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L , multifandoms , girl

[orangeisfab]

the fact that throughout the season Abby is beggining to purposefully reach out to others that she thinks might be able to understand—Sam who very quickly shuts her down and Press who literally couldn't care less (and don't even get me started on how grateful I am the writers didn't go with that awful prediction that Press would be the one to support Abby)—but then when Ginny and Norah have their cute little intervention/trauma bonding scene with her, she's so quick to do the same thing as Sam and Press. She dismisses her own issues and says Ginny and Norah are being dramatic, and insists that she can stop whenever she wants to. Like she so clearly wants and needs to feel seen and cared for, but when someone offers that to her, Abby finds it hard to take a hold of that and be truly vulnerable because she's still always afraid of being dismissed.

[sapphicsdonowrong]

THIS.

I think whilst Abby wants somebody to actually truly care for her, she also vehemently doesn’t want to be seen as a “mess.” That might sound weird since she’s fine to openly smoke weed and party and not care about school, but I’ve noticed that she always spins it in an unserious/unbothered way in front of others. For example, she’s at a point where she needs alcohol to ignore her emotions, but she plays it off as “YOLO let’s do shots!” She was seeking the validation that she doesn’t get from her parents in Press (an emotionally abusive asshole), but when Ginny asks about their hookups she giggles and gives a comment about his body being hot.

Maybe her reasoning for this outward indifference is somewhat to do with the way that she sees Marcus being treated for his problems. Everybody views him as a ticking time bomb of sorts, somebody who might go off the deep end at any given moment, and drown himself in solitude and drugs and suicidal thoughts and (particularly) alcohol. Meanwhile Abby skips school and smokes weed whenever she’s unsettled, has a eating disorder that can and will kill somebody eventually, and (by the end of the season) seems to be worryingly dependent on strong alcohol to stabilise her mood. However due to her “don’t care” attitude and ability to appear just barely mentally stable, people just dismiss her as a typical angsty teenager with poor grades and somewhat absent parents.

The most heartbreaking part about the indifferent act is that she clearly does care. The point where I would say she is arguably the most happy (when sober) is when she gets an A- and a compliment on a school essay, and that’s also the only time she speaks proudly of an accomplishment. The only time she truly considers not throwing up her food is when Norah pleads with her sincerely not to, and she seems so disappointed in herself when the bulimia ultimately wins. All she needs is someone to do what her parents should be doing by saying “I love you AND you’re not okay, so let’s figure it out.” Hopefully somebody, whether that be Tris or Norah or Ginny or (preferably) another responsible adult, can do that for her.

[sapphicsdonowrong]

Not to dampen the mood or anything, but Sasha Trusova has said several times over the past three years that her child will not be involved in competitive skating. She said it more than once before she was even pregnant, and reiterated it again today. Makar agreed with her. Please stop speculating over whether her son will become the new skating phenomenon.

[sapphicsdonowrong]

The second half of Season 3 has lowkey ruined JackieShauna for me.

I just can’t ship them knowing that Shauna went on to become such a genuinely vile and abusive partner to her actual girlfriend.

[danhumphrey]

it’s chuck bass hate hour. i think it’s so funny when i see chair content that centers around him being protective of blair. yeah he slammed her into a wall and told a sexual abuser he could “have” her in exchange for a business deal because he cares so much about keeping her safe 👍🏻

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

People should take the repeated hints that Jackie is in the early stages of a prescription drug problem more seriously when they discuss her.

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

ik the post was from like a week ago but would like to hear your thoughts on jackie and the prescription drug thing because it really isnt discussed!

Absolutely. Jackie has prooooblems and I really wish they were more openly talked about in the fandom.

