I desperately want Akilah to be the 8th survivor, but like. She’s somehow completely fine. They track her down, they’re all panicked and grieving Nat; Tai and Van are pretending they’re not in permanently-devastating love with one another; Shauna’s doing a “bring your daughter to cult” road trip. and Akilah’s just

Chilling? Has a family she DOESN’T cheat on or otherwise traumatize? Goes to therapy properly, instead of just talking to herself in a locked room? Has found peace and joy in her career without, y’know, damaging others in the process?

Everyone else: how the FUCK are you so well-adjusted????

Akilah: whatlikeitshard.gif

WHAT IS WRONG WITH HER (AFFECTIONATE)

Honestly my one of my favorite things about Yellowjackets is that it’s like the “high-school-stereotype turns out to be more than that” trope, but turned up to such a grotesque and horrifying degree. Like-

“Turns out the popular girl has her own weaknesses/insecurities!” Yeah and she literally freaking dies for them.

“Wow! The rebellious punk girl we were all afraid of is actually really nice!” So let’s turn her into this borderline divine figure, entrust her with our lives and follow her deep into the wilderness as she’s the last one to hold onto a sliver of humanity and not turn into some primal, depraved animal.

“Oh! So the weird childish kid is actually capable of things!” Mm hmm, capable of MURDER. Capable of holding the cards of life and death itself in her little hands and becoming so needed yet so feared.

“That strange quiet kid finally finds her voice!” AND STARTS A CULT.

I could keep going but just- Y’all that retro 90’s energy of exploring the high school trope coupled with the utter gruesome obscenity that is their situation… It so does it for me. Everyone’s become so suffocated in their little boxes that the only way to break out is in a dramatic frenzy where they start killing each other. Glorious.

not people disliking this episode???? “when did they decide to eat people” sorry did i lottie-style hallucinate the “it can’t be her” scene? they made the decision because they were trying and failing to eat BELTS because they ran out of food a month ago and they refuse to eat lottie because she’s the only one keeping them fucking sane out here, she’s their fucking god-queen despite the fact she never wanted to be, that she WANTS to sacrifice herself for them and they say no. and even now in the future she is haunted by the queen card, by the ritual they all came up with to keep her alive. they will have to tell her when she comes to. they will have to tell her who she ate and how they did it to save her.

natalie gave javi new gloves. she stares at those gloves as he drowns. he goes down like the moose. “we needed it.” he was trying to save her. he would have saved her. she would have saved him if they didn’t stop her. it’s him or you. it WAS him or her. he pulled the king card. he went to cry in his brother’s arms because he was scared to die. the queen let him drown and now his brother will eat him. travis doesn’t know it was natalie’s choice but he’ll suspect. he hugged his brother assuring him it wasn’t him. travis made the choice to save natalie and now it is him. javi made the choice to save natalie and now it is him. misty made the choice to save natalie and she keeps making that choice and natalie wishes she’d let her die in the hunt twenty-five years ago. travis made the choice to save natalie, hugging his crying brother, and now he eats his brother. the wilderness saved him solely to save natalie. or maybe the wilderness doesn’t decide on anything at all. you can see his gloves as he grips the ice. “you’re a good person, natalie.” you can see his gloves. the wilderness chose. javi was the baby of the bunch. they may not have eaten shauna’s baby but they ate the baby nonetheless. the wilderness chose.

I think this season of yellowjackets has been doing some rlly clever stuff with Shauna's pregnancy, specifically examining the ways pregnancy gets fetishised.

Shauna's pregnancy is a group event, it's a baby shower Shauna never agreed to, it's Lottie touching her body without consent, it's Misty and Crystal planning a song as if this isn't going to be intensely traumatic, it's 'OUR baby'.

So much of Shauna's dream sequence is just her and the baby - getting to have intimacy, and solitude, 'I just want to enjoy this moment'.

It may not be 'real' but the group DOES cannibalise her baby, in the same way Shauna cannibalised Jackie before ever touching her corpse. They're cannibalising the story of her baby, taking it in and using it for fuel.

