas individually and their dynamic #roman is a boy who displays 'feminine' (read: weak) traits like emotion empathy love sadness fear etc #shiv probably saw all that growing up and learned that she should be disgusted by it so she was #she molded herself into being a girl displaying 'masculine' traits bc it's the only way she could survive #but first and foremost she's always a woman which means that if she shows any emotion (and she does) she will be skewered alive #in a way that kendall for instance isn't. roman isn't either but that's also because he's always shown so much emotion that no one takes #him seriously -- no one takes 'feminine traits' etc seriously. so baby roman was fucked from the getgo bc he loved his parents more openly #than a boy should have or something #agh. so much thereerAJKKASJDjka #so many thoughts so little time #succession #succession spoilers #shiv roy #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

what a fuckin episode huh. im sure everyone is opinion dumping in ur askbox but I NEED TO DO IT TOO.

ok. fuck tom as ceo, to me it made no sense but i think shivs resolution was kinda understandable. to me it honestly felt like she was making a sacrifice? if that makes sense? shes seeing kendall become more and more like their father every second, and roman continually collapsing under what little remains of him. i think she knows she needs to stop it for their sake, even if it means shes becoming her mother. its INSANE to me that people are trying to call her a villain over this. again, despite it all, she fucking loves her brothers, she would absolutely put herself in that position to save them. i think it definitely comes with being the ONLY daughter in the family, having to be the one to make that sacrifice.

idk. im having thoughts and feelings in my peabrain. killing myself in the club rn <3

opiniondump in my inbox as much as u want i fuckin love it fr!

first yeah not the huuuugest fan of tom ceo but honestly i think a) i can’t imagine a “better” ending (i really do think none of the kids should get CEO and who else would it have been then? fucking greg? no thanks) and b) if it had been built up to more in previous episodes (mattson slowly coming around to/eyeing tom, mencken mentioning liking tom, etc. but really the mattson part in particular could and should have been built to throughout the season instead of having him get a lightbulb moment when shiv says tom will suck the biggest dick in the room in the finale) i would like it a lot more. i also think that it would have more meaning thematically if the show continued to emphasize the concept of interlopers the way they did in episode 4 of this season — where all of these random people were trying to act as if they knew logan best etc after his death and all that. i think that while the ‘interlopers’ concept has been a throughline of succession (w tom and greg, willa, marcia, kerry, etc) it kind of fell off in the latter half of this season because there was just so much ground to cover, and the tom win would feel more meaningful to me if there had been some continuous groundwork laid throughout the season rather than trailing off after ep 4. like, tom and greg had no real meaning as interlopers for most of this szn, so much so that i literally had no idea why greg was even fucking there for most of it. i think the show was a lot better at centering that concept and making it interesting in earlier seasons, which is when tom ceo was conceived, but in recent episodes it had fallen by the wayside somewhat which made the ending weaker than it could’ve been in my opinion. succession has always been a show about outsiders, about interlopers, but less and less so with each season as theyve focused inwards into the sibling competition (which is personally my favorite part of the show so yknow no complaints there), but if they were building to a tom ceo end (which they were) it would’ve been beneficial to maintain that commentary rather than sideline it or briefly reference it once in a while. i think one way this could’ve been done is through the wives and consorts — marcia, kerry, willa, tom, etc. there used to be so many interesting parallels drawn between them (remember the family therapy episode with marcia willa and tom talking while the others did ‘therapy’ etc?) but, again, with so much that needed to be done this season, focus on ‘side’ characters petered out. tbh the more i think ab this season the more i feel like it could really have benefited from a few more episodes — not a full season and not one after the finale, but just some more room to cover the things that needed to be covered while making space for the teasing out of certain dynamics, threads, and themes so they wouldn’t be slammed in suddenly in the final episode

that got long sorry but ANYWAYS re: shiv — personally i disagree with the sacrifice take as i feel her decision wasn’t made out of altruism at all, it was pure gut instinct self destructive ‘fuck no anything but this.’ i’ve posted ab this a lot in the past few days so instead of sounding even more like a broken record i’ll just link to some posts here lmao

however i do agree that the ‘villain’ takes are fucking ridiculous and that 99% of the time they’re rooted in that Skylar White Is The Devil brand of misogyny prestige television fans are so susceptible to. she’s not a villain she’s just a fucking person who made an objectively irrational, self-destructive, emotionally fueled choice because she simply could not stomach the alternative — and if someone says they haven’t done the same in their own lives before, they’re lying. straight up. but yeah no thinking of succession in terms of heroes and villains is just about as braindead and media illiterate you can get imo

and yup mass suicide in the club rn babe we r all in it together!!!

