An insight into the characters based on their approach to the “Allie problem”
If good writing means that every scene has the potential to say something about a character at their core, then the girls' attitude towards the "Allie problem" is an interesting example.
Taissa
The one who comes up with the very plan. This establishes her as ambitious and extremely rational, but it’s the type of rationality that without grounded moral principles could degenerate into violence and cruelty at any time. It’s what we see with adult Misty and Walter, who are both so practical-minded that resorting to murder is nothing more than a smart option to choose to them.
Like Jackie says, Taissa has so much fight in her. The way she handles the Allie situation shows that if she has a goal, she’ll do whatever she finds necessary to obtain it.
How does that translate into their time in the wilderness?
Taissa’s the first to make the call that they should leave the plane and find water. She’s the one who sleeps in the attic when everyone else wouldn’t, she’s the only one who tries to tell Jackie she shouldn’t leave. And in season two, she’s the one who says, “We need to find a way to stay alive, and it can’t be her [: Lottie]”.
Then we see them drawing cards. We’re not shown how they get to that very decision exactly, but it’s important that we know that the two things are tied. The hunt that follows, their first conscious hunt (let’s not forget about Travis), wasn’t supposed to happen—it’s rather the consequence of the designed sacrifice refusing to take on the role.
Though there’s an obvious religious aspect to it, drawing cards isn’t just letting fate/the wilderness decide in their place so that they don’t blame themselves. It’s also the girls’ attempt to give the ritual some semblance of logic and structure—on a normal day, they would draw cards to decide who gets which task. They’re using the same mechanism, except that they’re now deciding who should die and get eaten. And it starts with Taissa’s very rational and straightforward remark about needing to survive.
Natalie
She openly and passionately goes against Taissa’s plan. Despite being presented as the outsider who doesn’t really engage with the team and disregards rules by smoking and doing drugs, she’s the one who fights to play fairly. She most likely doesn’t care about Allie personally, but she’s a teammate, and they should treat her as such.
While Tai’s ultimate goal is winning at Nationals, Natalie doesn’t want to win more than she wants to be a team (T: What’s your plan, then? / N: I dunno, play like a fucking team and win? It’s worked so far.).
It’s quite ironic—yet not that surprising—how, despite being opposites, Natalie and Jackie share a similar mindset about this.
The scene establishes Natalie as a sympathetic character with grounded and noble moral principles, no matter the adversities. In the wilderness, she’s the first and possibly the only one who acknowledges Travis’ grief and sees through his unsufferable attitude and understands that, as much as questionable his methods are, he’s trying to make sure Javi gets over their father’s death and wants to live on.
It's also meaningful that Natalie’s not there when Jackie and Shauna fight and Jackie ends up leaving the cabin. The night earlier, Natalie was the one who let her out when Lottie and the others locked her in and went to hunt Travis down. Natalie basically saves the girl who just had sex with Travis being perfectly aware that it would hurt her, and she doesn’t even know. Viewers do know, though, and we’re instinctively led to think of her as even more noble and deserving of empathy.
Jackie’s death certainly comes from an irrational choice, but the deepest reason is the others’ lack of sympathy towards her at the end of the season. It could be delusional, but I can’t see Natalie turning a blind eye on the whole thing, had she been there.
Jackie was their captain when they had a normal life. Natalie becomes their leader thanks to the constant effort she’s put into the group ever since they landed there—and possibly, as the matter with Allie shows, even before that.
Lottie
Lottie’s phrasing for her refusal is telling. She says, “It doesn’t feel right.” It’s not that she thinks it is, or that it seems like it is. She feels like they’re not meant to go through with it. A simple yet fitting choice of words foreshadows Lottie’s spiritual nature and her connection to the wilderness as well as her role of prophet/messiah.
It’s also important that she’s not shown as particularly proactive. She does express her opinion, but she’s not as passionate as Natalie about it, who instead actively tries to convince them what a terrible idea it is and interferes with Taissa’s plan on the field. This shows how Lottie never cared be a leader, but rather follows where her feelings lead her.
Van
We’re not really shown Van’s reaction until they’re in the locker room after the scrimmage. We just learn that she’s impressionable, as she almost throws up at Nat’s mention of Allie’s bone being visible, and that she’s so devoted to Tai that she won’t let Shauna talk shit about her at the party.
