of all the ways to lose a person, death is the kindest.

amber waves was written about addiction. addiction to drugs, and the inherent idea of feeling "good", leading to anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure or happiness due to numbing your mind with your vices.

AMBER WAVES / NATALIE SCATTORCIO AND SHAUNA SHIPMAN

at a surface level, its easy to tie this song to nat. she struggles with drug abuse in her teen years and as an adult, dancing in and out of rehab centers, accompanied by the feeling of not knowing how to receive love or keep it. however, to some extent, she feels guilty for all of this, along with other things, which, to me, does not fit the premise of the song. in my mind, the singer is simply selfish, choosing what they know is bad just because it feels good, and almost making peace with that fact. yes, the general idea of the song fits nat, but reading between the lines, it fits shauna better.

as stated by melissa in the show, shauna is addicted to sabotaging herself. she "stirs the pot" just because it feels good. as a teen, she sleeps with jackie's boyfriend and starts fights at parties just to do it. as an adult, she continuously ruins her relationship with her husband and daughter, cheating on jeff, keeping callie at arms length and even treating her like she's a dumb threat instead of her own kin. she shows up to melissas house to find the person who sent her the tape in attempt to kill them without any forethought, chases melissa to her car covered in blood without even thinking about who may see her. in the wilderness, sturcken with grief, she constantly causes problems with other survivors and, as antler queen, pushes the idea of violence on everyone. just because she wants to see what will happen.

and shauna is perpetually aware of all of this. shes aware of her own bad decisions, and the dumb ones, shes aware she killed adam and pushed her family away by the end of season three, she was aware of her unabashed violence in the wilderness, and chooses it over and over again. shes fully aware that all of this is bad. and yet, she keeps making the same decision over and over again, because she is addicted to it. the violence, the self-sabotaging, the thought of ruining something or knowing it's already ruined, e.x "I liked the idea of smelling someone else on your clothes." and just like the singer of the song, she ends up alone with her consequences, knowing she'll pick the same thing over stability or all that is "good" in her mind.

HOUSEOFPSYCHOTICWOMN / JACKIE TAYLOR AND LOTTIE MATTHEWS

"Yet here I am, empty

Watching love of mine leave

But I'll be alright

Me and my amber waves

I'll be alright, I'll be alright"

houseofpsychoticwomn is a long, droning track of the words "i love you" being repeated, over and over. at first, it sounds meaningful, but as the song goes on, it starts to sound less like a phrase of affection and more like someone is trying to convince someone else of it. it starts to sound like a lie, in other words.

jackie was hard for me to pinpoint a song to from this album, since her vibe was just so light to me i nearly skipped her for this one. but houseofpsychoticwomn does fit her to an extent, since there's so much versatility to this song and so many sides of it. to me, it could be abuser to victim, attempting to control the narrative, or a victim lying to themself. the repeated i love you can be linked to jackie in two ways; lying to herself and her compulsory heterosexuality regarding jeff, or others claiming to "love" her despite putting her on a pedestal and idealizing a version of her in their heads. no one really loves jackie, and no one ever will; no one knew her enough to love every part of her. to shauna, she was "the perfect little princess", to coach martinez, she was "the one with influence and the star player", to her parents, she was "the perfect daughter", always an idea, never herself.

however, there's also a lyric break in this song. the singer explains something unattainable, something elusive and deceitful giving them belonging and love that they yearn for after it's gone. and who does this fit? lottie.

lottie never once frames what happened to them in the wilderness as something bad or evil. she explains to everyone she knows that it was beautiful almost, that it was natural, like something higher than them gave them permission to act on their instincts. she speaks about the wilderness as if it's a person or a god, not a place. as an adult she's so deeply attached and devoted to it and how it made her feel she creates a whole compound, and was the first one to suggest giving it a long overdue offering. she knows it plagues her and that it causes violence, but thoroughly believes it's all for a reason. deep down, she wants to believe the wilderness is something good, and that it loves her, but will always know it's the opposite, and that causes conflict and guilt in her own mind.

