Just....thinking about how Van uses humour to mask emotions. Frequently. And by that I mean like. All the time. Do we ever really see Van get upset outside of a group setting? No, not really. We got that one frog/tent scene in ep8 but prior to that? Nothing. And that goes for the adult timeline as well.
But I mean think about it. She gets left in a plane and the next joke she cracks is "You're on fire today Jackie- oh wait...that was supposed to be me, huh?" She's upset she got left in the plane, and reasonably so. But jokes are the only time we see her actually communicate that to anyone verbally. Tai is consistently the ONLY person we see her be genuinely vulnerable with. We see her soften for others a couple times, but rarely does she soften for herself.
I mean hell, she gets almost burnt alive after getting mauled by wolves and how does she talk about it? "Fire?? Really??" and "You killed a wolf for me, which is about the most attractive thing someone could do." neither of these statements are serious- they both have this overtone of humour.
And I mean you could also say that on top of Van writing "I love you" in blood being self sacrifice, its also a testament to her humour. Her Girlfriend just got possessed and drew blood by biting her lip and not only does she affirm that she loves her, she uses the blood from that injury to say that. She's taking the pain she has and making jokes about it in order to make others feel better- and the I love you is the most literal translation of that.
Van shows distaste through humour, its her more subtle way of communicating. Eg, Adult Van "sounds like your hands were really tied there- oh wait, those were her hands." its a joking sentence, but really, its also showing her disapproval. We can see that Van isn't happy with Misty for killing Jessica, but does she explicitly say that? No. Instead she cracks a joke about it.
Even in her arguement with Tai back in season 2, where Van gets annoyed at Tai for trying to walk away without letting her help because "she has to help her after seeing her like this", what does she do during that arguement? Start making references to movies. "I'm mixing up my pop culture metaphors cause I'm fucking upset!!!" Iconic line. But also. Really shows how she copes with bad situations.
Van's reactions to bad things both in the adult and teen timeline have consistantly been humour. Its not exactly deflecting the fact that there's an issue, its more downplaying it. She sees that something is wrong and she doesn't approve of it? Joke about it. She sees that she's hurt physically/mentally? Joke about it. That way nobody worries too much, they get a laugh out of it, and she can tell herself that she at least kind of addressed it.
