working on the basis jackie and shaunas relationship has always been blatantly and very deliberately homoerotic and that they were both silently habouring feelings (which i do), i find the rabbit motif even more interesting.
its been said before but the rabbit motif isnt so much representative of jackie as it is representative of the false version of jackie. her own parents didnt know her, her teammates didnt, even shauna didnt fully know her, etc, but thats not by accident, jackie simply didnt make herself easy to know. the girl looks miserable every time we see her alone in the pilot, but she pulls on a mask for others. for jeff. for shauna. we see her seemingly have a crisis over sleeping with her boyfriend and then she gets in the car with her best friend and buries it all, not letting shauna know shes struggling. starts talking about losing her virginity to him like its no big deal, like its what she wants, when its pretty obvious to both shauna and us as the audience that it isnt.
we later find out from the meat shed conversations that shauna knew about jackie's struggles. deep down she knew, even though they didnt discuss it, she saw jackie was lying about her relationship. but shauna has never been a good communicator and also perhaps was too afraid of upsetting/losing jackie to have an honest conversation with her. and if shauna knew that jackie was hiding things from her, obviously that causes resentment in someone like shauna. shes irrational, reacts to percieved rejection in unhealthy ways, and this is her best friend whos lying to her. something shauna sees as a form of rejection.
the first act of violence we see from shauna in the show is her adult self killing the rabbit. it cuts to this directly after we see her sleeping with jeff in the teen timeline and i dont think its as simple as parralleling two acts against jackie. like maybe its foreshadowing jackies death, aka that shauna sleeping with jeff will ultimately lead to it, but given that we've been shown time and time again how rabbits are mistakenly attributed to jackie, it could be something else instead. if the rabbit is representative of jackies perfect, manicured facade, then having sex with jeff and killing the rabbit are one and the same. shauna gains control. she takes all the power out of jackie's facade by sleeping with jeff. ruining the perfect lie. which makes her actual objective clear —
she hates the fake exterior jackie maintained. her adult self literally murders it. she is desperate for jackie to be truthful with her. to confess. be open and vulnerable. and as if that desire wasnt homoerotically charged enough, their entire conversation about jeff later in season 1 furthers it; jackie saying she should have said i love you back the day before they left, saying she shouldnt have made "him" wait, saying she just wanted it to be perfect, all fits within the circumstances of jackie and shaunas relationship as well. jackie didnt say i love you back thay day, she did make shauna wait (for jackie to be honest with her), she was too fixated on some perfect ideal to share her true feelings with shauna. i think its relevant that another big way the rabbit motif resurfaces is as a mask that melissa wears. like... a literal mask. worn when she tries to kill shauna and cant because she does love shauna, despite how badly she doesnt want to.
and for me the conversation about jeff, jackies struggles, everything about jackies character, if we put it all together, hardly makes any sense at all without accepting that jackie was in love with shauna. like yes it can be explained away, because of course it can, but does any of it actually add to the story? why was it included? if jackie wasnt, there is no obvious reason for the focus on it. why do we see her express her worry that she'll die and someone else will be jeffs first? just so we can see shauna feel guilty? the framing of the scene makes it so obvious this is about far more than that. and then jackie does die and someone else is shaunas first.
shauna is the only one who knew jackie didnt like rabbits. aka shauna was the only one who even came close to knowing the real jackie. but one thing jackie would always put up a facade for with shauna was when she'd talk about jeff. she didnt love him, barely even liked him, and shauna knows that. we see her confusion when jackie says she should have said i love you back.
shauna killing the rabbit then becomes very specifically about her killing that lie. the jeff lie. just like her having sex with him is. she wants control, she wants honesty, she wants an "i love you". she wants the lie jackie was telling her dead, but she also EATS it. she consumes it. accepts it. makes it part of her. never actually confronts jackie on it. eating the rabbit, making her family secretly eat it, as a metaphor for both her and them accepting the lie that their family is based on. a marriage she got into out of "guilt and shame" because she was in love with her best friend and her best friend loved her back and on some subconcious level shauna has always known that and cant face it, didnt dare make jackie face it either. i think any true conscious realisation of it would kill shauna. it honestly might be what eventually kills her. or rather, it might be what she has to face at the end. because if we're talking about things coming "full circle", as things often do in this show, then shaunas story would have to end with jackie and the secrets they kept from each other in that car in the pilot.
