#Season 8 has some great episodes/good arc but i just really don't vibe with how cruel the Doctor is sometimes/Danny deserved better | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rappaccini · 11 months

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big catchall yellowjackets s2 thoughts post

tldr: season 2 has a great takeoff, hits some turbulence, and ends in a a potentially disastrous crash landing. eps 1-8: soar in places but shaky in others. ep 9: thanks i hate it!

according to conventional season progression, season 1/act i is the act of establishment. s1 of yj was incredible on that front. we really sink our teeth into all the characters and the plotlines. great questions are teased.

s2 is the act of conflict. this is the one where we dive into what the story's about. i still think they did a great job on that front-- rational vs supernatural, with the girls' descent into cannibalism, into hunting each other, into embracing lottie's cult mindset and natalie's rebellion against it.

but then ep 9 kinda fucks it. the biggest offending elements are things that could work in the right context, but i don't think that was it.

i think the fandom went rancid on fan theories and are now descending into aggressive positivity/negativity infighting. glad i decided not to get involved. esp given how this ended

since nobody reads these, i'll say the truth: season 2 was by no means a bad season (though it certainly has a bad finale), but it was definitely weaker than s1. the show isn't off the rails, but it bit off more than it can chew, and now it’s choking. there are now massive cracks in the foundation. s3 is the do or die to fix this... and i don't think they will.

alright so yj went in one episode from my favorite show currently airing, that i tell everyone to watch and make a social event out of every week with my friends..... to a show that i will recommend to no one bc i don't want them to get let down as hard as i was. when s3 comes out i'll wait for all the episodes to air, read some spoilers and ask some friends what they think before deciding to get back into, and if it gets canned before that happens... honestly, i'd be fine with that.

positives

the first act of cannibalism was perfect.

shauna and lottie. loved watching shauna's paranoia melting into total deference. both of them lost a best friend they had major gay vibes with, who really kept their worst impulses in check. i always felt it would be... right, for them to link up and form a codependent bond as a result. hopefully this is the start of that. (not to mention that the shaman needs her butcher) i'm the only person who ships shottie. so be it.

misty and crystal's friendship

the individual arcs of nat, travis, shauna, taissa... until the end

fleshing out akilah and mari. they're now at the tier lottie and van were in s1.

the development of lottie's cult taking time to coalesce

the stillbirth of shauna's baby was handled great

callie becoming a much more well rounded character. thank god. for a show about teens, we can't neglect the one in the present.

jeff knowing all shauna's sins, telling himself he's fine with it, but then having to contend with them firsthand and faltering? excellent.

the girls all losing their grip on reality by ep 8.

shauna butchering javi. incredible scene. love the buildup and the gore aftermath. love her hiding her face as she does it.

card pull theory confirmed. seems an appropriate way to start the cannibal sacrifice ritual. lots of fun variations to keep it fresh-- (quarry falls off a cliff, quarry is beaten/stabbed to death, quarry gets away, quarry kills her hunter, quarry makes an alliance ahead of time with one of her hunters to kill someone else for her, subtly rigged card pull, obviously rigged card pull, the group killing the one girl who won't participate, 'fuck the card pull, let's kill the other team instead of one of our own')

cave theory confirmed. good. we need a separate place for the second group to go, and now we have it. but idk who the fuck would join the second clan after ben burned the cabin down.

the cabin burning down kills it. it burning is a good thing, an important step in the group being further encroached into the wild, just feels like it happened way too soon and bc of the wrong person. more later.

negatives

more on this later but... Poor Lottie. fuck off. she was the villain s1 set up until she suddenly got switched up between seasons.

walter why. dude's just a plot device to get shauna off for killing adam and give misty a love interest she doesn't need. to the fans who hate travis, why do that when walter's right here? he's the Real unnecessary annoying boyfriend character.

crystal's body vanishing went nowhere. i like that she dies in the way she does, don't like that it goes nowhere.

so cabin guy doesn’t matter I guess

so javi's friend went nowhere

so the man with no eyes went nowhere

sure, we need to keep mysteries for later, but there's 'saving a resolution for later' and there's 'just dropping a question after it's raised' -- that's what the show did. you have to answer some questions before you raise new ones.

so that scene where travis died.... wasn't filmed weirdly and filled with inconsistencies bc the writers were implying that lottie was lying. it was literally just inconsistent and weird. hate it!!!

the cops. what even..... and kevyn dies but pedostasche LIVED?????

i'm cool with adam's murder being investigated. i just don't think it should've happened this fast. it's been One Day. and the entire resolution happened so quickly. the writers just tied it off and threw it away.

in general the women’s plot lines lack momentum. they spin their wheels till they reunite at the compound, then have a clip show until it’s time to commit mass suicide for some reason.

jeff never actually confronting real shauna about her repressed feral side.

'we conveniently forgot things' ..... no. lottie did on acct of the electroshock. none of the others should have. this feels like the writers trying to justify the continuity errors and sudden reframing of lottie as Misunderstood Reluctant Prophet.

