#Wilderness world

[novelconcepts]

There’s a line from American Gods I keep coming back to in relation to Yellowjackets, an observation made early on by Shadow in prison: “The kind of behavior that works in a specialized environment, such as prison, can fail to work and in fact become harmful when used outside such an environment.” I keep rotating it in my head in thinking about the six survivors, the roles they occupy in the wilderness, and the way the show depicts them as adults in society.

Because in the wilderness, as in prison, they’re trapped—they’re suffering, they’re traumatized, they’re terrified—but they’re also able to construct very specific boxes to live in. And, in a way, that might make it easier. Cut away the fat, narrow the story down to its base arc. You are no longer the complex young woman who weighs a moral compass before acting. You no longer have the luxury of asking questions. You are a survivor. You have only to get to the next day.

Shauna: the scribe. Lottie: the prophet. Van: the acolyte. Taissa: the skeptic. Misty: the knight. Natalie: the queen. Neat, orderly, the bricks of a new kind of society. And it works in the woods; we know this because these six survive. (Add Travis: the hunter, while you’re at it, because he does make it to adulthood).

But then they’re rescued. And it’s not just lost purpose and PTSD they’re dealing with now, but a loss of that intrinsic identity each built in the woods. How do you go home again? How do you rejoin a so-called civilized world, where all the violence is restricted to a soccer field, to an argument, to your own nightmares?

How does the scribe, the one who wrote it all out in black and white to make sense of the horrors, cope with a world that would actively reject her story? She locks that story away. But she can’t stop turning it over in her head. She can’t forget the details. They’re waiting around every corner. In the husband beside her in bed. In the child she can’t connect with across the table. In the best friend whose parents draw her in, make her the object of their grief, the friend who lives on in every corner of their hometown. She can’t forget, so she tries so hard to write a different kind of story instead, to fool everyone into seeing the soft maternal mask and not the butcher beneath, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the prophet come back from the religion a desperate group made of her, a group that took her tortured visions, her slipping mental health, and built a hungry need around the very things whittling her down? She builds over the bones. She creates a place out of all that well-intended damage, and she tells herself she’s helping, she’s saving them, she has to save them, because the world is greedy and needs a leader, needs a martyr, needs someone to stand up tall and reassure everyone at the end of the day that they know what’s best. The world, any world, needs someone who will take those blows so the innocent don’t have to. She’s haunted by everyone she didn’t save, by the godhood assigned to her out of misplaced damage, and when the darkness comes knocking again, there is nothing else to do but repeat old rhymes until there is blood on her hands just the same.

How does the acolyte return to a world that cares nothing for the faith of the desperate, the faith that did nothing to save most of her friends, that indeed pushed her to destroy? She runs from it. She dives into things that are safe to believe in, things that rescue lonely girls from rough home lives, things that show a young queer kid there’s still sunshine out there somewhere. She delves into fiction, makes a home inside old stories to which she already knows the endings, coaxes herself away from the belief that damned her and into a cinemascope safety net where the real stuff never has to get in. She teaches herself surface-level interests, she avoids anything she might believe in too deeply, and still she’s dragged back to the place where blood winds up on her hands just the same.

How does the skeptic make peace with the things she knows happened, the things that she did even without meaning to, without realizing? She buries them. She leans hard into a refusal to believe those skeletons could ever crawl back out of the graves she stuffed them into, because belief is in some ways the opposite of control. She doesn’t talk to her wife. She doesn’t talk to anyone. It’s not about what’s underneath the surface, because that’s just a mess, so instead she actively discounts the girl she became in the woods. She makes something new, something rational and orderly, someone who can’t fail. She polishes the picture to a shine, and she stands up straight, the model achievement. She goes about her original plan like it was always going to be that way, and she winds up with blood on her hands just the same.

How does the knight exist in a world with no one to serve, no one to protect, no reason propelling the devastating choices she had grown comfortable making? She rechannels it. She convinces herself she’s the smartest person in the room, the most capable, the most observant. She convinces herself other people’s mysteries are hers to solve, that she is helping in every single action she takes. She makes a career out of assisting the most fragile, the most helpless souls she can find, and she makes a hobby out of patrolling for crimes to solve, and when a chance comes to strap her armor back on and ride into battle, she rejoices in the return to normalcy. She craves that station as someone needed, someone to rely upon in the darkest of hours, and she winds up with blood on her hands because, in a way, she never left the wilderness at all.

