#but by doing so they say that stiles bad behavior should be always dismissed

[slice-of-magenta]

Realizing that the show unintentionally said Scott shouldn't be able to relax or have nice things at all. That's one failure that they have actually remedied in the movie.

I don't like how Stiles is seen as his competitor. Especially since envy is built up when Stiles Is in distress and Scott is having nice things in the next scene. The choices here was begging the question, which one is your favorite? And that wasn't fair. And it wasn't a one time thing. They constantly made this contrast in the show that apparently it became bothersome. When I was more obsessed with Stiles - this was super apparent to me. I loved sciles but because of how they did scene placement it was like it was asking me to choose one of them. They didn't have another character be in the next scene. The separate scott and Stiles scenes were always pushed together.

[voidstilesplease]

Attractions

Demigod AU Ficlet [3]

Stiles

"Stiles?"

Stiles turns around to the source of the call. He finds himself facing the new Ares camper. The boy gives him a tentative but wide, slanted smile, stepping closer. Stiles is not going to lie; the excessive gushing he hears from the Aphrodite cabin about the guy are well-founded. But he's not going to say that out loud. He replies, "Hey,"

"Chiron said to look for you," the boy tells him, looking far brighter and good-natured than what Stiles anticipates from an Ares kid speaking to a child of Athena.

"Give me a sec, will you?" At the boy's nod, Stiles rushes inside the cabin to retrieve the materials he prepared for their brief session today. He assigns one of his half-siblings to take over the cabin clean-up while he's out. When he returns outside, the Ares boy is standing patiently, hands in his pockets, watching the flurry of activities inside.

"Your cabin looks like a library," the boy comments when Stiles is near enough to hear. He doesn't sound mocking and what he said isn't in particular insulting, but Stiles gets defensive all the same. From his time at camp, he gets this automatic response to the Ares bunch.

"And yours look like," he pauses, and they both turn to look at cabin five right across from Athena. Its blood-red paint job is giving Stiles goosebumps. Not to mention the stuffed boar's head on the doorway with soulless eyes that seem to be following everyone's movements, and the ugly barbed wires on the roof. It's an angry-looking cabin that's very fitting to its aggressive and violent occupants. "-a nightmare."

Stiles expects the boy to sneer, but he gets a different reaction. The new Ares kid laughs. "You think it looks bad outside? It's absolute chaos inside." The boy turns to him, smiling cheekily. "You should come and visit sometimes."

Stiles stops short and takes a moment to consider the boy. He's never made an Ares kid laugh before, at least not that isn't derisive. They all think Stiles is stuck up even when he was only new to the camp. Only Fred, the head counselor, tolerates him, and he only does so because Stiles handed his ass to him in capture-the-flag last summer. His grudging respect is because he got beat by a rookie. Typical. This boy, though, doesn't seem to be corrupted - yet. It's only been a few days. Stiles replies with a serious, "I will," the boy's face lights up in return, probably mistaking it as Stiles flirting back. So he adds, "When it's my turn for cabin inspection. I give decent scores."

The quick shooting up of his eyebrows means he doesn't quite believe that.

But Stiles does. Last summer, he gave them 1/5. It would have been zero, but Fred had made an effort to upturn the bunk beds back in their upright position and shove all strewn underwear inside a box. He only hopes those were burned after and not distributed back to their owners. Stiles is a saint, considering.

He moves them forward, tracing the steps to the Big House. They walk side-by-side in surprisingly companionable silence for a moment, then Stiles begins introduction. "So, as your official welcome wagon, albeit a few days late," Stiles spreads his arms in an all-encompassing gesture. "Welcome to Camp Half-Blood!"

The boy laughs a little and regards him with amusement. He looks pleasant, but it's disconcerting and just a tad suspicious. An Ares kid is not supposed to be a charmer, newcomer, or otherwise.

"My name is Stiles," he says, pausing in his tracks to politely offer his hand to the boy. "I'm Athena cabin's junior counselor."

The boy smiles and takes Stiles's hand in a firm grip. He mentally registers that the boy's hand is mildly calloused and only slightly bigger than his. And the boy's eyes are blue, like the sky and ocean on a fine day. 

"I'm Theo."

Theo is a nice name, too, his brain whispers kindly. Probably short for Theodore. Stiles knows another Theodore from his previous school. That Theodore is bland; this one is far from it. But he's not going to admit that out loud, either. 

Stiles clears his throat, breaking their contact. His mind runs on him sometimes (all the time); he hates when that happens. The last time it did, Stiles got humiliated by his crush in front of the others during combat training. What a fun memory. He really shouldn't be thinking about that right now. So he picks up his steps, and Theo follows dutifully, not losing the open expression.

"I'm supposed to give you a starter kit today: the camp's map, our camp brochure, and your study guide for our next sessions." Stiles holds up the book and papers on his other hand. "As much as I'd like to tour you around, we don't have that much time."

Stiles waves a hand to one of the Hermes kids, who's carrying a trunk-load of garbage for disposal. The boy smiles back brightly despite the strain on his face from the weight of the junk. Ever since day one, everyone from cabin eleven has been friendly to Stiles, most especially the head counselor, Kira. So, Stiles always makes a way to return their kindness.

He shifts back to Theo to find him observing the interaction with attention. It's not malicious, though, which still baffles Stiles. He didn't know there could be nice ones from his cabin. 

He continues as they near the Big House. "There's a meeting with Chiron and the cabins' head counselors in an hour. Haley, our head, went with Demeter and Dionysus' cabin leaders to Manhattan to deliver strawberries. You know, the camp's source of funds? You'll see that in the brochure," he says, raising the object in question. "I'll have to attend as a proxy."

They arrive at the porch, and Stiles motions for Theo to sit on a bench. He passes the materials to him, "I'll let you check these, and if you have questions, you can ask me."

Theo shuffles the papers absently before lifting his head, "I do."

Stiles is pretty sure he hasn't read a thing yet, but he gestures for him to proceed.

"How did you manage it?" He asks, a genuinely curious look on his face. "You're here for one summer, but you're already second-in-command."

Stiles searches his face and tone for ridicule. He doesn't find it, still suspects it, so he schools his expression to its neutral - not friendly, but also not dismissive. It's a sensible question, anyway. It's not every day that he gets one from an Ares child. "It's not all about tenure here at camp," he starts, gauging.

Theo leans forward to indicate he's listening.

Stiles takes a seat adjacent to his position. If this kid is civil to him, there's no reason not to act the same - even if Stiles still thinks their cabin is the worst. "The eldest or the longest camper automatically gets the head counselor post, and they assign their seconds. Usually, they pick from the next eldest campers, but they can also base on achievements disregarding age or length of stay."

Theo inclines his head, eyes level on Stiles. "Achievements?"

"Yes. Like winning in the camp's games, or successfully returning from a quest."

His eyes flash in thought, and it is with revere when he says, "And you did both."

Stiles blushes embarrassingly. He tries to mask it by ducking his head and rubbing at his cheeks. Stiles is suddenly self-conscious when he is usually gloating. Stiles never passes up an opportunity to rub it in an Ares kid's face how he's defeated them in capture-the-flag like he's born for it.

When Stiles looks up again, the boy is smirking at him, blue eyes darting around his face in a thorough examination. Stiles's guard kicks in again, feeling measured. 

He straightens in his perch, lifting his chin haughtily. "Yes," he makes sure that his tone is sharp. "I led my team to victory against yours. If you have any doubt to the legitimacy of that claim, you can remind Fred how he uselessly hung upside-down like a wet market chicken while I plucked the flag from his hands."

Stiles waits for the offended snarl and stream of profanities, but once again, he's knocked off his careful balance. Theo's face splits in a wide grin, and he laughs. "So, that's why he doesn't share details, the loser."

Stiles goggles, starting to feel annoyed by the unusual behavior. "Aren't you going to mock me and defend his honor?"

Theo snorts, "What honor?" He snickers for a few more and then puts his attention to the reading materials when he recovers.

Stiles finds the situation peculiar, so he stays quiet and allows Theo to read, answering when he has more questions and volunteering information that isn't in print.

Later, when they adjourn, he prepares to leave when Theo leans to tell him, "I'm not like my siblings. I don't hate clever people." He pauses, and with an easy grin, adds: "Fred might even be right. I think I'm attracted to one of them."

