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The oversimplification of Shauna Shipman and Natalie Scatorccio

When we consume media, we are trained to look for someone specific to blame for the conflict within the story. Think Joker, or Lex Luthor, the supervillain that must be defeated by the hero.

But in stories like Yellowjackets, there is no hero, and no real villain either. But it doesn’t stop the audience from continuing their fruitless and relentless quest to pin the villain label on someone.

Misty and Lottie have also carried the villain label at some point, but as of April 2025, there seems to be a revision amongst the fandom, considering the finale and Shauna’s monologue, that she was actually the real villain, or that she was “always evil” or “enjoyed being in the wilderness”

Natalie on the other hand, is praised for being good, the “moral compass” of the group. She is unfairly held to a higher standard than the others, and excluded from the flack that everyone else seems to be getting. People even state outright that Natalie was better than the other girls and was “too good for them”

So I have decided to deconstruct this extremely simple-minded one-sided view of two of my favorite characters and do them justice by acknowledging their virtues and vices respectively

Part I: Uncovering the Antler Queen

When we first see Shauna as a character we are introduced to her committing the biggest friendship taboo (cheating with her best friends boyfriend) which immediately gives her character an awful reputation from the start

This led to people saying that she was “evil from the start” because of this action. They use this as an excuse to state blatantly that she had no capacity for empathy, that sleeping with your best friends boyfriend means that you are incapable of compassion or empathy.

When people state that Shauna was not a bad person pre-crash, you are usually told, that since Shauna committed adultery, she:

a) Is medically incapable of loving Jackie

b) Is a demon wearing human skin

c) Was just itching to chop human meat

d) Could not wait to kill everyone

I’m not even joking

Apparently her covering her eyes before chopping Javi was “performative”

Who was she performing for?

Natalie? Who let him drown in her place?

Tai? Who was Shauna’s closest friend?

Van? Who was just about to go tell Travis to shut up about his dead brother?

Shauna definitely has some sadistic tendencies, but the way you all talk about how much Shauna “scared everyone into doing bad things” takes away from one of the main points of the show

That they were all bad. That “it” was in all of them. Shauna might believe she scared Lottie, Travis and Akilah into changing their vote, but Lottie changed her own mind based on seeing the wilderness in Shauna. Travis and Akilah followed Lottie’s lead, not Shauna’s.

And how could she have scared them when she was effectively powerless? Natalie was the leader, not Shauna! She could yell until she was blue in the face, but they didn’t have to listen to her? What would she do if they refused? Stab them? And then what? She’d be on trial next! Even as leader, Shauna cannot kill Hannah without group approval.

Even at Shauna’s worst, Van and Tai are actively supporting her by pulling Natalie out of bed and checking her hut. To say that Van and Tai were helpless and afraid of big bad Shauna is a gross mischaracterization that proves how little you understand the characters.

The first thing we learn in this show is the power of influence, when Jackie loses influence, she is cast out, when Travis loses influence, he is chased and nearly killed. When Ben loses influence he is killed. And so on and so forth.

I find it interesting as well how Shauna is actively dehumanized by the other characters as well. It’s definitely nuanced, like everything else in the show.

But it’s the way that they (outside of Tai) show little to no concern about her freezing in the cold while chopping bear meat in her third trimester of pregnancy.

It’s the way they take ownership of Shauna’s baby, refusing for months to let her grieve her son in peace.

It’s the way that Coach Ben slept in the only bed without thinking of handing it over to Shauna for a few months, or the fact that no anyone else told him to give the bed to the pregnant teenager for a couple of months.

It’s the way they show no concern for her when letting her slit the throat of whoever is picked, and how they call her outside to slice up Javi. Both of these things are happening to her a matter of days after burying her infant son

It’s the way that Van and Tai and Natalie are praised in Van’s stories, are heralded as heroes, while Shauna, who had saved their lives, is not even mentioned.

It’s the way that they treat her like a moody teenager and not a grieving mother, how Akilah attempts to put the crown on Shauna’s head even after she refuses. That she is forced to play dress up in a play that is an outright mockery to the memory of her son, that his death is a sacrifice, not a tragedy.

