misty-caligula

[misty-caligula]

And THAT'S why you join a union.

#WGA strike #Phenomenal work #see you for Season 3 :)

[misty-caligula]

Meeting a new couple like

“So who’s the queen and who’s the knight who swore lifelong fealty in the relationship?”

#yellowjackets #mistynat forever

[misty-caligula]

Coach Ben will never willing let himself be sacrificed he won’t play by the wilderness rules in the name of fairness. If they kill him it will be murder not sacrifice. It’ll be brought on by rage and revenge.

Yeah, this.

I think that Coach, and Society as a whole, and a lot of the audience, makes a strange assumption about cannibalism, about the sacrifice: That somehow it’s fun. That one day the girls wake up and choose violence just because it’s kind of an eat-your-friends sort of a day.

And the show is working SO hard to go against that perception. But it’s also not ALL that it’s trying to do. It’s trying to show the way that social groups harden and fracture in extreme circumstances. The way that trauma affects people when they’re put in positions to make very, very hard choices - and then have the cruel fortune to survive to have the time to really think about those choices later on, and drive themselves mad wondering what if...

It’s doing a lot of thematic stuff about the social pecking orders of teenagers, in particular teenage girls, the way that our past informs our future and how we grow up, and all kind of things. It’s spinning so many plates it’s kind of dizzying at times. And now that we’re between seasons it’s difficult to say with any specificity what’s coming next.

I mean, at the end of season 1 look at Lottie. In the adult timeline the final line was “Who the hell is Lottie Matthews??” as the cult smashes in and kidnaps Nat, and simultaneously it shows teen!Lottie giving It the bear heart, flanked by Van and Nat. It did a lot of work to make her seem SO sinister and dangerous. By the end of season 2 look at her. In the adult timeline she’s a tragic and barely coherent figure, completely lost in It, scared and alone and confused. In the teen timeline she’s lost control of the team, lost her grip on It, and has given up on herself and her ability to lead. Did you see that coming? I didn’t.

However. I can GUESS at a general narrative arc at this point. I may well be dramatically wrong, but I can guess.

In teen! world Season 1 was about holding on to the hope of rescue, and slowly watching it fall away and be replaced by the first hints of the new life to come. It’s about learning basic skills, in the warmth of summer and then the growing sinister recognition of fall that things are going to get bad at some point, and that they’re not prepared for it.

Season 2 is about survival, plain and simple, about huddling together against the cold and holding on to whatever will keep you alive. It’s about learning that you can’t have everything, that you’re going to need to prioritise if you’re going to cope. That you will need to make HARD fucking choices. About how to live when you don’t have the resources to waste on trial and error. That mistakes don’t give you second chances and accidents get you killed. That the only system that works out here is pure altruistic communalism. There’s no room for heirarchies, little space for morality. You huddle together for warmth and you hold back the cold in whatever way works, and if that means that you face a situation where it’s the life, the health, the safety of one vs the team... you need to prioritise the whole. Even if the one is you.

These are hard, hard lessons, but the constant and endless freeze force the issue. If you don’t learn you all die. Even if the cost is your own life, you have to acknowledge that sometimes the only choice is one or everyone. It’s not personal, it’s not cruel, it’s not something anybody wants. But they also don’t really have the space to think too hard about the choices they’re making. They’re just glad to be still alive. Every day they wake up is a day they mightn’t’ve.

In season 3 spring will come, the cold will leave and food will return, plentifully. Once the pressure goes down the guilt will kick in, the deep deep consequences of the choices they have been forced to make. Some of them will crack under the released pressure, and with extra resources they’ll have more space to begin to fight about what is the right way to go. Right now it’s everyone on board in every way, because they can’t afford to argue. They don’t have the energy or the space to fight. With the luxury of heat and resources they’ll be able to get out all the built up rage and stress. It’s going to go off like a powder keg.

But here’s the thing: They’ve already broken taboos. They’ve already hunted a human on purpose. They’ve already eaten two. They’ve watched Shauna beat Lottie half dead to solve her anger. They’ve created precedents. Violence is very much ON the table, and it’s not that they’re desensitized to it. It’s that it’s just... another tool available. Right NOW what’s driving them is love for each other, community, mutual necessity. But once they don’t NEED each other quite so much I think they’re going to turn on each other pretty viciously. They’re going to pick sides.

My point in my big post wasn’t that everything they do is about love, it’s that it starts from there. It’s toxic and warped and damaged by the trauma. That’s how trauma bonding works, it’s you and me against the world.

But I think that one of the angles that can well be part of what shifts them from acts of violence as a twisted act of care to acts of violence as an act of hate will be if they do find Coach. I mean, someone I saw made a point that the way you exterminate yellowjackets is you burn their hive. Well I don’t know much about wasps, but I’m sure that if you have them inside their own hive, fed and sated, they’re chill and fine. If you go out of your way to aggravate them, hurt them, destroy them, they’re going to come after you and honestly you’d better start running. And in the same way that they bond over their first hunt, the shared violence of it drawing them closer, I think that they could easily bond over the shared pain of losing their home, of tracking down and killing the man responsible. And if they DO do that, it’s going to be another taboo broken, another tool on the table.

Violence is a tactic that is value neutral, it’s neither good nor bad. It’s entirely about the context in which it is used. But once it IS used it’s so easy to have it become a hammer that gets brought out for any problem that at all looks like it might resemble a nail.

Which I feel takes away from the point of the show. These girls aren’t   monster or a coven of witches. They’re scared hungry girls simply trying to keep each other alive by any means.

I personally can’t agree on that point. I think that it would’ve taken away from the point of season 2. But this is a large, 5 season show, with a lot to say on a lot of points. I think that if this is the direction they choose to go in it will thematically click with the story they’re trying to tell.

Think of it like Jackie. Some people feel like she was not included enough in S2 because she was such a big part of S1. And that all the time she might have taken up in S2 was about the baby instead, which was barely even a thing in S1. And to that I’d say “Well, yes, they only have a certain amount of runtime. They’re doing plot beats and themes one by one and building on their foundation.” Jackie didn’t go away in S2, she was just so deeply rooted in the foundation that we didn’t need to remind the audience that she was there anymore, because she haunts the show in our minds. As the baby will in S3, when it in turn will be barely mentioned.

In the same way, S2 was so much about the formation of ritual, the organic and largely good-intentioned and pure-hearted reign of Lottie Matthews. The way that it slowly got away from her and took on a mind of its’ own. Until she couldn’t recognise it anymore and abdicated to someone who could. Season 3 will be built on that foundation, but won’t be about that. And corrupting those good intentions, those original reasons for the rituals as they’re made will, I think, be a major theme of the season.

Again, in an organic, probably well-intentioned and tragically flawed kind of way.

So I’ve seen some posts about how ppl can’t wait for the girls to eat coach Ben but I really hope they don’t because if they do it will fundamentally change the story and it’s characters.

Warning ⚠️long post

@misty-caligula made a post talking about how the show subverts the expectations set by the pit scene in episode 1 of season 1. Initially we the audience are expecting a violent slasher, a supernatural ghost story. We create a boogie man of sorts with the antler queen (a character we the audience name) but throughout the course of the show our initial beliefs are challenged we come to empathise with these girls we care for them and their relationships.

They allow Jackie’s body to freeze in the meat shed for months before they eat her. they were never planing to eat her and when they do it’s not just due to physical hunger but emotional hunger. Shauna eats Jackie’s ear because she wants to be close to her she wants to keep a part of her with her, inside her. The first act of cannibalism is brought on by grief in quite private moment.The other girls don’t eat Jackie until Shauna tells them she would want them to. Though Jackie was unable to assimilate to the wilderness and was an outsider of sorts. She loved the Yellowjackets in her dying moments she hallucinated them comforting her and saying they loved her. Eating Jackie was an act of love. A way for Shauna to grieve, a way for Jackie to finally contribute to the group.

