#cannibalism as a way to show a character becoming what they hated. but not being able to stop. enjoying the tatse of that power. consuming.

[bread-squid-uwu]

Aaron Lycan, who ripped people to shreds with his mouth during his rampage, his teeth and fangs sinking into flesh and severing the muscles and meat from the bones.. staining his jaw and face with sticky blood and small chunks of metallic yet sweet pieces of the people he's left limply sprawled across the pathway.. the adrenaline, the rush, perhaps even the taste - addicting, intoxicating.

Aaron Lycan who enjoyed the feeling of death in his mouth, who was terrified of being a monster- but adored the senses of control and power, the tangy muscle and copper tastes.

idk, I just have a newly found appreciation for cannibalism and things related to it.

#cannibalism as a way to show a character becoming what they hated. but not being able to stop. enjoying the tatse of that power. consuming. #tw cannibalism #cw cannibalism #tw gore #cw gore #tw blood #cw blood #aaron lycan #mystreet aaron #aaron mys #mys aaron #aaron mystreet

[marauderonthepirateship]

HAZBIN HOTEL EP 7 AND 8 QUICKK REVIEW

contains major spoilers, let's start!

how about we start with episode 7, hmm?

i must say, before the episode were released I had a theory, that alastor could make a deal with charlie and try to get her soul to(following the theory about lilith having alastor on a leash) try to exchange charlie's soul for his own BUT it did not happen, and I cannot say it's disappointing for me

as hannibal fun and an expirienced cannibalistic-joke maker it feels like a personal win to have cannibal town being one the most comfortable places in hell with cannibals being really wholesome and polite guys

and of course the diamond of the crown - rosie

she was amazing in this episode. she definitely has the vibe of this rich auntie who visits you once a year and gives the best gifts and advices. she actually gives amazing advices, that's for sure. and i love her friendship with alastor, i bet they meet every weekend and share gossips

all of us should be proud of charlie and the way she becomes leader and takes responsibility for her people. this is THE character development

here we are slowly coming to episode 8 also known as the finale of season 1!!

it was a bright culmination of all of the season 1 and it turned out amazing

but dear readers, i'm sure all of you have already watched it (maybe even 2 or 3 times, right?), so why don't i just say a few words about my favorite moments

the scene before big battle, where everybody is just spending time with other is exactly what shows how much are this lost souls now bonded. they realise they have no idea what is there, waiting for them in tomorrow and that's what make this scene

and let me just say it: huskerdust

it is a big joy to know this actually happened

i also might say that the victory wasn't easy nor unreasonable. think about the fact that nobody knew how to defeat angels is the exact reason hazbin's crew won. indeed the more power you got the less carelessness you should have.

and i'd really enjoy to share some of my highlights of this battle if I do say so

here wee goooo:

sir pentious kissing the girl he loves than heroically dies and goes to heaven. absolutely nailed it

charlie's demon form. and shall we not forget ruzzle and duzzle in their dragon form.

that absolutely iconic show up from lucifer and him in the whole battle

niffty killing adam. i'd say this is hilarious

alastor being beaten, afraid and panicked. yes, i WAS talking about it. it was important to show he can feel real emotions and fear and loss are one of them

three vees watching battle for hotel and living their best lives(i still hate val, just to be clear)

what is really natural about the battle that they don't just celebrate victory. they mourn pentious, and charlie feels guilty, but they still go on, rebuild hotel singing one of the best songs for the whole show

i am intrigued by what the season 2 has to offer for us, my dear friends and I surely will be waiting for it

now i'm just about to thank you for reading this and wish you a pleasant day!

#hazbin hotel #huskerdust #alastor #alastor hazbin hotel #angel dust #husker hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel lucifer #hazbin charlie #hazbin hotel alastor #hazbin hotel husk #hazbin hotel lilith

[cherripentiousshipper]

Unpopular Opinions about characters' sexualities to make the show more adult and complex, cause I love dark romances(pt1/??)

(I take criticism as long as You're polite, thank you)

So, first of all, I would've rather Alastor to be Pansexual, not in the nowadays way, but actually in the Freud -would fuck a tree if It was a taboo- kinda of way.

Stay calm, I have my reasons, and I will tell you all of them.

Like first thing first, it'd be way much more in character for him. He's a serial killer, and a cannibal.

He could have stopped in hell, but actually went even more wild. Thus meaning that he actually has a very passional and lustful nature, like many serial killers, and especially cannibals have.

You may think this is to be connected to the sin of Gluttony, but not at all! He doesn't act rationally to reach satisfaction like a gluttonous person would; instead he acts instinctively, he's driven by his needs, he has no control over himself, so he seeks It on others.

You see as you may have noticed, he is very violent and bloothirsty, ruthless, and merciless. All these characteristics are his true nature that he has to repress in front of others.

So having him hypersexual would've been a better call in my opinion. (Having to repress a lot, means you'd need to.. ahem... "relax" a lot.)

Or rather making him extremely into paraphilias to be considered to only engage with normal living humans (or rather human souls) when He needs to manipulate them.

Like imagine him engaging with overlords only to reach agreements or make pacts, or steal useful informations, (similarly to early Stoliz, but with real pacts where he owns sinners' Souls).

Or like not engaging in any way when he knows that it's the best way to manipulate some others. In this very case for exemple imagine Vox going totally insane knowing that even his situationship (aka Valentino or p.o.s.) went to bed with Alastor, but he didn't, doesn't, and never will. He'd become putty in Al's hands without even having to make a deal!

Plus, mega bonus: if he made a pact with Lilith he can destroy Lucifer just with that information. And maybe He never even went to bed with her, but way worst! He has had her trust for all these years, and been at her service all this time, hating the restrains, but adoring and being allowed to adore the restrainer.

To seduce her, to amuse her, to be at her leash, to be owned by her, all while Lucifer could only dream her and see her in pictures! Damn the rivalry would be beautiful! (And a great mirror to the one Luci has with Adam "bow chica bow now!").

And I would not even want him to be open about It, the other way around! Since It's still a need, he represses It in public. Like he acts like he always does in the serie 'cause that's the mask he wears!

But once he wears It off, he's unleashing everything that's underneath!

This would definitely make him even more of a creep! And I would love to see the characters deal with him.

I can see Alastor turning off Angels' advances, 'cause he knows that he's making Angel insecure, or rather secure enough to make him feel bad about self-ojectifiying (like what happened between Angel and Husk, difference being that Alastor would bribe Angel to make him listen, instead of helping him).

I can also picture him trying to seduce both Vaggie and Charlie, but losing interest as they're both too loyal to each other, while also feeling incredibly powerful when he makes a pact with each of them.

Maybeee he has intercourse with Rosie while or after having dinner with her.

Not sure about the rest.

Aaaaand done for now! Stay tuned to know which characters I would've liked to see as Aces instead of Alastor! Yeeeeeeeh!

Thank you for reading, go drink a glass of water at least, and have a nice day! Goodbye!!

#hazbin hotel #alastor #lucifer x lilith #lucifer morningstar #charlie morningstar #vaggie #chaggie #alastor x Lilith #vox x alastor #headcanon #character analysis #unpopular opinion #please don't eat me alive #have a nice day and drink some water #very sapphic of me to write that part about Lilith... I'm not so surprised tho. #apple daddy #dad beat dad

[lovesickbrat]

Bunny by Mona Awad (Spoilers!!!)

okay so bunny by mona awad succeeded in areas I think my year of rest and relaxation by otessa moshfegh failed in which she created a satire that actually had something to say. the way awad deals with the concepts of loneliness (both incidental and self inflicted), female friendships, class and the pretentiousness of New England college culture actually feels purposeful. and the reason I compare it to moshfegh is because both books are satires with unlikeable protags but while moshfegh is too busy kissing her own ass and hiding behind “oh all art is apolitical” bc shes to scared to admit that she actually cares about the topics shes talking about, awad cares very deeply about what she’s writing which made it unsurprising to see she based it on her own experiences at brown university.

Samantha is not the most likable character and you’re either gonna cone away from the book hating her and her pity parties or deeply understanding why she throws them (especially if you read her as a woman of color like I did). there’s a constant theme of her being obsessed with her own otherness and its true especially when you consider (Spoiler) She created her best friend Ava from a swan in the pond . Ava is Samanthas ideal friend but also the ideal form of herself: cool, self assured and beautiful. If Ava is the good part of herself, then Max is the bad. Her dark thoughts, negative impulses and hatefulness. But he is also how she sees herself as well, or at least what she thinks Ava would find attractive, he’s smooth, attractive in a dangerous way, poetic without being pretentious (he’s a literal vessel for her to say what she feels about Ava all of which is written in her diary) and what I think is very very important he can fuck Ava. Something the bunny-boys couldn't do.

there's also the sense of how we lose ourselves in our friends, as female friendships tend to be all consuming to the point we really do melt into a hive mind and I think even the friendship with Ava is tinged with co-dependency. Samantha dehumanizes the Bunnies calling them by nicknames she gave them, robbing them of agency because of their perceived perfectness but once she is invited to the Smut Salon she begins to call them by their real names until finally in honestly the most disorienting section of the book they all become Bunny, to the point its hard to tell who is talking and I loved that I wish we got more of Sam as a Bunny.

the atmosphere and aesthetics of the novel were so fun a candy colored dark academia where we even see that the bunnies also put on airs around each other like how Kira’s voice deepens when she thinks shes alone, no longer concerned with sounding like. bunny. I like how each of the women have a genre assigned to their writing and personal style showing how even though they are indistinguishable from each other, they were their own people beforehand but they allowed themselves to get sucked into a vacuous pretentious bubble.

the commentary on class was great, especially with how sam is said to be too obsessed with being poor to have been poor her whole life and I think thats a very accurate representation of someone who's financial status has been precarious for much of her formative years and why despite herself shes so intrigued by the bunnies and feels out of place in her writers cohort. rich people love to blow smoke up each others asses, which allows the bunnies to write horrible work because at the end of the day they’re rich it doesn’t matter they're never gonna have to improve themselves. its also why sam feels reluctant to speak her true feelings on their work because she doesn't have anyone to rely on lest she gets ousted

the usage of the all female writing cohort with the singular teacher was a great nod to the secret history honestly the whole book was

I loved how it was a creation horror story as well as coming of age the horrific parts were truly gross and the way the cannibalize themselves (metaphorically) towards the end was satisfying as fuck

and a lot of ppl hate the ending but sam choosing Jonah was honestly cathartic, she isn't healed things aren't sweet and nice but she makes a connection with someone who has been reaching out to her instead of being obsessed with her own otherness