It’s the way that Misty outright says that Shauna would’ve left Mari to die in the pit during the trial, and Natalie agrees, despite the fact that Shauna had saved her life twice.

It’s the way that Lottie and Melissa enable her and encourage her violence. The way that Melissa treats Shauna’s mental illness as a quirky character trait and encourages her to commit acts of violence while fully aware of how unstable she is.

It’s the way that Mari, Akilah, Gen and Melissa poison their only ethical food source for the sole purpose of murdering Shauna, and cannibalizing her.

And yes, they wanted to eat her. Mari had the crossbow, and if she really wanted to overthrow Shauna peacefully, she could have rallied the group against her. Based on how Shauna backs down when confronted by Tai and based on how Jackie and Natalie are overthrown, it would’ve worked

Mari (as well as the others) wanted a hunt, so they could justify killing and desecrating her corpse. They were willing to kill their only ethical food source and risk starvation just to kill her. It’s not crazy to believe they wouldn’t have dragged her corpse and treated her like an animal as well. They hated her for ruining their chances of returning home, they viewed her as the cause of their problems. They would’ve felt justified in disrespecting her corpse.

Everyone (rightfully) complains about Shauna’s actions towards Mari’s corpse but forget to point out, that Mari would have done the same. This wasn’t a one-sided beef. Shauna desecrated Mari’s corpse out of anger, not sadistic joy.

In “Doomcoming” when Shauna is having a PTSD episode and uncovering old memories for the first time in years, the memory of her crowning and dragging Mari’s body and desecrating it are there as well as doomcoming, itself. These memories trigger enough fear to cause a panic attack and a fight or fight response.

This fits the way she acts in that scene. It’s the memory of her crowning, the plane crash, doomcoming and Jackie’s death that triggers a fight or flight response that causes a panic attack.

When reading her journal in the pilot, she is horrified and saddened by what she reads. When she listens to the tape, she flinches at the sound of Lottie killing a man with an axe and is disturbed by her laughter. She gets emotional at the message Hannah leaves behind for her daughter.

This clearly points out that she is not, in fact, a person who takes joy in people’s suffering on a usual basis. And that she was indeed genuinely guilty about what she had done. Seeing these things to her are like reading your journal from the psych ward.

You don’t bury memories because you enjoyed them so much, you bury them because they cause extreme fear and stress that your brain cannot handle. The memory of her crowning causes the same, if not similar fear to when she unwrapped Jackie’s body after she died. That clearly shows how she views those days, no matter how much she lies to make herself feel better.

It makes her crowning as the antler queen feel a bit more interesting as her ceremonial costume has a veil, unlike Natalie and Lottie. While Adult Shauna monologues about how she was her true self in the wilderness, her face is being covered. When someone is their true self, they are usually not covering their faces.

It gets even more interesting when you remember the pilot episode and the reactions we had to who the antler queen was. We all assumed that the antler queen must be the worst of them, the most evil one, right? But it isn’t.

The antler queen isn’t the leader, she’s a symbol. The objectification and dehumanization Shauna had attempted to avoid, had happened anyway.

She was no longer their friend, but a holy figure. The bearer of their sins

The antler queen is not Shauna’s true self, it’s actually Shauna when she is most removed from her true self.

So what are Shauna’s good traits? Well I’m glad you asked!

In the pilot, Shauna, for all of her faults, is seen driving Jackie to school. This is clearly a normal occurrence as Jackie is comfortable enough to honk the horn while she is driving. When Jackie is told to compliment Shauna, she specifically says that Shauna had “always been there for her”

This is clearly shown throughout the season. Shauna helps to get Jeff and Jackie together in freshman year, and she is most likely the one who comforts Jackie after every breakup. She is the one who brings Jackie blankets, and offers her comfort. Even the abortion attempt is done so that Jackie would live without the knowledge of what Shauna had done, as she knew Jackie couldn’t handle it. She attempts to get Jackie to do chores, she tries to make her eat when she refuses. When Jackie is outside, she stands by the window for a good amount of time before she sleeps.