Then you have javi who died risking his life to save Natalie and again the cannibalism begins with an act of grief. Travis carefully cradling his heart before forcing him self to eat it raw. an act of love and penance. Shauna had to blind her self to be able to cut him up, forcing herself to separate her friend and her food.

In the show cannibalism becomes an act of love. An act of sacrifice. They agree to these rituals and rules, agree to risk their lives to feed the rest. Yes they’re afraid when they’re chosen but they knew the risks and played along anyways because they live each other. When they’re killed they become one with the rest of the group they become a part of each of them.

Coach Ben doesn’t have this love for the group. He teaches them how to hunt and butcher animals simply because he needs them so HE can survive because he can’t do it himself. Not because he cares about their survival. He sleeps in a room separate to the rest doesn’t pray to the wilderness or go the seance. The only one he has any relationship with is Natalie and that relationship is severed at the end of season 2. Coach Ben will never willing let himself be sacrificed he won’t play by the wilderness rules in the name of fairness. If they kill him it will be murder not sacrifice. It’ll be brought on by rage and revenge

Which I feel takes away from the point of the show. These girls aren’t monster or a coven of witches. They’re scared hungry girls simply trying to keep each other alive by any means.

#yellowjackets #long post #spoilers #meta #theories

[misty-caligula]

I hear what you’re saying, and on the re-read I think I might’ve let my attempt at taking on a more humorous tone affect my clarity when I got to the coach/jackie section. I’ve actually already addressed this here:

https://www.tumblr.com/misty-caligula/718627055136325632/okay-so-im-not-used-to-really-getting-noticed?source=share

I hope that it clarifies the point I was trying to make, that’s way less about judging coach or jackie as being bad terrible people (I’m a Misty fangirl, I have no interest in characters “being good” or whatever) and way more about understanding why they acted the way they did, why they were WRITTEN they way they were and how they fit into the metatext.

(What I think is really interesting here is that my actual point, that Coach/Jackie cannot join in the Team because their personalities just won’t let them, that they just cannot see what the ‘jackets see, and that they judge them as being crazy or corrupt because of that is exactly the same point that you made back at me. We’re saying the same things, just with different flavours, which shows that the story is effectively getting these themes across at least.)

Okay this is gonna be long, but I’ve got a lot of ground to cover so please bear with me. In a real way, this is my series thesis.

I’ve said before, many times now (like a cycle) that for me the most important scene is ep 1 act 1 scene 1. There’s something There that I have been struggling to see clearly, struggling to articulate, and s2e9 really finally gave me the last pieces for it.

I think that Pit Girl is the point of the entire story. But not in the way that I thought going in. I feel like I’m rambling, so I’m going to try to structure my thoughts.

Imagine you’re a new viewer. You haven’t watched yj start to finish 30 times, you’ve never even buzzed before. You turn on the tv and the FIRST thing that happens is you see … brutality. A half dressed girl chased through the freezing woods, murdered without a chance. They drag her through the snow, string her up, pour her blood on the ground. Hack her into unrecognisable chunks. Sit around in scary outfits and rip at her, with a huge focus on the teeth, as horror music plays. Then, Misty takes off her mask, puts on her glasses, and does the worst possible thing. She smiles. Directly at you.

Again, forget everything you know and go on vibes. You’re seeing the teens pre-crash, and you’re seeing them in the third timeline, fully formed, with horror motifs and covered in fur. You’d be mistaken for thinking that you were seeing start and end. Except that… we know, and you know, that Pit Girl is the middle. These monsters somehow came back from this. How? When they’re so so so far gone?

Hence the show. I know I’m not breaking new ground here, but bear with me. I’m going somewhere.

(Edit: Readmore added because honestly, LONG post)

Keep reading

#spoilers #responses #long post #Honestly I'm much happier with my level of clarity in my second post #I kind of regret my tone in the jackie/coach section #meta #theories

[misty-caligula]

Gosh I wish I could answer anons in private...

Anon I'm not gonna be answering ur ask from just now, I'm going to just say thanks, it means a lot. I've been having a really rough day and honestly it's really picked me up, so I'm gonna be holding on to that one in my inbox. <3

#vagueblogging #anon answered

[misty-caligula]

Pit girl wearing the heart necklace, Jackie giving the heart necklace to Shauna before the plane goes down, Shauna giving the heart necklace back to Jackie before she dies, Jackie not giving a fuck about Jeff but being broken by Shauna's betrayal anyways and concluding that love isn't real and dying for it, Lottie offering the bear heart up in thanks for its sacrifice, Lottie giving the necklace back to Shauna before they eat Jackie, Shauna giving everyone the okay to feast, Shauna consuming Jackie and living her life out in her stead and being haunted by her for the next 25 years, Tai and Van being their most authentic selves here in the woods in front of their friends who love them, Tai making masks for both of them as an act of love, "I <3 you", "I love you too", Van and Tai finding love and comfort in each other at the end of the world, Van seeing Taissa as a whole person and speaking to both halves of her, the Other Tai who was most connected to the wilderness seeking out Van after 25 years of dormancy, the Yellowjackets refusing to let Lottie die and laying down their lives for her because she has been the one leading them through the darkness, Shauna giving the heart necklace to Natalie because she loves her and does not want to kill her, Javi giving his life to Natalie and to all of them, Travis accepting that he must live for Javi's death to mean anything, Shauna pulling the wool over her eyes so she doesn't have to bear witness, Shauna presenting the meat to Travis first with the heart at the center, Travis eating the heart first as an act of love, Travis putting Natalie's hand over his heart to show his forgiveness and fealty, Travis and Natalie making a pact to live for Javi and for the trade that they made, Jeff seeing the brutal gruesome truth of what Shauna is capable of laid out before him and still understanding and laying down his life for hers, Misty laying her hands over Kristen's heart and still not being able to bring her back, Misty stopping the rest of them from eating her, Misty going to any lengths to protect her friends for the rest of their lives, Misty unthinkingly snorting drugs in Natalie's stead even though she knows she could've died for it, Misty being a 42 year old teenager desperate to be needed and loved, Tai being there for Shauna at the worst moments of her life, Shauna helping Tai sleep when they're 42 year old teenagers, Tai hallucinating her son being excited to see her again, Shauna stealing the van back for Mr Schwoozums, Akilah finding solace in loving something small and innocent even when it wasn't real, the girls throwing a baby shower for Shauna even while they're starving and going mad, the girls being broken by the stillbirth of the baby that they had poured all of their hopes into being able to LOVE and to care for. "Love is the only thing that matters!" "Do you BELIEVE in LOVE?" "I love you, Jackie." Coach Ben giving up on love before he even got on the plane. Lottie trying desperately to drink the poison and pull the queen card and finally make that promised sacrifice for her friends, and they won't let her. Natalie repaying Javi 25 years later by laying down her life for Lisa, who trusted her and helped her want to live again, in a split second without even thinking about it. The Queen of Hearts with her eyes scratched out, so she does not bear witness to the horrors.

Cannibalism as an act of communion, of canonization ("I love the saints - they're all so tragic"), devotion, grief, desperation, and LOVE. Cannibalism as sacrifice and as a choice to live - or to die - for one another.

#yellowjackets #spoilers #meta #yeah you get it

[misty-caligula]

You are so right, I was literally having this exact conversation with my best friend last night and was going to write a much longer, less coherent version of that, but now I don’t have to.

yellowjackets s2 finale spoilers~

I get that a lot of people are upset at the finale for various reasons, one of which is that Misty is the person who did...you know. Putting aside the implications for Natalie's role in the story, I want to talk about Misty because I think it was a crucial turning point for her and I think she had to be the one to do it for her story to progress.

