How do people watch Shauna clutch her dead baby to her chest, look straight at us, the audience, with tears streaming down her face, and plead directly to us, “Can’t you hear him crying? Why can’t you hear him crying?” and still reduce her in Season 3 to an evil, unfeeling villain instead of someone clearly drowning in the paranoia, grief, and severe trauma that stem from this moment? This scene in particular literally begs us to understand Shauna, and to understand that everything that follows. Season 3 Shauna is not devoid of humanity, what she goes through is so deeply human.
cw: discussions of slutshaming, sexual assault, classism and racism
i've been thinking about how tai's and jackie's slutshaming of nat give insight into the complex influence of classism on their personal relationships and what this reveals about the social hierachy between the yellowjackets.
both tai and jackie use nat as a sort of punching bag to improve their social standing. tai tries to deflect nat's reasonable criticism about the situation with allie by insulting her, while jackie attempts to distract from her own fears and insecurities in the wilderness by going against nat. even though it's pretty unprovoked in both situations, they both choose to not only attack nat, but also bring slutshaming into it, which imo is directly tied to classism (more on this in a moment). i think it's interesting to see how the social hierachy in the team is influenced by classism and how this developes in the wilderness.
your class position can influence your sexual activity in many ways and i think you can see examples of this in nat. @softantlers has made a really good post about nat, poverty and gender a while ago that i think everbody should read. among other things they argue that the misogyny nat experiences often intersects with classism. for example both tai and jackie combine their slutshaming with somewhat classist insults. tai tells nat she "smells like a wino", a term that is specifically associated with homelessness (source) and jackie calls her a "burnout", which is associated with addiction and lazyness (source).
furthermore, nat's sexual experiences themselves might be influenced by her experience with poverty. for example, richer families are more likely to have the capacity to surveil their children's free time, including their sexual encounters. we see nat's dad get specifically mad, because her mom failed to keep an eye on her due to her alcoholism (something obviously not inherent, but connected to poverty). on the other hand, it seems logical that someone with "less to lose" regarding their social standing also cares less about their reputation and is more open to different sexual experiences.
it is also important to note that poor women and girls are far more vulnerable to sexual assault, since poverty increases the risk of getting caught up in dangerous situations and once in that situation, it's more difficult to get out due to lack of social/economic power (source). women in poverty are also less likely to receive help in abuse situations due to the belief that they can take it (more on this here). of course this is really simplified and generalized, but it seems to fit nat's experiences in some ways. while nat generally seems to enjoy sex, she also recounts having a negative (possibly non-consensual) experience with an older guy at a show and jackie hints at nat being mistreated by men. in short, a connection between nat's sexuality and her class status can definitely be assumed and this also shapes the way others see her.
tai and jackie definitely have a different class position than nat, but i'd argue that there's also a clear distinction between tai and jackie themselves. jackie is heavily implied to be upper class, while we don't really see hints at this position for tai. she's definitely well-off, but her living situation reads more like a stable middle class household to me. but of course, this is only speculation. i think the difference becomes more obvious when you look at the way jackie and tai are navigating their class status.
it's often shown that jackie grew up sheltered, making it difficult for her to adapt to living in the wilderness. i think this also goes hand in hand with a kind of classblindness. to me it seems that jackie wasn't really aware of her privileged situation until the crash. she never had to worry about her social standing, naturally having a strong influence on the team and all her needs met. before the crash, she seemed to have a good relationship with nat and i don't think jackie consciously looked down on her. this changes when jackie suddenly loses her influence in the wilderness. her attack on nat seems like an attempt to reinforce the previous social hierachy, clinging to her former privilege of "upper-class girl".
meanwhile, tai seems to be aware of the insecurity of her social status. she's puts in hard (and if necessary ugly) work for her goals and things aren't just given to her the way they are to jackie - even though tai is a better player than jackie, she isn't made captain etc.
due to her sexuality tai's social position is unstable and her attempts to keep it secret mean that she constantly has to watch her words and actions. even though she brushes it off as "just not being interested in the drama" when talking to van, it's clear that she's very aware of the social risks of "being found out" which is also acknowledged by coach ben in the trial and obviously van in the adult timeline.
her Blackness also forces tai to constantly navigate different forms of respectability politics. i'm white so i obviously don't have the best understanding of this, if you're Black and have another/better understanding of this please chime in!! generally, i think these rules she has to follow are pretty obvious in the adult timeline, especially in s1ep4 when she's at that rich people event talking to diane rafelson.
