mapledbee

[mapledbee]

natalie as daddy meta (part 1)

(happy father's day to this depressed italian!)

okay, okay, okay. silly title aside, something that has really been tugging at me with regard to natalie scatorccio is the concept of fatherhood. ever since season 3 aired, i've been seeing a lot of callbacks to natalie's upbringing and her dad's death. interestingly, much of the discussion has centered around nat's relationship with coach ben & tends to position ben as another father figure to nat (thus making her move to kill him all the more tragic).

and yes, yes, GO OFF. however, i think a more fruitful examination of nat's relationship to fatherhood can be explored by considering nat as never actually being fathered (not even by coach ben). rather, nat is character who, by virtue of her own trauma, naturally seeks to fill in the gaps left by shitty fathers. she's a character who understands deeply a father's capacity for disappointment, for abandonment, and even for violence. and the way she moves through this intuition is to become a type of caregiver, to become a protector, & to essentially adopt the role of father in the wilderness (as far as it will let her).

to this end, i would even argue coach ben is not a father figure to natalie-- she's actually a father figure to him.

(the crowd GASPS.)

okay, okay stay with me.

a little note on language

i think it's important for this conversation to consider nat's relationship to becoming a father figure (more on this, i promise) as a gendered thing. yes, "parent" could work just as well, but the show is naturally attuned to the absence of man as the structures & hierarchies of home collapse under the yellowjackets' experience in the wilderness. the notion that teenage girls now have the autonomy to take on roles that they would never normally be expected to in the outside world is meaningful, and the ways the yellowjackets expand and grow past the social limitations they left when they entered the wilderness is a big fucking deal. therefore, natalie adopting a position as father really needs that gendered texture to drive home its significance, which is why i'm avoiding neutral language like "caregiver" and expressly moving away from "mother."

nat is becoming a father.

coach ben didn't want this

okay, but what the fuck do i mean? well, the absence of dad is a huge theme in yellowjackets. as soon as the plane crashes, it's just the girls. all probable father figures are dead or injured, and there was no adult woman on the plane to play mother. coach ben's leg is fucked, and coach martinez was impaled by a tree. the only people left to make choices on how to survive are the girls, and you see them moving with (and against) each other to do so.

when ben finally comes to, he's totally checked out. it makes sense, given what he's lost, but all the same, he's not a leader for quite a bit. instead, he's processing what's happened to his leg & he's letting the girls lead the way. when taissa discovers the lake, he expresses some passive suicidal ideation, suggesting that they could just leave him behind. the offshoot of that is... well, what the fuck, dude? you're the adult here. yes, yes, he is going THROUGH IT. but comments such as this begin to cement a particular dynamic for the yellowjackets: they can't depend on ben. ben isn't who they can look to. he's more or less telling them he isn't the adult in the room.

for nat, this isn't too much of a change of pace. she grew up with a violent alcoholic father and a mother who was tapped out and passively letting the abuse happen (therefore, complicit). she's a fiercely independent person by virtue of the terrible parenting she received. honestly, when i think of natalie scatorccio the certainty that "no one is going to save you" comes to mind. i think this principle is what drives nat to be such a proactive presence in the wilderness. she has already learned not to rely on dad, or anyone, and so it's natural for her to step up & take matters into her own hands.

the gun as fatherhood

it's actually a bit sad because in s1e4 (bear down) we get our first glimpse into nat's trauma, and it starts with her dream about the plane. we have imagery of all of the yellowjackets freaking out as the plane begins to crash, and nat is looking horrified and her hand flies out. she reaches out for something, and what she gets is terrible.

there is the briefest flash of relief in nat's gasp of "dad" before her father turns and becomes a fucking nightmare. no reassurance for natalie scatorccio-- that was never her father's role. instead, he's there to show her how hopeless the situation really is, invoking the darkest parts of her own trauma in the very moment she reached for some comfort.

the gun is a potent symbol of fatherhood to nat because the gun is what defined and ended her own father. and here it's actually been put in her hands as the plane goes down and they descend into the wilderness. nat has fatherhood in her hands, and her reaction is absolute fear, panic, before it all settles into a slow steadying breath as the chaos of the plane and the screaming continues around her.

to me, this is the moment of handoff. natalie is taking the central figure of her trauma (the gun = her father) and she's resolving herself into something. "no one is coming to save me. i am what i am and what i've done. i have to keep going."

so later in the same episode, we have coach ben acknowledging his limitations. he is trying to step up despite his earlier crashout, but there's no way around it: he can't be the hunter. and so he's offering up his knowledge (interestingly, knowledge handed down from his own father) to one of the yellowjackets. essentially, ben is saying one of you is going to have to adopt this responsibility that should more naturally be associated with me. one of you is going to have to become an extension of me. one of you will be chosen to provide, to hunt, and if you take the gun as a symbol of fatherhood (as well as ben's stilted attempt to express this caregiving), here we are: one of you has to help me actualize father. because i can't do it on my own.

and natalie, despite her trauma, despite everything that should put her far far far FAR away from guns, is the one who pushes past the flashbacks and the pain and the fear, and steps up. in that moment, she's moving toward ben & saying, "i can do this for you. we're going to do this." and they move forward as co-fathers of the group.

handing off the mantle

so here's the thing about dads and father figures. there's a specific form of abandonment that people in these roles can inflict without actually leaving. a father is a father. a father is NOT your brother. a father is NOT your peer. a father is DEFINITELY NOT your child.

it's a common theme with immature father figures to abdicate responsibility by turning the child figure into a peer, a sibling, and at the very worst, inversing the father-child relationship altogether. let me be clear here: ben did not sign up to be a father! he's a young man that never expected to lose his leg in a plane crash and get stranded in the wilderness with a pack of teenage girls.

all the same, i would argue that his failed attempts at fathering and his quiet resignation to stop trying altogether have a similar trajectory into abandonment. with regard to nat specifically, ben forfeits the father role and becomes the child altogether.

flight of the bumblebee

i think a really interesting example of ben's movement into the child figure is when nat approaches him by the stream and clocks the ever-loving shit out of him!! this is during s1e8 (flight of the bumblebee), so they've settled into nat's dynamic as the primary hunter by now.

she sets down her rifle, teases him about misty, before getting right to it: "you like guys, right?" at first, ben is totally freaking out ("what the hell, nat?") but the panic doesn't last very long. because now nat's sitting down next to him and playing it sweet and reassuring. she's shrugging and smiling and telling him she thinks it's cool...

this is... peak good dad behavior??? honestly, if you were ben and you were concerned about coming out to your family--certain even that they would not accept you--an interaction like this would be all that you could have ever hoped for.

the way nat reassures ben, shows a bit of interest in who he is & who he's dating, and makes that quiet spot by the stream a safe space... this is the kind of coming out that ben never got to have with his parents. this is a gift he never expected from a teenage girl, and yet here it is. nat opened the conversation and gave him the freedom to self-actualize in that moment. it's a big fucking deal. and it's also a vulnerable exchange that brings ben down to her level. he's not a towering, untouchable father figure. he's something smaller. he's almost, dare i say it, a little brother...? and when ben shares that he's fearful of this getting out, big sibling nat promises she won't tell.

doomcoming

nat and ben's shifting dynamic continues into s1e9 (doomcoming). like i said, following the gun training and nat taking on the role as hunter, she and ben have basically moved forward in the group as co-fathers. when they have their moment alone together during the doomcoming celebration, nat is passing ben some hooch she found under the cabin porch and they're sitting together like old friends-- there's very much a peer-to-peer or a siblings vibe going on versus a father-daughter one.

there's a moment when ben offers the drink back to nat, and nat reveals that actually she's doing okay sober... honestly, there's some vulnerability in nat's statement, but i'm not sure that it breaks through to ben how significant it is that she's saying no to the drink. instead, he raises his eyebrows and essentially says "more for me!" for me, this scene is interesting because it seems like nat is reaching for something... maybe some sort of encouragement about what she's doing? but ben is just a peer. he's not a dad. and he's not really in the position to say that he's proud of her. he doesn't.

