#sunsongs

[icaroid]

tales from when i lived in faerieland

Hey uhhh so! My book is available to read, in full. Updates to come to make the footnotes more easily readable. But it’s here. It’s alive.

Look to the sun to find it. Enjoy.

[unsatisfiedonion]

The sun came out today and it made me so happy, almost hysterical. That kinda makes me sound like a sun fanatic.

[icaroid]

would n e one. want to read my neverafter paper.

[icaroid]

middle aged woman polycule save me... save me middle aged woman polycule...

[icaroid]

thinkin about it more & thinkin about the research & thought I've been doin on yellowjackets, and reading as well criticisms on the handling of race in the show, an upsetting but culturally congruent pattern appears: bodies of color are treated as eminently more sacrificiable.

im only gonna talk about Jackie, Lottie, Javi (Natalie), and Mari; there's more to be said about other deaths tho. also this is a tumblr post i am too tired to like. quote shit but. read violence and the sacred.

it can be tempting to point to Jackie (or Natalie) as a counterclaim; in Jackie's case, she's the original victim, and her death is reified in later sacrifices, connected to her by the necklace. even the cooking of her body came from an attempt to honor the corpse. the eating of her body is juxtaposed as a decadent feast, in sharp contrast to the firelit images of Mari's consumption.

when I think about Lottie as a sacrifice, im thinking about the scene in 2.07 ("Burial") where Shauna beats Lottie. this can be viewed as a sacrifice, as an offering of Lottie's body to Shauna's violence in order to keep it from overturning out onto the entire community. Lottie is in a position to receive this violence as a spiritual leader with connection to "the wilderness," but she is also in this position as a mixed woman and a person with mental illness, which has broader and more immediate implications.

the hunt of Natalie where Javi is allowed to die is a really stark example of a young latino man being sacrificed to allow a young white woman to survive. there is no wilderness choosing there; the community of the yellowjackets chooses one of their own over someone on the margins. especially after he disappears and returns, he is on the edges of the wilderness community, and it kills him. his distance from the community normality makes him sacrificiable.

and wow. the way Mari's body is treated; previous sacrifices we know were handled with at least a little more grace, while Mari is bled out in a gruesome and callous way. even Mari's disrobing through the hunt; she is pushed to further extremes than Natalie because she isn't afforded the same proximity to cultural power. it's especially telling that she replaced Tai and Van's choice of sacrifice, Hannah. Tai and Van chose a person on the outside of their community to be sacrificed, sensible within the sacrificial schema. Shauna's intervention saved Hannah, a white researcher, and put Mari into danger.

im coming to this as a white viewer with some background in sacrifice research and im glad to have read the criticisms of the show's third season; it shows an underlying devaluation of bodies of color in popular culture that remains even if shows try to avoid it.

anyway this isnt fully formed n i gotta wrap up this post now but yeah.

[icaroid]

RENE GIRARD HELLO HELLO PAGING RENE GIRARD WHAT DO U THINK ABOUT YELLOWJACKETS SEASON THREE

[unsatisfiedonion]

I have discovered a bunch more sun songs during my absence! (not like I needed to discover more, since I still have more than enough to share.)

[unsatisfiedonion]

Lately I was searching for a place in the sun, all in vain. I hope it comes back soon.