Latest Posts by hellsiteacademia - Page 5
Okay this is gonna be long, but I’ve got a lot of ground to cover so please bear with me. In a real way, this is my series thesis.
I’ve said before, many times now (like a cycle) that for me the most important scene is ep 1 act 1 scene 1. There’s something There that I have been struggling to see clearly, struggling to articulate, and s2e9 really finally gave me the last pieces for it.
I think that Pit Girl is the point of the entire story. But not in the way that I thought going in. I feel like I’m rambling, so I’m going to try to structure my thoughts.
Imagine you’re a new viewer. You haven’t watched yj start to finish 30 times, you’ve never even buzzed before. You turn on the tv and the FIRST thing that happens is you see … brutality. A half dressed girl chased through the freezing woods, murdered without a chance. They drag her through the snow, string her up, pour her blood on the ground. Hack her into unrecognisable chunks. Sit around in scary outfits and rip at her, with a huge focus on the teeth, as horror music plays. Then, Misty takes off her mask, puts on her glasses, and does the worst possible thing. She smiles. Directly at you.
Again, forget everything you know and go on vibes. You’re seeing the teens pre-crash, and you’re seeing them in the third timeline, fully formed, with horror motifs and covered in fur. You’d be mistaken for thinking that you were seeing start and end. Except that… we know, and you know, that Pit Girl is the middle. These monsters somehow came back from this. How? When they’re so so so far gone?
Hence the show. I know I’m not breaking new ground here, but bear with me. I’m going somewhere.
You’d be forgiven, fresh-faced new viewer, for thinking you were watching some kind of gross-out slasher. But what happens in S1? Restraint. Laura Lee, the first non-crash victim dies at the end of episode eight. Jackie end of ep 10. (For the sake of this thesis we’re going to be almost exclusively focused on the teens.)
And yet there’s this tonal shift, It’s like … inevitability. Like watching a crack in a window that’s very slowly spreading. Everything is steadily Getting Worse. The weather is slowly getting colder, the days are getting darker, food’s getting scarcer, life is getting harder. But so much of this difficulty is coming from external events and pressure. Yes, cracks start to show in the internal relationship dynamics, of course, but if food was plentiful, if shrooms were less so, if the weather were better, then they could probably work out a very long term stable situation. Sadly for them, things are not stable, and the pressure is building.
Then Jackie dies and the glass gets a really big break.
It’s worth mentioning at this moment that Jackie at any time could’ve come the fuck inside. Safety and warmth and even love were available to her. All it would’ve required was for her not to be the centre of the world. To make actual goddamn concessions and join the team. Which is why she couldn’t possibly make that choice, because she had to be invited, she had to be apologised to, she had to be accommodated. She couldn’t see the rest of the ‘jackets as being people who just like her were in a really shitty situation. She saw them as being external, as being in cahoots against her, as being part of some Thing that she wasn’t in on. She couldn’t let go of the society they’d left, and she preferred to die. Which sure is a choice…
Keep all of that in mind though. We’re taught to blame Shauna for Jackie’s choices. Let’s stop with that. Jackie chose not to assimilate, she looked around the cabin at the team eating the bear and praying to the wilderness and instead of just paying lip service to fit in, like Tai, she decided to put her foot down and make a Thing of it. She decided that being Right was more important than being Included.
Seriously, keep that in mind, we’re coming back to it. Cycles, you know…
Season 2, everyone’s hungry and hey we have this spare Jackie lying around. And we joke like “ha, you gonna eat that?” Only…
No. They WEREN’T going to eat her.
Really think about that for a second. They put her in the meat shed. With the bear. Think about what that does, psychologically. Linguistically. The meat shed is made to store food. The bear has a word: carcass. Day after day after week after month they carve progressively more pathetic chunks from it, subsisting on what little it offers. In the EXACT same room, sitting right there is Jackie. Her body has a different name. Corpse. With many different connotations. At NO point does ANY of them raise the fact that they’ve taken their friend and added her to their meat stockpile.
Because they haven’t. Instead, they’ve added a new sub-room. The meat shed is now also a morgue. And nobody ever once had to say it. They got it. We got it. You got it. And while they starved and their bodies BEGGED for food, Jackie’s corpse lay there, frozen and fresh, and stubbornly refused to become a carcass, because they wouldn’t let it. They knew that there were more important things than meat, even when they were starving.
