Queer men had the AIDS epidemic, queer women/AFABS have the ACL epidemic in women's soccer 😔

god gives his gayest soldiers (me) the hardest battles (not spending every free minute rewatching bottoms)

I saw you like complicated sapphic stories and Hozier and I've just gotta ask you: have you heard of Burn the House Down by Kenna Jenkins? It's an alternate history novel abt the 1st woman president and her secret sapphic relationship/bearded marriage with her mlm best friend and has massive Hozier vibes (especially Francesca, Nina Cried Power, Take Me To Church, Arsonist's Lullaby, Damge Gets Done, The Wages, Better Love, and Nobody). It also has a subplot about arson at the White House, a pro-choice subplot with strong Swan Upon Leda energy, and ft. an entirely queer main cast and really fleshed out characters!

I have not but that sounds amazing! I'll have to check it out 😌

Now that the tournament is wrapped up I'll first say that even with all the bullshit that came along with it, I still feel so privileged to be able to watch the growth of women's sports in real time like this. There was so much Black joy, so much colonized joy, so much queer joy, and I hope nobody loses sight of how radical the wwc and woso are at the roots. The players are succeeding with quite literally every odd stacked against them in some cases, and i desperately hope that with a spotlight shined on some of the inequalities we've seen, it might get better.

Having said that, I hate that Spain won. It's nothing against the players and everything against Vilda; I ache for the players who watched the final knowing that with a win, with the federation backing Vilda, their careers might be over. I'm still kind of in disbelief that after this incredible tournament, this is somehow where we ended up. And I hope that if you're feeling similar to me, that feeling will serve as a reminder that we are not done yet. Growth isn't good enough if it comes at the cost of players' well-being.

I'll definitely have more complex thoughts about the wwc and the uswnt's run at some point, but right now I'm mostly stuck on the fact that vlatko did this team so dirty. And I'm absolutely heartbroken for Kristie Mewis, and Sofia Huerta in particular - who were frozen out of the NT for years, who put so much work in to finally make it to a world cup, who might not get another chance, and who barely fucking played after all that. The uswnt just has an incredible amount of talent no matter how you look at it, and the fact that the vast majority of that talent wasn't utilized at all (not to mention the increased risk of injury to the players who were constantly played!!) pisses me off to no end.

watched atsv again today and this was all i could think about

(it's available as a sticker on my redbubble shop here)

tw // mentions of disordered eating, food, cannibalism

something i haven't seen people talking about a lot and something that really stood out upon recently rewatching yellowjackets is the show's themes around food. because consider: the yellowjackets' relationship to food in the wilderness is so incredibly complex. it's something to be afraid of - we've seen over and over that food is tied to death; but it's also the thing they most desperately need, something they risk their lives for over and over. it's the cause of celebration, rejoicing (there is so much to say about the bacchanal scene in particular) and simultaneously the most consistent source of grief for the team. we see the girls caught between dread and excitement at the prospect of food, desperately hungry but trying to stop themselves from craving sustenance because they know it will also cause pain. and yeah, it's complicated because their food is coming from cannibalism, but consider also that they're teenage girls in the 90s and that almost all of them likely already had some sort of complicated relationship with food. they had probably already been told food was something to fear, something bad, and honestly i think having that experience would make it easier to navigate the complications they face in the wilderness - if you've already feared something your whole life, what does it matter now if you simply fear it for a different reason? and this is what make ben's perspective as an outsider, the only one not involved in teenage culture, so fascinating. he has the hardest time accepting this new relationship to food because he's the least likely to have encountered anything like it before. he still sees food as something black and white, something that can't give you life if it took from someone else, while the yellowjackets have been navigating this landscape and all its complexities for a long time. is the wilderness just a metaphor for diet culture? probably not, but i certainly think the context of a culture of disordered eating adds a lot to the show.