immediately after this interaction, nat prods ben about his "secret boyfriend" approach to dealing with misty, which is admittedly a bit immature and probably not a wise way to approach the advances of a minor!! in any case, he deflects by bringing up her relationship with travis and nat laments their recent tension, but before ben can give any advice the shrooms kick in. he starts to freak out a little bit but nat's aware that they're tripping. she doesn't seem concerned at all and this seems to soothe ben. they spiral into the trip together, but nat's the steady hand, the older sibling... you get the vibe it would have been a lot more scary for ben if she wasn't there.

ben's spiral into becoming the child

okay, so if season 1 showed nat and ben moving into a peer relationship (with moments of nat subbing in as an almost older sibling figure for ben), then season 2-3 tracks the reversal of the father-child dynamic altogether.

following the cannibalization of jackie and the yellowjackets surviving through the winter, ben is clearly not good. there's just not enough space here to go into a deep dive about his mental health and the ways he begins to untether himself from being a guardian to the girls, but suffice it to say, ben is no longer a figure of any sort of authority. on the one hand, he's beginning to be othered for not eating jackie (and for casting judgment about it), and on the other, he's starting to lose the plot entirely and is spending days on end laying in bed, starving, and hallucinating.

meanwhile, nat is hunting. she's having confrontations with lottie. she's making difficult decisions that are (in her view) for the betterment of her peers. she's still a teenager, and not all of the decisions she makes are mature! when she lies to travis about javi in order to get him to stop looking, she has to deal with it later when travis loses trust in her. when she plays into the hunting game with lottie, she has to stomach the fact that everything went sideways when they needed to work together most to retrieve the moose. nat is doing her very best. she's going out every day. she's trying to bring back food. she's taking jackie's bones to the plane. she's trying to make a map of the wilderness...

but nat's very best isn't appreciated by the group. she's trying, and really she's trying alone, because ben just isn't present. and really, if you take nat and ben as co-fathers of the group, it boils down to this. nat is a father who is staying and striving despite the struggle. she's still working for the kids. ben? is not. he's checking out. he's done. he's losing the willpower to keep going.

letting down shauna

a pretty brutal example of the disparity between nat and ben is shauna's miscarriage. nat literally drags ben to shauna during the delivery. she says, "ben, we need your help. come on!" he tries to tell her he can't help, and she says no. she doesn't let him bail out of this. she's begging him to snap out of it, to be there for them. and when his reaction is such a wildly apparent "oh shit" that's likely to scare the hell out of everyone (including shauna), you can see the disappointment in nat's face.

ben says, "shauna, i'm sorry," and nat gasps "no." he can't be doing this to them. he can't be doing this to her. this is the moment where it all falls apart. ben isn't the father. he's isn't even a peer. he's abandoning shauna obviously, but what i think gets overlooked in this scene is that he's abandoning nat. they were supposed to be doing this together. that was the deal when she took on the rifle. that was the deal when she sat by him by the stream.

but ben's letting her down. and that is fucking that! nat rushes away from ben and tells shauna to ignore him! she reassures her that women have been having babies forever. shauna is going to be fine. she's going to be fine!

nat tells shauna to breathe. from a positional standpoint, she is very much looking like a father during the midst of a delivery. she is at the mother's side, she is offering encouragement, she has water at the ready. this is the moment of transmutation: ben isn't the father anymore. and natalie is.

"you don't belong here, coach."

the handoff during shauna's miscarriage guides nat and ben's relationship through the end of season 2. while ben was off discovering his escape route from the yellowjackets, nat stayed behind. she never left the children. she was even ready to sacrifice herself for the children during the queen hunt, but she's still just a teenager. when travis broke the circle and everything went to shit, she ran. nat's just a fucking kid after all. all the same, she weathered javi's death (and the escalation of the wilderness) with the rest of the yellowjackets while ben was gone.

when the yellowjackets return to the cabin, nat is walking with resolve. she tells travis that the wilderness chose (although whether she believes this is debatable) and she works with tai, van, and shauna to prepare javi for the butchering. ben returns back to this absolute-fucking-nightmare, and he can't do it. he can't deal with this. he turns to see nat and he offers her an escape route.

she says no. because at the end of the day, the yellowjackets need natalie. she's the hunter. in ben's absence, she's the father. she has to stay because the children need her. she has to stay because she's like the children. ben, on the other hand? he's not cut out for this. nat understands this and she sees it and after shauna's miscarriage? well, she knows not to expect anything of ben anymore.

so, nat relinquishes him of his duties. she lets him run off into the wilderness, an abdicated child scampering away. this cements their dynamic moving forward: ben is now the child, nat is now the father. he's not what she needed him to be, but she doesn't hate him for it. instead, she spends the rest of season 3 trying to protect him as best she can, wearily wielding the leadership that he was never cut out for.

putting a child to rest

as we move into season 3, we learn that nat has guided the yellowjackets through the cabin burning down and into the spring. she's taught others like gen how to hunt (mimicking fatherhood as it started with ben's father and then was handed down to nat), and under her leadership, the yellowjackets have cultivated and organized a functioning society that requires no cannibalism. nat is firmly in the father role now, and it's definitely wearing her down (the camp counselor bit with mari and shauna fighting). she's by no means a perfect leader, but she never rats out ben (in the same way she never outs him).

there's a lot, a lot, a lot i could go into here about how nat plays father within group dynamics in season 3, but i'm going to save that for a part 2 on this meta. focusing on her relationship with ben specifically, we see the lengths that nat tries to go to protect him and how she ultimately fails when shauna encourages the group to vote for his execution.

as it turns out, akilah's prophecy convinces the group to keep ben alive, but now nat is in the position of seeing her former co-father, her peer, her little brother, and now someone who seems as weak as a frail child suffer for weeks or months on end. she tries to play into the group's wishes, she tries to focus on the hope of it all. when she speaks to ben and he expresses suicidality, she tries to be authoritative and tell him it'll pass. she tries to be strict and tells him to eat as you would a petulant kid.

but it's all taking it's toll on nat. she can't watch ben wither away like this. and so in the end, she takes him into her arms. this is not the positioning of peers... this is not the positioning of a daughter and her father. this is the positioning of a father and a sick child. this is the loving care of being with someone so small and so weak and guiding them to their rest. being strong for someone who isn't strong enough to drive a knife into their own chest. at its root, nat is fathering ben when she kills him. it has the vibe of a father who has spent months caring for a sick child only to realize the time as come. the only thing nat can do for ben now is be there for him and hold him as he passes.

nat was never supposed to be ben's father figure. but also their plane was never meant to crash. so be it.

[mapledbee]

shauna, death, & meat meta

cw: detailed discussion of stillbirth with respect to the show! descriptive language around death, dying, bodies, & meat.

i am not sure that i have the words for this but i am going to try! so shauna and dead things...

as the butcher, shauna has the most proximity to dead things, right? to a certain extent, travis & nat share this burden. akilah & mari also share it as the cooks. but all of that is different than shauna's task... working with the squelching innards of something that was once living is a lot. it's visceral. it's bloody. it's gored out!! in this sense, shauna acts as a necessary bridge between "what was once alive" and "what is now food" & between "what was horrifying" and "what is now palatable."

butchering dead things is not for the faint of heart! there is a psychological component to touching something that was once alive & accepting that it isn't anymore. there's something eerie about doing things to a once-living body that would be wretched if it was still alive. with it comes a natural kind of dissonance, and humans are very fucky about death & bodies & the "when we're no longer us" of it all... the book when breath becomes air by paul kalanithi is very famous for its meditations on a life ending but it's also famous for its title-- what is that point? when is a body no longer a being? when does breath become air??

