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docholligay · 10 months

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Dog and Wolf

Hello! This is about up to Episode 3 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 3 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the third episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me. Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open

I love Taissa because I feel like she’s horrible in a way that is so relatable for me personally. Perhaps that’s the gift of this show--it’s like a fucked up Sailor Moon where no matter what your ‘deal’ is you can find someone who makes you feel represented, only instead of you being a princess of the galaxy you’re a gelatinous blob of bad impulses and coping mechanisms. Anyway.

There’s a one man show I really love, and no one ever watches it, but I am borderline obsessed with the way it tells stories, called “In and of Itself” and one the of the things it talks about in that show is the time between wolf and dog. That’s the time of day when the sun is so low, that you can’t tell the difference between a wolf and a dog.

Doc, what the fuck does this have to do with anything? Taissa is a wolf. This isn’t just me saying this, this has already been shown a few times within the show, there’s a lot of wolf references and imagery generally, sure, but SPECIFICALLY in reference to Taissa*. But she’s living in a world that is domesticated, now. Her wife is a dog. Her wife is upright, and kind, and thoughtful. Her wife believes good things of her, and is, you know what? Actually naive. When she says Tai promised that this campaign would be about the issues, she shows a stunning lack of knowledge not only about how politics is done but about who her wife IS.

Tell you what, if I ran for anything, my wife would just assume I was going to start committing overt social violence immediately, which is part of the reason I DON’T run for shit, is I would be hedged into a situation where I KNOW I would compromise my values and become a person I can’t be proud of.

And Tai too! her first impulse is to weaponize something Bathurst didn’t do and couldn’t have prevented--his family potentially owning enslaved people. But she knows it’s an effective weapon, the same way she sets herself against Allie, the same way she doesn’t attempt to convince fucking jackie of anything but shows her that she’s no longer leader, the same way she is going to use Bathurst’s daughter’s addiction to bolster her own campaign. THE SAME WAY SHE HIRED A WOMAN TO TRY AND GET THE OTHER GIRLS TO CRACK. Taissa believes that the best defense is a good offense and that was never ever just on the field.

Taissa is a predator.

And this is part of the problem with Sammy, too, isn’t it? Sammy is displaying wolvish tendencies, aggression and strong pack behavior with his family. IN many ways, he is a Taissa who has not learned to appear a dog in the dim light.

I’m not unconvinced that part of this show is about generational trauma but we haven’t gotten far enough for me to make more than a throwaway comment about that, so.

Maybe the woods let Taissa be the wolf she always was. Maybe everything happening with the postcard is going to release that ugliness, that strength, that power and that darkness.

*I think this is too on the nose, but I’m not leaving out the possibility that Taissa killed Jackie. I’ve talked before about rabbits and wolves in this show, and Jackie is Doomed, and Shauna’s fucking weird rabbit thing I think has to do with still hating yet memorializing Jackie, jackrabbit, etc etc etc. I am gonna laugh so hard if Jackie is alive ahaha.

#Doc watches Yellowjackets #Yellowjackets S1 E3

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cavehags · 1 year

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love the yellowjackets/the circle crossover. just wondering do you know how the wilds girls (and boys if you feel inclined) would play the circle? 👀⭕️🏝

thank you VERY much for taking an interest in this weird crossover of things. i don't remember the boys well enough to speak to them but here's what i think about the girls!

leah isn't exactly catfishing--she's using her own name and pictures--but she's portraying herself as much more social than she really is, whether she recognizes that in herself or not. and while she should be self-aware enough to realize that everyone in the game is representing their personalities in a calculated way, because that's the game, instead it just makes her paranoid and keen to hunt out the catfishes. she overanalyzes every interaction she has with other players to the point that audiences are convinced she's going crazy. this makes her vulnerable when another player named "marcus" comes into her DMs with flirty pictures and gossip about some strange interactions he's had with shelby. then, a game rolls around where everyone has to publicly answer questions submitted anonymously by other contestants. when asked who she trusts least in the game, leah names shelby. shelby was #1 and #3 in the past two rankings, so tactically speaking, it's a risky move. she's very, very lucky that it plants a seed of doubt in the other players that's powerful enough to get shelby, rather than leah, eliminated that night.