in yj ep 107 van mentions getting taken to NYC on her second birthday and seeing Cats, and i just. do you think present day van saw the Cats movie. do you think she sobbed or laughed hysterically when she was inevitably shown the trailer against her will. i would pay so much fucking money to see her reaction to that movie oh my god

i'm thinking about how hozier said "Honey, I wanna race you to the table / If you hesitate, the getting is gone" and how the yellowjackets are racing against time, racing against the wilderness, racing against themselves to find sustenance; one hesitation (misty pulling nat back, nobody bringing jackie in from outside, travis not being able to follow nat) can cost a life.

about "Throw enough rope until the legs have swung" and "Skinning the children for a war drum", how eventually hunted girls will be strung up to drain and how javi's clothes, the second skin of the only child among them, were removed so that the rest of the team could have a better chance of survival.

about "We can celebrate the good that we've done / I won't lie, if there's something still to take / There is ground to break, whatever's still to come" and the celebration of fresh meat, the bacchanal, the way the relief of something to eat drowns out any grief that might be felt; but also, food only makes them hungrier, lets the cracks in their stomachs grow bigger, until they dig pits used to hunt each other and take from their teammates until there's quite literally nothing left.

thinking about "Turning back to shore again / Above the outer atmosphere of a world he's never seen / And looking down to his new home, he feels the rising of a wave / And knows at once he will not weather it", how Lottie, who has led them through so much, doesn't recognize the teammates she crashed with, doesn't know what she's unwillingly created, and seems to sense that whatever the others are swept up in will drown her too --- even 25 years later, all of them are barely keeping their heads above the tide.

about "I looked down into the depths when I met you / I couldn't measure it" and laura lee recognizing something in lottie, taking her in, quite literally looking down at her as she welcomed lottie into her beliefs yet never able to participate in lottie's created belief system in the same way.

about "Measure the silence of a house / The unheard footsteps at the doorway / The unemployment of the mouth / The waking up, having forgotten / And remembering again the full extent of what forever is", how painful every morning waking up to a silent, freezing cabin would be, a team of teenagers reduced to silence by their stomachs in order to conserve energy, the lost members --- a team divided into those who are gone, and those who wake up every morning and wonder when they'll be gone.

about "With each grave / I think of loss and I can only think of you" and how shauna has to confront the reality of the part she played in jackie's fate every single time the yellowjackets hunt, every time another one of them dies for their survival, every time they dig another pit but end up with nothing to bury in graves.

thinking about "Do you think I'd give up / That this might've shook the love from me / Or that I was on the brink? / How could you think, darling, I'd scare so easily?", "My life was a storm, since I was born / How could I fear any hurricane?" and van, who took care of her mother and tried to make sense of her life as a teen, taking care of taissa --- following her when she's sleepwalking, keeping her safe even when it brings her close to the cliff herself, trying to understand it so that taissa can have peace of mind --- van, who's in her thirties and still taking care of her mother and taissa and everyone around her and trying to make sense of her life while knowing that she doesn't have much left.

about "I'll tell them put me back in it", van looking into the eye of the storm and gritting her teeth. the woman who's supposed to be dead, burnt to a crisp, taking the crumbling foundation she's been given and trying her best to build it into something she can be proud of.

in conclusion i better fucking hear some hozier in the next season of yj

so i was drawing Gwen and noticed that she's lowkey buff and now i am absolutely OBSESSED with the idea of beefy gwen standing next to tall, lanky-ass Miles it's so good

(my headcanon is that Gwen goes to the gym every week with her dad. Miles has never gone to a gym in his life)

MILES MORALES' MOM IS SUCH A FUCKING MILF, RIO PLEASE STEP ON ME OH MY GOD

one of the themes of yellowjackets that i haven’t been able to stop thinking about is cycles of violence, which i think we particularly see in two ways: inter-generational trauma, and this idea of violence as a tool of forgiveness.