it gets more personal when we're discussing shauna butchering humans because we're anthropocentric creatures, you know?? that's a big bridge for the bridge! all the same, shauna does butcher humans. of course, she stays in the meat shed with jackie because jackie was her best friend. but there's something very interesting to me about shauna, the butcher, being the one who can best hold that proximity with "deadass jackie." she's able to look at her... to talk to her... to touch her... not everyone on the team would be able to do so-- in fact, most people probably don't want to be anywhere near a corpse.

being with jackie in this way demonstrates (to me) an underlying fascination that shauna has with disembodiment. as she sits with jackie, she's avoiding processing that this was her friend but no longer is. the finality of them burning jackie's body is distressing to shauna because she's still working through that separation of life from the body. as the butcher, she knows that jackie is gone but the part of her that's still clinging to the humanness of humans--separate (but not really) from the animals she's been butchering--is struggling. to that end, i would argue that jackie's ear coming off is a shatter-glass moment for shauna... this ear is not her friend anymore... it came loose... it fell off... shauna isn't completely there yet, but she's getting there.

and then the ear becomes another fixture of disembodiment... personally, i think it's fascinating that the first part of jackie that shauna eats is the part that is no longer attached to her. it's like the excision of the ear from jackie's body breaks through & gets shauna to that place of... "meat? nothing more than meat?" it's such an excellent transition that speaks to her perspective as butcher & how she's moving into reckoning with personhood, death, and what that means for bodies.

but yeah, disembodiment. shauna's harshest confrontation with disembodiment is her baby. not only did she have a stillbirth but she had an immersive dream that convinced her she didn't have a stillbirth... to come out of that & the fervor of almost dying and to look at what's in your arms and realize he's not alive... it's quite extreme.

the fact that shauna can't accept that her baby's not alive is another example of how she is struggling with disembodiment. shauna knows what death is. she's held it. she's sliced through it. she knows what a body is-- after jackie, she knows what meat can be. but her baby... how could that ever be him too? even after all they've been through, she's still struggling with the "when breath becomes air" part of it.

and then javi-- fuck, javi. here we go again with disembodiment. and shauna's struggling with the weight of disembodiment alone! just as everyone leaves her when she has her breakdown over her delivery, everyone leaves her again when she has to butcher javi. in a way, javi is even worse than jackie (& possibly even the baby) because they did this to him. this is a true and intentional butchering-- we've finally passed the point of no return. humans and animals? no in between. it's all just fucking meat... and the concept of that? well, it's too much for shauna. she has to cover her eyes... even as the butcher, she needs the protection. she never meant to become this: the bridge between humans and meat...

all of shauna's experiences with death and meat set up a framework imo of understanding why she latches onto hannah's hair in season 3. now, i am by no means claiming that my perspective on this is right, and there's a thousand ways to interpret why shauna becomes so fixated with hair. but when you run with her feelings toward disembodiment... god, it is interesting!

because fundamentally, hannah's hair breaks the rules that shauna has learned about bodies, personhood, and meat...

and yeah okay-- weird girl, creepy girl, dommy mommy collecting trophies jokes aside-- let's talk about it: shauna is fascinated with hannah's hair. she's almost as fascinated as she was with jackie's ear. but the thing of it is that hannah's hair is different... because hannah's hair was a part of hannah, but it's not meat. it's not meat and hannah's not dead. and god, the way shauna keeps that hair with her and looks at it? i'm sorry but it's like a baby noticing its goddamn hand for the first time... you can almost see her coming to a realization about the world: "a part of someone? a part of someone apart from someone? and it's not meat? huh..."

shauna, i think, is having a crisis about personhood... imo, the reason that she teeters so horrifically in her empathy toward others in season 3 is due to this very dilemma. what makes other people other people if we're all just meat? because for shauna, she's lost so fucking much. she's lost so many people because the wilderness treated them like fucking meat. from jackie to her baby to javi, and the proximity to each and every one of them... in a nihilistic way, i can see shauna's coldness toward ben, mari, and even melissa as being a reflection of that-- "if my baby was meat, then you're just fucking meat too." but then hannah... hannah and the bits that fall off her that are like the bits that fell off jackie but somehow aren't meat... this hair is hannah's and she's not dead... when does breath become air?

and i don't think shauna ever comes to a conclusion about this. from dicing up adam with natalie to biting a hunk of flesh off melissa's goddamn arm, she's still struggling with this concept & to a certain extent experimenting with it... humans and meat, humans and meat, humans and meat. what the fuck are we? which are we?

AGAIN, i'm not trying to come to any ultimate conclusions about shauna and her character or why she does the things that she does, but i think this tension--this dissonance of what the fuck is the body--when does breath become air???--is something so important to her psyche. out of necessity, shauna became the bridge between humans and food for the others... as the butcher, these are the questions that i think haunt her.

[mapledbee]

my long-ass post about why i don't have a problem with low interaction between lottienat in season 3 and why i actually really enjoy their avoidance and awkwardness!

anxious, awkward, avoid

like if you think about it from nat's perspective, here's this girl that you have beef with & who has been connecting with your sort of boyfriend in ways that you can't reach him and who has turned everyone onto this wilderness shit that you don't believe in & that you find so fucking irritating bc no you don't necessarily need affirmation to hunt--you'd do it either way but mari criticizing you for rejecting lottie's blessings and connecting that to coming back empty-handed during the winter is the last fucking straw.

and just like all this tension & then the fucking strangeness of lottie, this girl who you have so much fucking beef with, turning to you and literally giving you the leadership that you have been so annoyed she has, and like maybe you didn't WANT the fucking leadership exactly, but now she's kissing your hand in front of everyone and your peers are finally expressing appreciation for you and you didn't expect to be so fucking moved by this, and why the fuck did lottie do this for you? why the fuck would she after how you've been at her throat all winter?

then moving into season 3 and just... avoidance because now you're the leader and maybe you didn't want to be but you have skills and the cabin fucking burnt down and ben's gone and you guess this is how it is now. and your leadership is yoked to the wilderness in a way that you don't particularly like but people are turning to you for guidance and lottie gave this to you and you don't know what exactly is going on with her right now or what the fuck she's doing with travis in the woods (but you and travis have been so weird after javi, so you're just letting him be... space is needed... you get it...)

in any case, as the winter clears everyone is starting to sober so you wonder if this wilderness thing can just exist on the side and be contained to whatever the hell it needs to be... and you just don't know what to do with lottie and you're kind of afraid to touch anything with her because you don't get it (and you don't want to) and mainly you don't want the forest deity shit to get bad again but maybe you don't have to think about it right now... avoid...

and then everything with fucking ben and lottie is using the wilderness as justification for not killing him and here she is again, popping out of the crowd and saying your name, saying that you're right... that the wilderness decides... and okay you didn't say THAT exactly but you're not going to tell her as much because this is how you get your fair trial and ben gets a shot at surviving...

and then lottie is a little too fucking much during the trial, invoking more wilderness bullshit, but misty is really killing it questioning her and there's a tenderness & rawness in her deposition that no one else could reach and... wow? everybody is looking at lottie when she shares that "anyone could have done it" and somehow, this really seems like it's turning the tide...

but then the vote and then what the fuck? what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck? lottie and travis voting against ben? it doesn't make any fucking sense & the humiliation of that--because travis is supposed to be on your fucking side and lottie gave you this leadership thing and now she's fucking it up--not to mention the outcome. you're angry but you're crying and you can't be vulnerable right now & so you shut it down, you swallow it back-- you don't want to talk to anyone. this was your trial and these were your rules-- you have to stomach it, you avoid... and ben is going to die.

and then AGAIN with the fucking switchup. lottie jumped in front of loaded gun to prevent ben's execution and now it's down to the wilderness again and you can't particularly object because doing so would be bad for ben. so you're just fucking confused by this person and you're confused about the wilderness, but you have to acknowledge that this crazy "bridge" idea is making everyone feel a little better & you didn't know being leader was going to be so fucking weird and that you'd feel responsible for everyone's fucking feelings like this, but also this is how ben lives... you let lottie, akilah, and travis carry on with whatever the fuck they're doing in the caves because they're less of a problem than shauna right now. seriously what the fuck is going on with shauna? taissa seems to think it's a problem too... but whatever... you're not going to touch any of this. it's too fragile.

