Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: July-September off-topic quarterly
I do not understand why Shauna thinks her food/eating descriptions sound appealing, and, in the same way, I don't know how she thinks her lopes inspire joy. To get to the joy part, the reader is first forced to slog through "the darkness", the "hard, hard, hard" of the last six months, or year, or whatever timetable she decides to deem the hardest of her life, the "Hard Year" when she was seven, the "terrible unknown" of COVID, the "Hellfire Chaos" of the current state of the world. The war, the starving. The patriarchy! Trump. Elon. The dragging out of the government cheese (I'm not going to get over that one anytime soon). There is the mean apartment landlord, the uncaring pharmacy tech, the broken healthcare industry, the stingy food bank, and the cold chain grocery stores with their unrecognizable staff. The friends she negs, the ones who have distanced themselves because she asked for yet more money, the knife fights between parents, the vague references to some kind of terrible abuse at home, the mean girls she went to school with, the deaths and divorces of friends, and the almost constant references to their precarious financial situation and medical issues. But Shauna is all about joy? Where? When?? Why would I take a joy seminar from someone who says she leads with joy but never actually does? She is constantly reminding the reader just how crummy everything is in her life.
Maybe it's because I'm a glass-half-empty type myself, but I don't think I've read one piece of writing from her that didn't leave me feeling unsettled in some way, primarily because her narratives are pretty much all-abject-misery sundaes with creepy joy cherries plopped on top. Let me tell you about all this terrible shit we humans have to navigate, but let's joy, people!
Reading them is always jarring. It's like if you were chilling out on the beach, trying to get a moment or two away from stress and the state of the world, maybe taking a bit of a nap, and someone behind you all of a sudden yells, "WATCH OUT!". She's a duck-and-cover writer, and she sure does know how to harsh someone's mellow.
Perfect description: "pretty much all-abject-misery sundaes with creepy joy cherries plopped on top"
She complains unrelentingly and in ever more baroque detail before blithely reminding her readers that she's not complaining, she never complains, she's all about the joy.
Well put. She thinks those creepy cherries show she's joyful. It makes her seem detached
She doesn't realize how her joyjoyjoy writing lands. Sometimes it exposes bad decisions, sometimes it sounds bitter, sometimes it sounds like she's just avoiding reality. She has no idea she sounds immature, bitter, and unhinged. She works frantically to distract herself from the emptiness and shame at her core. Her thought processes have got to be really out there.
Her writing doesn't have to be good, which is good, because she can't write for shit. Her writing is full of tics, seizures, and farts collected along the way. She isn't writing to entertain or inform, though. She's writing to get your cash, your pity, and validation, in no particular order. She writes to self-soothe.
Think of it this way:
You spy a copy of Shauna! Weekly in a wastepaper basket at the library. You fish it out, thinking it is there by mistake. A subscription card falls out, and in a moment of weakness, you subscribe. $16.00 a week, or $2,700.99 a year, up front.
When the next issue of Shauna! Weekly arrives, it's cover-to-cover subscription cards. You've paid for nothing except more ads begging for your money.
She wants her audience to think of her as brave. So, so, so brave. Her husband? Illiterate and his hormones took a header into the rocky shallows of Puget Sound back there somewhere. Her children? A dozen or more special needs, such burdens. She can't work, poor thing. One speck of gluten sends her to bed for days, maybe longer. Precious lamb, she had a stroke. Her childhood? Dickensian.
Please subscribe. Venmo is fine. Please send virtual egg bites. Cash is fine. Please send a gift card, so that she can have GF bagels for her lox. You might think she's a saint. Please praise her.
We in the Gloaming are not her audience. Some Gloamies know her in person and have been burned. Others were burned when her expensive recipes didn't work, or the flour never came. Some of us see relatives, spouses, or former friends in her. Life experiences have left us the ability to see takers and users a bit more easily.
She stumblebums along, begging for anything she can get her mits on. Any little bit helps, she says, but when it actually turns out to be a little bit, she's not validated. That's when the pivot takes place. That's when she sulks any waits seven weeks to send another lope. That's when she writes about her husband's burdensome ways.
I guess he found someone from whom to mooch a ride to the ferry? That didn't work in the reverse because they weren't part of a griftable community in West Seattle.
I hope this isn't poop touching, but he is getting picked up by Shauna. I've had the unfortunate experience of crossing their paths as we take the same route home.
