#all the meta abt the team resorting to cannibalism is great

[jilyandbambi]

also jackie absolutely would've partaken in the cannibalism had she made it to the same point.

the girls eating Jackie is a horrific act, but the act itself isn't about morality. Starvation--specifically the point of starvation the Yellowjackets were at by this point--betrays the mind and body. As your muscles break down and your organs disintegrate, your nutrient-starved brain makes you hungry for literally anything you can chew and swallow, edible or not. Your brain doesn't even have to make you hallucinate, you become ravenously hungry the second anything remotely edible appears in front of you and it's nigh impossible to stop yourself from consuning the thing your brain has now identified as food.

When the girls smelled meat cooking it triggered this exact instinct. They literally couldn't have helped themselves. They were starving adolescent kids, they didn't stand a chance. Jackie would have been the same. So would Laura Lee, for that matter. They were sweet, warm-hearted girls, but they weren't saints or superhuman. They would have been starving kids like all the others.

Why didn't Coach Ben join in? He's a grown man. Yeah, but as an adult well past puberty and with a fully developed brain, he has more self-control than kids whose bodies and brains are still developing. And that's the point.

He's the proverbial adult in the room. He's supposed to be there to keep them safe and sane and he's failed. Not only have 2 of his charges died on his watch, but now the remaining kids have starved to the point of eating their dead.

If it were a matter of being scared of/disgusted by them Ben would've burned down the cabin and fucked off that night. But he stays because he's afraid OF them and FOR them.

They aren't monsters. They're kids. They're starving. They're desperate. Their brains aren't finished growing. Their already-limited self-control & reasoning is being crippled by a body that's starting to literally eat itself as a last resort. They don't resort to cannibalism due to their being inherently violent or predatious, or because they were intrinsically worse people than the teammate and team captain who predeceased them.

THEY. WERE. STARVING.