'travis never believed in lottie' except he did and we don't even see him lose faith. another inconsistency (no, this can't be 'nat not understanding travis' because dude, she's his best friend, lover and the most important person in his life.)

all of episode 9.

ben burning down the cabin. i think he'd do it, but he isn't the best arsonist for the job (more on that below)... also are we not doing 'two warring clans' anymore? because who the fuck would join ben's after he did this?

massive missed opportunity for nat and travis to like. talk. alone. about what happened with javi. there's no resolution with that.

nat doesn't even really have a moment where she breaks down over it. she just goes numb, then participates in javi's butchering as if she weren't trying to save him only hours ago, with no indication of a changed mindset.

lottie becoming fully passive. what a letdown. she went from the character with the most potential as of the end of s1 to a wad of wet tissue paper.

nat becoming the leader.... seems heavily implied she's the antler queen, not to mention all the promo has been screaming 'come find out who aq is tonight!' so it sure looks like it.... no this doesn't make sense. it's ooc for her to accept this role and lottie's influence. it just does not gel with what we've seen of her so far.

it 100% feels like the writers, after spelling out lottie as the leader of the wilderness cult in s1 (that slow build of her embracing her delusions, attributing it to divine powers, seizing control of the girls as jackie loses power for good, starting the sacrificing, "who the fuck is lottie matthews" being a question meant to make us afraid), decided they wanted a Big Twist and decided to cram it in here to surprise Reddit. more on this later.

the only way i can see this working is 'each season, we get a new queen. s1 was jackie, s2 was lottie, s3 will be nat, s4(/5 if they get that far) will be tai/shauna. and each season shows each queen's affect on the group, how her power wanes, and how she's deposed and replaced.'

HOWEVER: nat accepting leadership FROM lottie? no.

and what the hell was all that heavy foreshadowing that Only Lottie would be it.

the pacing of the adult plot felt so off and i couldn't even tell if they were hunting lottie or shauna by the time the hunt got started. the resolution of the adam plot was so sloppy. no resolution for anything with taissa. van sure was There. did lottie poison all her followers or not.

nat's death. i'm cool with nat dying in s2. yellowjackets is shauna's story before anyone else's-- she's our protagonist. nat was (WAS... i guess) the one voice of reason, and responsible for the girls' survival, and lottie the voice that guides the girls into self destruction. if lottie's way of thinking is going to overcome the women in the present, that means nat can't counteract it. therefore, nat must die, and s2/s4 (the Season of Conflict or the Season of Emotional Lows) are the right times. s2 is better bc it inspires the characters to get more active earlier in the story.

but dude. not like THAT????

i still don't know if nat bought lottie's story about travis or not. i still don't know if nat started to truebelieve the cult shit. i still can't tell if nat was in on killing lottie or decided to help hunt shauna. she just... goes with no closure on any of those questions

i'm cool with her sacrificing herself for lisa. good parallel to failing to save javi.

but 'i dove in front of lisa to save her from.... misty quigley, who is smaller than me, who is running at her very slowly with a tiny needle that she jabs through my many many layers of thick clothing, and it contains a poison that kills me instantly' ....... is so dumb.

making it all about ~misty losing her bestie~ ......... nat never even referred to misty as her bestie. the filming doesn't seem to make it seem like misty's overselling it. the show seems to genuinely think in that moment that they're best friends.

oh my god that was for the fandom wasn't it.

nat's dying hallucination. what was that. 'i was dead the whole time so i should accept my death now' what. also why does she see lottie in her vision and not travis?

the finale left me full of doubt abt the future of the show. now i don’t trust the writers to do a good job anymore. bad place to be in.

the cracks:

1. inconsistent characterization

example: akilah. her being played by a totally different actress doesn't count. that couldn't be helped. i'm talking about how akilah goes from being a true believer of lottie's to 'i never bought into it, i'm just riding the fence' without a moment of acknowledgment that her faith faded... and then it doesn't even go anywhere bc she instantly follows lottie's lead and swears fealty to nat

example: shauna. she has a special bond with javi that totally evaporates in s2. it's fine if it breaks down, you just need to acknowledge in-show that it did. have javi approach shauna, probably during her labor, and be rejected.

big example: nat. why the hell would she agree to stay in the cabin and become the girls' leader. she was never particularly close to them, they just tried to murder her, she doesn't trust lottie's bs and she isn't the leader type. it just feels like the writers wanted a twist.

BIG example: lottie matthews. see below.

2. pacing and timeline confusion. you mean the adult plot all happened one week away from s1? dude. tell us immediately, not in episode six. do you know how many gripes about taissa being a senator who never goes to senate and abandoned sammy at school for days we could have avoided.

not to mention ep 9 switching from night to day to night in MINUTES.

the adults conveniently forgetting things about their time in the woods... oh, it's so the writers can retcon the hell out of it and claim 'unreliable narrator', I see

the drag of the adult timeline

in the past, the slowburn was the right move. shauna's labor and the first hunt arrived at the exact right times. but the characters just kind of ebb and flow through the season-- nat'll be super important for three episodes, then sit in the background for three, then she pops up again. that kind of shit. like, javi literally sat in the corner for shauna's birth. dude was Not There. what the hell. no one comments on ben being missing in ep 8 or 9

ben. his hallucinations were great, but did we really need four of them?

3. redshirts. i get that covid made this necessary in s1, but in s2 we're starting to have a problem. crystal was fantastic, but gen and melissa don't have distinct personalities. they don't have interests or hobbies. they just say lines that could be interchangeable. they're like the mari and akilah of s2, except at least we could tell mari and akilah's personalities apart.

there are three yellowjacket girls who have yet to be cast. hopefully they have personalities and the writers put real effort into building them and genlissa out.

otherwise when they're all eaten, it won't feel important.

crystal proves it's possible to do. so do it. fast.

