Someone has probably already pointed this out but mentoring is hell. When Snow and all the other kids get assigned to being a mentor for the games they all end up falling for their tribute in a way. Or at least most of them do. They develop soft spots for them. Snow falls for Lucy Gray. Lysistrata fell for Jessup. Even Juno shows remorse over Bobbins death. Nearly all these capitol born children find out when mentoring that the kids they watch die are actually people.
At nearly every turn in the ballad of songbirds and snakes you see all capitol born citizens get personally involved with them. And when they inevitably lose them they all become different. It changes who they were. Each of them gets a little more convinced that their kid isn't district. Snow even pushes the idea that Lucy Gray is practically capitol. Within the mentoring they all view their tribute as the exception. The one that doesn't belong to a district. Their tribute is always better or smarter or kinder than the rest. A few of them even get saved by their tribute. The tribute didn't have to do it but they did. So to them they can't possibly be from a district.
Making the victors mentor the children from their own district is fucked in a lot of ways. Every year they are forced to get close to another kid, knowing their families back home are depending on them to do their best to bring them back. They try their damnedest to save them but the odds aren't always in their favor. It takes away the opportunity for their capitol citizens to humanize them while making them isolated on all sides. They don't want the capitol citizens getting too close because if they do then they'll realize these are people. They allow the winners to go home while being the richest in the district. In twelve, we see that everyone is starving while Haymitch is fine. This helps isolate the victors even more.
Who would want to look at their winner when people are dying and they are doing perfectly fine? Who would want to look at the person that didn't bring your child home? They may know the capitol is to blame but the mentor always shares that responsibility in their mind.
It's part of the punishment for the victors too. It's not enough to force them into prostitution and sex slavery. You need more than bodily control over them to keep them broken and beaten down.
The capitol does such a good job at isolating and punishing victors. You're forced to mentor a child every year that you may or may not know. Half of them are already dying or too weak to fight back and yet you are their only chance of survival. You have to be willing to forgive your fellow mentors for the actions of their tributes because they are the only ones who will ever truly know the hell of losing everything. They are the ones that understand the hate from all sides. The victors are hated by the president, their own districts (outside of the career districts but they have their own fucked problems) and by the kids they have to shepard to death.
Snow's games is designed to make them view the other districts as the enemy and for the most part it works. They want the victors to hate each other but by having control over everything else all they are left with is each other. Even if they wanted to hate each other there would be no point. They have no one else. Their games change them. No one back home is able to pick up their pieces.
In bosbas he reflects that all the capitol mentors now are bonded. It's a club with an unbreakable connection. I think he saw how dangerous it was to let their citizens be too close and just how painful it was to do that job. Imagine being one of the few like Haymitch that had 20+ years of failure to haunt them with a district full of children blaming them for the losses.
Aristophanes' Lysistrata is a play about the women of Athens and Sparta working together to stop the war between their cities. Already a good parallel to Lyssie who, behind Sejanus, is the most sympathetic mentor to the Districts (paralleling her wanting to bridge the Capitol-District divide due in part, to her experiences with Jessup).
This play is a comedy. Not directly related to my main point, the peace is achieved through a sex-strike. The ridiculous premise is a part of the humor. The audience is meant to laugh. Just the idea of her name being a comedy reminds me of Lepidus Malmsey believing her kind words about Jessup might be a joke. Her name being a comedy mirroring how she isn't taken seriously about Jessup.
More than that, Lysistrata is a comedy written by an Athenian and performed (originally) in Athens. While all the men and women are overall heightened caricatures, the portrayal of the Spartans relies heavily on Athenian stereotypes of them, including potentially a mockery of their accent (there is a notable parody of the Spartan dialect according to a past professor of mine, I don't understand Ancient Greek) and very side-eye worthy comments on the Spartan body. Modern adaptations of Lysistrata have also apparently made very questionable decisions on what accents they've used to portray the Spartan dialect which isn't great. This creates more parallels between the Capitol and Districts to me. The Districts being stereotyped and othered by the Capitol being a potential parallel to what the Athenians/the play(?) does to the Spartans.
