My Tears Ricochet

[pinkskylne]

"A cascade of feelings came over me as I watched him sponge up the adoration. I wanted him dead. I wanted him all to myself." — INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE

[nataliescatorccioapologist]

I truly can’t get enough of how quietly but fiercely protective Taissa is of Natalie. I would go as far as to say that Tai shows the most genuine, untainted care and empathy for Nat out of any other character on the show. Tai gives Natalie a lot of shit, but it always feels a lot more like the exasperated concern you would hear from an older sister.

Tai is the only character so far to recognize the impact of Nat’s home life before the crash (“Her dad, at home…Horror show”). She consistently pulls Nat back on her feet after her relapses and toxic stints with Travis and pays for Nat’s rehab on multiple occasions. Taissa is the first person Nat thinks of to call when she gets arrested. In Nat’s time as leader in the wilderness, Taissa appears to be her right hand man, the primary person she entrusted to offer her guidance and direction (“Don’t forget what happened to Jackie”). Even Tai’s opposition to Nat’s leadership feels more like concern that Nat can’t handle the burden that has been placed on her than actual hostility. Tai has a uniquely deep understanding of Nat. She sees Natalie’s full picture, not just her addiction and self-destruction, but the damage underneath, the why behind everything she does.

It means so much to me that Tai starts tearing up during her interrogation of Nat in the Coach Ben trial. These aren’t just tears of anger, they’re tears of disappointment and betrayal. They come from a place of deep care and admiration for Nat. Tai is genuinely hurt by the realization that Nat has been lying to her and, in her eyes, endangering the group’s safety. This whole interaction between the two of them, both with angry tears in their eyes, really feels like an argument between siblings. This is about a personal breach of trust, and Tai feeling let down by Nat.

In the aftermath of Coach Ben’s death, when Nat stumbles out bloodied, Tai’s first instinct is to check if she’s hurt.

When Shauna threatens to kill Nat, Tai is the first one to step in to protect her. She steps right in front of where Nat is kneeling on the ground, blocking Shauna’s path to her with no hesitation. Even though she doesn’t agree with Nat’s decision to kill Coach, she is ready to go head-to-head with Shauna to defend her.

There’s a solid constancy in the way Tai shows up for Nat that’s rare in her other dynamics. It’s not loud or showy, but it’s steady, and it’s real. There is something so familial about the way these two interact. Underneath all of Tai’s logic and control is someone who loves Natalie like family, and who can’t help but try, again and again, to keep her safe.

[snow-fire13]

[snow-fire13]

All this ship discourse is getting a little weird now and I think this fandom needs to take off their shipping/fanfic glasses for a little because we have lost the plot and a lot of people are just being rude for no reason.

Need someone to pull a Jackie Taylor and make everyone say one nice true thing about each other because it has become impossible to engage with this fandom without running into constant negativity.

At the end of the day fanon is fanon and it has no real affect on the show or the characters.

Here's to hoping s3 resets things and we can get back to obsessing over the story and characters individually.

Anyway, going back into character now. Where tf is Javi?

[artliara]

i just want you to be safe.

[fadeintoyou1993]

NATALIE SCATORCCIO + PREACHER'S DAUGHTER

[snow-fire13]

I need season 3 to let Teen Nat have a storyline outside of Travis. Same goes for him. Let them interact with other people PLEASE.

[deeply-embarrassing]

i do love the "she's back where she started but somehow even worse" yj moments

[kashlat2]

Just a Girl

[zeroforest]

I made a comic from the deleted scene where Natalie almost shoots Lottie after doomcoming. Wish we could have seen it on the show.

[licorice-lips]

I'd really love to say I like the theory that Everlarck haunted Snow because of what SnowBaird could've been but I can't because I really don't believe Snow is bothered by their love in that way.

Remember: as infatuated as he was with Lucy Gray, Snow didn't really like life in the Districts or the forest, like Lucy and the rest of the Covey. He craved the order, control, and "civility" of the Capital and the power that came with the status he had as a citizen of it.

As we see Snow in TBOSAS, he never really changes his personality, he just goes on and on bringing up a façade for each person he interacts with based on what characteristics he thinks it's best to charm them. So when he falls for Lucy (be it love or not), even though he wants her, he doesn't really want the life he's gonna get with her. He actually abhors the idea of the kind of life Lucy Gray craves.

The only thing that does change in Snow throughout the book are his opinions and worldview - "Mister Snow, what are the Games for?" -, he loses all of the morals he thought he had to abide in order to maintain his status. And it's fair to assume those changes of opinion keep happening as he progresses after the end of The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes because that's what happens as human beings age.

But the direction of Snow's opinions is clear: that love is a weakness, that love is not something worth fighting for, that is something fleeting and unstable, so why would it ever bother him that Peeta and Katniss felt what he considered to make them weaker and feeble? Remember again: Snow doesn't see love like the rest of us do, he doesn't want to - what he does want is to see the world in a light that confirms his own view of it, and he warps facts to fit into his narrative.

In his mind, at first, Katniss didn't really love Peeta, which further proved his belief in love and what it really was, but as time progressed and he realized she did love Peeta, his belief turned to the one where Katniss would betray her allys (including Peeta) to keep on living. At last, the realization that their love wasn't selfish was an opportunity for him to make Katniss bend or break during the revolution, and when she didn't, it proved to him her love wasn't so strong to the point where she'd breach no limits to save him.

But that's the thing, even if he did believe Katniss' and Peeta's love for each other was pure and selfless, he still wouldn't envy them, he wouldn't see this as something he could've had with Lucy Gray. At least, I don't think 82-year-old President Snow would've because we have to remember that this version of Snow got everything he ever craved so much: all the power in the world to do as he pleased for the entirety of his life. Let me remind y'all: Snow was already dying when the revolution came, his power was already at its end. It's the reason why he laughs as he's killed: it doesn't really matter whether he's killed by his own poison, the rebels, or Katniss herself because he'd already won his entire life by then.