How does the queen keep going without a queendom, without a pack, without people to lead past the horrors of tomorrow? She doesn’t. She simply does not know how. She scrounges for something, anything, that will make her feel connected to the world the way that team did. She moves in and out of a world that rejects trauma, punishes the traumatized, heckles the grieving as a spectacle. She finds comfort in the cohesive ritual of rehabilitation, this place where she gets so close to finding herself again, only to stumble when she opens her eyes and sees she’s alone. All those months feeding and guiding and gripping fast to the fight of making it to another day, and she no longer knows how to rest. How to let go without falling. She no longer wears a crown, and she never wanted it in the first place, so how on earth does she survive a world that doesn’t understand the guilt and shame of being made the centerpiece of a specialized environment you can never explain to anyone else? How, how, how do you survive without winding up with blood on your hands just the same?

All six of these girls found, for better or worse, a place in the woods. All six of them found, for better or worse, a reason to get up the next day. For each other. And then they go home, and even if they all stayed close, stayed friends, it’d still be like stepping out of chains for the first time in years. Where do you go? How do you make small choices when every decision for months was life or death? How do you keep the part of yourself stitched so innately into your survival in a world that would scream to see it? How do you do away with the survivor and still keep going?

They brought it back with them. Of course they did. It was the only way.

#yellowjackets #yellowjackets spoilers #yj meta #long post #shauna shipman #lottie matthews #taissa turner #van palmer #misty quigley #natalie scatorccio #the question not being how do you survive the wilderness. the question being how do you come BACK. #the way each of them tries so hard to keep moving forward #unable to untangle the girl in the woods from the adult suffering in polite society #how the world doesn’t want to hear about the pain or the night terrors or the sleepwalking or the addiction #the world wants the bright colors and the flash-bang headlines #the world doesn’t want who they are. who they had to be. it wants pretty perfect tragedy #that specialized environment lives on in each one of them every day #but it’s not a place anyone else can ever go #how do you feed that for so long and then just…stop? #constantly thinking about nat saying we didn’t make it out. none of us. #because no. no they didn’t. the girls died the minute that rescue chance did. what came back was risen from those ashes

[adventurelandia]

1971 Fort Wilderness poster

#fort wilderness #1971 #1970s #vintage #disney #disney world #vintage disney #vintage disney world

[downfalldestiny]

Nature Never goes out of style 🌅 !.

#Sea #Ocean #sea waves #ocean waves #waves #downfalldestiny #downfall #life #magical world #magic destinations #magic moments #Nature #Wilderness #Style #beautiful scenery #epic scenery #scenery #Breathe #Florida

[deankarolina]

A Softer Wilderness ⤷ the things we did

#Yellowjackets #yellowjacketsedit #a softer world #a softer wilderness #Shauna Shipman #natalie scatorccio #van palmer #taissa turner #misty quigley #last one stuck in the drafts

[awfullydxpeched]

for the world violation tour book, each of the band members drew a rose, with handwriting by anton

#depeche mode #dave gahan #alan wilder #martin gore #andy fletcher #violator #world violation tour #synthesizer #synthpop #synthwave #electronic music #80s #80s music #80s fashion #80s aesthetic #90s #90s music #90s fashion #90s aesthetic #devotees #explore #explorepage #foryou #foryoupage

[keepingitneutral]

© Protap Shekhor Mohanto, 

Courtesy: Sony World Photography Awards 2023

#art #photography #bird #animals #owl #forest #bangladesh #protap shekhor mohanto #sony world photography awards #wildlife #wilderness #eyes #nest #trunk #tree #charming

[malice-kingdom]

Tales of Red (and orange) ❤️🧡

———-

The Tales of series is my favorite game series of all time and I wanted an excuse to draw every character from the games I played (there is so many and I will forget some of them just watch me) So I decided to go about it by organising everyone by hair colour I guess.

Almost added Asbel here but decided to keep him for the pink/purple category (yes I made a whole plan and no I’ll probably never manage to finish it).

Pascal might have fitted this group as well but I kinda forgot until now that she has red in her hair.

#tales of symphonia #tales of berseria #tales of the abyss #tales of arise #tales of zestiria #tales of eternia #kratos aurion #zelos wilder #luke fon fabre #eleanor hume #dohalim il qaras #rose toz #ash tota #Reid Hershel #Richter Abend #jrpg #tales of symphonia dawn of the new world #Funnily enough this bunch of characters contain my favourite and least favorite characters from the whole series. #anyway might go for pink haired characters next cause I already drew Asbel

[depechemodecutelover]

" Let me show you the world in my eyes " 🖤 🖤

#dave gahan #martin gore #alan wilder #andy fletcher #depeche mode #violator #world in my eyes

[adventurelandia]

1990s Fort Wilderness sign

#fort wilderness #mickey mouse #vintage #sign #1990s #disney #disney world #vintage disney #vintage disney world

[downfalldestiny]

Mood 🔥☕ !.

