I. what love is

stabby definitely didn't start off perfectly when they met, with tabitha being..... tabitha. but stella eventually managed to soften her up, so much that tabitha would lie to her mother for her just so they could hangout and watch movies together. even tabitha herself remarks that they were really, really close. from the photos in stella's computer, you can see how tabitha looks and acts completely different from the way she does in the present. her genuine smile, her carefree disposition, her accepting physical affection like its no big deal, all of this is almost like an entirely different person from the version of her we meet her in chapter one.

spending so much time with stella brought out a completely different side to her. one that actually enjoyed her life and maybe even found it... fun? it's hard to imagine someone like tabitha, when we see how she turns out, being so laid-back and happy like she was. this version of tabitha is the person stella once knew, the same person tabitha herself says that she isn't anymore.

but if they were so happy, what changed?

the answer to that is tabitha. pearlanne saw how her daughter was being around an outside force, a force that could deter her from what she was born to do. and in her eyes, raising someone to carry all these family burdens meant that tabitha absolutely must not see a world beyond any of them, lest she realize that she is actually capable of more. that world was introduced to her by stella, so losing stella meant losing that side of her completely.

from both their recollections of their relationship, with tabitha describing them as "ex-somethings" and stella saying that she was her first relationship, it's clear they were something more than friends. unfortunately, we all know how that turned out for the both of them. however, despite how complicated things got between the two of them, they both still loved each other. that's the part that hurt the most: neither of them could ever stop.

the interactions they have in chapters 2-4 make this very obvious as well. while stella is more outward about it (defending her to kaneeka and reese whenever she gets brought up, inviting her to go ghost-busting despite kaneeka's protests, constantly sneaking in the mines to try and talk to her), tabitha is less so but equally caring about her (wanting her out of the shaw mines for her own safety, defending her from becka calling her "sad", congratulating her on her sponsorship, genuinely worrying about her when she disappears in chapter 4).

this is one of the things that i think is important to establish between the two of them, they have equal footing in this relationship. they are both an equally powerful force on the other person.

so, how did they become.... that?

toxic yuri happens when tabitha speaks to stella alone when she runs away to the place where her parents died in the end of chapter 4. what she says exactly and how she says it is unclear. however, there are a lot of factors when it comes to stella's current state of mind in this point of the story:

the haunting is still fresh in her mind, so she was already vulnerable as the trauma of her parents' death resurfaced

kaneeka was disappearing from her memory

reese was sicker than ever, and only becoming more distant (either running away, tranquilized and trapped in his house, or full on dead)

she was already missing tabitha, as she says if you were there to see them reconcile. she hadn't properly moved on from their falling out, still reaching out a hand for her

these factors paint the picture of a lonely girl who was desperate to get back any semblance of normalcy in her life. tabitha was the last remnant of "normal" in her life, the good ol' days when the world felt so big and they'd just watch movies together. every other factor of normal was gone: kaneeka, reese, her parents. so she clung onto tabitha and what's left of the town, as a desperate attempt to make herself feel better. or maybe not "better", just not like this anymore.

it's no surprise at this point that stella is no good at processing her emotions properly, opting to dump them into the void of other traumatic things in her life and pretend they don't exist. from kaneeka's remark of "i don't think she's ever going to actually leave this town", she's basically saying stella can't move on. she's clinging onto nostalgia, anything that feels normal. and to her, the town is the epitome of that. it's where she's from, where she and her parents grew up, where her friends are. she can't let it go. she can't let it rot.

she puts on a brave face, sure, but in the face of actual danger, she freezes. she's scared. and you can see the effect this has on her when we talk to her with tabitha, as she says she doesn't remember the years when the accident happened, suppressing her emotions so much that it causes her memory loss.

toxic yuri exemplifies stella's flaws perfectly. she wants to feel normal so bad, to be happy so bad, that she no longer cares what has to happen or who has to be sacrificed in order for her to obtain it. at first, it was her own well-being (disregarding her feelings in the name of "feeling better" but actually just making herself feel worse, or in other words being self-destructive), and now it's the same thing but on a much larger scale. essentially repeating the same cycle of avoiding the hurt. she wants to save the town with tabitha in it so she can feel "okay" again, so she doesn't have to face the reality of everything that's going wrong.

II. what can love become?

for something that started innocent and sweet, how did it become so dangerous and harmful?

the stellamance routes show that if you explore the forbidden wing with stella, she is appalled by the cell. she can't imagine tabitha knowing about this, let alone planning to actually trap someone in there. but in toxic yuri, the way she speaks of this fate is so terrifyingly cheery, like it's not a big deal. tabitha was sitting and holding a shotgun, yet there's something much more unsettling about stella's demeanor. smiling and joking around, talking about trends and watching movies as if it were just a free vacation.

but why would tabitha do that to someone she loves?

she knows how desperate they both are at this point in the story. they're seeking comfort in each other so they can both feel "okay". neither of them want to be alone in this. they need each other, for the wrong reasons.

toxic yuri and interacting with wayne show that tabitha's true intention all along was to lock us in the hole for the sake of saving the town. even without player intervention, her investment in the plan is faulty. when you treat her like a decent person, she falters and her walls crack.

this can be even more/less so depending on your relationship with her, but in the toxic yuri worldstate, she sees this as the only way to save the town. and so she enlists stella so she can feel less guilty about it. of course doing so would only continue the "scarlet cycle of hurt™" and make her feel worse in the long run, but having stella by her side makes it seem not so bad.

maybe she forgot about that side of her for a fleeting moment, whenever she was with stella. toxic yuri just takes that and flips it on its head.

now, there is a high chance that tabitha sugar-coated the player's fate so it wouldn't sound so bad and stella just bought it out of sheer desperation for everything to be okay again. and yes, i do believe this is what happened, i also think tabitha is not only lying to stella but to herself as well. she's still trying to absolve herself of the guilt of her actions whenever she can even when she can acknowledge that she isn't a good person, and stella is the perfect cheerleader for that.

to put it simply, they're making each other worse. love has the potential to do that, as it also has the potential for them to make each other better. stella's aversion to facing her own feelings, and tabitha's "scarlet" tendencies. they're two strong forces: push and pull. whenever tabitha starts to feel uneasy about what they're going to do, stella is there to pull her back into believing its what's best. having each other to back up their own flaws makes it feel not so bad anymore. like they're going to drift off into perfect fantasy land together, frolicking in fields once this is all over.