and then ben. ben is suffering and you can't let him suffer like this & at first you thought maybe this was the way & that this could give the others hope, but the wilderness is hurting people again--just in a different way. after weeks and weeks of trying to feed him, of him begging you to end it, you can't take it anymore. that night is a blur and suddenly you're shaking and covered in blood and glancing around at everyone, and then you're being thrown to the ground and people are talking about what's to be done with you. tai is mentioning another fucking trial, shauna thinks you're already guilty, and lottie...

lottie should be mad at you. lottie should be furious. this was her whole fucking thing. you killed this person that she was keeping hostage for the fucking wilderness or whatever. but she's staring down at you, bloodied and on the ground, and she doesn't look mad at all... it doesn't make any sense. and then shauna is saying that they know what they should do, and lottie steps in. steps past her. and she's giving shauna your crown but you're not particularly upset about it right now. you don't even fucking want it right now. and sure, whatever, this makes as much sense as anything after the stupid ben vote. obviously, you getting the leadership in the first place meant shit-all. but what's bothering you is... why isn't lottie mad at you? that's the part you can't make sense. why isn't she upset about ben?

but she's with shauna now... she chose shauna. and shauna is too fucking much right now. so you don't touch it. you can't touch it... and then the whirlwind of being newly subordinate, of having to butcher ben, and the strangeness of the evening. and then... the strangers.

what the fuck did lottie do?

and this is the moment where you realize something is wrong. you kind of knew you all were losing it during the winter, but this?? this is wrong. something has gone so fucking wrong with lottie & you have no idea what has happened but you're horrified, but you can't exactly deal with it right now because there's the flash of the chase & the possibility of fucking rescue to consider, and maybe rescue will mean whatever has gone so fucking wrong will be solved too.

and so you hunt down kodi and hannah with the others. you get back and you have no idea how to deal with the mess lottie made, so you just soldier on. maybe rescue will fix this... avoid... you drag information out of kodi and hannah with the others. and goddammit, shauna. at this point, who cares who the fucking leader is?? you want shauna to get the fuck over this, because like with the stupid hunting game and the moose, none of that petty shit matters when we're talking about food--when we're talking about rescue.

and you can't deal with lottie right now either. all the ambiguity. all the wilderness bullshit that you had hoped had died down but is now resurfacing in the worst fucking ways. you get angry, you let loose on her. she can't fuck this up. she can't fuck up rescue for everyone.

all the same, that gone wrong feeling is so deep inside. it's not just lottie. you know it's not just lottie and that scares the fuck out of you. something you don't understand is happening out here, and you're dragging everyone away from it--you're going to get them away from whatever is going on in these godforsaken woods.

and now, finally at the point of rescue--finally at the point of leaving. and lottie says she's staying??? and the gone wrong heaviness that has filled your chest is outweighing the anger and you're turning back to lottie while everyone calls her crazy because you understand something... you don't understand what but you do understand fear and you do understand uncertainty, and beyond all that, you've realized (more solidly now than ever) that something is wrong with lottie. that something is happening to lottie.

...but you can't let what's happening to her happen to everyone else. and when she refuses to go, you don't have any options. you don't know what you're going to do. but you can't do this...

and then shauna... and then tai... and then being stuck behind and the effort to get some of your people out and away from this nightmare backfiring horribly. and the night raids and checks on your hut which remind you so much of your fucking dad. and all the while, you can't engage with lottie because that gone wrong thing continues to get worse. so you avoid. you work with van. you work with misty. you try to figure a way out of all that's fucking wrong.

and when it all comes to a head in the hunt and you try to reach out to lottie again, you don't even recognize her. you can't reach at all. she's not just gone wrong--she's gone.

and so it's rescue all the way down. no more trying to talk it through. no more trying to find reason. no more trying to work it out. you're just a fucking kid and this has become something so far beyond the scope. you're screaming into the phone, you're begging for help, because you're all just fucking kids and this has gone so fucking wrong. you need someone to save lottie from herself. you need someone to save all of you from yourselves.

[mapledbee]

yellowjackets & antler cannibalism: inspired by (& cited/quoted from) "antler cannibalism in reindeer"

[mapledbee]

lottie matthews, tj maxx, & clothes meta

okay, so this crashout is brought to you by lottie's fabled hostess snoball outfit from the pilot.

truthfully, i have been thinking about this outfit for four years now, and to a lesser extent lottie's relationship with clothes pre-, during, and post-wilderness-- all this and especially how it intersects with her teen timeline confession that she steals from tj maxx (and the way she continues to steal as an adult).

to preface: this meta isn't trying to imply that this is the Canonical Reading of lottie's relationship with clothes. it's more just a reading that i'm offering to you that i think gives her character a lot of texture, especially in areas that are less explored by the fandom (gender and race). also, i'll touch a bit on lottie's background as māori, and while i'm mixed race, this is #notmylane, so i'll try to bring up what feels reasonable/respectful and leave the rest at a distance for those with better insight.

anyways, disclaimers disclaimed, let's get it!

lottie matthews feels like she's from outer space.

what i mean by that is that you're looking at a girl in deep diaspora.

little sidebar here: my conception of "deep diaspora" is that it's diaspora times ten. it's diaspora when there isn't much access to diasporic community at all, or when that access is focused around "close enough" contact with people who have perhaps empathetic experiences, but they still aren't YOUR experience. i consider lottie to naturally be in deep diaspora because she's māori in new jersey. if you take courtney's background as canon, lottie also has cook islander, chinese, and white heritage. in new jersey, especially in the 90s, it's going to be difficult finding someone with a similar background. this is deep diaspora to me, and it comes from my own perspective being part of a specific cultural subgroup that isn't represented practically anywhere either. deep diaspora is isolating. and i think it brings a lot of insight into lottie's experiences growing up. also, i don't think you can neatly separate this background from lottie, given the ways that simone kessell has worked in more explicit cultural markers for her adult character. so, i appreciate this context.

but back to the meta. what you're looking at is a girl in deep diaspora. she's mixed race. she has schizophrenia in the 90s, which would likely feel unspeakable to her peers. she's so wealthy as to be entirely unrelatable to the kids around her.

also, if you take the canon information dropped in s3 that @wildernessworship posted a while back (AWESOME post), then lottie has been living with her mom in new jersey since her parents divorced. in that context, this means lottie's mom is independently wealthy enough to afford the home and the maid we saw in the pilot & it raises interesting questions about how involved lottie's dad was in her life in wiskayok...

to me? that's oof. because it means you can take all the feelings of "being other" that i just described and add onto it "new girl" in a small town (at least for a while). man, what a cocktail of isolation.

in my opinion, all of this leaves lottie feeling like she's from outer space. she's not like her peers. she's not even like her mom, who she may share a racialized experience with, but also not the SAME racialized experience and also not compounded by lottie's own (likely different) upbringing, mental health considerations, and baseline individual differences.

what the hell does this have to do with clothes?

