#The antler queen as a representation of the wilderness

[chaotictissuebox]

two posts in one day? Unbelievable. Insane even. I’m planning a short animation so I was making myself an easy reference for the antler queen.

[nataliescatorccioapologist]

Honestly I think I’m fully a part of the Antler Queen is a manifestation of the Wilderness/a hallucination team now because I just think having it be one of the girls will be a letdown/anticlimactic no matter who it is. I think it would mean so much more if the AQ was just a representation of the girl’s descent into insanity and wasn’t really there all along. The AQ is inside all of the girls, an amalgamation of all of them and now a ghost of their past that will haunt them forever.

[everyurlithinkofistoolong]

Everyday I think about how Misty isn't the antler queen and how she was the first girl to be disproven right off the bat to not be her. You would think it would be her at first right? She's unhinged, she's unable to see the fault in some of the things she does, she murders and murders, and essentially everything that happened in the wilderness is indirectly her fault because she destroyed the box. But she was the first girl to be shown unmasked because Misty doesn't attempt to hide, or maybe she just can't. She's unmasked because we see her nature right of the bat, there's no pretense of normalcy or repression of who she is.

The antler queen is hidden, behind the scenes. She isn't the one who dragged pit girl's body out, prepared it, and served it. It was served to her. If the wilderness is the representation of trauma, then the antler queen is the source of it and the instigator. The center.

If Misty is a hammer used to beat someone to death, then the antler queen is a quiet poison that you don't even know is in your system until it kills you. Anyways here is why I believe with my whole heart that Shauna is the antler queen.

[wildernesslost]

under the cut is YJ S2 episode 8 spoilers mentioned but what i want to talk about is a little criticism i have of the way the show has treated their POC characters this season in particular, now I write this as a white bitch, so by all means there are plenty of other folks who are probably more equipped than me to talk about it, so listen to them over me, this is just what i have noticed, and i preface this with the fact i do love this show, and i love that they have a diverse cast, the representation itself is great, but representation only goes so far, you feel me?

I am still processing this week's episode, and I wanna start by saying right out the bat, that Javi deserved fucking better. BOTH of the Martinez brothers deserve better than for their deaths to be used a plot device to add trauma to Natalie's character, without their storylines being in any way meaningful fleshed out, this season in particular Javi has been entirely sidelined after his miraculous return from the wilderness, which we only found out about how he survived and was hiding this week as a means to a plot line to serve Natalie's survival, and don't get me wrong I ADORE Natalie, she is one of my favourites, so this is in NO WAY character hate, this is purely criticism of the show runners, and while I get that someone had to die in his episode, that isn't my criticism, I think he could have still ultimately met the same fate but with his character having actually been given some depth, and for us to have found out before Thursday where he was.

In season 1 we find out Travis is dead in modern timeline, with little to no real storyline, no real explanation other than an oh whoops it went bad and Travis died, oh well, too bad, better move along from Lottie (i love our delulu antler queen but C'MON). The only person really affected b his death was Natalie, and it felt like a real cheap shot to use his death only to add trauma points for her, without once again, giving it more depth and substance.

I know that with such a big cast, and two timelines there is always going to be things we wish we'd gotten, but to me, it feels like it's even more of an issue for the BIPOC characters on the show (Akilah's lack of storyline besides nugget, or the fact none of the mains seemed to give a shit that Crystal (Kristen) was never found, who'd death was only used to give Misty some trauma points. Simone's character barely being mentioned when her wife almost caused her god-damn untimely demise - and sure i get that she isn't a 'main' she's Tai's wife, her storyline isn't wound up in the main modern storyline, it still feels off that we saw the car crash then CRICKETS...anyway, you get my point.)

I just think it's very telling the way that the white main characters are given far more screen time and storylines that are actually meaningful, i'm just a little disappointed that his death was used for shock value and trauma points to a white counterpart, but it's not anything new in TV, so while i am disappointed, I am not surprised. Maybe i have worded this terribly and if i have people feel free to yell at me or give your own interpretation! xD

[silencedrage]

Okay, so I know this is such a contentious topic about who the Antler Queen is and what the character is supposed to mean, but for me personally, I think the "antler queen" is a representation of all that is going on in the Wilderness. I think it might have been Simone or Courtney in an interview that said the Antler Queen isn't a specific person, but rather a representation of the ideals that they're living by in the wilderness. Obviously we see in the pilot that there's a singular person that wears that crown (and I fully accept that it's often Lottie based on the hints dropped) but I think that within the storytelling of the show, the Antler Queen is a separate character altogether, very much how some religious people envision a god. (not spoiler free under the cut)

So I wanted to take that concept and run with it re: my best goalie Van Palmer so I can parse through the changes that we're seeing on the show and how that plays out in my portrayal. From the start of Lottie's woo-woo shit, Van is right there with her. A lot of it stems from her near-death experience with the wolves and what she saw during that time, but we also know that before this happened, Van is 'jock superstitious'. She might not have full-fledged belief, but can already swayed by Lottie's insistence that she take the bone for protection, and that she was able to predict things in their pre-crash lives. Through the end of the first season and the first half of the second, we see Van wholly embracing what Lottie is putting down. She wears the bone, she prays with Lottie at the end of S1, she goes to her meditation circles. She fully believes that Tai stopped sleepwalking because of Lottie's connection to the wilderness.

