batgirl!

getting back in contact with people after a depressive episode is so wild because it's like hey sorry i dropped off the face of the earth and never responded to your attempts to reach out for months i was six feet deep in a grave of my own making when i suddenly realized i didn't want to die down there and had to claw my way to the surface inch by inch on my belly like a worm until i felt the sunlight on my face again. anyway how have you been? how are things? but you can't SAY that so you're just like. um. hi. do you still like me 👉👈

personally I find that Yellowjackets succeeds where other plane-crash-stranded media falls short. and it's because if you peel back the layers of other shows in this genre, the story is basically the same: people will do what they have to in order to survive, roles will reverse. Yellowjackets does this too, but Yellowjackets isn't about a plane crash and it isn't about survival. it's about the singular, violent, inescapable wilderness of girlhood, not nature. the wilderness is a backdrop and though the girls use it to tell their story (literally Van beginning an origin story in the season 2 trailer), it isn't... really that important. before they crash they were already icing their teammates out, betraying one another, surviving brutally through youth. being a girl is just like that. yeah, the setting and the strange magic helps reveal that story to the audience in a shocking and palatable and larger-than-life way, it brings to view what that complex inner world of girlhood really felt like. but it has something to say other than "people will do horrible things to survive". if you were ever a teenage girl, you already know that.

the best thing about supergirl is every time i sit down to watch it i have no idea whether i'm going to get anti government agency kara, pro government kara, good journalist kara, bad journalist kara, 'my parents were good self sacrificing people' kara, 'my parents made mistakes but that doesn't reflect on me' kara, genius kryptonian kara or dumb jock kara. it truly is a lucky dip