#Tea #Away #Wilderness #Magic #Beauty #downfalldestiny #life #downfall #magic destinations #magical world #magic moments #Fire #Bonfire #Breathe #Camping

[deankarolina]

A Softer Wilderness ⤷ JackieShauna

#jackieshauna #yellowjackets #a softer world #A Softer Wilderness #Yellowjacketsedit #JackieShaunaEdit #yjweek2023 #For free choice have some asw edits i've been meaning to post #I have more but have some jackieshauna to start #e Jackie #sometimes i post things

[annon-guy2]

Tales of Symphonia Chronicles (Unisonant Pack) Perfect Guide - Skit Expressions and Extra Art/Concept Art

Got a favorite character expression from these fourteen characters?

#Tales of Symphonia Chronicles #Tales of Symphonia #Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World #Lloyd Irving #Colette Brunel #Genis Sage #Kratos Aurion #Raine Sage #Sheena Fujibayashi #Zelos Wilder #Presea Combatir #Regal Bryant #Mithos Yggdrasill #Emil Castagnier #Marta Lualdi #Richter Abend #Tenebrae #Perfect Guide

[fictionadventurer]

The Long Winter hits very differently in a post-pandemic world. Now it's not just "we almost died because it was such a long, cold winter." It's specifically a story about supply chain issues.

In other books, the Ingalls family could have weathered a snowy winter pretty well. They almost never went to town, and they raised and stocked up enough supplies to get through the whole winter. But in South Dakota, they didn't have time to raise much of a crop their first year there. They lived a mile from town and relied on trains getting through to bring supplies. So they were out of almost everything by Christmas.

Instead of homemade candles, they were burning kerosene--which came by train. Instead of meat they hunted or slaughtered themselves, they were living on salt pork--sent by train. Instead of wood, they had only coal for fuel--which comes by train. And so on and so forth. They relied on a vast shipping infrastructure to bring what they needed, which meant they were out of luck when that supply line was stopped. The problems in this book come not so much from their world being too primitive, but because they relied on it being too advanced. And it all feels very familiar from personal experience.

#the long winter #little house #laura ingalls wilder #and that's why i now classify this story as a science fiction book #it's all about how technology affects the lives of these characters #you could tell the exact same story about settlers on a colony world waiting for supply ships to arrive #it's all the same thing

[scrawnytreedemon]

"Gerudo man acclimates cats in unethical manner: more at 5."

Behold! The nuclear family.

#hyrule warriors #tloz #tloz art #ganondorf #zant #ghirahim #team villain #scrawny draws #shitpost #fanart #nintendo was so right to stick them all together #i just think they could have gone wilder yknow yknow? #i need them to explode like an atomic bomb. #OR ! IF YOU DO WANT THEM TO GET ALONG !!! #i want it *earned* 😤👏 #ghirahim getting over his grief for demise and being able to connect again with people he initially despises #ganondorf learning to trust others after millennia of hurt alienation and fending for himself and making amends with his fellows #while zant realises the bitter hatred festering in his heart is ruining any relationship he has including w/ himself and he needs to let go #you could of course throw a betrayal in there. it is all very tenuous. #i don't think anyone is truly *comfortable* but it is them against the world yfeel me #until then though let them FIGHT !! #i could make a post about this but my brain is beans god help #obviously not the only dynamic i have for them. #there are Many. #send tweet ect. ect.

[twocubes]

one of those fantasy settings where the underlying structure of the universe is narrative, right, and doing magic of whatever sort involves playing along with those narratives, whatever sort those are. karma, good and evil, fairness, the condensation of people's anxieties, whatever it is. Narrative.

but it isn't, actually. it turns out that humans/wizards/whatever are responsible for constructing/expanding this bubble that magically imposes/provides these underlying narratives on everyone within it. thus the resentment of the non-humans/non-wizards/non-whatevers having these things imposed upon them as the bubble expands.

#look what im saying is i feel weird about the “world is narrative” trope #its sad and people do not understand what i mean #Wilderness Preserve but for nonnarrative reality