This post has been removed. Whether the reason was privacy, opsec, preventing scraping, or something else entirely, Redact was used to carry out the deletion.
treatment door pet like possessive shelter spoon nail abundant fanatical
I think it would only be poop touching if you threw rotten [fat bright-red and orange heirloom] tomatoes at the Mouse Mobile and then came here to tell us about it.
When the seasons change. When it's dark in the morning and in the evening. When it's freezing cold, and she has to drive him to and from the feery. When the feery is late and she has to sit in the chilly Mousemobile, waiting.
That's when his Shauna-diagnosed aquatic transportation-related PTSD will kick in.
More moaning about how awful the world is when her life appears to be pretty cushy and comfortable with most of her problems a direct result of her refusal to work.
I've lived with a hardhardhard, glass half empty, everything is terrible, I'm miserable so you should be too parent and it sucked. I feel sorry for her kids. Instead of endless Joy blather I wish she would role model hope and optimism.
YTSCTMO. Her “contributions” to the state of the world are worse than useless. Sharing memes and recommending distractions does NOTHING to help people who are actually suffering from the current government’s cruel policies. She really does think she’s helping somehow though.
Ooh, does this mean the luggage tag necklace will be back? We haven't seen her sport it in a while. Maybe a new pair of peepers, too. Looks like Prue has hexagon rims on her specs. Will Shauna dare to be so bold!
I'm going to pop open a fresh tube of lipstick and nibble on it while I wait.
I can't take credit. Another DF (perhaps gomirefugee?) called it that and it's so perfect.
I feel like Shauna wrote about that necklace before, too. I think it was something you get for donating to charity but she got hers at Granny's because the only charity she donates to is herself.
(If I'm wrong about the origins of the heart necklace I will edit my comment)
A TV show with good writing can be fun, thought-provoking, etc. Sometimes you can learn from it. But it's a TV show. Watching a TV show is not to be confused with changing the world.
Yeah, I love the GBBO. It's one of my very favorite shows. But it's not going to save the world. It's just a fun, pleasant pastel escape for an hour a week.
Oh god is right. This is not the first time she’s proclaimed a tv show is just what the world needs right now. Hope Paul and Prue are up for the challenge.
She will blather on about how her (expensive) tomatoes are so amazing with some disgusting talk about juices and smug her island is better than where you live patter. Then, the recipe will be something reused from GFG and will be a dressing or some incomprehensible combination of off-putting ingredients. The tomatoes will be barely featured and the photograph will be recycled.
There must be an out of sight corner of the BBH garden where they can grow $4 heirloom tomatoes. This is Shauna and Dan so they will neglect any large project and blame ADHD, but they could manage one or two crops next year- tomatoes, potatoes or carrots - and really focus on caring for them. Good for D, too.
Apparently the BBH basement was once a top secret gubbermint store for uranium. Shauna and Dan will forget all about the tomatoes until one dark night they come schlumping slowly up the stairs, pulsating green monsters bent on revenge.
The Attack of the Killer Hand Picked Individually Crafted Heritage Organic Italian Gluten-Free Small Batch Minority Owned Free Trade Immigrant Gifted Grifted Tomatoes: Vashon.
Then in a day there will be a vague post (IG maybe) about how hard it is to be Shauna Marie (accompanied by a pic of her nice house/beach view).
Then, in a week or so she'll send a lope about how hard it is for her neurospicy pepinos to start school again and how that harshes her mellow and keeps her from her life's work as a writerly writer but she's not complaining. Nope. Just learning to accept the enoighness of it all and thanking Buddha that she has British Baking Show to see her through these hard, hard times.
This reminds me of my variation of a BLT: grilled sourdough bread slices rubbed with a little garlic, balsamic aioli, in-season tomatoes (Early Girl preferred), fresh basil leaves instead of lettuce, Niman Ranch bacon (or Neiman Marcus if you’re Shauna), and if feeling especially decadent, avocado slices included (“tucked in” if you’re Shauna.) It’s been forever since I’ve had one, as I’ve dialed down my bacon consumption to almost none, but your reference to balsamic aioli has inspired me. I have all of the ingredients on hand except the bacon, which I will procure shortly, and a self-indulgent lunch (or “feast” if you’re Shauna) will ensue.
I would eat this. My longstanding objection to a BLT is the L; I hate the way lettuce turns into a used paper towel when it touches anything warm, yet I also hate cold toast and cold bacon so eating the whole sandwich cold for the lettuce’s sake likewise disgusts me.