but even in the teen timeline tai often takes on a mediating role (e.g. between jackie & nat, shauna & lottie etc... she pretty much intervenes in every conflict) and i think she constantly feels the need to be in control of the group and herself, only allowing some parts of herself to show.
in this interview (starting 2:15) the interviewer asks jasmin if other tai could be an allegory for codeswitching with "regular" tai being the side of her that has to adhere to respectability politics and other tai representing her repressed Black rage, which i think is a really intriguing way to see other tai. and in this interview (starting 17:20) jasmin says that she believes tai would have pretended to eat jackie if other tai hadn't taken over, so that she wouldn't be ostracized by the group.
tldr, i think taissa is very aware of her instable and vulnerable position in the group and puts in a lot of effort to be accepted by the people around her.
and in that sense i think tai's slutshaming behaviour can not only be read as a deflection from her own mistakes, but also shows tai's deeper understanding of the social hierachy. since she knows her own position is unsteady, she goes against someone whose position is even less secure. her choice to use nat's sexual experience against her is interesting since she has to know that her own sexuality isn't really more socially accepted. moreover, she's also kind of doing the same things she shames nat for doing (smoking and sex), just in private. i wonder if tai's issue with nat partially comes from a bitterness that nat is able to these things so openly, while she can't really afford to do that.
tai's conflict with nat pretty much stops in the wilderness. this obviously has to do with a lot of factors, mainly them having bigger problems (and imo tai has pretty reasonable priorities). but i also think the fact that tai is granted more freedoms regarding her sexuality allows her to be more forgiving towards nat.
meanwhile jackie's conflict with nat starts in the wilderness. jackie can't adapt to the new situation leading to her losing her influence on the group. this prompts her to reflect her position more and i'd argue that she developes some kind of class consciousness. to her, privileges that she didn't have to abuse before, now seem like the only power she has left.
something i think that's interesting about nat's gender presentation and her approach toward the other girls is that it is a bit "not like other girls," but i don't know if i agree that it's "not like other girls" in an intentionally diminishing way.
one thing about being raised poor is that it, like the myriad of other ways you can be subjugated/oppressed, is something that -takes- your gender too, especially in terms of femininity. if you go to school smelling like smoke because your dad hotboxed you in the car, your footing in the gender box that society prefers (clean, put-together, in some ways innocent) is impacted. if your clothes are ripped and stained and you don't have many of them, this can become a struggle too. you're not like other girls because you literally are not like other girls, and it's even possible that you're experiencing the punishment not just from shitty boys but also your girl peers-- it's just how it goes.
and so in the case of nat, it kind of makes sense to me? if you're already outside the box of "girl" in the way that the world would prefer, it becomes a protective strategy to simply lean into that distance. (more on this in a sec.)
as an example, i do think it's interesting that taissa's go-to for nat when they were arguing over allie was, "you smell like a wino. get your shit together." the term wino is pretty often associated with homelessness or being drunk in the streets, so the comment isn't just a nod toward what might be going on with nat drinking-wise but also a pretty charged statement in relation to her class status. this sort of dynamic carries into the adult timeline too, where it's definitely felt through various interactions that shauna and tai look down at nat in different ways. (and don't get me wrong, it's quite complicated, especially in terms of her dynamic with tai and the tumultuous rehab support there.)
all the same, i think this whole class impact on gender thing continues on with respect to nat's sexuality and how this is commented on by other characters too (re: jackie and tai). the reason this feels like another class thing is that "chastity" has its roots in women as material objects with worth rooted in a perceived "purity." chastity is naturally going to be more often surveilled and prioritized in richer families who have the time/energy to keep an eye on their children. meanwhile, poorer families might not have the resources to surveil children in the same way (even if a parent, like nat's dad, clearly wants to control this aspect). so nat's even having had sexual experiences can be a bit of a nod to her class-- the fact that she was able to be in spaces where this was possible, to disappear into those relationships, even at a younger age, can speak to this.
but yeah, when you do look at nat, you see that she primarily has relationships with men. her younger friends, kevyn and rich. her connection with travis. her connection with ben. there's probably a level of internalized misogyny there, but i think it's also interestingly placed at odds with nat's protectiveness over womanhood: when she has her comeback to travis after he makes sexist comments about her having sexual experience; when ben checks out from shauna's delivery and nat rushes to her side to hold her hand and tell her that women have been having babies for since the dawn of time; even when nat takes up the gun after her dad throws her mom to the ground.
