cantstandlosingyou

[cantstandlosingyou]

one thing i love about yellowjackets is how good is the evolution of the characters' dynamics. i feel like in the beggining of season one the team was basically just a group of girls who played soccer together. and, yes, i know there were friendhips inside the team even at the beggining, but excluding jackie and shauna's or tai and van's relationship, most of them seemed to only care or know the others on a mostly superficial level.

but with the crash we see how they get to the point where they start to work as an actual team. the best example is probably on episode 7, when theyre tracking/hunting the frog scientists.

throughout the seasons we can see how they start to form bonds with each other. and i feel like each character has a very intricate and unique dynamic with the rest.

all of this makes mari's death all the more painful. in the show's initial pit girl sequence, it was just a nameless, faceless, character being hunted by the rest.

but by season 3, like van said, its mari.

and her death is so important because she is the first one of the team to die in the wilderness, at their hands. because javi and coach never were a part of the team. and while jackie and laura lee were, they never got to actually become part of this team, the one that was forged in the time spent in the wilderness.

i think it will be very interesting how each character handles mari's death in season 4. i just can't wait to see it.

[cantstandlosingyou]

࣪𖤐 “Van keeps telling me you…” Taissa paused, inhaling. “Know stuff. About whatever is wrong with me. The sleepwalking, the other me.”

࣪𖤐 Lottie gave Taissa a weird smile that she couldn’t quite decipher the meaning behind. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Tai.”

[cantstandlosingyou]

That wasn’t supposed to be a stumper.

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[cantstandlosingyou]

i know lots of people have probably talked about this before, but one thing that has been bothering me recently is how freely people use the term queerbaiting, when most times it's just queercoding or queer subtext.

queerbaiting is advertising somethin as queer, to attract audience, but there's actually no overt queer representation. but some people have taken to calling queerbaiting anything that's just not explicit told to the audience.

it feels like homophobes some people wont accept that characters are written as queer until the point where it is explicitly said by the character (and sometimes not even then). and on the opposite side of the spectrum, some people will call out any type of media for "queerbaiting" or for not having good representation, because they hint at things without just outright telling it.

it honestly feels like there's a lack of media literacy, because people just refuse to accept that some things can be shown and not told.

that being said i do acknowledge that queerbaiting can be a problem with media, and sometimes it comes hand in hand with, at least some level of queercoding, it just bugs me when people ignore how something is written a certain way, just because it's never "confirmed".

[cantstandlosingyou]

okay but why aren't we talking more about tai and lottie?!? you know these two mentally ill teenagers of color who found purpose for themselves whilst in the middle of a tragedy?!? who after they were rescued never actually coped with what they went through, and instead busied themselves in building somethin else?!?? in trying to feel normal??! trying to fill the void!??! who continue, after TWO DECADES, to not only carry the wilderness with them, but they actively try to cherish it, and (dare i say succesfully) push it onto the others?!?

[cantstandlosingyou]

lottie and shauna both work as a moral scapegoat for the rest of the yellowjackets. in a way, we can draw parallels between teen shauna and adult lottie and teen lottie and adult shauna, based on the way they're treated by the team, and how they feel about their actions, in this essay i will-

[cantstandlosingyou]

I've seen a lot of discourse in the yellowjackets fandom about wether jackieshauna was requited or not, and after a rewatching the show a few times i'm pretty certain that it was - shauna totally liked jackie back.

[cantstandlosingyou]

so I’m on season 1 in my angel rewatch, and I can absolutely believe angel descending into madness in the birthdayverse and it is breaking my heart.

you forget sometimes amidst the plots of the episodes, but internally he took doyle’s death HARD, and he felt responsible for it. but cordelia got the visions, and the important thing is that he has cordelia and wesley to ground him and keep him sane and give him a purpose.

so imagine a universe where there is no cordelia in his life. he leaves buffy, he’s distraught, and then he meets doyle. and they’re actually really similar! two lonely pathetic post-breakup irish part-demons who seek redemption. they fall in love over the few months they have together, they kiss, and doyle dies. and angel is completely alone with literally the weight of the world on his shoulders, or behind his eyes in this case. the visions and the grief and the loneliness and all his other angst and pain pile up until he’s nothing but a shivering wreck.

