#yellowjackets 2x04 | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

tabithatwo · 1 year

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hi hello thinking about how neither lottie or taissa is advocating for their sight or championing themselves.

lottie quietly doing the best she can to lean into what she hopes is real to give the others protection and faith, yes! but it isn’t I CAN LEAD YOU (especially this season) it’s I can quietly do the things that can’t hurt, in case they help. it can’t hurt to prick my finger and they’ve come back safe so far and I’m aware of my mental health I’m OH so aware and I know the dangers of delusions being proven correct by happenstance by setting up an infallible cause and effect by building my own reality BUT but. it’s just a prick and it’s just a sip and if I don’t do it now and they don’t come back safe then I AM the reason. it can’t hurt IT CAN’T HURT.

but see, now she’s stuck. she’s wedged into this place of having followers and she can’t tell them how she feels, partly because she isn’t even sure how she feels to begin with because nothing is real and everything is far too real!! (because BECAUSE lottielee jackieshauna parallels and so much post laura lee was not in our view, we didn’t fall as deep deep deep into the rabbit hole with lottie as we did with shauna, but this season has confirmed it for us. lottie and shauna both lost reality when they lost Them and they were both already girls with a loose grip of reality to begin with) so it’s That, but it’s also because she isn’t Lottie The Girl From New Jersey Who Shoplifts, she’s not herself, she’s what they make of her. she’s Lottie The Reason We Will Survive This.

she was on the other side of this dynamic, she felt that anger at jackie, she felt that sense of betrayal, she felt that letdown, that rebellion in her heart. because jackie wasn’t serving them the way they wanted needed craved being served. jackie couldn’t be that person. jackie who had been divisive in her leadership before they even crashed, because what is leadership if not a spotlight that people can adjust to make you glow like something ethereal or to point out all your flaws with great illumination? jackie had larger than life expectations put on her (and they were warm and sunny and positive some of the time yes, but that all curdles when it’s left in the spotlight too long.)

so suddenly lottie is divisive. there are teams around her and against her and myth built up, but the myth isn’t that she’s the bratty unhelping girl who gets whatever she wants like it became for jackie, the myth is she is our only hope. she is our savior and salvation and seer. and she doesn’t need to even say anything to make that so. jackie didn’t need to say anything to make them color her selfish (other, but bad). lottie doesn’t need to say anything to make them color her anointed (other, but good). she is girl vessel, girl hopes, girl dreams, a witch hunt where she Better Be A Witch.

doomcoming lottie snapped. she was On drugs and she was Off drugs and she was tired and she gave them something to cling to that they could shape into more with the seeds of the past (bear and blood and you get the picture) that they’d already been trying to plant in her image. (jackie did the same that night. she snapped, she yelled, she gave them something to cling to that they could shape into more with the seeds of the past that they’d already been trying to plant in her image, do you SEE??)

and of COURSE natalie understands both lottie and jackie. of course she knows what it’s like to be doing nothing but your best, to not want the responsibility, to be seen more as liability than asset, even though the only reason you can fail so hard is because you provide so much. before the crash and after, because girl carrying the weight of family secrets and girl who bears their insecurities and girl who SEES that they are insecure so she cannot even bring herself to be ANGRY with them and girl who hunts. girl who hunts and feeds, but now who hikes and disappoints, because there is no game to bring home, but that can only be Her Failure because it is Her Contribution, do you hear me are you with me??

so natalie walks for miles and she eulogizes jackie and she steps out of her reward her one small comfort and she makes sure that lottie sinks into the hot water and she apologizes, she apologizes, she apologizes. because maybe she’s mad, maybe she says it isn’t fair in the heat of the moment, but at the end of the day she knows who she is and what she is and all that they’ve made her and she carries that responsibility. (like jackie the girl she wasn’t home to save and lottie the girl she doesn’t know how to reach. it’s too late for them, there are no words to undo it. jackie was sealed when she made captain and natalie was sealed when she pulled the trigger and lottie was sealed when she warned van.)

and taissa finally TAISSA. she has hidden her secret. little girl looking in the mirror and seeing something that shouldn’t be there and older girl who is hearing things that she shouldn’t hear and leading people places she shouldn’t be able to lead them to. she doesn’t want it and she’s made it the Most Known of them all. don’t tell lottie, don’t tell the others, don’t bring it up. and van who champions her so naturally, so routinely, so lovingly for all the normal things. van who believes in the supernatural. van who has simply refused to die. van can’t hold it in anymore, because taissa’s sight Brought Back Javi. but tai doesn’t want her to mention it to the others. tai is perceptive and tai understands power struggles and she’s tired and hates this part of herself and she’s scared and she’s logical and she doesn’t want to Be Lottie (not lottie the girl from New Jersey who shoplifts, but lottie who better be a witch).

so maybe I’m seeing things myself, maybe I’m reading too deep, but here’s what I saw in old wounds.

lottie, who sits quietly while the others discuss her prophecy. lottie, who seems to have developed an openness to a different view of jackie in her death, because she was girl there and now she’s girl gone and she served them again in death and maybe lottie didn’t quite have the right idea of her and maybe lottie is in her seat now, in a way. lottie, who wanders into the snow without ever really agreeing because it was never really a choice, and cuts her hand because it can’t hurt IT CANT HURT.

natalie, who signed up to hunt when it was spring and warm and possible, who knows that it will be hers always and forever now. natalie, who will always be the reason they are starving, more than the reason they are fed. natalie, who is jealous of the girl who is bone, because she was allowed death. natalie, who has sympathy for all of them and knows that lottie has been made her rival through the mechanisms of group projection than her own volition. so she bathes her and tends to her and apologizes to her.

taissa, who has always been a leader and always been under scrutiny but did so in a way She Could Control. taissa, whose deepest secrets are being unfolded before her eyes because she can’t stop herself from divulging them when she is unconscious. taissa, who might start to think that maybe lottie didn’t ask for this.

so jackie is bone, and natalie is hunter, and lottie is seer, and taissa might be even more so. natalie alone in the realm of the mundane (for this), but aware of them all, so I’ll set her aside for a moment.

jackie accidentally opened the door to this spiritualism. she was the seance and doomcoming (and the first communion), but she didn’t mean for it to be that. she meant to cheer them up.

lottie thought that jackie had it wrong, thought that she didn’t use her position to protect the girls, because she refused to work with the woods and lottie tries to save them and protect them and negotiate with the wilderness for them.

taissa thinks that lottie has it wrong, because she feeds into their delusions and her power is a runaway train in this setting and taissa wants to keep them alive in the best way. the practical way. except that logical leadership never led to anything out here and her other self, her spiritual self, found javi after months.

pedestals and wrecking balls and clearer views once you’re hoisted up with the girls on them. girls who are not Them but who are What Others Say. shauna dictating jackie and mari dictating lottie and van dictating taissa and everyone dictating natalie. everyone meaning the best and riding the high of delivering it, until it’s cut out from beneath them. you don’t go from great to fine. the mighty don’t fall to land on a straw bed with the rest of them, thanks for trying and welcome back. they are Icarus and their love for the others is flight and their belief that They Can Do It Better is the sun and the sun burns. in death or in life or in dreams.

and maybe in old wounds lottie understood jackie a little more and taissa understood lottie a little more and nat, who has always been able to understand them all, can watch and wait and hope that it changes things. but it won’t. because they aren’t driving their own stories anymore.

so they’ll hunt and they’ll bleed and they’ll walk in their sleep and, no matter what they say or don’t say, the others will fill in the gaps.