-pulls you in by the collar- the hostess snoball outfit.

the pink one.

that outfit is, hands down, one of the most egregious combinations of clothing i have ever seen. oh it is cunty. oh it is amazing for how bad it is. but truly? you can't even blame the 90s for that outfit. really, i think we need to give lottie credit where credit is due: that outfit is some of the most incredibly unhinged clothes-wearing behavior i have seen.

and the thing of it is this: i don't think lottie knows what she's doing.

yes, she has wealth. yes, she has resources. yes, she has things that her peers do not. BUT. does she intuitively know what things she wants? does she intuitively know what even goes together? hmmmm. i'm not sure we're given adequate evidence that she does.

no, i don't think lottie knows what she's doing.

because that hostess snoball outfit is so much unlike lottie in the wilderness that it makes it so much like lottie as a person.

let me explain.

mixed race womanhood and an absent mother who is not taking the time to show lottie the way. navigating womanhood alone with only a white maid of a different class status as the most proximate image of lottie's access to adult womanhood in the pilot...

with regard to the pilot, it's my argument that the clothes lottie puts on are put upon. just... why tj maxx? why would a rich girl steal from a store that is known as a bargain store? and why would a rich girl return the clothes that she successfully stole? she got away with it. she doesn't seem surveilled enough by the absence shown to us in the pilot that anyone would probably notice extra clothes in her closet. why does she take the clothes back? she doesn't need the tj bucks.

lottie matthews is roleplaying being like her peers

because i think she is so fucking alienated from her peers. we're talking about small town new jersey. tj maxx may very well be what some of her peers wear (or even better, lottie's wealth-clouded assumption of what they wear). picture this: lottie matthews in tj maxx pulling clothes right off the racks and wearing them at home before realizing she can't wear this because she's lottie matthews.

people would say things. people would be surprised. people wouldn't understand.

no, she can't wear these clothes because she's lottie matthews. she can't be like other girls because she's lottie matthews. and so. returning the clothes and accepting this. that she can't, she won't. but... she keeps stealing. as if one day maybe it'll work and the clothes will fit, and she'll be like everyone else. she'll be someone other than this island amidst a sea of people who make sense. she'll be someone besides lottie matthews.

the wilderness is an unbought untransactional womanhood

the wilderness is not the world outside. the wilderness is not lottie's mom looking so gorgeous and almost thoughtlessly put-together in her on-screen moments but still probably having no time to show lottie how to look gorgeous and thoughtlessly put-together against the backdrop of white women's beauty standards and racist virulence.

the wilderness has no expectations and no capacity to fail, at least not in this regard. the wilderness is fuckass swamp furs and laura lee's ruined dress and wearing the same shit over and over and over and over and over.

and not having to think about it because the wilderness is the focus, the wilderness is the mission, the wilderness has no time for dysphoria and clothes and everything that fits wrong and everything that feels and everything that never felt quite like lottie.

the wilderness is absolution.

"it's not purple. it's heliotrope."

and so lottie matthews in the adult timeline. a sort of academic distance that mingles with a seemingly artificial fascination for the finer things.

"it's not purple, it's heliotrope."

i learned this.

i read this.

let me tell you what i learned about clothes.

let me tell you what i learned about being a woman.

because i had to, they made me. i had to be a woman and not a girl from the woods because becoming a woman who knows the difference between purple and heliotrope, a woman who bathes and a woman who talks, and a woman who knows how to apologize--

this was how i got out of the hospital.

they made me change my clothes and they made me bathe and i learned that these brands were important, and i listened and i regurgitated it right back, because i needed to be a woman and not whatever i became in those woods to get better.

to get better. to get out of the hospital.

and when i started wearing the clothes and i started reading about them and i started showing interest in the dresses and the jewelry and the color theory and the design and the appreciation for what's beautiful-- when i started talking about that, my mom thought i was better.

and i wanted my mom to think i was better.

"linens? lottie loves linens."

of course, she does.

she's read about them.

-dragging my hands over my face-

my race is my gender my gender is my race my clothes are my gender my clothes are my race my gender and my race are my mental health my mental health is my clothes my clothes my clothes my clothes i can make them think i'm better if i just figure out my fucking clothes

[mapledbee]

something i think that's interesting about nat's gender presentation and her approach toward the other girls is that it is a bit "not like other girls," but i don't know if i agree that it's "not like other girls" in an intentionally diminishing way.

one thing about being raised poor is that it, like the myriad of other ways you can be subjugated/oppressed, is something that -takes- your gender too, especially in terms of femininity. if you go to school smelling like smoke because your dad hotboxed you in the car, your footing in the gender box that society prefers (clean, put-together, in some ways innocent) is impacted. if your clothes are ripped and stained and you don't have many of them, this can become a struggle too. you're not like other girls because you literally are not like other girls, and it's even possible that you're experiencing the punishment not just from shitty boys but also your girl peers-- it's just how it goes.

and so in the case of nat, it kind of makes sense to me? if you're already outside the box of "girl" in the way that the world would prefer, it becomes a protective strategy to simply lean into that distance. (more on this in a sec.)

as an example, i do think it's interesting that taissa's go-to for nat when they were arguing over allie was, "you smell like a wino. get your shit together." the term wino is pretty often associated with homelessness or being drunk in the streets, so the comment isn't just a nod toward what might be going on with nat drinking-wise but also a pretty charged statement in relation to her class status. this sort of dynamic carries into the adult timeline too, where it's definitely felt through various interactions that shauna and tai look down at nat in different ways. (and don't get me wrong, it's quite complicated, especially in terms of her dynamic with tai and the tumultuous rehab support there.)

all the same, i think this whole class impact on gender thing continues on with respect to nat's sexuality and how this is commented on by other characters too (re: jackie and tai). the reason this feels like another class thing is that "chastity" has its roots in women as material objects with worth rooted in a perceived "purity." chastity is naturally going to be more often surveilled and prioritized in richer families who have the time/energy to keep an eye on their children. meanwhile, poorer families might not have the resources to surveil children in the same way (even if a parent, like nat's dad, clearly wants to control this aspect). so nat's even having had sexual experiences can be a bit of a nod to her class-- the fact that she was able to be in spaces where this was possible, to disappear into those relationships, even at a younger age, can speak to this.

but yeah, when you do look at nat, you see that she primarily has relationships with men. her younger friends, kevyn and rich. her connection with travis. her connection with ben. there's probably a level of internalized misogyny there, but i think it's also interestingly placed at odds with nat's protectiveness over womanhood: when she has her comeback to travis after he makes sexist comments about her having sexual experience; when ben checks out from shauna's delivery and nat rushes to her side to hold her hand and tell her that women have been having babies for since the dawn of time; even when nat takes up the gun after her dad throws her mom to the ground.

what i'm saying here is that nat is actually often moving toward women-- her taking lisa under her wing, her teaching gen to hunt, her making way for lottie in the bath, her reassuring shauna, even her reaching out to work with hannah. when she says marishauna's beef is "dumb girl shit," it does grate because it's a diminishing thing to say about a real dynamic that is causing problems in the group, and not necessarily to defend it, but i do think it comes from a place of conceptualizing behaviors she has maybe been at the end of (gossip, slut-shaming, classist remarks) as "dumb girl shit" to better let them roll off her back.

all that to say, i think nat does have some internalized misogyny stuff going on, but i also think she cares deeply about her teammates and actually does respect them. it's just that she has simultaneously been boxed out of "woman" by the ways classism and purity culture also intersect with her own experience of misogyny. so there's this level of care there met with this distance of "i'm not like you. because you would never let me be."

[mapledbee]

My God, It’s Full of Stars by Tracy K Smith

[mapledbee]

We need to find a way to stay alive. And it can't be her. — Hélène Cixous; Stigmata, sevdaliza; shahmaran.

[mapledbee]

it's just...the interconnectedness of taissa and lottie. they canonically wear the same cleats. taissa sleepwalks pre-crash, lottie post-rescue. they're both burdened with the supernatural prior to the wilderness - both forms of sight, a warning in some ways. lottie's visions spill out and have to be dealt with - Tai doesn't tell a single soul about what she sees. It's a terror she has to carry all on her own. I've always thought of other tai as a shield, a crutch, a protective layer of hard skin that kicks in at the point of pain.

there's a familiarity/fluidness (?) in the way that lottie and taissa get at each other? it's so quick, innate -- like a knee jerk reaction.

What if you're wrong? What if there's just nothing?

I don't know. / You do know. / If I'm wrong, I'll die out there.

“I don’t believe in that shit, and neither will you.”

I'm just trying to figure it out / Yeah, maybe you shouldn't.

they're on each other's heels verbally, physically at all times. I think that only comes from a shared and intimate knowledge of each other. how they work, how they think, how to get under each other's skin.

most of their interactions on the show are tactile. pulling each other's arms, bodies, clothing, to steer them to, or away, from something. hurtling their bodies into one another. shoving. pushing. crowding each other's space.

all of taissa + lottie's understandings of each other are underscored by touch. paralleled beginnings. at what points in their shared history did they meet and diverge? whatever the answer, i truly believe they share a deep understanding of one another that maybe surpasses words. it's in the body.