what i'm saying here is that nat is actually often moving toward women-- her taking lisa under her wing, her teaching gen to hunt, her making way for lottie in the bath, her reassuring shauna, even her reaching out to work with hannah. when she says marishauna's beef is "dumb girl shit," it does grate because it's a diminishing thing to say about a real dynamic that is causing problems in the group, and not necessarily to defend it, but i do think it comes from a place of conceptualizing behaviors she has maybe been at the end of (gossip, slut-shaming, classist remarks) as "dumb girl shit" to better let them roll off her back.
all that to say, i think nat does have some internalized misogyny stuff going on, but i also think she cares deeply about her teammates and actually does respect them. it's just that she has simultaneously been boxed out of "woman" by the ways classism and purity culture also intersect with her own experience of misogyny. so there's this level of care there met with this distance of "i'm not like you. because you would never let me be."
okay, okay, okay. silly title aside, something that has really been tugging at me with regard to natalie scatorccio is the concept of fatherhood. ever since season 3 aired, i've been seeing a lot of callbacks to natalie's upbringing and her dad's death. interestingly, much of the discussion has centered around nat's relationship with coach ben & tends to position ben as another father figure to nat (thus making her move to kill him all the more tragic).
and yes, yes, GO OFF. however, i think a more fruitful examination of nat's relationship to fatherhood can be explored by considering nat as never actually being fathered (not even by coach ben). rather, nat is character who, by virtue of her own trauma, naturally seeks to fill in the gaps left by shitty fathers. she's a character who understands deeply a father's capacity for disappointment, for abandonment, and even for violence. and the way she moves through this intuition is to become a type of caregiver, to become a protector, & to essentially adopt the role of father in the wilderness (as far as it will let her).
to this end, i would even argue coach ben is not a father figure to natalie-- she's actually a father figure to him.
(the crowd GASPS.)
okay, okay stay with me.
a little note on language
i think it's important for this conversation to consider nat's relationship to becoming a father figure (more on this, i promise) as a gendered thing. yes, "parent" could work just as well, but the show is naturally attuned to the absence of man as the structures & hierarchies of home collapse under the yellowjackets' experience in the wilderness. the notion that teenage girls now have the autonomy to take on roles that they would never normally be expected to in the outside world is meaningful, and the ways the yellowjackets expand and grow past the social limitations they left when they entered the wilderness is a big fucking deal. therefore, natalie adopting a position as father really needs that gendered texture to drive home its significance, which is why i'm avoiding neutral language like "caregiver" and expressly moving away from "mother."
nat is becoming a father.
coach ben didn't want this
okay, but what the fuck do i mean? well, the absence of dad is a huge theme in yellowjackets. as soon as the plane crashes, it's just the girls. all probable father figures are dead or injured, and there was no adult woman on the plane to play mother. coach ben's leg is fucked, and coach martinez was impaled by a tree. the only people left to make choices on how to survive are the girls, and you see them moving with (and against) each other to do so.
when ben finally comes to, he's totally checked out. it makes sense, given what he's lost, but all the same, he's not a leader for quite a bit. instead, he's processing what's happened to his leg & he's letting the girls lead the way. when taissa discovers the lake, he expresses some passive suicidal ideation, suggesting that they could just leave him behind. the offshoot of that is... well, what the fuck, dude? you're the adult here. yes, yes, he is going THROUGH IT. but comments such as this begin to cement a particular dynamic for the yellowjackets: they can't depend on ben. ben isn't who they can look to. he's more or less telling them he isn't the adult in the room.
for nat, this isn't too much of a change of pace. she grew up with a violent alcoholic father and a mother who was tapped out and passively letting the abuse happen (therefore, complicit). she's a fiercely independent person by virtue of the terrible parenting she received. honestly, when i think of natalie scatorccio the certainty that "no one is going to save you" comes to mind. i think this principle is what drives nat to be such a proactive presence in the wilderness. she has already learned not to rely on dad, or anyone, and so it's natural for her to step up & take matters into her own hands.
the gun as fatherhood
it's actually a bit sad because in s1e4 (bear down) we get our first glimpse into nat's trauma, and it starts with her dream about the plane. we have imagery of all of the yellowjackets freaking out as the plane begins to crash, and nat is looking horrified and her hand flies out. she reaches out for something, and what she gets is terrible.
there is the briefest flash of relief in nat's gasp of "dad" before her father turns and becomes a fucking nightmare. no reassurance for natalie scatorccio-- that was never her father's role. instead, he's there to show her how hopeless the situation really is, invoking the darkest parts of her own trauma in the very moment she reached for some comfort.
