the responses i’ve seen to shiv’s ending seem very quick to write her off as just another sad victim of the cycle, which isn’t without truth BUT!!! that is not even remotely the summation of shiv’s story.
i don’t think she votes yes to “save kendall” or to try to finally set her brothers free. and i don’t think her main concern was that ken was becoming their dad. she absolutely noticed and didn’t love it, but that was not her motivation in betraying him. she was thinking about herself.
it’s tempting to make a martyr out of her as she is the only female child and we see her suffer the onslaught of misogyny that comes with that. but to make her into a saintlike figure who got beat takes away the power and intelligence behind her decision.
at this point she’s stuck between two non ideal choices, but she recognizes that they have accidentally made her the single most important player in the game. because while she can’t have the outcome she’d prefer, she has the power to decide the fates of everyone else. the written off lone woman now holds in her hands the fate of every man in her life.
so she thinks about the long term benefits of both options and realizes that one side leaves her completely without any leverage.
her brothers have proven to her multiple times in the last few days alone that they will cut her out and walk all over her the first chance they get. siding with them leaves her nothing to bargain with. she would just have to hope that ken would actually take care of her. and that level of vulnerability is not only unacceptable to her, it’s stupid. and shiv fuckin roy is not stupid.
so she thinks about the other side and about what she actually wants for her life. and against her better judgment, it’s becomes unfortunately clear that she wants tom. the way she wants him is not altogether loving or even good but it is necessary to her. she sees relationships as having winners and losers and she chose this man specifically so that she could be confident in her ability to win. except now he’s grown some balls and made himself unavailable to her.
she may not like the way her husband is evolving but she already placed her bets on him, so she’s sure as hell not losing to him now. there’s also a part of her that feels intrigued by this new man she’s married to. it’s interesting to have a sparring partner in him instead of having to looking for excitement outside of their marriage.
so for maybe the first time ever, she processes what tom has said to her and thinks about what he actually wants.
he needs her to prove that she cares. he needs to know that she is capable of sacrifice. if she can’t find it within herself to do this for him, then she will lose him, and by extension, she will lose.
siding with tom gives her the opportunity to once and for all make a grand-stand gesture of love, but more importantly, it creates leverage for her. never again will he be able to hold the moral high ground over her head. never again can he say she doesn’t love him. never again can he call her selfish or uncaring. above all, he can never betray her again, because she just removed all of his moral justification for turning on her. he doesn’t realize it yet, but she’s just taken back all the power in their relationship. just in a more subtle way than she’s used to operating.
and just like that, she has the ceo of a multi billion dollar company in her pocket, while situating herself as the only descendant of logan roy to still be playing the game, having removed her brothers from the equation permanently. she may still be far from the top but she’s creating a path for herself to climb.
so yes, she’ll let tom play king for a day, and she’ll have his baby and say “congratulations,” and play the gracious wife, but tomorrow is a new day with lots of room to maneuver. and when her husband puts out his hand, she’ll place her own on top. but she won’t grasp it because she doesn’t need to.
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she says he won't let her get a dog, which is fine, because they're in an apartment, and that's the kind of thing people say about their partners. he won't let me get a dog. and you're at a dinner party and you tilt your head a little to the side just like that dog he won't let her get, because is this the thing that's going to upset you? you don't know every corner of their relationship, she could be joking, they could have had so many healthy conversations about the dog, right, and maybe she's not letting herself get the dog because of money and time and whatever. but, like, she did say let
and she wants to move away from his hometown and he wants to stay and then he tells you with a wink and a conspiratorial stage whisper don't worry i'll convince her and she laughs about it - so clearly this is something they laugh about. but you do just stand there and stare at him like what the fuck, man. you can't say what you want to say which is why do you get the final say on everything because they're both obviously aware of the other person's stance on this and have obviously had private conversations about it and what are you going to do about it except make a scene and then he'll be mad at you and call you one of those bitches behind your back and she'll cut you off, which is a loss that doesn't feel worth it just because he makes you a little skeeved out every 3rd comment
and they both agree he just isn't the type to get flowers which is fine because everyone shows love differently, and are you really gonna judge someone based on their sense of individual relationship responsibility? maybe he's constantly cleaning her car and writing her poems and making her furniture or something. maybe she doesn't even like flowers and this is perfect, actually. and no you couldn't date him, obviously, ew; but like, she tells you she's happy. you almost send her a tiktok that says don't be 25 and the cool girl that doesn't need anything, you'll hate not getting flowers at 30, but that's like, starting drama & you shouldn't start drama needlessly.