He doesn't wait for Stiles's reply - not that Stiles has one to that statement. He only stands there, taken aback, and red as a startled tomato.

Theo, finally displaying the familiar audacity comparable to his kins, winks. "I'll see you later, Stiles."

And well, it's impossible not to notice him everywhere now.

~•~

[1][2][companion]

[princeescaluswords]

Black-and-White Whatever

Peter: Oh, come on. How much damage can they do? So they off a few homeless people, a drunk stumbling out of a bar too late. So what? Let Scott deal with it. Let him be the hero of his morally black and white world. The real survivors, you and I, we live in shades of gray. Then again, even if you did kill them, you're still an Alpha. You can always make more werewolves.

Just to remind you that in this scene in Fireflies (3x03), Peter Hale says this while his nephew is trying to corral his beta, Boyd, and his sister, Cora, who have been driven moon-mad by the Alpha Pack.  Peter suggests killing them, which is what Deucalion wants to happen, or letting Boyd and Cora, out of their minds, kill any innocent people they come across.

And yet, his criticism of Scott has echoed across the fandom for years.  Peter’s self-serving appeal to Derek has become the fundamental attack against Scott McCall’s character arc.  (And it is self-serving.  Notice in the above passage how it turns out to be a subtle defense of Peter killing innocent people along with the guilty in season one and how he justifies it as survival.)  

And it is just as racist as the themes of Stiles is Always Right and Derek Deserves Nice Things, because all three of them are about the same thing: the entitlement of good-looking white males and the necessity of minority characters knowing their place.  

Peter’s argument, as Peter’s argument almost always are, was designed to get him what he wants as much as they are dishonest and insincere.  The audience knows, if they paid attention to the show at all, that Scott doesn’t devolve into black-and-white thinking.   I mean, would someone who refuses to cross the line into ‘shades of gray’ do the following things?

plan to kill Peter to cure his lycanthropy.

rescue Derek after Derek betrayed him to Peter and tried to kill Jackson

work with Derek after Derek abused him in Ice Pick (2x03)

deceive Derek by joining his pack

deceive Gerard by feeding him scant information (”You haven’t been answering your phone”) and poisoning him

try to reach an accord with a mass murdering cult leader like Deucalion

agree to join Deucalion’s pack to save his and Stiles’s parents

call on Peter to help Stiles during his possession

conspire with Chris Argent against his own father

conspire with Deucalion to stop Theo from getting the Beast’s powers

ask Peter for help and endure his annoying and pedantic lectures

try to reach an accord with Gerard and Monroe

Any one of those actions puts the lie to the idea that Scott won’t cross his own arbitrary moral boundaries.  I’m sure you can think of others, but Scott eschews black-and-white thinking throughout the show when it is necessary to save lives.   It’s actually one of Scott’s strengths in the story -- his ability to put other’s lives above his own wants and needs, including his desire not to have the power and responsibility thrust on him.

Then where does this criticism come from and why is it racist?  Because its always used to defend white male characters and argue that the story should be theirs.

They see this fallacy in Scott refusing to condone Peter’s killing spree in Season 1 or fighting against Derek’s recruitment of child soldiers and kill-them-first thinking in Season 2 or believing that Stiles would be capable of murder in Season 5.  White men have the privilege to ignore morality when it suits them, and so if Scott considers himself better than Peter, it is unforgivable.  White men should be in charge, so when he resists Peter’s and Derek’s attempts to compel and control him, it is stubornness or obsession.  That he opposes Derek’s attempt to murder his way out of the mess he created in Season 2 must be stupidity.  That Scott could possibly (and finally) think he can hold Stiles accountable for his behavior in Season 5 is tyranny.

Look at it this way -- very few people in the fandom (except me) hold it against Derek that he tried to murder Lydia, because he believed that she was the murderous kanima.   It would have been the slaughter of an innocent girl performed by other children at Derek’s orders, but he was doing it for the greater good.   Yet, when Scott tells Stiles to go talk to his dad, the chief law-enforcement officer in the city, about the manslaughter that Scott thinks Stiles performed, it’s ... well, you know fandom’s reaction.   Who, to them, is entitled to think in terms of moral necessity?   Not the Latino.

And, to be sure, it’s not just this minority character.   It’s perfectly okay when the Sheriff is willing to risk exposing the supernatural world for his shifting dedication to the law.   It’s perfectly okay for Stiles to despise Peter for the entire show and decide if Malia gets to know the identity of her biological father.   Yet it’s not okay for Alan Deaton to act according to his own concept of right and wrong and his own code of behavior.  It’s not okay for Mason to hold what Theo did against him.

Women, too, get it in the end.  Compare how the fandom treats Derek, Peter, Argent, and Theo compared to how they treat Jennifer, Monroe, Allison, and Meredith.  Black-and-white thinking -- the reduction of people to good or bad with no empathy for necessity, trauma, or history -- is rightfully considered a bad thing, but fandom’s more than willing to use it to dismiss a character like Braeden because she’s a mercenary as they are to infantilize Isaac because he’s a hot white dude.  Isaac was willing to kill Lydia because she turned him down for a date but ... he’s baby.

This black-and-white-world criticism isn’t really being applied as a sincere criticism of Scott.  It’s echoing a single solitary quote from Peter, a character whose very nature is repeatedly described as unreliable and manipulative, in order to undercut Scott’s position as hero protagonist.   

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM.

[sparkwhorunswithwolves]

2/2 Scott didn’t sell Derek and his betas out to the hunters; Scott did’t give Gerard the informations he wanted; Scott didn’t conspire with Gerard behind everyone’s back. Gerard FORCED Scott to force Derek to bite him: Scott is as much of a victim as Derek is (if not more.) What Scott did to Derek wasn’t a violation, it’s a well deserved comeuppance that made Derek a better person. Stop pretending that Stiles and Lydia wouldn’t congratulate Scott for outwitting both Gerard and Derek

1/2 "Invalidate a few teens’ trauma, violate Derek, and just be a general nuisance, and congratulations, you have one (1) fully redeemed werewolf. /sarcasm" What Scott didn't violate Derek! That's not what Jeff Davis and the production wanted viewers to take from Teen Wolf. Jeff Davis and the production determined that Scott would be the hero protagonist and a glance at his actions and behavior shows this to be irrefutable.

Tumblr ate my first attempt at this, so this might even be more short tempered than usual.

But seriously, am I being trolled? I feel trolled. If not, kudos to you for somehow absolving Scott of all wrong doing because Gerard forced him to, while also saying that he totally autsmarted Derek and should be congratulated because he assaulted Derek into becoming a better person. (seriously, what even—?)

So, Trauma Olympics, tw's general fuckery, Peter and Lydia, and whatever else I forgot:

But the main issue, not just with this, but with fandom in general, is that the worst case is always Bad and not their fault, while anything “less” is not as bad, and doesn’t deserve as much if any complaint/leeway as the first. While it’s more like any Form of mind manipulation is Bad and it can only be worse.

What im trying to say is, any violation is bad, period.

From this response about brainwashing yesterday.

By saying that something that happened to Scott was so much worse, you're automatically saying that whatever similar thing Scott did is not as bad, not only absolving Scott of most if not all of the blame, but also dismissing the very idea that his victims could have any sort of trauma because of it.

Yes, Peter violating Scott with the neck-claw-thing is "worse" than when Derek/Scott did the same with Jackson and Corey respectively, but you can't take worse as the baseline and calling everything else less by default, rather than seeing any kind of violation as bad and wrong with certain circumstances making it worse.

I don't blame you. Teen Wolf does this hilariously and infuriatingly well. But watch it again and pay attention to what we're supposed to excuse/celebrate with Scott, while everyone else gets demonized for the same things.

That's not what Jeff Davis and the production wanted viewers to take from Teen Wolf.

But we did. Because yes, they decided that Scott's the hero, that everything he did was either right or justifiable. But it's not.

And I refuse to take some nice soundtrack and a few epic camera angles at face value and think that someone being premeditatedly violated, no matter who you think as "actually" responsible, from a show which has a serious problem with either sexualizing pain/abuse/torture or playing it for laughs.