#coquette #coquette aesthetic #bunny mona awad

[wistfulwatcher]

ok not only was this just a bad narrative choice for the show in general and natalie's character, this was also such a WEAK narrative choice for misty, too.

christina has talked about how something happens at the end of the season that "changes" misty. but the thing is, this has happened before. to her. same circumstances. this is the opposite of something that should change her, because it's exactly what happened with crystal!

both times misty found a friend when she was desperately alone, she clung to that friend and put everything into the relationship. and then, due to the intensity of her relationship—sharing everything with crystal, wanting to protect natalie—she caused the death of the person she loved.

there is nothing i love more than parallels, but for a parallel to be narratively meaningful, there needs to be a purpose to it. you need to use it to highlight differences, or show a progression. there is no progression for misty here. this is just history repeating itself. if misty didn't change after crystal died, and nothing has changed between then and now for misty, then WHY does this change her? she just needed it to happen twice??

killing natalie was a disgusting choice, and if we're supposed to believe that it was necessary for misty's character growth, with absolutely no narrative justification for it to be, then—beyond it just being awful—it is an entirely lower level of bad storytelling.

i am all for a story where these women continue to (figuratively) cannibalize each other as adults; i signed up for a dark show about women making bad choices. but 1) this wasn't a choice. this was, once again, an accident. i signed up for a show about women with agency, and making everything around them an accident or an unintended consequence is absolutely spitting in the face of that (presumably to make them more ~sympathetic, and i hate it).

and 2) there are other ways for them to hurt each other without death being a factor. this show is supposed to be about struggling with trauma, and you can't struggle with trauma when you're dead. the far more interesting story is one where the past is well and truly saturated with conflict—with characters you know are doomed and you still learn to love, and with characters you know survive and you have to continually struggle to forgive and understand.

i had so, so much love for season one because that's what i thought we were getting. i thought we were getting a bittersweet love story about the complexity of women, the complexity of trauma, the complexity of survival.

instead, this is becoming yet another show where things happen to women. where, to make them sympathetic—as more palatable to mainstream (cough male cough) audiences—they need to write women as victims of circumstance, as victims of their pasts, as victims of their own actions.

this is becoming a show where women who make bad choices are not allowed to stand behind them. who must be out of control (shauna, lottie, tai), or must be punished for the unintended consequences (misty), or must die (nat, van potentially).

and now, with natalie the antler queen in the past, and a character we no longer have in the present, i wonder how long it will be until she becomes the scapegoat for the surviving characters. how long until the worst actions in the wilderness are put upon natalie's shoulders, to lighten the load from the surviving women. how long until the only characters allowed to have agency, allowed to be complex and make disagreeable choices that they intend to make, are ones who die.

how long until our beautiful, complex, surviving characters are washed down to nothing, to shells of themselves in the name of making them more sympathetic. more palatable. how long until this is just another shallow mystery, without the beating heart of the first season.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets spoilers #natalie scatorccio #misty quigley #yellowjackets meta #anti yellowjackets #yellowjackets critical #mine #wordles #~ #the more i think about this show the angrier and angrier i get #i should not have rewatched s1 as many times as i have #slash that's all i'll be watching for the rest of my life

[kyouka-supremacy]

Hello, I have a question and you're the only person I can think of who can answer it properly. Not sure if you subscribe to the "Akutagawa fell first" belief for sskk, but if you do, what do you think was the moment in canon that made him fall for Atsushi? Or was it more of a gradual process?

I personally can't pinpoint it because he seems hopelessly smitten during the Moby Dick fight but before that there's nothing. What do you think?

Omg thank you for asking me this I have extremely strong opinions on the matter. This got way longer than I predicted but honestly what did I expect?

I DO firmly stand by the “Akutagawa fell first” statement. I mean, as I've said before, it's hard to interpret the canon events in a way that doesn't frame Akutagawa being in love with Atsushi, while when it comes to Atsushi it's arguable he would even fall at all, and definitely didn't within canon¹. SO, in my very unbiased perception of canon (lie), here's the story of Akutagawa falling for Atsushi:

Akutagawa gets assigned Atsushi as his target for a mission. He doesn't have any strong impression on him. He doesn't know anything about him.

Akutagawa talks with Dazai. Now he's got very personal beef with Atsushi.

Akutagawa and Atsushi fight on the trading ship. There's clashing of morals, the personal beef becomes even more personal and it's surely accentuated by Atsushi defeating him. He definitely hates him with all his guts at this point.

Akutagawa and Atsushi meet again on the Moby Dick. Akutagawa still hates Atsushi, but talking their feelings out on the bridge and on the elevator is a first step towards actually understanding and warming up to each other.

Akutagawa and Atsushi fight together against Fitzgerald and share some heartfelt words of support right beforehand. I'm like, 200% sure the exact moment Akutagawa fell in love with Atsushi is when he told him “if you asked me... I'd say Dazai-san has already recognized you long ago”. Because that's everything for him!!!! More exactly, that's everything Akutagawa ever wanted to hear. That's the most valuable words in the world for Akutagawa, and them coming from Atsushi... I think that made them all the more meaningful for him. Atsushi saying those words meant signing a death sentence for Akutagawa.

They fight together against Fitzgerald and I like to think Akutagawa found it a particularly romantic experience. He's fought alone his whole life, it must have evoked a warm feeling in him. He falls harder.

Now, Akutagawa loving Atsushi doesn't mean he will accept he loves Atsushi. I mean, it's Akutagawa, he's bsd's most stubborn character, and on top of that hating Atsushi is his main drive– he's definitely going to spend ages in denial. He'll meet Atsushi again looking all gloomy one day and he'll be like “Oh shit what's up with that sad puppy face. Oh shit. I guess I'm not fighting Jinko today because.................. Defeating an enemy while he's unhappy will earn me no honour. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. It's not that I like him or anything”.

The Cannibalism events happen; Akutagawa and Atsushi beat up some more people, share some more heartfelt moments. Convincing himself that he doesn't like Atsushi is getting harder by day for Akutagawa, and that perhaps makes him the most hostile he's ever been to Atsushi; but he also is in the most harmless way anyone can be hostile. He keeps threatening Atsushi, but he never follows up to his words. Atsushi insults him in the most hurtful way, and he just kinda lets him. He tries to leave Atsushi behind; he turns back to see if Atsushi is tagging along. In the mines, Atsushi is endlessly cruel to Akutagawa, but that's really nothing new; what's new is Atsushi saving his life, Atsushi showing compassion to him, Atsushi wearing Rashomon. What's new is that now he understands Atsushi a little better. And now he's back home with new vivid images of Atsushi in his mind and a freaking self-sabotaging deal he had no reason to accept, and he really can't keep pretending he doesn't love Atsushi anymore.

There's a long narrative break between Akutagawa's Cannibalism appearance and his next appearence. Thirty chapters pass. I like to interpret this long pause as a moment of self-reflection and change for Akutagawa: he finally admitted to himself that he loves Atsushi; he knows that Atsushi doesn't love him back. He stopped killing. He started revalutating his life choices. He knows he doesn't have much left to live. He starts spending more time with his family– maybe even with his coworkers. And he goes to meet Dazai when he calls, and Dazai tells him that he will save Atsushi and he knows the reason why, and Akutagawa knows the reason. And he dies to save Atsushi because he loves him, and it doesn't matter that Atsushi doesn't love him back, what matters is that he does and that his life is worth dying for.

1. I mean. maybe it is arguable. I warmed up to the idea a little more than what I could have said six months ago. But it's still only remotely possible.

#Thank you for this ask!!!! Loved laying this down #I think it's very easy and clean to see the progress of Akutagawa's feelings for Atsushi in the manga!!! #ryūnosuke akutagawa #sskk #shin soukoku #bsd #bungou stray dogs #mine #people asks me stuff

[phasesofpencils]

Idk both shows have some serious issues but imo character wise, and pacing wise [comparing season 1s at least] Helluva is SLIGHTLY better. My pov of this under the cut.

Tldr: Hazbin requires homework and is unfocused in characters and plot, Helluva [season 1] is focused on actually establishing the characters as characters and developed a plot LATER that it focuses more on.

The characters in Helluva feel more like characters, rather than talking props like the Hazbin characters. You get a sense for their deal and their personalities and dynamics even from episode one: Blitz is the eccentric boss who is obsessed with his employees. Loona is Blitz's adopted daughter that he dotes on but she also hates everyone and everything, especially Blitz and enjoys messing with Moxxie. Moxxie is the more quiet one and tries to be more professional who tolerates Blitz and is tired of his bullshit while also trying to give him a level of respect since he IS his boss. Millie is Moxxie's wife who is in a loving relationship with him, is occasionally microagressive towards Loona and gets annoyed with her sometimes especially with how she messes with her Husband and kinda enables and brushes off Blitz's stalking. And Stolas is overly horny and obsessed with Blitz that Blitz tries to distance himself from but is also stuck with bc he's his ticket to keeping his business.

Hazbin characters feel restricted to their one archetype: charlie is happy, angel is flirty, husk is grumpy, nifty is whacky, Alastor is "creepy" [except he isn't], pentious is the butt of the joke, etc. And the Hazbin characters rarely feel like they go any deeper than that, besides maybe Angel in episode 4. And we never really get a good sense of the characters dynamics with each other are within the group. We know Husk and Angel go from Angel harrassing Husk and Husk not being cool with it to them understanding each other and becoming friends [maybe potential love interests]. And we know Charlie and Vaggie are dating, but that feels less bc we actually see and explore their relationship as partners and moreso bc we are told and have to be reminded.

And let's not forget, that with season 1 helluva had the SAME episode count as Hazbin and with LESS time per episode. Sure Helluva was more episodic in the first half, but then it started establishing a plot half way through, like it or not, and actually started shifting more of its focus on it [for the price of their elevator pitch essentially, the whole main premise of the show, to focus on Stolitz drama].

Hazbin HAD a plot from the beginning but it stumbles, ignores, or hardly wants to focus on it in favor of introducing new characters, most of which are supposed to play some big part, when we barley have gotten to know our main cast.

Hazbin:

ep 1: introduced to the cast, also Adam and Lute

Ep 2: the Vees and Pentious

Ep 3: the overlords

Ep 4: [no new characters but we're only JUST getting to focus on one, and what his struggles are]

Ep 5: Lucifer and Mimzy

Ep 6: Sera, Emily and Cherry [and St Peter if you want to count him]

Ep 7: Rosie and the Cannibal town

Ep 8: [no new intros but we have our big battle]

She introduces too many characters without having the time to really explore them, pretty much relying on fans to do HOMEWORK to find out details about the characters from old livestreams and sifting through her twitter rants. Hazbin introduces all these new characters and expects to "pay off" half of it by the end of one season, sometimes even by the end of the same episode they're introduced in. By the end of the season the main cast are friends, not because that friendship was properly developed and more so bc the plot needs them to be. Which makes watching the show frustrating and confusing bc watching these characters you never really get a solid explanation for their motives and bond, they feel more like they're just there to provide commentary on events and characters happening around them at times.