and you're a little older than her but not so much older you can pull the whole trust me on this one babe thing and besides that wouldn't have worked anyway (when does it ever) and besides you have trauma so you and your therapist both agree that you're always looking for a problem even when there isn't one. and you tell yourself that just because you see them for 15 minutes every month does not mean you can identify every single red flag based on a single shitty half-joking(?) comment
and besides, what are you going to do? she says i actually wanted another stand mixer but thankfully he stops me when i'm about to spend too much money and you're standing there like are you okay? is this normal? is this just something people say? and again - what are you going to do?
to your therapist you try to language it - it's not, like, any of my business. but sometimes, doesn't it feel like - you should do something. there's got to be something, right? you've tried dropping little hints but they sail right through and you've tried having a single serious conversation and she got upset because why does it matter to you, yes it's different but we're happy, it doesn't need to make sense to you and you're like. really unwilling to push a boundary about it anymore; because the truth is that you know logically it shouldn't matter to you, as long as both parties are happy.
and besides, you've been wrong before. it's just... like, every time you see them both, something else happens, some kind of shiver down your spine like do you even hear each other when you talk. it's their strange, bickering orbit. just the way he's on his phone through dinner or watching sports instead of helping in the kitchen or, fuck, another one of these little throwaway comments he makes about we'll see about that, babe. she laughs when he calls her passions stupid shit and meanwhile she gets him tickets to see the knicks and he tells you well at least she's smart about something and still! it's none of your business.
you say get the dog anyway and she laughs. like, this is is you being funny. and not you saying - no really. get the dog. get the dog and get out of here. pack up and start running.
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I should have known that people would have acted annoying about the Team's reunion and, after the dumb takes I saw, here I am to make a breakdown of their reactions in relation to the context because that's defenitely how my psychology majoring is supposed to be used apparently
Before I dig specifically to each character I'd like to remind people that, like Weiss herself said, everything happened so fast. It's not just that the time itself wasn't that much. In between the fight and them trying to find each other in the Ever After it would have been, what? An hour?
It's been 2 years for us guys, for them it isn't that much time to justify the super touchy and hugs reunion like we got in V5, or V6 in Argus, or V8 when they meet back (except for Blake, but I'll get there). You all need to remember that media in general for stories like this aren't your fluffy fanfic full of feelings and hugs and kisses all the time.
Now, welcome to my psychology class! First on our list, our one and only traumatized team leader child, Ruby Rose.
"Why didn't ruby rush to hug her sister?"
Well, let's see it from her point of view; actually, we litterally saw it at the start of the episode! We saw how fast everything went from her eyes!
She had to go in fight mode in a fucking instant because, differently from Blake (who was trying to jump after Yang) and Weiss (who was busy stopping her), Ruby has been attacked immediately by Neo after her firt attempt at her life failed. She didn't even have the time to process what happened because she was already fighting for dear life!
Our brains are very resourceful machines that always try to save energy (it's why stereotypes exist, it's our brains identifying stuff by one thing to not think about it too hard), and considering how complex and crippling the feeling of loss is, and how much it takes to process, in a life or death situation our brains would just shut it down.
Because we're all different people it might not work the same for everyone, but Ruby is a trained fighter, she's a huntress, her body and mind falling in fighting mode is actually the most logical reaction in the given situation because it falls both on habit and instinct.
And given that she didn't even have the time to process the the thought that Yang might have been dead (even during the fucking fall she had to fight Neo still, give my girl a break!!), it's very reasonable that despite the frustration and stress of everything else in the Ever After, she wasn't too worried about Yan'g safety. Because she never got time to even think "I lost her" that she got in the very same situation. So, "If I fell and I'm here and I'm okay, then Yang is too, she must be fine".
Besides, Ruby did run towards her after fighting the thing!
Yang just interrupted her with her "Dammitt! You're not supposed to be here!" before Ruby settled to get near her and "If you thought we wouldn't come for you then you must have forgotten who raised me", so any argument about them not caring is just really dumb.
In conclusion, considering that she found out that her sister was probably okay before her brain could have even processed the concept of her loss, and all happening in a very short spawn of time, it makes 100% sense that Ruby wouldn't need to jump in her arms and cry or whatever. They're in a weird place but they are okay and that's all that matters (before Ruby will discover the horrors of what happened after she fell and the horrors of her quickly approaching breakdown, but that's for another time!)
