#yellowjackets character analysis

[m4rdb]

An insight into the characters based on their approach to the “Allie problem”

If good writing means that every scene has the potential to say something about a character at their core, then the girls' attitude towards the "Allie problem" is an interesting example.

Taissa

The one who comes up with the very plan. This establishes her as ambitious and extremely rational, but it’s the type of rationality that without grounded moral principles could degenerate into violence and cruelty at any time. It’s what we see with adult Misty and Walter, who are both so practical-minded that resorting to murder is nothing more than a smart option to choose to them.

Like Jackie says, Taissa has so much fight in her. The way she handles the Allie situation shows that if she has a goal, she’ll do whatever she finds necessary to obtain it.

How does that translate into their time in the wilderness?

Taissa’s the first to make the call that they should leave the plane and find water. She’s the one who sleeps in the attic when everyone else wouldn’t, she’s the only one who tries to tell Jackie she shouldn’t leave. And in season two, she’s the one who says, “We need to find a way to stay alive, and it can’t be her [: Lottie]”.

Then we see them drawing cards. We’re not shown how they get to that very decision exactly, but it’s important that we know that the two things are tied. The hunt that follows, their first conscious hunt (let’s not forget about Travis), wasn’t supposed to happen—it’s rather the consequence of the designed sacrifice refusing to take on the role.

Though there’s an obvious religious aspect to it, drawing cards isn’t just letting fate/the wilderness decide in their place so that they don’t blame themselves. It’s also the girls’ attempt to give the ritual some semblance of logic and structure—on a normal day, they would draw cards to decide who gets which task. They’re using the same mechanism, except that they’re now deciding who should die and get eaten. And it starts with Taissa’s very rational and straightforward remark about needing to survive.

Natalie

She openly and passionately goes against Taissa’s plan. Despite being presented as the outsider who doesn’t really engage with the team and disregards rules by smoking and doing drugs, she’s the one who fights to play fairly. She most likely doesn’t care about Allie personally, but she’s a teammate, and they should treat her as such.

While Tai’s ultimate goal is winning at Nationals, Natalie doesn’t want to win more than she wants to be a team (T: What’s your plan, then? / N: I dunno, play like a fucking team and win? It’s worked so far.).

It’s quite ironic—yet not that surprising—how, despite being opposites, Natalie and Jackie share a similar mindset about this.

The scene establishes Natalie as a sympathetic character with grounded and noble moral principles, no matter the adversities. In the wilderness, she’s the first and possibly the only one who acknowledges Travis’ grief and sees through his unsufferable attitude and understands that, as much as questionable his methods are, he’s trying to make sure Javi gets over their father’s death and wants to live on.

It's also meaningful that Natalie’s not there when Jackie and Shauna fight and Jackie ends up leaving the cabin. The night earlier, Natalie was the one who let her out when Lottie and the others locked her in and went to hunt Travis down. Natalie basically saves the girl who just had sex with Travis being perfectly aware that it would hurt her, and she doesn’t even know. Viewers do know, though, and we’re instinctively led to think of her as even more noble and deserving of empathy.

Jackie’s death certainly comes from an irrational choice, but the deepest reason is the others’ lack of sympathy towards her at the end of the season. It could be delusional, but I can’t see Natalie turning a blind eye on the whole thing, had she been there.

Jackie was their captain when they had a normal life. Natalie becomes their leader thanks to the constant effort she’s put into the group ever since they landed there—and possibly, as the matter with Allie shows, even before that.

Lottie

Lottie’s phrasing for her refusal is telling. She says, “It doesn’t feel right.” It’s not that she thinks it is, or that it seems like it is. She feels like they’re not meant to go through with it. A simple yet fitting choice of words foreshadows Lottie’s spiritual nature and her connection to the wilderness as well as her role of prophet/messiah.

It’s also important that she’s not shown as particularly proactive. She does express her opinion, but she’s not as passionate as Natalie about it, who instead actively tries to convince them what a terrible idea it is and interferes with Taissa’s plan on the field. This shows how Lottie never cared be a leader, but rather follows where her feelings lead her.

Van

We’re not really shown Van’s reaction until they’re in the locker room after the scrimmage. We just learn that she’s impressionable, as she almost throws up at Nat’s mention of Allie’s bone being visible, and that she’s so devoted to Tai that she won’t let Shauna talk shit about her at the party.

