#consequences of letting fanon run rampant in fandom really

[discordiansamba]

I do think the VLD fandom as a whole has a problem with wanting things in the series to stay stagnant. This is why it got so up in arms because characters (checks hand) went through character development. Like they're supposed to do. Which is a good thing. Could that development be clunky at times? Sure. We all know VLD's writing wasn't the best. But a character going through development and reasonably changing as a result of that isn't the character being OOC. They've just grown and changed.

[princeescaluswords]

Fandom *still* thinks that Deaton and Morrell are "sitting on their hands" because they refuse to accept the only reason Jennifer was capable of all those flashy feats was due to killing people for sacrifices and thus throwing the Balance outta whack. Deaton is supposed to I guess be cutting up Derek's food for him and wiping his ass when not playing archmage. But ya know, they KNOW that Jennifer was only capable of those things through murdering innocents. Yet how often do they portray "druid" Stiles able to do the same things and more overnight? And portray him as sneering at Deaton for "doing nothing"? I read a fic where Stiles demanded to learn magic from Deaton while thinking that Deaton is "privileged" to "stay in his clinic" while he's out fighting and surviving

The glib answer is, they’ve watched too many episodes of the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, the Teenage Witch.   

The more serious answer is that they’ve missed several key themes in Teen Wolf.  The most important of those themes today is Balance, of which Deaton and Morrell serve as the primary examples: power must be balanced with responsibility to others.  

Every single villain in Teen Wolf neglects that balance.  They’re not antagonists because they have power; they’re antagonists because they use that power without regard to how it effects other people, especially those without power.  

Peter wants his revenge for his pain and he needs power to achieve it, even if it means deceiving and killing his own niece, even if it means deceiving and abusing his own nephew.   He kills allies (Nurse Jennifer), he kills innocents (the janitor), he terrorizes teenagers who just happened to stumble across him, and he even seeks to kill Allison, who had nothing to do with the Hale fire.  He does not allow himself to be bound by anything but his own desire; he barely treats his targets like individuals.   

Derek wants to rebuild his family so he can feel safe and loved again, which sounds like a nice pleasant idea, except he does it by dishonesty, manipulation, and violence.  He wants a pack, but he knows from Omega (2x01), that giving the Bite to teenagers puts them in danger from Gerard and then the Alpha Pack, which he knew was coming.  He treated Jackson abysmally because the teen annoyed him, yet everyone else reaped the consequences of Derek’s pettiness and disregard.  Season 1 and 2 Derek consistently put his own wants and needs above other people.

Deucalion and Jennifer are two sides of the same coin.   Deucalion was deceived and betrayed, so he essentially decided to burn the werewolf world to the ground to prove he was right.  Jennifer was deceived and betrayed, so she murders innocents in order to gain power in order to make it right.  See the pattern?

Now let’s look at Deaton.  Incurious viewers may believe that Deaton is ‘vague’ and ‘cryptic’ but what they’re really upset about is that he doesn’t pretend to have all the answers and he doesn’t feel obligated to share everything he knows.  On the other hand, when he does decide to help, it never ‘comes with a price.’  He never demands payment or even changes in behavior from those he helps, though he reserves the right not to act if he is morally unsatisfied, such as when he made it clear in Raving (2x08) that he wasn’t going to help Derek execute Jackson.  This doesn’t mean he’s weak or incapable.  It means he has set boundaries for himself and he keeps them, and those boundaries always involve respecting other people.  I always enjoy his behavior in two different scenes -- treating the de-aged Derek in 117 (4x02) and examining the chimera Tracy in Parasomnia (5x03).  You can notice that  he doesn’t give orders to the people helping him in those scenes, always asking if they’re comfortable with what he’s doing and focused on his patients.

Teen Wolf believed that maintaining the Balance didn’t have to mean that the character was nice.  Morrell played a dangerous game of trying to keep the Alpha Pack in check, working behind the scenes when any one of them could kill her.  Yet she also understood that she can’t manipulate them without having to sometimes ‘get her hands dirty.’  When Stiles is in Eichen house, she gives him amphetamines to help keep him awake -- something that could get her in trouble -- but she also makes it clear she’s not going to let the Nogitsune run rampant if a solution can’t be found.   People may not like her, but they have to admit she took action to limit the damage to innocent people and she doesn’t seem to get anything out of it.