the gun is a potent symbol of fatherhood to nat because the gun is what defined and ended her own father. and here it's actually been put in her hands as the plane goes down and they descend into the wilderness. nat has fatherhood in her hands, and her reaction is absolute fear, panic, before it all settles into a slow steadying breath as the chaos of the plane and the screaming continues around her.
to me, this is the moment of handoff. natalie is taking the central figure of her trauma (the gun = her father) and she's resolving herself into something. "no one is coming to save me. i am what i am and what i've done. i have to keep going."
so later in the same episode, we have coach ben acknowledging his limitations. he is trying to step up despite his earlier crashout, but there's no way around it: he can't be the hunter. and so he's offering up his knowledge (interestingly, knowledge handed down from his own father) to one of the yellowjackets. essentially, ben is saying one of you is going to have to adopt this responsibility that should more naturally be associated with me. one of you is going to have to become an extension of me. one of you will be chosen to provide, to hunt, and if you take the gun as a symbol of fatherhood (as well as ben's stilted attempt to express this caregiving), here we are: one of you has to help me actualize father. because i can't do it on my own.
and natalie, despite her trauma, despite everything that should put her far far far FAR away from guns, is the one who pushes past the flashbacks and the pain and the fear, and steps up. in that moment, she's moving toward ben & saying, "i can do this for you. we're going to do this." and they move forward as co-fathers of the group.
handing off the mantle
so here's the thing about dads and father figures. there's a specific form of abandonment that people in these roles can inflict without actually leaving. a father is a father. a father is NOT your brother. a father is NOT your peer. a father is DEFINITELY NOT your child.
it's a common theme with immature father figures to abdicate responsibility by turning the child figure into a peer, a sibling, and at the very worst, inversing the father-child relationship altogether. let me be clear here: ben did not sign up to be a father! he's a young man that never expected to lose his leg in a plane crash and get stranded in the wilderness with a pack of teenage girls.
all the same, i would argue that his failed attempts at fathering and his quiet resignation to stop trying altogether have a similar trajectory into abandonment. with regard to nat specifically, ben forfeits the father role and becomes the child altogether.
flight of the bumblebee
i think a really interesting example of ben's movement into the child figure is when nat approaches him by the stream and clocks the ever-loving shit out of him!! this is during s1e8 (flight of the bumblebee), so they've settled into nat's dynamic as the primary hunter by now.
she sets down her rifle, teases him about misty, before getting right to it: "you like guys, right?" at first, ben is totally freaking out ("what the hell, nat?") but the panic doesn't last very long. because now nat's sitting down next to him and playing it sweet and reassuring. she's shrugging and smiling and telling him she thinks it's cool...
this is... peak good dad behavior??? honestly, if you were ben and you were concerned about coming out to your family--certain even that they would not accept you--an interaction like this would be all that you could have ever hoped for.
the way nat reassures ben, shows a bit of interest in who he is & who he's dating, and makes that quiet spot by the stream a safe space... this is the kind of coming out that ben never got to have with his parents. this is a gift he never expected from a teenage girl, and yet here it is. nat opened the conversation and gave him the freedom to self-actualize in that moment. it's a big fucking deal. and it's also a vulnerable exchange that brings ben down to her level. he's not a towering, untouchable father figure. he's something smaller. he's almost, dare i say it, a little brother...? and when ben shares that he's fearful of this getting out, big sibling nat promises she won't tell.
doomcoming
nat and ben's shifting dynamic continues into s1e9 (doomcoming). like i said, following the gun training and nat taking on the role as hunter, she and ben have basically moved forward in the group as co-fathers. when they have their moment alone together during the doomcoming celebration, nat is passing ben some hooch she found under the cabin porch and they're sitting together like old friends-- there's very much a peer-to-peer or a siblings vibe going on versus a father-daughter one.
there's a moment when ben offers the drink back to nat, and nat reveals that actually she's doing okay sober... honestly, there's some vulnerability in nat's statement, but i'm not sure that it breaks through to ben how significant it is that she's saying no to the drink. instead, he raises his eyebrows and essentially says "more for me!" for me, this scene is interesting because it seems like nat is reaching for something... maybe some sort of encouragement about what she's doing? but ben is just a peer. he's not a dad. and he's not really in the position to say that he's proud of her. he doesn't.