Laura Lee

Of course, nobody would even dream of telling Laura Lee about an act of such misconduct. She would never go along with Taissa’s plan, she wouldn’t even fathom doing something like this. She’s more clueless than Jackie, because Jackie at least did notice something was off on the field. Even at the party, Laura Lee is the only one who still has no idea there were such tensions.

Her blissful ignorance keeps her kind and pure, apart from the ruthless tendencies of the team. It doesn’t change once they’re in the wilderness—Laura Lee dies trying to help her friends, and she fortunately never gets to witness their worst moments.

Shauna

Unsurprisingly, Shauna’s a tough one. Her attitude towards the Allie situation is as ambivalent as it will be for the rest of the story towards everything else.

Shauna keeps her thoughts for herself until Nat and Lottie leave and it’s just her and Tai, and even then, the first thing she says is, “Jackie’s not gonna like it.” The moment she’s asked to make a personal decision, she talks about what Jackie would think, and it’s not because she herself doesn’t know what to think, it’s just what she chooses to say outright. If anything, Shauna isn’t against Taissa’s plan entirely, and bringing up Jackie rather sounds like an excuse so that she doesn’t dwell on her own dark thoughts.

When Taissa says, “Then we probably shouldn’t tell her,” we expect that to upset Shauna—she wouldn’t keep things from Jackie, right? They’re best friends. While it does upset her, it still doesn’t stop her. We understand why later in the episode, when we discover that she’s no stranger to keeping secrets from Jackie, between her affair with Jeff and the admission letter to Brown (it also recontextualizes their first scene together in Shauna’s car, where Jackie addressed literally both).

On the field, when Taissa plays aggressive and forces Allie to play under pressure, Shauna tells her, “It’s not helping,” and once Allie’s on the ground, she’s one of the girls who runs to her first and tries to comfort her. Even though she didn’t openly disagree with Taissa’s plan, she didn’t want or expect things to escalate the way they did. She’ll make the same mistake when Jackie leaves the cabin, Taissa tells her to go talk to her, and Shauna just goes to sleep, underestimating the consequences of it.

Her ambivalence—if not hypocrisy—is shown later that night at the party, when she tries to pick a fight with Taissa while drunk. I think some part of her felt guilty to an extent, so she tries to fight with Tai out of remorse and because she wants to make her look like the only culprit, since she hates that she was so close to being complicit in it. Who calls her out when she defends Nat from Taissa’s slut-shaming at the party? Natalie herself slams in Shauna’s face that she is complicit.

If Shauna had told Jackie, she would’ve put a stop to it for sure. In the 2019 script for the pilot, Jackie says, “You should have told me about Taissa and Allie.” Shauna’s choice to keep the secret directly anticipates their falling out towards the end of the season. Shauna’s continuous lying drives Jackie mad until she explodes and they have that fatal fight.

Shauna’s the one who tries to act as a person who has it together but really doesn’t. She has the potential to be a good person, friend and mother, but she ends up flunking everything and she barely understands why.

Finally, she tells Tai that she’s “a fucking sociopath”, which, considering everything that happens later in the series, is sort of rich.

Jackie

Like Laura Lee, Jackie has no clue the whole “freeze Allie out” strategy is even happening. Shauna didn’t tell her, she was left out, and she doesn’t find out until Allie’s already hurt and there’s nothing she can do about it.

She watches the others as they rush to help and comfort her and handle the situation, but she doesn’t partake in it because she’s too shocked to move. After the scrimmage, she tries very hard to do as Coach Martinez told her—as captain, she’s meant to glue them together (“When it gets tough out there, these girls are going to be looking for someone to guide them. Can you handle that?”). It’s more than that, though—the way Coach put it, if Jackie can’t do that, then she isn’t really anything special. She’s not as fast as Shauna and her footwork isn’t as good as Lottie’s, and there’s something else that Taissa’s better at, too, though Jackie stops Coach before he can tell her that bit. But nobody seems to care about what she’s saying, and Natalie storms off.

Jackie’s inability to handle the Allie situation and lift the others’ spirits foreshadows her incompetence as well as her progressive loss of influence in the wilderness—in Lottie’s words, “You don’t matter anymore.”

Allie’s accident marks the beginning of Jackie’s downfall even before the plane crashes.

[nataliescatorccioapologist]

A Lottie Matthews Deep Dive/Character Analysis

Let’s talk about an enigmatic, other-worldly, lonely weird girl who may or may not be the leader of a cult.