fatin is catfishing as a white guy. when entering a group where other people's snap judgments will determine her success, sidestepping factors like racism and misogyny is just practical! she plays a basic, flirty, work-hard-play-hard finance bro named marcus. she expects to coast for a long time on a strategy of sliding into every girl's DMs and giving the lower-ranked girls incriminating gossip about the more powerful girls so as to keep them firing on each other, hoping that means that she'll never land in the hot seat herself. fatin often monologues to the camera about how she's weaponizing the internalized misogyny most girls have. the one problem with her strategy is that few of these girls came here planning to flirt, and even fewer are the rash act-first-ask-questions-later type that fatin was hoping they'd be. she doesn't make it to the end. but when she does get blocked, she stops by leah's apartment to try to make amends, and... could there still be a spark? it's inconclusive, but the energy leaves fatin eagerly looking forward to seeing her again in the finale.

shelby is every inch herself, of course. her bio makes it clear she's a good christian girl whose interests include charity work and community theater. her persona is relentlessly welcoming and kind. after she's ranked pretty low her first night, she bounces back from the near-blocking with a positive attitude. in a game where everyone has to say something positive about another player, shelby is one of the very few whose messages can't reasonably be interpreted to be backhanded compliments--and to top it off, she starts private chats with the other players who were on the receiving end of backhanded compliments to see how they're feeling. she ends up moving up through the power rankings with surprising ease. even when she's an influencer, she refuses to engage in any politics. rather than giving any personal reasons for eliminating a specific rival, she points to the math behind eliminating the last-place player, the person the whole group would presumably least mind saying goodbye to. her diplomacy is enough to keep her ranked highly for a while, but it ends as quickly as it began; one night, she's ranked third, and the next night, she's blocked.

toni is just too angry to hack it in this game, unfortunately. after she picks a public fight with shelby on day one, she ends up being the first player blocked because of her negative vibes. the circle offers her her a second chance to stick around by playing as a catfish going forward, but toni bombs that too. she's totally out of the game by day three, and honestly, she's happy to be done.

rachel plays as herself, leading with a profile photo of her on the diving board. and branding herself as a champion is very consistent with her gameplay. she holds herself to high standards and crafts every message with great care not to stir up any shit she doesn't want stirred. unfortunately, after she repeatedly opts not to open up about herself, the other players start to regard her as a mysterious and even secretive player, and it's too easy to make a case to send her home. what pisses rachel off the most is that she's the very last player to be blocked before the finale, and she's sure that if she had made it to the final rankings, everyone would have changed up the way they voted to put the most unlikely winners at the top. if she could have survived one more ranking, she's positive she would have won. when they bring her back in the finale, she can't quite manage to hide her bitterness and she gets dragged for being a sore loser.

nora plays as a green-haired gamer girl. she says bluntly in her confessional that people often find her communication style unusual and off-putting, so having a similarly "weird" public face will help them piece together that she just has an eccentric vibe. unluckily for nora, she's just too quiet and too strange to blend in with this group of normies. after toni, she's the second elimination, and most people kind of forget she existed by the time she returns for the finale.

dot plays a brutally efficient game. catfishing as "matt," a blue-collar dad in his early 40s, she wins the hearts of everyone in the circle with great jokes and a reputation for unwavering honesty. dot knows the show very well, and she understands the importance of proving oneself to be "authentic." with that in mind, she engineers opportunities to prove "matt" to be a man of integrity. when toni starts a public fight with shelby in the circle chat on day one, dot steps in to deliver some tough fatherly love, letting toni know that she's not making the best first impression and that the community would be better served if everyone tried to hear each other out. taking a public stance in a controversial conversation makes "matt" look mature and principled (even if, behind the scenes, dot very much made that call based on the quick mental calculus that there was no way toni was bouncing back from that and siding with shelby was the more strategic choice). and later on, dot wins even more respect by tanking an alliance that was starting to hurt her game; although "matt" is tight with "marcus" for the first half of the game, as soon as dot notices that the girls' relationships with "marcus" are starting to fray, she picks her moment to create a groupchat with a few of the girls and admit to them that "marcus" has been bragging about consistently ranking them low. it's a vicious move--and it ensures dot a spot in the finale.