immediately after this interaction, nat prods ben about his "secret boyfriend" approach to dealing with misty, which is admittedly a bit immature and probably not a wise way to approach the advances of a minor!! in any case, he deflects by bringing up her relationship with travis and nat laments their recent tension, but before ben can give any advice the shrooms kick in. he starts to freak out a little bit but nat's aware that they're tripping. she doesn't seem concerned at all and this seems to soothe ben. they spiral into the trip together, but nat's the steady hand, the older sibling... you get the vibe it would have been a lot more scary for ben if she wasn't there.
ben's spiral into becoming the child
okay, so if season 1 showed nat and ben moving into a peer relationship (with moments of nat subbing in as an almost older sibling figure for ben), then season 2-3 tracks the reversal of the father-child dynamic altogether.
following the cannibalization of jackie and the yellowjackets surviving through the winter, ben is clearly not good. there's just not enough space here to go into a deep dive about his mental health and the ways he begins to untether himself from being a guardian to the girls, but suffice it to say, ben is no longer a figure of any sort of authority. on the one hand, he's beginning to be othered for not eating jackie (and for casting judgment about it), and on the other, he's starting to lose the plot entirely and is spending days on end laying in bed, starving, and hallucinating.
on the other hand, nat is hunting. she's having confrontations with lottie. she's making difficult decisions that are (in her view) for the betterment of her peers. she's still a teenager, and not all of the decisions she makes are mature! when she lies to travis about javi in order to get him to stop looking, she has to deal with it later when travis loses trust in her. when she plays into the hunting game with lottie, she has to stomach the fact that everything went sideways when they needed to work together most to retrieve the moose. nat is doing her very best. she's going out every day. she's trying to bring back food. she's taking jackie's bones to the plane. she's trying to make a map of the wilderness...
but nat's very best isn't appreciated by the group. she's trying, and really she's trying alone, because ben just isn't present. and really, if you take nat and ben as co-fathers of the group, it boils down to this. nat is a father who is staying and striving despite the struggle. she's still working for the kids. ben? is not. he's checking out. he's done. he's losing the willpower to keep going.
letting down shauna
a pretty brutal example of the disparity between nat and ben is shauna's miscarriage. nat literally drags ben to shauna during the delivery. she says, "ben, we need your help. come on!" he tries to tell her he can't help, and she says no. she doesn't let him bail out of this. she's begging him to snap out of it, to be there for them. and when his reaction is such a wildly apparent "oh shit" that's likely to scare the hell out of everyone (including shauna), you can see the disappointment in nat's face.
ben says, "shauna, i'm sorry," and nat gasps "no." he can't be doing this to them. he can't be doing this to her. this is the moment where it all falls apart. ben isn't the father. he's isn't even a peer. he's abandoning shauna obviously, but what i think gets overlooked in this scene is that he's abandoning nat. they were supposed to be doing this together. that was the deal when she took on the rifle. that was the deal when she sat by him by the stream.
but ben's letting her down. and that is fucking that! nat rushes away from ben and tells shauna to ignore him! she reassures her that women have been having babies forever. shauna is going to be fine. she's going to be fine!
nat tells shauna to breathe. from a positional standpoint, she is very much looking like a father during the midst of a delivery. she is at the mother's side, she is offering encouragement, she has water at the ready. this is the moment of transmutation: ben isn't the father anymore. and natalie is.
"you don't belong here, coach."
the handoff during shauna's miscarriage guides nat and ben's relationship through the end of season 2. while ben was off discovering his escape route from the yellowjackets, nat stayed behind. she never left the children. she was even ready to sacrifice herself for the children during the queen hunt, but she's still just a teenager. when travis broke the circle and everything went to shit, she ran. nat's just a fucking kid after all. all the same, she weathered javi's death (and the escalation of the wilderness) with the rest of the yellowjackets while ben was gone.
when the yellowjackets return to the cabin, nat is walking with resolve. she tells travis that the wilderness chose (although whether she believes this is debatable) and she works with tai, van, and shauna to prepare javi for the butchering. ben returns back to this absolute-fucking-nightmare, and he can't do it. he can't deal with this. he turns to see nat and he offers her an escape route.
she says no. because at the end of the day, the yellowjackets need natalie. she's the hunter. in ben's absence, she's the father. she has to stay because the children need her. she has to stay because she's like the children. ben, on the other hand? he's not cut out for this. nat understands this and she sees it and after shauna's miscarriage? well, she knows not to expect anything of ben anymore.