4. fandom

the cast and writers are way too online. they should not be on reddit, reading fan theories or sharing their favorites in public. they should not be in these spaces.

it feels like misty's now the fandom interpretation of her (but straight), that taivan were softened to appeal to their popularity, that lottie especially was retconned into a well intentioned character and nat into the leader of the cult as a way to Stay Ahead Of The Fans.

even the alanis morrisette cover of the theme that keep playing feel like the writers are like 'look at us! we're a famous show now!'

at this rate they’ll make akilah pit girl

...'no one guessed the ending yet!' say the cast and writers............ yeah. because no one imagined how bad of an idea it would be.

the consequences:

1. if we can't rely on the characters to be consistent between seasons, how can we get excited about watching them grow, if they might be totally different people or jump out of their projected arcs for shock value/bigger appeal?

2. how can we care about the adult timeline at this point. and as for the teens, s3's gotta cover spring-summer-fall. if they do a 3-ep act for each like they did this season, that's a lot of time to cover.

3. if genlissa still have no distinguishing characteristics, and the redshirts follow in their footsteps, how will we care when they're the bulk of who's killed off next season and in s4? (bc gen and mari should be getting a ticket to s4 to keep pit girl intrigue alive)

4. if the cast and writers are consumed with giving the people what they want (shocking twists! surprise, lottie isn't the ringleader even though s1 very carefully built up to revealing her as it. she's just misunderstood!) how are they going to stay faithful to what the story needs. can we even trust their instincts anymore?

as for the characters, best execution to worst:

the greats—

SHAUNA

the only arc that feels great start to end. as befits the protagonist.

her issues with her daughter are fully fleshed out and so visceral. everything with the pregnancy is great.

trying to cling to jackie after her death? loved that.

being the one who starts the cannibalism? loved that.

formally becoming the butcher? loved that

initially being a skeptic/fearful of lottie, and succumbing to blind worship after her stillbirth trauma? makes sense. dynamic and fascinating. her rejecting the hunt in the present when she joined in the past? good shit.

as much as i HATE antler queen nat, shauna being petty that she didn't get picked as lottie's favorite felt right.

and modern shauna trying to cling to a normal that's quickly dissolving? Good Shit

looping jeff and callie in here: also great. callie learning more about her fucked up family, jeff being stagnant but still allowed to display hidden depths as we learn he does genuinely Know All Of It, the awakening of violence in callie as shauna's traumas are passed on to her... and the way lottie latches onto that and gets creepy about it? yes please.

MARI

love mari being a hater, and keeping up her role as cook

love mari descending into fanaticism.

love mari breaking down when no one can see her. alexa barajas killed this role

mari is a social opportunist. misty is an antisocial one. mari understands how group hierarchy works and how to climb it, but has no skills to offer. misty doesn't, but has the skills. looking forward to see how this plays out going forward.

mari is the front runner for pit girl and it should still be her— two contenders are no names, one is gen, who has no personality or arc yet. mari finally having her opportunism catch up to her and her blind faith used against her is a fitting end.

AKILAH

love expanding her character and giving her more scenes with tai.

love her backstory about her sister and nephew, rachel, and wanting to keep studying.

love the nugget subplot

love her introducing a third party of 'idk if this cult shit is real, but i like having friends'. wish we got more insight into how she arrived at this conclusion since in s1 she is very much a lottie minion

feels like she’s coming to represent compromise: fine, ill become a cannibal, but im keeping my hope of escape alive. fine, i’ll go to woods church but just for the people. fine, i'll hunt nat but please can we not let javi drown.

but then it went nowhere.

idk man it felt like they were preparing akilah for a defection to nat's faction but then all that never happens

CRYSTAL

proof the writers can make the extras distinct and vibrant while still serving an efficient story purpose.

she was a minor character for five episodes but she's such a standout. great performance. great use of her. great writing

she came in, gave misty the origin of her theatre hobby and her ability to manipulate, and peaced out. a side char at her best.

JAVI

represents innocence. he had to die to mark the start of the ruthlessness. fantastic execution.

love his contribution of the cave mystery

love his connection to nat and travis

just don't love how he does nothing for all of ep 6

mixed bag—

TRAVIS

my boy. loved his arc. until ep 9.

it was important for him to try the lottiecult out, so that way when he disowns it it feels more dynamic.

except then he never... disowns it.

so what's all nat's 'travis never believed that' stuff. is the disowning still coming, or did the writers Kinda Forget.

mvp of episode 8

then in ep 9 he just... accepts that he has to eat his brother and stay with the girls who murdered them. bare minimum i was hoping for him to take off with ben (and nat) as a step towards being a more active character.

now he's right back to sitting in a corner.

my hot take is that the fandom hates him in the exact same way fandoms of mostly-male ensembles hate the one underwritten female character who's there to be a love interest. they demonize her every action, refuse to examine her situation with empathy, and insist her relationship with the fan fave bad boy is toxic/she's unworthy of him, so they can mentally break him up with her and ship him with the same-sex chars he has interesting dynamics with, but in a watered-down shallowed-out fluffed-up version of the relationship they originally had.

also, i find the idea that shauna and tai (two women who are toxic to their partners)'s insistence that natravis were toxic is rooted in them being angry that travis and nat resisted the cult groupthink together; we're not the bad ones, they are. i'm still disappointed that didn't happen.

wish he got to develop a connection with coach a la tai and akilah’s bond. coulda been great.

anyway.