Laura Lee
Of course, nobody would even dream of telling Laura Lee about an act of such misconduct. She would never go along with Taissa’s plan, she wouldn’t even fathom doing something like this. She’s more clueless than Jackie, because Jackie at least did notice something was off on the field. Even at the party, Laura Lee is the only one who still has no idea there were such tensions.
Her blissful ignorance keeps her kind and pure, apart from the ruthless tendencies of the team. It doesn’t change once they’re in the wilderness—Laura Lee dies trying to help her friends, and she fortunately never gets to witness their worst moments.
Shauna
Unsurprisingly, Shauna’s a tough one. Her attitude towards the Allie situation is as ambivalent as it will be for the rest of the story towards everything else.
Shauna keeps her thoughts for herself until Nat and Lottie leave and it’s just her and Tai, and even then, the first thing she says is, “Jackie’s not gonna like it.” The moment she’s asked to make a personal decision, she talks about what Jackie would think, and it’s not because she herself doesn’t know what to think, it’s just what she chooses to say outright. If anything, Shauna isn’t against Taissa’s plan entirely, and bringing up Jackie rather sounds like an excuse so that she doesn’t dwell on her own dark thoughts.
When Taissa says, “Then we probably shouldn’t tell her,” we expect that to upset Shauna—she wouldn’t keep things from Jackie, right? They’re best friends. While it does upset her, it still doesn’t stop her. We understand why later in the episode, when we discover that she’s no stranger to keeping secrets from Jackie, between her affair with Jeff and the admission letter to Brown (it also recontextualizes their first scene together in Shauna’s car, where Jackie addressed literally both).
On the field, when Taissa plays aggressive and forces Allie to play under pressure, Shauna tells her, “It’s not helping,” and once Allie’s on the ground, she’s one of the girls who runs to her first and tries to comfort her. Even though she didn’t openly disagree with Taissa’s plan, she didn’t want or expect things to escalate the way they did. She’ll make the same mistake when Jackie leaves the cabin, Taissa tells her to go talk to her, and Shauna just goes to sleep, underestimating the consequences of it.
Her ambivalence—if not hypocrisy—is shown later that night at the party, when she tries to pick a fight with Taissa while drunk. I think some part of her felt guilty to an extent, so she tries to fight with Tai out of remorse and because she wants to make her look like the only culprit, since she hates that she was so close to being complicit in it. Who calls her out when she defends Nat from Taissa’s slut-shaming at the party? Natalie herself slams in Shauna’s face that she is complicit.
If Shauna had told Jackie, she would’ve put a stop to it for sure. In the 2019 script for the pilot, Jackie says, “You should have told me about Taissa and Allie.” Shauna’s choice to keep the secret directly anticipates their falling out towards the end of the season. Shauna’s continuous lying drives Jackie mad until she explodes and they have that fatal fight.
Shauna’s the one who tries to act as a person who has it together but really doesn’t. She has the potential to be a good person, friend and mother, but she ends up flunking everything and she barely understands why.
Finally, she tells Tai that she’s “a fucking sociopath”, which, considering everything that happens later in the series, is sort of rich.
Jackie
Like Laura Lee, Jackie has no clue the whole “freeze Allie out” strategy is even happening. Shauna didn’t tell her, she was left out, and she doesn’t find out until Allie’s already hurt and there’s nothing she can do about it.
She watches the others as they rush to help and comfort her and handle the situation, but she doesn’t partake in it because she’s too shocked to move. After the scrimmage, she tries very hard to do as Coach Martinez told her—as captain, she’s meant to glue them together (“When it gets tough out there, these girls are going to be looking for someone to guide them. Can you handle that?”). It’s more than that, though—the way Coach put it, if Jackie can’t do that, then she isn’t really anything special. She’s not as fast as Shauna and her footwork isn’t as good as Lottie’s, and there’s something else that Taissa’s better at, too, though Jackie stops Coach before he can tell her that bit. But nobody seems to care about what she’s saying, and Natalie storms off.
Jackie’s inability to handle the Allie situation and lift the others’ spirits foreshadows her incompetence as well as her progressive loss of influence in the wilderness—in Lottie’s words, “You don’t matter anymore.”
Allie’s accident marks the beginning of Jackie’s downfall even before the plane crashes.
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"If you need to be mean be mean to me."