When Tai comes up with the “freeze Allie out” plan, Shauna is undecided and passive. Given the undeniable truth that Allie was an awful player and almost cost them states. But when it goes too far, Shauna is the only person to outright tell Tai to stop before she breaks her leg.

Afterwards, it’s Shauna who holds her hand and tells her not to move her leg. Shauna seems guilty at the idea of partying while Allie was in pain. Her anger at Tai and her empathy for Allie are genuine. Afterwards Shauna apologizes to Tai less than a few minutes later.

When the plane goes down, in spite of her fear of planes, she immediately runs towards Van in an attempt to save her without a thought for her own life. She has to be physically removed from the plane by Jackie, and then attempts to get back inside the burning plane right after

Like, that is pretty huge levels of genuine selflessness. She is not doing this for attention or approval. She never mentions it afterwards either. This proves she doesn’t see people as objects to be used, but in spite of Shauna’s later claims of how they are not close, she was willing to die alongside her if she meant she wasn’t alone. To save her even if she died in the process.

Everyone else evacuated the plane immediately, Shauna was the only person who did not. This isn’t a one time thing either, as she spends the entirety of season one being there for people. Whether it’s attempting to calm down Mari after she has something down her back, dropping everything she was doing to do so without annoyance or judgement.

Or offering comfort to Javi and Mari after the crash as well. Or trying to help Lottie when she was having her seance freakout

Even when drugged, she is against running in on Jackie and Travis at first, saying that they should be left alone.

Before Tai famously became Shauna’s support, Shauna had been hers first. Shauna had come running to find her and an injured Van. Shauna had also, in spite of her fear of the attic went up to sleep with her, because she couldn’t let her be alone. Tai trusted Shauna enough to open up about her sleepwalking in both timelines. Shauna promises in both to sleep with her and to keep her from hurting anyone.

Shauna comforts Misty after she comes runnng back with news of Van’s injury. She keeps Misty from interfering with Van’s stitching

Even while in her third trimester of pregnancy, she never cuts herself extra food or complains about how little her rations are or attempts to use her pregnancy to get extra food.

She does a lot of hard things without complaint, such as immediately cutting up a deer after her botched abortion attempt. Or doing chores while pregnant and mentally unstable. Or going back to boil water after burying her son. Or even standing as the antler queen after nearly dying.

She sleeps on the hard floor willingly while Coach Ben sleeps on the bed. Even at nine months, she never complains or insists that he get up. She sits out in the cold meat shed, chopping meat in the freezing snow while everyone sits and waits.

She helps Natalie pull the moose from the water and treats both her and Lottie for hypothermia afterwards, all while extremely pregnant. Even when in childbirth, in the worst pain of her life, she asks Tai to prioritize her baby’s life over her own.

She attempts to bring blankets to Lottie after beating her, and is happy and relieved when she is okay. She plays a motherly role to Javi during their time in the wilderness to the point that he was comfortable going through her bag and even while drugged, warns him to run.

She is the reason that everyone survived the cabin fire, in spite of her anger at being overlooked, she immediately wakes up Natalie and screams for the others to wake up, only Tai ever calls her a hero for it (even then it was during Ben’s trial).

The fact that Melissa and Akilah lived long enough to return to civilization after attempting to kill her shows that she isn’t a deranged killer.

When Shauna returns to civilization, she is hit with the guilt of everything that happened. She then proceeds goes out her way to punish herself in the worst way possible while also remaining as harmless as possible. According to the writers Shauna did make an attempt to keep herself in check.

Going out of your way to keep yourself from causing harm is the opposite of evil. It showcases that you care enough to think of others. That you are trying to be better.

Shauna goes out of her way to ruin any and all prospects of a future because of her sense of justice. Her ironclad belief that actions have consequences also includes herself.

She does not believe that she deserves a future after everything. She is constantly afraid of harming others, of destroying everything, that she ties herself up way to tightly to the point of extreme boredom, which then leads to her desperately wanting to break free but refusing to let herself do that until given an excuse (ie: believing Jeff was cheating).

Everyone around her views her as pretty normal, her own daughter seems to find the idea of her mom being crazy or violent as impossible. she goes out of her way to do things she hates without complaint, like washing Jeff’s skid marks. She attempts to spend time with Callie before everything goes to shit.

