re: jackie
okay i've been thinking about this for WEEKS and i think some of the younger yj fandom needs to hear this because we are getting stuck in this overly dualistic pattern of thinking where it has to be either "jackie was a mean girl" or "jackie was a sweet, perfect girl", when neither of those perspectives is 100% correct.
shauna's betrayal objectively made her a bad friend to jackie, but i think it would be a disservice to jackie's character to act like she was a good friend to shauna. yes, obviously what shauna did was worse, but let's not forget how the show makes a point of establishing jackie as a sweet, popular, but sometimes controlling/self-centered person during multiple moments in the first season.
for example, in the very first episode, jackie insults shauna's music taste and taste in fashion. at first, it's in sort of a joking manner that feels like that's how she and shauna banter, but the whole "wear the red dress moment" is there intentionally to show that jackie kind of steamrolls shauna, as evidenced by shauna snapping at her after. it's one thing to joke with friends, and its another to insult your best friend's taste to her face multiple times and then be shocked when her feelings are hurt. not to mention that shauna got into brown, an ivy league school, and never told jackie because she didn't want to disappoint her. i saw a tiktok comment that explained it really well, saying "even if the whole jeff/shauna thing never happened, jackie and shauna's friendship would still likely implode once they went to college, as jackie would likely see shauna going to brown as a betrayal".
in the wilderness, when shauna votes with tai to head down to the lake, jackie ices her out right away. she slutshames nat and again insults shauna to her face about how she "makes people feel judged" when shauna is literally the only one defending her for not contributing. during the fight, when shauna admits she only did soccer to please jackie and actually doesn't even like it, there's a sad implication there that shauna could've avoided being on that plane if she had stood up to jackie's steamrolling/if jackie didn't pressure her to do what she does.
that's why the notion that jackie was simply "too pure" for the wilderness isn't quite correct in my mind; in my opinion, one of the reason jackie struggles so much with adapting to the wilderness is that she is one of the few yellowjackets that hasn't experienced that much strife at home. it is mentioned that shauna's parents split up when she was quite young (plus the fact that her room is in what looks like an attic, which gives the impression that she doesn't get a lot of support from her family), tai had that whole experience with her grandma/the one eyed man, van's mother is an alcoholic, nat's mother is an alcoholic and her father was abusive (not to mention the horrible way he died in front of her), misty was severely bullied, mari saw her 4 yr old cousin die from cancer when she was only 12, etc. unlike the rest of her teammates, jackie lived a relatively sheltered life with a big and fancy house, parents who were still together, and was popular at school. that's not to say she didn't ever struggle (ex: she mentions how her mother is on a bunch of pills), but compared to the rest of the girls, jackie hasn't exactly been challenged in life the way they have. that's why she wasn't as ready to adapt as the rest of the girls; she didn't really have to overcome obstacles like this, at least independently of her parents, the way some of her teammates did. the result was a dynamic in which the girl who, at least on the surface, is rich, beautiful, popular, talented, and smart, was one of the first to die because she became alienated from her team.
all this to say, jackie objectively didn't deserve to die the way she did. but let's not forget she tried to kick shauna out first, and it was only because of the aforementioned reasons that made her not contribute that nobody except tai tried to stop it. hell, even coach didn't go out to get her and he was the only adult there. that's why i think the whole "jackie would never have let shauna sleep outside" argument doesn't really hold up. they are all teenagers, and while what shauna did with jeff is selfish and stupid and cruel, she was also just a teenage girl. none of them had any idea it would snow the next day. none of them had even considered that jackie could die out there. and it especially irks me that a lot of people say "shauna is the reason all the bad things happened to her, its her own fault", because nobody deserves to experience child loss (let alone a scared teenage girl who had to give birth without any medication or the support of her family, only for her baby to die). her relationship with jackie, regardless of how much shauna hurt her, did not cause her stillbirth.
what makes shauna's relationship with jackie so compelling is that she does have legitimate reason to resent jackie and jackie has legitimate reason to resent shauna. the idea that only one of them is a bad friend and only one of them is a good friend is an extreme oversimplification that removes the complexity of jackie as a character and their relationship as a whole.