Have all the links because I'm not repeating myself more than necessary.

Lydia had no control over resurrecting Peter, yet Derek was allowed to be wary of her; Liam tried to (and temporarily did kill) Scott because he had full moon control issues, something that no one else was blames for in s1-3a, yet Scott is justified in shutting him out. But no one's mad at Scott, who had more autonomy and the chance to get Derek involved; but no one's telling Stiles (or Jackson/Allison) or Derek they should be more wary of Scott/the betas/Cora.

As to Lydia and Stiles, no?

Considering that Lydia has just been violated by Peter for months, (though, I mean, was that really his fault? Given that someone (Peter) might have died otherwise? He was totally forced to do it?!? /obvious fucking sarcasm don't @ me), and we're clearly shown that Stiles doesn't believe in the it's not abuse because werewolves thing.

Also, am I the only one who's really fucking concerned about the whole violation/torture/isolation/whatnot is a perfectly Valid punishment and/or redemption arc thing?

[thisdiscontentedwinter]

Ew, look at this vile attempt at canon erasure and blame shifting/victim blaming courtesy of Scott McCall delusional squad’s honorary member liliaeth: https://liliaeth.tumblr.com/post/184737916176/what-if-scotts-my-best-friend-now-but-not-my

“The problem really was that Stiles didn’t have faith in Scott. If Stiles hadnt lied to Scott for weeks, then there wouldnt have been a problem. But its Stiles lies to Scott, and Stiles betrayal of Scott by conspiring with Theo that led to Theo being able to murder Scott" 

and AGAIN: https://liliaeth.tumblr.com/post/184799264106/theo-really-manipulated-scott-into-thinking-that

"Basically the real problem was Stiles lies. If Stiles hadn’t lied to Scott. Then there wouldn’t have been a problem. Even after Stiles lied to Scott for weeks, and started avoiding Scott, abandoning Scott to Theo’s manipulations, Scott still gave Stiles a chance to explain. Yet instead of saying it was self defense, Stiles instead attacked Scott, lashed out at Scott, and dehumanised Scott. And yet even aftet all that, still all Scott did was to ask Stiles to go talk to his Dad. Whom they both know would do anything for Stiles. My heart broke for Scott in that scene, and I was just so damn pissed of at Stiles after he said ‘some of us are human’, knowing Scotts fears in that regard… It’s why even though I’m a sciles shipper, I did and still do want Stiles to apologize for his betrayal of Scott. One of the worst things the show did, it’s that Stiles was never once held accountable for his behavior. I’d probably like the character better, if he’d shown some understanding that what he did, aka lying to Scott and conspiring with Theo, was wrong" 

No wonder true self righteous hypocrite & petty dictator wannabe Scoot "B-B-B-BUT IT’S NOT SELF DEFENSE ANYMORE!!!!”~“I HAD YOU BEFORE!!!!” McBadCall is liliaeth’s personal fave tbh. He’s literally her fictional stand-in 

DW: This is legitimately hilarious though. 

No, Lil, the real problem is that Scott is a dumb fuck who thinks that a human can take down a chimera with a wrench. 

The real problem is that Theo spins this story of Stiles being so angry and out of control that he manages to beat a chimera--a being with supernatural strength--to death, and Scott doesn’t once go, “Huh, well that doesn’t make sense.” 

And no, Scott did not give Stiles a chance to explain, because the whole “self defence” had already been addressed and dismissed by Scott in a previous episode. Is there a chance he’d change his mind for his best friend? Maybe, because Scott’s moral compass in incredibly dependant on whether or not a deed benefits him or not, but it’s also as wobbly as a drunk barfly at closing time, so who knows? 

I mean, Jesus, the one time the writers actually foreshadow something, and you biscuits miss it completely? Here’s the foreshadowing part: 

Stiles:  Okay… Wasn’t he just trying to kill you, though? I mean, that just sounds like self-defense. 

Scott: It was more than that. I mean, she nearly took off his head.

Stiles: Maybe she had no choice? There’s gotta be a point where self-defense is justified. Tracy killed her own father, and Lucas would have killed you.

Scott: They’re not the bad guys. They’re the victims. We shouldn’t be killing the people we’re trying to save.

Have a read through that again, actually take note of where it positions Scott, and try to keep it in mind as the context when we get to Lies of Omission. Here’s how the confrontation plays out in that, BTW: 

Stiles: Hey, sorry… I had trouble starting the Jeep again.

Scott: That thing’s barely hanging on. 

Stiles: I couldn’t get in touch with Malia or Lydia. 

Scott? Where did you get that? 

Scott: This is yours? Why didn’t you tell me?

Stiles: I was going to. 

Scott: No, but why didn’t you tell me when it happened? 

Stiles: I couldn’t. 

Scott: You killed him? You killed Donovan? 

Stiles: Well, he was going to kill my dad. Huh? Was I supposed to just let him? 

Scott: You weren’t supposed to do this. None of us are. 

Stiles: You think I had a choice? 

Scott: There’s always a choice. 

Stiles: Yeah, well, I can’t do what you can, Scott. I know you wouldn’t have done it. You probably would’ve just figured something out, right? 

Scott: I’d try. 

Stiles: Yeah, because you’re Scott McCall! You’re the true Alpha! Guess what? All of us can’t be true Alphas. Some of us have to make mistakes. Some of us have to get our hands a little bloody sometimes. Some of us are human! 

Scott: So, you had to kill him? 

Stiles: Scott, he was going to kill my dad. 

Scott: But the way that it happened… There’s a point when it’s… It’s not self-defense anymore! 

Stiles: What are you even talking about? I didn’t have a choice, Scott! You don’t even believe me, do you? 

Scott: I want to. 

Stiles: Okay, all right, so… So, believe me then. Scott, say you believe me. Say it. Say you believe me. 

Scott: Stiles, we can’t kill people that we’re trying to save. 

Stiles: Say you believe me. 

Scott: We can’t kill people! 

Stiles: Do you believe that? Well, what do I do about this? What do you want me to do? Okay, just be… Scott, just tell me how to fix this, all right? Please, just tell me, what do you want me to do? 

Scott: Don’t worry about Malia or Lydia. We’ll find them. Maybe… Maybe you should talk to your dad.

So where exactly in here is Scott giving Stiles a reason to explain? And how many verbal cues like “You think I had a choice?” and “What are you even talking about? does he have to steamroll right over in order not to ask what happened? 

Isn’t it funny how in Season 1, Scott tells Derek that the Argents “must have had a reason” to kill all the Hales? Like, he’s defending the family of a girl he barely knows at this point, because he loves her and wants to believe that her family–not even her, but her family–could never do something so vile.

And yet roll around Season 5, and when Theo tells him Stiles killed Donovan, Scott isn’t only so fucking dumb he doesn’t realise Stiles should be incapable of beating a chimera to death, he also doesn’t once say “He must have had a reason.” And, when he confronts Stiles, he doesn’t ask, “Hey, what was your reason for killing that guy?” He just assumes the worst.

I feel that this is the main reason I could never ship Sciles. Because clearly Scott would have approached the entire situation differently if he’d wanted to put his dick in Stiles.

Also, lil, Stiles didn’t “conspire” with Theo. He was blackmailed. There’s a difference. 

@stickykeys633

[nyxelestia]

Racism in the Teen Wolf Fandom

[This post originally tagged several people I was directly addressing, as I was expecting it to mostly be reblogged by them and their followers, with maybe a small handful of people I asked to take a look at this post even bothering to read this behemoth, let alone share it. However, a lot more people than I expected paid attention to and shared this post, including a blog that dedicates itself to highlighting racism in fandom. In the interests of preventing "raiding"/dogpiling behavior against the people I addressed this post to, I have removed their handles.]

tl;dr - I don't actually believe any of you are racists, no more than I am, than we all are by virtue of being raised in a white-centric culture, internalizing the attitudes expressed by our media and community, and carrying those attitudes with us into fandom. But that is all the more reason we need to address bigotry in our communities, no matter how passive or benign or minor, because that is the only way to engender change in this fandom, in fandom in general, and in ourselves. I take issue with your guys' posts and meta not because I think everyone should worship Scott - hey, he's not my #1 fave either - or because I think he is perfect (no one is, perfect characters are boring). I take issue with the fact a lot of your logic, meta, and analyses rely on the same racist arguments that permeate mainstream media. I object to the casual dismissal of canonical events, and the way headcanons and assumptions are treated as canon when analyzing the show (especially when they are overwhelmingly skewed a certain direction). And I object to the fact every attempt by myself and many, many others to point all of this out is often met with little more than dismissing everything with the vague claim that we're "too sensitive" and "see racism everywhere" and "are only using buzzwords". I don't think any of you are racists, but I think all of you have utilized or enabled racist rhetoric when talking about Scott (and several other characters, but primarily Scott, for reasons I explain down below).