So there are at least three references to Jackie abusing prescription drugs in canon. I forget what the third is (I might be misremembering it but I'm pretty sure it's there), but the first two are in "Pilot" and "Blood Hive". The reason why Shauna is asleep during the flight is that Jackie has given her Valium, a benzo (its generic name is diazepam) that in the 70s through 90s was commonly prescribed for anxiety and to an extent still is. What's remarkable about this is the casual way everyone involved treats it; this is consistent in how Shauna and Jackie themselves talk about Jackie's drug use, but the scene also establishes that even Jackie's mother doesn't seem to see any need to monitor her teenage daughter's access to her pills. As Jackie puts it, "Swiped these from my mom's medicine cabinet. Valium. She's got, like, a never-ending supply, so I doubt she'll even notice."

A series of questions already arises here, all of which the show is fascinatingly uninterested in answering, possibly because the screenwriters share Shauna and Jackie's flippant attitude (which is generational, as I'll discuss below) but, I think, likely also because what's implied about the Taylor household here is more disturbing if it's not spelled out. Why does Mrs. Taylor have that much of a med lying around at all times? Has Jackie taken the Valium before? If so, why and how often? (Does she, perhaps, use it to get through sex acts with Jeff?)

The second time this comes up is in the scene in which Shauna and Jackie are discussing their respective Wilderness skills as Shauna butchers one of Nat and Travis's first quarries. Almost everyone in the fandom has favorite bits of this scene, which is full of fantastic Shaunajackie lines and moments, so it's surprising to me that this isn't discussed more, but again, the breathtakingly casual delivery probably goes some way towards distracting the viewer from what's actually being communicated. (It could also be that the line in question here comes immediately before "Wowza, Shipman," which understandably steals the show):

Shauna: Remember when Kiffy Schumacher broke her arm right before we were supposed to go to Whipsplash River, and you told her that if she shared her Percocet, we'd all crash bingo at the Elks Lodge instead? Jackie: Wait. Is this a pep talk? Wowza, Shipman. Wow, that is so not your style.

Uh. Girls? You okay there? "Poppin' Percs" is something Kendrick Lamar accused Drake of earlier this month. The company that makes this drug is currently being pounded in court by the Attorneys General of Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri, New York, and possibly other states too since the last time I checked. You're talking about like it's Pez.

Percocet is a mixture of oxycodone, which is an opioid, and paracetamol, which is a common over-the-counter painkiller (it's called acetaminophen in the US and a few other countries; it's the active ingredient in Tylenol and Panadol). Unlike Valium, oxy is something I've been on in the past--I, like Kiffy Schumacher, had a badly fucked-up arm a few years ago--so I can speak to how it's currently treated in American medical culture. You're given a very small amount of it at once, you pace yourself taking it and alternate it with over-the-counter painkillers unless absolutely necessary, and if you have any left over when you decide you no longer need it, which I did, you surrender whatever pills you still have on you to the police. I know that the current widely accepted view on drug control is that it's wildly overdone in the US, and I agree with that for the most part, but in this case the tight controls on this sort of painkiller are a regulation that was written in blood. And the opioid epidemic is still ongoing; in fact, in some ways it's worse, since people are using black-market opioids now that are even more dangerous than oxy and its ilk.

I do want to stress that Jackie's pattern of drug use isn't unusual for a teenager; in fact, it's pretty classic. "Adolescents....most commonly reported receiving prescription[s] for free from a friend or relative, although significant proportions of adolescents also used their own prescriptions, purchased drugs from a dealer, or took them from friends or family without asking." (The article linked cites data taken in 2006, when the prescription drug abuse epidemic on whose upward slope Jackie lives had plateaued.) I also want to clarify that the cavalier attitude Shauna and Jackie have towards prescription drugs isn't unique to this category of substances; teenagers in the 1990s were much more blasé about controlled substances in general than they are today, and adolescent prescription drug abuse has declined less than most other categories:

(Note the especially massive drop-off in adolescent cigarette use after the turn of the millennium. Lottie in her kinderwhore-meets-Empire Records party outfit diffidently holding a cig is very much an image from the past these days. And yet this isn't entirely a success story; adolescents who are still engaging in substance abuse are OD'ing a lot more than they were thirty years ago.)