The bacchanal was a mistake. A literal error. It simply wasn’t planned, wasn’t meant to go down that way. Maybe if they HAD considered that route earlier and had a discussion about it they’d have been prepared, psychologically, maybe if they weren’t so starved. Who knows. But in the middle of the night they were offered a way out, and they took it.
But Shauna took it first.
Even in their state, even faced with an ideal roasted feast infront of them, they waited until Shauna said it was okay. Because Jackie was Shauna’s friend, and they knew that she was still a person. That this was still a corpse first. It was Shauna who was able to give them permission to survive. To turn a friend into a meal. It was not their place to take that step. To shoulder that guilt. So Shauna did it for them.
The next day they’re devastated. The heavy reality sets in, now the hunger is settled. And Jackie’s carcass is far too real, they can’t change her back into a corpse. Nat tries, bless her heart. But Tai’s screaming reaction at having eaten Jackie’s face is only an externalisation of the grief and horror and agony they’re all going through.
And after Jackie they starve again. Hope and heat and light dwindles further. Every single day they all take another step towards death. That’s what starvation is, it’s the same thing as dying, you die a little bit every day until you can’t die anymore.
Kristen falls. Misty doesn’t even consider that she might bring her back as meat. If she had’ve, she might think, maybe she’d be considered like … heroic. It doesn’t even occur to her. She’s not going to LET those bitches eat her one and only friend, and she goes out of her way to protect her.
Shauna has her horror show birth. And, no matter WHAT the context is, she produces…. meat. In the most awful, brutal way. And while the fandom made so many jokes and stuff, the reality is that yes… at least to an extent there was real nutrients there. And it was never once even brought up as an option, by these desperate, starving girls.
When Coach tries to kill himself, here’s a ready source of willing meat. And Misty uses it as a threat to stop him. But it’s hollow, she’s just putting on fake fangs to try to keep him safe. She’s not actually that vicious thing that she’s pretending to be, just like she’s not actually homophobic.
When Lottie tells Misty to eat her if she dies, Misty fights her on it. Lottie has to insist. Then when she tells the rest of the team, they are so overwhelmed with the selflessness of the gesture that it inspires them to twist it into their first hunt. That’s what it takes. The hunt is an act of self-sacrifice and love.
And so we get to the hunt. The proto-pit-girl, we’ve come full circle and we start to learn all these answers to questions posed in act 1 scene 1. And they’re not the answers that were assumed.
How do they get to the point of eating each other? They sacrifice themselves willingly, for the sake of each other’s survival.
Why do they hunt the way they do? Because Shauna just can’t stand to murder a friend in cold blood, a friend she cares for and has no reason to hate.
Why the spike pit? Because it keeps the blood off their hands. Because it lets them blame It and preserve a tiny fragment of their innocence.
Why the weird symbols? The ritual itself? Because they need SOMETHING to hold onto, to make it all make sense.
Why so brutal? Is it? We THINK it’s brutal. It’s certainly bloody. But Pit Girl dies almost instantly. Her pain is over fast. She doesn’t have a good time going into it, obviously, none of them want to die. But she chose to run, she could’ve taken the knife instead. And the spike trap was efficient. Yes they drag her through the snow and string her up, but it’s mechanical and just part of the process and she’s dead already. Her pain is over fast, it’s not sadistic.
Why do they chop her up into chunks like that? Because nobody wants to eat her face. Because nobody wants to struggle with her humanity, they want her to look just like any other meat. So that they might be having deer or bear or … friend. They’re eating because they are biological machines that need to eat, that NEED death to survive. They didn’t ask to be made the way they are, and they’re doing their best to cope. Shauna, probably blindly, takes on that responsibility, to transform their friend into unrecognisable meat to change a corpse into a carcass. She takes that pain for them, holds that sin for them, out of love. So they can eat, so they can survive.
What’s with the creepy horror masks? During the ritual they can’t handle being themselves. They create alternate versions of themselves to hold what must be done. The masks aren’t there to scare anyone, because there IS NO AUDIENCE. The masks are there to hide behind. That’s why Misty takes hers off at the end of the scene. The ritual is over and they can go back to being people again.