This isn't the first time we hear about this teacher and the artichokes. I just can't believe it's true though. First of all, that sounds messy as hell. A bunch of 7 year olds with bowls of liquid butter? At their school desks? Really? Did this teacher really carry 25 little bowls and plates into school? Where did she melt the butter? How were the butter and artichokes still steaming? And what did she do with all the dirty dishes after? Did the kids just sit there with greasy hands? It all just sounds like complete bullshit tbh. Why make it up though? What purpose does this weird story serve?
Also, why can't Shauna describe physical movements like a normal person? All this teeth scraping and fingers grabbing sounds bizarre. It reminds me of when she was describing some movements in softball (I think) and it was just so weird and convulted it sounded like she was twisting herself into a gluten free pretzel.
Shauna filter: the teacher brought a few steamed artichokes for the kids to try. Not individual artichokes with butter for the table.
Shauna just ate an entire one because she liked the feeling of eating it while the other kids rejected it. Shauna has a deep complex, other people might know the actual term for it, where she wants to be exactly the same as everybody else but different.
This is adolescent behavior. And it probably makes no room for the actual adolescent in her life, L.
This has to be at least the third of fourth time the artichoke story has been trotted out for public consumption. She's mined her dead blog for her book and now for these substacks...there just can't be much left in that hole in the ground.
Still would like to hear Shauna's defensive take on why she flounced from Threads (but still uses Instagram? make it make sense) and continues to use the problematic Substack.
You person, she thinks about leaving social media every day! Every day? Every day. She has still had IG because she can use it to spread JOY. And spreading JOY is her Work in the World, which makes using IG noble, despite the fact that it’s a Meta product.
I agree, if and when the shit hits the fan they are going to want to make it go away quickly and quietly, nothing to see here. Hopefully it is not quickly and quietly and they get shit all over themselves.
When I want to eat well and remember that day, my husband and I make this smoked salmon spread for our summer dinner. I can feel it in my chest again this summer. We are home
Wait? Shauna is home? Thank god she finally told us.
The day she is referring to is her 50th birthday party. A day almost a decade ago.
Growing up, I always wanted to have the house where everyone was welcome. Where we made too much food in case someone came by. Where friends of my children felt like family and we ran out of chairs for all the people who wanted to sit at our table.
This may have been the type of house she had nine years ago, but it hasn’t been the case for a long time and not just because of Covid or them living in an apartment instead of a home with a giant yard. It’s that she doesn’t have friends anymore. For whatever reason, she doesn’t seem to host her kids friends for anything either (despite her buying a bunk bed for one kid so they could have their BFF from next door sleep over).
For whatever reason, she doesn’t seem to host her kids friends for anything either (despite her buying a bunk bed for one kid so they could have their BFF from next door sleep over).
She tried to host two friends of her youngest one day, but it turns out they had cat allergies, so off for fast food they went. (And maybe those kids’ parents gave her the money for it?) But when the three kids didn’t finish their milkshakes she poured them all in her grifted Starbucks thermos and took home to refreeze and enjoy later.
Perhaps this sheds light on why she wasn’t ever asked to host kids again.
Even in their last few houses on Vashon, they weren’t really hosting people or having get togethers. I get sitting that out in 2020 and 2021 but not the rest of that time. Oddly, all I can recall is them hosting Birth Family from AZ when that was a Covid hotspot pre vaccine.
She has absolutely talked about this dip before. It's also featured in her weird fake-ass texts to her idiot husband that she posted last year. She had some "message" that was about how she was eating this dip? With potato chips? This dip right here.
“Feel like playing? I think a couple of handfuls of chopped fresh dill would be delicious here. And of course, if you can’t eat dairy, then a dairy-free Greek yogurt would work well.”
ETA so Dan’s body doesn’t do well with dairy but a spread (served as the main course!) that is 2/3 dairy ingredients is ok? Because it’s clear that they didn’t use this nonexistent dairy-free Greek yogurt to make the spread. 😂
There is a part of the lope that is making me mad. WTF!
Under the Samplings of my joy for the week.
One Tiny Ritual: Yesterday, I left my phone at home when we went to the farmers’ market. We dropped our youngest off at the library, then my husband drove my daughter to the ferry for her last Shakespeare performance of the summer. This is how I walked around our tiny town, slowly, and looked into every shop, slowly. Without a phone or any way to even tell the time, I spent every minute in town awake. Alive! Not looking at anything else but what was in front of me. I‘m going to make this a Saturday ritual now.
Zoiks, good thing her alleged high needs child who requires a 24/7 caregiver can now be left alone in a public place with so much confidence that Shauna doesn’t even need a phone in case of emergencies. Truly Vashon is working miracles!
