#i love shauna this is not shauna hate this is shauna LOVE do not misinterpret pls

[tabithatwo]

it's yellowjackets / jennifer's body parallels time!

hi hello keep reading if you would like to hear about shauna/jennifer and jackie/needy, here's my totally noncomprehensive, very much off the cuff thoughts on this very complex and interesting dynamic!!

(i'm not getting into the basic parallels, i'm gonna assume you know the karyn kusama of it all, the heart necklace, the homoerotic female friendship, the death)

yellowjackets is so brilliant because it feeds you stereotypes and absolutely does not deliver on them. there could be an entire paper on each girl and how this is true for them specifically, but walk quickly with me because i want to get into the nitty gritty gory fun stuff! a brief oversimplified example: nat is referred to as a burnout, some would assume she's a loner based on that, but she cares about the team as a unit more than arguably anyone else. (this is common in real life too, our stereotypes often don't hold water in reality and yj reflects that beautifully!)

now to the jackie/shauna of it all. it would be oh so incredibly easy to look at jackie and think she's the jennifer of the duo. we are set up to see her as prettier, more popular, more demanding. but that illusion falls apart QUICKLY if you pay attention to the things that jackie actually says and does. she's not a mean girl. she's actually one of the kindest on the team. she doesn't pick on shauna, she clings. there are plenty of takes on this on tumblr so i won't exhaust it, my adhd loves to digress and meander but i'm forcing myself back onto the trodden path to this point: people look at the first few minutes of the pilot and they immediately decide that they know who these girls are. the audience typecasts jackie as a jennifer and shauna as a needy. the popular, bubbly girl and her shy, bookworm best friend.

a lot of people, especially casual viewers who don't study this show like its their job (god, wonder what that would be like lol) understandably stop here. but to me the BRILLIANCE of yj is that they don't actually make it HARD for you to undo your initial impressions. the material is there. it isn't hidden. it isn't some deeper self of each character that is unraveled throughout seasons. they push, push, push to see just how far they can carry our deeply held stereotypes/expectations. how forward and violent can shauna be, with viewers still clinging to a shy and sweet girl, who was really their own creation? how kind and honestly pathetic kicked-puppy can jackie be, with viewers still clinging to a mean girl, who was really their own creation? how far will we go to warp the characters intentions, so that we can keep them in the box we understand them in? they ask this of the viewer and of other characters, but AGAIN i digress.

so, while this might sit strangely with some, yes i think that jackie is very much aligned with needy if you peel back just one layer. but far above and beyond that, shauna is so very fucking jennifer.

the overall veneer is thinned immediately in yj. there isn't one girl in the stands and one on center stage. jackie and shauna are both on the team. they go to the same parties, they play the same sport, i would argue that shauna isn't even coded as "less pretty" (please note the word coded, because i'm not saying needy is literally less pretty than jennifer, i am simply saying that we have hair, makeup, clothing, glasses trends that we use to stereotype characters, are you with me?)

so now what? now these girls are both and neither. shauna thinks that she is the needy to jackie's jennifer. jackie wears the necklace and the introductory shots frame her as important. but we're already diverting from that set-up.

our absolute clearest common denominator here is one that i rarely see people mention funnily enough: JENNIFER IS A SUCCUBUS. she CONSUMES. she KILLS. she WANTS and she TAKES.

now before you get TOO EXCITED!!! i see some of you getting ready to say i'm a shauna shipman hater, put the pitchforks down!! shauna is one of my favorite characters of all time. i love her crazy ass so deeply that it's alarming. (i don't hate jennifer, either, for the record.) i love her largely for WHAT she is. i think sanitizing or sweetening her is a disservice. she's amazing and complex and wounded and capable of deep love. but she also, quite LITERALLY, consumes.

her character is sex and desire and violence and obsession and consumption. and it's AMAZING. she's POWERFUL. she's our main framing character (in this dynamic), rather than needy. the scripts are switched. jennifer dies and needy lives, and that's one story. that's clearer cut, simpler, made for a horror film. but here, jackie dies and shauna lives, and that story is deep and rich and goes on to include a whole lot more death and destruction and chaos.

shauna tells us herself that it excites her. she likes it. she is this girl. this woman. she reminisces and she recreates and she covets.

jennifer tries to consume needy, shauna literally consumes jackie.

there's more to this story, obviously. you could deep dive and mine for the intricacies of the set up and fall of stereotype and expectation, or collect all of the exact parallels. but i'll stick with a few, because this is a quick outburst of thought.

a huge one, who is taking whose boyfriend?

here's another personal favorite of mine, just for kicks

is it too complex to neatly tuck away? absolutely. they're different stories with different themes. shauna isn't simply a teenager possessed by a demon. it runs far deeper. as is the essence of this show.

but if you want to look at parallels, look at the one who has been holding the knife the whole time.