#succession #succession spoilers #asks #anon #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #me: i love asks. send them constantly. i love them #also me: *has 5052975 asks in my inbox i still need to respond to because i am bad at responding to them in a timely fashion* #send them anyways i will do my best! #long post

[brookheimer]

i think i’m just wary of this plot decision not because shiv shouldn’t be pregnant, but because there are like 2 ways to do this right and about fifty six thousand ways to do it so very wrong

oh 1000000% agreed!!!! like dude same here. absolutely not talking ab that at all because believe me i feel the same — hopeful, yeah, but also very apprehensive.

i was pretty specifically talking about like very specific reactions i kept seeing — some really weird, anti-pregnancy stuff that kinda just sounded very misogynistic actually?? shit about how ‘shiv being pregnant already ruins her character because it turns her into a woman’ which to me is a crazy response to this but it was framed as like a feminist take!! i’ve just seen a lot of really surprisingly misogyny-ridden commentary that‘s so clearly not intended to be misogynistic and i wanted to say something ab it because i was just not expecting the critique of this plot development to be, like, “anytime a female character is given a pregnancy plot that’s inherently sexist and diminishing them to nothing more than a womb” …..like no, man, pregnancy is just a thing that fucking exists. it’s not a trope it’s a real life very common thing and it would ge very very strange to have no media depicting that. kinda sounds like you’re the one who thinks that pregnancy inherently diminishes women — that explicit reminders of a female character actually being female and having to deal with the real world implications of that (rather than just being a male character in a female body) are bad in and of themselves? and that’s not even talking about how weird and essentialist it is to reduce womanhood to pregnancy and vice versa. jesus.

like there’s a lot of warranted apprehension about this plotline (altho i do think people are doomposting a little bit) but i was not expecting a ton of anti-pregnancy misogynistic rhetoric that seemed frankly pretty in line with how the male roys would react to the pregnancy news tbh

#idk #rambling rambling rambling #but anon yeah completely agree fr. i said in another post that it’s high risk high reward #like it could be fucking GREAT. but there r so many ways it could not #succession #succession spoilers #shiv roy #asks #anon #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

So funny that you argue that pregnancy isn’t limited to just women and it’s not an inherently feminine thing so it’s not a sexist trope to utilize for an underdeveloped female character since it’s just a neutral thing and then argue that its good for shivs character because your tired of all the Butch Business Bitches or whatever the fuck you’ve made up in your head since she needs to desire to be feminine to be a good character

whhhhaaat the fuck. this is like... eight different strawmen fallacies at once. how did you do that genuinely how did you do that

okay. lemme run this down real quick the only way i know how: fuckin hs debate style. i'll go down the line by line:

pregnancy isn't limited to just women, it's not an inherently feminine thing, but it IS societally associated with women and femininity. like, it's a sad truth but it is a truth.

the existence of pregnancy in general in television is not a sexist trope! pregnancy exists in real life! when a woman you know gets pregnant, do you think that's sexist or something?

shiv isn't actually underdeveloped, man. the parts of her that are underdeveloped are the ones that she refuses to acknowledge, which are, coincidentally, the ones tied to 'femininity.' so yeah, i think that for a character who has been very very developed in her relationships with her family, her husband, her career, and everything else, i think that having her unpack her relationship with gender is a good thing and a way to develop her further.

it's good for shiv's character because it allows both her and us to explore the aspects of herself that she refuses to admit to as said above and in the post multiple times

i'm tired of "Butch Business Bitches or whatever the fuck [i've] made up in my head" ???????????? alright. okaay. ooookay. i'm not even gonna go here. i just answered another ask claiming there are No Career Women Who Get Abortions On Television which is apparently, seeing as you're saying that as well, an actual thing people somehow think! fucking believe me. i am ALL for butch business bitches. i just don't think that 'feminine' traits and values being considered weak and thus off-limits for any woman who hopes to be respected is a good thing, and i think women should be allowed to have nuances, and be butch business bitches who also want to fall in love -- if they want! and not if they don't! as long as it's about what they want, not what they feel like they need to do in order to survive in a male world

'she needs to desire to be feminine to be a good character.' uh huh yeah so that's not a thing i ever said or meant in my life, like ever? there are just a lot of women who base their personality and identity off a fundamental fear of femininity and being perceived as a woman -- i know, i was one for much of my life, that's why i like shiv and amy and other characters like them -- and maybe, just maybe, that's not actually a healthy or satisfactory way to live! doesn't mean they have to 'desire to be feminine,' just that they actually start to consider what they desire. again. see above. and also the actual post. which you will not do.

you dropped like all my args in the post btw. you'd lose both on VC and line-by-line even ignoring the unprofessional demeanor and lack of understanding of my original contentions. 0 speaker points. good night!