starting with inter-generational trauma, i love what yj has done with this. there are so many different examples: van’s relationship with her mom, which liv hewson has said impacts the way they play the character (in particular her relationship with tai), and which i think is especially important given that van’s mom was an alcoholic and now we’ve seen this suggestion that van may or may not have some kind of addiction problem herself. tai’s trauma which manifests itself in sleepwalking, which she never fully dealt with, and now has directly passed onto her child - arguably largely because she refuses to face it. shauna’s relationship with callie, the way she’s treated her child as accomplice, distant yet also expecting callie to fill in the role jackie might have had if everything had happened differently; still processing the trauma of her wilderness birth which leaves her unable to be fully present for callie. lottie’s relationship with her parents, natalie’s experience with abuse, there’s so much i could go into with this.

but in particular, i think one of the most interesting ways this manifests is in the way lottie passes her beliefs and practices - shaped by this unspeakable trauma, shaped by her experience in a mental hospital in a foreign country, shaped by the ways she’s failed and how nobody has taken her seriously - onto the members of her “community”. dozens of people living their lives on a foundation lottie has built out of her pain.

and this is also the clearest place we’ve seen lottie express this belief in violence as a way to achieve forgiveness. when she tells lisa to stab natalie, to take her anger out on the cause, just as she offered herself up as a sacrifice to shauna 25 years ago. i certainly agree with others that lottie can be manipulative, but i think in this regard she’s genuine - she believes that she’s found a solution, but she blinds herself to the fact that she’s caught in her own cycle, that intentionally or not the people around her have been caught in this same cycle. misty couldn’t save crystal/kristen, so she lets javi die to save another friend. nat can’t save javi, so she saves lisa at the cost of herself - but misty can’t save natalie this time, and the cycle continues, because the cost of using violence to find forgiveness is that somebody will end up harmed, somebody won’t be able to stop it, and the burden of guilt is simply passed on.

to me this is such a fascinating idea that i’ve never really seen explored before, and on some level i know that it will only get so much worse as more shit goes down and more people can’t be saved. if this is the principle the yellowjackets are living by, they’re all accruing a lot of fucking guilt. and i most certainly see how constantly trying to outrun this guilt, caught in a trap of committing more violence and acquiring more guilt to escape what you’re already carrying, could bury a person.

Last round of yj memes for a while 😔

More yj memes for your enjoyment

shauna in jeff’s dream:

notes from “it chooses”

so i took notes on the new yj episode (”it chooses”) both because i’m a nerd and because so much shit happens in literally every episode and i can’t keep it all straight - i have so many fucking Thoughts and i figured y’all might also, so here are some of them in roughly chronological order (obviously lots of spoilers below, also it’s fucking long but bear with me):

lottie is extremely fucked up good lord girl

mari being the most devoted but also making fun of lottie - what’s her deal

NUGGET IS DEAD WHAT THE FUCK - him being a hallucination the whole time mirrors both shauna’s baby dream and ben imagining paul/being in a better place

they’re going to the Sharing Shack this is so deeply unserious

shauna having to confess that she killed a man fucking sent me

jeff seeing the pictures of the man his wife killed all cut up sent me in an extremely different way (off the brink)

nat and misty being the ones to follow shauna when she tries to leave, both in purple - they’ve become the most devoted to lottie in the present, whereas van is completely the opposite

young nat saying “they’ve changed because of her” (THE THOUGHTS I AM HAVING... i can’t put them into words quite yet but boy am i fucking having thoughts)

van being the one to unite the group in lottie’s absence - and also lottie “sacrificing” herself being used to motivate/unite the group

mari hallucinating blood dripping from the walls and saying “they’re dead” made me SCREAM because oh my god i thought at the beginning of the season that the dripping would be related to blood and related to mari finding something in or around the cabin having to do with the wilderness/sacrifice and i am simply so correct all the time

misty my serial killer queen <3

misty somehow being both a serial killer and the FBI, what an icon

do we know if van ever got a postcard?