General Information

Charlotte (Lottie) Matthews is played by Courtney Eaton and Simone Kessel on Yellowjackets. Lottie is 17 years-old at the start of the series in the teen timeline and approximately 43 years-old in the adult timeline. She grew up in the (fictional) town of Wiskayok, New Jersey.

She is described in the script as a “tightly wound, statuesque, lonely rich girl.” Lottie is gentle and soft-spoken until she finds her voice through her spirituality and leadership. She is deeply empathetic with a natural gift for guiding and helping others, but there is a darkness under the surface that she has been struggling to keep from taking over for her entire life.

Childhood and Relationship with Parents

Lottie is the only child of Malcolm and Emilia Matthews. Due to her father’s success in business, Lottie grew up in a very wealthy home (wealthy enough to have maids and to be able to afford a private plane). However this wealth came at a cost, as Lottie’s father’s busy work schedule resulted in him rarely being around. Lottie stated that her father buying the team a private plane was “basically his only form of parenting.” When Malcolm was around, it seems like he was cold, distant, and critical of Lottie.

We see that, as a child, Lottie often had strange “visions,” including a time in which she prevented her and her family from getting into a potentially fatal car crash.

The aftermath of this incident allows us to see how Lottie’s unusual behavior was handled by each of her parents when she was growing up. While Emilia seemed to believe that Lottie was had a “gift” and was connected to something greater, Malcolm was adamant that Lottie was “sick” and needed psychiatric help. Due to Malcolm’s influence and control in the family, it is clear that his mentality is the one that prevailed, and Lottie grew up believing that there was something wrong with her.

From what we have seen of Malcolm so far, it is clear that he was very controlling of Lottie and hyper focused on maintaining the family’s image. He is happy to take the reigns and make major life decisions for Lottie (including checking her into a psychiatric facility and agreeing to have her go through electroshock therapy) in order to maintain this spotless, prim and proper family picture. His insistence that Lottie needs to be “fixed” after she’s rescued says a lot about how he views Lottie and her trauma.

I believe Malcolm’s criticism and control of Lottie is to blame for her quiet, “tightly wound” and “statuesque” demeanor described in the script. She has learned to make herself presentable and acceptable, which means not using her voice and being rigid as she attempts to push down her natural thoughts and behaviors. I think it says a lot that Lottie regularly steals from TJ Maxx even though she definitely has the funds to afford pretty much anything she wants. It’s her subtle way of rebelling against her father’s control. Lottie has a strict set of standards she must live by, and stealing is her way of feeling free and unrestricted.

Mental Illness and Struggle to Appear ‘Normal’

Likely due to Malcolm’s insistence that something is wrong with Lottie, we see her taking Loxapine (an antipsychotic often prescribed to people diagnosed with schizophrenia) in the Pilot episode. Over the years, it does seem like Lottie deeply internalized her father’s beliefs about her mental state. We can see how fearful she appears when she’s counting how many pills she has left after the crash. She’s learned that the pills allow her to appear “acceptable,” and she’s ashamed of who she is without them due to her father’s emphasis that she is “sick.” I think that some part of Lottie is afraid of herself; she knows there is something in her, deep down, that is dangerous.

We can see this bubbling under the surface in the Pilot episode, as Lottie tries her best to appear normal and fit in with her classmates. I feel like her fashion sense in the first few episodes perfectly exemplifies this. In the Pilot episode, we see Lottie in cute little pigtails and, in the party scene, a cropped pink fuzzy sweater with a plaid mini skirt that looks like something Cher would wear in Clueless.

This is a popular style for a teenage girl in the 90s, but something about it feels inauthentic and slightly off when Lottie wears it. It looks more like a performance of what Lottie thinks a girl her age should be wearing rather than an actual representation of who she is. After the plane crash, Lottie initially clings to this look, but as she discovers her connection to spirituality, her clothing gradually evolves. She transitions from cropped brightly colored baby tees and preppy sweaters—notably echoing Jackie’s fashion sense—to long, flowing dresses. As an adult, she embraces bohemian kaftans and shawls. In these more eccentric and ethereal outfits, she appears much more relaxed and natural, contrasting with the rigidity she exhibits when trying to fit in.

We can see this in the way she talks, as well. She’s quiet and soft-spoken, at first, afraid what might happen if she expresses who she truly is, but we can see a hint of something a little more bold underneath (thinking of that amazing Danny Mears cousin comeback Lottie threw at Mari). As Lottie starts to believe in herself and her abilities, she starts to speak up more.