#so wiped i am speaking out loud as i type and what i am typing is fucking debate lingo. okay i mean it that's the last one for tonight #and also maybe ever. by which i mean like i'm not really sure why i'm providing actual responses to clearly bait asks but here we are #so sorry for clogging up the dash with this horseshit #guteeen fuckin nacht #succession #succession spoilers #long post #asks #anon #when i find myself in times of trouble my high school debate team captain memories come to me #speaking words of wisdom: don't let it be #LOL #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

hi! i started following you when i found your veep posts after i finished the show! I've been enjoying your posts discussing the shiv pregnancy plotline and i love all of your analysis posts! ❤️ i'm also REALLY hoping they don't pull an amy plotline on this, but i don't think they will. and this message below got really long, i'm sorry!

i think shiv's plotline is also a new way to look at femininity and womanhood through her eyes. she's considering if it will hold her back professionally, and also how people may see it as an excuse to treat her differently or fragile bc of it -at least that's how i took the fall scene and her conversation with tom on the steps. it does seem like she might be trying to prove something to her mom. she also mentions their mom the most (maybe the same/more than roman does?) and their conversation last season in italy wrecked me, personally.

i don't always agree with shiv, but at those exact points it's just like the aspect and pain of how she's seen or treated differently bc she's a woman is emphasized and it stabs right through me. like, i get it. i can truly understand what it feels like, and they portray that perspective perfectly.

awww oh my god hi !!! so glad to have another veep expat onboard here there are disconcertingly few of us. and yes i completely nd totally agree -- i'm - gulp - maybe looking forward to the pregnancy plotline possibly?? like, do i trust succession to do it well? not entirely. but do i trust it more than any other show currently airing that i can think of? ummm yeah probably. i am also a known Complicated Female Character Aficionado and while i have always liked shiv a lot, for some reason i never quite resonated with her the way i have some other female characters -- not entirely sure why that is, maybe it's the wealth, but maybe it's the lack of focus on her inner life in prev seasons. not that she isn't complicated or interesting, but that a lot of what we know about her really only relates to her relationships with men and how she exists around them -- which is obviously an incredibly huge aspect of her character and the lives of women generally (i fuckin know it is for me), but we haven't seen much of who she is outside of that. and even if she's literally nothing outside of that, i still want to see and explore it, because that's character depth too (she's so wrapped up in roy-style masculinity that she literally doesn't know who she is outside of it etc).

to me, the most interesting shiv scenes have largely been the ones she shares with other women -- with gerri, with her lawyer friend, with the woman she talked out of coming forward about cruises, with fucking caroline?? like, there are just a lot of Career Women Who Shove Down Femininity To Exist In Masculine Worlds in television these days, and i just want to see some more interiority with shiv, because i know it's there, we get hints of it and it plays across snook's face in every scene. i'm not saying i want to be explicitly told every aspect of her life -- god, no, that would be an entirely different show -- but that i want some like focus on her, not her relationship with tom or logan or kendall or roman but something with the purpose of developing her. more than any other character on the show i feel like i just know so little about her life before, beyond, outside of waystar royco. and if there isn't stuff beyond that, then i want to see that too! i just think there is so much that could be done with shiv that hasn't been quite covered already (it is an ensemble show, after all) and i'm really hoping this plotline will kind of fill that void. maybe it won't, maybe it'll suck, but maybe it will be the deep dive into shiv i've been waiting for. praying and praying and praying succession does for shiv what i so desperately wanted veep to do for amy brookheimer fr <3

#ok so fun fact i accidentally ended up writing out like five more paragraphs of thoughts bc this is literally my Pet Issue i'm sorry yall #i will probably be posting that next as a separate thing LOL #so sorry for not shutting up about thsi everyone. but to be fair. you are literally asking ME the girl notoriously obsessed with narratives #about female characters who struggle with being perceived as female forced to reconcile with their gender and their relationship with it #and the fact that maybe they do desire 'feminine' things (like family/love/etc aka basic aspects of human life we have inexplicably dubbed #feminine and turned into like Death Pits for 'strong women') esp when thru especially humiliatingly 'feminine' (again - perceived as fem- #inine bc pregnancy isn't just feminine blah blah blah but the roys and their ilk sure fucking see it as such) experiences like pregnancy #you're asking ME to not be insane about a shiv roy pregnancy plotline? that could literally heal the world from the disaster of veep s7??? #be so for real rn #LOL #but yes thank u for the ask hard hard hard agree <3 that convo w caroline fucking destroyed me bro #asks #succession #shiv roy #succession spoilers #honeybunchcalum #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

jesus christ i am incapable of being concise. but yall asked for a long shiv take so really this one's on you >:)