sure wesley and gunn are giving him a home and doing the dirty work for him, but in this universe they don’t have a connection - how can you have a relationship, a friendship, with a husk of a person?

point is I think angel’s grief over doyle is written really well, and imagining what he would have gone through in that universe where they were canonically in love and he had to deal with mind-melting visions AND cordelia wasn’t there to support him makes me want to cry

[cantstandlosingyou]

The Fandom Erasure of Angel… and the Woman Who Loved Him

There’s a quiet tragedy in the Buffy fandom. Not just in the story. Not just in the deaths or heartbreaks. But in how we talk about it now—how we’ve learned to rewrite it, sanitise it, erase it. And at the center of that erasure are two names:

Angel. And Sarah Michelle Gellar.

Angel isn’t just ignored—he’s actively erased.

He was Buffy’s first love, her true happiness, the reason she understood sacrifice and heroism.

He shaped her growth, her grief, her strength. He changed the trajectory of her entire life.

But in fan spaces today? He’s a footnote. Or worse—he’s mocked. Called boring. “Her high school boyfriend.”

Meanwhile, ships that arrived years later and often harmed her (emotionally, physically, psychologically) are framed as her “real love” because they were messier. Because they were louder.

Angel loved Buffy enough to leave. To die for her. To let her go. But fandom only seems to value the men who stay and hurt her.

Sarah Michelle Gellar remembers what the story was.

Sarah has said time and again: Buffy’s true love was Angel.

She’s never said it cruelly. Never dismissed other actors or arcs. She simply speaks her truth.

And for that, she’s received harassment. Death threats. Online abuse.

It got so bad she left Twitter.

Let that sink in:

The woman who brought Buffy to life was bullied off social media for remembering the love story she helped build.

David Boreanaz has said the same thing. No harassment. James Marsters has said Buffy belonged with Angel. Still adored.

But Sarah? She’s punished for saying her own character was in love.

It’s not just about ships. It’s about whose voice matters.

Sarah is the face, the soul, the heart of the show. But when she speaks, fandom tells her she’s wrong.

They rewrite the narrative not just to erase Angel, but to erase Buffy—the version of her that was young and soft and in love, that believed in something pure and good before the world broke her.

They mock that Buffy as immature. Infantilize her.

This isn’t just fandom discourse. It’s gendered silencing.

Sarah is dismissed. Buffy is rewritten. Angel is erased. Bangel is ridiculed. And the story becomes something it never was.

Final thought:

The saddest thing isn’t just that the love story gets forgotten. It’s that the woman who lived it—onscreen and off—is told to forget it too.

But we remember. And we won’t stop reminding them.

[cantstandlosingyou]

lottienat hate is so interesting to me because their character foil realness is just too powerful to ignore??? the prophet and the non believer, but they're both the most empathetic people in the teen timeline. their personal dynamics with travis show this; they both protect and defend him because they both see he's very vulnerable. they do it in different ways, but at their core they are the same. they are both providers; nat provides food, lottie provides hope. they are both leaders; nat (was) the leader of state, and lottie was the religious leader. their roles in the narrative play so well into each other

the point that nat is “the wilderness'" favorite is a point driven home by the show many times; and it's also heavily implied (and also practically laid out) that the wilderness is basically just… lottie. lottie is the one who sees it, hears it, and explains it. she chooses natalie for leader and she's the one that takes it away. "you were always Its favorite" It is just LOTTIE

in the teen and adult timelines, they are symbolic for the most vulnerable parts of one another due to the ways they challenge them. who is able to make lottie question and feel bad for her spirituality in the teen timeline? nat’s skepticism and lottie's false hope speech go hand in hand here. who is able to comfort nat in the adult timeline despite her hardships? lottie is. nat sees lottie in her final moments because of this complex connection they have

their roles in the narrative and in the group are amongst the most valuable in the show, and their connection is very complex despite having few nice interactions. the ship is built around this complex and interesting dynamic that really builds on both of their characters indiviually

[cantstandlosingyou]

Can we just acknowledge that Lottie is the only person we ever see Nat accept comfort from? Throughout the series, in both timelines, Nat suffers alone and in silence. Travis reaches out to touch her after both Javi and Coach Ben’s deaths, but she walks past him in both instances. When she finds Travis’ body, Misty attempts to comfort her but Nat pushes her away. Whenever Nat breaks down, she turns inward, shutting others out instead of seeking connection. Nowhere is this more evident than in the final moments of 3x09, when she begins to sob and everyone around her vanishes, leaving her utterly alone. It’s a visual metaphor for the profound isolation that defines how Nat experiences pain.