so, nat relinquishes him of his duties. she lets him run off into the wilderness, an abdicated child scampering away. this cements their dynamic moving forward: ben is now the child, nat is now the father. he's not what she needed him to be, but she doesn't hate him for it. instead, she spends the rest of season 3 trying to protect him as best she can, wearily wielding the leadership that he was never cut out for.
putting a child to rest
as we move into season 3, we learn that nat has guided the yellowjackets through the cabin burning down and into the spring. she's taught others like gen how to hunt (mimicking fatherhood as it started with ben's father and then was handed down to nat), and under her leadership, the yellowjackets have cultivated and organized a functioning society that requires no cannibalism. nat is firmly in the father role now, and it's definitely wearing her down (the camp counselor bit with mari and shauna fighting). she's by no means a perfect leader, but she never rats out ben (in the same way she never outs him).
there's a lot, a lot, a lot i could go into here about how nat plays father within group dynamics in season 3, but i'm going to save that for a part 2 on this meta. focusing on her relationship with ben specifically, we see the lengths that nat tries to go to protect him and how she ultimately fails when shauna encourages the group to vote for his execution.
as it turns out, akilah's prophecy convinces the group to keep ben alive, but now nat is in the position of seeing her former co-father, her peer, her little brother, and now someone who seems as weak as a frail child suffer for weeks on end. she tries to play into the group's wishes, she tries to focus on the hope of it all. when she speaks to ben and he expresses suicidality, she tries to be authoritative and tell him it'll pass. she tries to be strict and tells him to eat as you would a petulant kid.
but it's all taking it's toll on nat. she can't watch ben wither away like this. and so in the end, she takes him into her arms. this is not the positioning of peers... this is not the positioning of a daughter and her father. this is the positioning of a father and a sick child. this is the loving care of being with someone so small and so weak and guiding them to their rest. being strong for someone who isn't strong enough to drive a knife into their own chest. at its root, nat is fathering ben when she kills him. it has the vibe of a father who has spent months caring for a sick child only to realize the time as come. the only thing nat can do for ben now is be there for him and hold him as he passes.
nat was never supposed to be ben's father figure. but also their plane was never meant to crash. so be it.
or, the nat scatorccio + masculinity essay, featuring guns
warnings for mentions of: physical abuse, sexual assault, suicide, and canon-typical violence
the gun (part I)
nat and the specific side of emasculating trauma she faces from her father (separate of the implied sexual trauma, which is its own thing in this grand scheme of being a daughter under the patriarchy) has always been interesting to me.
and you might be saying, 'how can someone be emasculated if they're not a man'?
the scene. we all know the scene. where nat's father mocks her, saying that she was a little girl who cried killing a turkey.
it's fucked up. it’s humiliation, a direct attack on a perceived failure in that moment. he's deriding her emotional response, her femininity, her softness. and yes, this is partly because he’s a misogynistic, abusive dick who sees women as lesser. that’s evident.
and this is the point where i'm going to lose a lot of people but stick with me an autistic transgender is talking listen and learn.
maybe... it's because nat isn't a good enough son.
masculinity, for nat, becomes both this curse and a conduit. it’s the language her father speaks, so, to be close to him, she has to speak it too. there are these expectations she never asked for but still feels bound to: be a provider, be strong, be the man, be a good son.
and the gun becomes the rosetta stone. it’s not just a weapon. it’s a symbol of acceptance and legitimacy. the one object that says: you’re tough enough. you’re one of us. you matter.
natalie clings to it, not out of fascination with death, but because it's the only thing she’s ever been allowed to hold that made her feel powerful. it’s the only thing that ever shut her father up.
the gun becomes her backbone. her barrier. her voice. when jackie threatens her pride, she says she’ll find something to shoot. because in every context she enters, the rules are the same to her: power is what protects you.
and masculinity, even if it’s not hers by birth or biology, is something she performs to survive.
sticking with the devil you know
i don't think it's a mistake that all of the people nat has described as her best friends and the only people who understood her are men. because really, it's all about the devil you know. and what nat knows is men.
you can almost chart her entire character through these acts of borrowed masculinity. they’re not performative exactly, but they are compensatory. she becomes tough because that’s the only language she’s ever seen love in. she spits, she drinks, she swears. it's pattern recognition.
but it's also her father and the connection she could never form with him: i’ll never be your son, but i could be what a son is supposed to be. i could love you in that shape.
and with this line of thinking, we have two different approaches to take: coach ben and travis. the only two male figures besides javi that nat associated with in the wilderness.