NATALIE

becoming increasingly isolated as she clings to rationality while the others descend into woods woo woo madness? loved that.

her friendship with ben isolating her even more from these girls who never liked her in the first place? loved that.

a complex arc with travis regarding javi? loved that.

her bond with lisa is sweet. her attempts to deprogram her? loved that.

the entire first hunt was fantastic.

what was that ending. what the fuck.

wilderness cult queen nat doesn't make sense. see the above reasons why. feels like this is just here to shock us. and i'm shocked... that it's this stupid. her being A Queen i'm fine with-- just not the one leading the exact cult that JUST TRIED TO MURDER HER and DROWNED HER BOYFRIEND'S BROTHER.

i'm cool with nat being singled out as a leader by lottie.

but the only way it'd work for me is if nat rejects the crown, runs for the woods, and sticks with ben. then you can have future drama where lottie's cult descends further into madness, and nat blames herself for not staying and taking control. and a queen-in-exile vibe that makes her especially alluring to the girls as an alternative to lottie

hopefully we'll get that if she's deposed. if. if.

again, her dying? i'm cool with it. like that? hell no.

so travis's extremely suspicious death was a Convenient Accident and poor lottie is innocent in all of it? fuuuuck off.

so lottie stalking natalie long enough to know exactly when she was in danger of suicide is just... not mentioned? fuck off.

(so the bank lady being stalked by lottie.... goes nowhere? fuck off)

so nat really did drink the kool aid, fall under lottie's spell, and get killed for it while blaming herself and insisting she's been dead since the crash. fuck offffff.

uhhh—

MISTY

watching her learn that through acting she can manipulate the girls was great.

revealing her opportunism during the javi hunt and springing into action to assert 'lottie's will' over the others bc it raises her status? great.

loved her toxic theater girl psychosexual friendship with crystal. the way it ends felt earned and natural... mostly.

though honestly i think she needed to push her off that cliff. i worry that the writers are softening her up to appeal to the misty fandom

do the writers and actors know if misty is misunderstood or coldblooded? i can't tell anymore.

100% think the framing of nat's death is for the mistynat stans

walter why

TAI

past tai starting out a skeptic and succumbing to belief because of the baby's loss? love it.

teen tai leading the hunt is great.

her relationship with van is great but i get the vibe that it was softened to appeal to the shippers. the big conflict between them re lottie never really erupted.

so zero answers about what's going on with her split personality in the present huh

biggest victim of the bad timing in the present.

sammy is still waiting for someone to pick him up from school

VAN

her being alive in the present is a big ? to me. feels like a massive oversight that she wasn't mentioned in s1. reeks of 'we didn't plan this'

still kinda wish she weren’t in the present

the business was in character though, and her seemingly being more attracted to tai's shadow self than tai herself? intriguing. can we make that actually go somewhere though? with payoff?

but her getting increasingly vicious in the past was great.

however i feel like she was held back specifically to make taivan soft moments for the fans. van's big struggle needs to be tai or lottie, and it seems like they deliberately avoided making her choose.

i get the vibe that mari's crazy devotion was meant to be van's, but they swapped it bc taivan softness trumped all

van having cancer never has any payoff. at this point i kinda hope it gets her. or that she died in the woods

GENLISSA

they were there

they feel like one hive mind. like the poor man's mari-akilah

their designs are great but idk a thing about them

the tiny details: melissa participates in the hunt while gen stays to pin down travis, melissa reads magazines over and over, the girls seem to be genuine friends, the girls prepare natalie for her hunt instead of lottie, yet are wilderness true believers... all that feels like it's incidental, after ep 9.

THE EXTRAS

didn't do anything mindmeltingly bad.

but dude you have to fast track their characterization.

gen and mari shouldn't die until s4 so the pitgirl mystery is still somewhat intact, meaning that we've gotta frontload the deaths with redshirts. gonna be tough to care if we've never even heard them speak.

we've seen the writers flesh out crystal. we know they can do it.... so do it, dude.

please god no—

BEN

said elsewhere: the pacing of his arc is So Off.

starting the season with him mapping the valley, and ending with him using that knowledge to find the tree cave? great payoff.

him sinking into depression after watching the girls become cannibals was great. took too long to wake up.

benching himself during the birth was infuriating. dude, you are the only adult, you are the health teacher, you were these girls' coach for months if not years before the crash. get the fuck up and help this teenager through her labor.

and burning down the cabin... no. it doesn't seem like his act to make.

at this point i can't imagine anyone joining his faction, so why is he even still alive

also how is this fucker gonna survive. he can't hunt. he can't walk. he's the wilderness's most wanted. he has no one who'll do that for him.

LOTTIE

the retconning of this character from all-but-confirmed leader of the group to 'nope it's nat!', from bloodthirsty wannabe queen bee finding her confidence in the wild and finally unleashing it to 'oh dear i didn't mean for you girls to take it this far'.... i think this killed the show. or at least gave it a serious stab wound that's going to kill it unless they do a Lot of heavy lifting in s3 to repair it, which is unlikely.