Shauna manages to emphathise with Natalie after Travis dies in a way that neither Tai nor Misty could. She keeps her daughter’s teddy bear in her car and threatens a man with a gun to get it back. She cannot bear to kill Bruce the goat and cries when she believes she will have to and makes a speech to Lottie about how she would not do it.

Even lying to Tai and Nat is done to protect Jeff, Callie and the others. She knows that Jeff being arrested will lead to their secrets being exposed and to keep Nat or one of the others from killing him in (rightful) anger and going to jail and traumatizing Callie for life.

When she believes someone is after her, she sends Callie and Jeff away, and tries to keep the others from following her. After Lottie dies, it’s Shauna who comforts her grieving father and calls out Walter for making a game out of their grief.

Shauna might not be a good person but I feel like it’s easy to forget that Shauna was not this way by nature but by nurture. It takes extremely harsh circumstances to break Shauna, such as

a) The plane crash itself

b) Prolonged starvation for months

c) Being drugged while pregnant

d) Losing her best friend in the worst way possible

e) Post partum psychosis and mental instability in general (extreme delusions and heightened paranoia, most likely a lack of sleep)

f) Childbirth (one of the most painful experiences)

g) Losing her son and having to bury him twice

h) Chopping up Javi

I) Feeling invalidated/invisible after not even being thanked for the role she played in saving their lives

j) being enabled and egged on by the others judgement of her or having her mental illness be romanticized by her partner and having her son be outright called a “sacrifice that was necessary for her survival”

This isn’t hate for any of the others, save the paragraphs I love everyone.

I just hate the oversimplification of nuanced, morally grey characters.

The point is, without all of the following factors happening in the exact same way, Shauna would’ve been a lot chiller. It is canon that without Melissa saying that Shauna could be leader, or Lottie handing her the title, she probably would’ve remained in the same place as she was in the beginning of season 3, angry and bitter, but mostly harmless.

For all of her angst at the beginning of season 3, Akilah is comfortable enough to attempt to put a crown on her head after Shauna explicitly refused to wear it. She only attacks Melissa after she followed her to her baby’s new grave out of fear that she would tell the others.

In a normal world, Shauna would’ve went to Brown, dyed her hair, had a few crazy situationships and then eventually pull herself together and become a normal adult. The Jeff situation would’ve been something to cringe at, not cry about.

And that’s the tragedy of her character, the fact that being this way wasn’t in her nature, that she was someone who was incredibly selfless, and kind, that horrific circumstances turned her physically and figuratively into a shell of who she once was

Part II: The Deconstruction Of A Saint

On the opposite end of the spectrum, Natalie is glorified and treated like the only good guy, the hero, the saint. Which is honestly kind of funny, as both Travis and Shauna canonically call her a saint to mock her and point out her hypocrisy

Just like everyone else in the story, she is morally grey, just at different times, in different ways. To preface this, just like Shauna does have bad traits such as aggression, jealousy and an inferiority complex, Natalie has her good traits as well. I am not denying those exist. I’m just attempting to criticize the black and white, Natalie good and Shauna bad narrative.

To start off, Natalie is introduced in the teen timeline in a sequence where she is insulted by one of her old hookups. Her friends defend her and they leave. Afterwards, she throws a bottle at their car, causing them to pull back and chase them.

The entire sequence is an example in Natalie’s biggest flaw, avoidance. Natalie was unable to stand up to their face, and only when their back was turned, did she fight back.

It also showcases an impulsivity that would be seen in her adulthood. She showcases a disregard for her friends, who are not as athletic as her, and will most likely be taking the brunt of whatever punishment the guys dole out.

This is a pretty insensitive thing to say to someone who just defended you, and the avoidance continues.

Everyone remembers how Natalie took the moral stance in the “freeze Allie out” argument. But neglect to mention how, in spite of her disagreement, she did not stop them.

She could have told Coach Martinez or Coach Ben. She could’ve told Jackie. But she doesn’t. She watches Tai push Allie and makes no move to stop her, unlike Shauna. For all of her claims that Shauna was fine with the plan, she was the only one to make a stand against it.

