April 13: Yellowjackets 3x09

[kinetic_elaboration]

You wouldn't know it from the state of my apartment but I did quite a bit of cleaning today and then rewarded myself, sorta, with Yellowjackets. Only one more episode left.

Biggest thing to say is RIP adult!Van my beloved soft butch. Like, I have some real mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I'd rather her die like this than of cancer, and it was fairly clear that she wasn't doing anything in this season in general, like what was there to cut short? Nothing.

On the other hand, the actors are a huge part of what makes this show so fun to watch, especially the adult timeline, and I have a Thing about Lauren Ambrose. I really didn't care if she wasn't doing anything. She could have been reading the phone book. She could have continued treading narrative water for another two seasons (just eating and fucking lol--that's her S3 story with Tai) and that's fine. The adult timeline is kind of all over the place anyway so why not.

And also--even though this is a problem with Van's story and not Van's death, I'm just really, really frustrated that Van was made a survivor and Ambrose was cast just for like.... nothing to happen with her, really. So now that it's over, I just feel kind of let down overall. I was thinking about those comments Ambrose made about what the show could have done with its adult queer women who find each other again and like.... yeah, there is so much more to be done with Tai and Van than whatever that was. Dare I suggest that this was written by straight people? (And yet--3/4 of the people playing Tai and Van are queer so it's not like there's not a resource there...)

Like it just seems so central to me that Tai and Van could only be open in their relationship in 1996/97 after they totally abandoned society. For a wilderness hellscape, but still. The show sort of points to this aspect when Tai talks about not being able to be together back there, but then she mostly focuses on wanting to clean up loose ends and not have her Perfect Future destroyed by being a known cannibal, etc. But then they DO break up, because of the homophobia, and then Tai comes out anyway and makes her queerness, like, part of her whole political campaign! Like there's honestly so much to mine there! Without going into how Tai is straight up still married in S3 and has a kid.

And then there's Shauna, now canonically queer, and somehow this has also never come up. Like.... I'm sorry but this is also screaming Straight Writers to me because my experience with queer people is we love talking about our queerness. Are her teammates the only people who know she's bi? Have she and Tai ever bonded over this specifically? Is being closeted yet another aspect of her suburban repression? I think the adult timeline falls too much into this trap of 'oh homophobia is over actually and no one cares about anyone's sexuality anymore.' Pure hetero speak and objectively untrue.

Also, I don't know how I feel about the specific mechanism of her death. I mean, again, better than cancer, and overall thematically makes sense, but in the exact moment of it, the minutiae of it... there was meaning in Van choosing not to kill Melissa but not in Melissa killing her. They really have no relationship or history at all (unless M is still mad about that side-eye of the M/S hookups? lol). Melissa has no particular history of Wilderness Cult Worship. It just... felt shoe-horned, honestly.

I also don't think Melissa should have been a survivor or have the size of a role that she's had though... she feels very blah to me. Like she IS the basic bitch in a whole landscape of weirdos, and her weirdest stuff (that kink for whatever Shauna is) still pales in comparison to what everyone else has going on lol.

I'm still supporting Shauna and her wrongs and I'm especially supporting Fuckboi Boyfriend Wilderness Shauna in that outfit and with that attitude. This is her truest self, I hate to say.