Why is Misty fucking Quigley in charge? Because she CAN be. Because she’s strong enough. If Lott/Nat/The AQ is the goddess/queen, Misty is the priestess/handmaiden, tasked with actually carrying out her orders. She interprets the queens words when she’s too weak, she provides counsel when she needs it, she tells the team what they need to hear in the moment, she gives out the micromanagement. Misty’s the power behind the throne, because when she says she’ll do something she fucking follows through. No matter the cost. And what the team NEEDS, whether they choose to admit it or not, is a backbone.
So…
They bring home Javi. The music uses a reference that’s never been done before. It uses the spiritual powerballad that was playing when Laura Lee tried to fly away. It builds the expectation of Great Things, of big, potent …
And then it just stops. As the girls are faced with the reality of what’s laying on the table. The cold, blue corpse of a soft child who never hurt anyone. No matter what they do, no matter how hard they try they just cannot make him a carcass. But they have made the choice already, and if they turn back now it’s not like it’ll bring him back. They’ll just be starving and regretful as he rots.
So Shauna, blind and shaking, does the best she can. And when she brings in the meat, she - of all people - understands EXACTLY what Travis is going through. She knows what he needs. Because she’s been here. With Jackie. So she brings him Javi’s heart. His core. His love. His soul.
(She doesn’t bring him Javi’s head. She cuts that off and puts it aside so nobody has to eat his face… Some things are worth more than pure nutritional survival.)
And Travis, god bless him, does the only thing he can do left to respect Javi. He takes his heart, and he bites it, raw and bloody.
It hurts him to do so. It disgusts him so much, but he manages not to throw up. It disgusts the girls too, but they watch on, horrified. And that’s the POINT. Travis makes sure that before they do this, before they do what they have to… that they all remember this is Javi, this is human, this is a person. And he preserves the horror. For all their sakes. And only then, after he’s given his blessing, after he’s done his human acts, do these starving, ravenous girls allow themselves to reach for their food.
S1E1. Act 1, scene 1. We do not know who Pit Girl is. We do not know the exact circumstances that get us there. But we do know where we started now. What the original meaning is behind each of these little things. And it’s not brutality, not barbarism. It’s love. It’s not lord of the flies, a bunch of monstrous human-shaped creatures giving in to their primal nature and predating on each other. It’s a team of terrified people desperately clutching at their own humanity as hard as they can. Trying SO hard not to let that glass break, to not become the thing that the framing of act 1 scene 1 tried so VERY hard to convince us they were. Context changes everything.
And the proof is in the pudding. After they eat Jackie the shock explodes throughout the cabin. The atmosphere is thick, and horrific. Now with Javi, reduced to simple meat, carefully and lovingly seperated from what made him human, so they can grieve him while they sate their natural needs, the mood post-eating is calm and soft and warm and loving. For once they’re all together, with grateful full stomachs and in a time of peace and plenty. They’ve done the impossible and maintained their humanity and love for each other and their respect for Javi in a nearly impossible situation.
*takes a deep breath*
Which brings us to THIS asshole.
Right from the start, Jackie is only kind of part of the team. She’s the team captain, put up there by Coach Martinez, but not because she’s the best of them but because she can maybe wrangle them into doing better. And they KNOW that she’s not really one of them. They plot around her, and just don’t bring her in on it. They put up with her, more than loving her, she’s just kind of forced upon them. But she does her best, to try to maintain some semblance of order, giving pep talks and the like.
Wait, Jackie? I mean coach. My bad.
Anyway, so Jackie has one friend, Shauna. She SEEMS popular, and everyone talks to her, but Shauna’s the only one who actually likes her. And Shauna’s her connection point to the team. She’s got one foot on each side, and is torn as to where her real loyalties lie.
Sorry I’m talking about Jackie again…. weird.
In S1E9/10 Shauna finally chooses the team, for real. And Jackie tries to pull her back away, but Shauna puts her foot down. No way, she counters, I’m ON the team, you’re the odd one out. Why don’t YOU leave, Jackie? Jackie looks around at the burgeoning cult, she thinks “Look at these evil monstrous bitches, and now Shauna’s one of them TOO?” And instead of finding a compromise, instead of doing introspection, instead of anything like that, Jackie goes and freezes to death because it turns out that sheer rage won’t keep you warm in sub zero temperatures. Because no matter what happens, Jackie’s Right and it’s more important to her to be Right than Included. If she’s not in charge than why is she even THERE?
