#the jackie lottie nat triangle

[grendelsmilf]

i still find it so interesting how jackie is (was?) largely defined by her niceness, her friendliness. she's not the strongest, or the smartest, but she can bring people together. so when she is mean to the other girls, you notice it. she's mean to taissa when she feels like her position as leader is undermined; she knows that taissa is just as much of their leader as she is and it scares her. she's mean to shauna when she finds out about jeff; understandable considering what a huge betrayal it is (at least on the surface). but the girl she is by far the meanest to is nat.

and there is no good reason why anyone should be mean to nat. she is kind of treated as a punching bag, and taissa especially resents her because she doesn't like the idea of nat threatening the team's performance with her day-drinking or whatever. but nat is by far the kindest, sweetest, most compassionate, genuine member of the team. even as an adult you can see that she might be jaded and grieving and ruthless, but she's still at her core a good person. young natalie especially though is someone with a very strong moral center and uses those guiding principles of kindness to define who she is.

she's more mature, capable, and sure of herself than the rest of the group, because before ever landing in that forest, she's had a much harder life than the rest of them. we see that van probably doesn't have the best home life, but the rest of them are living comfortably. even if they don't have great relationships with their parents, they still live in middle to upper class households. nat grew up in a trailer park with a father who horribly abused her and her mother (until the day she witnessed him accidentally shoot his own face off). these circumstances made nat more resilient, braver, and more empathetic than the other girls.

and i think jackie recognizes that, whether or not it's a conscious recognition. she knows that nat is everything she herself is not. nat is confident in herself whereas jackie is terribly insecure and relies on external validation to uphold her own identity. where nat comes from poverty, jackie grew up in a huge house. where nat is comfortable having sex with boys, jackie is too repressed to have sex with her longterm boyfriend because she's terrified of having to confront the fact that she won't actually like it. natalie expresses herself through alt/grunge fashion, music, and culture, whereas jackie is as preppy as it is physically possible to be. natalie is jackie's perfect opposite: a poor outcast who is nevertheless comfortable enough in her own (hetero)sexuality to present in a (gender) non-conforming way and not care what others think of her to jackie's rich popular prom queen soccer captain who is debilitatingly insecure and sexually repressed, conforming perfectly to society's expectations of her to the point that she'd rather die than explore the possibility that she might like girls.

jackie has negative interest in travis, but she breaks him and nat up and steals him from her anyway. and the thing is, nat doesn't even care. she forgives jackie. when lottie locks jackie in the closet (ha), nat is the one who comes to her rescue. when travis apologizes to nat for sleeping with jackie, she says it doesn't matter to her. jackie is horrible to nat, but nat is genuinely mature enough that it doesn't even bother her. jackie wears her insecurities on her sleeve, and nat sees right through her. she doesn't put up with jackie's bullshit, but she's also gracious enough to not gang up on jackie with the rest of the girls, even though she's the only one who actually has any right to be mad at her. nat is generally apart from the rest of the team, not only because she's an outcast, but because she's simply above their petty dramas.

jackie doesn't have a good reason to be mean to her. she's the kindest, sweetest girl on the team. but jackie is mean when she feels threatened, and nat's existence threatens her very identity.

[sappy-sappho]

wrote some yellowjackets fics

locker room talk

Guess there's some fucked up kind of camaraderie that comes from everyone getting naked together. Jackie calls it team bonding, like it's a trip to the bowling alley or a rager at Lottie’s house, and not something that makes Shauna feel like she’s in a literal prison. As much as Shauna hates playing soccer, she hates the locker room even more.

(yellowjackets, ~3k words, one-shot, canon compliant, pre-canon, character study, one-sided shauna/jackie)

solitary vice

She doesn’t let herself linger. She doesn’t deserve that luxury. This is purely a practical thing, to relieve stress, to regain full control of her brain, to release her pent up everything. Jackie catches Shauna in a private moment late one night in the woods. Things get worse from there.

(yellowjackets, ~10k words, four chapters, canon compliant-ish, explicit, shauna/jackie)

haunt me then

It’s just a body, a frozen, soulless husk that will never reach its nineteenth birthday, will never have a chance to begin to heal the wounds both visible and invisible that mar its perfect form, and will never approach any semblance of forgiveness for Shauna.

After Jackie dies, Shauna is truly inconsolable—doesn't stop Tai and Nat from trying though.

(yellowjackets, ~5k words, two chapters, canon compliant through season one, shauna & tai, shauna & nat, past shauna/jackie)

shame reactions

“Tell me you love me.” It’s breathless and pathetic and Jackie doesn’t hesitate in her response:

“I love you, Shauna.”

Shauna is drunk enough to believe that it’s true.

That's the first time they hooked up at a party. It isn’t the last.

Shauna and Jackie have always been inseparable. Why wouldn’t they go to the bathroom together at parties? Still, Shauna always makes sure to lock the door.

Doesn't she?

(yellowjackets, ~4k words so far, five chapters planned, pre-crash, explicit, jackie/shauna/nat love triangle, background nat/lottie/laura lee love triangle)

drain you

Shauna pours another bucket of hot water into the tub, and steam fills the air. She places her hand on Nat’s bare shoulder.

“Are you okay, Nat?”

Shauna gives Nat some much needed comfort. In another life, Shauna remembers Jackie and pays her freezing penance.

(yellowjackets, ~2k words, one-shot, canon compliant, explicit, s2e4 missing scene, shauna/nat, past shauna/jackie)

what's the tale, nightingale?

“We didn’t mean to scare Lottie,” Crystal says, “We were just—”

“So desperate to finally get even the tiniest bit of action that you decided to lez out?” Mari says.

Misty and Crystal bond over the worst of the chores.

(yellowjackets, ~4k words, one-shot, s2e5 canon divergence, explicit, misty/crystal, misty/mari, misty/crystal/mari)

[teabookgremlin]

Some thoughts on your thoughts: I think Ghost!Jackie saying that is Shauna trying to avoid her feelings for Jackie. I felt like the Tai confrontation was because of how scared Tai was of herself. She needed control and tried to take it over Shauna. The writers have said that Nat/Lottie/Travis isn't a love triangle, but Travis being caught between what to believe.

agree with ghost jackie but i am just desperate for shauna to be honest with herself

your reasoning behind tai confronting shauna is definitely fitting and i did like the confrontation i just wanted more fucked up corpse stuff before it happened lol

and yeah the nat/travis/lottie stuff i’m glad it’s not gonna be a love triangle and i get why it’s there i just wasn’t a huge fan of lottie appearing during the sex scene