Van occupies this really interesting space as someone who is both very pragmatic and practical, and also someone who has an almost childlike view on the world. Smarter people than I have opined about the arrested development of all of the survivors so I won't rehash it here, but I think Van's tends to manifest in her outlook of the world. We know she loves movies, and I fully envision her as the type to get lost in a movie world in order to cope with the pressures of her home life. What that results in is a Van that both understands implicitly that hard decisions are a necessity in life sometimes, but also tries to be optimistic and believe that there are good things in the world, because that's what so many movies do. That there's some kind of reasoning for all the suffering they're going through, and after what happens with the baby, just like everyone else, Van receives a very cruel wake up call. Things don't always work out like they do in the movies. People don't always get happy endings.

In 2x07, she tells Tai that she just thinks they all need to "wake up" and Tai outright says that it doesn't sound like Van. And it doesn't. Up until now, Van's been the joker, who tries to bring a little hope when people are down, who cracks a joke just to give people a smile, but as the episodes wear on, she's not immune to the stress and trauma that they're all going through. Even though Van's been through a lot of shit up until this point, it's a combination of the way Lottie had truly believed that the baby would survive, that would change everything in the wilderness, and how Van had blindly followed in that faith. When that ultimately didn't pan out, Van's now sitting there, like many other religious people have over the years, wondering what the fuck does that mean for all of the rest of it. It's a crisis of faith, and what I find fascinating is that Van doesn't turn away from the Wilderness, but rather leans into it full-steam ahead. Part of this is prompted by Shauna's rage and Lottie's sacrifice, and the final implicit understanding that violence is the only way forward, but it's one thing to have that understanding and another thing to give voice to it.

Liv said in their post-episode interview that Van is the "ringleader" in the moment with the cards. With Lottie out of commission, Van is at the top of the "hierarchy" when it comes to this makeshift religion that they've cobbled together. Even if Van herself doesn't fully believe in what Lottie is saying anymore, she still admits that she "can't imagine" surviving in the wilderness without Lottie. She's not trying to claim that top position for herself, but she's trying to get the others to "wake up", as she said before. What they've been trying to do up until this point, dancing on eggshells around each other, pretending that they're still the same people who got on that plane months ago, and Van is done with it. She was done with it when Tai kept insisting that Van didn't actually believe in Lottie's bullshit in 1x10, and she's done with it now.

There's a shot of Van in this episode at the beginning of the card scene, where the antlers are framing her head, and I think this is the show's way of granting authority to the person it's framing. Before, we've seen it with Lottie and Shauna, even Ben when he was in the midst of his own hallucination (therefore having the greatest authority in that situation). We see it for Van as she holds up the Queen card and begins to shuffle the deck. No one is talking, and everyone is looking at her to continue. Since Lottie can't speak in this moment, Van is the priestess speaking for her.

I wrote somewhere before about how Van, of all the survivors, is the one who can't escape post-rescue. While the others still have their own struggles that they deal with, they don't have a physical reminder of that time as the first thing that people see about them. For Van, having those facial scars means that she can never fully leave the past in the past, no matter how badly she wants to. And I think this moment plays along with how bitter and furious Van got in 2x06, when they were talking about what they remembered of their time in the Wilderness. Van can't forget what happened out there, partially because she has a reminder every time she looks in any sort of reflective surface, and partially because she was the one that set this all in motion.

As much as the narrative and even the others want to blame Lottie for what happened (and to be fair, I'm not saying Lottie is innocent in all regards), Lottie was bedridden in this exact moment, and all she said was, if she dies, don't waste her body. Van was the one who, in realizing that this is the point they've reached, interprets that to mean the Hunt. Van is the one to declare that the "Wilderness chose" its victim in Javi, and even more, no one argues with her interpretation? They all just accept that this is the path that they're taking, one that Van set them on.

To circle back to my original point a million years later, I do think that the "Antler Queen" is more of a symbol rather than a single person. I think it makes sense that Lottie is most often portrayed as that single person because she has the closest proximity to the Wilderness as a concept, but that doesn't mean the title solely belongs to her. In this moment, Lottie can't participate, so the Antler Queen moniker shifts to Van, and everyone in the circle gives her that same respect and reverence. No one questions the rules Van came up with for this moment, and it's a heady level of responsibility that I'm not sure Van is ready for, and I think it haunts her as an adult. It's the one thing that she cannot forget, however much she wants to.

[honeyslow]

ok i need to figure something out. i was rewatching 2.05 earlier and in the end scene where nat is being injected with narcan and she’s telling travis what she saw. not only is it the thing of being close to death so u can communicate with the wilderness like travis tried to do (so what saved nat that didn’t save travis) and also. in nat’s visions it cuts to a figure that kinda looks like nat in a grey background with dark eye makeup and bc my streaming service is shitty i can’t get a screenshot but i’m so intrigued i need to know of anyone else saw it xxx

yes it actually looks to be nat herself as the antler queen or a similar figure! i have no idea if it has a more specific meaning (regarding nat's eventual role in the wilderness cult) or if it's just visual representation of nat accepting there Was something out there with them / in them