He did everything his younger self wanted to do, he became everything his younger self wanted to be, and he thrived in it for his entire life. He's so corrupted by then he probably thinks of his "love" for Lucy Gray as a lapse of judgment, one he'd never desire in the first place.

So no, I don't think Snow was bothered by Everlark because they represented what he could've been with Lucy, I think it bothers him because it's yet another facet of Katniss he cannot control, and more than that: it's the living proof his entire worldview on human beings -as passed on by doctor Gaul and his own experiences during the Dark Days -being bad and selfish at their core was actually wrong.

Please let's be cautious, and not make the mistake yet again of reducing a story about human nature and how it shapes the worldview of people, therefore having consequences on how we act in society, to a love story. Snow and Lucy Gray are compelling together as a couple, but the point is that Snow views human beings a certain way and, because of that, he begins to justify his terrible acts. It's a masterpiece of a villain origin story, not a love story - not entirely anyway.

[shipmvns]

yellowjackets 1.10 original script — a deleted scene where natalie and travis see jackie shivering outside

[snow-fire13]

Welp!

At least it didn't make it into the show so I can continue living in delusion

[petalsfordany]

i hope season 3 of yellowjackets starts with a shot of natalie scatorccio’s grave and your first thought is AGONY AND HELL and then your second thought is oh this is the adult timeline, but then the camera pans out and it’s 1998 and teen nat is looking at her own grave that got made after the crash

writers, feel free to use your better pay and conditions to just full throttle ruin my life you know

[snow-fire13]

The way I need this to actually happen

[nataliesscatorccio]

Dead cabin guy and his technicolor dreamcoat have haunted me since the wardrobe reveal in season two, and today im going to make it everyone's problem.

Travis wears the coat first. He and Natalie take the blessing and go out to look for Javi. Travis hallucinates (prophesies?) that Javi is dead and buried beneath the snow, but Natalie shows him it's only a fox. Travis finds the strange, mossy tree stump. The next day Travis has strong feelings about which direction is best to search for Javi in, and we don't see more of him until Nat reveals the bloody pants. Not that weird, all things considered. New season, new wardrobe additions. Hiking on a caloric deficit with PTSD, you'll probably hallucinate. Pretty standard stuff.

Then Nat wears the coat. She takes it to lay Jackie's bones to rest at the crash site, and while she wears it she sees (hallucinates? prophesies? I'm not sure!) the white moose that they'll later lose to the lake (ergo the hunt, ergo javi dies for real). More on that later.

We get to Old Wounds, the hunting competition, and Lottie wears the coat now. You see where I'm going with this but just to be thorough: she enters the realm of death dreams, talks with Laura Lee, almost freezes to death.

Episode five. Melissa wears the coat. Maybe that's not important! Maybe it's just to show that they all share the wardrobe, and that the side characters are as equally All In This Together as the main characters are. Or it could mean something that a peripheral character, wearing important wardrobe, framed in antlers (not unlike Travis in 2.01), has the line "maybe he did die, and that's his ghost." It's a little suspicious, and at this point starts to feel like a pattern.

Who wears it next, who wore it best!? That's right baby, it's Paul! For his dreamworld drifter, hallucination hunk Coach Ben Scott. Nicholas Urfe himself. Ben spends almost all of his time in a dream, until *drumroll please* Paul, very pointedly, takes the coat and walks out the door. "Where do you think you are, Ben?" he puts the coat on. "You had to have known you couldn't stay here forever. [...] What matters now is that you aren't welcome here anymore." Following Paul means committing to death (to dream), and until interruption that's the choice Ben makes. Because letting Paul (and the coat) go would mean committing entirely to reality.

Of course, the pièce de résistance is something I didn't even notice until I went looking for it. The first dozen times I watched, I thought that after Lottie's beating Shauna brought her a blanket. "Lottie's cold." But she doesn't. She brings her the coat. Lottie is laying with it when, in a fever dream, she witnesses/hallucinates/prophesies parts of the hunt.

It's there again (on the back of the chair) when she sits by the fire and speaks for the wilderness, appointing Nat their queen. Ben watches, having woken from the dream himself, as they all bow to Natalie and leave reality behind for good.

Of course, there are a lot of times when characters hallucinate strange things in the cabin while not wearing the coat, because they're all starving to death and traumatized. Mari. Shauna. Akilah. But in addition to that, it seems like a pattern worth noting that in each instance where a character wears the technicolor coat, the line between the real and the imagined seems to blur with more ease. Does dead cabin guy's technicolor dreamcoat help the Yellowjackets connect to the dream realm?

I'll be brief here with the biblical parallel: blah blah Joseph is the favorite son (you were always its favorite), his father gives him a technicolor coat (they're nothing special, they don't change color in the cold or anything). blah blah Joseph starts having prophetic dreams etc etc his jealous brothers throw Joseph down a pit (the wilderness chose) and bring his bloodstained coat back as false proof of his death (hanging on a branch. a couple miles back). You get my drift.

Does it mean it anything? Who knows. But in a series where wardrobe is such an integral part of the storytelling, it felt worth paying attention to.

[taiturner]

NAT & AKILAH Yellowjackets ◆ Seasons 1-2

[overthemushroomcave]

The Huntress

I find it interesting how she was the one who couldn't get her life together after what happened. Almost like it affected her the most. In early season 1 you could see that other girls had already something dark within them before (Tai overachieving leading to hurting a member of the soccer team, Shauna not being loyal to her friend, or Misty.. well...). Well Nat despite having awful parents stood for what she thought was right

[mickxtii]

grimace shake incident with the yellowjackets