Laura Lee, The Wilderness, and Finding a Voice

Laura Lee is instrumental in Lottie’s development from quiet weird girl into the influential leader we see in the adult timeline. After the plane crash (and as Lottie’s meds run out), Lottie starts to have strange visions/hallucinations (including seeing a deer with shredded antlers, a red river, and smoke). At first, Lottie hides these visions as she likely has been doing her whole life due to her father’s insistence. But, once she confides in Laura Lee and Laura Lee actually believes her, we see Lottie’s view of herself begin to shift. Laura Lee is the first person to stand by her and insist that Lottie has a gift, and that her eccentricities are something to be proud of rather than ashamed of.

The baptism scene marks a major shift in Lottie’s character, as it is the beginning of Lottie’s connection to spirituality and “The Wilderness.” The mental illness rhetoric that her father has been feeding her her whole life is finally shattered, and a new image of herself is developing. This is only strengthened as Lottie’s visions begin to come true (Nat and Travis brining back the deer with the shredded antlers, Tai’s expedition group stumbling across a red river, the smoke from the flare gun Tai uses to scare off the wolves). As more people begin to believe in Lottie, we see her leading prayer circles, giving directions, and even standing up to Natalie when she challenges her. The Wilderness has finally allowed her to be her authentic self, which is why we see her so devastated when they are rescued.

Lottie’s selective mutism after they are rescued is representative of how important the Wilderness was to Lottie finding her voice. Now that The Wilderness is gone and Lottie is back to the real world (and back under her father’s thumb), her voice is gone with it. She went from being worshipped and being a leader to being strapped down, electrocuted, and held against her will in a psych ward.

Thankfully, Lottie finds her voice again as an adult, when she starts her wellness center (cult?).

Influence and Intentions

Lottie’s influence over others is undeniable. In the teen timeline, she managed to get an entire group of people who previously thought she was crazy to follow her every direction and worship her as a spiritual figure (including even the most extreme skeptics, Tai and Nat). In the adult timeline, she manages to get hundreds (possibly thousands) of people to devote their lives to her teachings and guidance. We can see just how magnetic Lottie is in the scene where the survivors reunite for the first time, the look of pure awe on Van’s face says it all:

Lottie has a lot of power, and, as the overused saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. Lottie’s intentions are usually good. She wants to help and protect others, but her power and influence always ends up spiraling into something darker, resulting in disastrous consequences for her and those around her. She believes the Wilderness is protecting them, so she follows its lead in order to ensure the survival of her teammates. This results in cannibalistic rituals and a descent into complete primacy. She wants to help Shauna release her rage, so she lets her nearly beat her to death. This causes the group to do the card draw to save her life, which results in Javi’s death. She wants to help Travis reconnect with the Wilderness so that he can put an end to the visions that are tormenting him, which results in his death. She wants to save Nat’s life, so she kidnaps her and keeps her against her will at her compound. She wants to have one more hunt to appease the Wilderness and end the suffering she and the rest of the survivors are experiencing, which results in Nat’s death.

Lottie even has good intentions in crowning Nat as the new Antler Queen. Lottie sees how much her power has become warped and misguided after the group kills Javi to save her, so she chooses the most grounded and skeptical person of the group, Nat, as the new leader in an attempt to lead the group away from the dark path they are following. However, she doesn’t realize the burden she is placing on Nat, crowning her the leader right as the group has descended into something more evil and primal. She has taken the weight of the groups sins and placed it onto Nat, whose sanity is already clearly beginning to deteriorate. I imagine that Lottie’s well-intentioned decision to crown Nat as the new leader will spiral just as the rest of her intentions do, and more people will die and/or suffer as a result.

The Dark Side of Lottie

While Lottie is generally a gentle person, we’ve seen hints of a much darker version of herself come to the surface. The first time we really see this shift is Doomcoming, when Lottie locks Jackie in the pantry and hunts Travis down with the intention to kill him. Lottie’s laughter when Nat pushes her to the ground is definitely chilling and shows us that there is an unhinged side of Lottie that is capable of hurting people.

We see this again when Lottie insists on reinstating the hunt in the adult timeline, as she becomes insistent that she or one of the other survivors must die to appease the Wilderness. It’s definitely unsettling to see the crazed look in her eyes as she’s shuffling the cards for the hunt and after Callie shoots her in the adult timeline.