Lysistrata is not purely a funny play about achieving peace. It is also a play first performed two years after the Sicilian Expedition (where Athens was defeated) in the middle of the Peloponnese War (between Athens and Sparta). It's been read as a kind of hypothetical daydream for the end of the war. A respectable one in contrast with Athens' semi-recent defeat. Obviously, the First Rebellion is over, but we know that the struggles between the Capitol and Districts are far from over. This kind of emphasizes the tragedy of her not being taken seriously when she tries to get the Capitol to see Jessup as a person. It's a nice dream, but the end isn't here yet. The Capitol isn't there yet.
sophie nélisse should not be widely known as “the actress that plays rose landry in heated rivalry”, where she is a side character—she should be known for playing shauna shipman
i don’t say this just because im a yellowjackets fan, i say this because she is the main character in an emmy nominated and a critics’ choice award winning show, i don’t have many opinions on heated rivalry because i don’t care about it, but i care about the fact that an extremely talented actress is being known for a lesser role where she is hardly involved as an actress, or as a character, rather than being known for the main course of her acting in her career so far
I keep seeing people saying they want Shaunahat to be endgame....I kind of want all of them dead by the end. Not all of them like Tai and Misty can live.
Though I want Shauna to kill Melissa and Jeff so it would continue the trend of Shauna killing her Jackie-likes
Ik everyone and their mother has a Jackie lives AU but
HERE’S MINE!
TEEN TL:
Nat and Travis(only sane ones) come back from hunting and drag her back in
They put her in the hot water like they did Lottie.
Her right ear was black with frostbite so Shauna had to cut it off, with Misty and Ben’s supervision obviously. She has permanent cold burn on the right side of her face, neck, and hands.
She’s essentially in a coma for half of season 2, she’s in an out of consciousness and only awake to eat and then goes right back to sleep. Shauna barely leaves her side, only goes to cut up meat.
Jackie eventually maintains a normal consciousness cycle and gains back some of her strength about a week before Shauna gives birth.
Jackie and Shauna hadn’t been on speaking terms since that night. But when Shauna gives birth, Jackie’s the one holding her hand and trying her best to calm her down. When Shauna realizes that her baby didn’t make it, she throws her self into Jackie’s arms and sobs. they don’t talk about it.
During the chase game in the opening scene of season 3, she’s lurking around the circle and Misty tosses it as she gets pushed over by Shauna and they win the game. She dangles the necklace in her hands and says “ooo tough loss, shipman” (I’m sorry have such a vivid vision for this)
During the feast scene Mari says “thank god Jackie you used to have you on a fucking leash” to Shauna
She was going to gather firewood when she runs into the scene of Shauna and Melissa macking, she stares for a few seconds before sneaking off
Her defense during the trial is “why would I burn down the cabin when I was in a significantly weakened state, where I needed shelter? It’s a miracle I’m alive right now”
Many many many MANY passive agressive comments abt Shauna and Melissa
Her leaving wilderness fantasy was a shower
Was very much team “let’s get the hell out of here”
During the hunt, she trew Melissa off of Shauna and gave Shauna the opportunity to run, and then ran the other way herself, once again they don’t talk about it
She was not part of the black box plot, still being iced out by most of the girls
IN BETWEEN TLS:
2001-got married young to a son of one her fathers business partners, private ceremony, just their parents and them. Never had any kids
2002-attends Shauna’s wedding with her husband and parents, her and Shauna end up hooking up (“I wish I could’ve married you”) in the bathroom, and guess what? THEY DONT TALK ABOUT IT
Jackie and Shauna don’t speak much over the years, just “happy birthdays”and a “congratulations” when Callie was born
2005-Her and husband moved to southern New Jersey.