I'm temporarily disabling anon - either one of you, or one of your followers, constantly fills my inbox with misogynistic slurs every time I speak up against bigotry in fandom, and I just do not have the time to IP block each one. I just got this lovely one just yesterday:

(I and everyone else who talk about racism in Teen Wolf fandom are accused of "using buzzwords", while I'm getting anons who accuse me of misogyny while calling me a cunt. Yay irony.)

If you want to yell at me, do it under your own name. And yes, out of all the people circle-jerking on the original post, I blocked the one who used name-calling now, and has demonstrated some remarkably immature behavior in the past. If bhadpodcast is going to act and post like I blocked them, I might as well actually block them and save myself the headache. They can still relay messages to me through one of you. The rest of you have demonstrated yourself to be open-minded and willing to listen to logical arguments in the past (or I don't know you well enough to assume that you'll ignore my words and skip straight to the name-calling) which is why I've tagged you.

This is a rodeo I've ridden before, and while I can always hope for change, the reality is that I have already expressed all of this in meta before, and that I've spoken to most of you directly about all of this. I'm familiar with the arguments you make, and I'm tired. So it's going to take pretty much all of my self-control to do this, but no matter what you reblog, I am not going to respond. I'm not going to get caught up in the tactics of deflection and distraction, I'm not going to let you draw me into petty arguments on isolated comments and use that as an excuse to ignore the overwhelming majority of this post, and I'm not interested in rehashing arguments I've already had a dozen times over with almost all of you at one point or another.

If you actually read this entire thing and have an honest rebuttal to something I stated below, and its something that is based in the canonical source material, is not contradicted by other canonical source material, and is not contingent on a headcanon, my Messenger is open. Otherwise, it's been good talking to you, and I'm sure we'll be talking about all of this again, soon enough. But I am stating my piece and peacing out, because I need to save up my energy for the next time this wank comes around - and given the way fandom has shown itself to act in the past (and the fact racism has been around far, far longer than television, letalone fandom), that is not an 'if', but a 'when'.

Below the cut:

1.) Yes, Scott is a character of color, I don't care what country you're in.

2.) The fact that most of the racism in Teen Wolf fandom comes in microaggressions does not make it less racist.

3.) Actors and characters are held to tremendously disparate double standards and this is a huge problem, probably the biggest one.

4.) Racism of Teen Wolf fandom is highly reflective of racism offline/in the "real world".

On Scott actually being a character of color

Now, first and foremost - I don't really care what country you are from, Scott is a character of color. I get that some of you come from backgrounds where someone with his complexion is coded as white, but ignoring the fact that 1.) internalized racism is as much of a problem as external racism and 2.) most of ya'll have your own serious problems with colorism and race (where do you think America got it from?), the reality is that you are watching an American TV show, filmed using Amercian actors and and in a setting whose populace is designed to look American. On top of that, most of you have consumed plenty of American media before Teen Wolf, or media that reflects/contains the same problems with colorism and racism as American media.

Even if you did not perceive Scott as white on your first watch, the majority of the target audience did, a significant portion of your meta still used logic and arguments saturated in racist rhetorical history (American racism and otherwise), and many of your character delineations still fell along racial lines (i.e. which characters you headcanon as being secretly evil or having ulterior motives, and which ones you headcanon as secretly not being as evil as they act). As this article points out, the actual TV show has a pretty sketchy history when it comes to its treatment of non white, non male characters - granted, it's nothing new, most TV shows do this or something like this, as does most media in general. But "everyone else does it" and "it's always been this way" has never been an excuse before, and Teen Wolf doesn't get to start now.

On top of that, even if you personally came from a country with no ties to or influences from Western racism at all, you are still engaging in a fandom that is largely rooted in America, with American racial preconceptions, and dealing with American racial norms. Much of my issues with racism in your posts, meta, and reponses is not that an individual is immediately being racist, but rather are perpetuating racist misconstructions.

i.e. Stiles gets struggles on a test, and it's because he has ADHD, so/and he's still a genius, which is reinforced by all the times outside of school. Allison openly admits to having had to repeat a year before and failing a class now, and it's attributed to familial and superantural stress. But Scott gets a bad grade, he's an idiot, and the idea that he "never" does anything outside of school. You aren't going to call Scott stupid because of his ethnicity. But by taking away situations in which he has demonstrated intelligence and cunning and attributing it to someone else, you reinforce anti-Scott fans' rhetoric that Scott is an idiot who can't do anything, most of which traces back to racial stereotypes about Latino boys in the American education system. This is just one of many, many examples.

I understand why you feel like the fact you didn't code Scott as white on your first watch means you don't and can't possibly have racist attitudes towards him or express it in meta. But the thing is, bigotry is rarely about you individually, it's almost always about how you connect to and relate to a broader tradition of oppression and marginalization. There is not a single English-speaking or European country that does not currently have problems with racism and colorism, and while the nuances of how racism manifests varies from country to country, the traditions, media trends, and social habits do not - which is why the fact that people from different countries perceive characters' a little differently based on their appearances, the underlying rhetoric and logic is still the same.

Teen Wolf Fandom Racism

In the post this came clusterfuck from, the person I was responding to literally says, 'the hero is not a hero, and the villain IS the hero'. The fact that she didn't actually say their races doesn't change the fact all the positive attributes or successes of the character of color were projected onto white characters, while supporting the idea that the character of color is evil. She literally removed the character of color from the story, by claiming that the adult werewolf is actually the "teen wolf". AUs are fine and dandy and dark AUs are a lot of fun. But we call them AUs for a reason. The show itself is one created by people, not some documentary about real life events. The story presented is the story intended, and the post is one which undermines that story in order to demonize a character of color, while also deifying white characters, in a way that is contingent of separating the character of color from his own story and plastering his story onto white characters.

It's a not-so-micro microaggression. Just because you don't intend a certain bias, does not mean you are not acting it out or perpetuating it. Just because you are not intentionally judging someone on the basis of race, does not eliminate the fact you (and I) were raised in a very racist culture, and especially in a racist media environment, and express racialized judgments without intending it. We all do this - up until her library scene with Mason in Season 5, I was doing this with Kira all the time. And I've also fallen prey to the tendency to sideline Boyd. When I recognized that I ponder the stories of white characters who has as much screen time as him or even less so, I strove to change that.

This article explains the way fandom treats characters of color and how erasure manifests in fandom, and very specifically #3 in to one of you whose meta I was responding to before. The article is primarily about shipping, but it also specifically addresses the demonization of Deaton, and other characters of color, in the Teen Wolf fandom, and puts these into the context of fandom racism in general, not just Teen Wolf. In particular:

When characters of color are distanced from their triumphs and relationships in canon via headcanon, photo manipulations/edits, or simply not being written or drawn into fanworks, it’s an attempt to minimize the importance of the character. Whether or not it’s a subconscious or conscious distancing, the fact of the matter is that fandom does this on the regular and it usually only benefits white characters (and largely white fans) because it takes importance away from the few characters of color that the canon gives us.

This is literally erasing a character of color and replacing him with a white character, who the fuck thought this was okay? I get that this was a Stiles-centric event, but if you can smoothly switch out heads and paste in characters, then you can damn well make your own banner pulling together all the characters independently, without erasing the character of color and pasting a white character over him.

On top of that, the post points out how much racism in fandom manifests as separating characters of color from their white friend.