I don't really have a conclusion here, because I just want to encourage the fandom to discuss this aspect of Jackie's character, not necessarily to adopt any particular narrativization or interpretation of it. This, then, is the basics on Jackie and prescription drugs. Poor girl.

[sapphicsdonowrong]

This, and also the hinted eating disorder, are so small in the grand scheme of things, but they make me yearn for more exploration of Jackie’s character beyond the crash and her relationship with people other thanShauna/Jeff.

Other Yellowjackets have more obviously incompetent parents, but it doesn’t seem like Jackie had a great time of it at home either. No teen should have easy access to Valium, and her mother was awful to Shauna in the adult timeline. Her controlling attitude could have contributed to Jackie’s seeming unwillingness to eat (and before you say it was only the wilderness, you can’t just starve yourself unless you already have something going on mentally.)

Also Jackie’s relationships with the other Yellowjackets. Her and Van seemed to have some sort of relationship going off the compliment scene, and Jackie was by far the nicest to Laura Lee. Don’t even get me started on her dynamics with Nat and Tai, and what could have been with Lottie.

Basically Jackie was wasted potential, and her death seems even more tragic when you consider all her character traits that were never explored.

[samcarpentara]

you KNOW the rest of the team is regretting not saving jackie when they could bc now the tasmanian devil and her little muppet hat gf are wreaking havoc everywhere they go 😭

[nerd-at-sea5]

nat: hey lot, how’d you come up with ‘lottie’ anyway? isn’t the default nickname for charlotte ‘charlie’

lottie: nat. baby. darling. sweetheart. love of my life. call me charlie and i will dump you and quite literally never speak to you again

nat: 😳

taissa: it’s what her parents call her.

nat, van and jackie: o h. damn relatable.

[rootsmachine]

yellowjackets (2021) // quantum girl theory, erin kate ryan

[sapphicides]

call me crazy or gay but i genuinely think the writers, directors, and hell, even the actors knew what they were doing when it came to how they portrayed shauna and jackie's relationship in the pilot. watching it for the first time, i went in completely blind, with no exposure to the fandom, the ships, or anything beyond the core premise of "a group of teenage girls get stuck in a nightmarish lord of the flies/lost scenario after a plane crash and do crazy shit to survive." i fully anticipated any romance in this show, if at all, to be straight. yet i still saw how they established shauna and jackie and immediately thought "my god, these bitches are gay"

from the very first scene we see of jackie (almost) by herself being her faking an orgasm with jeff, clearly implying that she's disinterested in her own boyfriend, to the very first scene we see of shauna and jackie alone together starting with this rom-com esque image of jackie stepping out of her house while music plays in the background and shauna goes from resting bitch face to all smiles

from the longing stares they give each other in their school gym, to shauna responding to tai's "freeze allie out" proposal simply with, "jackie wouldn't like it"

from the scene of shauna dressing with jackie in her room before the party, her snapping at jackie when she merely suggests that shauna sleep with randy and jackie looking genuinely hurt and apologetic by it, to the infamous party scene where shauna looks on at jackie and jeff longingly– except, she's only really looking at jackie, because the entire shot is framed around jackie. for the majority of that scene, jeff is barely even in frame, a faded blur in the background, until he puts his arms around jackie and physically puts himself in shauna's line of vision

the way she immediately takes a pained sip of her beer after

the way she turns around to randy flirting with her, only to turn away with a look of disgust on her face (just like how jackie looked disgusted during jeff's attempt at getting her off)

the way she can't pull her eyes off jackie even when jeff is dropping them off, even when she knows she's about to fuck her boyfriend once she's gone

the way she says goodbye to jackie, tells her she loves her, and jackie doesn't say it back, so she asks jeff to say it to her when they have sex