Helluva introduces characters but with the expectation that they'll either be inconsequential one offs [sinner clients] back ground characters [Wally] or with the intention of bringing them back when they decide to do more with them later on. [Striker]. Despite how you feel about the characters and what they do or don't do with them, Helluva i feel something for the characters, even if it's annoyed and frustrated but that's because i KNOW what their motivations and dynamics are.

Viv had YEARS to come up with a satisfying story for Hazbin but by the end of the season it feels like fan interpretation/past familiarity is doing most of the heavy lifting for the show. Hazbin was created for fans who have been following Viv's every thought since Zoophobia and leaves new fans behind expecting them to get caught up on their own or by having old fans come up to them and EXPLAIN it to them. While Helluva at least is being fleshed out at about the same time we're seeing it, it was a spin off for Hazbin that started as a general idea she had to explore a different aspect of hell that grew from there, so it actually takes the time to explain and flesh out characters and motivations.

#hazbin hotel criticism #hazbin hotel critical #helluva boss criticism #helluva boss critical

[whumpster-fire]

Rating the Overlords in Hazbin Hotel:

#10: Valentino. Bitch ass motherfucker supreme. I want him to die and I want it to hurt the whole time he is dying. Fucking scumbag. Also IDGAF if he's a moth I will always maintain the headcanon that the sleazy prick is a pubic louse.

#9: That one blue firey skeleton dude in the meeting who didn't say anything. Has literally no characterization.

#8: Zeezi (that one pink and green lady at the meeting): Has literally no characterization but that color scheme is eye bleeding and I'm here for it.

#7: Rosie. Man she's cool and all, helpful to Charlie, friends with Alastor, but she just doesn't capture my interest the way the others do. Being the overlord of cannibals is a really niche thing it seems like compared to being in control of major forces that are fucking up society, I have a feeling she maintains her position because (a) she's smart, and (b) the other overlords don't really want her domain because taking eating human flesh to the level of an obsession is kind of dweeb behavior.

#6: Velvette. Horrible cringe zoomer iPad kid (or Millennial, I don't know). I absolutely love the fact that she showed up at the meeting and literally everyone else in the room was like "What's with this sassy... lost child?" Has so much potential though for her character to embody the absolute worst of internet culture. Next season I want to see Velvette trolling, going "L + Block + Ratio," and doxxing random sinners and getting them killed for her own entertainment.

#5: Carmilla Carmine. Awesome. I like seeing people in hell who are still people and not obsessed with becoming the most cartoonishly evil motherfucker possible because "hey we're already in hell, might as well get crazy." People can have friends, family, etc. and still do shit that gets them sent to hell. I'm getting "was leader of an organized crime family in life" vibes. Also has vibes of being one of the less horrible overlords to work for because she's emotional stable enough to know that being cruel to your minions for fun is bad for morale.

#4: Husk. Okay he's a former overlord but let's say Overlord Emeritus. He has my respect as an overlord for dying in like the 70s but choosing an absolutely classic vice to make his domain: drinking and gambling. Also the timeline here implies he rose to power when Alastor was already around. I wonder if there was a power vacuum because Al killed the previous overlord of gambling?

#3: Vox. I hate his cringey techbro ass but in a "I want to put this man in a jar and shake it vigorously" way. The fact that he actually enjoys Valentino's company is a major minus though. I kind of wanted to see a strained business relationship where he dislikes Val immensely but works with him because sex sells and Val has the market cornered. Also his voice is kind of... generic. I was really hoping for him to have a Mid-Atlantic Accent but of a more "mid-century TV anchor" type to make it extra clear how much he wants to rip off / replace Alastor and as a part of him that isn't as hip and modern as Mr. Died In the 50s wants to present himself as.

#2: Zestial. Hello Mr. Tall Dark and Mysterious. He is so fucking cool. I want so badly to believe that he and Alastor are genuinely friends and respect each other but also Alastor respects Zestial enough to want him to think he's cool, and when Zestial showed up Alastor internally panicked because of 'Oh shit my friend showed up while I'm being trailed by the lamest minions in hell, he's going to think they're mine this is so embarrassing!'

#1: Alastor. What a fucking guy. This man is being dragged kicking and screaming into character development and I am here for it.

#hazbin hotel #overlords (HH) #alastor hazbin hotel

[arceespinkgun]

I want to share my opinion on Earthspark Tarantulas as somebody who really enjoys BW Tarantulas and despises IDW Tarantulas, since I haven't seen anyone in that position talk about him. I think people would expect me to hate Earthspark Tarantulas... but I don't, actually.

I hated IDW Tarantulas so much because I refuse to believe he's so pathetic and weak that he'd become obsessed with bland people/people who outshine him, particularly at the expense of his well-being and agendas. I cannot imagine him looking at any person or any one thing and crying, "This is all I have left!!!" BW Tarantulas was pathetic as well, but it was in a "ha ha spider go splat from big rock" way, not in a simpering desperate way (also I hated how he looks in IDW and it's fixed in Earthspark).

But I don't think it's an invalid interpretation to make a claim that BW Tarantulas, who is a compelling character, could be lonely. There are pretty clear signs that he wants his own faction, he wants "slaves" to his specifications but then pushes his creations away because he doesn't trust them, see Blackarachnia. She and Tarantulas are rivals because they have parallels, and I could see Tarantulas sharing in her desire for companionship and fear of being hurt.

I don't really have anything against what Earthspark did with the Tarantulas character—it's a very weird choice, but his role was enjoyable and I don't think Earthspark lost anything by not having him be a kooky cannibal. It's not like the show isn't extremely dark already, and they already had a whole episode about why it's important to be cautious around people (the one with Swindle, Mo, and Thrash). I also think it helps that Tarantulas treated Nightshade more as a colleague than as a child he's desperate to adopt. Earthspark has done a lot of weird things, but what's the point if a new show isn't weird, right? Things like having Tarantulas be sympathetic or Bumblebee and Breakdown having a brotherly bond are surprising, but that's why they're interesting.

#my analysis #Tarantulas #earthspark spoilers #transformers earthspark #Earthspark has been successful in being aware of the past #while doing new stuff that doesn't ruin it IMO

[fereldanwench]

so i finished my rewatch of s1-s3 and new watch of s4-s7 of the 100 aaanddd i wanna ramble

spoilers and, from what i've gathered, unpopular opinions under the cut lmao

i watched the first three seasons in 2015-16, iirc (binged s1 and s2 on netflix; watched s3 as it aired)--i remember losing interest towards the end of s3 so i wasn't super hyped about s4 and just kinda forgot about it. on rewatch, i was also getting bored with s3, lmao. it starts off pretty strong, and the end revelation is a banger, but the last 4 eps or so just draaaggggg

i really liked seasons 4 and 5, though, with one big exception: giving clarke a daughter-figure to go all mama bear over was quite possibly one of the most obnoxious character development choices they could have given her

clarke in general is kind of a frustrating character for me because on one hand, i fuckin love a female character who does awful things for what she believes are good reasons, and that is clarke 100%

but in spite of that awesome set up, she manages to be so fucking boring

i think a lot of it is the actress' performance, tbh--the acting on the show overall generally isn't anything spectacular, but i find her particularly bad. i cant quite pinpoint my gripes, i just find her very bland

and given that the show is basically one extended trolley problem and there are dozens of characters who are also constantly put in the position of making the most difficult decisions in the universe, that just isn't enough to make her compelling

i found myself really drawn to echo in the later seasons because i am predictable af and i love a character who is loyal to a fault and bases their entire identity off being a loyal follower. i do feel like the relationship with bellamy was a little shoehorned, though. like i see the enemies to lovers potential there, but i think having most of that transition happen off-screen took all the fun from it

and i was stunned when i went looking for echo gifs to find out that most people hate her but love clarke apparently, lmao. hard opposite

s5 also delved into one of my favorite dark apocalypse tropes: what will push people to become cannibals to survive? it's always been a morbid fascination and i wasn't expecting them to get as fucked up with it as they did, but it was compelling shit

s6 had interesting elements to it--the worldbuilding/lore i think is part of the reason i got so sucked into the show, and seeing how becca's influence managed to reach a whole other planet was cool. i also liked the personality chip stuff bc it gave me ideas for valerie, haha. i also liked russel as an antagonist--love a very polite and calm villain being pushed to their limits

but i could see it was starting to lead into a setup for a whole metaphysical aspect to everything that had happened, and i just really don't like that shit

oh, also, kane and abby were my absolute favorite couple and i'm very sad they didn't get their HEA

so s7 was very meh to me. lovedlovedloved echo, dioyza, octavia, and hope getting to be badasses together, but that's about it. the transcendentalist shit was so fucking tedious, and bellamy got done dirty. and i've found myself overly fixated on the logistics of the "finalkru" situation with clarke and her buddies living on earth for the rest of their lives with no hopes of procreation or extending the human race

like at some point there's just gonna be one person remaining, right? and they have to spend their remaining days all alone? unless they do some kind of death pact? or how exactly do the transcendents ensure there are no babies? can the humans undo this? like what if they clone themselves or do in vitro fertilization? i have questions!!!

i don't mind a story ending with unanswered questions--i even really like that sometimes--but ending with a bunch of new unanswered questions is annoying lmao

plus i find the premise of finalkru surviving and maybe trying to figure out a way to continue the human race to be more interesting than 87% of the plot of s7

also two of the big themes throughout the show was never giving up hope and always seeking to rediscover their humanity after doing horrible shit--i just don't feel like this ending really tied those motifs up in a satisfying way. 99.9% of the human population no longer experiencing pain because they basically don't exist anymore feels less like a reward for Good Behavior and more... idk, just unsettling to me.

i mean, it's basically sci-fi rapture, and the whole idea of the rapture always freaked me out too lmao

i know the show is based on books, which i haven't read and don't plan to, so maybe some of this would be better explained there, but i've also seen commentary that it deviates a lot from the novels so who knows

anyway, i do like the show overall. there's a lot of juicy stuff here, but very weak ending. reminded me a bit of how i felt watching lost, actually, although not as egregious

#t: wench watches stuff #shows: the 100

[infinitelycomplexpuzzles]

// I know it's my autism hyperfocusing

but I really DO dislike when I encounter bad writing from ostensible professionals. Because no one is making them write bad plotlines. No one is making them write them in a way that doesn't make logical sense.

Like okay, some plots are mandated by editors. But that doesn't mean every time you write you have to commit a Flashpoint level atrocity upon the canon.