Take a look at the finale of Season 2. We never once see Stiles' reaction to Gerard (he wasn't even there, yet). Only edited for size and brightness, here is Stiles' entrance to the scene - after Gerard has already collapsed from the mountain ash:

Incidentally, the show never explains how Stiles actually knew to go to this warehouse in the first place, and at the the beginning of the scene, it was Scott, Chris, and Isaac who arrived here first, setting the location for the finale. There are a lot of possible explanations for all of these. But fandom only treats one as if it were canon, while rarely or never mentioning the other, equally likely, possibility. Why? Because that creates a separation between Scott and Stiles (despite/especially because of the fact the season literally ends with the two of them goofing off together).

The very ending of the season is about Scott and Stiles playing lacrosse together after Scott respectfully walks away from Allison when she breaks up with him, but how many post-S2 fics start out with Stiles feeling lonely because Scott abandoned him for Allison? We see Stiles discovering the alpha symbol and learning about the alpha pack at the same time as Scott at the beginning of Season 3A - yet why do so many people talk about Stiles helping Derek look for them over the summer as if it were canon? (In the interest of demonstrating full disclosure about our own mistakes, even I used to think this, just because it appeared in fanfic so many times. It wasn't until my second watch of S3 that I realized Stiles hadn't canonically been helping Derek look for Erica and Boyd, or known about the alpha pack beforehand.)

(Sloppy gif is sloppy. Derek and Scott were talking about alphas, so Derek actually said "A pack of them." This conversation was interspersed with cuts from the Braeden and Alpha Pack fight scene, so the awkward jumps are from cutting those out.)

This unconscious racism also manifests in how fandom treats actors of color in the fandom, and in Teen Wolf fandom.

Dylan O'Brien made a joke about violating native law and taking advantage of sacred land for his own personal humor, and fandom largely forgot about it in a week. Tyler Posey makes a joke about being gay, and fandom still rails at him over it. Tyler and Dylan should be held accountable to the same standards. Both of them made a stupid, shitty joke, and both apologized pretty quickly. Only one of them is still being taken to task for it.

One Tyler calls Sterek twisted and bizarre, the other Tyler calls Sterek disrespectful. Only one is taken to task over it, and it's the one who was routinely harassed about this ship, whose character is almost systemically marginalized from his own TV show, and whose character's death was being advocated to make another character into the lead of the show.

For those who want more quantative evidence

The number of fanworks about Scott compared to Stiles and Derek is ridiculous. On its own, in the context of a fandom that wasn't so otherwise racist or engaging in racist rhetoric and behavior, I'd buy that it was because there are many reasons why someone could identify with Stiles and Derek more than Scott. But most of the reasons people profess for identifying with Stiles - complexity, mental illness, etc., - are also attributes that apply to Scott's character, which means if you eliminate the things that are same, the racial difference becomes much, MUCH more prominent.

This is before getting into the fact that if you go into the Scott McCall tag right now, most of the fics (based on other tags, and summaries) aren't even about him, but about Stiles and/or Derek. Out of the 10 results in the first page when I just checked, only 1 had a summary that wasn't about Stiles or Derek. And it's really hard to take "Scott is just not that interesting" too seriously when I see how many people have forgotten really engaging scenes and stories with him, and how often people think a scene between him and either Stiles or Derek was actually between Stiles and Derek - and not him - in the show. People erase Scott from his own story, then claim he has no story.

Other Prominent Examples and Points of Contention

We live in a culture that romanticizes white pain in media, and dismisses the experiences and pain of non-white characters. Western audiences are trained and predisposed to dismissing characters of color, their experiences, their pain, and their development - or to taking these experiences and projecting them onto white characters. People are culturally trained to romanticize white, male suffering (which they do with Derek and Stiles), and dismiss men of color or their needs or pain (which they do with Scott).

To put it more bluntly, people will make a hundred gifsets about Stiles crying in the waiting room, but barely a dozen of Scott crying into his mother's arms. There are a hundred gifsets of Stiles conning Derek into a striptease in the first season, but barely any of Scott admitting he'd made a mistake in accusing Derek of murder, and trying to fix it. Does anyone remember that while Stiles and Derek were paralyzed on the floor of the police station in Matt's rampage, Scott had been shot? I've seen hundreds of gifs and images made of Stiles and Derek's pool scene - but I can't remember ever seeing a gifset about Gerard torturing Scott after that, stabbing him and holding the knife in while threatening his mother. And oh, hey, do you remember what Scott was dealing with during the pool scene?

No one is actively racist against Scott, but the implications that he's never changed, that he's never suffered, that he has no story, etc. etc. that so much of the anti-Scott meta is built upon - those are because people just dismiss his experiences and his story, without ever once actually thinking about it. They dismiss it when they watch it, and then again when they make a million gifs about Stiles and Derek's experiences, yet only a fraction as many about Scott's experiences.

This post illustrates my point quite nicely.

It's a pair of gifs from the first season about the boys after Hunters show up at the school, with feel good tags about Stiles "swooping in to save Derek". But here's the thing, those gifs have been edited to cut out Scott from the scene. Scott was the one driving Derek's car to rescue them. *Scott was was saving Derek too.* They were BOTH saving Derek's ass in here, but the gifs are edited to only show Stiles, and the tags only talk about Stiles. If you didn't actually watch this scene yourself, you probably wouldn't know that Scott was even there, let alone the fact the scene was primarily between him and Derek, not Stiles and Derek. How often do we see characters of color in critical roles get dismissed as "support staff"? Scott is "just" the getaway driver, so he's not important anymore to this scene, he no longer exists, only Stiles does.

(This can be a cute Sterek moment, but it can also be a cute Scerek moment and McHaleinski moment. Stiles and Derek actually have the least interaction in this scene, and Stiles is literally in the backseat and mostly in the background of the scene, which is focused on Derek and Scott.)

So now a lot of people are seeing this gifset, and not just internalizing those feel-good tags - they are internalizing the idea that it was only Stiles saving Derek, conveniently forgetting that Scott was even there. On top of that, the ensuing dialogue involves Scott admitting he made a mistake in accusing Derek of murder when he thought Derek was dead, and trying to fix the problem - but how many meta accuse him of never changing, admitting his mistakes, or addressing problems that he caused?

And this is just one example, from the very first season.

On top of that, that scene was also where Stiles and Derek find out the symbol Derek was investigating was on Allison's pendant. The next scene is Stiles pushing Scott to ignore Allison's need for space, in order to get that necklace - but Scott is the one who is blamed for "emotionally abusing her/manipulating her" for trying to reach out to her. I'd bet money that if Scott had decided to respect Allison's space, fandom would be decrying him for not helping Stiles and Derek hunt down an actual killer just because he didn't want to make a teenaged girl he barely knew a little uncomfortable. :|

Other Double Standards

Scott is called an abuser for levels of interpersonal violence that Stiles and Derek are constantly excused for it. Scott lies, and is called manipulative, Stiles lies, and he's just trying to protect people. People in fandom say that Derek is "violent, but not abusive", despite recurring acts of violence against relatively vulnerable characters who are under his care, yet they call Scott an abuser for all of two instances of lashing out at Isaac over something stupid.

Alan Deaton gets headcanons painting him as evil because he withholds information from the main characters. Stiles withholds information from the other characters, and he's just traumatized and scared.

Marin Morrell said if no other solutions to the nogitsune problem was found, then she'd kill one teenager who they already have confirmed is the source/host of the villain, in order to protect the rest of the town from the definite threat. Derek nearly murdered an innocent teenager, hoped for and attempted to engineer the death of another teenager, and dragged three more teenagers into a violent situation which they had little understanding of because he needed a pack (the alpha pack didn't come until later). But he is not called a villain at nearly half the rate Morrell is, if at all outside of the anti-Derek fandom. (Side note: neither of them are villains. Both of them are stuck dealing with the actual villains who've forced them into shitty situations. My problem is that while neither of them are villains, only one of them is repeatedly called and portrayed as one in fanworks.)

Boyd probably fares best, by virtue of barely ever getting mentioned in fanfic or meta, even in comparison to Cora or Erica (who he had about as much screentime as).

Fandom compares Scott to a rapist for using Derek's body against his will in order to save Allison's life. But where were they when Liam tried to kill Scott for his girlfriend, and Scott takes a few weeks to feel safe around him again instead of welcoming him back with open arms right away?