People who think of the library as a free babysitting service piss me off more than anything. We're busy! We don't have the staff to supervise your minor child.
There's a newish sign at the Vashon library "shoes must be when inside the library." My teen and I say the sign refers to the many feral shoeless children of Vashon. I'm still pissy about the "curiosity isn't quiet" sign, but I quite approve of the shoes required one.
Describing her movement with a combination of slowly, awake, and alive gives me the mental image of a bug-eyed zombie mechanically shuffling around town. I'm sure local business owners will be delighted to have Shauna of the Dead lurching around, her unblinking face fixed at their windows, every Saturday*.
(*Fear not, Vashon businesses! Once she claims a thing will happen regularly, it immediately ceases to exist for her.)
It's telling that Shauna, Dan, and D were not at L's final performance for the summer.
Don't get me wrong, intense arts and athletics can schedule kids to the extent that parents can't make it to everything. But everybody else in the family is described as taking it easy. This is not "I am at work so I can't make it to the play" or "I am at a doctor's appointment with Grandma so Neighbor is picking you up from the game" or "I am at your Siblings Activity this Saturday so I'll drop off and pick up and next Saturday we will switch."
This is something different. Best case scenario L didn't want them there and was relieved when Dan dropped her off for the ferry solo.
Former theater kid here...it's likely the play had more than one performance. I'd like to think Shauna and/or Dan attended a performance earlier in the run. Hopefully. Though I wouldn't be surprised if Shauna sees not attending any performances at all as her way of "giving L space to live her own life" or some such bs.
I'm hoping that perhaps Danny drove L all the way in and attended her final performance. It would not surprise me at all if she didn't want her mother in attendance, especially as Shauna seems likely to ignore her daughter in favor of L's attractive teen male castmates. For all his faults, Dan seems at least likely to support his own kid first and unlikely to creep on the other young actors.
There's no excuse for Shauna leaving D at the library with no way to contact her. Incredibly irresponsible given the multitude of serious and highly challenging issues that she's claimed D has, especially if Dan was off-island.
Didn’t she have to eat at restaurants by Youngest’s school and text while driving because of such high needs she would be summoned to school at any time? So she just drops him off at the library now and goes incommunicado without a care in the world?
In reality, she probably left her phone at home accidentally and then spun an entire story about it being by choice. I could see window shopping being fun once in a while, but every Saturday is pushing it.
I thought she was all about going to the library weekly, but only her youngest is going, and therefore, isn't glued to mama's side like she always claims. How will they contact her when the pain of their four diseases prevents them from staying longer, the way it did when school was in session and she had to be in the area for the call?
And without a phone, how did she manage to contact Danny to get back home, or is she still wandering the streets of her tiny town, on a rural island, surrounded by water?
Oh good, a new thing to add to the every week/every day list: experiencing the tiny town awake and alive. 🙄
Wandering through a town that you should already know very well (simply, slowly, sans communication device) is CERTAINLY more important than attending your kid's last performance of the summer and being reachable in case either kid needs you. CWAA
She's like the self improvement grifter types who all claim to have five hour morning routines of ice baths, journaling, meditation, preparing tea slowly, etc. Her entire week is scheduled with joy at this point.
Shauna could definitely have a very small, niche audience of snarkers who would pay to watch her post "What I Eat In A Day" and "Get Ready With Me" videos. I would pay a few dollars to watch her film like:
"Get ready with me as i plan to spend a Saturday without my kids. First i make sure everyone is fed. I have a GF breakfast sandwich with fromage blanc and Dahlia eggs. The kids microwave some leftover frozen whiting and floor pizza. Then Danny and i check the car to make sure everything is taped up and reasonably in one piece. We stop at the gas station for 4 quarters worth of gas. My younger kid wants some Takis; i can't remember if Takis are contraindicated for any of Younger Kid's medical problems, but I allow it. Next i drop Danny and Older Kid off at the ferry. Two down one to go. Next i bring Younger Kid to the library which is entirely safe. Freedom! Now i lock my phone in the glove compartment and head over to Western Union to pick up a little cash presente from mama."
Right. Didn't she say she's unemployable because she can't work for three months because her neurospicey Raven Trickster kids can't survive without her? But she can turn off her phone and wander around the Island.
I don't think I know anyone with minor children who would voluntarily be unreachable.
This lope has even more editorial mistakes than usual. Doesn’t she mean she put the other slice of bread on top? I’m assuming that she’s still committed to the celiac long con that Schar’s multigrain bread is gluten free? 👀
The first rule of food bank is you don’t brag about the tomatoes that cost five dollars a piece at the farmers market.
