Voted Most Likely To Be Eaten First In A Plane Crash

voted most likely to be eaten first in a plane crash

The case for an ND reading of Jackie Taylor, a decently-sized post.

I got a lot of scrambled thoughts on this, and they need a space for coherence. Maybe this is more for my own headcanon-ing, but feel free to take this if you want to. A lot of this comes down to a certain reading of text that I do with a certain kind of lens that may not be there for everyone. And that's fine! This is just silly analysis stuff that I wanted to do.

Am I an "authority figure" on this? Probably not by some standards! I consider myself to be on some spectrum, but only my brother has a diagnosis (tm), so do with that what you will.

This a mix of new thoughts and some copy-pasted from messages i sent on discord once.

SO, where to start. The first proper introduction of Jackie with other people is that gruelling opening sequence, but I think the more interesting is her first scene with Shauna where we get the big chunk of what the history is between these two and on what dynamic they interact with each other.

Jackie's got the whole thing color-coded and planned out. She likes that, but from all the other things later in the episode -- and the season -- it becomes very clear that she likes to have some input that ranges from voicing her opinion to micro-managing in order to feel in control and somewhat safe in her position as (social) captain of the Yellowjackets.

That Shauna is going to Rutgers with Jackie is taken as a given by her. One interpretation is that Jackie thinks that Shauna, obviously, will go with her to Rutgers on the basis of their friendship. However, I would like to propose a lil switch in that maybe Jackie hopes that Shauna will go with her to Rutgers. Getting into Brown isn't nothing, and there's gotta be some pointers at High School that Shauna would be/feel overqualified for Rutgers.

High school is a game of social credits. Jackie knows what to wear, what to say, what to do. Coach points out her "influence", and she demonstrates some skills at conflict-resolution during the kegger. Soccer is a game, one that she's very passionate about, as is her supposedly on-and-off-ish thing with Jeff. The funny thing is that Jackie seems way more interested in calling out how her boyfriend's team has been doing at baseball, rather than stuff that concerns him (or the both of them) personally.

To segway back a bit: Everything is a game with rules. Jackie knows them, but is shown to be really out of her element in the wilderness and trying to bring back normal societal rules into it (this will be a surprise tool that will help us later). Is Shauna going with her to Rutgers a naive wish on the basis of their friendship, or is it also so Jackie can have someone to scout and feel out all the social conventions for her? College means that a new playbook needs to be made, and it saves embarassment if you can base it on someone else.

Jackie assuming that Shauna would go along to Rutgers to be her roommate can very well be an expression of "this is my best friend and my sole, kind, understanding constant in my life, and I need her there with me in this unknown territory." College means starting over from scratch, and if we assume the manual-based functioning to be true, then Shauna's presence there to take cues from could help a lot to smooth out this transition.

On the other hand, this is of course the opportunity to drop some masking that Jackie might've been doing. Shauna being there could then very well work against her

My greatest argument, I think, is that you can see the entirety of Jackie's lil subplot of going after Travis as an example of how such a process backfires tremendously against her.

A little step-by-step:

Jackie is shown to give Shauna multiple chances to come clean about the Jeff Thing. Shauna doesn't, but Jackie still sticks around her.

Jackie proposes the plan to have some fun with Travis to Shauna. Shauna voices her thoughts about it, underlining that it would be a bad thing to do to Natalie.

This notion is repeated throughout the episode. Travis himself brings it up, the high group of hunters brings it up, Nat herself looks not too pleased at Jackie and Travis slow-dancing at doomcoming.

There's an interesting reverse happening once the hunter girls confront Jackie about having had sex with Travis. Everyone is out of their minds, so idk how well we can factor in that almost all of them proceed to go after Travis despite mentioning once again that "he's Natalie's".

Doomcoming is post journal discovery, yet quite some time has passed between that and the episode. Jackie makes some very obvious comments at Shauna to signal that She Knows, and the Travis plan is set up after that. Hooking up with Travis can serve the plainly stated "I'm not gonna die a virgin :/", but over the course of the episode, it also creates this whole new catalogue of reactions from the others. And all of these, in their defence of Natalie, would speak in favor of Jackie if the news would break that Shauna had sex with Jeff.

So at the end of Doomcoming, we can get some sort of list of "rules" that would apply out here in the wilderness appendix for the section on CHEATING

People can call dibs on someone, and those are to be respected

Acting like the "bigger person" by calling everyone out on how little value it has out here is not going to do you any favors

The group will react badly if you crossed a line in their eyes. Taking someone's boyfriend falls under that.