Hold on, I see my mistake. Let me backtrack.
Right from the start, Coach is only kind of part of the team. He’s trying to hide from his real life, from Paul and the complexities of being genuine in society by taking on the job of coaching the ‘jackets. And they KNOW that he’s not really one of them. He’s just the guy they have to listen to, because society put him there. But he tries his best, giving pep talks and the like.
So Coach has one friend, Natalie. He SEEMS popular, and everyone talks to him, but Nat’s the only one who actually likes him. (Ignore Misty, a schoolgirl comphet crush is not the same thing). And Nat’s his connection point to the team. She’s got one foot on each side, and is torn to where her real loyalties lie. Sometimes she’s on the bench with Coach, complaining about the state of things. Sometimes she’s in the thick of it with them all, and Coach is nowhere to be found.
In S2E9, Nat finally chooses the team, for real. And Coach tries to pull her back, but Nat puts her foot down. No way, she counters, I’m ON the team, I’m worse than them, you’re the odd one out. Go, save yourself, you don’t belong in this place. Coach looks at a table covered in blood and gore, at Nat’s face, at the rest of the team pledging fealty to her. And instead of looking for context, or looking for compromise, or even remotely trying to understand what he’s looking at he thinks
Look at these evil monstrous bitches. They’re eating each other. They’ve all gone mad. They’ve even gotten Nat now. There’s no hope for them, there’s no hope for anyone out here.
And he decides that they’re corrupt. That the way you deal with that is fire. And he’s wrong.
(I have a theory that he’s gone and jumped off the cliff, that he set the fire to clear the corruption, and now like Jackie, unable to live in this situation any longer, he’s decided to die himself. I’d not be surprised to find him in s3e1 that way)
Jackie was a frustrating, difficult person. Because no matter how things went she just COULDN’T let go of the fact that she was trying to fit a mold that just didn’t suit her. She was raised with super high expectations, when she was really just kind of mid. And that’s fine, honestly, most people ARE mid, that’s why it’s mid. But she refused to see that those around her were shedding their social pressures, were adapting to the wilderness. They weren’t having a good time, they weren’t hunting and foraging because they were out there, camping for fun. Nobody wanted to be there. They were just trying not to complain about it, because they were all in the same boat.
Coach is similar. He simply won’t adapt. Refuses to. I mean this is a guy who’s STILL trying to live in the closet when there’s open lesbians making out in public around him. Who thinks of others as inherently monstrous when he himself, as a gay man, should know better. Because that’s what trying to fit your society-assigned role does to you.
It’s no accident that he and Jackie both spend a long time in the woods and neither of them can do something as basic as start a fucking campfire. Javi, a little kid, survived for MONTHS on his own in that cave. Coach couldn’t make it a day alone. Jackie couldn’t get through a night. They both rely so heavily on the team without ever once recognising it. Because SOMEONE was keeping the fires going. They both just … refused to engage.
And just like Jackie can’t see that they’re not having fun out there in the woods, on the knifes edge of survival, Coach can’t see that they’re not having fun when they are so desperate they feel it’s warranted to sacrifice one of their own. He always thought of them as monsters, and he just sees what he expects to: a bunch of stupid useless teenage girls, finally doing what he always expected they would.
At any point… At ANY point he could’ve come in from the cold. He could’ve just accepted reality as they have. He could’ve taken some meat and accepted the price, as they have, joined them in their GRIEF about it, shared their humanity, and survived. Just as Jackie could’ve come in from the cold, and become part of the whole. But instead, they sit in the cold, consumed by their bitter hate, and decide that no, it’s everyone ELSE who’s wrong.
And who emerges from the burning cabin? A bunch of scared kids. Shauna, the FIRST cannibal, who saves Jackie’s prom dress before anything else. Travis, who grabs Javi’s wolf. Nat who grabs the ammunition - that they NEVER use on each other - because if they lost that they’d get SERIOUSLY desperate. And they protect each other, they make sure everyone makes it out. These supposed monsters who are so far gone they don’t even care about eating each other go out of their way to save each other, not just themselves.
Because Coach is wrong. Just like Jackie was wrong. Just like WE were wrong, in s1e1. Which brings me to my actual point.