#can you tell both of these stories make me crazy #i love shauna this is not shauna hate this is shauna LOVE do not misinterpret pls #you guys she EATS people!! #anon who just messaged me about this YES I see you I’m with you here are my thoughts lol #yellowjackets #yellowjackets meta #jennifer's body #shauna shipman #jennifer check #jackie taylor #anita needy lesnicki #karyn kusama #shauna x jackie #jackie x shauna #jackieshauna #shaunajackie

[lesbianalicent]

i got tagged by @lottieurl to try and get anon hate ig 🫡

rules: share some unpopular opinions about 5 different fandoms of your choosing

gonna do yellowjackets, hotd, succession, and bc i haven't been loud about them in a while: dragon age and mass effect

yellowjackets

literally do not care about jackie outside of her relationship to shauna sorry. like i love her role in the story but like as a character i'm just like. ok forgettable. she served her purpose. any time i see fics where she survives i'm like you are so fucking boring oh my god. also i have been known to enjoy shaunajackie on occasion but i really do think they're super overhyped. like what the show has currently is perfect for me. yes girl haunt the narrative! i also find misty deeply boring and i'm sick to death of jeff and coach ben.

i really enjoyed the 1996 storyline in s2 but the 2021 storyline was soooo dumb on so many levels and the pacing was terrible. too much focus on walter and jeff and the adam shit at the expense of everyone else and it's such a waste of talent tbh. also where tf is simone and sammy.

hotd

had no opinion on daemon until the targ stans started being themselves and now every time i see him i see red, which is especially annoying because he is essential to rhaenyra's entire character and the rhaenicents who claim otherwise are bonkers like guys c'mon now.

team black vs team green is stupid as fuck. moralizing asoiaf in general is just so, so stupid.

l*cemond's popularity is just misogyny plain and simple. you are all nuts. leave that poor actor alone.

alicent is a lesbian.

succession

greg should've been written out in season 3 if not earlier he did not serve a purpose in season 4 and the fact that nic braun got an emmy nom had me doing deep breathing exercises to try and calm down.

dragon age

people whose three canon romances are alistair, anders, and cullen are immediate red flags.

i think dao is genuinely the only good game out of the three. dai has extremely lazy storytelling and i hate here lies the abyss because it tries to play on the player's attachment to these characters instead of the inquisitor because like, why would the inquisitor give a shit about these people they've never met? they tried to pull a virmire without having the narrative weight behind it that would've actually made it juicy. it was just dumb!

speaking of mass effect, narratively the series is much much weaker than that trilogy and i think part of that is because they changed the formula with the second one and tried to make the protag like shepard and it really limited things. warden best protag.

solo queen anora and i will not budge on that. warden alistair endgame is his ideal endgame to me and leaving hawke in the fade is fine because the kirkwall gang will storm the fade to get them out if they don't get themselves out. it's hawke like, be fr.

mass effect

i'm more interested in humans than i am the aliens because i personally find earth politics way too fascinating. like yes please tell me more about the texan megapolis.

love ashley. love kaidan. you can imagine the kind of stress i am under at all times. also the space racist jokes make me want to put my head through a wall, because everyone misinterprets what ashley meant by the dog + bear convo and you too would be alarmed by the sight of an elcor.

garrus is overhyped and shakarians get on my nerves. i don't like bioware forcing liara on me. tali being straight is one of the cruelest things that bioware ever did.

andromeda was dai in space so i don't get why it flopped so hard. it was, like, fine i guess? and it had a natalie dormer asari. i could overlook cora for that.

[dearbraus]

i hate that so many people think jeff accepts shauna for who she is because he read her wilderness journals. i feel like it’s a gross misinterpretation of the situation. jeff violated her privacy by reading the journals she kept locked in a safe and he only read her journals so that he could have some sort of blackmail material on the yellowjackets not because he wanted to understand her pain better. if he loved shauna he would have never tried to exploit the yellowjackets shared trauma. it was never about making sure shauna and callie we’re taken care of, he needed the money because he didn’t want to be seen as a failure!

it’s the guilt that keeps him loyal to shauna. she went through something so horrific, she lost the person who meant the most to her, and when she killed adam it was a trauma response due to her paranoia and that jeff cannot fault her for. but he doesn’t accept her, he’s terrified of her but he feels guilty for exploiting her past and thinks helping her cover up a crime will make their transgressions even. but it doesn’t and it never will. sure, jeff loves shauna but he will never understand her not the way the yellowjackets do.

and furthermore, jeff doesn’t know how to parent callie, he doesn’t know how to care for the house. he’d rather go to jail than he the central figure in his teenage daughters life !!! if shauna went to prison whose going to wash his clothing, make him dinner, or keep the house clean???!

#fawns meta #i think that’s the tag #i’m not anti jeff i’m just a realist who spent so much time analyzing yellowjackets #like realistically why does jeff keep her secret? it’s bc hes committed his own crimes #it’s a double assurance