It's how she plays the fight with Shauna! Shauna wants to bring up that most problems were caused by Jackie hooking up with Travis, which Jackie follows with an uno-reverse card she now (thinks) she has in her hands

If I (Jackie) hook up with Nat's boyfriend (Travis), then the group takes Natalie's side. Therefore, if Shauna hooked up with my boyfriend, then they should take my side.

And it goes so bad! Shauna outplays her by making the whole fight not about the cheating, but about their friendship as a whole, which Jackie has been viewing way differently and blinded than Shauna and the others. There's plenty of moments of Jackie "not reading the room" and either waving it off as the others being party-poopers or a lil mishap of her own.

Of course the big difference is that Jackie isn't really awkward in the highschool setting. She won homecoming queen for a reason, has many people looking up to her, and Coach Martinez probably made her captain for similar reasons. I guess what I'm going for with what's provided in Doomcoming is that Jackie lacks that "reading the room" skill (we can see it a number of times with Shauna in the pilot. In particular I'd say the Rutgers discussion, the boob dress, and telling Jeff to drop her off first) but makes up for it a lot by having a sort of manual of how to act in certain situations.

She's not seeing how Shauna might feel about her constant input on things. She's not seeing that others might orchestrate stuff outside of her knowledge. Nobody ever outright goes head-to-head with Jackie until the wilderness, and on good grounds there. If rescue isn't coming, we go to the body of water that's just been discovered. But the crash site is (ironically) safe. Whatever might happen if we leave it behind for something we're not even sure of?

It also doesn't look like Jackie has any (good) friends outside of Shauna. Might come with their years long codependence that nobody even wants to put themselves into, but also that with a captain position/being a generally popular high school student, she might not seem as approachable on a personal level. Jackie does make herself very open, and she's shown to be able to set up brief but very attentive conversations (Allie, Mari, Misty) but beyond that on a superficial level, there's not someone who she turns to when she suspects Shauna of something. Shauna's very obvious other friend is of course Taissa, but there's nobody out in the wilderness like that for Jackie.

and for some random bits:

Verbal stuff! The Beaches quote is peak, because who else would drop a line like that in such a moment. If Jackie's lying about not quoting it, then it does really speak of it being a hyper-focus movie (and we can also discuss why Shauna can recognize the movie from just the one line). But I think the possibility of it just being one of those phrases that you whip out like a vine quote, even if you've forgotten the origins of it

Presentation and maybe textures! Her luggage lacking skirts/dresses is… yeah. She wears a dress at the party in the woods and going to school with Shauna in the pilot episode, but besides the doomcoming dress, that's it. The article that says that while the others are already sharing clothes, Jackie sticks to her own wardrobe OR borrows some thing from Shauna (shoutout to the Doomcoming flannel!)

I hope Mari's the last survivor and she's doing really well, like just having a fantastic life

thinking about how while jackie wasn’t the best player on the team, she was probably the most enthusiastic. like she was probably the first one to learn all of their names. she probably organized team sleepovers. maybe her footwork was not the best, but she could give a great pep talk! ofc she would do your face paint for you! ofc she would help you tie your hair or get out that knot! like this is the girl who stole her mom’s valium because, oh no, what if her best friend is too afraid to fly?? handed off her necklace immediately — here shauna, good luck charm! and like, ofc she didn’t do well in the wilderness. they are wolves, the rabbit is not like them. ofc she flinches at blood, ofc she doesn’t pick up the knife, ofc she can’t hold a gun. ofc, ofc, ofc! this is the girl calming allie’s nerves before a pep rally, helping misty feel pretty for the first time, offering shauna her last bit of food. this is the girl who had so little hate in her heart that she had to steal an insult from beaches, the girl who cried over shauna not being her friend anymore, the girl who would’ve come back inside if she heard an i love you.

jackie “at least we still have each other” taylor

jackie taylor is actually one of my favorite girls ever in yellowjackets. if lottie is a prophet with a lot of responsibilities, natalie is an antler queen and wilderness' favorite, shauna is the one who lost the most, jackie is just a teenage girl and I love her. she didn't kill anyone, she didn't lose her mind, she didn't see visions and other shit. she was just a teenage girl who didn't know what to do among people who adjusted to the wilderness kinda quickly

I've been thinking about this gif all day