This question is asked so many times in S1 it’s almost a mantra. And the ‘jackets’ oath of silence really builds up that it must’ve been something REALLY bad, right? But S2E9 has really made me recognise that fundamentally… Act 1 Scene 1 is entirely what everyone who asks this question is expecting.
Imagine they DID know what really happened out there. With that bloodthirsty fucking look in their eyes…
They’re not looking for an answer. They’re looking for a story. For an exciting spooky nightmare they didn’t take part in, so they can get a shiver and a thrill they didn’t earn.
They’re not looking for a love story. They’re not looking to hear how HARD these scared, tragic, broken people fought to hold onto their morals and their humanity and their sanity even against their own survival. They’re not interested in Shauna blinding herself just to try to stop her hands from shaking. They’re not looking to hear about Travis choking down the blood of his brother just to make sure that he can really FEEL it. So he can share the guilt, and never ever pretend like it’s Just Meat. The look in his eye when he can’t think of any good response to Van’s arguments that he needs to let Javi save him. What they want is…
They don’t want the context. And if the ‘jackets ever did try to tell anybody what actually DID happen out there, all they would see is … Episode 1, Act 1, Scene 1. A bunch of monsters. Eating each other. Just like Jackie. Just like Coach. Just like we did, on first glance.
I’ve been saying this whole time that Yellowjackets is doing something really special. That it’s letting us see behind the curtain, that while everyone’s asking this big question, “what really happened?”, we’re the ones who get to know. Because it can’t be told. It can’t be spoken. It can only be seen. Experienced. I think that S2 has finally finished the first major arc in the teen timeline, that we now have the context to understand what comes next. And I do believe that it will get messy, it will devolve. Into fighting and screaming and battles. It’s tragic, but it looks like that’s the downward spiral, spiraling. As Travis and Nat deal with the guilt of what they did with Javi for each other. As Shauna and Nat butt heads and people pick sides. As Misty Mistys. As resources get even more desperate now their shelter is gone. As potentially new people (hikers? other cabin people?) get brought into conflict with them (I believe the cabin is a smoke signal, personally).
But don’t ever forget that we got here with love. Expect that the downward spiral will be lubricated with toxic, broken, codependant, self-destructive love as well. Watch them love each other to death… they’ve already begun.
so I got into grad school today with my shitty 2.8 gpa and the moral of the story is reblog those good luck posts for the love of god
There is nothing more painful in this world than to be in love with something that can never be.
-Laura Chouette
Poppy and Ian are like. They’re soulmates, but also they’re horrible for each other. They’re miserable when they’re apart. They can’t stop hurting each other when they’re together. They bring out the best in eachother and also the worst. They love eachother. They are like an old bickering couple. They aren’t romantic. They have linked their lives too tightly to untie themselves. And it probably would be even worse if they did. They both hold a button that allows them to exploit and attack each others most vulnerable core, and they’ve both pressed that button a hundred times each. They believe in each other more than anyone in the world. They’ve been cosmically linked since they were kids. They have faith that the “being together with you” of it all makes anything worth it.
To me the way Keeley’s bisexuality has been written so far has been so realistic. She’s making all of these blatantly queer comments about women, yet they’re treated as jokes by everyone around her, and most of the audience. Which is just…yeah, that’s exactly how it is. People do assume you’re joking if you say stuff like that.
It’s so wild that bi women can essentially be out of the closet, making comments about wanting to have sex with women, yet nobody takes it seriously. They don’t believe you’re bi unless you explicitly say so. I’ve been there, thinking I’m out of the closet making comments about women I find attractive, just to find out years later that those people thought I was straight because I didn’t tell them how I label myself.
Maybe this isn’t on purpose or maybe it is, but either way I’m interested to see what Jack brings to the table. To me it’s blatantly obvious that Keeley has a little crush on her and now I’m wondering if they’re going to go anywhere with that. It would be interesting if Keeley has a little fling with her, especially to see how people react to her bisexuality being “confirmed” — when really it’s been there the whole time but people just like to ignore it.
How do I do it? How do I escape the capitalist life—how do I reclaim this language? The language of a slow sunrise. The language of salt and blood. The language of 10,000 stones. The language of sleeping stars. The language that gives me my name.