#someone: what did you think about ___? me: glad you asked. so basically [500000 word essay] #tl;dr did not like the shiv ending but i WOULD have liked it were it better built up to and developed but as it is it just feels forced and #rushed -- forgoing realistic character development/continuity in characterization in order to get shiv to the place they wanted her to #which COULDVE BEEN DONE AND DONE WELL had there been more time allotted to ya know. getting her there. not just woop! shiv now is able to #subject herself to indignity when it means future potential for power! even tho her fatal flaw has literally always been her inability to d #that! #like ok ideally there would've been some time in between ken vote and shiv return to tom. she would not ever NEVER be able to #stifle her anger that quickly and play the good wife so immediately. she would take a few days THEN maybe come back to access his power -- #and that's a MAYBE #she would need to find a way that worked for her ie wouldn't make her look as pathetic and weak and humiliated and Woman as the current #outcome does. she would neeever willingly let herself look that vulnerable and pathetic and failed esp when it's related to men #ok i've talked enough about this for now i need to shut up LOL #succession #succession spoilers #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy

[brookheimer]

Dfunk anon (off anon now bc who givea a fuck) from earlier love uuu thank you for validating my takes <3

Yeah obviously i dont mean the if you love roman dni shit seriosuly lol. Thags gow it is with this show today we hate em tomorrow we love em again, they contain multitudes. Its the awful people show, we were doomed from the start what else did we expect et cetera

One thing that did shock me was shiv's pregnancy reveal to tom, do you have any thoughts on what the fate of tomshiv might be? Ifl at this point shes too far gone sges gonna do everyhing in ger power to "win" and if she doesnt at least shell bring everyone down with her.. ita gonna get ugly methinks. Anyway i understand if you gotta go to sleep i should too its been real gn

YOOO DRUNK ANON REVEAL !! hello and thank u for the asks they were a joy truly. no bad takes in sight!

and yeaaaah the tomshiv moment this ep really really Got me — personally found it like 10000x more affecting than the screaming match last episode. one of my fav tomshiv convos ever maybe? like just so devastating bc they just fundamentally do not understand each other the way they want to be understood. but as for ur question yeah i can’t really see them ending up in a happy marriage to say the least! i do think there will be attempts at reconciliation probably from tom’s end — once it really sinks in that she wasn’t lying about the baby, i think he’ll try to talk to her. i mean, from his perspective, shiv came up to him to try to sweettalk her way back into his life after their blowup last night not bc she actually meant her apology but bc she wanted an in at ATN on election night, and she used the one thing tom has explicitly wanted more than anything else in their relationship — a baby — against him as a manipulation tactic to try and reel him in. like, his response to her was genuine and hurt; it wasn’t an attack so much as a deeply sad “you’re…. seriously going to do this to me? this is what we’re doing?” and of course shiv is horrified and furious he doesn’t believe her (understandably so, i know i would be too), and everything goes downhill from there. i think yeah, it’ll probably get ugly, but just in general i’d be a little surprised if the ending were like insanely bleak. the show cares too much about its characters for that, which is a good thing — they won’t receive unrealistically horrible endings to hammer in The Satire, because yes succession is a satire, but it’s also a character and relationship study. they’ve never sacrificed that for satire before (except for greg but who gives a fuck its greg) so i don’t think they will now. i don’t think there will be a happy ending but i do think it’ll be open ended enough that some form of reconciliation or at least like peace (as in even if they’re not together i think there will be a sense of self-assurance, in a way, that there isn’t right now) will be visible somewhere off in the distance. whether or not the characters will actually ever reach it is anyone’s guess, but i don’t think succession will revel in their misery in a Boom Haha Satire Fuck Em way. i don’t think it’ll be a hopeful ending by any means, but i do think it’ll be an ending that holds room for some distant hope, rather than snuffing it out entirely (cough veep cough cough)

sorry that was much more of a general / thematic answer than specifically tomshiv related but tbh as of rn i have no fucking clue how the show is going to end — it just feels like there’s too much left, like there’s so much more i want to see. i’ve gotten a lot of asks along the lines of like “you’re so good at predicting things! any predictions for the ending?” (which, first of all, thank u <3) but my ‘predictions’ are really more about following the latest narrative threads than anything else. like, ask me again next week LMAO bc it’ll all depend on what happens in the coming ep. i have a broader sense thematically on the tone i think the show will try to strike but as for details im totally lost — it feels too far away! how can it end so soon there’s so much left! but ya know. we shall see >:)

#sorry for lowkey hijacking this ask to answer OTHER asks in my inbox. o would copy paste to those asks but i am lazy and on mobile so it #would b hard #is this comprehensible? dunno. brain mush. post #succession #succession spoilers #succession speculation #asks #loversneverlose #long post #casey shut the fuck up about shiv roy #. kinda