Halfway through season 2, teen Misty learns Crystal is really Kristen and trades this for a secret that she wildly misjudges as being of equal import. Realizing her mistake, she threatens Kristen, who steps back and falls off a cliff. This death both is and isn't her fault; she didn't really mean to kill her, and she didn't actually touch her. It was an accident. She has an out. And, crucially, she gets away with it: no one else is witness to it, Kristen's body has yet to be found.

Fast forward to the hunt, Misty was the one who pulled Natalie back from trying to save Javi. I suspect she probably realized that saving the group's best hunter was the, objectively, most "rational" thing to do for the group, all else aside. (This is the first of multiple times we see Misty steal Natalie away from death before the wilderness finally comes to collect.)

So when Lottie picks Natalie as her successor, and the girls all give their own versions of fealty, Misty's is this incredibly dramatic bow that Nat laughs at. But Misty is dead serious, because I think she is taking this deadly seriously. The wilderness gave her a purpose she never had before so she trapped them all there within it, and Nat is its favorite. Whatever her reasons, I think this is the moment Misty dedicates herself and her life to Nat. It's why she looks so fucking pleased when Natalie shows up in her living room pointing a rifle at her, 25 years later.

Fast forward to Jessica Roberts. Misty tells us that fentanyl is her weapon of choice because it is legal and it looks like an overdose. Moreover, she doesn't just inject Jessica with fentanyl and fake the death afterwards; she injects the cigarettes, and she lets Jessica choose them. Because, after all, those cigarettes would've killed her anyway, a lot slower. So she does what she needs to do, but she still maintains a distance. And she gets away with it.

In season 2, several people have implied to adult Misty that she has serial killer vibes, and it seems to confound her in spite of the multiple deaths she's responsible for (that we've seen.) She goes into a sensory deprivation tank and concludes that she's a "closer" who cleans up messes for her friends - so that she can be useful to them again like she was in the woods - and she will do anything that that entails. She doesn't questions her methods or motives or do even the slightest bit of self-reflection. As horrible as the Crystal incident was for her, a part of her (like Shauna) has always been drawn to violence until it gets too close and personal to her. She was excited when she cut Ben's leg off and when she watched Shauna beat the shit out of Lottie.

So when it comes time for the hunt again, Misty has loaded up a needle with some drug, either phenobarbital or her favorite fentanyl. She will kill if she has to, for the good of the group. When Lisa threatens Nat with a gun she doesn't hesitate and goes in for the kill.

Only, purely by the good will of Natalie for Lisa, Misty misses her target, and she kills her best friend (again) instead, accidentally frames clean and sober Nat for a relapsed drug overdose, the person she pledged fealty to, the person she was willing to die for, the one person in the entire world whose death could possibly make her stop and question herself, wonder if maybe using violence to solve all her problems is a bad thing, if maybe bringing "it" back with her so gleefully was NOT a good thing. Maybe, just maybe, she will start thinking about the dark and terrible secret she hides - the black box she destroyed and doomed all of her friends with. Part of the reason adult Misty is so fun to watch is because of the delusional levels of self-confidence she possesses, and this is the one and only thing that I think could really shake her to her core. Crystal's death got pretty close when she was 17 and had a lot less armor, but Natalie is someone she has been trauma bonded to for 25 years. She gets away with it in the eyes of the law, yet again, but she knows what she did, and that she can never take it back. She has to live with it. She has to live with the worst possible consequence that playing with other people's lives could have for her.

And that's why it had to be Misty.

#Yellowjackets #spoilers #long post #meta #Misty Quigley needs to have a bit of a think

[misty-caligula]

Another long-ass day in the meta analysis mines...

#It's not

[misty-caligula]

Okay, so I’m not used to really getting... noticed... in the way that I have been recently. And I’ve been kind of just vibing quietly before I actually respond to anything. But I got some responses to my big thesis post which I think warrant extra attention, because I think perhaps I wasn’t as clear as I wanted to be.

It’s worth mentioning that I have almost 500 posts up at this point, and have been very much immersed in yj theory for a fair while, so it’s hard to necessarily know how clear I am in any given context, and if I’m making assumptions of a reader. So I’m going to respond to a couple of things and see if I can redo a bit of Jackie/Coach stuff. My intention isn’t to say “Ah you’re wrong!” but to reframe my own position. If you don’t like what I’ve got to say that’s fine, I’m just a random on the internet. I’m not Right, I’m just thinking thoughts.

(Long post ahead about meta analysis of jackie and coach and society)

@inthegloomglow

Really good post but… coach and Jackie didn’t deserve to die for not being calm about all of this. They murdered his brother. I’m not sure that’s the point I’m supposed to get? But it’s weird to condemn them for that.

@areyoushuri

!!!! Criticizing Jackie and Coach for not being well adapted to the willingness and struggling to accept the rituals and cannibalism created is odd considering that the vast majority of viewers probably wouldn't survive/accept something like that. Yes, they're stubborn, not built for the wilderness, etc. but so many of the traits we criticize now served them well before the crash.

Okay! So first thing’s first. I do not hate Jackie or Coach. I think they’re both really interesting characters, with interesting through-lines. I think that they’re well acted, well written, and bring a lot of value to the plot. I’ve completely fallen in love with Jackie and Shauna’s really messy ... mess, and will absolutely go on giant tangents about it if you don’t stop me. I find Coach to be a really intricate and tragic portrayal of being queer in the 90s, one that speaks to me as someone who was struggling with being queer in the 90s, and whose dad was queer in the decades prior. I love these disasters, as I love all the disasters on this show.

I’m not critiquing them as people, I’m digging into the metatext of their actions as thematic devices. I also don’t know if this actually needs to be said but I’ll be very clear: If these were actual human beings then I wouldn’t want any of them to die, the point is that they are not humans, they are commentaries on society and culture and trauma and the way that people adapt or fail to adapt to changing situations. I don’t think people deserve to die for being wrong, or making mistakes... I just accept the theme of characters either surviving or dying based on their values within the show. I hope that’s clear, but just in case... there you go.

So my big concept of the show is that there’s this one giant question that the yellowjackets keep getting asked: “What really happened out there?” And that what DID really happen out there, fundamentally, is that there was a fracturing of social realities. Think of it like... the ‘jackets used to be part of “Society,” a huge world-wide group of all connected human cultures as a whole. And then they went off to the wilderness and they lost contact with Society, and they had to build a whole new culture all of their own from the ground up. We’ll call that the Team. Then they were suddenly rescued, after they’d fully given up on ever seeing Society again, and were forcibly thrown back in, and now are expected to just... reassimilate. And they’re struggling to do so.

So if you think about the show as a collection of big chunks, you can think of it like this:

> The ‘jackets are normal kids, living in and learning from, and protected by Society

> Their connection to Society is severed, but they expect rescue, and so they build a micro outpost of Society in the wilderness

> They slowly realise they’re never going to be saved

> They begin to recognise that the values and lessons that Society gave them are not all helpful in the wilderness and will get them killed. They start to develop the Team to replace what’s not working

> The Team grows in power, and the individual survivors have to make a decision about whether they’re going to remain loyal to Society or join the Team. Those who don’t join the Team die, not because they’re bad but because Society cannot protect them in the wilderness. To be very clear, neither Society, nor the Team, are inherently good or bad, they’re simply cultures that exist and offer each individual a place within them to provide and be provided for. But Society is NOT here, it’s a memory of a culture that’s been severed, and cannot provide anything anymore, only the Team is capable of doing so. THAT’S why only Team members can survive.

> The only survivors left are Team members, the Team stabilizes into a functioning self-perpetuating system

> They’re rescued and forcibly reintegrated into Society

> The remaining Team members now find themselves in the opposite situation, the Team is now toxic and can’t help them anymore, just like Society couldn’t help them in the wilderness, and they need to shed it to adapt back to Society just like they shed Society the first time. Those who can do so will eventually live long and happy lives. Those who can’t will die.