She also was an addict long before the crash. Obviously I don’t want to come off as insensitive, but when Tai mentions that she smells like a wino, it clearly isn’t an insult, it’s the truth.

Yes, Tai and Jackie and the others were being mean and judgemental as hell, but their insults were not completely off base.

Natalie was a burnout who had clearly given up on her future at this point, she did probably blow off practice and classes to get high and wasted. It’s not wrong to point out that those things would probably annoy other people, especially Tai, who wanted to win nationals.

When Laura Lee and the others look to Natalie for alcohol, they aren’t judging based on vibes, but facts. Natalie, who is known for her alcohol and drug abuse, would be most likely to have smuggled alcohol on the plane. And guess what? They’re correct!

Natalie doesn’t just become the hunter for purely practical reasons, she does so to be praised for her usefulness, and to have her ego stroked, which makes perfect sense as she has never been praised for much by either of her parents.

She fakes Javi’s death not just because she thought he was dead, but because she missed having Travis all to herself. Of course she wasn’t malicious but it’s extremely selfish. Afterwards she has sex with Travis after he burnt whatever was left of his brother, while actively hiding the evidence of her lie (her bandaged leg).

When caught, she refuses to genuinely apologize, it’s Travis who apologizes “for ever making her doubt how good of a person she was”

This is an incredibly selfish thing to do, yeah I get why it happened, but it’s still selfish. She also has an issue with Lottie. It’s a very similar jealousy to what Shauna felt in season 3

She outright claims that Lottie should die, and needed to be stopped. She childishly challenges Lottie to a competition knowing she could die end up seriously injured or sick because her ego was bruised.

It’s the exact same pettiness that killed Jackie. But Lottie is lucky enough to survive, and Natalie gets to apologize for her stupidity.

She stands by as Shauna beats Lottie half to death, and given her jealousy and how she had somewhat wished for her to die, it isn’t crazy to believe that she kind of agreed with Shauna on that front.

She lets Javi die in her place. The show makes it clear that Natalie carries the most blame and rightfully so

Yes, everyone else stood there, but Javi had stuck his neck out for Natalie, sacrificing his own safety for her survival and she repays him by letting him go.

Obviously she felt awful afterwards, but she did make the choice to let him die. Misty told Natalie that the others wanted her dead, she saw them coming and sat there, even after Misty let her go.

When confronted by Travis, she uses the wilderness, the one thing she did not believe in as a cover for what happened.

I genuinely believe that Natalie had an idea of how Shauna felt about the entire queen thing, but she chose to ignore it because she liked the attention she got. Her hard work was finally rewarded. And she did not want to share it with anyone, not even Shauna.

I’m not trying to slander her or anything, but you’d have to be incredibly naive to believe that Natalie couldn’t tell why Shauna was mad.

Natalie the empath btw

She doesn’t want to deal with it, end of story. She wants to bask in the glory of finally being accepted, even if it comes at Shauna’s expense.

If this sounds childish, that’s because it is. This heroic mary-sue Natalie characterization is bent on removing Natalie’s flaws and making her seem much older, which causes fans to forget that she is a child, no older than seventeen. She is no hero in shining armor.

She is a child who had been degraded and abused since childhood.

So of course she would jump at the opportunity to be praised for once when she spent her whole life being criticized!

She takes a very non confrontational stance in her leadership role, to the point that no one took her seriously. They liked Natalie because she was nice, but when push came to shove, she fell to pieces.

When Tai warns her to take Mari and Shauna’s issues seriously, she ignores the issue entirely

She ignores this, despite clear evidence that Mari is ragebaiting someone who is mentally unstable and might end up getting hurt. (I’ll make a post about the marishauna dynamic I love them so much) They were in the room when Shauna accused them of stealing her baby. They saw Jackie’s body.

