every system has a flaw

Hello, I was hoping you could maybe share your opinion on how Shaw's feelings for Root work in relation to her PD? I want to understand Shaw's character better, and I was wondering what you think

ok so going by parts. Again I’ll start by saying that nothing of what I say will be anything but my own opinion and what I think. Someone can 100% disagree with me, n that’s ok cause this is just my view on things.

Also, I’m gonna talk from a POV of my own pd. We don’t exactly know what shaw’s pd is even though they kinda hinted at aspd, but she doesn’’t exactly fit the criteria for aspd, so idk. we have no canon confirmation of what she specifically has, just that she has an “axis II personality disorder”.

ok so now that that’s out of the way, in my experience, can ppl with szpd have feelings for someone else? of course. But what I also think is that feelings take time. I could have feelings for someone, but feelings usually take a long time to develop, a lot of social interaction, and i actively suck at that, and people usually don’t stay around for that long.

This is what is so nice in Root and Shaw’s relationship. I truly think that Shaw developed feelings for Root. Do I think she has feelings as strong as Root does? Maybe. I don’t think so, but that’s a possibility. I think Shaw only actually started developing feelings for Root, in some kind of process, as in her feelings developed little by little, because Root was always there. She was always coming onto Shaw, she was always making innuendos and actually facing shaw, which actually gave Shaw time to process and develop things, which end ups in what we saw in S4.

At first, I think it was maybe more of a irritation x admiration/interest kinda thing, because on their first meeting, Root one ups her. Like, we saw Shaw shoot Reese in the chest several times, put a fucking grenade inside a guy’s gas mask, and then Root fucking manages to tie her to a chair n almost torture her with an iron. lol. Shaw rly rly disliked root back then I think, but there’s also a little bit of “who the fuck is this woman cause she’s like the only one that managed to make me”. And root does that TWICE. lol shaw.

Then when Reese goes after quinn I think it went ore into the realm of “I need to have this person around, even though I don’t trust them or they annoy the fuck out of me. They are the only thing that can help me rn.” n here is where it starts to get fun, because shaw’s contact to root starts to be associated with danger and thrill and fun (which we end up seeing 100% as a consequence in the beginning of S4 when root is actively the only thing that shaw has there with her that is connected to her old life, to the thrill n the danger, to who she truly is.) Then later we see Shaw worrying about Root, to looking forward to seeing her, to then, at last, admitting that she cares about Root on 407.

Shaw’s PD has shaped a big part of her life from what we’ve seen on screen. Shaw self diagnosed, has been living with her PD, aware of it, since she was 10 and has been humiliated, diminished and excluded because of it. Shaw lost her career because of her PD. That is a huge thing, for anyone. You are being humiliated, losing what you built in life, because of something that you can’t actually change. So, what I think is that, because of that, Shaw is someone hyper-aware of her PD and her feelings. I think she is always aware of what she feels, and always rationalizes herself. Consequences of it would be why she is always saying that she is a sociopath and doesn’t feel things. Defense mechanism. Also another consequence is an actual rationalization of all your feelings, and keeping them stored as logical experiences, not emotional ones (cause one thing about spd is that u don’t usually have “emotional permanence” like, i feel stuff n then they are gonna n i cant remember what it was like to feel that. so rationalizing is a way to store this info as something else. But again this is only my experience and what I think, it may be different for other ppl)

So, when Shaw actually goes out of her way on 407 to tell Root that she cares about her, what I truly think is that Shaw has been aware of these feelings that she has been feeling for a while, and has really rationalized them and thought about them, but she is coming out and saying them, because she realized the jealousy Root felt re: Tomas. Shaw was completely aware of what she felt for Root and how far those feelings go, and as she said she cares about Root. But I’m p sure she was also v aware that of Root’s feelings for her, and doesn’t want to step into that. Because as she said, allying her feelings with root’s would be a four alarm fire in an oil refinery, aka something neither of them can control, and it would burn everything, including both of them, down.

I’m quite sure Shaw is aware of her feelings but also knows that she can’t give Root what she wishes for (or what Shaw thinks she wishes for because of her experience with what other ppl have wanted from her). Even though she does have feelings for Root, Shaw also has a PD and as she said back in S3, she doesn’t do relationships. Like, she has her own reservations to the whole thing, on top of not actually wanting to hurt Root. (…. At least not like that)

That’s why that “maybe someday” was a really big huge fucking deal for Shaw. It was like her saying “for you, I can try this, Root. If you want so much this, I can get past my own reservations. I can let this happen. If you want me the way that I am, I can maybe, someday, give you, not what you need, maybe not even what you want, but i can give you what I can.”, and we all know that Root accepts and respects Shaw completely.

And the kiss, that kiss was Shaw’s way of 1) doing what she had to do with the least backlash, and 2) A way of giving Root a parting gift. Shaw consciously chose, instead of punching Root, to kiss her, as if a goodbye, as if “I may never see you again so I want to give you this, for you to have this, remember this, because I may never be able to give you anything else.” That, was already their “someday”. And I think that’s as much what broke root as actually losing Shaw.