By the way, wanna know why fandom rarely gifs the scene of Scott forcing Derek to Bite Gerard with the actual dialogue?

Because you can't compare Scott to a rapist for using Derek's body against him when we see that he's only doing it because the villain is holding someone hostage and threatening their life, and you can't claim that Scott never apologizes for anything if you see him literally apologizing for what he's doing to Derek. And I'd bet even more money that if the reverse had happened, fandom would have decried Scott for letting Allison die "just" so Derek wouldn't have had to Bite someone he didn't want to, and called him a murderer for it.

People castigate Scott for successfully setting a broken leg when it was technically illegal, but I don't see any posts castigating Stiles for interfering in police investigations, violating people's privacy and boundaries, or interfering with an active crime scene/body search.

People call Scott a murderer because Theo killed Tracy and Josh on another character's information - not even a suggestion, just information - yet Derek actively sought to violate a girl's bodily autonomy and got her killed as a result. (I don't think he is a murderer for it - I think that if he isn't a murderer for Paige's death, then it's as ridiculous or even more so to claim that Scott is responsible for Theo's victims.)

Scott isn't perfect, no one on this show is, because perfect characters are boring. But only Scott is considered evil and villainous for not being perfect, while white characters' flaws are celebrated. Scott is derided for not being held accountable, but not only are the instances where he is held accountable erased, white characters' actions are constantly excused or justified without anybody screaming about their lack of accountability. Fandom hates on Scott for not verbally apologizing for things, but no one makes hate posts about the fact Stiles and Derek never verbally apologize, either. Fandom holds Scott up to an impossible standard while having little to no standards for the white characters. They use "he's the main character/protagonist/hero!" to justify the double standard, but then try to claim he ISN'T the protagonist or hero to justify giving his story to a white character - in the instance at the beginning of this post, a white villain no less - and casting him as the villain.

Main Points

I like darkfic as much as the next person, but that doesn't erase the fact that the process of making Scott a villain (as in, claiming Scott is actually a villain in the context of canon) is contingent on the racist traditions of separating a character of color from their own story, wiping away that characters' story, and romanticizing the struggles and personal strifes of white characters (often in the process of "giving" the character of colors' stories to them).

This problem isn't unique to Teen Wolf. Just about every fandom is racist, and many (if not most) of their media sources are even more racist than Teen Wolf. If anything, one thing Teen Wolf fandom has going for it is that, while it still has a lot of sexism and misogyny, it seems to have less so than most other, similar fandoms. Though the biggest point of comparison is the Supernatural fandom, so that might not be saying much.

The difference is that in other fandoms, the main characters are white, and most of the surrounding characters are white, too. Characters of color are always secondary ones. A Netflix show was the first time an MCU production had a non-white character as its lead. But in Teen Wolf, the main character is a character of color, and he's still getting treated the same way as secondary characters of other fandoms, if not even worse so.

I don't think any of you, as individuals, are racist. But I do think that all of you, as individuals, never examine racial biases in your media consumption or analysis. This leads to you microaggressively expressing racist attitudes in your meta, passively perpetuating racist stereotypes and tropes, and - however unintentionally - enabling racism in fandom.

I was also asked if I admit to my own biases, so here it is: When it comes to analyzing Teen Wolf (and making judgments about the show and the characters therein), I don't care about people's headcanons, or fanons, just the source material. The show was written by written by over a dozen people alongside Jeff Davis and produced by MTV, it did not magically appear out of thin air, nor is it a skewed documentation of some "real" story or "real" events. I believe in holding the characters' to the same level of accountability, and the same standards, as each other. If this makes me biased, then yes, fine, I'm biased.

I also know that none of these problems are unique to Teen Wolf fandom, and that actual Scott stans have also justified his poor decisions, and hated on Stiles and Derek. Some of you might remember me getting blocked by some Sciles BNFs for saying "Derek's not a rapist", and I've lost track of the number of times I'd try to reblog a Stydia or Stalia gifset, only for it to turn out I can't, and most likely this comes from my past of pointing out misogyny in those fandoms.

Meanwhile, Sciles fandom slathers heteronormativity onto the pairing as much as Sterek fandom does, and the fact that it's being done on an interracial relationship actually makes it a little worse than when it's on the all-white Sterek ship (but that's a can of worms for another day). Female characters like Allison, Lydia, Malia, and Kira are constantly utilized as little more than talking plot-devices or fag-hags in fandom unless it's explicitly about them, and they are reduced to caricatures instead of characters even more than the most underserved male characters of color, like Boyd. For all of them, I went onto their character tags, and I didn't find a fic summary that was about them until I got the second page, which is worse than Scott having only 1 out of 10 in the first page.

But the sheer amount of Scott hate outpaces hate of all the other characters combined, and the sheer amount of fanworks about these secondary characters outpaces the fanworks about the main character. And yes, every ship and character's fandom sent rape and death threats to the cast and crew over their stupid ship or character. But the amount leveled at Tyler Posey from Sterek fans, even before he finally snapped and made an unprofessional comment about it, is tremendously higher than all the other kinds of hate - especially when compared to the fandom's reaction to the Tyler Hoechlin also saying a negative comments about Sterek.

Fandom does not exist in a vacuum.

The attitudes by which white characters' trauma and experiences are used to justify their violence while characters of colors' victimizations are dismissed, is the same logic used to defend cops who "just reacted" or "panicked", while blaming young children of color for "getting shot" by not behaving 100% correctly. The logic by which a white characters' abusive behavior and characters of colors' abuse are dismissed, while the white characters' abuse and the character of colors' abusive behaviors are exaggerated, is the same logic for which white rapists are painted as "merely making a mistake" while a black shoplifter is painted as a bankrobber in the making.

And the logic of calling someone who explains all this an "ableist troll" for pointing this out is the same logic used to pit marginalized peoples against each other in an effort to maintain the status quo - why do you think racism between racial minorities exists? And the logic of claiming someone is just "exploiting real tragedies" to talk about racism in fandom only makes sense if you assume all fans are white, and therefore none have ever been or will be touched by racism or racial violence in their real lives, and only bring up race to prop up fictional characters.  (Yes, these are why I blocked bhadpodcast.)

Some of you can choose to walk away from racism, you can talk about it in fandom and that is the only place it will ever affect you directly. Not all of us get that luxury. Some of us have to confront racism in our daily lives, and sometimes, the racism online and the racism offline start to look and sound the same.

And I will apologize for one thing on the post that started this: my tags in my initial response were needlessly aggressive. I had to deal with racism in my real life, and then I came home, and see echoes of that exact same racism in a fandom post, and I over-reacted in the tags.

The logic by which a character of color is erased from his own narrative, derided as a villain, and replaced by a white character, is the same logic that is used in professional environments to judge who has "worked hard" and who hasn't (and thus, who gets promoted and who doesn't). Maybe, if you've never experienced racial bias in the work place, these seem like problems worlds away from each other, but they are not, these are two different manifestations of the same subconscious bias. When I came into fandom and saw someone I consider close to a friend regurgitating the exact same illogic as one of my workplace superiors, I snapped.

When I say that fandom doesn't exist in a vacuum, this is what I mean. The same attitudes and judgments of people that exist in offline life - based on their physical appearance, their skin tone, their heritage, etc. - follow us into fandom, whether we like it or not.

I acknowledge I should've been a lot calmer about expressing my frustrations with that post. I probably shouldn't have answered so soon after work-life problems and just before I was supposed to go to bed. I tell people all the time to hold back on topics which are personal to them and wait until they are calmer to address it, and here I went and ignored that. I took out my anger on athena via those tags, and for that, I am sorry.

But it's also the only thing I'm sorry about. I still stand by my notion that the post I was responding to was very racist, and the fact that the characters' races were never brought up in the post itself does not change that.

[halekingsourwolf]

sometimes i think about what could have made me like sc*tt. like. s1&s2 sc*tt definitely had his faults- esp. wrt his treatment of derek- but i think he definitely could have developed as a person from there and had a rly interesting character arc? like real personal growth and shit. it gets harder after master plan. is there a way that episode could have gone down the way it did and still made him a likable character after that? is there any apology he could give that would suffice?

cont. - like im not sure of the answer, but id love to see someone manage it. i don’t know if ive ever come across a fic that manages to redeem him from that moment while still acknowledging it. most fics either dont forgive him for it or they just sort of ignore it. for me tho, i think the real breaking point for sc*tt is the true alpha storyline. after that i don’t think there was anything they could have done for him to make him an interesting or likeable character. that storyline ruined it.