PUNISH / NATALIE SCATTORCIO

"There was a point where everything bent down

And it took something from me

Something I can't quite explain

And I always wondered if it would come back

And love me the way it said it was supposed to

But maybe it lied

Maybe it was all a lie"

the main idea behind the song punish is the story of a child predator repetitively harming a healing wound to punish himself for his attraction to children. not saying this has anything to do with natalie, but you get the main idea. feeling as if you need to be punished for something you cannot control.

nat might appear multiple times on this list because, she, too, is very complex. i wanted to highlight how her role as the true antler queen and the savior of the survivors affected her mentality. because she was always seen as the sensible one, the "good" one, the human one, i feel as if her mind began to see in black and white, or split into extremes. one side is "you did this, it was bad, and you hurt and killed people", while the other side is "you did this, it was good, you saved and helped everyone".

this, of course, leads to massive amounts of guilt. nat was struck with a sense of self-preservation in the wilderness, like an animal stripped bare, that the others might not have posssessed. she made bad decisions, she lied, she let other people die, because she knew she needed to live. and, as i stated, her mind made extremes out of all of it. she doesn't categorize her decisions as 'surviving' or 'doing what she had to', she simply views them as selfishness or saviorism because, by herself and everyone else, she was set on a pedestal. in one of the very first episodes during a sharing circle at rehab, she claims to have "lost her purpose" after being rescued, showing how her reputation among the girls affected her.

the main, central line that made me tie this song to nat was her monologue with lisa at lottie's retreat. she tells her to stay away, that she's poison, and only ruins people. she claims to have killed her best friend, which was travis, and solely an accident on lottie's part, but once again, she does not see that. she believes it's her fault and her fault alone that he died, despite the explanation lottie gave her. this represents the left extreme, or the black to her white: "you killed him."

her story as an adult was heartbreaking and tragic to me. the constant guilt an dshame, people dying around you, feeling as if it's all your fault. nat as a person was never going to end up any other way, she was never going to make peace with what she did and didn't do, and her self-sacrifice in thought of javi was the most beautiful way for her to go out. death was her only retribution in her mind because no one went out of their way to tell her she did what she had to do to survive.

VACILLATOR / TRAVIS MARTINEZ

"Whatever's wrong with me

I will take to bed

I give in so easy

Nature chews on me

Little death like lead

Poisonous and heavy

It has always been this way"

the literal meaning of the word vacillator is someone who cannot decide. in the song, the singer dances between letting someone in and allowing them to see their true self, and keeping the relationship purely sexual to avoid being seen and vulnerable.

along all three (and soon to be four) seasons, travis is torn between two people; lottie and natalie.

lottie and natalie both represent two sides travis can't choose between; spiritual salvation, and pragmatism. lottie attempts to guide him into what she thinks will help him, trying to make him see her point of view and the greater good she believes they can all serve. natalie, on the other hand, tries to guide him into being human, and seeing what's happening around them and the consequences of it all. both attempt to keep him alive in their own ways. when javi is missing and the winter causes food to grow more scarce every day, travis turns to lottie for comfort of the mind, and natalie for comfort of the body. by the spring, when travis knows what the group is turning into, he turns to natalie, who represents survival and morality he believes the others don't possess anymore. as an adult, he relies on comfort on different levels from both natalie and lottie.

and by the end of his life, his unwillingness to stay loyal to one kind of stability was his end.

THATORCHIA / LAURA LEE

"You're so smooth

If you want, you can bite me

And I won't move

You won't lose me to thunder or lightning

But you could to crowded rooms"

this one can be a difficult song to coin, given as it doesn't have lyrics, and the word "thatorchia" isn't a genuine word recorded anywhere. thankfully, hayden cleared it up and said thatorchia basically meant "knowing god will let you near but won't let you stay". the song's tone in general carries themes of false belonging, and a relentless, destructive pursuit of a moment of religious bliss or ecstasy.

i gave laura lee this song because, as we all know, she died in the plane attempting to get rescue for her teammates. God let her believe that she would make it, and that it would all work out, just to have all hope ripped out from under everyone's feet in a way that was nothing short of cruel. the slow, tense buildup of this song reminds me faintly of laura lee's studying of the flight book and her liftoff.

god allowed her to get close enough to graze her fingers against the divinity and hope, but he did not let her stay.

no lyrics to quote.