Personally, I chalk it up to what I call demon in a bottle syndrome.

For those unaware, Demon in a Bottle is the comic that established that Iron Man is an alcoholic. Now, even if you like that addition to his canon, the reality is that it wasn't meant to be a foundational comic, because it's a single issue comic wherein Iron Man develops, deals with, and overcomes alcoholism.

Yeah, a single issue!

And now, every writer can't just write a good story, they have to write the story, the story that's going to change the character forever.

And what you end up with are characters that don't feel like characters because every new writer feels like they need to reinvent the character again. Event comics certainly aren't helping this either.

But the whole actually Captain America was hydra the whole time! thing is evidence of this. Actually, Captain Marvel is a fascist is part of this. The whole actually, the hulk is magic now is part of this.

So much time in comics is spent by writers trying to reinvent their characters they forget how to write good stories, and the characters stop being memorable, because if everyone is writing different stuff into it, then none of it sticks. It just becomes 'oh remember so and so's run on x?'

And sometimes, Demon In A Bottle Syndrome metastasizes. It become terminal. That's how you get the Ultimate universe ending in a clusterfuck of incest and cannibalism. It's how you get Brightest Day requiring a full universe reboot or how you get Rebirth being required.

I think this is why the best comic media is not actually in comics at all. There's a reason why people got invested in the snyderverse even if people hated/liked it. There's a reason why marvel movies make billions, why their cartoons live in longer than any of the comics.

I mean, we're still familiar with the 1960's Spiderman show. We know about it than most comics that came out a decade ago. That should point something out to us!

But also, it's just... in a time when comics properties have never been more mainstream, it's really sad to see that comics themselves have never been more forgettable and tiring?

#ooc

[jimmycarterghostland]

Good Girl Mari Needs To Happen

Mari from Yellowjackets is an interesting character. She's not considered one of the mains(Natalie, Misty, etc) She's more of a side character who isn't quite one of the big players.

Throughout season one she was a one-note mean girl. Season 2 added some depth to her, showing her crying, and even hugging Lottie in the finale of the season. In season one, Mari was actually mean to Lottie. Probably in all their one-on-one interactions.

I doubt Mari will ever respect Natalie as her leader. Mari adores Lottie, and it will be interesting to see how Mari interacts with Natalie in season three. Will Mari let her dislike for Natalie be known? The only two people Mari seems to sincerely like are Lottie and Akilah, so I am sure Mari doesn't like Natalie either.

Moving on.

Here's what I want to see for Mari's character in the future:

Good Girl Mari. That's what I want to see.

Season one had Lottie on a path to evil, but in between S1 and S2 that idea was clearly thrown out. Lottie in season 2 is more of a Jesus figure. The personality switch was jarring, and that evil wilderness queen build-up from S1 was all for nothing.

Mari, though. She's got noticeable character development going on. She's still a jerk, but becoming less of one. When she hugs Lottie in the S2 finale, Mari tells her she's glad she's okay. Sadly, Akilah being involved in the hug too lessened the impact. But still. That moment proved Mari can be good. And seeing these characters devolving into ruthless people who hunt their own friends, it would be nice to see a character who doesn't. Or no longer wants to.

I want that character to be Mari.

I saw a post on Reddit showing a girl post-rescue who might be Mari. I'm hoping it wasn't. Because it would be great if Mari turns out to be Pit Girl and that she refused to draw a card, which automatically made her into the ritual sacrifice. Perhaps could've refused because she no longer wanted to hunt and eat her friends anymore.

If the show does that with Mari, I would absolutely love it. Before Ben set the cabin on fire, he was the moral, compassionate member of the group. This show needs a new one. Badly. I want that person to be Mari. If the showrunners go that route, if they turn Mari into a person who wants the murderous cannibalism to stop, wants them all to stop being monsters, and wants everyone to make it home, that would be amazing.

It could be realistic character development too. Unlike the jarring personality switch we got with Lottie. How she was talking about spilling blood in season one, but is all goody-two shoes in season two.

A lot of people are betting that Mari is Pit Girl. Many are hoping that she is. If she is PG, I hope the show uses my "Good Mari refused to participate in the choose-a-sacrifice card game" idea.

I need to see this girl Mari go from cold-hearted bully to cannibalism-hating saint. I feel like this is the best way the showrunners could use her character. I don't want to see her character used any other way. Unfortunately, my idea is just an idea, and I'm not a Yellowjackets showrunner, so I highly doubt everything I detailed will happen. But it is what I want to see. And I do believe the YJ staff will miss out big time if they don't make Good Good Mari happen.

The potential is there. Mari went from hating Lottie to loving her. She became one of her most devoted follower's. Mari cried after Misty lashed out at her(a show of softness that might lead to benevolence). And Mari's possible hatred of Natalie being the leader might just make Mari eventually dislike the whole cannibalism thing and cult stuff. It might bring her on the path to benevolence, one where she finds a way to survive without killing and eating people. Ben might find a way to do that. Maybe Mari will join him and they will live together in that secret tree lair? Ben wanted that life with Natalie. Perhaps he will get it with Mari.

I'm aching to see Good Girl Mari team up with Ben.

Mari needs to become a main character in the teen timeline. We definitely don't see enough of her. And what I want to see is Good Girl Mari happen.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets mari #tv show #television #Good Girl Mari

[mudefrau]

son of a witch x rammstein ❤️‍🔥

NO ONE ASKED FOR THIS but there is no musical so let me cope making a playlist. i've been writing this little thing since yesterday; i know no one's music taste matches perfectly so i give up directly exchanging recs with people, but this is what *i* like.

my song picks are mainly associated with liir, trism, shell, and cherrystone and here i explain why (sorry candle, despite being the musician, in my heart you become more relevant in out of oz.)

CW: typical r+ covers; soaw -typical dark themes

LIIR

of course the song called mutter (mother) had to be in. here, the narrator is conceived in a sterile way & the mother has abandoned him, let alone loveless in the world ("no sun shined on me, no breast cried milk"...) and he resents her. the resentment is a biiit strong for liir & elphaba ("i'll send her a sickness and throw her in the river")...THOUGH it ends with a repetition of "mutter, oh, gib mir kraft" (begging this mother to "give him power" eventually) which is SO them. (as a bonus, the sentiment matches a few of my hcs for shell & melena who died in his birth, hence "abandoning" him from shell's pov)

dalai lama is about fear of flying (the song was initially going to be called flugangst, literally, but the current dalai lama has a fear of flying in planes apparently and they changed it to this more unique title), it's based on a classic goethe poem. in the original, a father and his son meet an "elf king" who attempts to lure his child, the father tries to protect him in his arms just to find out he's already dead. in r+'s song, they meet the "wind king" but it's the father who accidentally holds his son too hard in fear and suffocates him to death. it's one of my favorite songs from r+, really underrated perhaps because it's not their usual style.

hilf mir's (help me) lyrics remind me of the fire of bengda since it's one of the rare r+ songs with fire that isn't pyromaniacally enthusiastic (lol). it's a child alone at home & feeling alone and they play with matches, accidentally puts on a fire and is calling for help; but also sorta trying to find company in the fire (?? it's how i interpret "the fire loves me, the fire loves me not"). this also reminds me of cherrystone-liir: liir SHOULD hate him to death given what he did in kiamo ko and yet cherrystone is (consciously or not) exploiting liir's craving for a fatherly figure so he doesn't. interestingly the bridge burning happened shortly after shell (/ his friends) burnt the scarecrow, i think of it as a parallel.

TRISM

well mein teil is about that one famous consensual homoerotic (?? its been a long time an i don't feel like looking it up again man) cannibalism case in germany. and i do associate trism with eating human flesh even if he's not the one doing it! (the dragons are) and something animalistic about it, about drawing the line between urge and reason, between human and beast, it speaks to me about him. i think that's a big theme in his character, who is used to training beasts and then lashes out at liir like one. because HE is trained like one. (by shell!!!)

SHELL

every rammstein degen sex song fits him and they have *a lot* of those so i'll just pick the iconic pussy. it's one of the rare r+ songs majorly in english because it's the pov of a foreigner, a stranger- just like shell is in southstairs: he's a dandy but he's coming down there for "pleasure" (and well, intel, in his case). the foreigner in question is going to berlin seeking legal prostitution and the lyrics, even if not super violent (compared to other r+ songs at least), show the narrator's entitlement to these women. shell DEF buys prostitution, it's hinted a few times; but the way he presents himself is as if he's the one selling himself. and even if i hc there's a part of truth, all we know for sure is that he's a professional liar.

CHERRYSTONE

waidmannsheil is a phrase to wish hunters success before their hunt. so this is a song about hunting, not necessarily military, about wanting to chase and kill the creature no matter whether it's on land or in sea. according to some interview with r+ it's about rape culture (since the song does specify "young female deer" as the prey), but i believe more than one interpretation is possible and to me it could well be about violence from soldiers in general (which, yes, includes rape).

#Spotify #playlist #son of a witch #gregory maguire #i thought i was going to include something from sehnsucht but eventually didn't a

[fostopia]

hi............. if you are up to it i would very much like hearing about your ocs

** 11/20/23 edit: IM USING THIS AS AN EXCUSE TO POST THIS

* Funfact! I only remembered about this ask now because my friend asked me about the same ocs and it came to mind so I’m picking the old draft back up

Anon you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into

Fun fact about me dear readers I have over 278 oc’s (11/20 edit: now 347) and counting all are fully developed too. However, we’re gonna focus on the ones I posted previously

The ask to make my day OKAY

BACKGROUND

Was on a whiteboard with a bud and he made the joke about throwing a baby he was holding, I told him to do it and drew ‘C supports baby throwing’ which lead to the "#cforpresident" hashtag being drawn by him. This silly little thing promptly dissolved into a full fledged au because none of us are capable of being normal

There’s three universes sorta associated with this au, and there’s no actual name to it— it just.. exists.

PRESIDENT C

The first version of this character in this AU, C (no real name here, just C) is the President [It’s sorta unconfirmed what the fuck he’s the president of but we kept making the joke of him being POTUS so maybe the canon world in this is just… our irl world.] My man’s Vice President is unconfirmed because my bud Sarah who ‘ran against me’ swapped to swat last second so.. guess there is no Vice President. C had a husband (Ace), got married before he entered office and got unlucky cause his spouse is fucking dead. He’s sorta just tired of this shit™️. In this world monster begins aren’t rare but they’re not exactly accepted, even more so if you look dangerous. C is a shapeshifter with his default look replacing his head with a ball of black matter; it’s an odd substance, as it gives off a look of a black hole but you could literally shove your hand into his face and bam your arm is in a weird kind of pocket dimension (this can only occur when he allows it though, so don’t try it you’ll punch the President.)