Because if that isn't Lottie Fucking Matthews in a sentence I don't know what is. In her eyes she is a vessel. A vessel for dreams and promises and prophecies, for guidance and hope and survival. She is not a full person she is the medium she is the method. The crown is a wood woven chain, a reminder of how much good her sacrifice can achieve. All she wants is love, companionship, understanding. To be listened to, to be believed, to be cared for. Yet all she knows how to do is care. She will cut herself to ribbons and twist the truth around and around until it comes out palatable, until it comes out as a command as something doable instead of pure unattainable inevitability.
Because nothing is never enough, for the world, for those around her, for the ones she loves, for herself. It will never be enough, pain in the end, will forever be simple pain. But better her pain than someone else's. Because pain may be pain and sacrifice may never be enough, but even something momentary, even care on borrowed time is better than none at all. Because if you need to be mean be mean to her, she can take, she's had practise. She can take it on, free you off it. As she frees all the others, the ones who listen to her, who admire, who care, of the true, heavy weight of it. But it can't last forever, nothing lasts forever. On some level, some deep, unacknowledged level she knows this. She knows where the line is, when it's gone too far, when it's time to pass this burden along, and she does so to the one person who simultaneously understands her more then anyone and one who understands her the least.
To the person who never asked be have anyones anger directed their way, but to the person who takes it time and time again. To the person who keeps them alive by sustenance while she keeps them alive by hope. The the only person who could carry that weight, who could understand the cruelty that comes with it, who has never known love or care or tenderness, let alone admiration or reverence, to the person who hungers for it just as much as she dose. To the person who never truly believed her, never placed her higher, never gave her anywhere to fall from. The one who gave her a soft landing. To the one who understands, to the one who never will, to the one who's anger she has always taken the brunt off in her attempts to shield and love and be understood by the others.
"If you need to be mean be mean to me." Because how are you going to let me stay?
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ok ok imagine dating both jackie and shauna… the chaos. but i’d love it!! shauna’s possessiveness def comes out sometimes (especially if you dated her first) and she’ll hog you like a blanket when you all cuddle together and jackie’s like 😑
"imagine dating both Jackie and Shauna" i do that every night to fall asleep but continue lmao. i actually don't think it would be that chaotic, funnily enough.
so i think shauna would def be a little more possessive if yall dated first, but i dont think it would last super super long. at least, not the possessiveness against jackie. i think the first time shauna and jackie had to close ranks because someone else was flirting with you shauna would remember there are bigger problems lmao.
I've always HC'd that shauna and jackie have been friends since like kindergarten so I think they've definitely learned how to share with each other lmao. "i don't even know where you end and I begin" type shit. jackie didn't get new clothes jackie-and-shauna got new clothes, shauna didn't get a car jackie-and-shauna got a car, etc. I don't think it would be that weird once shauna got over her initial issues with it.
she would def hog the hell out of you whenever yall are cuddling though. jackie's watching shauna with absolute disbelief as yall practically merge into one person and shaunas just like 😁. less possessive and more competitive though, I think. they're both extremely competitive athletes which translates a lot into your relationship. they'd definitely compete over who got you the most thoughtful/biggest gift, who kisses you more that day, etc.
the addition of a third person would make their relationship a lot less toxic as well I think. shauna's main issue is that she doesn't communicate to jackie at all, and expects her to know what she's thinking because they've been jackie-and-shauna since they were children. shauna just assumes jackie knows she's upset and just doesn't care, while jackie in reality doesn't realize she's upset. a third person there to play mediator as well as soften both of their edges would do a lot towards the relationship in general.
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ok im going to ramble for a minute but i think van palmer's turn towards violence is so interesting. like in the beginning, she nearly throws up just thinking about allie's broken leg. she can't watch when shauna sobs over her baby's body. but then she's one of the first to truly believe and accept that they'll end up turning to violence in order to survive - she stops and she watches shauna beat their friend and teammate and she knows. it's brutal and bloody and near deadly, but this time, she doesn’t look away.