Given the nature of Nat’s home environment, I don’t think she ever learned how to accept tenderness and physical intimacy beyond sex. It’s foreign to her. And, on a deeper level, I think she doesn’t believe she deserves this kind of intimacy and unconditional care.

But, in this moment with Lottie, she finally allows herself to be held. For what might be the first time in her life, she feels safe enough to surrender, to lean into someone else’s care without flinching. She even feels safe enough to regress to a younger version of herself, a form of healing her inner child as she lays her head on Lottie’s lap. We see Nat engage in simple hello or goodbye hugs (or moments of sexual intimacy) with other characters, but Lottie is truly the only character Nat physically embraces in this unguarded, emotionally vulnerable way.

[cantstandlosingyou]

i feel like im the only one who just feels fucking sad about lottie this episode. shes a mentally ill unmedicated girl trapped in the wilderness trying to live up to the insane impossible expectations put on her by a bunch of scared teenagers. she's trapped in the throes of a twelve month long psychotic episode. she's scared, paranoid, and delusional. she's existing in a state of unreality exasperated by the fact that everyone around her is feeding into her delusions and encouraging them, because if they don't, what do they have ? there's no false hope, right ? only hope. and the only people giving her any pushback or trying to ground her are constantly attacked and ostracized for not prioritizing "the good of the group". and she just fucking killed someone. she's 18 and she killed someone.

[cantstandlosingyou]

i’m actually getting exhausted at this point guys yellowjackets is an extremely queer & sapphic show 😭 like no it’s not the L word. because it wouldn’t make any fucking sense for it to be the L word. these are teenagers from the 90s who have weird and complicated relationships with each other who grow up into emotionally stunted adults who continue to have weird and complicated relationships with each other. i need you to stop discrediting the extremely queer way jackie and shauna were written, the devotion courtney eaton and jane widdop played their characters as having for each other, the ways in which christina ricci has played and talked about misty’s sexuality and feelings toward men, the obvious ways in which travis can be read as a trans woman. i need you to stop discrediting all of this just because they’re not portrayed in a stereotypically sexual and romantic way, just because the themes of this show aren’t spelled out for you. not every queer person is going to look the way you want them to. not every queer showrunner (because, i will remind you, bart and ashley are both queer) is going to write queer characters in the most straighforward way. it’s frankly fucking insulting to see so many people accuse yellowjackets, a show full of beautiful and complex and fucked up queer female dynamics, of queerbaiting and not being gay enough. watch heartstopper if you want a romcom. this is something different. just because queer representation doesn’t look the way you want it to doesn’t make it any less queer.

[cantstandlosingyou]

shauna never fully letting go of jackie and her and jeff visiting her parents on her birthday every year. misty being willing to do anything for nat. lottie saving nat’s life. van writing i love you to tai in her blood. shauna crying when she realizes that she has to kill nat. the other version of tai whispering “go to her” and leading her to van. lottie getting beat up just to make shauna feel better. shauna and van not letting tai sleepwalk. misty being with nat when she finds travis’ body. tai paying for nat’s rehab and doing whatever she can for her. ALL OF THE SURVIVORS DANCING TOGETHER IN THE SNOW THAT TRIED TO KILL THEM 25 YEARS AGO IT’S NOT A LOVE STORY BUT IT’S A STORY THAT HAS LOVE IN IT ARE YOU GETTING WHAT I’M TRYING TO SAY??

[cantstandlosingyou]

"Girls Gone Greek" (Sakhi Thirani) / "Greek Maenadism Reconsidered" (Jan N. Bremmer) / The Dance of the Bacchantes by Charles Gleyre (1849) / "Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and Other Modes of Abjection (Jela Krečič, Slavoj Žižek) / Nymphs Dancing to Pan's Flute by Joseph Thomanek (1920)

[cantstandlosingyou]

also happened to my buddy angel nolastname

imagine you had sex with your fine as fuck girlfriend and it activated your sleeper agent blood thirsty other personality. happened to my friend taissa turner