Poor Lottie is one of the big fandom consensuses. oh don't we feel so sorry for assuming she's the big bad when she was nothing but a victim all along! she didn't do anything, she was gaslit and manipulated! ~all she wants to do is help~

and now the writers seem to be backing it, with how s2 shakes out.

in s1 lottie is something of a foil to jackie: both are affluent girls, only children. but lottie's family ignores her while jackie's spoils her. lottie is medicated and hidden away, jackie is indulged everything. lottie and jackie both have a capacity for being deeply mean-spirited, but jackie has the confidence to be the queen bee, while lottie hovers in the background. as jackie falls apart in the woods, lottie starts to feel freer. she starts talking back and snapping at the girls more, she (unhealthily) embraces her 'visions' (delusions) thanks to laura lee as jackie's friendship with shauna evaporates, she finds some kind of faith in a new order as jackie loses hers in the old one. the loss of the laura lee-lottie, shauna-jackie gay as hell friendships marks disaster and a transfer in the girls' social order.

they are very much meant to be compared to each other. and lottie is to be understood as a tragic character sinking deeper into delusions because she just wants to feel special for the first time.

yes, lottie is not evil. she's anxious, needs reassurance from others, and initially very hesitant about her hallucintions/visions.

BUT.

she is not a victim. she is not the manipulated, misunderstood sweet girl who only has good intentions.

... literally the first thing lottie does when she's in control of the girls is pick up a weapon, whip them into a rabid frenzy and lead them to humiliate jackie (aka the highest-ranked girl, who lottie is now challenging for leadership), take her sexual partner, and when said partner rejects them, they assault, hunt and try to sacrifice him.

yes, she's under the influence of shroomberry booze and sad about laura lee dying... but dude. just imagine if charlotte were charlie and travis were tanya. would you really be saying 'oh charlie didn't mean to get half a dozen boys to sexually assault tanya, strip her naked, chase her, tie her down and try to murder her when she rejected him, he was just drunk and sad'

all the shrooms did was remove everyone's inhibitions: natalie becomes happier, giggly, and acts from her heart to patch things up with travis. ben comes out and tells misty to fuck off. misty tries to fuck ben. shauna lashes out at jackie. van lets go of her scar shame..... and lottie does That.

yes, the other girls do That too. akilah, mari, van, taissa, shauna, probably-melissa-but-who-knows-they-never-bring-it-up all participate. but lottie is the one who starts it, by taking them to the cabin with the stated intent of taking something away from jackie forcibly, by starting the attack on jackie and the assault on travis, by telling the girls to think of him as a stag and leading the chase, by handing shauna a knife and telling her to kill him when they have him tied down.

when lottie has no inhibitions, she seeks power over her peers, and uses manipulation and violence to get and keep it.

then on day two lottie shows no signs of remorse, only slight embarrassment (it reads as 'sulky teenager upset that she got caught doing something bad', not 'oh god what have i done'), and goes right into sacrificing a bear heart and 'shed the blood, my beautiful friends. and let the darkness set us free'

where the fuck did that girl go.

at this rate there better be some entity at play, bc that's the only way to excuse lottie's 180 back to passivity.

if they wanted a story about lottie being a tragic prophet figure, having her well-meant words and intentions twisted despite only wanting to help, then you probably should make sure her intentions are actually well-meant. because of doomcoming, the tone was set to expect the worst. and then it was walked back with no on-screen change of heart.

if you'd done that, if lottie had addressed doomcoming and mentioned that she's regretful and doesn't want things to go down that road again, then lottie's arc would be about trying to control her worse impulses (her mean streak, her hunger for validation, her desire to punish the girls who threaten her power, her interest in possessing travis, her bloodlust, her ability to use her empathy for the other girls to manipulate them into becoming their worst selves, her belief that she's Chosen, the woods Picked Her, don't you see, she's not crazy, she's Special) as the girls keep persuading her to give into them, before ultimately succumbing to the role of tragic villain

just because lottie wants to help doesn't mean she can, and she won't accept it, because in the wilderness, the girls listen to her and validate her illness instead of ignoring her and shutting it up like her parents did.

the group wants lottie's validation and easy answers, they need nat's realism and heart.

that would mirror her adult plotline well-- lottie is trying, again, to have her cake and eat it too. she wants to be important, and loved, and eco-friendly, and a healer, but she also wants that rolex, and that specific smoothie (and if she doesn't get it she'll litter that eco-friendly cup and straw without a second thought), and total control over her followers and all their money and attention.

the (stalking and) kidnapping of nat/convergence of the yellowjackets just sets her back down that path towards cannibal shamanhood.

sure, give her electroshock to repress the memories. i like that angle. but the point needs to be that because of (murdering travis, she needs to have killed travis, come on) nat's presence setting her off, all those electroshock-repressed memories are returning....

just like in the past, lottie is faced with the same question: the girl you are deep down has always been repressed, and now she's starting to emerge, and it feels so good to finally become yourself... but what if that girl is dangerous? what if she's malicious?

lottie having doubts about her visions is important. but her fully succumbing to 'oh dear me i hate that everyone's taking my words and twisting them' just makes her a passive character.

poor lottie might be more likable, but she's so much less compelling. i hate this regression with all my heart. the idea of future episodes with passive, woe is me lottie makes me not want to watch them.

the crowning jewel of this is when she says 'nah i'm not in charge, nat is'

girl. are you kidding me.

top of my head season doctoring:

adult timeline. far more general bc it seems much harder to tie up.

immediately establish in the adult timeline how long it's been since s1.

no walter.

pair misty up with kevyn instead. misty reports nat missing, he takes it personally, they go on a buddy cop adventure where kevyn learns a lot about the wilderness years. and misty tries, again, to make a friend. this woman is a citizen detective, you know she'd love to hang out with a real one and play with his badge.

as for kevyn, i get the sense that his goth to cop pipeline was triggered by the crash. watching his best friend/first love vanish, and then the rescue efforts totally fail to find her and then give up, then learning if they'd just kept looking they could have saved her sooner? probably a pretty formative experience.