Scott learned those lessons well.  He didn’t use his status as a True Alpha to get what he wanted.   He pursued his responsibility as Protector of Beacon Hills to protect everyone which included holding others responsible for their behavior and included standing up for people he might not like, such as Donovan Donati.  He couldn’t fulfill that duty if he let anyone -- no matter who it was -- do as they please.  

If we put aside the idea that without supernatural transformation, people like Deaton, Morrell, Jennifer and even the Doctors had to study for years and years and years for whatever power and knowledge they had, whereas Fanon Stiles frequently gets his power overnight, knowing ancient magics by chosen-one osmosis.  He doesn’t earn the power and he doesn’t respect the need for balance.  Indeed, if we go by fanfiction, fanon Stiles would immediately join the ranks of Peter, Derek, Deucalion and Jennifer, using his power without regard to other people if they weren’t important to him.

How many times have you read a story where Stiles kills, beats, or rips Scott’s power away from him because he doesn’t think Scott was using it right?  How many times has he tortured Deaton to death for not doing more?  How many times had he murdered the entire Argent family?   Theo?  Deucalion?   To these people, what’s the point of power if you can’t use it to destroy the people who made you unhappy?

Fanon Stiles would be the best villain for Season 7.  

Now, on the other hand, how many times in fandom, when the story has Scott or Deaton be the villain, have they possessed overwhelming power?   So seldom it’s hilarious.  In these stories, they never kill or hurt anyone important.  They are villains and they get destroyed, not because they hurt others for power, but because they deny a variety of good looking white men their deserved place as the rulers of the land, and it hurts the white men’s feelings a great deal.

Come on, find more than a handful of stories where Evil Dark Villain Scott isn’t painted that way without actually inconveniencing or even hurting a single white person?  He did make them feel sad, and for that he must be punished.  Their Evil Mastermind Deaton constantly schemes to deny the Hales their rightful place (why?  None of these writers seem to care).  Their motivations and actions are always just as incongruous as Archmage Stiles, and they never actually pose a real threat because they never really have any power -- Scott impedes people with moral authority (the fiend!) and Deaton does terrible, horrible things like not healing Peter while he was in the hospital and hiding Stiles’s Unlimited Powah until he doesn’t.

Teen Wolf proposed that villainy comes from the use of power for one’s own needs and wants without any recognition of its affects on other people, especially people that you don’t care about.  Privilege and connections and wealth and family doesn’t make someone more worthy of life than the people who audience didn’t care about or people who didn’t care about the main characters.  To the production, nameless extras have the right to live, too, which was the entire point behind Monroe’s plotline.  

Scott’s a hero precisely because he didn’t execute Peter, Derek or Gerard even though it would make his life easier, and because he cared about people like Donovan, people like the list of names on the Dead Pool, and people like those two children in the woods. 

Fandom missed it, like they missed so much of the story while trying to manufacture Sterek and/or Steter out of the ether.   Fanon Archmage Stiles is the ultimate expression of the power fantasy that what Stiles wants is more important than anything else.

[flyswhumpcenter]

The Eyes Watching Your Back - Chapter 1

Chapter 2: [TBA]

Summary: Angie's sharp eye isn't just to assist in operations, just as much as a nurse's mission exceeds the OR. You just wouldn't expect the nurse to have to take care of the surgeon she was assigned to. 

Fandom: Trauma Center Ships: Pre-Rel. DerAng (Derek/Angie)

Notes: Oh no, I ship it.

This was written with a prompt in mind, albeit I'm not sure of how exactly I went through with it. I have this bad habit of straying away from my prompts whenever I try following one, but here you go.

