#thats part of why i love roman and shiv so much - both as charas individually and their dynamic

[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