She refuses to talk to them and mocks Tai for the idea

When Coach Ben is found, she helps them in finding him and bringing him in. She lets Tai and Shauna walk her like a dog. I saw a post praising Natalie for how empathetic she was for allowing Shauna to push her into accepting a 2/3 vote 💀

That’s not empathy, that’s being passive

Coach Ben’s trial reminds me a bit of Shauna’s baby dream. Natalie in both situations, is the closest to Coach Ben and Shauna and is trusted with a secret of theirs (the baby feeding and coach Ben’s location)

Both characters view her as someone they could be open with, and trust. They both admire her as well.

In both scenarios she betrays the other person, even though it goes against her morals, for the sake of survival.

She does feel bad afterwards, but it doesn’t matter because she still does it. She not only does it, but leads the charge in doing so, and irreparably ruins her relationship with both of them in the process, (I mean in Shauna’s dream, it’s slightly different in real life)

She does take a few digs at Shauna as well, whether it’s treating Shauna like a brooding teenager (“Shauna’s in a mood” or “Shauna would” in response to Misty’s belief that Shauna would’ve left Mari to die”). She participates in the play to please the others instead of thinking of how this would affect Shauna.

Natalie definitely knows that it’s mean and insensitive but does it anyway, which is the thesis of her character. A moral compass is useless if you aren’t going to stand by it.

I do think that Natalie’s attempts to spend time with Shauna are to make up for it, and Shauna’s anger at her is based on this hypocrisy. She desperately wants Natalie to acknowledge that she is a liar and a hypocrite, that her hands are as dirty as hers.

This is also showcased when Natalie avoids being the one to shoot Coach Ben in spite of being the best shot, something she was incredibly proud of. This is the exact reason Shauna was picked to butcher Javi in spite of burying her son a few days ago, because she was the best at butchering

Natalie refuses the responsibility while Shauna was left to shoulder hers. She says that “anyone could do it” and insists on a draw for it “to be fair”

There was no draw for Shauna when she was left to slit Natalie’s throat, no draw when she was called outside in the freezing cold to cut up a kid she viewed as a friend

You can see why this would boil Shauna’s blood, right?

Natalie can avoid responsibility while Shauna is unable to.

For all of Shauna’s villiany, she has a strength that Natalie cannot match, a dedication to what she believes is right, that I believe that Natalie is jealous of.

Which is why she chooses to punish her by quite literally putting Natalie in her shoes, to make her understand how she feels. She wants Natalie to feel as unappreciated and alone as she once felt.

Natalie gives in to Shauna’s demands, she does not punish Shauna for yelling out of turn, setting the expectation amongst the others that would eventually lead to her downfall, as Tai had once predicted.

Natalie does do the right thing eventually, but she still does it behind everyone’s back. She sneaks off to kill Coach. She uses the hunt as a distraction to get to the mountain. She doesn’t put up a fight when Shauna takes the gun.

When returned to civilization, it has the opposite effect on her, instead of ruminating on her actions, she buries them in drugs and alcohol, just like before

According to Sophie Thatcher, Natalie hadn’t fallen to pieces in the wilderness because she happened to be separated from her vices. Unlike Shauna, of whom the wilderness provides the perfect circumstances for her to become her worst possible self, the wilderness provides Natalie the chance to be her best self. Her actions are rewarded and she is spared a lot of things such as:

a) Being cut off from drugs and alcohol and her mother and everyone who assumed the worst in her

b) She is given a job that is held in high regard (unlike Shauna, whose job is avoided)

c) She is less affected by the shrooms, as she had spent her life abusing harsher drugs (unlike characters like Shauna, who was pregnant, and Lottie, who was already schizophrenic)

d) She is missing during the fight that leads to Jackie’s death, which frees her of responsibility

d) Her childish behavior towards Lottie (the competition) luckily, does not kill her

e) Both her and Shauna work themselves to the bone over the winter. But only Natalie is praised by Lottie, and has her hands kissed, and everyone bows and acknowledges her as a hero, she gets to have Van tell stories about her heroism and the others acknowledgement.

f) Coach Ben dies thanking Natalie, while Jackie dies believing Shauna hated her. She gets to apologize to him as well

g) When she butchers Coach Ben, the others treat it like an awful thing, when Shauna butchers Javi, the others treat it like a job she was expected to do

f) Her act of heroism (calling for rescue) is remembered 23 years later while Shauna’s act of heroism (saving them the night of the fire) is forgotten and completely ignored

When returned to a world in which she has no one to care for and no one to lead, in the trailer she had hated, with the same people who had looked down on her and with the paparazzi in her face, she would go back to her old habits and become a worser version of herself

A lot of mary-sue Natalie fans hate adult Natalie because her existence proves that Natalie was as bad as the others. Her unhealthy obsession with Travis gets worse as she clings to him desperately at the cost of both of their mental health.