I think one of the biggest places where people take issue with Scott –– and this doesn’t mean they hate him or he’s a horrible human being (although some people feel that way too, and are entitled to it), but where many people see Scott falling short as a character is in that the show seems to have decided that “main character” or “hero” should mean perfect, and that’s just… that’s not good for character development, for plot building, or honestly, for a character’s likability.

Characters need to grow to be engaging. And people grow by making mistakes, learning from them, and moving forward. Scott’s mistakes, his flaws as a human being (and yes, he has flaws, everyone does, that’s not character assassination, that’s just fact) are really never addressed. He isn’t made to apologize for the things he does wrong (and why should he, honestly, since no one around him recognizes his problematic behaviors and calls him out on them) or face any apparent payment for them. This compared to the rest of the characters in the series, who are called out on their mistakes –– either by other characters or by consequences in canon. I always use Derek as a comparison, because there are a lot of straightforward parallels, such as the key moments with Isaac. Derek throws a glass at Isaac to get him to leave the loft. We know that’s an absolutely shitty thing to do, it reads immediately on both Isaac and Derek’s faces, and as consequence Derek loses Isaac as a pack member. That’s some hardcore, immediate reaction showing people in the scene and in the audience that This Was Not An Ok Thing To Do. The fact that Derek knew it wasn’t ok as he was doing it, and that he did it on purpose to get Isaac to leave for his own safety, does not make the behavior alright, and Derek acknowledges and pays for that behavior in the permanent loss of Isaac as a housemate and pack member.

When Scott, a short time later, throws Isaac into a wall in a moment of jealousy, it should, on the surface, seem to strike a fairly close parallel. We have Isaac’s Alpha, someone in a position of power over him, physically lashing out at him in some way. But in this instance, neither Scott nor Isaac react much to it, Isaac continues to go on living in Scott’s house and remaining a member of his pack, and there is just… no real follow up to that moment. And while I understand how that can lead some viewers to dismiss the moments as not being parallel (Isaac wasn’t upset there, so clearly Scott’s behavior is acceptable), what I and many viewers are instead left with is the message that Derek lashing out is unexpected and unacceptable, Scott lashing out is expected and acceptable, and that makes him… more heroic?

In season five I believe there finally was a moment between Stiles and Scott where Scott seemed to be being called out on his behavior, but even that came off as very “I’m flawed and you can’t understand that because you’re perfect,” which is… it’s how Scott sees himself, and it’s how the writers seem to see him, but A) that fails to acknowledge the ways in which he is flawed –– meaning that he can’t learn from and improve upon those flaws –– and B) makes for an incredibly un-engaging character. How can we identify with perfection? How can we root for perfection? And how can we fully get on board with someone we are told is perfect, when we can look at them and point out a dozen instances where they weren’t?

This is my major issue with Scott’s character. That we are told he is perfect when we see he isn’t, that he has a double standard of being excused from all of his bad behaviors when the characters around him aren’t, and I do think this connects very much to the True Alpha problem (I got another ask about my thoughts on that so I’ll answer that in more detail separately), because it’s just another level of saying “Scott is a better man, werewolf, and person in general than everyone else.”

Ok, now after all of that, how do I think Scott could have been improved and made more likable for many critical viewers? To be honest, for me it would have been really simple. Include moments where he apologizes for things. That’s… really, honestly, all I would have needed. Because like I said, I’m not looking for perfect characters. Scott acknowledging that he screwed up now and again would make me ecstatic because it would mean that he’s learning and growing and is trying to become better, and that makes for an amazing character arc in any show. If Scott had done the exact same thing in “Master Plan,” except when Derek asked why Scott didn’t tell him Scott had said “I’m sorry… I was afraid if I told anyone then Gerard would find out my plan. And I couldn’t risk that, my mom was in danger” then bam. I would have had a complete turnaround on my attitude toward him in that moment. He would have been humanized, we would have seen that he was in a tough situation, and he would have become more sympathetic by sympathizing with the shitty thing he’d done to Derek. Honestly, that simple.

[gldngrl7]

Binge Watch: Teen Wolf (Thoughts on Character - Part 2)

LYDIA: I was fully prepared to dislike her because I have little patience for the vapid teenage girl stereotype. But then lo! She is not vapid but only pretending to be so! Glorious! A genius in mean-girl Prada. But she’s also more than just a genius, she also cares for people, maybe even as much as Scott. She takes people under her protective wing. Right from the start you see this with Allison, who’s the new girl in school. Then later with both Kira and Malia. In a way, she fills the leadership/counselor needs of the female pack members in a way that a male Alpha can’t necessarily do.

KIRA: I never fully understood the Kitsune and what exactly her abilities were, other than being long-lived and a bad-ass with a katana. But again, just as it looked like they might delve...she disappears. It almost seems like characters disappear when they start to get more interesting than Scott. Hmmmm. Apparently, for the show’s purposes, Kira was just an excellent rebound girl for Scott. Once he rebounded from Allison (and then her death), Kira was no longer needed. Thanks for playing.

LIAM: a true Scott-created Beta was always going to be required. Interesting that they chose (not that there was much choice) a kid with anger management issues. Not so interesting is that the writers made his arc all about how his anger made him a stronger beta, when they should have made it about his journey to absolute control. He was so worried that his parents would see him as a monster, and yet we only met his dad (a surgeon, because....male) who was never given a chance to see Liam’s truth.

MASON: I loved the parallels between Liam/Mason and Scott/Stiles.

MALIA: talk about having the worst parents ever! But at least it seems like she became the impetus for bringing Peter towards the light, giving him something fight for other than his own hide, even though he didn’t know how to show it at first. I like that she was set slightly apart as a were-coyote, occasionally leaning more towards Lone-Wolf behavior and sometimes chafing against the internal pack structure. Her blunt speak and dismissal of societal norms seems more a function of having spent several formative years as a full coyote (“Can you TRY to act human?”) but her hair-trigger attack mode is all coyote. That she ends up with Scott seemed to come more from the Alpha/Beta construct than out of any real chemistry there (IMO).

HAYDEN: Another character to disappear unceremoniously, and I can’t help but think that it was because the love story between Liam and Hayden had begun to overshadow Scott’s story and maybe even the Stiles/Lydia ship, which had become centerpoint just before Hayden “moved away”.

THEO RAEKEN: Another one of my favorite, but rarely used tropes, is the “quick route to redemption through the hell dimension” trope. For Theo, this was a miss, but a near one. Maybe when they started his redemption arc they expected or hoped that they would have more time to see it through than they did. As a child, Theo kills his sister for her heart (did he even need a heart?) at the behest/corruption of The Dread Doctors. He’s essentially a sociopath, but he wants to be the hero, to be worshipped and adored, not because he wants to take on any responsibility. The Skinwalkers sent him to a hell dimension where we later learn he was tormented by the sister he murdered. This would have been a good time for him to learn some contrition, and more importantly to learn that there is no escaping the consequences of his actions. But when he’s restored to the mortal plane it seems his self preservation instincts are more alive than ever, because he’d do and say anything to keep from going back there. To be fair, we don’t really see him maneuver again to supplant Scott’s place (smartly accepting that that’s a well one can only go to once), but instead watch as he rather painfully tries to wedge his way into the pack like a square peg into a round hole. No one wants him there, but they’re taking a “keep your enemies closer” tact with him the second time around. As Theo himself said, he doesn’t take rejection well. Against the Ghost Riders we see him fight the good fight, even saving Liam, though his motives are unclear and it’s much too early to believe that he’s just a good guy now. The final proof of his redemption, in the finale, is when he takes the pain of a dying boy who tried to kill him, perhaps for the first time empathizing with someone, as like himself the dying boy had been corrupted to murder by forces beyond his control. But it came too quickly and one is left to wonder, why now?

ARGENT/MELISSA: DAMN! That was the ship I didn’t know I needed. Why isn’t there more Fanfiction!?!???