[mapledbee]

i've written on it before in past metas but i think i sort of danced around the point in a way that could be communicated more sharply: i think it's super crucial to lottie's character to think of the wilderness as an abuser & to be curious about the ways that dynamic drives her actions and relationships with the other girls.

the wilderness as an abuser meta (with some lottienat side action)

i don't know if i have the energy to explain this as well as i'd like but something that can happen in an abusive relationship is "love bombing" -- there's the pop psychology slant to this which can get super reductive so i'm not trying to go there, but the main thing to understand with love bombing as a real tool of abuse is that it's often meant to isolate you. it's meant to make you feel that the person doing it is the only person who can really give you that degree of affection or attention or fondness & that if you let them go, you'll never ever ever be loved in that way again. (it keeps you in the cycle of abuse by preying on your insecurities and feelings of scarcity.)

the fact that lottie becomes a sort of conduit to the wilderness and therefore has a unique and special relationship to it that's admired by some of the girls who end up following her is deeply troublesome, not least because it plays into lottie's spiral into derealization but also because it's essentially giving someone who entered the wilderness profoundly isolated a sense of being needed for something that's yoked to her being unmedicated and growing progressively unwell.

i've waxed on in past metas about lottie being mixed, how untalkable her diagnosis would have been, the relative absence of her parents-- it all functions to make her an island. she's known but unknown. no one truly sees her, but the wilderness is of her and it can only be communicated to the other girls through her & that's a very dangerous avenue for lottie to gather a sense of self from because it's predicated on not just being unmedicated but on the fervent desire to take care of her team by following the whims of this new belief system.

how that all gets back into abuse-- the combo of the delusions and the feeling of being special, which is rather chaotically denied and affirmed by the girls over their time in the wilderness, is a kind of love bombing. you might argue that lottie doesn't actually feel special or god-like (and i actually think this is true-- she feels like a drowning acolyte trying to keep it altogether) but her baseline perception is that she is special because heavy are her shoulders wearing the crown through s1-s2. it's not the kind of grandiosity that smacks you in the face because it's much more restrained. lottie simply knows she's the one who hears the wilderness. she even knows it hurts and you must sacrifice to hear the wilderness, but it's coming from a place of love. she will give of herself for her girls, and she will partake in this relationship (as much as it torments her) to keep them safe.

lottie doesn't wield her connection to the wilderness like a weapon necessarily. she's not flaunting it. it's a steady knowing inside her. she's chosen.

and in any case, the wilderness is an abuser because what it demands of lottie are things you experience when you're going through abuse:

loss of personhood

as lottie deregulates she begins to lose the sassyness, bite, and sense of humor that we saw pre-crash. we get a bit of her old self right after the plane goes down: her snipes at mari and travis, and we get the briefest flash of it in the bathtub scene with natalie: "you fucking loser."

these moments are lottie to some extent, which we see echoed through to her medicated state in the adult timeline: "asshole" she calls natalie, calling tai out for simone, calling misty out for really killing someone, etc etc. even just smiling and being happy to dance together...

but in the wilderness? lottie is fucking losing the plot. she's so unlike herself, she's tormented, she's wearing the same clothes, she's saying less and less and less, she's pushing boundaries. her whole personhood is turning into acolyte, prophet, etc. her value system is blurred and hard to retrieve.

she's not pre-crash lottie at all.

punishment

this is a huge one. so one aspect of abuse is withholding attention to torment someone when they do something that isn't to your liking. this is so plain in lottie's relationship to the wilderness. for example, when everything goes down with javi and the queen draw (an outcome we know lottie didn't want), she proceeds to crown natalie as leader. the fact of the wilderness becoming silent to lottie around the same time as crowning natalie feels really important, because natalie is not the type of leader who is going to let shit fly that far off the chain again. we totally see the contrast in how nat walks the girls through survivalism in the spring. under nat's leadership, there is no cannibalism. imo, this is one the reasons lottie picked her (alongside the fact that i think she knew nat needed it but sidebar). she saw that nat would lead them through without the kind of horror that killed javi (and she was right)

but also, it seems like the wilderness really didn't fuck with that because it left her.

punishment, punishment, punishment. "you tried to play a game with me, you tried to give it off to someone else, but you can't, you can't, you can't." the wilderness is inside lottie and it has deep and incredibly cruel wants, but it's also the only thing that made her matter... it's the only thing that had her with both feet on the ground. and now it's left her and the absence feels like a hole in her chest. she's going to go fucking crazy if she doesn't get that connection again, that piece of her that actually for once mattered and that actually for once was needed and seen by other people. and this is how the wilderness draws her back to it. "you thought you could be anything without me? you can't." it's why imo, the second she starts to feel it again, she starts making choices at the expense of travis, at the expense of akilah, at the expense of nat, and to some extent at the expense of shauna (enabling her mental break as well).

because when you're living through that kind of abuse and the abuser has made itself your whole world, personhood, and identity, then other people become unreal. you can't really consider their needs because they're barriers to you trying to survive.

on the topic of punishment, i could talk a bit here about the mari warning as well but i already wrote a meta about that, so i'll link:

stockholm syndrome

i mean this one writes itself. lottie can't leave the wilderness because leaving the wilderness would be psychic annihilation. she's found too much personhood and meaning in her connection with the wilderness (and ofc, she's bought in to the idea that staying would be better for everyone: "what home do you have to go back to, nat?") without the wilderness, what is lottie?

i feel like there's a necessary degree of empathy that needs to be adopted when considering lottie's desire to stay behind because it would be easy to call it "selfish," which i mean she is (to our knowledge) an only child of rich elites, so there is that... but i also think purely considering it selfish and self-serving is a bit of a disservice to what it feels like to be abused. first of all, we already know from the cave scene with akilah that lottie doesn't think leaving will actually be leaving. the wilderness is inside now. one of the things that keeps victims of abuse from leaving their circumstances is that they are presently surviving it, regardless of how truly awful it is, & that attempting to leave might provoke enough anger that they'll either actually be killed or others (like their children) will be.

there's a lot of fear with even asking for help because there's often an earned paranoia around surveillance (which really matches the energy of lottie's conception of the wilderness & how she doesn't seem willing to communicate her torment to others) and an associated concern that even discussing trying to leave will trigger some form of violence. personally, i really do think lottie was willing to stay behind on her own and be with the wilderness, as wretched as that existence would have been. the fact of others wanting to stay with her was reassuring because the wilderness is fucking scary. she wouldn't be alone and yes it's awful but can you blame her for not wanting to be alone? lottie's whole life has been oriented around being alone with her own personal torments. maybe we can have a little sympathy for lapping up the offer to be with her team, even though it ends up hurting everyone.

natalie & lottie & abuse

but yeah, so that brings me to lottie and nat. one thing that i think is really fucking interesting about their dynamic in the scene where lottie says that she's staying is that nat is a survivor of abuse. if you take this meta i'm jotting down and put it in contrast to nat, it's pretty jarring. lottie is a lot like nat's mom in this situation, who we know was at least getting thrown around by her gun-violent father and possibly worse. the sort of similar deliriums (likely through drugs and alcohol with vera and ofc schizophrenia with lottie) is heart-breaking, and the concept of nat watching people descend into that both pre- and post-crash is also heartbreaking.

i mean, if you really go down that this path, you can see lottie being beat up by shauna as a super triggering event for nat bc of the way it might bring her mom to mind. i wrote a meta about her physical reactions here:

but yeah bringing that all back to lottie and nat's interaction when lottie says she doesn't want to go-- well shit, it seems like that would be a lot like nat's mom "choosing" to stay with her father despite the fact he's a piece of shit.

i don't know how extensively nat considers all this or relates it back to herself, but we do get an inkling that she acknowledges the wilderness as something bad for her team in the scene of her telling it off in the plane that they're going to leave it behind.

so nat thinks of the wilderness as bad and lottie is here telling her that she's staying and nat is trying to convince her to go and lottie won't fucking go, & then lottie says something (in a bid for connection imo but so badly worded) that shuts nat down and drives her away.

nat's choice to walk away from lottie in that moment is the choice of a child of abuse to walk away from someone who is not ready to end a relationship with their abuser. i think it's helpful to not necessarily read this interaction as antagonistic or abandoning but as nat's natural sort of orientation toward lottie, which has always been to not participate in the abuse whether she really understands it as abuse or not. she's an eternal skeptic and this decision to turn her back just as much as any of her other actions says, "i won't be a part of you hurting yourself."

which tbh to me is the whole tragedy/tension of their dynamic.