She ends up abusing him, by stalking and breaking into his house and ruining his relationships out of spite and getting him to relapse on drugs. He changes his identity to get away from her.

She spends her adulthood causing chaos to the point that all of the characters (Shauna, Tai, Lottie and Misty) view her as the violent, unstable one.

She manipulates her sponsor Suzie into helping her commit identity fraud so she can afford her drugs, as well as getting her to relapse as well. She assaults Suzie at some point as well, most likely to get her to agree. The woman clearly seems afraid at the sight of her.

She stalks Misty and pulls up to her house with a gun when she assumes that she blackmailed them, and uses Kevyn, her old friend to get a gun, which she uses in an attempt to murder someone, knowing he will be in trouble for it. Remind you of the pilot?

She attempts to kill Jeff while he is completely unarmed and driving the car. When Shauna says at Lottie’s compound that she was afraid they would kill him, Natalie does not refute this, as it’s obvious that she would have killed him if given the chance, as she blamed him for Travis’ murder.

She also was chasing Shauna with a knife a few minutes before her death, with full intention to kill and had to be stopped by her 17-year old daughter who was holding a gun.

I also find it kind of funny that fans can understand why Natalie would state that she missed the wilderness in the pilot because, you know, she doesn’t actually miss the wilderness, she misses having a purpose and feeling useful, but act purposefully obtuse when Shauna, who just lost four of her old friends over the course of a few months and was abandoned by her husband and child would attempt to cope by looking back to a time where she believed she had control.

In conclusion, I like it when we look at nuanced morally ambiguous characters with the understanding they deserve

Shauna and Natalie were very much traumatized tragic characters who should not be put in the mold of hero and villain as it feels kind of one dimensional. As violent as Shauna was, she was just as selfless when she had someone to protect. As empathetic as Natalie was, she could be incredibly selfish when she wanted to be acknowledged.

problemnyatic

"Punishment works!!!" We're drowning in three to four generations of people so pants-shittingly terrified of ever being wrong that half of everyone has constructed a worldview wherein they never even consider the possibility that they could be wrong and the other half behaves like one wrong move will make anything or anyone explode violently into a million irreperable pieces. I don't think it works guys

problemnyatic

I know this might be a bold take but maybe teaching everyone from a young age that ever making a mistake will be met with unimaginable pain and misery doesn't actually encourage learning or correct behavior. If anything it creates a sense of terror so powerful it completely suffocates curiosity and exploration, thus leading to people knowing absolutely nothing but whatever is brought directly to them, which is a big problem in a world where information is so tightly controlled that a very small number of very powerful people basically have complete power over what people see and hear on a day-to-day basis when not actively seeking new and rigorously verified information from diverse and trustworthy sources.

problemnyatic

if any of this sounds like you, start by looking up the definition of words you've heard and are pretty sure you know what they mean, but haven't actually double-checked for yourself. Just like, whenever it occurs to you. Great first step

problemnyatic

This post goes out to the "we need to bring back bullying" crowd. Just because you aren't hitting someone physically doesn't mean you aren't being punitive. Maybe it isn't actually healthy to believe it's necessary to harass and humiliate anyone who makes you upset or uncomfortable. That sounds like a you problem actually.

problemnyatic

Anyways, breaking the cycle of abuse starts with you and how you treat yourself. You have to give yourself grace and room for error or you'll never be able to cultivate a healthier mindset than your trauma left you with. It's not easy, but you have to trust yourself that whatever seems kinder than however you usually treat yourself is probably a good enough start. Doesn't need to be perfect, doesn't need to be The Correct Answer, just needs to be a step in the right direction, y'know? We'll figure out the details along the way.

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