photograph taken by jonathan with a lil note underneath "you'll thank me someday" dated march 1986 and he gifts it to them on their wedding day with a card "i could see it then, i knew you'd get married someday"
there's still an entire finale there's still an entire finale there's still an entire finale there's still an entire finale there's still an entire finale there's still an entire finale there's still an entire finale
author’s note : this would take place in like the 2024-2025 school year instead of the 1995-96 school year!! this might be kind of poopy or ooc since we have like 3 precrash scenes but i did my best!! interactions are appreciated … not proofread we die like jackie
(^ _ ^)b
- Mari is SO chronically online… this girl definitely has a main, spam and alt account for every app. Has had her tiktok account since it was musically and has like 10k followers. She likes to brag about it and pretends she’s famous even though most of her videos only get 10 views.
- Mari is very caught up on internet lore in general. She’s so brainrotted it hurts. Probably can recite any quote from Daniel Larson or Ash Trevino… Watches slushynoobz and is a Mandy bias.
- Jackie has a 20 gazillion snapscore, she loves making friends sm
- Jackie forces Shauna to do dumb tiktok dances with her and then Shauna journals about it angrily later…
- Jackie watches masc lesbian thirst traps whenever she and Jeff break up. has NOTHING to do with Shauna…
- Shauna starts tweaking whenever she has to do her streaks with anyone except for Jackie and Tai
- Shauna is a self proclaimed lover of physical media and is lowk super inactive on social media. has like 20 followers and all of her accounts are private. Only has tiktok, insta and snapchat and audibly groans whenever she gets a notification that isnt from Jackie or Tai
- Taissa told Shauna what a futch was and changed her life. Evil futch Shauna 2025
- Taissa and Shauna have each other pinned on instagram and love being secret haters together!! Obvi Tai also has Van pinned and Akilah 🤫
- Taissa loves being able to be open about her sexuality without the fear of becoming an outcast!! definitely has the girls kissing emoji in her bio and got annoyed when there wasn’t a ginger option
- did that one tawog trend with Van… iykyk guys im not crazy
- Van loves posting Tai and flexing her every two seconds!! Also posts pictures of herself playing soccer to phonk songs and thinks shes a comedic genius (she is)
- Van argues with middle school boys in comment sections. Used to troll Misty too until Tai made her stop 😭😭 plays fortnite with Travis daily
- LOVES katie b
- Lottie has the entire apple ecosystem and loves it. iPhone, airbuds, iPad, macbook pro and apple watch. she gets the latest version of everything for Christmas and gives her old stuff to Nat and Shauna. Rich Girl McDoodle buys Laura Lee all the newest stuff for Christmas anyways.
- Lottie watches subway surfers reddit storytimes and gets super invested. she also loves blood orange. listens to ken carson before games much to Laura Lee’s dismay. will not elaborate.
- Lottie cried watching Ladybird
- Laura Lee has a bible study account on tiktok that never blows up (no pun intended) but she does it out of her love for the Lord, not a need for clout !!
- Laura Lee loves her daily bible verse app!! sends Lottie the verses everyday bc she’s the only one who tolerates it
- Misty loves animal crossing and roblox SO much. babysits Javi when Travis and his parents are out and they spend the entire time playing grow a garden or old obbies
- Misty loves subway surfers reddit storytimes and possibly rivals Mari in terms of who’s more chronically online. Has tiktok, insta, discord, twitter, pinterest, youtube, picsart, tumblr (so meta of me to reference) and a wattpad AND an ao3 account.
- Misty sends Natalie the dumbest memes that make zero sense… Nat pretends to be annoyed but they always make her smile
- Natalie only has instagram and youtube, hates tiktok with a burning passion and does not understand it at all
- Natalie and Misty play roblox and minecraft together, (sometimes with Travis too) Nat’s favorite game is tax evasion sim and Misty’s is CNA simulator or Maple Hospital
- Natalie still had an iPhone 11 in 2024 and didn’t care. also still uses wired earbuds. couldn’t be asked to give a shit and even if she did, doesn’t have the money to buy a fancy new phone. Lottie gave her a hand-me-down iphone 14 when she upgraded that Christmas.
- Travis plays fortnite with Nat and is HORRIBLE at it (claims it’s just the lag) he also genuinely gets scared of roblox game jumpscares!! my travis!!
- Travis said sybau/syfm to Javi and got grounded when their mom found out
- Akilah loves videos of cute animals. shes lowk an ipad kid but its okay
- addicted to adopt me and grow a garden
- Akilah loves the sims 4 and making little farm families!!
- gets into arguments in tiktok comment sections over how to properly care for animals
- Melissa loves caseoh and katie b.. Melissa IS katie b
- Gen doesn’t even like streamers but watches them for Mel
I really do think that Travis stayed sober for a relatively long time once he got home
he just couldn't bear to put his mother through any more tragedy, and having an alcohol son would only add onto her suffering.
I think he didn't get into alcohol and likely drugs until his mid to maybe even late 20s, when him and Natalie reconnected
They would go out to parties and get high off things they didn't even remember taking or get so blackout drunk they could forget who they were and what they'd done.