despite her weak stomach, she's always been willing to do what she believes is necessary. to her, violence isn't intriguing or sensational or something to be celebrated - but it is something to be resorted to, one of those things she sees as an inevitability, a necessity, no matter how painful or nauseating or depressing. she’ll slap her mother awake, but first she'll call out to her. she'll hunt nat through the woods and she'll let a 14yo drown, but only because she and taissa and lottie and everyone who she cares for, they're all starving, or hurt. she will do what she believes it will take to keep herself and her loved ones alive, at least most of them, at least as many of them as possible - because, of course, she’s always tried so hard to be the protector. that's who she is, shown in a thousand little ways. she plays goalie. she tries to break up the fight between tai and shauna in the pilot and she starts to defend nat when travis is being a dickhead in bear down and she helps hold shauna back until lottie tells them not to in burial. she tries to look after tai when she sleepwalks, like how she possibly had to look after her mother for years. she jokes around and she tells the group stories, trying to keep them connected to the outside world.
i think it's interesting to see a character so solidly rooted in the idea of protection to be the one spearheading violent action. it's ironic and tragic and it makes sense, because as yellowjackets shows, over and over - care is not an inherently gentle or bloodless act!! it's van telling the others to leave her bleeding in the woods after the wolf attack and it's tying herself to tai even though she gets hurt and it's helping carry bodies onto the plane and digging graves. it's telling tai she loves her for the first time by literally writing it in her own blood.
sometimes it’s painful. sometimes it's not healthy or righteous. sometimes it’s the hard choice - putting forth the playing cards and joining the hunt and watching with grim determination as javi struggles and cries out for help, and then separating herself and the others from the choice to let him die by claiming the wilderness made it for them. reaching out and turning his face away from shauna when it’s time for the bloodletting. convincing travis to cannibalize his little brother by telling him that he owes javi this final act of love.
it's giving up retelling movies and tv shows and instead telling a different story, a quiet, cold one, because she believes the only way for them to survive out in the wilderness is to give themselves over to it fully, no matter how horrible - because, after everything, what choice does she feel she has but to persist? even in wiskayok, living was always a fight, another series of necessary actions in order to Get Through It and Get Out. after the alcoholic mother and ambiguously unmentioned father and the trials of being young and gay and butch in the suburbs of 90s new jersey, she wants a future, so badly. and after having to pull herself out of the crash and surviving the wolf attack and the pyre, after spending months watching the others around her suffer and starve and die, she can't pull out of the fight. she wouldn't even know how. like a brutal, desperate instinct, she must survive, and she must protect.
it's agonizing but she won't let herself feel it and it's endless but she can only think about the end result. it's selfish in the way they're almost all selfish and it's loving in the way they all love - but especially van, who is so deeply and fiercely protective, who has always cared so much. in the end, that protective instinct both keeps her painfully human and pushes her out into the deep end. it's the kindest and most wonderful piece of her being and it's an intense force that leads her towards brutality. because sometimes caring is the violent thing!! sometimes love is violence and violence is love!!!!
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Yellowjackets is a really great example of how when people complain about "too many lesbian period pieces," they're misidentifying the real problem, which is that media doesn't know how to create relationships between women that don't revolve around their interpersonal relationships with men.
There's a reason the movie specified by Wallace in the Bechdel comic is Aliens: only in a completely otherworldly setting could a movie imagine a reason why two named women discuss anything besides a man. In Yellowjackets, nobody complains about or refers to 1996 Van/Taissa as lesbians in a "period piece," even though fiction set in the 1990s is just as much historical fiction as shows set in the 1890's.
All this combined with the latest year I've seen a setting labeled a "period" as a derogatory statement are things set in the last few years prior to the 1960's cultural revolution, and I suspect what people are really trying to complain about is that so-called "representation" is mostly cherry-picked to bare almost no resemblance to the daily experience of anyone currently living. It still takes an airplane crash for an audience to believe teenager girls might talk about something besides boys. It takes a killer space alien. It takes a time (be it the 1700's or contemporary Christmastime) where being attracted to women is the conflict itself.
Because at any other time, media would have to reckon with the fact that while systemic patriarchy exists, a contemporary woman of any sexuality has enough agency in her own life that she could happily not have any interpersonal relationships with men at all, and still have real, valid problems. Problems beyond that which the viewer can just blame on the woman anyway, because she shouldn't have been liking/trusting/fucking the wrong man. Problems as frequent as low wages, medical scares, renovation timelines, instead of as rare as cannibalism, aliens, or even running for state Senate.
There's no word for a woman 'Regular Joe.' There's just "The Girl Next Door." The problem is, the industry won't acknowledge that you can tell that girl's story from her own point of view-- not just the wild speculation of her neighborly voyeur.
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