PULLDRONE / TAISSA TURNER

pulldrone is a song that explores the idea of simulacrum, which was a theory developed about the phenomenon of a copy without an original by jean baudrillard. the lyrics are spoken, not sung, and describe the descent from the mundane, in which they grow tired of, and explore onward to find greater meaning, pleasure, and salvation in something greater then themself.

taissa was my pick for this song because she, quite literally, descends from the mundane. at first, she's doing millions of times better than each other yellowjackets; she's a politician, has a wife and a child and a beautiful home, running for senate, and has a lot of money on her hands. and, much like shauna, taissa gives this life up, or sabotages it, due to her feelings regarding the wilderness. deep down, she knows she can't handle a stable life like the one she had; and perhaps she knows it even bores her, to an extent. once her family is gone, she turns to van, begins experimenting giving the wilderness sacrifices on her own accord despite how van (the spiritual one, initially) deflects and tells her it's a bad idea, and consumes her raw heart after she's died. the cannibalization moment in season three beautifully ties her to this song; illustrating how she fell from such a high spot in life, or the "mundane" in search for something greater or of a more spiritual purpose. in pursuit of that, she lost what little she did have in the end, which shows how destructive the descent and false belonging can be when it comes to the wilderness and its sacrifices.

ETIENNE / VANESSA PALMER

"Six, delineation

I want to know what God knows, and I will bе with Him

Sent over the еdge, I sigh

Flush against the veil, I sing

Seven, perversion

It is no good bearing false witness

The sinner's errand

I am what I am but we are not the same

It is no good speaking of fairness, the fools errand"

the song etienne is another without lyrics, but it does have a spoken outro, which is the story of a man who tried to commit suicide by inducing a heart attack running across long distances without stopping. he tried again and again, until eventually, it made him feel so good he didn't want to kill himself anymore. this track is a bridge to amber waves and compared to the other songs in this album, it's comforting.

the transition from van being the first to believe and devote herself to lottie and the wilderness to her, as an adult, attempting to resist it, is what i mean to focus on here. van puts up a front initially that she's moved past the wilderness, in both the teen and adult timeline, I.e "I think it's time we woke up", but it's so painfully clear she still believes in it years later. after the event at lottie's retreat and natalie's death, lottie tells van they "gave it what it wanted". van has a look of pure relief on her face after that, which betrays her withstanding belief in lottie and the wilderness by exposing it.

however, my main reason for giving van this song was her death.

on top of melissa with a knife, she claims her cancer will disappear if she kills her. melissa manipulates her here by telling her she was always too good of a person to ever make a violent sacrifice, which, given how van cried after the hunt for mari, was definitely correct. it was only after this that van dropped the knife and gave up. it gave her a strike of clarity to hear how another person perceived her as "good", and therefore didn't want to go through with the murder anymore. here, she was finally realizing their obsession with the wilderness wasn't what was keeping her alive, but it was her own strength, and courage, and love, that did.

and that was her end.

ONANIST / MISTY QUIGLEY

"He ran and he ran until he was exhausted and he collapsed

But he didn't die

So the next night he tried the same thing and he ran again

And he still didn't die

So he tried again the third night

And then the fourth and the fifth

And after this had been going on for a week

He felt so good that he didn't want to kill himself anymore"

onanist is a slow-burn dong with an extremely intense peak, written about the idea of onanism, which as stated in the bible was the sinful indulgence of pleasure for a selfish purpose rather than to conceive a child. the climax of the song is the singer admitting to wanting to know love from another person, and wanting to know what it feels like.

im sure we are all aware how cunning and manipulative misty can be. what i want to target specifically in this section is her obsessive need for control, and her need to be needed by people to feel wanted and appreciated. at the base of her character, misty experienced (likely) years of alienation from her peers and her parents, accompanied by loneliness. this type of environment typically breeds shyness and a people-pleasing complex, but misty is, for a lack of better words, much smarter than that. or more strategic.

at the end of the day, what misty wants to be wanted. taking this into consideration a lot of her acts might seem forgiveable, until they aren't. she (attempts, or succesfully) drugs coach scott multiple times, destroys the transmitter to eliminate the chance of rescue to stay in an environment where she feels like she is needed or belongs, chains up and repetitively drugs the reporter to keep her vulnerable, provides her food and drinks, even works at a nursing home full of the most dependable population of individuals next to children, places a camera is nat's room to "keep an eye on her" and "keep her safe". yes, misty just wants to be loved. but she commits more than a handful of extremely immoral acts to achieve that, and ends up being evil or a nuisance in other people's eyes. she knows full and well what she's doing, but doesn't know how to give or receive affection in any other way that does not involve what she's so good at, i.e, her relationship with Walter.

misty was not a good person. she wanted good things and had no other way to achieve them.

PERVERTS / EVERYBODY

"There I found me in a long, long wood

Astray, midway of mortal life

Witness to such agony

But there, before the grace of God go I

I want to know love

I want to know what it feels like"

no one came untouched.

_

"No one you know is a good person"