— Angel Dominguez, from “[Dear Diego],” Desgraciado
The team not knowing the Believe poster was ripped as a metaphor for Ted always pretending everything is fine to Ted finally telling Michelle things aren’t fine I pipeline is filled with tears
The reason that each of the Roys are so easily manipulated by Logan begins and ends with the fact that he will always know each of them more than they’re known by anyone else—because they don’t know how to let themselves be known or understood by anyone else, not even each other, not even their partners or lifelong friends, (he’s made sure of that.) and THAT is why he’s always able to say the cruelest possible thing, cut them where it’ll hurt the most, or manipulate them most effectively. Because in order to betray someone fully, in order to hate them properly, you have to really know them. And even when he’s hurting them, all they can see is love. All they can feel is known, understood, and they’ll spend the rest of their lives chasing that feeling that only their father can provide, begging for scraps and doing whatever it takes to get them.
I will say I am so fucking glad we get to finally see some of shiv's rage this season. it's been blubbering under the surface for the entirety of the show and it's finally coming out, slowly, in small increments but it is. but it's still really fucked up how even now, even after everything that's happened, everything that's been done to her, there isn't really a response there from other people, mostly. when she loses her shit at tom on the phone this episode because he FUCKED HER OVER, he doesn't even acknowledge it, it's just 'I don't know what you mean, I don't know maybe Sara made a mistake. I want this to be amicable' literally gaslighting her and making seem as if she's the crazy one for freaking out after he did this to her. same goes for her outburst at the karaoke bar. no one really knows how to respond and she's just left with this ever-simmering rage, that, if she lets it out, proves to everyone around her that she's just the hysterical woman. and if she doesn't it just eats her alive without anyone even taking fucking notice
thinking about "everyone hit me I was annoying" and how all the violence we've seen between the siblings involves Roman. likely because they saw their own father "beat him with a slipper until he cried" just for ordering lobster (though I think the real reason Logan targeted Roman with so much violence is obvious at this point), thinking about how they claim he liked the violence too because it became so normal for them that it was mythified into a joke, into something so unremarkable they claim not to remember. Roman's pain is a joke at most, something for Kendall to use against Logan when Kendall chooses to acknowledge it all. so, he tries to beat them to the punchline, beat them to the insult, to the abuse with loud vigour, but sits quietly in fear when there's no garuntee someone won't hurt him and deny it if it goes wrong. Roman isn't going back to Logan because he has some hope Logan is changed. He's going back to Logan because Kendall and Shiv assumed he would. Not only did they not trust him, but they threw his greatest pain and shame in Logan's face, not out of a sense of justice, but just to spite Logan. He's going back to Logan because he knows to expect that kind of unpredictable cruelty from him and so it hurts less than staying with Shiv and Kendall and getting it from them. He's not going back to Logan looking for denied love, he's gone back because he's given up on believing anyone in his family can give it and better the devil you know.
I have two groups of comfort shows: the ones that completely destroy me emotionally, and the ones that are just super light hearted comedies and slice of lifes. The second category makes sense as a comfort show but it's just ironic that the shows that have me bawling all the way through, somehow, bring me some comfort.
poppy and ian's dynamic is so compelling, but not in an 'i ship them ' kind of way. they're coded romantically (always being compared to a couple going through a divorce, king and queen, paralleled to doc and beans + dana and rachel, both actual couples) but i also can't see them becoming a couple nor do i want them to. on one level i do think they're sort of soulmates, not in a 'fated to be together' way but more of a ' the way we developed as people throughout our respective childhoods, and then the way we grew together has resulted in us being the only two people who fully understand each other best and mean the most to one another' (the good place soulmates aren't found they're made etc). they're not in a romantic relationship but theyre clearly the most important person in the world to one another which is so refreshing in that it's so rare to see that outside of a romance. they're insane and they hurt each other all the time and yet they remain emotional core of the show. im sure there's some people who ship them but they're already so entertaining to watch have such a unique dynamic that i can't imagine wanting anything more out of their relationship than is already onscreen. i love them so much.
poppy and ian's relationship is so insane that it has rearranged my dna
If the gluttony song is this sexy how the hell am I supposed to survive the lust one????
It’s either going to be filthy or extremely political
Andrew is a big believer in the “everything is about sex, except for sex, that is about politics” quote
Just because we can't be together, doesn't mean I won't love you.
