#yellowjackets rant

All I'm seeing is that we are getting butcherqueen post crash scenes

she starts off as a prominent politician, separating herself from the other yellowjackets by being a public figure. her son is the first link we have to other tai, and the actions that other tai takes feel a lot more sinister in nature compared to how watered down she's seemed in following seasons.

she starts off as, objectively speaking, one of — if not the most compelling character of the show.

and in s2 and even more so in s3, she seems to me more of a filler character than a main, at least compared to the rest of the adult yellowjackets (save for van, whose storyline fuses with taissa's.)

despite winning the election, she quits her job and seemingly has no more professional aspirations — drawing that storyline to a conclusion despite it being a major part of her character in season 1. she's been married to simone for 15 years, and even as we get real taissa back, her wife isn't even mentioned. sammy is set up as an intriguing character in season 1, a boy that may have a connection to the supernatural to a boy who can tell the difference between his mother and her malevolent other self — only to be near fully axed in the show. the no-eyed man is one of the most compelling themes in the show, yet we don't even see him in the second half of season 3.

season 2 and 3 strip her of her political ambition, her family and eventually even the cryptid figure that's been haunting her — yet other adult survivors still kicking, to whatever extent, do have their own storylines.

she's gone from "I NEED to know more about this character" to "oh, she's there." I enjoyed her and van in the adult timeline, but I'm sure there must have been a way to execute that storyline without alleviating 80% of her previous storylines.

But then.... i think of it in the sense that of course Travis and Tai didn't want to loose Javi and Van but they did and that way to love and remember them was to eat their hearts in a sense to show that they loved and somewhat "owned" a part of their heart (if you know what i mean like they have a permanent place in their hearts). Yet compared to this scene....

Where of course Travis nearly lost Natalie and of course he doesn't want her to be dead and to cannibalise her so this is his way of telling her she owns his heart. That she will always hold a place in his heart and this scene is so especially crucial after what happened with Javi, cause we know that Natalie blames herself for it and Travis probably does a little bit too but even after all of it he still loves her and knows it wasn't her fault so this was him reminding her that she will always own and have that place in his heart.

jackie hates when shauna doesn't agree with her

jackie hates that shauna's not focusing on her

in jackie's death dream, she forgave shauna as soon as she said 'i'm sorry'

jackie's life would not be better without shauna, and i know you keyboard warriors are probably thinking 'oh but shauna's a homewrecker, she slept with jackie's boyfriend!' what home did she wreck. please, enlighten me. what home did she wreck. JACKIE DID NOT CARE ABOUT JEFF!!! THEY WERE NOT GOING TO LAST!! i know i'm technically dipping into headcanon-land when i say that the only reason shauna slept with jeff is because it's the closest she could get to jackie, but do you seriously think shauna cared about jeff either? the answer is NO!!! she only did it because of jackie, and you can argue what the specific reason is there, but you can't deny that it was because of jackie.

also, as i stated before, jackie's life is moot without shauna. i say this because shauna basically killed her. i don't believe that jackie's death was shauna's fault, i don't blame her for it, but i do think shauna is the reason jackie didn't come back inside. jackie had practically no one in her life, she was only ever close with shauna. in my opinion, jackie did not want a life without shauna or a life where shauna hated her.

you CAN be a jackie fan and not a shauna fan, but as jackie fan, you can NOT speak ill of shauna shipman.

There are SO MANY male characters that are just as if not worse than Shauna and I never see them get nearly this much hate.

Now DISCLAIMER I'm NOT saying every Shauna hater is sexist or anything, if you just don't like characters like that that's fair enough, you're all good I'm not talking about you.

But statistically, I am sure that there is at least a portion of Shauna haters that have a male character that is just as bad as her or worse and they like that character.

For example, Joe Goldberg, he is objectively WAY worse of a person than Shauna, he is done wayyy more damage, he is fucked up many more people's lives, he repeats the same pattern over and over, he is an ADULT man and he doesn't even acknowledge that he's a bad person. Granted, there are people that hate him (me included) but from what I've seen that is about half of the people watching, the other half LOVES him, they even say he's charming.

Meanwhile over here, this character is a TEENAGE girl (yes there's adult Shauna too but ppl hate on Teen Shauna just as much), a bad person ofc but objectively not as bad as Joe and is in a situation where she can't get assistance. Adult Shauna, though less justified in her actions, is also still not as bad as Joe. And the majority HATE her. Comment sections flooded with hate for her. I look Shauna up on any site other than Tumblr and I see so much hate for her.

I don't see this amount with any other male character, so many people praise them and analyse and dissect and appreciate their complexities and then I see female characters like Shauna and they can get so fucking flattened.

I don't even want Shauna to be loved by the majority, I just want it to be fucking balanced.

Now you could say people like Joe more cuz he can come off less angry than Shauna (even tho technically he is just as angry), well you know who is even angrier than Shauna and is loved by millions, fucking BAKUGO. To be fair, a lot of his fans are quite young so maybe this isn't as applicable but because he has SO many fans I know not all of them are.

And there is way more examples: JD, Jax, Nate Jacobs, Walter white, etc

I'm not against any of these male characters getting loved, I love some of them myself, and I'm sure I would hate some female character like this, but my issue is just the lack of balance depending on what their gender is. EVERY one of these morally questionable characters deserve an equally positive and negative lense.

You could rule all of these examples not applicable if you want because they're different characters or the tones of the shows are different or whatever. Could be. You could say it's just because a lot of fandom culture is straight women, I've seen that argument. Sure could be.

Bc you're allowed to rescind consent when you don't enjoy it anymore. Period.

You know why I don't think any of the arguments about her still being in love with Shauna matter?

Bc shes allowed to not have something in her life if she knows it's bad for her even if she "wants" it.

You know why I don't think Melissa is lying about getting better and putting it behind her?

She healed in creative and different ways bc she was still holding up her end of keeping the secret. She knows what's important to the group, respected that, and she still found ways to help herself too. She found someone to talk through some of things she couldn't by herself with. She found other resources even if she couldn't get a real therapist. She reached out for help in the only ways she could.

You don't need to erase things to be able to live with them in a healthy way. You don't need to talk about everything with everyone else to be able to move past it.

She isn't a different person bc she didn't tell them her birth name. Do I really need to explain why not using your birth name doesn't make your life any less valid?

Not glorifying your trauma doesn't mean you're ignoring it. Not talking about your trauma with everyone doesn't mean you're not actively working though it.

She questions herself constantly. That's what it's like to heal. It's never gone, but you can side step the spiraling if you're mindful enough. "This isn't some kind of survivors guilt or pity marriage, or shit maybe it is."