Blake on the other hand.
Blake is the one that speed into action the moment she saw Yang fall. When chaos wa around nobody went to attack her, she saw Yang disappear in the void. Now, she got to feel the loss, the pain, the weight of failure because she failed to save her!
And her first reaction was to fucking jump after her. Because she couldn't fail, she couldn't lose her, she must save her! And Weiss had to drag her up the platform herself to stop her from doing so because they had a job to do and Blake was blinded by pain!
Then, she got blinded by rage. It wasn't her fault, it was Neo! And Cinder! And I think that in that moment of emotional disregulation it's reasonable to think that Blake wasn't acting for the good of Mantle, of the plan, or anything else. We all saw it in her eyes, it was pure rage, she wanted revenge! And that's completely reasonable in that given moment. She saw the love of her life DIE because of them, OF FUCKING COURSE SHE'S BLINDED BY SUCH POWERFUL EMOTION.
As you can probably already tell, Ruby and Blake's actions are dictated by very different feelings! Even if the action itself, fighting, is the same, the mindset and motivations differ completely!
So, what happens when she meets Yang again? That after the danger is over (because it's not like she dropped everything, they fought the thing and waited for the situation to calm down and be safe. She also waited for Ruby to say her things first tbf) she fucking runs to tackle her!
Because Blake actually got to see and feel the loss! She thought she had lost her! She thought that she died because she wasn't fast enough! So, even regardless of the romantic feelings (that obviously play a part because come on, they've been inseparable for volumes now, it's obvious that she would have felt it all that harder), it makes sense that Blake's the one to feel pure utter relief in seeing Yang still alive! And she'd need to go to her, feel that she's there with her!
Now, probably the most complex one to explain: Weiss.
In a way, she's middle ground between Ruby and Blake. Weiss wasn't attacked right away either, but she had to jump in action to stop Blake. That means that she stopped to see what was happening and at Yang's "death" she just assumed what Blake was about to do or else she wouldn't have ad the time to stop her (we saw how fast Blake was)
That means that, in some way, she got to take in what was going on before going in fight mode, but she still didn't get to process it herself because she needed to act on the others' behalf. Where Ruby was litterally just hanging in there and Blake was blinded by her pain, both of them against Neo, Weiss saw what happened and told to herself "I must keep going with the plan, I must protect who's left, I can't let Yang''s sacrifice go to waste" and went to fight Cinder alone (until Penny arrives).
Weiss during the fight is the one more "emotionally stable" (more like she efficiently locked them to be functional in the fight), she's well aware of what is going on and doing her best. In this mindset, she got to fight but also to see more clearly everything that is happening.
She's also the one who stayed there the longest. She's the one who saw the worst because she's been there long enough to witness more horrors, but despite the awareness she didn't get the time to really feel them. When does she though?
After she saw all of her teammates, her family, die. When she's almost completely alone. Only her Penny and Jaune left, Cinder towering them while she's using Gambol Shroud, everything she has left of her family, to try keep fighting. Because at that point there's less chaos, less things to prioritize her focus on, the evacuation is done, she just has to not let Cinder get Penny's powers.
We didn't see Weiss and Blake finding each other, but my guess is that either there was a hug off screen or, more likely, she kept it together because they logically needed their weapons and teammates back first. She then chooses to stay focused (and cheer for Blake, bless her), and work, and shuts down every question about what happened because she knows that talking about it would break her down and be a distraction from their objective.
Which is why she doesn't speak until they're all together: withouth a distraction, she's crying before she even got to start.
The pain added up and got to her, and I'm pretty sure that Ruby's big reaction wasn't just because of the news on their own, but also the feelings Weiss was letting out while telling them (you know when you feel someone is feeling bad even when they don't tell you nor openly act up on it? And you still feel deeply bad/uncmofortable?).
I got overboarded here, but in short Weiss didn't act too clingy in the reunion either because she was busy staying focused first and then dealing with EVERYTHING that happened earlier and that she needed to tell them. Like, after getting both to Blake and Ruby, Yang's safety was basically 100% sure anyway, so. And, again, everything happened so fast.
It's been 2 long years for us. Not for them. So, to the people who have been complaining, you're just projecting your own personal feelings on them and then calling it bad writing when they're not acting like you feel right now.
Class dismissed.
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