*scribbles walter out of the poster, draws kevyn in his place* fixed it!

no notes on shauna's arc, just on the pacing: wait a few episodes before the cops get on her tail. if it's only been a few days, no way are they gonna figure it out that fast. spend the first third of the season dealing with the aftermath, the second third with the cops appearing in their lives, the final third with them on the ropes. with kevyn partnered with misty, just have her and callie deal with creepercop alone.

taissa's series arc seems to be about control. her continuing to spiral as the other emerges is good. her fleeing to seek out van... honestly idk about that-- i don't like how van is just conveniently in society but never mentioned in s1, even though she clearly had relationships with the girls for a while afterwards. i'd find it more interesting if the other can find van but taissa can't. and have the other creep around the compound too.

in general, more emotional impact regarding simone and sammy? tai just ditches them. just give her some kind of closure for simone and sammy by the end?

give van more of a consistent arc-- leaping right back into lottie's shit like an addict into an old fix bc she wants her cancer cured

yes, keep lottie's initial intentions ambiguous. but slowly reveal her manipulative side over the season, and make the mask-off moment one where we see doomcoming lottie's return. think of how creepy she is with callie. more of that.

give nat closure abt travis. what was she right about? how did he die?

how he died: lottie killed him to get the gang back together. she misses her delusions and her specialness, and knew if she killed travis, she'd destabilize nat and make the others come running.

let nat remain skeptical of lottie to the end, instead of swinging back and forth between 'i don't trust you' and kool aid chugging

... did lottie poison her entire cult or not? i'm in favor of the mass suicide option. she doesn't need her placeholder cult anymore, now that she has the original one back. time to clean house and give It such a big sacrifice that It can never ignore them again.

is tai now on team cult? tbh i'd prefer if she were. more intriguing, and a bigger threat for s2 if shauna, who's just broken out of the groupthink, might find herself alone against the others. killing biscuit got her that senate seat and a reunion with van, what more could she gain?

(misty could go either way, i think. true opportunist.)

i'm 50/50 on kevyn dying. if he does, absolutely not by drinking an obviously suspicious drink given to him by a cult member. have him enter the line of fire during the hunt or something.

if he doesn't, he could be a good ally for the women down the line, so in my head i'd keep him.

regardless at least let him talk to nat. they mean a lot to each other. fuckin wild that he never realizes she's on the compound, or gets to ask her abt her involvement in the adam martin case.

pedostache dies no matter what. let callie shed blood— let the violence of the mother visit itself upon the daughter. let callie kill this gross fuckwad when he tracks shauna to the compound.

the yellowjackets frame lottie for adam's murder. kevyn can be a key part in this— he’s protective of nat and enough seeds could be planted re lottie being dangerous and wanting to lure the women back into her influence— he could swing the investigation in a way that implicates her and protects shauna.

but instead of lottie being back in the asylum, send her on the run. no repetitive return to the ward, more opportunities for conflict in s3.

if nat's gotta die, make the scenario less stupid. connect it more to lottie, her antagonist, instead of misty and a little needle. and let her see travis in her dying moments. it's literally all she wants.

anyway with nat dead, now the women are alone with lottie, who is on the loose, fascinated by callie, and pissed at them. they have to be the ones to resist her influence now without anyone coming to help them.

specifically, shauna's potentially all on her own, with tai and van on team wilderness and misty a wildcard, as winter in the adult timeline sets in.

teen timeline:

bring back the flashbacks showing the chars’ backstories. we kind of have ben this season. show us travis, akilah, mari, crystal, van.

even kevyn and jeff could be a good insight into the day everyone realized the plane went missing. what was that like for the friends the girls left behind?

give gen and melissa some distinguishing characteristics. like, make them a couple instead of friends. give them distinct hobbies and skillsets. build on the crumbs of melissa as a mini-van who does manual work, gen as a mini-shauna who does camp work. sow some tension: melissa is pro-wilderness cult (acknowledge that she was involved in lottie's doomcoming hazing), but gen isn't. or the reverse. or have them flip positions. give them something.

begin the season with lottie walking back her behavior because of doomcoming guilt... but have her give in now and then to those impulses; she's angry that not everyone believes her/calls her crazy like her parents did.... then she gets worried about what the consequences of that anger are as she realizes the girls aren't listening to her requests to settle down, and prefer her when she's at her worst.

specifically, lottie is more antagonistic towards nat, and has to warm up to her throughout the season as she also loses confidence in her ability to lead.

when lottie participates in the hunt contest, she's the one who refuses the gun and gains some respect for nat in the aftermath

in ep 6, give javi a moment where he tries to comfort shauna and is rejected. closure on their former friendship.

in ep 6, ben gets off his ass and out of his hallucination and helps deliver the baby, but it still dies.

recontextualize ben's total alienation from the group and suicide attempt in 7 as the girls totally losing respect for him after the baby doesn't survive, and ben being guilty enough to try cliff diving.

lottie offering herself to shauna in 7 is great. keep that.