The circumstances around Travis’ death are still suspicious, as well. Was Lottie telling Nat the truth? Or did the dark side of her take over and intentionally sacrifice Travis to the Wilderness? And why did she drain his bank account after his death? And there are certainly some ethical concerns surrounding Lottie’s wellness center. Is Lottie preying on the trauma and vulnerability of her patients at the wellness center? Cutting them off from the outside world and their families and having them devote their lives to her is kind of creepy manipulative cult-leader behavior. And is there some part of Lottie that enjoys the power she holds over her patients at the compound? Was there some part of her that enjoyed having power over the group in the wilderness?

Lottie has been trying to push down and hide this unhinged side of herself for her whole life. While adult Lottie is more sure of herself and confident than we have ever known her before, she is still struggling with the same battle she was before the plane crash. Lottie is still confining a part of herself that she feels is dangerous. She still worries about her impact on others and her ability to hurt people. We see that Lottie has been in therapy for years. She’s back on the meds, and she’s pushing down the side of herself that believes in the Wilderness. She insists that the visions and feelings she is having are not real. We can see how afraid she is of that primal side of herself reemerging during the hypnosis scene with Nat.

The fear on her face when she realizes she's stepping back into that Antler Queen role is palpable. She doesn't want to step back into that role, but feels like it is out of her control. When the other survivors arrive at her compound, she initially wants them to leave, fearing her own reaction if she is around them for too long. However, her fear isn't enough to stop her from returning to her old ways, and, unfortunately, her allegiance to the Wilderness has fatal consequences in the Season 2 finale.

Season 3

In the aftermath of Nat's death in the adult timeline and Lottie usurping her leadership to Nat in the teen timeline, I think Season 3 will see some major shifts in Lottie. In the wilderness, she will have to grapple with no longer being the leader of the group, and the potential loss of purpose and direction that goes along with that. How will she feel watching Nat lead the group that used to worship her? Will she agree with Nat's decisions? Will the group still have allegiance to her over Nat? What is Lottie's relationship with the Wilderness like now that, according to her, she can't "hear it" anymore? Is Lottie the one under the Antler Queen hood after all?

In the adult timeline, Lottie will have to come to terms with the fact that she is partially responsible for Nat's death and the guilt and regret that may come along with that. There is also a high likelihood that she will be sent to a psychiatric hospital after the events of Season 2, so we may see her trying to once again reconcile the part of herself that wants to accept that she is mentally ill and the part of herself that truly believes in the Wilderness entity. We have also seen a casting for "Mr. Matthews" in Season 3, which likely means we will see the return of Lottie's father. Seeing her dynamic with her father as an adult will be very interesting. Will she fall back under his control? Or will she speak up and fight back against him this time? What will Lottie's relationships with the other Yellowjackets look like now?

Anyways, Lottie is a tragic, tormented character and I absolutely love her and all of her weirdness. I can't wait to see what Season 3 has in store for her.

[leitnerpiper420]

i think laura lee would have become antler queen if she didnt explode. she has command over people even if they dont take her seriously all the time. especially since lottie looked to her like a saint. laura lee was the one who had misty show them where van is.

[bugisawesomeasf]

you fuckers are really hating on travis when hes literally a he/him lesbian, also the wilderness is literally a metaphor for girlhood do you really think it wouldve let him survive if he wasnt at least a little girl coded ?

[max-is-really-okay]

Misty Always Saves Natalie (Until She Kills Her)

I don't even care that Misty's insane.

There's this lonely girl who doesn't have anyone, not really- even out here. Anyone who gets close to her sees something that drives them away. But there's this other outcast.

They never talked, too different and strange in different ways, but there was always this silent understanding that they're different than everyone surrounding them. People brushed the two off, but there's this inexplicable pull between them. A curse seems to follow them both around, driving everyone away and killing those who bother to stay.

And right before they graduate without ever really interacting, their world comes crashing down around them. And they're the first to adapt to the new world. No matter what anyone can say about them, they're the glue holding the group together. The hunter and the healer.

Misty finds herself on that first night. Hearing the others finally, finally, realizing just how much she does for them. Just what she would do. Given the chance to prove herself and finally feel loved, she refuses to give it up.

But it's not enough. She's never enough. Things get hard and scary and hopeless. The first person who trusted her backed away as soon as she got a glimpse of what Misty could do. And she fell to her death for it. She fell. She fell. She fell?