“If I was gay,” I told the ceiling, “I wouldn’t need an asterisk beside my name. I could stop worrying if the girl I like will bounce when she finds out I also like dick. I could have a coming-out party without people thinking I just want attention. I wouldn’t have to explain that I fall in love with minds, not genders or body parts. People wouldn’t say I’m ‘just a slut’ or 'faking it’ or 'undecided’ or 'confused’ I’m not confused. I don’t categorize people by who I’m allowed to like and who I’m allowed to love. Love doesn’t fit into boxes like that. It’s blurry, slippery, quantum. It’s only limited by our perceptions and before we slap a label on it and cram it into some category, everything is possible.” I glanced at Josh. “That’s me. I’m not gay, not bi. I’m something quantum. I can’t define it.” “You’re just human.”
Elliot Wake, Black Iris (via thebooksaidthat)
he's a 10 but he's the last man in the world i could ever be prevailed upon to marry
It wrinkles my brain that Jupiter’s moon Europa has oceans that are sixty miles deep, while Earth’s oceans only reach seven miles deep at most. I’m willing to bet good money that there’s life in Europa’s oceans. Like five bucks. You hear me, NASA? I bet you five bucks that there’s life on Europa… Now that there’s money and reputation on the line, I bet they send a mission there real quick.
i was forced to sin…………………………………………….
Haven’t finished severance yet, but one of the themes of the show that I’m really appreciating is the idea that humans will find and create the meaning they need from the media around them, even if it is incredibly limited.
For those who haven’t seen the show, the central premise involves people for whom their entire lives, their memories and consciousness, is limited to just being at work in an extremely isolated office with no access to the outside world at all.
The only book available that they’ve ever known is the employee handbook, the only art they’ve ever seen is the art that hangs on the walls of the office. And of course, these pieces of media are incredibly heavy handed workplace propaganda. As viewers with outside context, we can understand its disturbing messaging. But the characters, having known only this book, have made a sort of religion out of it. It becomes a sort of scripture that they quote when trying to make decisions or are trying to explain complex ideas (even ideas that are against the workplace itself!)
And then another book shows up. It’s a ridiculous memoir full of very eye-roll inducing truisms by a very entitled and self absorbed author. But to those in this workplace, it is the only competing source of information they’ve ever had. It is something from the outside world that has shown up, unapproved by the company. They read it in secret, it is heretical and challenging. Basic truisms without much meaning take on enormous rebellious meaning to the people there. Basic ideas about valuing yourself and your friends, about working together for common goals, about deserving to breathe fresh air, become highly radical passages that they begin quoting to each other in secret.
It makes me think about how we all have different access and different life histories that influence what media and messages we’re taking in. And sometimes you’ll meet people, people who seem to have good values, who express a real fondness for what feels like objectively bad media. Or you can think back to some of the super problematic media you absorbed as a child before you knew anything about the world. And you have to sit there and think through, despite the reality of what this text is, taken with all of the context you know, you have to think about what lessons that individual took from it, what passages they projected their own values and human need for meaning onto.
There’s a poem called “Confessions of an Uneducated Queer” by Lauren Zuniga that involves similar themes– piecing together meaning and knowledge about ones self and one’s community from whatever scraps you can find, from random comments friends make, from tumblr, from books your friends leave at your apartment when they go to college. There’s a line, “This is for the first time I heard the term heteronormative and felt like I was handed a corkscrew after years of opening the bottle with my teeth.”
So many people have a strong sense of important ideas relevant to their lives, and go long periods without words to communicate them. I’m thinking about the profound, almost spiritual, relief of finding language to speak about these ideas, to communicate ones own experiences to people around you, even if you find that language in less than perfect places.
Severance is about rebellion, about people who were literally created to obey finally questioning and breaking through that conditioning. There’s a storyline about someone doing a complete 180 and choosing to rebel when they realise they have a child that they’re not allowed to see, and I love that the storyline wasn’t given to the female lead, but to a previously comic male character. There’s a storyline about breaking protocol because for the first time ever you have fallen in love, in intense, overwhelming, impossible love, and I love that the storyline wasn’t given to the female lead, but to a pair of awkward old guys. The storyline about grief and guilt also goes to a guy, to the male lead.
I love that the female lead is the only one whose radicalisation comes entirely from within, the person motivating her is her, she’s not doing it for anyone else, she wants her freedom, and failing that, she wants bloody revenge even at the cost of utter self-destruction.