8 is great. keep it all.

as for 9....

i like lottie having an 'uh what the fuck' moment when she realizes what everyone did on her behalf.

have the girls acknowledge that ben's fucking missing? why does no one bring it up?

can ben find crystal's body? so we know how he's gonna survive the winter? closure??? please???

give a few girls-- akilah most of all, moments of hesitation.

i like natalie rejecting ben's offer to run away together. the guilt feels right. she Would feel obligated to stay.

this is where travis comes in. how the fuck does he decide to stay with these girls after they make him eat his brother's RAW HEART?

he should still eat it. important moment of teen girl peer pressure taken to its most terrifying extreme.

lottie announcing nat as Chosen By The Wilderness... it feels in character for lottie to think this (and want to pawn off responsibility after getting more and more uncertain about it), but out of character that nat would accept it.

how about this: lottie wants nat to get over her skepticism and get in line with the rest of the girls. surely this Sign from The Wilderness will do it. and because lottie is freaking out about how the girls keep doing crazy shit on her behalf, she wants someone else to take responsibility.

so she picks natalie. now you're in charge. you deal with it. your cross to bear. come see how hard it is to get these girls in line.

natalie rejects it. she runs outside, and travis follows her because...

nat and travis need time to talk about javi alone. travis needs to know what happened beyond 'the wilderness chose' and nat needs to let her worries out. let's hear travis's end of why he believed in the lottiecult: he wanted to fit in with the group, he was terrified of dying, of javi dying, and wanted an easy answer. but now he knows there aren't any.

might be a good time for that anti-suicide pact we know they make (bc what's gonna make you want to kill yourself more than being indirectly responsible for your boyfriend's little brother's death, or being forced to eat your little brother's raw heart by his killers) and for travis to reaffirm what he says in 208: tell nat she is a good person right when she needs it the most.

they run into ben, who's been stealing supplies and watching them. they decide to leave together-- travis is On Board right way, nat now has enough faith in herself to go.

nat and travis are so angry at the group for killing javi, for forcing travis to go along with it, for trying to pawn off responsibility on nat, that they set the fire.

it's part pragmatism (we need supplies and the gun, which they won't part with, so let's distract them while we get what we need), part rage and grief (we hate them for what they did and want revenge), part desperation (lets take out as many as we can because after we leave we will be hunted).

and it’s important for the team rational faction to be as morally gray as team supernatural. attempting a mass burning of their former friends and leaving them for dead feels both appropriate given their personalities and the situation, and drags them off the moral high ground.

lottie crowns the queen of her rival faction, thus legitimizing her power and making her a favorable alternative for her followers to desert her for, which some certainly will...

... but nat starts the war between the girl clans, and makes the cult's situation far more dire by destroying their shelter and supplies, thus driving them further into madness.

the conflict between them and their groups is a snake eating its tail.

(+ Why Don’t They Leave When The Snow Clears Up: one faction has accepted they’ll live in the woods forever, the other won’t abandon a one-legged member who can’t make the trek… and is committed to hunting down or converting the former group first.)

at this point, i'd have akilah and at least one redshirt spot them, follow, and ask to join. payoff for akilah's quiet disagreement with lottie, an opportunity for a new character to get some spotlight immediately in s3 a la crystal, purpose for nat as an alternative to lottie for the other girls, and the start of the two factions.

end on the girls watching the cabin burn down. specifically on lottie —who tried to reign in her worst instincts all season and stop the girls from going feral— deciding that trying to resist those impulses was a mistake. she chooses to completely give in to their (and her) worst desires. the wilderness punished her for doubting it and showing weakness, for giving up power and crowning a false queen. she won’t do that again.

...... ugh. i'm getting incoherent. i'll probably discuss this more somewhere else some other time.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets thoughts

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pappydaddy · 3 years

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Obx anon here lmao I hope you're not sick of me. 😭😂

I definitely agree the whole Kie vs her parents arc was very badly handled bc it made her seem more ungrateful than she probably is. I just really couldn't stand her this season, I mean she wasn't my fav character to begin with she definitely already had those moments in S1. I mean she was 80% annoyed with something this season sooo... 💀

I'm kinda surprised that so many ship her with JJ bc I got the impression from her she's rather their friend than be romantically interested in any of them. Like she mostly acts annoyed around JJ, for example in S2ep10 when they both stayed together in the ship container she literally rolled her eyes at him while saying "now it's only us" , so I'm sorry I can't really get on board with this when 85% of their interactions are like this. Or maybe it's just me because I love JJ so much and I think he deserves better idk please don't come for me. 😭 I can totally see her in a relationship outside the friend group plus it's super weird if she would go through every guy in her circle idk. The entire Pope thing was so unnecessary and I still hate her for playing him like that.

