Love your meta! You've got an amazing insight into Shauna's character!
I've been thinking that some of Shauna's resentment towards Mari is due to projection, & to her partially blaming Mari for what happened to Jackie - specifically, Mari's "why don't you leave since we're all so crazy" & how Shauna ends up projecting like an imax.
Would love to hear your thoughts!
(warning; my meta skills might be a bit rusty cause i haven't wrote on here in a long time lol)
personally, i think a valid precedent for shauna's resentment for mari starts with her hanging out with jackie at the lake. shauna feels resentment over jackie giving attention to someone else, especially when mad at shauna, and doing it just to piss shauna off. now, even after this we see shauna still being kind to mari, but for someone like shauna, so dependent on jackie's attention, her giving it to someone else sets her off.
we have this kind of parallel with shauna where she watches and yearns as jackie interacts with other people; jeff, mari, travis. i don't think moments like these are moments shauna forgets easily.
slowly but surely, mari (and the rest of the girls) start to turn on jackie; as their captain, she's supposed to take the lead and help out, but in their eyes, they see her as unwilling to do anything. shauna sees this, and attempts to help jackie out; at this moment, she is the only one still looking out for jackie.
when jackie and shauna have their fight, the other girls do nothing to stop jackie from leaving. as you said, mari even eggs her on; "why don't you leave, if we're all so crazy?" sure, this doesn't mean that the girls wanted jackie to die.
but they wanted her to sleep outside, and if they didn't, they didn't argue against it. nobody knew it would snow. yet, when jackie dies, mari openly taunts her, saying "now you're her protector? too little, too late". she's putting all the blame on shauna, when mari also told jackie to leave.
and to shauna, this is only the beginning of a bigger pattern, of her being the scapegoat for the girls' actions. of all of them agreeing to cut ben's achilles but shauna being criticized by nat for enjoying it, of all of them agreeing and even planning to do a hunt and yet shauna is the only one blamed and hated by the girls.
i think a big part, if not all of shauna's resentment for mari comes from mari making her feel like jackie did. by the beginning of s3, melissa tells her "everyone's scared of you, you know". everyone, even melissa herself, has learnt to respect and fear shauna.
everyone but mari, who treats her as if everything were normal; something we've seen shauna hates. she complains about how the girls are passing the summer acting as if everything were ok, when it's very much not; people have died, and shauna can't simply ignore that and move on with her life because one was the person she cared about the most and the other was her child.
mari teases her as if she were the same shauna from pre-crash, or even s1; "i was just decoy, biatch!" and while earlier shauna would've responded with a snarky comment back or simply ignored her, this shauna is at her limit with not only the girls, but life in general.
mari teases her, and pokes and prods at an already about to explode shauna; asking shauna to fetch her some berry wine, "i walked back to civilization so i could fuck your dad", etc.
now, are these normal teases? is this mari's normal self? yes! do i believe that mari was purposefully targeting shauna? ...not really? as nat put it, "shauna's in a mood, and mari's being mari."
shauna wants to be respected and even feared after everyone has stepped over her and talen her and her work as butcher for granted (at least in her eyes). mari is the only person who doesn't display the level of respect that shauna needs in that moment; which, in mari's defense, is totally normal.
as an environment, the girls have returned to a s1, happy summer mood. if mari was cracking joked in winter, she's gonna be even worse now, now that the girls are sort of ignoring what they did in winter to enjoy their summer.
anyway, this part is getting redundant.
moving on, all this isn't why shauna is happy when mari is chosen, like a lot of people think. shauna is under the impression that mari is going to kill her in the hunt. she can see tai and van acting weirdly, like they know they won't get picked, and she has heard the jv girls + nat whispering about who can take her out.
she's paranoid, and for good reason. so when she moves, and mari gets chosen (someone who shauna already knows was going to get her) she's not unfazed or even excited just because of mari's comments. she's satisfied with having won over mari in a way she never won with jackie (who shauna knows was in the right and who died right after their fight), or nat (who the girls always preferred and who it was always back and forth with).
anyway this is kinda sloppy for how long it took but i did nottt forget about it just find it hard to sum it up ! again thank you for the kind words!
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