starting with the subtle mirroring between nat and coach ben— it’s vital to painting a picture of how nat struggles with her identity, because really, what do a teenage girl and a gay man have in common?
well, a fucking lot, actually.
on paper, they couldn’t be more different, but emotionally, there’s a common wound: neither of them was ever able to be the kind of man they were expected to be.
ben is emasculated by his queerness in a heteronormative culture. nat by her gender in a hypermasculine household. they both exist in a liminal space here, cast out of traditional masculinity, yet not safely tucked into the feminine either.
and then there’s travis.
nobody’s son, nobody’s daughter
nat and travis bond, in part, because they're both failed sons.
travis carries the weight of a father whose standards he could never live up to because he was rendered fundamentally unable by an unfortunate circumstance. nat carries the absence of a father she tried to shape herself around. neither of them gets to become the man someone expected them to be.
but unlike ben, travis isn’t just haunted by that pressure, he’s actively suffocated by it.
travis is expected to be a provider, a protector, a stoic older brother. he fails. repeatedly. and it eats him alive.
nat steps into that role instead. she’s efficient, skilled, emotionally detached when she has to be. she hunts. she saves. she survives. in doing so, she takes on the traditionally masculine qualities in the group: decisiveness, independence, toughness. she becomes the one who performs and provides. she doesn’t do it to dominate. she does it because she has to— if no one else will take control, who will?
she has learned, at home, with her father, that stepping into masculine power is sometimes the only way to be safe. or to be useful. or to be respected. or to be loved.
travis slips further into emotional fragility. he gets overwhelmed, he spirals, he clings. his masculinity collapses in on itself. he starts to embody a kind of repressed femininity: he’s vulnerable, emotional, sensitive, consumed by shame. his crying, his jealousy, his bodily discomfort, they all read like traits that, in the world he grew up in, he was taught to bury.
nat sees it, and she doesn’t mock it, because she recognizes it. she has an advantage that travis does not— she knows both sides.
this is the heart of their connection. they’re constantly trading places.
when nat initiates sex, it’s not coy. it’s blunt. travis, on the other hand, flinches at vulnerability. he doesn't know how to be with her without feeling like he's losing something. his masculinity is too brittle for the kind of power nat embodies. her identity— masculine, feminine, and ever shapeshifting to fit needs— is intimidating to him.
and then there’s the point of travis’ assault.
doomcoming marks a break, not just in the group, but in travis himself. up until that night, his masculinity, however fragile, is something he still clings to. he’s the default man, with ben unable to provide for them. the protector by title, if not always by action.
but in one frenzied, drugged-out moment, that identity is torn from him.
he’s hunted. pinned down. stripped. touched. reduced to an object of desire and violence by people he trusted, people he lived with, people who later tell themselves they didn’t mean it. it’s rape-adjacent, maybe even rape-interrupted, and the aftermath is undeniable.
from that moment on, travis no longer occupies the space of masculine power in the wilderness. he becomes afraid, withdrawn, and passive. he questions himself, his control, and his place in the group. even in scenes where he lashes out or tries to assert dominance, it’s not coming from confidence anymore. it’s coming from fear. because how can he be the man, the provider, the protector, when he was the one held down?
the assault feminizes him. not inherently, but symbolically, through the lens of the world they’ve been raised in. it flips the gendered dynamic he tried to cling to completely on its head. suddenly, he’s the one whose body became a site of violation, the one who couldn’t fight back. and in a hypermasculine worldview, that makes him less than. not just in the eyes of others, but in his own as well.
and here again, nat becomes his echo.
because nat’s own history is marked by implied sexual trauma, glimpsed in throwaway lines. we don’t know everything, but we know enough. in a way, both of them were assaulted into femininity, into that culturally ingrained position of being acted upon rather than acting. their bodies became weapons wielded against them. their agency got overwritten. and instead of finding solidarity in that shared experience, they bury it. turn away from it. let it become shame.
nat knows what it’s like to carry that kind of violation in silence. to pretend you’re okay because you’re scared of what it means if you’re not. to make yourself harder, meaner, louder, until no one asks what happened to you anymore.
both nat and travis are broken by the same force: gendered violence. they just respond to it differently. travis internalizes it. nat externalizes it. but both are defined by it. and they both start crumbling under the weight of performances they can’t sustain.
travis was supposed to be a man. he wasn’t. nat was never allowed to be one, and still ended up performing masculinity better than most of the boys around her.