His other look, however, is much more human but simultaneously is used far less. That look is defaulted to a demon, and although he can change aspects none are permanently and he’ll always revert back to the demon look Oh yeah President C is morally good but he has cannibalized a vampire-bat shifter so, sometimes his morals are off.

His backstory is pretty sparse, I don’t have any ideas for his family life before presidency; he just showed up running for President and gained popularity real fast. He’s very advanced with his shapeshifting, he can use it to become people and even objects or full animals. His main team consists of Orin, the swat captain, and Sarah, who’s a rank below Orin. Sarah’s very responsible and very underpaid while Orin is horrible irresponsible and uses Sarah’s payment on Panda Express. President doesn’t let that slide when he finds out; but otherwise he has a good connection with them both.

TYRANT C

This one was a ‘what-if’ personality/role swap of the President C au; instead of being the morally good, demon presidents— Tyrant C (still just C here) is the morally corrupted, sheep president. Just like President, he’s a shapeshifter with the base for being the black matter head one; however he generally uses the humanoid sheep one more often as a way to seem more innocent and harmless— like a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

He’s fuuucked up, his whole point is gaining power and he’s lucky that the force that follows him is so loyal. In this one he had a husband as well, Zander (Ace’s alternate universe self), however the two married purely for tax benefits, the fact that it would help C’s campaign to be a queer president. They were a tragic case of right time, wrong person. Although both of them had truly loved each other to an extent (C didn’t know what love felt like so he hasn’t realized at the time while Zander was constantly bouncing between love and hate) both of them kept fighting. Tyrant was the one to act first but trust me, if Zander had lived longer, he might’ve killed Tyrant first.

He gets away with it because corrupt fucker, however he quickly finds that he needs somebody else to fill in for the spot that Zander had earlier; somebody to bounce ideas off of— and who better to than his SWAT captain, Orin. Orin is a huge simp. He’s actually responsible here however Sarah’s personality doesn’t swap and instead she just doesn’t like Tyrant too much. So, Tyrant decides to seduce Orin to get him wrapped around his finger because really; if he’s got the swat captain he’s got the power of his team too… yeah no, he falls in love on accident. Then he’s forced to acknowledge that this is what love feels like.

He’s a lot less good with his shapeshifting; only able to shift between his void matter and the goat one with even that taking to much energy as he wasn’t able to use them as he grew. He’s a man cut off from the world, however not from sorrow and guilt the same way President did.

Tyrant’s meant to be much more complex than President; his backstory includes shit like abuse from parental figures, cult shit, and with him having been raised with so much negativity he’s completely convinced that this is how everything has to be. Violence and evil have always been his normal; he was a kid groomed into a mindset that never left until he felt something beyond anger for the first time. He’s fucked up, he’s done some real horrible shit, but he doesn’t know that being good is on the table. He’s at a point where learning to grow won’t do anything to reverse years of trauma and anger. Tyrant has regrets he can never voice due to his nailed in beliefs, he will never be able to fully accept that he had loved Zander, that the king sized bed in his home feels too empty. He can’t acknowledge the way he makes two cups off coffee sometimes, one just the way his fiancé used to drink his. He can never come to terms with the fact that he regretted killing him. He can never accept that he misses his parent despite their abuse, that deep down he wishes he were still their little boy oh so willing to help mom and dad out with their ‘buisness’. Tyrant wants to, really, he does. However, some people aren’t capable of accepting that reality. He grew up within a world that called him a monster, and he was merely giving back what they had started.

#c talks #c rambles #c’s oc multiverse #I LOVE THEM #twins au not included bc lazy

[mountphoenixrp]

We have a new citizen in Mount Phoenix:

          Elias Callum, a 25 year old son of Aengus.           He is a priest.

FC NAME/GROUP: cha eunwoo, astro CHARACTER NAME:  Elias Callum (Haeun Lee) AGE/DATE OF BIRTH: 25, 6th November 1997 PLACE OF BIRTH: Sicily, Italy  OCCUPATION: priest (cult leader)   HEIGHT: 183cm WEIGHT: 70kg DEFINING FEATURES: a scar on his right cheek

PERSONALITY: A cold and calculative person, observant of others. he acts more on logic than emotions--to the point of throwing them away. it’s hard for him to convey his true feelings, often hiding his emotions from others and himself. additionally, he has difficulty empathizing with others due to the environment he was raised in. due to his being exploited during childhood, he can’t really comprehend love and always mistakes it for lust like it’s his fatal flaw.

He’s a man of conviction, selfless towards what he thinks is right; defending the weak and showing compassion to those in need. although his methods might be astray, however, the road to hell was paved with good intentions. 

HISTORY: [tw: religious themes, cult worship, grooming, emotional abuse/manipulation, murder, cannibalism, gore] 

Isolated from playing the children around his age, he spent most of his childhood with adults and dedicating himself to the church. The adults constantly tell him that he is special, a child sent from the gods and a messenger of love. At first, Elias did not understand any of the words they said, he just did as he was told like the obedient boy that he is. As Elias is growing up, his curiosity starts to grow better than him. He hates the daily devotions and choir, he doesn’t like the way the church members look at him when he sings. Thus the first spark of rebellion, was when he sneaked out of the church’s compound and met a boy of his age in which, he instantly fell in love–specifically, puppy love. 

His first puppy love ends up as a reminder that he is different. The adults quickly caught on and brought him back to the house, lecturing and locking him up in his room. “A child of love shouldn’t act this way, he has to be pure and innocent,” his teacher scolded him. Through his tears, he accepted that he was different. 

Elias is starting to become aware of his situation at eighteen. It’s when he’s able to talk to certain species of birds, they wail and cry for him, which makes him realize that he’s a caged bird. 

He devoted himself to the church, just like how the adults wanted him to. He travelled across Sicily, spreading the word of ‘god’, through the gospels and the promise of love from omnipotent beings. Soon, the church has become more popular and attracted new members. The masses were brought easily by empty promises and white lies, all he did was take a page from the way adults have taught him. 

Soon enough, he has everyone wrapped around his fingers. 

The adults believe that he has ascended to the omnipotent being they believed that he is, discarding all mortal woes that were deemed to be “impure.” As a celebration of his ascension, Elias invited them to a bouquet with food and wine. When the clock struck twelve, everyone was unconscious and when the sun rose, they were no more than pieces of meat. 

To the masses, he is seen as a god and just like any god, he abandons his people. 

Free from his abuser and from his shackles, Elias set to see the world for the first time. However, he finds himself unable to connect with them. Joy, anger, sadness, love, grief, hate and other normal emotions, he’s unable to feel them. 

Fortunately, a real god appears to his aid. Guiding him to the place where he’s supposed to be, though he wonders if he could find someone equal to him. 

After all, the top is a lonely place. 

PANTHEON: Celtic CHILD OF: Aengus, God of Love and Youth POWERS: Possess an angelic singing voice which can cause others to become infatuated with them for short periods of time. Can communicate with birds associated with love (doves, lovebirds, etc.) STRENGTHS: observant, manipulative, unpredictable WEAKNESSES: sore throat, tend to underestimate how powerful emotions are, still unable to fully recover from years of emotional manipulation and abuse

#kpop rp #krp #astro #cha eunwoo #astro eunwoo #mp; welcome

[rappaccini]

big catchall yellowjackets s2 thoughts post

tldr: season 2 has a great takeoff, hits some turbulence, and ends in a a potentially disastrous crash landing. eps 1-8: soar in places but shaky in others. ep 9: thanks i hate it!

according to conventional season progression, season 1/act i is the act of establishment. s1 of yj was incredible on that front. we really sink our teeth into all the characters and the plotlines. great questions are teased.

s2 is the act of conflict. this is the one where we dive into what the story's about. i still think they did a great job on that front-- rational vs supernatural, with the girls' descent into cannibalism, into hunting each other, into embracing lottie's cult mindset and natalie's rebellion against it.

but then ep 9 kinda fucks it. the biggest offending elements are things that could work in the right context, but i don't think that was it.

i think the fandom went rancid on fan theories and are now descending into aggressive positivity/negativity infighting. glad i decided not to get involved. esp given how this ended

since nobody reads these, i'll say the truth: season 2 was by no means a bad season (though it certainly has a bad finale), but it was definitely weaker than s1. the show isn't off the rails, but it bit off more than it can chew, and now it’s choking. there are now massive cracks in the foundation. s3 is the do or die to fix this... and i don't think they will.

alright so yj went in one episode from my favorite show currently airing, that i tell everyone to watch and make a social event out of every week with my friends..... to a show that i will recommend to no one bc i don't want them to get let down as hard as i was. when s3 comes out i'll wait for all the episodes to air, read some spoilers and ask some friends what they think before deciding to get back into, and if it gets canned before that happens... honestly, i'd be fine with that.

positives

the first act of cannibalism was perfect.

shauna and lottie. loved watching shauna's paranoia melting into total deference. both of them lost a best friend they had major gay vibes with, who really kept their worst impulses in check. i always felt it would be... right, for them to link up and form a codependent bond as a result. hopefully this is the start of that. (not to mention that the shaman needs her butcher) i'm the only person who ships shottie. so be it.

misty and crystal's friendship

the individual arcs of nat, travis, shauna, taissa... until the end

fleshing out akilah and mari. they're now at the tier lottie and van were in s1.

the development of lottie's cult taking time to coalesce

the stillbirth of shauna's baby was handled great

callie becoming a much more well rounded character. thank god. for a show about teens, we can't neglect the one in the present.

jeff knowing all shauna's sins, telling himself he's fine with it, but then having to contend with them firsthand and faltering? excellent.

the girls all losing their grip on reality by ep 8.

shauna butchering javi. incredible scene. love the buildup and the gore aftermath. love her hiding her face as she does it.

card pull theory confirmed. seems an appropriate way to start the cannibal sacrifice ritual. lots of fun variations to keep it fresh-- (quarry falls off a cliff, quarry is beaten/stabbed to death, quarry gets away, quarry kills her hunter, quarry makes an alliance ahead of time with one of her hunters to kill someone else for her, subtly rigged card pull, obviously rigged card pull, the group killing the one girl who won't participate, 'fuck the card pull, let's kill the other team instead of one of our own')

cave theory confirmed. good. we need a separate place for the second group to go, and now we have it. but idk who the fuck would join the second clan after ben burned the cabin down.

the cabin burning down kills it. it burning is a good thing, an important step in the group being further encroached into the wild, just feels like it happened way too soon and bc of the wrong person. more later.

negatives

more on this later but... Poor Lottie. fuck off. she was the villain s1 set up until she suddenly got switched up between seasons.

walter why. dude's just a plot device to get shauna off for killing adam and give misty a love interest she doesn't need. to the fans who hate travis, why do that when walter's right here? he's the Real unnecessary annoying boyfriend character.

crystal's body vanishing went nowhere. i like that she dies in the way she does, don't like that it goes nowhere.

so cabin guy doesn’t matter I guess

so javi's friend went nowhere

so the man with no eyes went nowhere

sure, we need to keep mysteries for later, but there's 'saving a resolution for later' and there's 'just dropping a question after it's raised' -- that's what the show did. you have to answer some questions before you raise new ones.

so that scene where travis died.... wasn't filmed weirdly and filled with inconsistencies bc the writers were implying that lottie was lying. it was literally just inconsistent and weird. hate it!!!

the cops. what even..... and kevyn dies but pedostasche LIVED?????

i'm cool with adam's murder being investigated. i just don't think it should've happened this fast. it's been One Day. and the entire resolution happened so quickly. the writers just tied it off and threw it away.

in general the women’s plot lines lack momentum. they spin their wheels till they reunite at the compound, then have a clip show until it’s time to commit mass suicide for some reason.

jeff never actually confronting real shauna about her repressed feral side.