And, of course, the instant her baby is dead, they all turn away. The camera turns away.

shauna being jealous that she wasnt chosen for antler queen actually saved all of them bc everyone else was asleep and she was only awake to talk shit in her diary and thats why she noticed the house was on fire. huge win for feminism.

surely, surely, surely

i’m still thinking about callie sadecki. i just love her so much. i’m thinking about her overwhelming empathy for her mom and how it’s always been there—the little tremor in her voice and the way she glances away when she asks “is dad working late again? ...i’m sorry” in the pilot. she bitches at her mom plenty but the second she gets high in blood hive she’s literally crying in the club because she recognizes at this core level that her mom, too, was just a girl once, and she lost people, and she didn’t start out as a bad person, and this isn’t who she would have been otherwise. 

callie begins season 2 by calling her mom selfish, saying shauna doesn’t care about her, and callie’s so horrified over what shauna did to adam, but by the finale, callie has shot lottie to protect her mom. “get away from my mom” and callie doesn’t sound powerful or in control or badass, she sounds so so scared, it’s all but a sob, no “get the fuck away from my mom,” she sounds like a kid. still holding the gun pointed at lottie, she says, “mom?” waiting for shauna to tell her what to do. waiting to hear that it’s okay. 

am i like mom? retaking her trig test, solving the crossword without so much as thinking about it, conjuring fake tears at the same time as her mom with a single police station wall between them because she’s that intent on sticking by her mom’s side, even though they’d been arguing walking in minutes before. am i like mom? holding the gun that shauna stole, shaking, she just shot a stranger and she’s maybe going to again, they were going to kill you, and the unspoken implication that if callie has to kill them instead to keep that from happening, then maybe she will. 

shauna, who never let herself get truly close to callie for fear that callie might die. shauna, who would be dead right now if it weren’t for her kid.

you know what if i saw the only sane one left smile and laugh as all of the tiny cannibals around her bowed and kissed her fingers and crowned her their queen i too would burn down hill house with all of them inside

me after finding out my real dad has been a woman all along:

coach ben whenever the yellowjackets engage in bacchic rituals

This is what it wants. For us to be together.

this is literally peak romance to me, the entire history of gay cinema has led to this exact moment

yellowjackets spoilers for this week’s ep but i dont see a lot of people talking about teen misty’s panic attack and it’s something i wanna talk about cause it is DEFINITELY not just because of crystal, it’s because of what crystal said to her.

less than an hour ago, the only friend she’s ever had found out that it was her fault they were still in the wilderness, that they were starving and freezing and eating their team captain, and told her she was insane. and misty knew she was right, that stranding them– whether she did or not, that was her intention– was an unforgivable act.

and misty gets confronted with that fact twice in quick succession. first when crystal fucking dies in front of her, second when shauna starts giving birth. when she looks at the blood and thinks of crystal, i think that’s when it clicks for her. the past nine months have been a fun camping trip for her, she didn’t care about the shrooms or the corpses or the blood or the cannibalism. she wanted to make bone broth outta jackie. but when crystal makes her realize it is her fault they’re there, she is suddenly thrust into a situation she is not prepared for. no red cross babysitter training class tells you how to deliver a baby.

misty broke the box because she wanted to be needed, she needed to be needed, she needed people to rely on her and depend on her and be nice to her for five fucking seconds and it worked for 8-9 months, she was happy for 8-9 months, only peeved when everyone blamed her for the shrooms, not at all peeved about the dead girl in the meat shed.

but when she’s suddenly needed and can’t do what they need from her, that’s why she panics, because that’s when it hits her that she did this and she cannot fix it. not only did she strand them and kill laura and kill jackie and kill crystal, she has changed everyone’s lives for the worse and now she can’t even do what the other girls need from her. she is a useless child in the woods full of people who hate her, and another girl is about to die in front of her, a baby is about to die, and it will be her fault.

if they were not in the wilderness laura lee would not have flown that plane, jackie would not have slept outside, crystal would not have stepped back, and shauna would not be in labor in the middle of the fucking woods– she would have either aborted the baby early or would be in a functioning hospital surrounded by adults who know what they’re doing.

she realizes it at that moment, realizes that crystal was right, and runs.

the only reason she comes back is that lottie convinces her that no, she is indeed needed. misty plays pretend at being the medic and when she cries and tells shauna she’s sorry, it’s because she failed at doing the thing she stranded them to do, and because it’s her fault they’re all here in the first place. she failed everyone and now she’s failed shauna’s baby– not that she could have fucking done anything anyway. she’s a teenage girl with no medical supplies in the wilderness and with the placenta coming out first, the baby was likely going to be stillborn no matter what they did. but misty doesnt know that and she believes it was her fault and so in the eyes of the wilderness it was her fault.

honestly i like that we don’t know if the black box was a tracker or not. if it was, all of this is hitting misty at once as everyone screams and sobs and bleeds around her. if it was not, then this is hitting misty for absolutely no reason.

both options are good fucking horror. this show is god

this was always going to happen

Aeschylus, Aeschylus: The Oresteia // Richard Siken, War of the Foxes // Kate Chopin, The Awakening // Anne Carson, The Glass Essay // Aeschylus, Aeschylus: The Oresteia

resident coldgirl