Coach and Jackie’s big thing in common isn’t that they suck, or that they’re unpleasant to be around. It’s that they’re Society loyalists. They just can’t let go. And what I think is most interesting about that is that both of them are being MISTREATED by Society. They’ve both been assigned roles that they cannot fill, and have held onto those roles SO tightly that it’s getting them killed.

Jackie’s absolutely plastered with unearned privilege. She’s constantly being told how perfect and brilliant and incredible she is. But she knows it’s a lie. And in order to defend her place, to justify her situation, and protect herself from anyone finding out, she holds Shauna SO close to her, so that she can have someone to feel constantly superior to. To make her look good by comparison. Except that Shauna is so many of the things that she secretly knows she isn’t and feels she NEEDS to be. So she spends a lot of effort beating Shauna down and focusing on convincing her that she has all these flaws and things so that she doesn’t realise that Jackie’s not actually this perfect person that people tell her she has to be.

Once she’s in the wilderness and Shauna starts to shine on her own - because the Team simply needs a different set of skills than Society did and Shauna’s willing to engage with it - Jackie’s control slips and she resents it, she fears it so much. And she can’t accept losing that level of authority that she got given by Society, to take a lower role with the Team. And so she stays loyal to Society even when it’s nonsensical. She sits in the snow and simply waits to be rescued, because that’s what Society has taught her to do.

But the Team doesn’t work like that. It requires Team members to be self-sufficient, and to work together. Jackie won’t go inside because Society has taught her to wait for Shauna to submit to her authority and apologise and invite her in, to give her the position that she Deserves. Shauna won’t do that because the Team has taught her that each Team member needs to be a part of the whole, that Jackie must eventually request permission to join the Team as a regular member. It’s a conflict that doesn’t get resolved, because neither will budge, but in the wilderness the Team can protect you and Society cannot, so Jackie’s faith in Society is punished with death.

That’s why Jackie can’t make a basic campfire to literally save her life. Because the Team would’ve taught her how, would’ve required her to learn. Society would provide her with someone to do it for her. So she just never bothered to learn. It’s why she’s unable to recognise just how dangerously cold it’s getting and be REASONABLE and knock on the door. Because Society has taught her that she’s protected from danger, that if it ever got Dangerous someone would come and help her. She doesn’t know the difference between damn cold and dying cold. Society works because of hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of people working together in intricate systems of mutual support and deep heirarchy. You don’t need to know how to put out a fire because when your house catches fire you call 911. You don’t need to know how to escape the wilderness because when you get lost they send a rescue helicopter. But without the connection to Society its lessons are literally destructive - Sit and wait until you die. Rescue isn’t coming.

Sidenote: If you want to go REALLY deep into the meta of it, the Team then gets rewarded with food by predating on Jackie as a vestige of Society, much the same way as they get little bits of technology by picking apart the wreckage of the plane. The plane is useful to Society as a transport, it’s useful to the Team as a source of supplies. Jackie is useful to Society as a member, is useful to the Team as a source of food. But I digress.

Now Society isn’t always a nice place to be, and Jackie’s not treated all that well within it either. People find her frustrating and comment on how undeserving she is of her position. They actively go behind her back when they can, Jeff cheats on her with her supposedly lesser best friend, Coach Martinez tells her to her face that she’s kinda mid, and people are generally mildly annoyed at her most of the time. But Society has her back, and as long as she plays by the rules, and follows the lessons, her life is pretty much made. It won’t necessarily be everything she ever dreamed of, but she’s solid, pragmatically. But the stress it puts on her, to conform and try to fit the role she’s arbitrarily placed into by Society is going to slowly ruin her and she’ll end up a bitter and unhappy person if she remains completely committed to it (assuming they never crashed, obviously). And what she doesn’t seem to realise is that the Team offers her community, and acceptance, and respect on the terms of her actual reality, on what she’s able to genuinely provide, whatever that is. But she’s so caught up in holding onto Society that it literally gets her killed.

That’s not to say that she doesn’t have a potential place in Society where she could be genuinely happy. Just that the one that she’s assigned isn’t right for her. If she was able to be let go of her fear, if she was able to be honest and stop trying to conform to the expectations put on her by those around her, and take a position in Society that more suited her she COULD have a perfectly comfortable life, happy and healthy. But the fact that she’s been assigned this life path that she knows doesn’t fit, that she’s so insecure about, is what MAKES  her such an unwavering loyalist for Society, because she has so much to lose.

And that’s what makes her and Coach so similar. Coach is born in the ‘60s, is brought up in the ‘70s and ‘80s. We don’t know when he realised he’s gay, but it has to have been a very scary thing for him. He has been living in a world of deep and abiding homophobia his whole life (I remember the 90s, I can only imagine the 70s...) and then came AIDS. For his whole life Society has convinced him that living in the closet is a life-preserving choice. That he can get all kinds of value from Society, all sorts of good things, as long as he plays by the rules, fits his assigned role. And being gay simply doesn’t fit his role.

So he hides it. He hides it despite the fear it causes, the pain it causes, the fact that it keeps him away from Paul whom he loves. He takes on a job that he hates, surrounding himself with a bunch of girls who he despises. Because, as Natalie said, if he actually threw in his lot with Paul, if he went against Society, then he’d be reliant on Paul (and by extension the Gay microculture) in a really intense way and if he lost him then he’d have nothing left. He’d have blown his entire life up, and been stuck. Coach, like Jackie, is ruled by his fear that without Society’s handouts of privilege and gifts and authority that he’d simply have nothing left on his own. It’s a painfully real portrayal of the fear and self-hatred that perpetuates the ongoing trauma of the closet in the real world.

He’s spent his entire life giving up real parts of himself for the sake of Society, he’s all-in. And he, like Jackie, is just too invested to let go. He can’t appreciate that Society has nothing to offer him in the wilderness, that the Team can and will protect him if he lets it. A lot of people make jokes about the idea that Coach might be eaten if he sticks around too long, because he only has one leg. But that kind of ablest absolutism is Society thinking. Because the Team still hasn’t turned on him. When they decided they needed to sacrifice someone for Lottie they didn’t say “Okay, where’s Coach gone? Let’s go hunt him.”

The Team just doesn’t have the room to see him that way. NOBODY is expendable in the wilderness, every sacrifice is an agony they struggle to cope with. And... I guess if you wanted to get very dark with it, Coach’s missing leg means that his food value ratio to his potential value as a Team member is lower.

And Coach has shown plenty of value to the team in the wilderness. He’s actually capable of providing real advice as an adult with life experience. He taught them to shoot and hunt, he made sure that Nat wouldn’t get pregnant (thank GOD after the nightmare that Shauna went through), he’s perfectly capable of holding down the fort, and once he’s adapted he’s remarkably capable of getting around. To the Team he’s a pair of hands, a thinking mind, company, experience, and just... a human being. To Society he’s lost a lot of value, but the Team simply doesn’t conceptualise him like that.

And when he WANTS to, he proves how capable he really is. He got to the cliff on his own without too much struggle. He got into and out of the cave all on his own. Not saying it’s easy to be an amputee, but it’s not AS disabling as a lot of people would assume. And he’s still got a perfectly functioning mind, hands, etc. What he doesn’t have is a will to join the Team. To genuinely engage with the reality they’re in.

Again, this is reiterated with a second camp fire disaster, making the point that he’s been in the wilderness for most of a year now and he still can’t do something as simple, as fundamental to Team survival (but not Society survival) as lighting a tiny fire. Because in Society he’d never have to, Society simply provides. And in the wilderness he’s been relying on the Team to provide and not recognised that he’s been doing that. Not recognised the fact that he’s not been pitching in. That every fire he didn’t light someone else did. Every scrap of warmth he’s enjoyed all winter has been provided by the Team, not Society.