'we conveniently forgot things' ..... no. lottie did on acct of the electroshock. none of the others should have. this feels like the writers trying to justify the continuity errors and sudden reframing of lottie as Misunderstood Reluctant Prophet.

'travis never believed in lottie' except he did and we don't even see him lose faith. another inconsistency (no, this can't be 'nat not understanding travis' because dude, she's his best friend, lover and the most important person in his life.)

all of episode 9.

ben burning down the cabin. i think he'd do it, but he isn't the best arsonist for the job (more on that below)... also are we not doing 'two warring clans' anymore? because who the fuck would join ben's after he did this?

massive missed opportunity for nat and travis to like. talk. alone. about what happened with javi. there's no resolution with that.

nat doesn't even really have a moment where she breaks down over it. she just goes numb, then participates in javi's butchering as if she weren't trying to save him only hours ago, with no indication of a changed mindset.

lottie becoming fully passive. what a letdown. she went from the character with the most potential as of the end of s1 to a wad of wet tissue paper.

nat becoming the leader.... seems heavily implied she's the antler queen, not to mention all the promo has been screaming 'come find out who aq is tonight!' so it sure looks like it.... no this doesn't make sense. it's ooc for her to accept this role and lottie's influence. it just does not gel with what we've seen of her so far.

it 100% feels like the writers, after spelling out lottie as the leader of the wilderness cult in s1 (that slow build of her embracing her delusions, attributing it to divine powers, seizing control of the girls as jackie loses power for good, starting the sacrificing, "who the fuck is lottie matthews" being a question meant to make us afraid), decided they wanted a Big Twist and decided to cram it in here to surprise Reddit. more on this later.

the only way i can see this working is 'each season, we get a new queen. s1 was jackie, s2 was lottie, s3 will be nat, s4(/5 if they get that far) will be tai/shauna. and each season shows each queen's affect on the group, how her power wanes, and how she's deposed and replaced.'

HOWEVER: nat accepting leadership FROM lottie? no.

and what the hell was all that heavy foreshadowing that Only Lottie would be it.

the pacing of the adult plot felt so off and i couldn't even tell if they were hunting lottie or shauna by the time the hunt got started. the resolution of the adam plot was so sloppy. no resolution for anything with taissa. van sure was There. did lottie poison all her followers or not.

nat's death. i'm cool with nat dying in s2. yellowjackets is shauna's story before anyone else's-- she's our protagonist. nat was (WAS... i guess) the one voice of reason, and responsible for the girls' survival, and lottie the voice that guides the girls into self destruction. if lottie's way of thinking is going to overcome the women in the present, that means nat can't counteract it. therefore, nat must die, and s2/s4 (the Season of Conflict or the Season of Emotional Lows) are the right times. s2 is better bc it inspires the characters to get more active earlier in the story.

but dude. not like THAT????

i still don't know if nat bought lottie's story about travis or not. i still don't know if nat started to truebelieve the cult shit. i still can't tell if nat was in on killing lottie or decided to help hunt shauna. she just... goes with no closure on any of those questions

i'm cool with her sacrificing herself for lisa. good parallel to failing to save javi.

but 'i dove in front of lisa to save her from.... misty quigley, who is smaller than me, who is running at her very slowly with a tiny needle that she jabs through my many many layers of thick clothing, and it contains a poison that kills me instantly' ....... is so dumb.

making it all about ~misty losing her bestie~ ......... nat never even referred to misty as her bestie. the filming doesn't seem to make it seem like misty's overselling it. the show seems to genuinely think in that moment that they're best friends.

oh my god that was for the fandom wasn't it.

nat's dying hallucination. what was that. 'i was dead the whole time so i should accept my death now' what. also why does she see lottie in her vision and not travis?

the finale left me full of doubt abt the future of the show. now i don’t trust the writers to do a good job anymore. bad place to be in.

the cracks:

1. inconsistent characterization

example: akilah. her being played by a totally different actress doesn't count. that couldn't be helped. i'm talking about how akilah goes from being a true believer of lottie's to 'i never bought into it, i'm just riding the fence' without a moment of acknowledgment that her faith faded... and then it doesn't even go anywhere bc she instantly follows lottie's lead and swears fealty to nat

example: shauna. she has a special bond with javi that totally evaporates in s2. it's fine if it breaks down, you just need to acknowledge in-show that it did. have javi approach shauna, probably during her labor, and be rejected.

big example: nat. why the hell would she agree to stay in the cabin and become the girls' leader. she was never particularly close to them, they just tried to murder her, she doesn't trust lottie's bs and she isn't the leader type. it just feels like the writers wanted a twist.

BIG example: lottie matthews. see below.

2. pacing and timeline confusion. you mean the adult plot all happened one week away from s1? dude. tell us immediately, not in episode six. do you know how many gripes about taissa being a senator who never goes to senate and abandoned sammy at school for days we could have avoided.

not to mention ep 9 switching from night to day to night in MINUTES.

the adults conveniently forgetting things about their time in the woods... oh, it's so the writers can retcon the hell out of it and claim 'unreliable narrator', I see

the drag of the adult timeline

in the past, the slowburn was the right move. shauna's labor and the first hunt arrived at the exact right times. but the characters just kind of ebb and flow through the season-- nat'll be super important for three episodes, then sit in the background for three, then she pops up again. that kind of shit. like, javi literally sat in the corner for shauna's birth. dude was Not There. what the hell. no one comments on ben being missing in ep 8 or 9

ben. his hallucinations were great, but did we really need four of them?

3. redshirts. i get that covid made this necessary in s1, but in s2 we're starting to have a problem. crystal was fantastic, but gen and melissa don't have distinct personalities. they don't have interests or hobbies. they just say lines that could be interchangeable. they're like the mari and akilah of s2, except at least we could tell mari and akilah's personalities apart.

there are three yellowjacket girls who have yet to be cast. hopefully they have personalities and the writers put real effort into building them and genlissa out.

otherwise when they're all eaten, it won't feel important.

crystal proves it's possible to do. so do it. fast.

4. fandom

the cast and writers are way too online. they should not be on reddit, reading fan theories or sharing their favorites in public. they should not be in these spaces.

it feels like misty's now the fandom interpretation of her (but straight), that taivan were softened to appeal to their popularity, that lottie especially was retconned into a well intentioned character and nat into the leader of the cult as a way to Stay Ahead Of The Fans.

even the alanis morrisette cover of the theme that keep playing feel like the writers are like 'look at us! we're a famous show now!'

at this rate they’ll make akilah pit girl

...'no one guessed the ending yet!' say the cast and writers............ yeah. because no one imagined how bad of an idea it would be.

the consequences:

1. if we can't rely on the characters to be consistent between seasons, how can we get excited about watching them grow, if they might be totally different people or jump out of their projected arcs for shock value/bigger appeal?

2. how can we care about the adult timeline at this point. and as for the teens, s3's gotta cover spring-summer-fall. if they do a 3-ep act for each like they did this season, that's a lot of time to cover.

3. if genlissa still have no distinguishing characteristics, and the redshirts follow in their footsteps, how will we care when they're the bulk of who's killed off next season and in s4? (bc gen and mari should be getting a ticket to s4 to keep pit girl intrigue alive)

4. if the cast and writers are consumed with giving the people what they want (shocking twists! surprise, lottie isn't the ringleader even though s1 very carefully built up to revealing her as it. she's just misunderstood!) how are they going to stay faithful to what the story needs. can we even trust their instincts anymore?

as for the characters, best execution to worst:

the greats—

SHAUNA

the only arc that feels great start to end. as befits the protagonist.

her issues with her daughter are fully fleshed out and so visceral. everything with the pregnancy is great.

trying to cling to jackie after her death? loved that.

being the one who starts the cannibalism? loved that.

formally becoming the butcher? loved that

initially being a skeptic/fearful of lottie, and succumbing to blind worship after her stillbirth trauma? makes sense. dynamic and fascinating. her rejecting the hunt in the present when she joined in the past? good shit.

as much as i HATE antler queen nat, shauna being petty that she didn't get picked as lottie's favorite felt right.

and modern shauna trying to cling to a normal that's quickly dissolving? Good Shit

looping jeff and callie in here: also great. callie learning more about her fucked up family, jeff being stagnant but still allowed to display hidden depths as we learn he does genuinely Know All Of It, the awakening of violence in callie as shauna's traumas are passed on to her... and the way lottie latches onto that and gets creepy about it? yes please.

MARI

love mari being a hater, and keeping up her role as cook

love mari descending into fanaticism.

love mari breaking down when no one can see her. alexa barajas killed this role

mari is a social opportunist. misty is an antisocial one. mari understands how group hierarchy works and how to climb it, but has no skills to offer. misty doesn't, but has the skills. looking forward to see how this plays out going forward.

mari is the front runner for pit girl and it should still be her— two contenders are no names, one is gen, who has no personality or arc yet. mari finally having her opportunism catch up to her and her blind faith used against her is a fitting end.

AKILAH

love expanding her character and giving her more scenes with tai.

love her backstory about her sister and nephew, rachel, and wanting to keep studying.

love the nugget subplot

love her introducing a third party of 'idk if this cult shit is real, but i like having friends'. wish we got more insight into how she arrived at this conclusion since in s1 she is very much a lottie minion

feels like she’s coming to represent compromise: fine, ill become a cannibal, but im keeping my hope of escape alive. fine, i’ll go to woods church but just for the people. fine, i'll hunt nat but please can we not let javi drown.

but then it went nowhere.

idk man it felt like they were preparing akilah for a defection to nat's faction but then all that never happens

CRYSTAL

proof the writers can make the extras distinct and vibrant while still serving an efficient story purpose.

she was a minor character for five episodes but she's such a standout. great performance. great use of her. great writing

she came in, gave misty the origin of her theatre hobby and her ability to manipulate, and peaced out. a side char at her best.