Because who could feel happy out there? Who could understand what it's really like, to finally feel like she belongs after years of being forced into a box that wasn't even the right shape?

But there's this other outcast, who isn't such an outcast anymore. She feeds them. She protects them. While all of their heads are full of confusion and starvation, Natalie is able to move with a new purpose. A glint in her eye that no one else can seem to relate to. Sanity and a clear head.

Misty plays along, but she doesn't believe like the rest of them. She's been watching this group for years and understands how important it is to stay in the good graces of the group. She needs to understand them to get them to do what she wants. It's why when the moment presents itself to save her, Misty doesn't hesitate to take it. Holding Natalie back, she lets the best of them- the most innocent and pure- take her place. Because no matter what, she needs to protect her own.

And when she can finally bow down to her equal, having saved her and raised her to her full potential, Natalie laughs. It's not sad or scarred, but accepting and joyful. Just as Misty has embraced Natalie, finally Natalie is embracing her back.

We don't know what happens after that, but when they get home no one talks to Misty for years. Still, when Natalie has a gun pointed between her eyes- Misty doesn't frown. Her eyes light up and she feels like herself again for the first time in years. The man she was trying to impress runs off but he never mattered. Not when Natalie is back in her life. She doesn't need to impress her, she just needs to protect her. And she does! Misty stops her from relapsing, protects all of them from the reporter/private eye, and (mostly) fixes the Adam problem!

She tries so hard to protect Natalie that she starts to forget who she's protecting. While she doesn't view any of it as a mistake, Natalie finds her salvation and redemption by taking the place of that young kid who doesn't know what they're getting into. Misty looks into the eyes of her queen while Natalie drifts off looking at her knight. And maybe her best friend.

[winters-rose-daughterofcain]

"If you need to be mean be mean to me."

Because if that isn't Lottie Fucking Matthews in a sentence I don't know what is. In her eyes she is a vessel. A vessel for dreams and promises and prophecies, for guidance and hope and survival. She is not a full person she is the medium she is the method. The crown is a wood woven chain, a reminder of how much good her sacrifice can achieve. All she wants is love, companionship, understanding. To be listened to, to be believed, to be cared for. Yet all she knows how to do is care. She will cut herself to ribbons and twist the truth around and around until it comes out palatable, until it comes out as a command as something doable instead of pure unattainable inevitability.

Because nothing is never enough, for the world, for those around her, for the ones she loves, for herself. It will never be enough, pain in the end, will forever be simple pain. But better her pain than someone else's. Because pain may be pain and sacrifice may never be enough, but even something momentary, even care on borrowed time is better than none at all. Because if you need to be mean be mean to her, she can take, she's had practise. She can take it on, free you off it. As she frees all the others, the ones who listen to her, who admire, who care, of the true, heavy weight of it. But it can't last forever, nothing lasts forever. On some level, some deep, unacknowledged level she knows this. She knows where the line is, when it's gone too far, when it's time to pass this burden along, and she does so to the one person who simultaneously understands her more then anyone and one who understands her the least.

To the person who never asked be have anyones anger directed their way, but to the person who takes it time and time again. To the person who keeps them alive by sustenance while she keeps them alive by hope. The the only person who could carry that weight, who could understand the cruelty that comes with it, who has never known love or care or tenderness, let alone admiration or reverence, to the person who hungers for it just as much as she dose. To the person who never truly believed her, never placed her higher, never gave her anywhere to fall from. The one who gave her a soft landing. To the one who understands, to the one who never will, to the one who's anger she has always taken the brunt off in her attempts to shield and love and be understood by the others.

"If you need to be mean be mean to me." Because how are you going to let me stay?

[mourning-at-night]

ok im going to ramble for a minute but i think van palmer's turn towards violence is so interesting. like in the beginning, she nearly throws up just thinking about allie's broken leg. she can't watch when shauna sobs over her baby's body. but then she's one of the first to truly believe and accept that they'll end up turning to violence in order to survive - she stops and she watches shauna beat their friend and teammate and she knows. it's brutal and bloody and near deadly, but this time, she doesn’t look away.