nat becomes the traditionally masculine figure. the one who controls the weapon. the one who touches first. the one who can compartmentalize. the one who doesn’t cry. travis becomes the emotional one. the one who’s hesitant. the one who flinches. the one who can’t reconcile his body with his feelings.
the gun (part II)
but when shauna takes the gun from natalie in season 3, it doesn’t matter that she’s a teenage girl. it doesn’t matter that she’s not a man. what matters is the gesture. the snatch. the grab. the sudden removal of power.
to natalie, it’s not shauna anymore. it’s her father.
it’s the same entitled reach. the same assumption that whatever she’s holding, she doesn’t deserve to. the moment shauna takes the gun from her hands without asking, she’s back in that house again.
natalie doesn’t just lose the weapon, she loses the illusion that she’s safe. that she’s in control. that she’s grown. and the scariest part is, shauna probably doesn’t even realize what she’s done. because to shauna, the gun is a power play.
to natalie, it’s a lifeline. it’s safety. agency. autonomy. the only thing that’s ever made her feel like she could stand toe-to-toe with the terribleness around her. it’s not about violence. it’s about not being the victim again.
so when shauna rips it away, it becomes a reenactment, a revival of every time natalie was told she didn’t get to choose. that her body, her fear, her choice didn’t matter. and suddenly she’s not natalie the hunter, the provider, the survivor. she’s natalie the daughter. natalie the target.
the wilderness never gave her peace. but it gave her power. it gave her a role, however brutal. and when that’s taken from her, especially by someone like shauna, someone who should understand, it’s worse than betrayal.
trigger discipline
when nat puts the gun to her chin, it’s not just a suicide attempt. it’s an inheritance.
because this is how her father died. by his own hand, by the gun he used to measure worth. the same gun that mocked her tears, that made her feel small, that taught her love was something loud and fatal.
so when she chooses the rifle, his weapon, their weapon, it’s not just to die. it’s to belong. to be the son he always wanted, in the most final, irrevocable way. to prove she can do it like he did. meet him on the same ground, muzzle to mouth, and say: look, i finally got it right.
there’s something intimate about it: the gun has always been her tether to power, to safety, to manhood, and here she is, turning it on herself. as if to say, if this is what made me strong, maybe it’s the only thing strong enough to end me.
it’s a moment of total collapse, but also a moment of brutal clarity.
because for natalie, the gun was never just a tool, it was the narrative. the object that made her feel close to her father, to manhood, to value. the one thing she could hold and feel capable, but also the one thing that always threatened to erase her.
and when she doesn’t get to pull that trigger, it's not just failure. it’s interruption, disruption. a moment that could’ve ended in legacy but doesn’t.
because she doesn’t get to die like her father. she doesn’t get to decide how the story ends. it's never been her choice.
she’s forced to keep going, to live in the aftermath. to let that gun go, heavier than ever, not just with the weight of almost-death, but with the unbearable truth that it wasn't enough.
that she couldn’t even do that right.
father, son, and ghost
nat’s life was shaped by a identity that was never hers, but always loomed over her, through her, inside her. she was never given the chance to just be a girl. she grew up under the thumb of a man who spoke only in anger and expectation. a man who didn’t know how to love a daughter, but maybe could’ve loved a son.
so she tried. she picked up the gun. she learned to take up space the way men do: violently, defensively, without apology.
but the tragedy is, no matter how convincingly she performed it, she was never allowed to be it. the world wouldn't let her. the wilderness wouldn't let her. even when she was leading, she was overlooked. even when she saved lives, she was sidelined. even when she held the gun, people saw something less— not a protector, not a threat, not a son.
she chased that ghost of being the son her father might’ve wanted, of mattering in the way that boys are allowed to matter. because what do you do when the only version of belonging you’ve ever known was never made for you? when everything you built yourself around was rooted in someone else’s expectations?
she never got to be a boy. never got to be a girl. she just became something outside, a weapon.
and in the end, she was still trying to protect people. still trying to shoulder something. still trying to earn that invisible nod of approval.
when she dies— when she becomes the sacrifice— it’s not because she’s the chosen one. it's because she was useful. because she’s been trained, her whole life, to step in front of the barrel.
there’s nothing redemptive about it. it’s not a neat conclusion, and god knows it's a product of poor writing and circumstances.
but maybe it’s the most honest one, dying the way she lived: carrying a role she didn’t ask for and trying, always trying, to be enough.
theartofmadeline
prguitarman
stormborns
areudirty
romaincrisis
baratheonpilled
snowghoul