the show sets up their dynamic to be one that feels inherently romantic to first-time viewers, only to flip it on its head when its reveled that shauna's true interest is in... jeff. she's really in love with jeff? the guy who's face we see maybe a couple of times total, that jeff? the guy who's basically a background character the entire episode, that jeff? yeah, i don't buy it

you could argue that the show places so much emphasis on jackie because it's trying to convey that the affair is eating away at shauna. to some extent, i agree with this, but i really doubt that it's only this. it would explain shauna's snappy and, at times, cagey behavior around jackie, but it doesn't explain the way that jackie is framed by the camera, music, or even some of the writing choices. whenever we see jackie through shauna's eyes, the camera is always focused directly on her, often times with her face illuminated brighter than anyone else. the music that plays behind her is shauna's kind of music (both supernova by liz phair, which shauna chooses to listen to in her car's tape deck, and miss world by hole, which undeniably fits her grungey music taste). she's joined at the hip with shauna, even in scenes where she's with jeff– seriously, there's only one scene where she's completely alone with jeff without shauna, and it's that one. and the same goes for shauna

for the entirety of the pilot, they are in a constant state of push and pull with each other, almost all of their actions being dependent on one another. jeff feels like a plot device at best, a character designed to come between them and to be thrown away once they realize who each other's real love interest is. even upon several rewatches, it still feels this way. even in the adult timeline, it still feels this way. we barely see adult jeff, but we feel both jackie's literal absence and her metaphorical presence in the form of shauna's collection of porcelain bunnies

there is so much foreshadowing and detail packed into the pilot that i have a really hard believing that this was just an oversight or mishandling of their relationship on the show's part. do i think there's going to be any kind of big love confession from shauna any time soon? no. but do i think they intentionally laid the groundwork for her to realize the feelings she had for jackie at some point? yes, i really do

[mushroomcaphat]

having had a severe eating disorder in my late teens i do understand the behavior of the yellowjackets perfectly. starvation really will make you hunt your friends through the woods like i was doing it on purpose and had access to food and i think i still would've done that if i was like mildly annoyed with someone. the cult stuff also.

[chamomillehoney]

since we're approaching yellowjackets season 3 release day and I still haven't moved on from season 1, I wanted to expand on the food/love metaphor the show has going on by raising you a headcanon that I've been thinking about for quite a while!!

before I start, I just want to make clear that 1) a good chunk of this is just me relating the story to my own experience, so it's not very objective and idk if it makes any sense, 2) i will try to tackle a sensitive topic to the best of my abilities, I hope I don't mess up, and 3) I've watched the show only recently, so I might be very late to the party and this might already be well accepted as practically canon, in that case I apologize for the redundancy

ok, what I want you to hear me out on is: jackie taylor with an eating disorder. please bear with me as I try to explain my messy thoughts.

so, the way I see it, one of the show's main themes is love, explored through food as a metaphor (and its most disturbing implications we're all well aware of). the other predominant themes are grief, guilt and shame.

here's the thing: most times (to my experience, at least) restrictive eds specifically stem from inner feelings of guilt, shame and inadequacy, triggered by societal pressure and the need to put up a perfect facade in order to hide whatever you feel inadequate for, hoping the guilt will go away if you respect this set of "rules".

it's renowned that jackie is the character that represents societal norms and that's why she's the first to die and be eaten and yada yada; it's made pretty clear that she's perceived as "the perfect one", based on the other girls' recurring comments. the need to be perfect at everything is actually a pretty common symptom in people with eating disorders, for all the reasons I've explained earlier. more often than not, it's not until the very last stages of the illness that the facade begins to crack and you start losing the control you think you had on your life (because you dont have the energy to keep it up anymore).