ADULT TL:
2021-her and husband get a divorce so she moves back to Wisayok to her parents place
About a month later, she gets into a fender bender with, guess who, SHAUNA!!!!!!!!!!!! They awkwardly exchange pleasantries and Jackie panically offers to pay for the damages
They don’t speak again for a few days, but then Jackie runs into Shauna at the hotel when she was looking for Jeff, they end up having dinner together. They end up drinking too much and hooking up in Jackie’s car. (w a beautiful scene of it cutting back and forth between adult them and teen them, representing that this is not a new feeling for either of them)
Soon after affair starts and they do high school like activities to feel like the 17 year olds they were when they fell in love
Basically imagine all of the adult TL team up scenes +jackie bc I’m lazy
Blaming Shauna exclusively for the implosion of hers and Jackie's friendship and Jackie's death is beyond anything else just... unsatisfying to believe. Like did Shauna press the big red launch button? Sure. But she had a lot of help building the bomb. The way they fell apart was so deeply human and layered. They both assume they love the other more than they are loved back. This breeds insecurity. Jackie puts on a performance to cope. Shauna feels rejected as a result. Jackie is dismissive. Shauna lashes out. Jackie feels judged. Shauna feels lonely. Then they push it down and try to pretend it isn't happening. They both bottle up their feelings and the pressure just builds and builds to a breaking point. Never talking even though its slowly killing them because they're so damn afraid of losing each other. Fear. Rejection. Revenge. Guilt. This cycle they got stuck in. Shauna didn't say what she felt, but Jackie wasn't being honest either. Shauna feels she killed Jackie, but Jackie also chose her fate in her own passively suicidal way. They did it together because that was the way they always did everything.
there's been a lot of interpretations of the grocery store sequence and my favorite part of it is that shauna isn't actually acting like herself until she hears jackie call herself shipman. she says "it's easier this way" and is scanning something repetitively with a dead face, and doesn't listen to what jackie says until she actually realizes it's her. i think it's another way of showing that shauna lost her identity and drive to be good after experiencing the trauma of jackie's death.
shauna repetitively lashes out all throughout s3, but what really stands out to me is that shauna becomes still and silent every time jackie is mentioned. when the group is arguing in front of the scientists what gets shauna to actually shut the fuck up is nat yelling about how jackie's dead. shauna is not afraid to talk over nat, she does it the entire trial episode. a reminder of jackie is all that can bring her back to reality. i think it's interesting because in s2 shauna is still clearly very emotionally reactive when jackie is mentioned, specifically during the scene where they decide to burn her body. i really think shauna didn't accept that jackie is really gone until the scene in the meat shed after she "buries" her son and ghost jackie doesn't appear, and after having months to process it by s3, she's accepted, even if she's not fully aware of it, that she was in part responsible for jackie's death and feels emotions other than overwhelming anger at her circumstances. jackie was always tied to shauna's humanity.
i think the bugs being attracted to the light that kills them can be interpreted in different ways, but i see it as shauna not heeding jackie's warning and becoming too obsessed with power and control (her "light") in both timelines, which leads to her downfall.
beyond that the sequence adds to the idea that shauna subconsciously knows that jackie wasn't intentionally trying to hurt her and a lot of her problems were self-inflicted (jackie looks upset when shauna says she hates the nickname), which also is interesting because consciously, shauna is still refusing to take responsibility for all of her actions. there is goodness and morality hiding within shauna, but it's buried beneath layers of pain and her main coping mechanism for dealing with her trauma, which is repression until boiling over. shauna's violence is her repeatedly scanning something over and over because it's easier than putting in effort to actually do the right thing
no one really speaks about shauna and the reason shes dating melissa besides the fact she wants power (and also because she cant have jackie anymore) but like. i think another very big reason is that she sees herself in melissa. like melissa is a follower, a sheep, a lapdog maybe, and after we learn that shauna was really following in jackies footsteps in season one, its easy to see that melissa is a very good depiction of shauna before the crash.
i think shauna is trying to take melissa's impressionability and manipulate that into how she wants herself to be. she's taking out her anger from her actions in season one out on someone else, almost as a way to 'punish' herself, even if she's not the one necessarily getting punished.
jackies family gives off the vibe to be that household that cant stand anything messy 😭. like shauna spilt too much soup on the couch one time and for the next 2 years tiny little shauna wasnt allowed on the furniture like a pet dog or some stupid shit like that 😭😭😭 jackie dsfinitely brings it up all of the time too. "remenber that time my mom didnt let you on thr furniture for 2 straight years?" then shauna would get that kicked puppy look about her and be like "no 😒😒". whenever jackie goes over to shauna's theres like spots on the ceiling from where jackie threw slime and then they had to get a ladder out to peel it off since its clear shaunas home life is not as pristine as jackies 😭.
"for the next 2 years tiny little shauna wasnt allowed on the furniture like a pet dog"
I can't, for some reason just the image of child Shauna melts my fucking heart like you know she would have had the baby cow eyes and i just get so sad, get that girl back on the couch, jackie you better be sitting on the floor with her dont even T-T
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