Dude I'm way too invested in this show I basically binged the entire thing in two days bc I refused to watch it until this year. I already knew this would happen based on the things I saw on the Internet and I didn't want to add another fictional white boy to my list of characters I'm hopelessly in love with, but here I am daydreaming about JJ Maybank like I predicted a year ago. 🙃🤦🏻‍♀️💀 (might fuck around and start writing fanfics for him bc I can't help myself)

Definitely a highlight of this season was JJ stealing a fucking ambulance bc ofc he would. Like he's so loyal to his friends my heart can't handle this 😭❤️ He definitely has Steve Harrington energy another white boy who stole my heart 😂🙃 I wish both would get more development as normal characters and are not treated as punching bags (literally) and comic relief characters.

I can't wait for season 3 and how this entire thing ends (I heard there will be only three seasons so correct me if I'm wrong). How the fuck will they escape from the island and when will the Camerons finally face the consequences for their actions? 🙃😬

Of course I'm not sick of you lovely! I love when you guys interact with me like this!

I get what you mean, I feel like the situation between Kie and her parents was handled poorly on both their parts, but I feel like Kie's faults were a bit (teeny) more excusable as she is a teen who thought her best friends had died and then had her parents tell her she couldn't hang out with her friends anymore. But overall, aside from her situation with her parents, Kie did annoy me in both seasons. I really hope in season three, there is more character development for her because she is a good character and has strong morals, but I just feel like she's a bit lost in herself. Which is a big reason I don't like her and JJ together. I just feel like they both have such strong personalities and they would only draw out the worst in each other. I also picked up on the things you pointed out about Kie acting annoyed with JJ and that's another reason I feel like they wouldn't be a good match romantically - more like a brother/sister kinda match would be better I feel. For next season, I would love for Kie to find another person outside of the main circle as well, I feel like that would not only be good for her character development, but it would be interesting for the plot since she is usually the person who doesn't like new people joining the group. And I know I said this before, but it would be great if she was LGBTQ+ because I feel like the writers could incorporate her past behaviours and such into the internalized anger she felt towards herself for being part of the LGBTQ+ because I feel like that is something many people in the community still battle internally about even if they are accepting and I know that a lot of bi people still deal with those feelings (spoken from experience).

My take on the Pope/Kie thing was that Kie knew she didn't like Pope that way. And even if, for a second, she thought she might like him that way, when he stopped her before they had sex expressing how he didn't want to do it if there was a possibility that it would mess up their friendship - she should have respected that and maybe they could have felt the relationship out a bit more before going all in. Especially because it was Pope's first time. I love Kie, I really do, I know it doesn't seem like it from this post, but I feel like the writers aren't doing her character justice. Just like Greys Anatomy destroyed Izzie's character.

Also, don't worry, I binged the entirety of season 2 in one day. Nonstop. I laid in bed for ~10 hours just watching the show because I worked 8 hours the next day and I knew I was gonna be too tired when I got home to watch it and I needed to finish it for my sanity. When I first started watching, I knew JJ was gonna be someone I fell in love with because he is the type I usually fall for, so I tried really hard to fight against it, but I am a white man's whore so I ended up losing. But Pope is my baby, I want to protect him and just save him from everything so it's not just JJ who I am in love with from the show. IF YOU START WRITING FOR JJ PLEASE SEND ME THE FICS I WOULD LOVE TO SUPPORT YOU! I ALSO HAVE A HARD TIME FINDING FICS BECAUSE THEY NEVER COME ACROSS MY DASH SO!

BUT 100%, START WRITING FOR JJ, THERE IS NOT NEARLY ENOUGH OBX CONTENT ANYMORE! YOU WOULD BE AWESOME, TRUST ME, YOU HAVE A REALLY GOOD SENSE ABOUT THE CHARACTERS FOR JUST WATCHING THE ENTIRE SERIES IN TWO DAYS! IF YOU NEED ANY HELP REACH OUT!

And JJ def gives off more chaotic Steve vibes. Loyal, a little dumb sometimes, his heart in the right place, crappy parents, etc. It's pretty much a dead match. Even in between last season and this season, JJ had a lot of character development. He seemed more calm this season, he wasn't getting in fights every episodes. But, I agree, both characters def need more character development and to be beat up less.

I haven't heard anything about them being signed on for more seasons yet, so I'm not sure how many seasons there are going to be. But saying as though it's still in the top 10 and lot of people are streaming it, I feel hopeful that Netflix isn't gonna just cancel it like they love to do. I have a feeling that they might sign on for more than three seasons if the actors are willing (hopefully) since it is such a popular show.

I think they will probably pick up next season with a search being conducted, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Pope will figure a way to get them off or lure help to them. Maybe the coast guard will stumble upon them or Pope will do some cool shit to send a distress signal to them. But since this show is really realistic when it comes to the privileges that rich, powerful, white men hold, I have a sneaking suspicion that Rafe and Ward won't face the consequences for their actions, especially not if Rose continues to help them.

But, please, oh please, start writing for JJ and send me your fics, I would love to read them and support you! I started this blog and writing my fics just because I wanted to try my hand at them, but I also didn't want them cluttering up from drive. I just had so many ideas swirling around my head and I needed a place to put them. I have not regretted the decision to start this blog. It's been the best year. I found so many great people who are supportive, I found followers who are supportive and put up with my randomness and my rants about my life and family. If you need any help getting started, never hesitate to reach out. I would be glad to help you even if you just need a hype man.

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