In S1E10 when Shauna gives up on Society and finally commits to the Team she does so with a fight with Jackie. And the only person on Jackie’s side is Coach, the other Society loyalist, who - like Jackie - assumes a position of authority based on his status within Society. And Lottie - the Team authority - says “Stay out of it, Coach.” She asserts that this is Team business, that Society has no say here. And, without Society providing the backup behind his words, and without actually contributing anything to the Team (not because he Can’t but because he Won’t) Coach has absolutely no power and no say, and he disengages from this point. And because he simply won’t join the Team his fate is sealed.

Coach also provides a viewpoint on the Team from Society’s perspective. Because the audience perspective is so deeply rooted in the Team, Coach’s viewpoint is the alternative. He’s the last tiny vestige of what they left behind. Like a tourist, watching a culture he doesn’t understand, assuming that he’s better than them, that they’re evil, that he knows what’s Really Going On. That his loyalty to Society will someday gain him some sort of advantage or reward, even as he stands on the edge of the cliff. Because his attachment to Society is so strong that he’d rather die than join the Team, an unthinkable option.

So when Coach sees the ‘jackets eating Jackie, his response of horror is not just that of Coach Ben Scott reacting to cannibalism in his face. It’s also the response of Society to the unforgivable breach of social laws by the Team. The fact that they’re able to do it, that they seem to be enjoying it, completely giving into the deepest taboo... he can’t handle it and neither, by extension, can Society. And as he’s powerless to stop it he simply closes the door, trying to separate himself from them. When he finds Shauna carving up Javi he tries to rescue Nat, the only Team member he sees as somehow redeemable, as a potential Society ally. And when she rejects him, when she shows him that she, who was on the fence, has now willingly and knowingly joined the Team he sees in her his faith in Society collapsing. Because here’s the girl who he put up on a pedestal, as “the good one” and she’s rejected Society. So either a) he’s wrong about Society, and Nat’s right. Or b) he’s wrong about Nat and right about Society.

Or a secret, third option, he could lose himself in a tantrum of repressed rage, burn down the cabin and also throw himself off the cliff, giving up on EVERYTHING in the process. (That’s my personal theory, but we’ll have to wait to find out)

Now he COULD respond at this point by going “Fuck it, fine, I can be a Team member too, if it saves my life.” And he might find in it the kind of value the rest have found. But doing that would require him to accept that they’re never ever going to be rescued. That Society truly is gone. That it was all for nothing. That he gave up his life, gave up Paul, gave up happiness and love and everything ... and never got his reward. No, he HAS to keep holding on, has to keep believing that there is a point, is a purpose to it. For his own sanity.

Again, we can read really deep into the meta of this and say... that’s what coming out of the closet really is. It’s saying “I’m SICK of giving up so much for Society, and I don’t believe that the reward is there, or if it is that it’s worth it. If the alternative is to be a monster, as Society tells me I am if I’m queer, then fuck it I’ll be the monster you say I am. Because that’s what’s going to keep me happy, to give me love, to feed me, and give me a life I want to live.” I’m not saying that it’s a completely 1 to 1 exact match, but you get the idea.

And so Coach tries to destroy the Team, tries to reassert the dominance of Society, because the Team is a bunch of inhuman monsters as far as Society is concerned. They’re deviant, corrupted, feral. But they’re not. They’re just trying to create a new culture that will get them from monday to sunday without dying on tuesday. They’re just trying to face a harsh reality with a perspective that makes sense, to them. They’re neither bad, nor good, neither moral or immoral. They’re surviving, or dying, and that’s what matters in the wilderness.

*Intermission, go grab some snacks*

Okay so this is already really really long, but you can flip the script and watch the exact same story happening in reverse in the adult timeline too. In Season 1 the whole big question is why is Travis dead? Who killed him?

And the answer is... the Team did. Like, in a LITERAL sense, he put the noose on his own neck. And Lottie pressed the button, at his command. He literally did kill himself. But he never intended to die, and what got him there was the Team. He genuinely believed that he needed to do the ritual in order to connect with It for all their sakes. And he - like Coach and Jackie in the wilderness - was wrong. The rituals they’d developed, the beliefs they’d formed to cope in the Team simply were of no use now they were back in Society.

But he couldn’t let go. He couldn’t accept that they were truly out of the danger, that the trauma was really over. That Society could protect them, when he’d had it proven so powerfully to him that it couldn’t help them in the wilderness. And his unending and irrational faith in the Team is literally what killed him. And Lottie, who MIGHT’VE been able to somehow rescue him from the situation - she was standing RIGHT THERE - was herself so absorbed in Team thinking that she instead just stood by as he died.

(Again, I really really need to be clear, I do not hate any of these characters, I love them all dearly and I’m reading into the meta rather than their literal actions, I don’t blame Lott for her actions as I don’t blame Travis for his, this is just how the story is written and WHY)

I could make a similar argument about Nat, and almost did, but she’s SO complex (she and Shauna have such intricate relationships to the Team and Society) it would honestly take up as much space as I’ve already written now and my brain’s getting tired. But I will end with a little thing I thought of as I was writing this.

There’s a third Society loyalist I forgot to mention: Laura Lee.

Laura’s faith in God is mirrored with her faith in Society. Neither are based on anything solid in the wilderness, she never gets any form of external validation of any of her beliefs. She just interprets what happens through her own lens and assumes she’s right. She’s been provided with a role of spiritual authority by Society, in an acceptable religion, and she assumes that she’s competent to hold it. When Lottie comes to her for advice, she provides it and assumes she’s correct. When Lottie sees things she interprets them as though her opinions were fact. When she sees the plane she decides that she should use it to save everyone, and because she decided that, she assumes that it’s God’s will, and so she assumes she cannot fail. That God has her back. Just as she, and Jackie, and Coach, assume that Society has their backs.

In the plane, Laura Lee sees her opportunity to reconnect with Society. And her unwavering faith in the capacity of God to provide protection from harm and Society to provide functional and reliable transportation without needing to work for it ... gets her killed. The lack of connection to Society, and the incapability of Society, and its’ God, to provide for the Team is displayed as a giant fireball in the sky for all to see, proof that they are truly, deeply alone. That Society cannot help them here. But it still takes a while for the lesson to really sink in. And for some of them, it just never does.

#yellowjackets #long post #spoilers #theory #meta

[misty-caligula]

I LOVE THIS!!

Shauna taking the first slice of Jackie, before the rest start the bacchanal...

Also also, Misty bringing the platter of meat to the AQ in the council, who then nods, contrasted with Shauna bringing the platter to Travis.

I had an idea a little while ago that maybe the ritual was a coronation of sorts for the Queen. This makes way more sense with that theme. Especially with the starting of it all as love... it’s a feast, it’s a funeral, it’s a wake, it’s a sacrifice, it’s a blessing and it’s a curse, and it’s all about finding the middle ground between respecting the dead and transmuting them from friend into food. Mourning and gratefulness and fear and ecstasy all in one.

Saw this on Twitter I think this is a really great theory

#Ahhh I love this show #I can't believe s2 is over already #yellowjackets #theories #spoilers #rambles

[misty-caligula]

I’m very seriously considering moving from text to video essays... probably takes forever, but I think it’d give me more space to work with...

#I jokingly tell people I'm a professional yellowjackets blogger but uhhh #well I guess it might not be a joke at this point

[misty-caligula]

anon I got your ask re: "It's just hungry" and it fits real well with a much longer thing I'm percolating, I will answer, in time, I've not forgotten u!

[misty-caligula]

Okay let’s talk about gender.

(To get it out of the way, we’re going to be talking about Van as a cis AFAB person, because Liv’s gender is unrelated to Van’s. And while I do agree that it’d have been cool to have done something with that, and as a trans person I’m always looking for opportunities for that, I don’t think that just because an actor isn’t cis they can’t play cis characters, it’s a valid character choice in a vacuum. This post isn’t about that, anyway, so like... ramble over)

In S2E9 one of the coolest things they did was they took a very gendered conversation trope and then they immediately twisted it around and said “Yeah we’re not doing that, sike!”