despite her weak stomach, she's always been willing to do what she believes is necessary. to her, violence isn't intriguing or sensational or something to be celebrated - but it is something to be resorted to, one of those things she sees as an inevitability, a necessity, no matter how painful or nauseating or depressing. she’ll slap her mother awake, but first she'll call out to her. she'll hunt nat through the woods and she'll let a 14yo drown, but only because she and taissa and lottie and everyone who she cares for, they're all starving, or hurt. she will do what she believes it will take to keep herself and her loved ones alive, at least most of them, at least as many of them as possible - because, of course, she’s always tried so hard to be the protector. that's who she is, shown in a thousand little ways. she plays goalie. she tries to break up the fight between tai and shauna in the pilot and she starts to defend nat when travis is being a dickhead in bear down and she helps hold shauna back until lottie tells them not to in burial. she tries to look after tai when she sleepwalks, like how she possibly had to look after her mother for years. she jokes around and she tells the group stories, trying to keep them connected to the outside world.

i think it's interesting to see a character so solidly rooted in the idea of protection to be the one spearheading violent action. it's ironic and tragic and it makes sense, because as yellowjackets shows, over and over - care is not an inherently gentle or bloodless act!! it's van telling the others to leave her bleeding in the woods after the wolf attack and it's tying herself to tai even though she gets hurt and it's helping carry bodies onto the plane and digging graves. it's telling tai she loves her for the first time by literally writing it in her own blood.

sometimes it’s painful. sometimes it's not healthy or righteous. sometimes it’s the hard choice - putting forth the playing cards and joining the hunt and watching with grim determination as javi struggles and cries out for help, and then separating herself and the others from the choice to let him die by claiming the wilderness made it for them. reaching out and turning his face away from shauna when it’s time for the bloodletting. convincing travis to cannibalize his little brother by telling him that he owes javi this final act of love.

it's giving up retelling movies and tv shows and instead telling a different story, a quiet, cold one, because she believes the only way for them to survive out in the wilderness is to give themselves over to it fully, no matter how horrible - because, after everything, what choice does she feel she has but to persist? even in wiskayok, living was always a fight, another series of necessary actions in order to Get Through It and Get Out. after the alcoholic mother and ambiguously unmentioned father and the trials of being young and gay and butch in the suburbs of 90s new jersey, she wants a future, so badly. and after having to pull herself out of the crash and surviving the wolf attack and the pyre, after spending months watching the others around her suffer and starve and die, she can't pull out of the fight. she wouldn't even know how. like a brutal, desperate instinct, she must survive, and she must protect.

it's agonizing but she won't let herself feel it and it's endless but she can only think about the end result. it's selfish in the way they're almost all selfish and it's loving in the way they all love - but especially van, who is so deeply and fiercely protective, who has always cared so much. in the end, that protective instinct both keeps her painfully human and pushes her out into the deep end. it's the kindest and most wonderful piece of her being and it's an intense force that leads her towards brutality. because sometimes caring is the violent thing!! sometimes love is violence and violence is love!!!!

[shaunamilfman]

ok ok imagine dating both jackie and shauna… the chaos. but i’d love it!! shauna’s possessiveness def comes out sometimes (especially if you dated her first) and she’ll hog you like a blanket when you all cuddle together and jackie’s like 😑

"imagine dating both Jackie and Shauna" i do that every night to fall asleep but continue lmao. i actually don't think it would be that chaotic, funnily enough.

so i think shauna would def be a little more possessive if yall dated first, but i dont think it would last super super long. at least, not the possessiveness against jackie. i think the first time shauna and jackie had to close ranks because someone else was flirting with you shauna would remember there are bigger problems lmao.

I've always HC'd that shauna and jackie have been friends since like kindergarten so I think they've definitely learned how to share with each other lmao. "i don't even know where you end and I begin" type shit. jackie didn't get new clothes jackie-and-shauna got new clothes, shauna didn't get a car jackie-and-shauna got a car, etc. I don't think it would be that weird once shauna got over her initial issues with it.

she would def hog the hell out of you whenever yall are cuddling though. jackie's watching shauna with absolute disbelief as yall practically merge into one person and shaunas just like 😁. less possessive and more competitive though, I think. they're both extremely competitive athletes which translates a lot into your relationship. they'd definitely compete over who got you the most thoughtful/biggest gift, who kisses you more that day, etc.

the addition of a third person would make their relationship a lot less toxic as well I think. shauna's main issue is that she doesn't communicate to jackie at all, and expects her to know what she's thinking because they've been jackie-and-shauna since they were children. shauna just assumes jackie knows she's upset and just doesn't care, while jackie in reality doesn't realize she's upset. a third person there to play mediator as well as soften both of their edges would do a lot towards the relationship in general.