martha is the circle's most successful catfish. she sets out to play her own personality, but with the name emily, using photos of a thin, beautiful, curly-haired model a few years older than herself. she explains to camera that social media is very image-obsessed, but she knows people will love her if they give her a chance that has nothing to do with looks. and she's right: people adore her. especially fatin, who ranks her #1 every single time after realizing that "emily" will believe absolutely anything "marcus" says. even though she has numerous slip-ups that should have given her act away (mostly based on being too naive to understand references to sex and drugs), she's just so well-liked that most people, other than leah, don't really care that she's likely a catfish. martha wins the circle, and she cries when she learns she's taking home that 100K.

#the wilds #the circle

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dirhwangdaseul-archived · 11 months

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it feels true to life that the martínez family is consumed for these girls' story, both in the wilderness and irl, like we know already who survives, only three of those people are of color, and one of them is dead for nat's story while on our present, and it's like with travis death their very souls all end up being consumed, who will remember travis like nat did, and who will remember travis like javi did, so now who can travis be without nat and the girls and the wilderness? travis has no identity without javi or his father or. mother because what kid fucking does,? not. completely not without conditions or parts of ourselves smashed with the lessons of the world built by that unit, his rage was so.obvious, so easy, trying to distance himself from. his family to be someone by himself, someone away from flex, a teenage struggle well known to everyone, to be someone that doesn't feel shaped entirely by those around us, is it hormones? is it that our society and community can't be enough? is it that simply is human to travel? to adventure? to experiment with the self? to have the the opportunity to break into a million pieces and still be... something, someone?

but... his coming of age, his next universe stunted by the wilderness, his next world is built on gutting all of that off from his heart, so that it can be nat's and the wilderness's, to be able to acquiesce to the society chosen by the girls who make the wilderness' power a reality by the power of storytelling, and specifically through the heads of the pack, nat, van, misty, shauna, taissa, lottie.... of them... nat is truly his perdition, she who doubted, she who runs, she who is loved by travis, his last doubts fade to her radiance and his love, and so he literally destroys his brother's remains for a life with her, an identity forged for them, the king of nat the queen, united in heart and hearth forever, and all it took was this brown family as an offering to the land, like i said, consumed for the story to take place, no adults, no hearts of old are allowed, just the things built out there like nat and travis kingdom

im not sure if it's intentional but it is a mirror of life how often brown families get consumed for white womanhood to rise to power, but simply for white hegemony to break away traditional structures that don't belong to a globalized white supremacist world and that separate families to the point of no return but even so a simple desire to participate in the comforts of capital usually means cutting parts of one self to achieve a certain, white, ideal, like the nuclear family in commercials, i think yellowjackets could benefit with some delving into propaganda and media and civilization vs life proper (van is right there), but what im. trying to say is that modern life asks of brown and black families to mold themselves into whiteness to fit in, and maybe the current hegemony asks that of all of us, because nat too has to break herself and the love she bears for javi and travis to acquiesce to that white womanhood that rises in strength as the story goes, and like maybe it was accidental. i. dont think the writers see the imbalance in how many white girls survived and how many girls of color will die and have done so already, but regardless, accidental or not, that story doesn't belong entirely to white society either so maybe they stumbled upon it, because it's the story of how we manage to belong to the world, by understanding which parts of us go with other people and which parts get cut off for not being able to do so as well