So Coach returns to the cabin and he bumps into Natalie, and he tries to convince her to leave with him. He comes at her with a really male > female argument (because Coach is society-pilled), and it’s framed as logic vs emotion. So it goes:

Coach: I think you and I could probably survive the winter together. You don’t have to stay here. You’re not like the rest of these girls.

Natalie: Actually, I’m worse.

Coach: How can you say that?

Natalie: I let him die in my place. It was supposed to be me. You’re a good person, Coach. You really don’t belong in this place.

Now for me, it’s that use of the specific phrase “You’re not like the other girls” that made me sit up and take notice. I’ve written already about how Coach sees the rest of them as evil monsters, but he’s holding Nat up on this pedestal, in that way men so often do. And he thinks he’s using a logical argument, and that she’s using an emotional one.

“You don’t HAVE to stay here. You’re not LIKE them.”

And he thinks that she’s responding with emotion.

“Actually I’m WORSE.”

But the table flips, when she gives him a logical response. She’s worse, because she took part in it. Because she’s not just like the other girls, she’s not just one of them, she actively sacrificed Javi so save her own skin. She’s taken the logical side now, and flipped the argument on its head. Coach cries, because he has nothing to say to that. Without the veneer of logic and rationality, he doesn’t have words to cover for his emotional state. He doesn’t know how to handle her when she’s broken his mold. And then she throws his own logic back at him:

“You really don’t belong in this place.”

So he leaves. Because he just has no answer to that.

Cut to the very next scene, and Van and Travis are having a similar conversation. Again, Travis is the logical man, trying to make Van the emotional woman. And the way they’re talking is, again, so gendered.

Travis: You should be ashamed.

Van: Well I’m not.

Travis: The fact that you can even say that...

Van, interrupting: I'm not ashamed, Travis. I'm glad I'm alive. Just like you are.

Travis can't respond to that and turns away, as he takes the emotional side and Van hits the logical.

Van: And I don't think that any of us who are still here should feel ashamed of that. Ever.

Again, Travis has nothing to hit back on with that.

Van: Let your brother save you, Travis. After everything he went through out here, don't you owe him at least that?

Both times here we have male characters who are trying to control the conversation, who are coming at it from a perceived point of authority. Who assume that the women they’re talking to are going to respond with emotional (read: empty, weak, stupid, irrational) answers, and are not expecting push-back. And both times they receive a slap in the face. A response they weren’t anticipating, and cannot answer.

For Coach, he can’t handle the loss of authority, as an adult, as a man, as an authority figure, as Nat’s protector. And he finally snaps when he sees her ascend to the throne and decides that he’ll assert himself with violence.

Travis started the show with so much toxic masculinity. He pointed a gun at Nat for calling him a name, was SO insecure and fucked up about his own masculinity and his place in this new society, where his perceived authority and competence was challenged again and again. And now he’s grown to a place where he can really listen, can really hear what Van’s saying. And he acknowledges the truth in her words, and as hard as it is for him, he accepts her argument and joins in eating Javi. And that’s literally WHY (from a script-writing, thematic point of view) he survives to be rescued and Coach doesn’t.

Travis isn’t perfect, by any stretch. None of them are. But I feel like he’s gone through so much growth since we met him. And in S1 I found him so frustrating because so many of his plot beats were about the ways in which he conflicted with the ‘jackets, because he just struggled to let go of the social conditioning of toxic masculinity. And for their part, the ‘jackets treated him with a fair amount of toxicity too. The doomcoming didn’t make ANYONE look particularly great... But he’s really been putting in the work, and it’s not just about getting softer, but about being more open, and seeing the people around him AS people. Capable of having thoughts and understanding just as valid as his own.

Coach watches Nat get down off the pedestal he put her on and he hates her for it. She’s gotten her perfect halo dirty. Travis watches Van assert herself and remove herself from the pit he’d placed her in. And he respects her for it, acknowledges her, and re-evaluates, and changes.

Be like Travis.

#long post #yellowjackets #theories #spoilers

[misty-caligula]

FINALLY finished moving house. Exhausting stuff, but hopefully done for a very long time.

Time to open tumblr, see how things are go-WAH...

oh. Hi everyone....

#Apparently I hit a nerve. #I'm going to take a while to organise my shit and think.

[misty-caligula]

We get it, Van’s hot, PLEASE stop trying to set her on fire...

#yellowjackets #spoilers I guess

[misty-caligula]

Okay this is gonna be long, but I’ve got a lot of ground to cover so please bear with me. In a real way, this is my series thesis.

I’ve said before, many times now (like a cycle) that for me the most important scene is ep 1 act 1 scene 1. There’s something There that I have been struggling to see clearly, struggling to articulate, and s2e9 really finally gave me the last pieces for it.

I think that Pit Girl is the point of the entire story. But not in the way that I thought going in. I feel like I’m rambling, so I’m going to try to structure my thoughts.

Imagine you’re a new viewer. You haven’t watched yj start to finish 30 times, you’ve never even buzzed before. You turn on the tv and the FIRST thing that happens is you see ... brutality. A half dressed girl chased through the freezing woods, murdered without a chance. They drag her through the snow, string her up, pour her blood on the ground. Hack her into unrecognisable chunks. Sit around in scary outfits and rip at her, with a huge focus on the teeth, as horror music plays. Then, Misty takes off her mask, puts on her glasses, and does the worst possible thing. She smiles. Directly at you.

Again, forget everything you know and go on vibes. You’re seeing the teens pre-crash, and you’re seeing them in the third timeline, fully formed, with horror motifs and covered in fur. You’d be mistaken for thinking that you were seeing start and end. Except that... we know, and you know, that Pit Girl is the middle. These monsters somehow came back from this. How? When they’re so so so far gone?

Hence the show. I know I’m not breaking new ground here, but bear with me. I’m going somewhere.

(Edit: Readmore added because honestly, LONG post)

You’d be forgiven, fresh-faced new viewer, for thinking you were watching some kind of gross-out slasher. But what happens in S1? Restraint. Laura Lee, the first non-crash victim dies at the end of episode eight. Jackie end of ep 10. (For the sake of this thesis we’re going to be almost exclusively focused on the teens.)

And yet there’s this tonal shift, It’s like ... inevitability. Like watching a crack in a window that’s very slowly spreading. Everything is steadily Getting Worse. The weather is slowly getting colder, the days are getting darker, food’s getting scarcer, life is getting harder. But so much of this difficulty is coming from external events and pressure. Yes, cracks start to show in the internal relationship dynamics, of course, but if food was plentiful, if shrooms were less so, if the weather were better, then they could probably work out a very long term stable situation. Sadly for them, things are not stable, and the pressure is building.

Then Jackie dies and the glass gets a really big break.

It’s worth mentioning at this moment that Jackie at any time could’ve come the fuck inside. Safety and warmth and even love were available to her. All it would’ve required was for her not to be the centre of the world. To make actual goddamn concessions and join the team. Which is why she couldn’t possibly make that choice, because she had to be invited, she had to be apologised to, she had to be accommodated. She couldn’t see the rest of the ‘jackets as being people who just like her were in a really shitty situation. She saw them as being external, as being in cahoots against her, as being part of some Thing that she wasn’t in on. She couldn’t let go of the society they’d left, and she preferred to die. Which sure is a choice...

Keep all of that in mind though. We’re taught to blame Shauna for Jackie’s choices. Let’s stop with that. Jackie chose not to assimilate, she looked around the cabin at the team eating the bear and praying to the wilderness and instead of just paying lip service to fit in, like Tai, she decided to put her foot down and make a Thing of it. She decided that being Right was more important than being Included.

Seriously, keep that in mind, we’re coming back to it. Cycles, you know...

Season 2, everyone’s hungry and hey we have this spare Jackie lying around. And we joke like “ha, you gonna eat that?” Only...

No. They WEREN’T going to eat her.