[lottiesdocmartins]

No one:

Me: *Always hitting the key that Lottie feels incredibly lonesome and despite all of her attempts at not being so alone she ultimately becomes isolated and lonelier*

[buzzez]

yellowjackets rewatch!! in this scene there's no actual proof this was the reason that argument happened.

It's realistic that Shauna's just making up a reason, and she chose this reason. One that would further herself as the villain and keep making herself feel guiltier for Jackies death.

[novelconcepts]

“I’m out here writing smut!”

WIP: no, no, what you’re writing is in-depth character analysis as to how a person irrevocably changes when they’re forced to choose survival over the learned impulse toward shame

WIP: where they also go down on each other

[sukibenders]

"Cannibalism as a metaphor for love is such an interesting narrative choice!" Until you add poc into the narrative and here come the millions of "think pieces" that either 1.) dehumanize them for the same thing their yte counterparts are praised and, sometimes, even...applauded for (eg. Yellowjackets and other supernatural media), 2.) or use it inappropriately to justify harm brought on to poc communities. But that's a conversation for another time.

(tw for some of the tags as well)

[holliday-inn]

Natalie is very “love someone like a dog” but not in the puppy love way, in the old beast lumbering onto your porch, eating the food you put out, and coming into the house in the winter. Growling at you every time you pet her in the wrong spot, but rolling to show her belly after a long nap. A mangy creature, missing spots of fur and with scars across her body, but with the occasional light of a puppy in her eyes when you offer her a toy. An outlet.

[puppmeo]

Sometimes i look to the sky and i go 'Please, please let me interact with this media normally' and g-d gently places a dab pen between my lips and tells me that she'll let me know when to stop and then, after making me hit a blinker, she just leaves me alone in the middle of a grocery store while i wail like an injured beast in my distress

[festeringfae]

Yellowjackets is a really great example of how when people complain about "too many lesbian period pieces," they're misidentifying the real problem, which is that media doesn't know how to create relationships between women that don't revolve around their interpersonal relationships with men.

There's a reason the movie specified by Wallace in the Bechdel comic is Aliens: only in a completely otherworldly setting could a movie imagine a reason why two named women discuss anything besides a man. In Yellowjackets, nobody complains about or refers to 1996 Van/Taissa as lesbians in a "period piece," even though fiction set in the 1990s is just as much historical fiction as shows set in the 1890's.

All this combined with the latest year I've seen a setting labeled a "period" as a derogatory statement are things set in the last few years prior to the 1960's cultural revolution, and I suspect what people are really trying to complain about is that so-called "representation" is mostly cherry-picked to bare almost no resemblance to the daily experience of anyone currently living. It still takes an airplane crash for an audience to believe teenager girls might talk about something besides boys. It takes a killer space alien. It takes a time (be it the 1700's or contemporary Christmastime) where being attracted to women is the conflict itself.

Because at any other time, media would have to reckon with the fact that while systemic patriarchy exists, a contemporary woman of any sexuality has enough agency in her own life that she could happily not have any interpersonal relationships with men at all, and still have real, valid problems. Problems beyond that which the viewer can just blame on the woman anyway, because she shouldn't have been liking/trusting/fucking the wrong man. Problems as frequent as low wages, medical scares, renovation timelines, instead of as rare as cannibalism, aliens, or even running for state Senate.

There's no word for a woman 'Regular Joe.' There's just "The Girl Next Door." The problem is, the industry won't acknowledge that you can tell that girl's story from her own point of view-- not just the wild speculation of her neighborly voyeur.

[winters-rose-daughterofcain]

Something something Natalie's death being ruled an overdose and how even in death she cannot find peace or escape from the judgments or assumptions made about her due to a coping mechanism, however unhealthy, she developed only after society failed her as nothing but a child, something something death being labeled the great equaliser yet proving time and time again not to be, proving that the memory is far to great an stain on it's supposed equality to ever truly balance anything, something something Jackie and Nat parallels and Jackie being remembered as the image she projected of herself that fell apart outside organised society and Nat being reduced to the image others projected onto her that she was only ever given the chance to break free of after the established rules of organised society fall apart, something something how no matter who they are at their core they will forever be reduced to what they were perceived, forever assumed and never understood, something something the reduction of them both to predetermined roles for the dead and the stripping of both their individual personhood being not at all surprising on reflection, just a microcosm of girlhood and womanhood itself, something about how in that way, perhaps death dose equalise after all, if only in the manner in which societies reflection after robs these girls of their human complexity.