[mapledbee]

The burden of leadership in Yellowjackets

There is such an interesting burden that each of the Yellowjackets leaders (Jackie, Lottie, Nat, and now Shauna) have had to carry of being the group’s scapegoat; the embodiment of the group’s darkness and therefore the one demonized to absolve the rest of their sins. Each have served as a symbol of the state of the group at a given time, a physical manifestation of their deepest needs and urges.

Jackie was a symbol of society, representing the team’s pre-crash identities and last shreds of civilization they clung to in the wilderness. Before the crash, she was revered and worshipped, but as the group’s desperation began to increase and their needs began to shift to something more primal, Jackie became a living reminder of the life they left behind and the societal constraints they were just starting to shed. Her resistance to change and insistence on old social norms made her an easy scapegoat for the group’s early struggles to adapt. The traits that once garnered admiration from the group (Jackie’s composure, her traditional femininity, her social confidence) became liabilities in the wilderness. What once made her a leader now made her a threat, a mirror reflecting who they used to be and how far they were falling. Therefore, Jackie was the first to be cast out; a symbol they could sacrifice to avoid confronting the shame of their own loss of innocence and moral decay.

Lottie was a symbol of faith and spirituality in a time of desperation for the group. As starvation and fear took hold, the team turned to something larger than themselves for meaning; something to explain the inexplicable and justify the unthinkable. But as the group’s belief in her grew, so did their dependence on her. Their belief in her as a prophet gradually evolved into worship of her as a divine figure in her own right. They made a teenage girl into a god. She became the scapegoat for the horrors they committed in her name. When the faith they had placed in her didn’t offer the salvation they hoped for and she inevitably broke under the weight of their expectations, they dismissed her as “crazy” and cast her out again. Even after the crash, the narrative persists that Lottie made them do those terrible things, when in truth, they molded Lottie into the figurehead they needed to justify the things they were already willing to do.

Natalie became a symbol of pragmatism and conscience, a reflection of the group’s desire to return to order after the chaos of winter. Like Jackie before her, she tried to reestablish some sense of society, grounding her leadership in fairness, logic, and restraint. She didn’t ask for power, but she stepped into it because the group needed someone to set limits, to draw a line between survival and savagery. In many ways, she embodied the group’s collective remorse; their quiet longing to repent for Jackie and Javi’s deaths and to take the necessary steps to prevent that kind of darkness from ever surfacing in them again. But following Natalie meant confronting what they had done, and few were ready for that. Coach Ben’s return gave the group an easier target; someone to redirect their guilt and rage onto. Instead of reckoning with their own actions, they focused on punishing him for his perceived betrayal. Natalie’s calls for reason and restraint began to feel like judgment, and her moral clarity became alienating. Therefore, she was ridiculed and cast down when the group’s remorse and attempts at recreating civilization were overpowered by their own primal urges.

Shauna is a symbol of the group's brutality and rage. Her turn as leader has come at the peak of the group’s suppressed grief, anger, and loss of control. The group needed someone to act out their darkest impulses, and Shauna became that person. She was made the butcher (literally and symbolically), tasked with executing the physical horrors the others could not. The group unthinkingly offers her up to execute Nat after the card draw and elect her to butcher Javi’s body. By pushing her into that role, they created a vessel for their own savagery, then blamed her for it. And by continuing to blame her, they can go on pretending they had no choice, that the darkness lives in her, not in them.

I keep coming back to Van’s line about Lottie in Season 2: “She’s like this because of us.” The survivors may try to distance themselves from their leaders’ choices, they may point fingers, assign blame, but the truth is, Jackie, Lottie, Nat, and Shauna became exactly what the group needed them to be. They needed Jackie’s normalcy, Lottie’s faith, Natalie’s pragmatism and remorse, and eventually, Shauna’s rage and capacity for violence. The leaders didn’t act in a vacuum; they were shaped, elevated, and used by the group. And the others were just as complicit in everything that followed. Jackie, Lottie, Nat, and Shauna didn’t just carry carried the weight of their own sins, they carried the entire group’s. They were not simply leaders. They were vessels, absorbing the group’s collective fear, projection, and shifting morality. And in doing so, they became the easiest ones to sacrifice when the group needed someone to blame.

[mapledbee]

something i've been struggling to put my finger on when it comes to my interpretation of lottie is, i think, her experience of grandiosity.

because okay, like, let's talk about the wilderness through the framework of delusions (i think it's more complicated than that, personally bc i fuck a bit with the supernatural, but to start--).

the thing is that mental health is adaptive and personal. as much as the "delusions" hurt lottie they are also an attempt to seize agency in an impossible situation and to confer meaning to it-- whether that's to appease a desire for control, to ease insecurity, or to (my biggest take) find personhood.

but the "delusions" are also a reflection of lottie herself and so they're oriented around who she is as a person. i don't think it's reading too much into it to note that the way lottie navigates them is deeply insecure. this is why i hesitate to understand her in terms of being a "cult leader" and tip toward "religious fanatic," if we have to use those terms.

sure, there's not really going to be one sort of archetypically pure version of a cult leader, and there's obviously blending here, but in terms of the stereotypes around outright manipulation, gaslighting, and abuse tactics, lottie falls short in a lot of ways. don't get me wrong-- she does hurt people. but there's a distinct difference between someone who is confident and pulling strings and someone who is (imo) tormented and trying to help. (even if there are similar outcomes.)

and i think that brings me back to lottie's grandiosity. she does believe she's the chosen one. she does believe that she's different than everyone else. she says as much when she reflects that she was the only one who could hear "it" -- at the same time, that grandiosity is not plainly superior or, i say again, confident. it's really insecure and scarcity-minded.

when the wilderness leaves lottie, it's painful and personhood-robbing. throughout s3, we see her chase after it, but i don't think this relationship is purely reverent. the wilderness is vice and virtue: it gives her a sense of purpose that she's never had before, and it's also a beast that's apt to bite off her hand.

really, i view the wilderness less about "loving it" and more that lottie believes fiercely (just as fiercely as the others believe in gravity and the seasons) that there is a small god with a particular set of laws ruling their prison. at the same time, she can see the beauty of the prison. at the same time, she seems horrified by it. i think she understands it's a prison, but the distinct difference between lottie and the rest of the yellowjackets is that she understands the outside world is a prison too.

regardless, i feel like lottie's relationship to the wilderness is less about admiring it (except in the sense of admiring it as a specifically angry god-- the beauty of absolution, smoke and brimstone, and the fear of it). her orientation is simply that the wilderness is how this world works. and all of her actions are driven by the certainty. when she tells the group in s3, just after finding ben, that the wilderness always chooses who lives and dies-- that's surrender. she no longer prescribes death to anyone else's actions. even when akilah kills the goats and nat stabs ben-- it's the wilderness.

i don't know. i talked about it in the abuse meta, but i just think there's something rich in reading into lottie's experience of being a "chosen one" as particularly terrifying and uncertain and reluctant but a burden that she shoulders anyways. she very much gives me the vibe of i love you so much, i don't even realize i'm hurting you, which is culpable, sure, but a lot more complicated than obviously bad intentions (or frankly much regulated intention-following at all).