Because no matter how many times Nat goes to rehab, and no matter how many times Trabis says he's done with her.... no matter what happens, the two of them will never get their happy ending together.
cw: detailed discussion of stillbirth with respect to the show! descriptive language around death, dying, bodies, & meat.
i am not sure that i have the words for this but i am going to try! so shauna and dead things...
as the butcher, shauna has the most proximity to dead things, right? to a certain extent, travis & nat share this burden. akilah & mari also share it as the cooks. but all of that is different than shauna's task... working with the squelching innards of something that was once living is a lot. it's visceral. it's bloody. it's gored out!! in this sense, shauna acts as a necessary bridge between "what was once alive" and "what is now food" & between "what was horrifying" and "what is now palatable."
butchering dead things is not for the faint of heart! there is a psychological component to touching something that was once alive & accepting that it isn't anymore. there's something eerie about doing things to a once-living body that would be wretched if it was still alive. with it comes a natural kind of dissonance, and humans are very fucky about death & bodies & the "when we're no longer us" of it all... the book when breath becomes air by paul kalanithi is very famous for its meditations on a life ending but it's also famous for its title-- what is that point? when is a body no longer a being? when does breath become air??
it gets more personal when we're discussing shauna butchering humans because we're anthropocentric creatures, you know?? that's a big bridge for the bridge! all the same, shauna does butcher humans. of course, she stays in the meat shed with jackie because jackie was her best friend. but there's something very interesting to me about shauna, the butcher, being the one who can best hold that proximity with "deadass jackie." she's able to look at her... to talk to her... to touch her... not everyone on the team would be able to do so-- in fact, most people probably don't want to be anywhere near a corpse.
being with jackie in this way demonstrates (to me) an underlying fascination that shauna has with disembodiment. as she sits with jackie, she's avoiding processing that this was her friend but no longer is. the finality of them burning jackie's body is distressing to shauna because she's still working through that separation of life from the body. as the butcher, she knows that jackie is gone but the part of her that's still clinging to the humanness of humans--separate (but not really) from the animals she's been butchering--is struggling. to that end, i would argue that jackie's ear coming off is a shatter-glass moment for shauna... this ear is not her friend anymore... it came loose... it fell off... shauna isn't completely there yet, but she's getting there.
and then the ear becomes another fixture of disembodiment... personally, i think it's fascinating that the first part of jackie that shauna eats is the part that is no longer attached to her. it's like the excision of the ear from jackie's body breaks through & gets shauna to that place of... "meat? nothing more than meat?" it's such an excellent transition that speaks to her perspective as butcher & how she's moving into reckoning with personhood, death, and what that means for bodies.
but yeah, disembodiment. shauna's harshest confrontation with disembodiment is her baby. not only did she have a stillbirth but she had an immersive dream that convinced her she didn't have a stillbirth... to come out of that & the fervor of almost dying and to look at what's in your arms and realize he's not alive... it's quite extreme.
the fact that shauna can't accept that her baby's not alive is another example of how she is struggling with disembodiment. shauna knows what death is. she's held it. she's sliced through it. she knows what a body is-- after jackie, she knows what meat can be. but her baby... how could that ever be him too? even after all they've been through, she's still struggling with the "when breath becomes air" part of it.
and then javi-- fuck, javi. here we go again with disembodiment. and shauna's struggling with the weight of disembodiment alone! just as everyone leaves her when she has her breakdown over her delivery, everyone leaves her again when she has to butcher javi. in a way, javi is even worse than jackie (& possibly even the baby) because they did this to him. this is a true and intentional butchering-- we've finally passed the point of no return. humans and animals? no in between. it's all just fucking meat... and the concept of that? well, it's too much for shauna. she has to cover her eyes... even as the butcher, she needs the protection. she never meant to become this: the bridge between humans and meat...
all of shauna's experiences with death and meat set up a framework imo of understanding why she latches onto hannah's hair in season 3. now, i am by no means claiming that my perspective on this is right, and there's a thousand ways to interpret why shauna becomes so fixated with hair. but when you run with her feelings toward disembodiment... god, it is interesting!
because fundamentally, hannah's hair breaks the rules that shauna has learned about bodies, personhood, and meat...
and yeah okay-- weird girl, creepy girl, dommy mommy collecting trophies jokes aside-- let's talk about it: shauna is fascinated with hannah's hair. she's almost as fascinated as she was with jackie's ear. but the thing of it is that hannah's hair is different... because hannah's hair was a part of hannah, but it's not meat. it's not meat and hannah's not dead. and god, the way shauna keeps that hair with her and looks at it? i'm sorry but it's like a baby noticing its goddamn hand for the first time... you can almost see her coming to a realization about the world: "a part of someone? a part of someone apart from someone? and it's not meat? huh..."
shauna, i think, is having a crisis about personhood... imo, the reason that she teeters so horrifically in her empathy toward others in season 3 is due to this very dilemma. what makes other people other people if we're all just meat? because for shauna, she's lost so fucking much. she's lost so many people because the wilderness treated them like fucking meat. from jackie to her baby to javi, and the proximity to each and every one of them... in a nihilistic way, i can see shauna's coldness toward ben, mari, and even melissa as being a reflection of that-- "if my baby was meat, then you're just fucking meat too." but then hannah... hannah and the bits that fall off her that are like the bits that fell off jackie but somehow aren't meat... this hair is hannah's and she's not dead... when does breath become air?
and i don't think shauna ever comes to a conclusion about this. from dicing up adam with natalie to biting a hunk of flesh off melissa's goddamn arm, she's still struggling with this concept & to a certain extent experimenting with it... humans and meat, humans and meat, humans and meat. what the fuck are we? which are we?
AGAIN, i'm not trying to come to any ultimate conclusions about shauna and her character or why she does the things that she does, but i think this tension--this dissonance of what the fuck is the body--when does breath become air???--is something so important to her psyche. out of necessity, shauna became the bridge between humans and food for the others... as the butcher, these are the questions that i think haunt her.
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