JAVI

represents innocence. he had to die to mark the start of the ruthlessness. fantastic execution.

love his contribution of the cave mystery

love his connection to nat and travis

just don't love how he does nothing for all of ep 6

mixed bag—

TRAVIS

my boy. loved his arc. until ep 9.

it was important for him to try the lottiecult out, so that way when he disowns it it feels more dynamic.

except then he never... disowns it.

so what's all nat's 'travis never believed that' stuff. is the disowning still coming, or did the writers Kinda Forget.

mvp of episode 8

then in ep 9 he just... accepts that he has to eat his brother and stay with the girls who murdered them. bare minimum i was hoping for him to take off with ben (and nat) as a step towards being a more active character.

now he's right back to sitting in a corner.

my hot take is that the fandom hates him in the exact same way fandoms of mostly-male ensembles hate the one underwritten female character who's there to be a love interest. they demonize her every action, refuse to examine her situation with empathy, and insist her relationship with the fan fave bad boy is toxic/she's unworthy of him, so they can mentally break him up with her and ship him with the same-sex chars he has interesting dynamics with, but in a watered-down shallowed-out fluffed-up version of the relationship they originally had.

also, i find the idea that shauna and tai (two women who are toxic to their partners)'s insistence that natravis were toxic is rooted in them being angry that travis and nat resisted the cult groupthink together; we're not the bad ones, they are. i'm still disappointed that didn't happen.

wish he got to develop a connection with coach a la tai and akilah’s bond. coulda been great.

anyway.

NATALIE

becoming increasingly isolated as she clings to rationality while the others descend into woods woo woo madness? loved that.

her friendship with ben isolating her even more from these girls who never liked her in the first place? loved that.

a complex arc with travis regarding javi? loved that.

her bond with lisa is sweet. her attempts to deprogram her? loved that.

the entire first hunt was fantastic.

what was that ending. what the fuck.

wilderness cult queen nat doesn't make sense. see the above reasons why. feels like this is just here to shock us. and i'm shocked... that it's this stupid. her being A Queen i'm fine with-- just not the one leading the exact cult that JUST TRIED TO MURDER HER and DROWNED HER BOYFRIEND'S BROTHER.

i'm cool with nat being singled out as a leader by lottie.

but the only way it'd work for me is if nat rejects the crown, runs for the woods, and sticks with ben. then you can have future drama where lottie's cult descends further into madness, and nat blames herself for not staying and taking control. and a queen-in-exile vibe that makes her especially alluring to the girls as an alternative to lottie

hopefully we'll get that if she's deposed. if. if.

again, her dying? i'm cool with it. like that? hell no.

so travis's extremely suspicious death was a Convenient Accident and poor lottie is innocent in all of it? fuuuuck off.

so lottie stalking natalie long enough to know exactly when she was in danger of suicide is just... not mentioned? fuck off.

(so the bank lady being stalked by lottie.... goes nowhere? fuck off)

so nat really did drink the kool aid, fall under lottie's spell, and get killed for it while blaming herself and insisting she's been dead since the crash. fuck offffff.

uhhh—

MISTY

watching her learn that through acting she can manipulate the girls was great.

revealing her opportunism during the javi hunt and springing into action to assert 'lottie's will' over the others bc it raises her status? great.

loved her toxic theater girl psychosexual friendship with crystal. the way it ends felt earned and natural... mostly.

though honestly i think she needed to push her off that cliff. i worry that the writers are softening her up to appeal to the misty fandom

do the writers and actors know if misty is misunderstood or coldblooded? i can't tell anymore.

100% think the framing of nat's death is for the mistynat stans

walter why

TAI

past tai starting out a skeptic and succumbing to belief because of the baby's loss? love it.

teen tai leading the hunt is great.

her relationship with van is great but i get the vibe that it was softened to appeal to the shippers. the big conflict between them re lottie never really erupted.

so zero answers about what's going on with her split personality in the present huh

biggest victim of the bad timing in the present.

sammy is still waiting for someone to pick him up from school

VAN

her being alive in the present is a big ? to me. feels like a massive oversight that she wasn't mentioned in s1. reeks of 'we didn't plan this'

still kinda wish she weren’t in the present

the business was in character though, and her seemingly being more attracted to tai's shadow self than tai herself? intriguing. can we make that actually go somewhere though? with payoff?

but her getting increasingly vicious in the past was great.

however i feel like she was held back specifically to make taivan soft moments for the fans. van's big struggle needs to be tai or lottie, and it seems like they deliberately avoided making her choose.

i get the vibe that mari's crazy devotion was meant to be van's, but they swapped it bc taivan softness trumped all

van having cancer never has any payoff. at this point i kinda hope it gets her. or that she died in the woods

GENLISSA

they were there

they feel like one hive mind. like the poor man's mari-akilah

their designs are great but idk a thing about them

the tiny details: melissa participates in the hunt while gen stays to pin down travis, melissa reads magazines over and over, the girls seem to be genuine friends, the girls prepare natalie for her hunt instead of lottie, yet are wilderness true believers... all that feels like it's incidental, after ep 9.

THE EXTRAS

didn't do anything mindmeltingly bad.

but dude you have to fast track their characterization.

gen and mari shouldn't die until s4 so the pitgirl mystery is still somewhat intact, meaning that we've gotta frontload the deaths with redshirts. gonna be tough to care if we've never even heard them speak.

we've seen the writers flesh out crystal. we know they can do it.... so do it, dude.

please god no—

BEN

said elsewhere: the pacing of his arc is So Off.

starting the season with him mapping the valley, and ending with him using that knowledge to find the tree cave? great payoff.

him sinking into depression after watching the girls become cannibals was great. took too long to wake up.

benching himself during the birth was infuriating. dude, you are the only adult, you are the health teacher, you were these girls' coach for months if not years before the crash. get the fuck up and help this teenager through her labor.

and burning down the cabin... no. it doesn't seem like his act to make.

at this point i can't imagine anyone joining his faction, so why is he even still alive

also how is this fucker gonna survive. he can't hunt. he can't walk. he's the wilderness's most wanted. he has no one who'll do that for him.

LOTTIE

the retconning of this character from all-but-confirmed leader of the group to 'nope it's nat!', from bloodthirsty wannabe queen bee finding her confidence in the wild and finally unleashing it to 'oh dear i didn't mean for you girls to take it this far'.... i think this killed the show. or at least gave it a serious stab wound that's going to kill it unless they do a Lot of heavy lifting in s3 to repair it, which is unlikely.

Poor Lottie is one of the big fandom consensuses. oh don't we feel so sorry for assuming she's the big bad when she was nothing but a victim all along! she didn't do anything, she was gaslit and manipulated! ~all she wants to do is help~

and now the writers seem to be backing it, with how s2 shakes out.

in s1 lottie is something of a foil to jackie: both are affluent girls, only children. but lottie's family ignores her while jackie's spoils her. lottie is medicated and hidden away, jackie is indulged everything. lottie and jackie both have a capacity for being deeply mean-spirited, but jackie has the confidence to be the queen bee, while lottie hovers in the background. as jackie falls apart in the woods, lottie starts to feel freer. she starts talking back and snapping at the girls more, she (unhealthily) embraces her 'visions' (delusions) thanks to laura lee as jackie's friendship with shauna evaporates, she finds some kind of faith in a new order as jackie loses hers in the old one. the loss of the laura lee-lottie, shauna-jackie gay as hell friendships marks disaster and a transfer in the girls' social order.

they are very much meant to be compared to each other. and lottie is to be understood as a tragic character sinking deeper into delusions because she just wants to feel special for the first time.

yes, lottie is not evil. she's anxious, needs reassurance from others, and initially very hesitant about her hallucintions/visions.

BUT.

she is not a victim. she is not the manipulated, misunderstood sweet girl who only has good intentions.

... literally the first thing lottie does when she's in control of the girls is pick up a weapon, whip them into a rabid frenzy and lead them to humiliate jackie (aka the highest-ranked girl, who lottie is now challenging for leadership), take her sexual partner, and when said partner rejects them, they assault, hunt and try to sacrifice him.

yes, she's under the influence of shroomberry booze and sad about laura lee dying... but dude. just imagine if charlotte were charlie and travis were tanya. would you really be saying 'oh charlie didn't mean to get half a dozen boys to sexually assault tanya, strip her naked, chase her, tie her down and try to murder her when she rejected him, he was just drunk and sad'

all the shrooms did was remove everyone's inhibitions: natalie becomes happier, giggly, and acts from her heart to patch things up with travis. ben comes out and tells misty to fuck off. misty tries to fuck ben. shauna lashes out at jackie. van lets go of her scar shame..... and lottie does That.

yes, the other girls do That too. akilah, mari, van, taissa, shauna, probably-melissa-but-who-knows-they-never-bring-it-up all participate. but lottie is the one who starts it, by taking them to the cabin with the stated intent of taking something away from jackie forcibly, by starting the attack on jackie and the assault on travis, by telling the girls to think of him as a stag and leading the chase, by handing shauna a knife and telling her to kill him when they have him tied down.

when lottie has no inhibitions, she seeks power over her peers, and uses manipulation and violence to get and keep it.

then on day two lottie shows no signs of remorse, only slight embarrassment (it reads as 'sulky teenager upset that she got caught doing something bad', not 'oh god what have i done'), and goes right into sacrificing a bear heart and 'shed the blood, my beautiful friends. and let the darkness set us free'

where the fuck did that girl go.

at this rate there better be some entity at play, bc that's the only way to excuse lottie's 180 back to passivity.

if they wanted a story about lottie being a tragic prophet figure, having her well-meant words and intentions twisted despite only wanting to help, then you probably should make sure her intentions are actually well-meant. because of doomcoming, the tone was set to expect the worst. and then it was walked back with no on-screen change of heart.

if you'd done that, if lottie had addressed doomcoming and mentioned that she's regretful and doesn't want things to go down that road again, then lottie's arc would be about trying to control her worse impulses (her mean streak, her hunger for validation, her desire to punish the girls who threaten her power, her interest in possessing travis, her bloodlust, her ability to use her empathy for the other girls to manipulate them into becoming their worst selves, her belief that she's Chosen, the woods Picked Her, don't you see, she's not crazy, she's Special) as the girls keep persuading her to give into them, before ultimately succumbing to the role of tragic villain

just because lottie wants to help doesn't mean she can, and she won't accept it, because in the wilderness, the girls listen to her and validate her illness instead of ignoring her and shutting it up like her parents did.

