thinking about taissa in yellowjackets and mental illness specifically when she's talking to shauna and shauna is like i had all these plans that i didn't do because of the crash whereas taissa literally did everything she planned... but looking at their lives like shauna seems so stuck in the past married to her dead best friend's boyfriend and the others too all have this problem to an extent like nat especially is actively wallowing in her misery as an adult completely incapable of escaping it even temporarily without drugs but taissa is, if anything, the most stuck in the past because she absolutely refuses to acknowledge what happened and it shapes her life entirely, her life that doesn't feel real... her happy marriage is a farce her dream of running for office is completely unviable because of people's knowledge of her past, her relationship with her son being that he's ultimately afraid of who she is 'deep down', her other self, but like the other self IS her! like it's her pain her trauma and she literally doesn't want anyone to see it. and she's RIGHT to, because when they see it, they're afraid, they stay away from her, they say she's dangerous, terrifying. and that's straight up because they don't know her. only the other yellowjackets know her truly. everyone else literally only knows the front she puts on, even her wife and son. she's already fighting such an insane uphill battle as a black lesbian in general but specifically in politics, and everyone wants to KNOW. they want to know what she did and they want to see her bleed, they want to see her break, and she is so steadfast to not let them see it - but she can't escape it. you can't escape your trauma and what it has done to you, and that's all she wants, but it's boiling over, it's breaking her at the seams.

just dumping thoughts here but one of the most fascinating (to me) implications we get about the tai/fugue tai duality is in season one where tai wakes up in the tree as an adult for the first time — this stood out to me the very first time I watched it, and still does; her panic, her shakenness, the terrible job she does of scrubbing herself clean. the contrast is not explicitly spelled out for us, but we know it from context: fugue tai does this gracefully. she covers her tracks. she’s seen by sammy but not simone because she chooses to show herself to one and not the other. tai would like to have everyone believe it’s her fugue self who’s erratic, unpredictable, out of control — but it’s the other way around. fugue tai acts deliberately and intentionally. fugue tai has the patience for 1000-piece puzzles where tai wants to snap her fingers and have everything fall into place. tai is the one who barely keeps it together, who slips in the spilled blood when all is said and done. who can never determine when and how she’s seen. there isn’t a hidden part of herself that can’t control her actions; there’s just her.