now, that is obviously not always the case; however, the reason I believe that behind jackie's picture perfect life there was this kind of mental illness is that she was living in the precise environment in which eds thrive: being a teenage girl high school, with demanding parents focused on appearances (dare I say, from what we've seen of the taylors), playing sports, etc.. furthermore, as I've said earlier, this pressure to be the best at everything stems from the need to cover up a sense of not being enough: and we know that jackie, for example, has probably felt dumb compared to shauna -- and here's where the comparison factor kicks in as well. she basically checks every possible box on the handbook.

so what does someone with a restrictive ed (fueled by these factors of perfectionism, guilt and comparison/societal pressure) do? they deprive themselves of food. because they don't feel worthy of it, as they are shameful and guilty. because, by doing so, they will achieve the perfect standards they set for themselves that will allow them not to feel so inadequate and guilty anymore.

so,,,,, after this long ass framework. given that jackie lives the archetypical life of someone prone to anorexia. if she were to be sick, let's apply the food/love metaphor: she feels guilty for something (eating/loving), therefore she deprives herself of something (eating/loving), to achieve society's approval (thinness/conventional love).

and what might possibly be the kind of love a young girl in the 90s felt guilty and ashamed for, that she deprived herself of, to achieve an "acceptable" kind of relationship?

[sapphicsdonowrong]

Adding to this beautiful theory, a lot of the fandom believe that the Yellowjackets fell for the whole “Lottie and the wilderness” crap so quickly because they were close to starving. This is because too little food over a certain period of time can, amongst other things, affect how your mood and overall thinking function, due to the electrochemical changes that are caused by a sudden deprivation of nutrients.

When the Yellowjackets were landed in the wilderness with no food, their brains will have gone through those electrochemical changes, and therefore their rationale would not be fully intact, leaving them vulnerable to manipulation and/or exaggeration of true events.

However, this would not apply to somebody who had been depriving themself of food before they got to the wilderness. Their brain would already have adjusted to those electrochemical changes, and therefore there would be no major change to their psychological makeup (beyond the trauma of being in a plane crash and getting stranded of course). If a person like this were to exist amongst the Yellowjackets then they would not be quite so susceptible to the apparent delusions that the other girls were swept up into.

Funnily enough there was one girl who ate less than anyone whilst they were stranded, but seemed far less caught up in the whole “wilderness controls us all” idea than the others…

[the-carlos-cow-eyes]

Also, I can now officially declare myself a Shauna hater

The fact that she literally basically peer pressured and forced the others to vote against Ben pisses me the fuck OFF

I mean, I've already disliked her before, but I officially fucking HATE her now

Y'all can come for my neck all y'all want, Idc. I said what I said

[girl-in-computer]

shauna is so fucking condescending towards jackie and it pissses me off everytime i rewatch. “are you done?” “well when a man and a woman-“ “what mistakes did you make? everybody loved you.” “nice SAT word.” like if i was jackie i would’ve slapped that bitch so hard

[thoughtdump]

In addition to literally … everything? One of the craziest/saddest things to me about the Russian figure skater girls is that pretty much all of them, past & present, will drop the most disturbingly abusive piece of information about their coaches/skating environment/life as a skater to the point where you’re like “oh, so they must understand that they’re being abused since they’re talking about abusive tactics that they’ve dealt/deal with so openly.” & then you find out, no, they actually don’t know it’s abuse. They don’t see it as the eating disorder that it is, they don’t see it as unhealthy & that just breaks my heart. They think it’s just what you do as an athlete. It’s just something you endure & it makes you tough but it’s literally just abuse. There’s a difference between mental & physical strength from working hard in a healthy environment & abuse.

[railmerosalie]

Smyers thinly veiled misogyny when it comes to female characters and their deaths

Rosalie: brutally raped, left for dead and bleeding out

Alice: institutionalised, isolated, shaved and given electric shock therapy

Esme: tried committing suicide after her husband domestically abused her, also lost her child

Bella: ripped apart from childbirth as resources tore her way out of Bella's body

Edward: the flu

[sapphicsdonowrong]

So true, and so sad.