Really think about that for a second. They put her in the meat shed. With the bear. Think about what that does, psychologically. Linguistically. The meat shed is made to store food. The bear has a word: carcass. Day after day after week after month they carve progressively more pathetic chunks from it, subsisting on what little it offers. In the EXACT same room, sitting right there is Jackie. Her body has a different name. Corpse. With many different connotations. At NO point does ANY of them raise the fact that they’ve taken their friend and added her to their meat stockpile.

Because they haven’t. Instead, they’ve added a new sub-room. The meat shed is now also a morgue. And nobody ever once had to say it. They got it. We got it. You got it. And while they starved and their bodies BEGGED for food, Jackie’s corpse lay there, frozen and fresh, and stubbornly refused to become a carcass, because they wouldn’t let it. They knew that there were more important things than meat, even when they were starving.

The bacchanal was a mistake. A literal error. It simply wasn’t planned, wasn’t meant to go down that way. Maybe if they HAD considered that route earlier and had a discussion about it they’d have been prepared, psychologically, maybe if they weren’t so starved. Who knows. But in the middle of the night they were offered a way out, and they took it.

But Shauna took it first.

Even in their state, even faced with an ideal roasted feast infront of them, they waited until Shauna said it was okay. Because Jackie was Shauna’s friend, and they knew that she was still a person. That this was still a corpse first. It was Shauna who was able to give them permission to survive. To turn a friend into a meal. It was not their place to take that step. To shoulder that guilt. So Shauna did it for them.

The next day they’re devastated. The heavy reality sets in, now the hunger is settled. And Jackie’s carcass is far too real, they can’t change her back into a corpse. Nat tries, bless her heart. But Tai’s screaming reaction at having eaten Jackie’s face is only an externalisation of the grief and horror and agony they’re all going through.

And after Jackie they starve again. Hope and heat and light dwindles further. Every single day they all take another step towards death. That’s what starvation is, it’s the same thing as dying, you die a little bit every day until you can’t die anymore.

Kristen falls. Misty doesn’t even consider that she might bring her back as meat. If she had’ve, she might think, maybe she’d be considered like ... heroic. It doesn’t even occur to her. She’s not going to LET those bitches eat her one and only friend, and she goes out of her way to protect her.

Shauna has her horror show birth. And, no matter WHAT the context is, she produces.... meat. In the most awful, brutal way. And while the fandom made so many jokes and stuff, the reality is that yes... at least to an extent there was real nutrients there. And it was never once even brought up as an option, by these desperate, starving girls. 

When Coach tries to kill himself, here’s a ready source of willing meat. And Misty uses it as a threat to stop him. But it’s hollow, she’s just putting on fake fangs to try to keep him safe. She’s not actually that vicious thing that she’s pretending to be, just like she’s not actually homophobic.

When Lottie tells Misty to eat her if she dies, Misty fights her on it. Lottie has to insist. Then when she tells the rest of the team, they are so overwhelmed with the selflessness of the gesture that it inspires them to twist it into their first hunt. That’s what it takes. The hunt is an act of self-sacrifice and love.

And so we get to the hunt. The proto-pit-girl, we’ve come full circle and we start to learn all these answers to questions posed in act 1 scene 1. And they’re not the answers that were assumed.

How do they get to the point of eating each other? They sacrifice themselves willingly, for the sake of each other’s survival.

Why do they hunt the way they do? Because Shauna just can’t stand to murder a friend in cold blood, a friend she cares for and has no reason to hate.

Why the spike pit? Because it keeps the blood off their hands. Because it lets them blame It and preserve a tiny fragment of their innocence.

Why the weird symbols? The ritual itself? Because they need SOMETHING to hold onto, to make it all make sense.

Why so brutal? Is it? We THINK it’s brutal. It’s certainly bloody. But Pit Girl dies almost instantly. Her pain is over fast. She doesn’t have a good time going into it, obviously, none of them want to die. But she chose to run, she could’ve taken the knife instead. And the spike trap was efficient. Yes they drag her through the snow and string her up, but it’s mechanical and just part of the process and she’s dead already. Her pain is over fast, it’s not sadistic.

Why do they chop her up into chunks like that? Because nobody wants to eat her face. Because nobody wants to struggle with her humanity, they want her to look just like any other meat. So that they might be having deer or bear or ... friend. They’re eating because they are biological machines that need to eat, that NEED death to survive. They didn’t ask to be made the way they are, and they’re doing their best to cope. Shauna, probably blindly, takes on that responsibility, to transform their friend into unrecognisable meat to change a corpse into a carcass. She takes that pain for them, holds that sin for them, out of love. So they can eat, so they can survive.

What’s with the creepy horror masks? During the ritual they can’t handle being themselves. They create alternate versions of themselves to hold what must be done. The masks aren’t there to scare anyone, because there IS NO AUDIENCE. The masks are there to hide behind. That’s why Misty takes hers off at the end of the scene. The ritual is over and they can go back to being people again.

Why is Misty fucking Quigley in charge? Because she CAN be. Because she’s strong enough. If Lott/Nat/The AQ is the goddess/queen, Misty is the priestess/handmaiden, tasked with actually carrying out her orders. She interprets the queens words when she’s too weak, she provides counsel when she needs it, she tells the team what they need to hear in the moment, she gives out the micromanagement. Misty’s the power behind the throne, because when she says she’ll do something she fucking follows through. No matter the cost. And what the team NEEDS, whether they choose to admit it or not, is a backbone.

So...

They bring home Javi. The music uses a reference that’s never been done before. It uses the spiritual powerballad that was playing when Laura Lee tried to fly away. It builds the expectation of Great Things, of big, potent ...

And then it just stops. As the girls are faced with the reality of what’s laying on the table. The cold, blue corpse of a soft child who never hurt anyone. No matter what they do, no matter how hard they try they just cannot make him a carcass. But they have made the choice already, and if they turn back now it’s not like it’ll bring him back. They’ll just be starving and regretful as he rots.

So Shauna, blind and shaking, does the best she can. And when she brings in the meat, she - of all people - understands EXACTLY what Travis is going through. She knows what he needs. Because she’s been here. With Jackie. So she brings him Javi’s heart. His core. His love. His soul.

(She doesn’t bring him Javi’s head. She cuts that off and puts it aside so nobody has to eat his face... Some things are worth more than pure nutritional survival.)

And Travis, god bless him, does the only thing he can do left to respect Javi. He takes his heart, and he bites it, raw and bloody.

It hurts him to do so. It disgusts him so much, but he manages not to throw up. It disgusts the girls too, but they watch on, horrified. And that’s the POINT. Travis makes sure that before they do this, before they do what they have to... that they all remember this is Javi, this is human, this is a person. And he preserves the horror. For all their sakes. And only then, after he’s given his blessing, after he’s done his human acts, do these starving, ravenous girls allow themselves to reach for their food.

S1E1. Act 1, scene 1. We do not know who Pit Girl is. We do not know the exact circumstances that get us there. But we do know where we started now. What the original meaning is behind each of these little things. And it’s not brutality, not barbarism. It’s love. It’s not lord of the flies, a bunch of monstrous human-shaped creatures giving in to their primal nature and predating on each other. It’s a team of terrified people desperately clutching at their own humanity as hard as they can. Trying SO hard not to let that glass break, to not become the thing that the framing of act 1 scene 1 tried so VERY hard to convince us they were. Context changes everything.

And the proof is in the pudding. After they eat Jackie the shock explodes throughout the cabin. The atmosphere is thick, and horrific. Now with Javi, reduced to simple meat, carefully and lovingly seperated from what made him human, so they can grieve him while they sate their natural needs, the mood post-eating is calm and soft and warm and loving. For once they’re all together,  with grateful full stomachs and in a time of peace and plenty. They’ve done the impossible and maintained their humanity and love for each other and their respect for Javi in a nearly impossible situation.

*takes a deep breath*

Which brings us to THIS asshole.