[mapledbee]

thought i would throw this out here because i've been turning over lottie's childhood scene from s1e6 in my head for a while, and i just have a few random thoughts:

so a couple things that are interesting to point out in this scene and the episode in general:

saints

contextually, the episode is called "saints." it's the one where laura lee baptizes lottie in the lake, and it's also the one where shauna and tai attempt to abort the baby and don't go through with it. saints are associated with mediating between the divine and the human (while remaining fallibly human themselves). also suffering and sacrifice. yeah, that tracks for lottie and shauna.

this episode is also the one where lottie has the vision of the deer with bloody antlers. (it's ridiculously CGI but to me the antlers seem to be in velvet, which works for the timeline.) lots of thoughts about what the shedding velvet vision could mean, but my brain connects it with lottie going off her medication, like she's shedding that protective layer to expose what's underneath.

also the concept of antlers being extremely fast growing is thematically satisfying when you think of how quickly lottie gains influence over the group and how quickly she moves into her beliefs toward the wilderness. the imagery of antlers in general is important for the show... we're shedding something out here and we're moving toward something else... hm.

tai, simone, & sammy

this is also the episode where taissa and simone take sammy for psychological testing and that's an interesting parallel to lottie's childhood (malcolm says at the end of the scene posted above that they're taking her to doctors as well).

i don't have particular thoughts on why this parallel exists (or seemingly why the writers never did much with it), but it's so intriguing that i wanted to mention it!

exxon valdez oil spill

getting into lottie's childhood scene proper, we see young lottie in the car and the radio is talking about the exxon valdez oil spill. this happened in 1989, which is kind of weird in terms of continuity since i doubt lottie was ten or eleven here (we see her near a stroller later-- this is probably just the writers eating shit on timeline). all the same, the exxon valdez oil spill happened off the coast of alaska, in prince william sound. it was incredibly bad, one of the biggest environmental disasters ever.

according to the source above--

The oil killed:

An estimated 250,000 seabirds

2,800 sea otters

300 harbor seals

250 bald eagles

As many as 22 killer whales

Billions of salmon and herring eggs

More than 25 years since the spill, the following species remain in a “Not Recovering” or “Unknown” status:

Killer whales (family group known as pod AT1)

Kittlitz’s murrelets

Marbled murrelets

Pigeon guillemots

who's gonna foot the bill?

this is the conversation in the car between malcolm and emilia:

Malcolm: "There's no way gas prices won't go up. Exxon Valdez is gonna pay billions in cleanup, but you know who's really going to foot the bill? We are. Right at the pump."

what's so fascinating to me about this scene is that emilia is shaking her head at malcolm as he speaks. this could be reactions to multiple things. on the one hand, she could be commiserating about the gas prices.

sidebar: to me, this is doubtful because the matthews are rich. i actually can't see malcolm being very concerned about gas prices more than he's probably just academically interested in the litigation and fallout since he's a wall street guy. his acknowledgment of people paying at the pump seems less sympathetic to working class folks than thinking through the Money of it all.

hard to capture in screenshot so definitely watch the scene above, but emilia does seem irritated in this scene. if she's not irritated about the financial fallout, i'd actually suggest she's irritated with malcolm. (they canonically divorced before the plane crash after all.) and i suspect she may be irritated because the radio is blaring about the devastation of wildlife and local communities while her husband is being finance bro with no sign of empathy in sight. (my read anyways.) this has really rich implications for their dynamic, but i'll talk about that in a sec.

everybody scream!

what's interesting about the shot where young lottie screams and ostensibly saves the matthews from a car crash is that the shot that slowly zooms in on her coincides with sound beginning to distort and sharpen into a focus on the radio.

specifically, the radio is saying, "Not only did the spill decimate the wildlife of Prince William Sound, but it drastically damaged the local Alaskan industries and its communities."

right at those words-- we scream!!! (also very interesting for my meta brain but potentially not relevant, malcolm instantly invokes christianity: "christ, lottie, stop it!" <- he also calls her lottie, which is... well, it's all just fucking intriguing for why lottie ends up taking the mantle charlotte later. is it something her parents started referring to her as when she grew older and "outgrew" lottie, or was this a decision she came to on her own?)

in any case, we scream!! and an... empty... truck smashes into a car? here, i will admit that despite the fact my dad is a fucking truck driver i have no clue what trucks are used to transport oil and i'm sure i'm reading into shit but why the hell not? if anyone knows, hit me up. could the truck that hit the car have been an oil tank truck? fascinating if so.

"it's just getting worse."

okay now we're in the matthews home and my thought, given s3's confirmation that emilia and malcolm divorced before the plane crash, is that we're approaching the end of their marriage here. we get the back and forth:

Malcolm: "It's just getting worse." Emilia: "You saw what happened, Malcolm." Malcolm: "I can't listen to this." Emilia: "Why can't you accept the possibility that there are things in this world we don't understand?" Malcolm: "Our daughter didn't save us, because she can't see the future. Lottie is sick and we are taking her to a psychiatrist."

some takeaways:

i don't pretend to be able to draw any precise conclusions about the show from this breakdown, but i do think there are some notable implications and takeaways:

emilia and malcolm were having problems before the plane crash and divorced beforehand. coupled with emilia's protectiveness and willingness to believe "there are things in this world we don't understand," she likely is not as much of a wet mop as the fandom tends to position her. she held primary custody (it seems) over lottie well into her teenage years, and lottie and emilia lived alone together in new jersey. @wildernessworship wrote more on where this was suggested in canon here:

more to the point, lottie's mom was independently wealthy enough to afford the home and the maid we saw in the pilot. she seemed to have opinions around the oil spill in particular that put her at odds with malcolm. she had opinions, seemingly about the environment. (why did the show include the radio bit about the oil spill? why did the show include an obvious shot of emilia's irritation in discussing it?)

in any case, what i think is important to consider here is that emilia's opinions, both of the environment and lottie's mental health, may have shaped the trajectory of lottie's teenage years more than her father's if emilia held primary custody! a lot to consider here... especially since we know lottie did get medicated.

there is something the show wants us to notice with regard to the environment, the oil spill, lottie's connection to the wilderness, and dare i fucking say it-- the baptism. notably, the exxon valdez oil spill had a devastating impact on alaska natives (and the many diverse groups therein). see the following source for more info.

whether the show is truly trying to do anything with lottie's heritage as mixed māori is complicated and debatable, but i think it's worth it to examine what's right in front of us anyways. the oil spill they invoked in the flashback measurably and profoundly harmed indigenous communities. they spliced the sound bytes with lottie, a mixed indigenous girl, screaming. why? (picture me ripping my hair out) MUCH TO THINK ABOUT.

and now for a few half-baked thoughts on the baptism--

the oil spill invoked happened in water. it is black and it is deadly and it kills. feathers get matted down and flighted animals lose their ability to fly and sometimes drown. marine mammals find it difficult to surface for breath and are also susceptible to drowning. you can't move, you can't escape, it's on you. the main causes of death are hypothermia, suffocation, and being poisoned. (javi, travis, and s3 just invoked cave huffing with concerning implications for akilah. <- is this anything? pattern recognition is my best and worst trait.)

MOVING ON, lottie was baptized in a lake... and her experience of that was this.

water, oil, poison, drowning, losing yourself, extraction, what was invited in by the seance and cemented by the submersion. the inability to get it off, to get it out, to escape...

MUCH TO THINK ABOUT

[mapledbee]

lottie matthews | macbeth, act 5, scene 1.

[mapledbee]

a few saw 2 mandys for @revrsbeartrap :)))

[mapledbee]

Ten billion more dollars to the saw franchise

[mapledbee]

I am on episode 21 of Revolutionary Girl Utena. This show is my SOUL! Also, so much hair. You know I’m loving it.

If you’ve never seen Utena, here is an excellent preview.

BTW I copied most of these shots from the show and official art because that’s what I do when I like things.