the leadership mantle among the yellowjackets going from jackie to tai to lottie to nat to shauna is very interesting and should be talked about more

the things that they were able to provide as leaders differs vastly from girl to girl and was based on what the team needed each time

1. at home, they needed jackie’s influence, her people skills, and her uplifting qualities. she was picked out for this role.

2. in the first few months after crashing, they needed tai’s natural leadership, maturity and drive. she filled this role very naturally, without even being asked to.

3. after the failed expedition and laura lee’s death, they needed the faith and hope only lottie provided. this was pure accident, like lottie said, she never wanted to be a leader.

4. after doing the awful thing they did to javi, they needed someone with nat’s lasting goodness/humanity. she was also picked out, chosen and then accepted by (most of) the girls.

5. as things just get harder and more brutal, it was only natural for someone with shauna’s wrath and ruthlessness to dethrone natalie. this was a forced change (even if lottie picked her).

just some food for thought

although i know that thomas being close to chuck, newt, alby, and minho before the maze was technically a retcon, the fever code (especially when read right before tmr) still adds so much to the reading experience.

like, thomas arrives in the maze and looks at the crowd around him and the people he notices and describes first are those four. his entire life was gone, he was a blank slate, but his subconscious mind still sought out those he knew and loved before, the ones he considered family?????!!!!?? somehow, beyond the swipe and the fresh start, he saw them surrounded by 50 other boys and picked them out. it breaks my heart

as we see young taishauna's journey continue to unfold, it only grows more tragic.

shauna is at her absolute lowest. she processes grief through rage and just wants to blame anyone else for her loss. and here we see her developing only her 3rd close relationship with anyone out there - melissa.

the first was jackie. someone who, to her, symbolised all of her repressed guilt, longing, desire, shame, jealousy, and more. an unhealthy relationship. shauna had so much love for jackie, so much respect and reverance, but she also felt like jackie overshadowed her, held her down.

and third is melissa, who does the opposite. she's being shauna's absolute lapdog, for lack of a better term, and shauna doesn't respect her. melissa is backing and encouraging and pushing every unhealthy desire and feeling shauna has. making shauna feel like she's finally on top, finally powerful.

tai, the second close relationship shauna found, continues to be the ONLY person who's ever been healthy for her. tai grounded shauna. she showed her love and companionship and support and safety. and protected her and let shauna protect her back. they genuinely loved each other. they were a family. but, like so many parents do after the loss of a child, they fell apart. and while they may still trust each other, still see eye to eye, still back each other up, it can never be the same again. it can never be as pure and loving as it was, because shauna has no love left to give.

one disparity that always stood out to be between teen shauna and adult shauna is how cold she became.

in s1, teen shauna was so warm and earnest, so nurturing and kind and caring. we already knew she had the ability to hurt people (jackie) but that was based on built up resentment, with literally anyone else, she had so much love and kindness to share. and with adult shauna, that seemed completely just… gone. she’s been so cynical, calculating, and cold from the start. she didn’t show any warmth even towards her husband or daughter.

finally that gap is being bridged. it makes complete sense now why she’s like that. s3 teen shauna is now closer to adult shauna than she’s ever been before, just in terms of how she reacts to things, her seeming lack of any close or trusting relationships with anyone.

and i know they already went into this in season 2, with adult shauna reflecting on her broken relationship with callie, and the implications of shauna’s lasting guilt over javi too. but to really see it manifest on screen through teen shauna is so satisfying.

i legitimately feel insane when i think about taissa's journey with motherhood. tai trying to help shauna carry out her abortion, and getting on her knees to feel the baby move, and holding shauna's hand through the whole birth and then having to be the one to tell her they lost him, and grieve the baby herself, in private, but still keep it together in front of everyone else.

tai wanted to be a mother so badly. and when she finally got the chance years later, the wilderness and the side of her that she can't control took it away from her again.

i’m gonna further ramble about taishauna’s relationship:

shauna trusts and relies on tai more than she ever did with jackie, her best friend of years. in season two, shauna looks automatically to tai or calls out to her when she’s scared or wants someone to defend her. tai literally becomes her number one person.

and shauna absolutely was one of tai’s priorities in the early season two as well, there are multiple scenes of tai thinking of shauna even while she’s with van. no there wasn’t any romantic entanglement, but tai was quite literally gearing up to be the baby’s parent. she was thinking about and worrying about shauna above all else.

i also saw someone say that she joined lottie’s circles in solidarity with van, but genuinely, desperately prayed to the wilderness when fearing for shauna’s life. the significance of that can’t be understated.

and after the birth, they hardly had any scenes together. they quite literally paralleled grieving parents whose relationship fell apart after a loss. and further, tai had her own moment of grieving the baby, private except for van to see, even though she kept trying to keep it together in front of shauna.

their relationship is my favorite in the show for a number of reasons, but one of them is how genuinely pure it is. tai’s love for shauna and the baby showed the audience a lot about her truly good, nurturing nature, and the way she cares so much about people and is so motivated by love. and this is important, because people are quick to mischaracterize tai as cold, ruthless, and blinded by ambition.

although it was very shauna focused in season two for obvious reasons, this is also reciprocated. their relationship is so based in mutual love and care for each other, as we see shauna protecting and promising to look after tai as well. it’s such a lovely contrast to jackie and shauna, whose relationship was all about obsession and jealousy.

tldr they mean the world to me and i need more of them in season three, in both timelines.

taishauna were on this journey together and are bound by it in the future timeline.

tai found out about the pregnancy first and was trusted with the secret. tried to help/accompany her through an abortion attempt. touched her belly and got on her literal knees to feel the baby kick. and she was the only person who stayed right next to shauna the whole time and held her hand while she was in labor. and the saddest part ultimately is that she had to be the one to tell her the baby died and who held her and felt that grief with her.

it's almost like they both lost their firstborn and were ever quite able to be the parents, the mothers they SHOULD'VE been when they were actually adults.

oh the bluenan of it all

i tried to give them grace even though i have always been a devoted lesbian kiara believer and wanted more development for sarah/kie but that ship is really giving nothing this season. we don’t know anything about their relationship as a couple, we don’t know what they talk about, how they spend time together, why they like each other, etc.

to contrast them, popecleo *in my opinion* gave us some of this even in just the first couple episodes with the crumbs they got, because you can tell both actors are willing to improvise and put some work into it and their chemistry is also great so they feel like real people in a relationship together. whereas jj and kie just kinda… go flat when they have scenes together? like there is absolutely nothing to them outside of what is scripted?

and if i tried to look past my bias because they undid all my headcanons [:(] i genuinely think that the two of them HAD chemistry back when jjkie’s relationship was only meant to be platonic. but all the banter and fun that they brought to the screen has literally vanished and i fear that you can tell their hearts aren’t in it

funniest thing about the virals is how they all have extremely weak stomachs

rating the changes between tmr book and movie

anyone who read the books first knows that the movie trilogy ended up telling a completely different story. i've been a big fan of the books forever so i thought i'd rate the significant changes made in the first one since it's generally the same plot. scale is 0-5 with 5 being good change.