Right from the start, Jackie is only kind of part of the team. She’s the team captain, put up there by Coach Martinez, but not because she’s the best of them but because she can maybe wrangle them into doing better. And they KNOW that she’s not really one of them. They plot around her, and just don’t bring her in on it. They put up with her, more than loving her, she’s just kind of forced upon them. But she does her best, to try to maintain some semblance of order, giving pep talks and the like.

Wait, Jackie? I mean coach. My bad.

Anyway, so Jackie has one friend, Shauna. She SEEMS popular, and everyone talks to her, but Shauna’s the only one who actually likes her. And Shauna’s her connection point to the team. She’s got one foot on each side, and is torn as to where her real loyalties lie.

Sorry I’m talking about Jackie again.... weird.

In S1E9/10 Shauna finally chooses the team, for real. And Jackie tries to pull her back away, but Shauna puts her foot down. No way, she counters, I’m ON the team, you’re the odd one out. Why don’t YOU leave, Jackie? Jackie looks around at the burgeoning cult, she thinks “Look at these evil monstrous bitches, and now Shauna’s one of them TOO?” And instead of finding a compromise, instead of doing introspection, instead of anything like that, Jackie goes and freezes to death because it turns out that sheer rage won’t keep you warm in sub zero temperatures. Because no matter what happens, Jackie’s Right and it’s more important to her to be Right than Included. If she’s not in charge than why is she even THERE?

Hold on, I see my mistake. Let me backtrack.

Right from the start, Coach is only kind of part of the team. He’s trying to hide from his real life, from Paul and the complexities of being genuine in society by taking on the job of coaching the ‘jackets. And they KNOW that he’s not really one of them. He’s just the guy they have to listen to, because society put him there. But he tries his best, giving pep talks and the like.

So Coach has one friend, Natalie. He SEEMS popular, and everyone talks to him, but Nat’s the only one who actually likes him. (Ignore Misty, a schoolgirl comphet crush is not the same thing). And Nat’s his connection point to the team. She’s got one foot on each side, and is torn to where her real loyalties lie. Sometimes she’s on the bench with Coach, complaining about the state of things. Sometimes she’s in the thick of it with them all, and Coach is nowhere to be found.

In S2E9, Nat finally chooses the team, for real. And Coach tries to pull her back, but Nat puts her foot down. No way, she counters, I’m ON the team, I’m worse than them, you’re the odd one out. Go, save yourself, you don’t belong in this place. Coach looks at a table covered in blood and gore, at Nat’s face, at the rest of the team pledging fealty to her. And instead of looking for context, or looking for compromise, or even remotely trying to understand what he’s looking at he thinks

Look at these evil monstrous bitches. They’re eating each other. They’ve all gone mad. They’ve even gotten Nat now. There’s no hope for them, there’s no hope for anyone out here.

And he decides that they’re corrupt. That the way you deal with that is fire. And he’s wrong.

(I have a theory that he’s gone and jumped off the cliff, that he set the fire to clear the corruption, and now like Jackie, unable to live in this situation any longer, he’s decided to die himself. I’d not be surprised to find him in s3e1 that way)

Jackie was a frustrating, difficult person. Because no matter how things went she just COULDN’T let go of the fact that she was trying to fit a mold that just didn’t suit her. She was raised with super high expectations, when she was really just kind of mid. And that’s fine, honestly, most people ARE mid, that’s why it’s mid. But she refused to see that those around her were shedding their social pressures, were adapting to the wilderness. They weren’t having a good time, they weren’t hunting and foraging because they were out there, camping for fun. Nobody wanted to be there. They were just trying not to complain about it, because they were all in the same boat.

Coach is similar. He simply won’t adapt. Refuses to. I mean this is a guy who’s STILL trying to live in the closet when there’s open lesbians making out in public around him. Who thinks of others as inherently monstrous when he himself, as a gay man, should know better. Because that’s what trying to fit your society-assigned role does to you.

It’s no accident that he and Jackie both spend a long time in the woods and neither of them can do something as basic as start a fucking campfire. Javi, a little kid, survived for MONTHS on his own in that cave. Coach couldn’t make it a day alone. Jackie couldn’t get through a night. They both rely so heavily on the team without ever once recognising it. Because SOMEONE was keeping the fires going. They both just ... refused to engage.

And just like Jackie can’t see that they’re not having fun out there in the woods, on the knifes edge of survival, Coach can’t see that they’re not having fun when they are so desperate they feel it’s warranted to sacrifice one of their own. He always thought of them as monsters, and he just sees what he expects to: a bunch of stupid useless teenage girls, finally doing what he always expected they would.

At any point... At ANY point he could’ve come in from the cold. He could’ve just accepted reality as they have. He could’ve taken some meat and accepted the price, as they have, joined them in their GRIEF about it, shared their humanity, and survived. Just as Jackie could’ve come in from the cold, and become part of the whole. But instead, they sit in the cold, consumed by their bitter hate, and decide that no, it’s everyone ELSE who’s wrong.

And who emerges from the burning cabin? A bunch of scared kids. Shauna, the FIRST cannibal, who saves Jackie’s prom dress before anything else. Travis, who grabs Javi’s wolf. Nat who grabs the ammunition - that they NEVER use on each other - because if they lost that they’d get SERIOUSLY desperate. And they protect each other, they make sure everyone makes it out. These supposed monsters who are so far gone they don’t even care about eating each other go out of their way to save each other, not just themselves.

Because Coach is wrong. Just like Jackie was wrong. Just like WE were wrong, in s1e1. Which brings me to my actual point.

This question is asked so many times in S1 it’s almost a mantra. And the ‘jackets’ oath of silence really builds up that it must’ve been something REALLY bad, right? But S2E9 has really made me recognise that fundamentally... Act 1 Scene 1 is entirely what everyone who asks this question is expecting.

Imagine they DID know what really happened out there. With that bloodthirsty fucking look in their eyes...

They’re not looking for an answer. They’re looking for a story. For an exciting spooky nightmare they didn’t take part in, so they can get a shiver and a thrill they didn’t earn.

They’re not looking for a love story. They’re not looking to hear how HARD these scared, tragic, broken people fought to hold onto their morals and their humanity and their sanity even against their own survival. They’re not interested in Shauna blinding herself just to try to stop her hands from shaking. They’re not looking to hear about Travis choking down the blood of his brother just to make sure that he can really FEEL it. So he can share the guilt, and never ever pretend like it’s Just Meat. The look in his eye when he can’t think of any good response to Van’s arguments that he needs to let Javi save him. What they want is...

They don’t want the context. And if the ‘jackets ever did try to tell anybody what actually DID happen out there, all they would see is ... Episode 1, Act 1, Scene 1. A bunch of monsters. Eating each other. Just like Jackie. Just like Coach. Just like we did, on first glance.

I’ve been saying this whole time that Yellowjackets is doing something really special. That it’s letting us see behind the curtain, that while everyone’s asking this big question, “what really happened?”, we’re the ones who get to know. Because it can’t be told. It can’t be spoken. It can only be seen. Experienced. I think that S2 has finally finished the first major arc in the teen timeline, that we now have the context to understand what comes next. And I do believe that it will get messy, it will devolve. Into fighting and screaming and battles. It’s tragic, but it looks like that’s the downward spiral, spiraling. As Travis and Nat deal with the guilt of what they did with Javi for each other. As Shauna and Nat butt heads and people pick sides. As Misty Mistys. As resources get even more desperate now their shelter is gone. As potentially new people (hikers? other cabin people?) get brought into conflict with them (I believe the cabin is a smoke signal, personally).

But don’t ever forget that we got here with love. Expect that the downward spiral will be lubricated with toxic, broken, codependant, self-destructive love as well. Watch them love each other to death... they’ve already begun.

#yellowjackets #spoilers #theories #Long post #no really long post

[misty-caligula]

really redifining the term “long post” out here today...