travis is doing something weird (not being an asshole)

i wish literally anyone could see the way i was internally cackling when jeff hallucinated shauna as the wife from sharknado i will be thinking about this for WEEKS

i fucking love the show’s themes of intergenerational trauma that we see showing up in so many different ways - most obviously with shauna/callie and tai/sammy, but also how the girls interacted with their parents, how we see the choices their past and present selves make interact, how lottie is actively shaping other peoples’ lives according to her trauma - there’s so much to say about this and there might be a more in depth analysis coming because again i will not stop thinking about this for weeks

it seems that the group as a whole still holds some animosity towards shauna for what she did to lottie, as seen when they’re all mad at her for telling jeff and tai specifically says that people have repeatedly put themselves in harm’s way for her

lottie very specifically Gazes Meaningfully at the camera during this discussion

once again i find it fascinating how lottie and nat’s arcs are converging, at first i thought their roles within the group had reversed when natalie said they need to talk about everything and lottie replied “this isn’t something therapies can fix” - really they’re moving in the same direction but at different paces, it seems here at least like nat has always just been a couple steps behind lottie but she’s starting to catch up and hoo boy something is gonna happen when she does

the way that in lottie’s absence van takes over the lead role - shuffling and holding the cards, orchestrating the hunt - but misty is her enforcing, the one actually pulling cards for people

this is something we see from misty even into the present - at one point she said something like “i took care of [jessica roberts], like i always do” and that just enforced it for me (no pun intended), while shauna has a similar capacity for violence i think she can only stomach it in the heat of the moment, while misty is always able to detach herself and that’s something the rest of them/the antler queen take advantage of

they all get so obsessed with the hunt that they’re not even chasing anything (that’s what��s called Symbolism)

the parallels between the moose and javi, both times natalie is desperate to pull them out but quite literally her fear/survival instinct overrides her hunger, she let go of javi so much more willingly than the moose

final thought (sorry this is so long dear god): a while back i listened to the episode of You’re Wrong About that was on the Andes plane crash, and something that came up a lot was this idea that we’re drawn to wilderness survival stories because there’s inherently something either comforting or deeply terrifying about the idea of not being in control of our surroundings, of being at the mercy of natural forces with no morals or intentions. and the way yj has been playing with this is incredible, particularly in the group dynamics: for the firm believers in the wilderness as an entity, the control is taken out of their hands. they’re simply surviving, and they may be aware on some level that they’re doing horrible things to each other but they justify it by making it a sacrifice to this outside entity. and on the other side (mostly just natalie at this point, really), there are those who are clinging onto what little control they still have in the wilderness, who can’t accept their actions as anything but their own and are horrified at those who don’t do the same. they’ve created such an interesting dynamic and i’m so excited to see it play out, especially as we see people changing sides and shifting who/what they see as in control (the most interesting case of this might be van, who wholeheartedly embraced the idea of the wilderness in control as a teen but seems to have retroactively taken ownership of what she did as an adult)

I'm genuinely so fascinated by Lottie and Natalie's dynamic - two girls from extremely different backgrounds but who have both faced parental abuse or neglect and who both carry similar stigmas (drugs/having sex for Natalie, mental illness for Lottie); two girls who are leaders in the wilderness in very different ways, but both shy away from it at first; two girls who are both trying so fucking hard to hold everything together, but going about it in such different ways that one of them is doomed to fail. And i can't help but wonder if part of the conflict between them is a result of Natalie desperately trying to avoid leadership, because the thought of people depending on her terrifies her - the girl who's been told over and over that she's doing everything wrong, fucking everything up for herself - and maybe that's a big part of her resentment of Lottie, who she sees so much of herself in but who takes the mantle of leadership so much more willingly.

And then there's the present, and how after resisting for so long Natalie has seemingly completely surrendered to Lottie. That makes me think that maybe she did the same in the past, maybe she got so tired and lost that she turned to Lottie like everyone else; maybe deep down she knows what she did as a result, and that's why she's the only one who truly displays animosity towards Lottie as an adult. I think that Natalie, who we already know is the most self-destructive of the bunch, is also the most likely to blame herself fully for anything that happened - because her and Lottie are so similar that Nat sees Lottie's accomplishments as a failure on her part. They're caught in this push and pull, where it's impossible for both of them to win.

Anyway, in summary i can't get over the way these characters have been written as such similar and yet diametrically opposed people, and I'm so fucking excited to see where their relationship goes.