the group wants lottie's validation and easy answers, they need nat's realism and heart.

that would mirror her adult plotline well-- lottie is trying, again, to have her cake and eat it too. she wants to be important, and loved, and eco-friendly, and a healer, but she also wants that rolex, and that specific smoothie (and if she doesn't get it she'll litter that eco-friendly cup and straw without a second thought), and total control over her followers and all their money and attention.

the (stalking and) kidnapping of nat/convergence of the yellowjackets just sets her back down that path towards cannibal shamanhood.

sure, give her electroshock to repress the memories. i like that angle. but the point needs to be that because of (murdering travis, she needs to have killed travis, come on) nat's presence setting her off, all those electroshock-repressed memories are returning....

just like in the past, lottie is faced with the same question: the girl you are deep down has always been repressed, and now she's starting to emerge, and it feels so good to finally become yourself... but what if that girl is dangerous? what if she's malicious?

lottie having doubts about her visions is important. but her fully succumbing to 'oh dear me i hate that everyone's taking my words and twisting them' just makes her a passive character.

poor lottie might be more likable, but she's so much less compelling. i hate this regression with all my heart. the idea of future episodes with passive, woe is me lottie makes me not want to watch them.

the crowning jewel of this is when she says 'nah i'm not in charge, nat is'

girl. are you kidding me.

top of my head season doctoring:

adult timeline. far more general bc it seems much harder to tie up.

immediately establish in the adult timeline how long it's been since s1.

no walter.

pair misty up with kevyn instead. misty reports nat missing, he takes it personally, they go on a buddy cop adventure where kevyn learns a lot about the wilderness years. and misty tries, again, to make a friend. this woman is a citizen detective, you know she'd love to hang out with a real one and play with his badge.

as for kevyn, i get the sense that his goth to cop pipeline was triggered by the crash. watching his best friend/first love vanish, and then the rescue efforts totally fail to find her and then give up, then learning if they'd just kept looking they could have saved her sooner? probably a pretty formative experience.

*scribbles walter out of the poster, draws kevyn in his place* fixed it!

no notes on shauna's arc, just on the pacing: wait a few episodes before the cops get on her tail. if it's only been a few days, no way are they gonna figure it out that fast. spend the first third of the season dealing with the aftermath, the second third with the cops appearing in their lives, the final third with them on the ropes. with kevyn partnered with misty, just have her and callie deal with creepercop alone.

taissa's series arc seems to be about control. her continuing to spiral as the other emerges is good. her fleeing to seek out van... honestly idk about that-- i don't like how van is just conveniently in society but never mentioned in s1, even though she clearly had relationships with the girls for a while afterwards. i'd find it more interesting if the other can find van but taissa can't. and have the other creep around the compound too.

in general, more emotional impact regarding simone and sammy? tai just ditches them. just give her some kind of closure for simone and sammy by the end?

give van more of a consistent arc-- leaping right back into lottie's shit like an addict into an old fix bc she wants her cancer cured

yes, keep lottie's initial intentions ambiguous. but slowly reveal her manipulative side over the season, and make the mask-off moment one where we see doomcoming lottie's return. think of how creepy she is with callie. more of that.

give nat closure abt travis. what was she right about? how did he die?

how he died: lottie killed him to get the gang back together. she misses her delusions and her specialness, and knew if she killed travis, she'd destabilize nat and make the others come running.

let nat remain skeptical of lottie to the end, instead of swinging back and forth between 'i don't trust you' and kool aid chugging

... did lottie poison her entire cult or not? i'm in favor of the mass suicide option. she doesn't need her placeholder cult anymore, now that she has the original one back. time to clean house and give It such a big sacrifice that It can never ignore them again.

is tai now on team cult? tbh i'd prefer if she were. more intriguing, and a bigger threat for s2 if shauna, who's just broken out of the groupthink, might find herself alone against the others. killing biscuit got her that senate seat and a reunion with van, what more could she gain?

(misty could go either way, i think. true opportunist.)

i'm 50/50 on kevyn dying. if he does, absolutely not by drinking an obviously suspicious drink given to him by a cult member. have him enter the line of fire during the hunt or something.

if he doesn't, he could be a good ally for the women down the line, so in my head i'd keep him.

regardless at least let him talk to nat. they mean a lot to each other. fuckin wild that he never realizes she's on the compound, or gets to ask her abt her involvement in the adam martin case.

pedostache dies no matter what. let callie shed blood— let the violence of the mother visit itself upon the daughter. let callie kill this gross fuckwad when he tracks shauna to the compound.

the yellowjackets frame lottie for adam's murder. kevyn can be a key part in this— he’s protective of nat and enough seeds could be planted re lottie being dangerous and wanting to lure the women back into her influence— he could swing the investigation in a way that implicates her and protects shauna.

but instead of lottie being back in the asylum, send her on the run. no repetitive return to the ward, more opportunities for conflict in s3.

if nat's gotta die, make the scenario less stupid. connect it more to lottie, her antagonist, instead of misty and a little needle. and let her see travis in her dying moments. it's literally all she wants.

anyway with nat dead, now the women are alone with lottie, who is on the loose, fascinated by callie, and pissed at them. they have to be the ones to resist her influence now without anyone coming to help them.

specifically, shauna's potentially all on her own, with tai and van on team wilderness and misty a wildcard, as winter in the adult timeline sets in.

teen timeline:

bring back the flashbacks showing the chars’ backstories. we kind of have ben this season. show us travis, akilah, mari, crystal, van.

even kevyn and jeff could be a good insight into the day everyone realized the plane went missing. what was that like for the friends the girls left behind?

give gen and melissa some distinguishing characteristics. like, make them a couple instead of friends. give them distinct hobbies and skillsets. build on the crumbs of melissa as a mini-van who does manual work, gen as a mini-shauna who does camp work. sow some tension: melissa is pro-wilderness cult (acknowledge that she was involved in lottie's doomcoming hazing), but gen isn't. or the reverse. or have them flip positions. give them something.

begin the season with lottie walking back her behavior because of doomcoming guilt... but have her give in now and then to those impulses; she's angry that not everyone believes her/calls her crazy like her parents did.... then she gets worried about what the consequences of that anger are as she realizes the girls aren't listening to her requests to settle down, and prefer her when she's at her worst.

specifically, lottie is more antagonistic towards nat, and has to warm up to her throughout the season as she also loses confidence in her ability to lead.

when lottie participates in the hunt contest, she's the one who refuses the gun and gains some respect for nat in the aftermath

in ep 6, give javi a moment where he tries to comfort shauna and is rejected. closure on their former friendship.

in ep 6, ben gets off his ass and out of his hallucination and helps deliver the baby, but it still dies.

recontextualize ben's total alienation from the group and suicide attempt in 7 as the girls totally losing respect for him after the baby doesn't survive, and ben being guilty enough to try cliff diving.

lottie offering herself to shauna in 7 is great. keep that.

8 is great. keep it all.

as for 9....

i like lottie having an 'uh what the fuck' moment when she realizes what everyone did on her behalf.

have the girls acknowledge that ben's fucking missing? why does no one bring it up?

can ben find crystal's body? so we know how he's gonna survive the winter? closure??? please???

give a few girls-- akilah most of all, moments of hesitation.

i like natalie rejecting ben's offer to run away together. the guilt feels right. she Would feel obligated to stay.

this is where travis comes in. how the fuck does he decide to stay with these girls after they make him eat his brother's RAW HEART?

he should still eat it. important moment of teen girl peer pressure taken to its most terrifying extreme.

lottie announcing nat as Chosen By The Wilderness... it feels in character for lottie to think this (and want to pawn off responsibility after getting more and more uncertain about it), but out of character that nat would accept it.

how about this: lottie wants nat to get over her skepticism and get in line with the rest of the girls. surely this Sign from The Wilderness will do it. and because lottie is freaking out about how the girls keep doing crazy shit on her behalf, she wants someone else to take responsibility.

so she picks natalie. now you're in charge. you deal with it. your cross to bear. come see how hard it is to get these girls in line.

natalie rejects it. she runs outside, and travis follows her because...

nat and travis need time to talk about javi alone. travis needs to know what happened beyond 'the wilderness chose' and nat needs to let her worries out. let's hear travis's end of why he believed in the lottiecult: he wanted to fit in with the group, he was terrified of dying, of javi dying, and wanted an easy answer. but now he knows there aren't any.

might be a good time for that anti-suicide pact we know they make (bc what's gonna make you want to kill yourself more than being indirectly responsible for your boyfriend's little brother's death, or being forced to eat your little brother's raw heart by his killers) and for travis to reaffirm what he says in 208: tell nat she is a good person right when she needs it the most.

they run into ben, who's been stealing supplies and watching them. they decide to leave together-- travis is On Board right way, nat now has enough faith in herself to go.

nat and travis are so angry at the group for killing javi, for forcing travis to go along with it, for trying to pawn off responsibility on nat, that they set the fire.

it's part pragmatism (we need supplies and the gun, which they won't part with, so let's distract them while we get what we need), part rage and grief (we hate them for what they did and want revenge), part desperation (lets take out as many as we can because after we leave we will be hunted).

and it’s important for the team rational faction to be as morally gray as team supernatural. attempting a mass burning of their former friends and leaving them for dead feels both appropriate given their personalities and the situation, and drags them off the moral high ground.

lottie crowns the queen of her rival faction, thus legitimizing her power and making her a favorable alternative for her followers to desert her for, which some certainly will...

... but nat starts the war between the girl clans, and makes the cult's situation far more dire by destroying their shelter and supplies, thus driving them further into madness.

the conflict between them and their groups is a snake eating its tail.

(+ Why Don’t They Leave When The Snow Clears Up: one faction has accepted they’ll live in the woods forever, the other won’t abandon a one-legged member who can’t make the trek… and is committed to hunting down or converting the former group first.)

at this point, i'd have akilah and at least one redshirt spot them, follow, and ask to join. payoff for akilah's quiet disagreement with lottie, an opportunity for a new character to get some spotlight immediately in s3 a la crystal, purpose for nat as an alternative to lottie for the other girls, and the start of the two factions.

end on the girls watching the cabin burn down. specifically on lottie —who tried to reign in her worst instincts all season and stop the girls from going feral— deciding that trying to resist those impulses was a mistake. she chooses to completely give in to their (and her) worst desires. the wilderness punished her for doubting it and showing weakness, for giving up power and crowning a false queen. she won’t do that again.

...... ugh. i'm getting incoherent. i'll probably discuss this more somewhere else some other time.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets thoughts