#uuuuugggggghhhhhhhhh

i tend to take characters as i find them, by which i mean i don’t evaluate characters like root in terms of ‘is she fitting into a specific diagnosis for a mental illness/pd’. i mean, i’m not a doctor of any sort so i feel like i wouldn’t be able to make an accurate call on ones i wasn’t personally familiar with. i always kinda cringe when people assign mental illnesses to villains (which she very much is in s1-s2) as the cause of their villainy so i’ve definitely avoided doing so for her.

when i write/talk about root i go by her actions and behaviors in canon to predict/explain what she might do rather than by assuming a diagnosis and predicting/explaining actions off of that. if that makes sense.

i think the show points to root already being into hacking and smug about her intelligence at a young age, but i don’t think that means much on its own. she was extremely smart and lived in a shitty town full of shitty people and i think that had a huge effect on who she turned out to be (exacerbated by what happened to hanna but i don’t think her misanthropy was caused by that specifically). i would say she’s sadistic in certain ways and while she states she doesn’t enjoy killing people i’m not sure i believe that (root is not a reliable narrator about herself imo).