idk what the wilderness does represent truly, because it is not meant to be just nature or one thing in particular if you ask me, the. ambiguity has been the point, and with that in mind there's something there that speaks of its form belonging to the observer, which means that maybe, as audience who observes too, we get to see different things there too, and for me a lot has to do with acquiescing to and preserving human life wherever we are because that's human, we want to love and live, our nourishment isn't just hearth but the warmth in the story of the hearth too, stories as this motivators to live; what greater motivators than the love of life itself as seen in the hearts of others, and this society, this modern world we live in, the ones they inhabit, it's a society that has put white womanhood as the face of all the stories, nat is given to these myths as not herself but as the tool of the group and the wilderness, but it's misty, another white woman, that affirms the violence that the group gets more comfortable with, it's been said, but it's another woman of color, a black girl, akilah, who shows restraint in the face of violence as well as travis who does try to save nat but we don't know if he would have saved anyone else the same save his own brother, interestingly enough he gets crowned king as does travis by the love nat and travis bear each other, he too was doomed always by the poison that drips through their love, with his brother's raw heart he reaffirms his commitment to this society, that maybe it's ours, the only way to belong, the wilderness knows, is by breaking the bonds before like shauna with jackie like misty with kristen, like travis with javi, and in. contrast to them, mari who i don't think was ever to have depth has been calling for violence for a while, so like a really interesting collection of opinions we did get when it came to cannibalism, but they all paled before the strength of the girls that survived because the season already showed us that when it came to opinions, the core yellowjackets' will reigns whole, but it's in the story they build in their hearts a story tied with religious awe and belief, in turn tying them to the wilderness, a wilderness that i think, finds strength in that union. and the ability for its will to be enforced seamlessly with the face of chance and accident, and with this i wonder did the wilderness teach us to break to bond and survive, or did it teach itself that didactic cruelty from us?

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets meta #travis martinez #sigh #deah #dez

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docholligay · 1 year

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Rabbit and Wolf: ep 2

Hello! This is about up to Episode 2 of Yellowjackets, and ONLY episode 2 of Yellowjackets. I have not seen beyond the second episode, at all, and know NOTHING about this show. Please do not spoil it for me. Things that are spoilery in nature, for me, include: saying things like “Just wait!!” confirming or denying anything I put forward, outside information about the cast interviews or creator statements, leading questions like “Do you think “blank moment” means anything?” etc. Remember that Y’ALL HAVE SEEN THE SHOW AND I HAVE NOT. This informs the way you talk about things relating to the show. Just be really careful is all I’m asking. Also: If there is LITERALLY any stance I could take on this show or character that would make you upset, please just fucking block the tag

If you WOULD like to discuss the show and my takes on it, the Discord is right here! I don’t go there, so it’s a great place to get every emotion out.

Please thank @sailorsunspot and @moonlight-frittata for backing this odd way of doing a liveblog, and remember my tip jar is always open!

So this show has, even in just the first two episodes, set up a lot of rabbit and wolf imagery. ANd while strict binaries are not always fun in a real world sense, they are very, very fun oftentimes in fiction. And so, I think this show is beginning to present that in the wold, there are rabbits and wolves. Predators and prey.

And it isn’t always even what you might imagine. Seeing Tai’s hand transform into a perfect wolf, seeing her remember the wolf, in no way does this surprise me. The wolf was always inside her, she was a wolf on the soccer field, none of this is news.

But what about Shauna? Shauna is a frumpy mom. Life has failed her, no one would think about her as a wolf. (Adam even says “Enjoy the rest of your minivan” which i think is such a brilliant little highlight of Shauna’s life even if here is the only place that I can find to mention it) She even loves rabbits in a perverse way, or at the very least the idea of them, the icon of them. Maybe as a representative of thing she wishes she were, or, a memory of the girls that were. But Shauna out and out kills rabbits more than once, she kills rabbits and feeds them to her family in a fit of sheer pique. Is this about how she killed at ate rabbits, both animal and human, out in the wild?

How do the other girls figure? The ones who lived, one would think, are wolves, but do wolves work for how we see them? I’m not sure. I’ve seen exactly two episodes and this is an idea that I am just now forming, so it is not fully developed yet, but MIsty for example I have trouble seeing as a wolf. What would she be, then? A spider, laying her traps? A snake, hiding in the grass? I don’t actually know yet.

And both rabbits and wolves are social pack animals, like the team of girls. They cannot exist alone, for all the popular imagery, a lone wolf is a dead one. So are they in the wilderness, in what I think will be a very fun thing to come, if one of then tries to leave or go against the pack, I think they could find themselves a very specific shade of fucking dead.

#Doc watches Yellowjackets #Yellowjackets S1 E2

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