DEREK/JENNIFER: not going lie. I’m never not going to be upset that that ship went the way it did. From the beginning I sensed that she felt “like an ugly duckling”. It was masterfully and subtly portrayed. Or maybe because as a plain woman, I identified with her immediately. So Derek and Jennifer were my personal fantasy of ending up with the guy you secretly think is way out of your league but is also incongruously soft with you. She brought a smile to his face, until they fucking ruined it. They brought her back for the finale where Anuk-Ite uses her image to taunt Derek into looking at him. His struggle is palpable. He’s afraid, knows it’s Anuk-Ite and that opening his eyes will turn him into stone. But in the end he can’t resist. He has to look and I think that’s very telling.

[princeescaluswords]

Stans were truly pissed that the narrative refuted their claims that Derek was in the right for his antagonistic, cruel behavior. That he explicitly said Scott was a hero, that he admired him. "Derek deserves nice things" they say yet have frozen Derek in their fics at his season 2 phase, ignoring how he healed and became truly happy. He's no longer their broody antihero. They cling to "alpha Derek" but that didn't make him happy, relinquishing it did.

Is it really surprising?  

There’s a certain satisfaction in using trauma to excuse bad behavior.  It can feel, short term, as if you are righting a wrong by allowing a person (or a character) to act out their revenge.   But there’s a difference between accommodating those who suffer from trauma and mental illness – which is an unalloyed good – and excusing them for bad actions.  We should all take someones trauma and mental illness into account when we decide how to treat them, but there is a limit to it, and that limit lies in how they treat others.  

But careful consideration and a nuanced approach to traumatized characters isn’t as sexy or as satisfying as giving them carte blanche to take their pain out on the world.  It’s more fun to applaud Derek dishing out the pain for once than to see him grow into someone who doesn’t have to.

The problem, of course, arrives in the form of double standards.  The visceral thrill of seeing your favorite character wallow in their pain – the number of hurt/comfort stories attests to that thrill – is sometimes spoiled if they take it out on other innocents.  That’s when you create the Trauma Olympics, where you compare the pain of others in order to give their acts legitimacy.  If Derek scores a perfect ten in Sad Backstory, then it doesn’t matter if he orders Lydia’s death, because she only has a four in the same event. 

Thus, certain Derek stans perform all sorts of ethical gymnastics to counter the idea that Derek (and even Peter) acted like absolute shits in Seasons 1 & 2.  It’s especially important that they don’t admit that other people are similarly traumatized.  The scenes of Scott being horrified by the changes in his body; being frightened when told by Stiles and Chris that there’s a strong probability he’ll hurt someone he loves; being bullied by Derek; being mentally controlled and violated by Peter; being rejected in horror by his mother and Allison, and being tortured and extorted by Gerard have to be erased or dismissed because he got to play First Line and doesn’t have asthma anymore.  Derek’s escalation of the war by recruiting child soldiers, by attempting to execute innocents, by employing physical coercion is somehow not enough justification for Scott to move against him.   (It always amazes me how every single adult and some children – Deaton, Peter, Chris, Stiles, Boyd, Erica, and Isaac – all recognize that Derek flops as an alpha, but somehow Scott’s rejection of him as one to these parts of fandom seems out of the blue).

For all they say they love Derek, as Derek begins to grow and move out of the phase where his trauma defines him, they begin to get antsy.   They want Derek to heal, but they want Derek to heal in a way that doesn’t require him to change.  For example, they want Stiles – whose canon idea of love is control and constant criticism – to somehow soothe the pain away without requiring a change in Derek’s behavior.  They want Derek to remain Alpha – not that it helped him or anything – because he is justified by it, even though he did nothing to earn it.  To them, Derek doesn’t owe anything to Isaac or Jackson or the other betas he got killed.   Derek certainly doesn’t owe anything to Scott or Lydia or the other teenagers he terrorized.  

Yet the show determined that Derek was going to own up to what he did.  He was going to use his skills and talents to help, without requiring obedience.  Instead of insisting on favors, he made sure it was “going to come for free.”   He helped with the nogitsune, he helped with Liam, he helped with the Dead Pool, he willing gave his life to save two innocent teenagers, and he came back to Beacon Hills for his alpha – facing down the architects of his trauma to do so.  

It’s sad to me that some people are still so dedicated to the idea that salving wounds means excusing bad behavior that character growth is somehow seen as cheating. 

(I mark this “anti derek hale” as a courtesy.  I don’t think recognizing Derek’s terrible actions in Seasons 1 or 2 means I hate the character.)

[princeescaluswords]

You would think that Peter calling Scott incorruptible would prevent fandom from demonizing him but somehow being incorruptible is a bad thing now. I thought Peter was oh so wise, guys? Shouldn't that mean you accept Scott as a good guy? But somehow Peter is still the good guy who is allowed "moral flexibility" to do wicked things + Scott is bad for being "black and white" which he never was. He really can't win and it's all due to racism 🤷🏽‍♂️

I’ve been told repeatedly that in polite company, you’re not supposed to say that, because someone’s feelings might be hurt, but you are absolutely right.

It doesn’t matter how often Peter praises Scott or recognizes him as a worthy opponent.  When Peter says the word incorruptible, all they hear is the word self-righteous.  This is the capstone of their argument, the one they must make, that Scott’s moral stance is suspect.  To them, if fans appreciate him for his compassion and virtue, they are worshiping him.   To them, if these same fans don’t recognize his flaws as disqualifying him from making any decisions about what is proper behavior, they (and Scott) are being hypocrites.

Scott’s fans see him as a teenage boy burdened by power he didn’t want but determined to use that power to help others, a child assaulted and victimized but refusing to let that abuse and violence define him.  It’s the crux of Teen Wolf (which is why some fans go so far as to question the validity of the story).  But certain people can’t stand the fact that he is the hero and the protagonist and not their white favorites, so they’re going to re-frame the idea that Scott cares about everyone, even the people who hurt him, as self-righteous.

This idea enables them to play the gotcha game, where they equate Peter murdering his own ally, stuffing her into a car trunk, and dismissing her death with the callous quip “I got better” with Scott e-mailing pictures of Allison and him together in an attempt win her back (and retrieve the clue needed to help solve a mystery without endangering Derek).   You see, they cry, they’re both selfish!  They can pretend that Peter’s callous disregard for the murder of his own niece, once remarking to her sister and his other niece “Not my finest hour, no.” is equivalent to Scott trying to hold Stiles to some sort of standard of behavior: “We can’t kill people we’re trying to save.”  You see, they cry, Scott’s not better than Peter!

They know that’s not true.  They know that Scott’s not cookie-cutter self-righteous, but they can’t publicly acknowledge it because it invalidates their entire strategy for making their white favorites more important.   It’s why they repeat a “ruthless con man’s” condemnation of Scott as the “hero of his morally black-and-white world” like a Bible verse, forgetting that at the time Peter was arguing that Derek should let Boyd and Cora go on a killing spree rather than risk their lives to stop it.  

If Scott was really self-righteous, Peter would never have survived La Iglesia.  If Scott was really self-righteous, Stiles would never have been let back into the pack after he lied to and betrayed everyone.  If what they claim is true, Derek would still be omega, staring out a rain-soaked window after he managed to get everyone who ever cared about him killed.  But Scott wasn’t – he was compassionate and kind and he gave second and third chances and had hope for everyone – and they know that.

But they’ll say it anyway, because it’s another comforting story to tell themselves when they get upset that the hero and protagonist of Teen Wolf wasn’t a white man.  They tell a lot of stories like that, because it helps them hide that desire.  That’s why they argue that Scott never really had anything bad happen to him, because they want to use trauma to make their white characters look superior.  

The whole point of these tales is to make it clear who should be the focus of the story without coming out and saying it.  That’s why they claim that Stiles was always right (when he was wrong just as much as he was right) because that meant he should have been calling the shots.  That’s why they claim that Derek deserves nice things (even though he got plenty of nice things) because one of those nice things would be to be alpha.   That’s why they claim Peter is the Left Hand (when the concept never even appeared in the production) because that gives Peter’s point of view just as much weight as Scott’s.  It’s all a subtle way to make it clear that one of their beloved white men should have been the center of the show. 

Eventually, you just have to come out and say it in the open.