like guys shauna literally NEEDS jackie to be dead in order to have the (in shauna’s head) ideal relationship with her. i saw this amazing post once that i cannot for the life of me find again (but if anyone has it on hand pls attach below as a supporting document 👇) about how shauna’s main crime is passive aggressiveness, which is to say, she is completely incapable of facing anything directly so instead she puts it through 10 trillion layers of filters and it comes out super warped and toxic.
if we extend that logic to her own feelings towards jackie (which we absolutely should) then there’s no WAY she’s ever going to let herself directly “worship” saint jackie in a positive way, like in the sense of confessing her love for her or EVEN allowing herself to have a crush or EVEN being an exceptionally devoted friend. she can’t confront the bad but she can’t confront the good either. there IS genuine love there and shauna clearly wants to experience the feeling of worshipping jackie otherwise she wouldn’t go through all these contortions! but because shauna is shauna, the safest way for her to experience that feeling is by hurting jackie and then self flagellating about it and convincing herself that this is love. and jackie dying, arguably by shaunas own hand, is actually PERFECT for shauna. it literally gives her enough material for the rest of her life!
once jackie is dead and becomes - dare i say - frozen as the eternal and unchanging saint jackie, shauna is finally free to worship her forever and ever, without the possibility of jackie putting a stop to the vicious cycle by calling her out on it and forcing a confrontation that would lead to EITHER the end of their relationship OR a reckoning with their feelings and the creation a new kind of relationship that shauna is not prepared to have.
and in either of these scenarios she will ALSO be forced to reckon with both her and jackie’s faults and accept that they are both flawed but redeemable humans rather than Saint Jackie and Sinner Shauna. this is apparently such complicated and uncomfortable idea to shauna that she would literally rather worship her dead best friend than have to face it.
so anyway. yeah. shauna needs jackie to be dead because Sinner Shauna needs her Saint Jackie. normal relationship for normal people