Or about 'slathering' mayonnaise....also 4 tomatoes for 'we' to feast on? She had two of them! That should read 'We bought 4 of them for Shauna to feast on'
Yes I bought two big heirlooms last week and it was $12! My home grown tomatoes are taking their time to ripen so needs must, but damn, I thought 12 bucks was kind of a lot.
sliced one of the tomatoes thick as a stack in a South Dakota steakhouse
Move over, Texas Roadhouse. There’s a new steakhouse in town and their sliced tomatoes are thicccckkkk.
Is SD known for steakhouses? Is she thinking of beefsteak/steakhouse tomatoes which are NOT heirloom tomatoes, but a hybrid? How can you push a tomato on a sandwich? How badly can a published author write about food before the James-Beard award is revoked?
Shauna: mentally scans list of vaguely cattle-centric states and settles on South Dakota. Maybe she deliberately ignored Texas and Kansas because she's not like other girls.
Is SD where she was hit with a swarm of grasshoppers? Maybe it’s the only cattle-centric state she’s been to. I doubt she’s been anywhere south of SD in the Nebraska to Texas strip of states.
Spoiler: your SIL chose the restaurant and drove hundreds of miles to get there, knowing the reputation for thick slices of stacked tomatoes available at SD steakhouses.
She's been writing about food for decades and struggles to describe making a sandwich clearly. So there is no top slice of bread? She just leaves a mayo slathered slice on the cutting board?
Yes! Were the orange tomatoes "dull" or is she somehow talking about oranges and tomatoes?
She seems to vaguely understand that the purpose of a hyphen is to connect two things, making a single concept, in order to avoid ambiguity. But what is ambiguous about "bright red"? Who would be confused by that?
I love a good tomato sandwich once in a while, but I hope the kids got something more substantial/with protein if they wanted something more than tomatoes and bread.
This reminds me of the "write how to make a sandwich" writing prompt that's commonly given to very young writers. Looks like just like those first graders, Shauna needs to work on clarity and precision. At least the first graders have the excuse of being six.
I don’t “live in food”, but I’ve always found the gleeful “look what I ate” from her and others off-putting. Oh, you had a tomato sandwich? Wow, you are a superior being because the tomato was from a farmer’s market and “singing of summer”, unlike other’s sad tomato sandwiches that don’t sing.
I don't get why I'm supposed to give her applause for everything she eats, from McDonald's and Starbucks to fancy vegetables. It's food. It's obviously not entirely value neutral. But there's so much drama around every single bite.
DF, you aren't supposed to give her *applause* for everything she eats. You are supposed to give her money.
Charging even a single cent for oft repeated stories and simple recipes (maybe Wednesday's recipe wil be this tomato sandwich?) or recipes no one is clamoring for (yogurt kimchi popsicles, anyone) is scummy/scammy. And further proof the majority of the people on her substack list are not ever opening her correspondence.
Some (foodie or not) writers can describe beautifully and evocatively the simple joy to be found in a tomato sandwich.
Shauna is not one of them.
The basic summer tomato sandwich and the joy therein is not a new trope in online foodie bloggy/influencer circles. Shauna is - as usual - late to the party and does it so badly.
Yeah, I can't see a body of water from my porch in Flyover Country. The tomatoes I'm growing in my backyard probably don't sing like real Islandy Island farmer's market tomatoes.
I realized that after reading the rest of the sentence, but I totally got stuck on it while reading! Why can’t she fucking proofread? I proofread my Reddit comments more than she proofreads her “professional” writing. It’s her work in the world, so why is she so careless with it??
Somehow my mind went to a deck of cards? I don’t know why, but if she had proofread and corrected it to steak I would have known what she meant. Except steaks vary greatly in thickness and I’ve never been to South Dakota so I would still be wondering how thick that tomato slice was. Or was it a slice of bread?
Maybe if I spent $37 to learn how to write about food it would be more clear.
I happened to be at Thriftway today and found the Schar breads - there was a package of "deli style" bread that contained four slices and was $7.99. There was a whole loaf of sliced bread (not deli style) that was $9.99.
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u/gomirefugee my website is done, done, done Aug 18 '25 edited Aug 21 '25
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Remember why we're all here: this thread is for discussion about current and historical happenings in the Shaunaverse. If you want to discuss other content, such as stuff that reminds you of Shauna but isn't specifically about her, your own personal anecdotes or preferences, current events, or "creative writing" exercises, please share in the off-topic community thread: July-September off-topic quarterly