It's going to be a two-shot because I have too many ideas about these two medical-field dorks. I borrowed a few names and things from other, much older stories that I found when going on a TC fanfic reading spree the other days. It's my way to pay hommage, in a way. It may also be out of character, but at least, I'd have tried lmao. This is set before UTK2 for sure, buuuut when exactly is left to fanfic/fanon limbo. You do you, reader. 

AO3 version available here.

Credit to @sickficideas for this prompt I’ve used for the story!

When she started her career as a nurse, the first thing Angie Thompson’s mentor and first doctor to assist, Dr Sarah Miller, told her was that doctors were much more illogical than they looked. Not that they were dumb, quite the opposite way around: they simply had skewed priorities due to how their brain worked due to their job. Angie didn’t believe her at first. Doctors should have always had their priorities very much in check, right? It was part of their job, for goodness’s sake!

But alas, as most of what Dr Miller had ever told her, the latter turned out to be right.

 As a nurse, Angie was aware of everything around her. It was part of her job to always stay alert to whatever could be happening around her, especially when it involved patients. She always had eyes everywhere, every place she went, in every corner of the hospital she worked at and in every nook and cranny of the city, just in case someone needed her help. Naïve was the one who’d have thought she couldn’t identify an ailment from a few yards. In a way, that was her own Healing Touch, or what was the closest to it. She may not have been able to slow down time like a certain surgeon she worked under, but it was most useful in some cases, especially in her profession. And it didn’t drain her dry, which was a much welcome plus: watching Dr Stiles collapse seemingly out of nowhere after a successful surgery a while back had scared her stainless.

 Speaking of the devil, her observant eyes had started taking up on some hints about her assigned surgeon’s… predicament. She couldn’t exactly tell why that was, but the feeling lingered in a part of her brain. Dr Stiles was obviously a goofball if she wasn’t behind her back and if the staff at Caduceus wasn’t constantly behind his back, and that was what had repulsed her at first (she’d have rather worked under a qualified and upmost serious surgeon such as Dr Kasal…), albeit he had grown over it. He was now a serious and hardworking surgeon, determined to save people’s lives from biological weapon GUILT, focused and not even that whiny anymore. He truly had grown into someone respectable and always hard at work…

Perhaps a bit too much, in fact.

 Coming from Angela “my work as a nurse is more important than literally anything else in my life” Thompson, that was rich, and she knew it. However, she had a way to justify her reaction to what was currently going on in Caduceus USA. She really did, she promised, she wasn’t just worried or paranoid or anything like that. She was just concerned about the general functioning of the building in case there was this one element which’d break and lead to catastrophic consequences in case GUILT patients came in… They had very little personnel capable of treating the disease. Moreover, it’d be that time of the year where people drove insanely because of the summer break, and there always were car crash victims sent down their way. She had all the reasons in the world to be more alert than at any other time of the year.

 To make it short, she was staring at Dr Stiles any time she could without being spotted by him either. Would their head surgeon operating on GUILT patients be out cold, it’d be the worst thing, a grand-scale catastrophe for mankind. That was the one reason she worried about him. It wasn’t personal, not at all, it was professional and for the greater good, just like a doctor and a nurse should always think of first. As an assistant, it was her mission to make sure the surgeon she assisted was doing his job properly too, so her eyes were also careful about that. She’d allow no slip-up from him, not when lives were constantly on the line in their own little life.

 Angie had always had an eye for details and especially for spotting the little things most people would never notice in others. People would have called her nosy, but that constant stare at everything around her had saved lives before, and she intended for it to do so again in times where she couldn’t fully trust who she was working with. Well, that was making Dr Stiles out to be a filthy incompetent, which he wasn’t (at least, not anymore), but there was still something just wrong with him. Simply and plainly wrong.

 First of all: his hair was even messier than usual. He had never been known for a neat and tidy hairstyle, but this was getting ridiculous and out of hand all the same. Second: his stance was getting weaker and weaker, and it wasn’t rare for her to see him staggering against a wall after performing some GUILT surgeries. Third: even if he was scatter-brained to begin with, it was getting worse and worse by the hour. She wondered if he didn’t forget his own name at times, because calling him out in front of everyone wasn’t cutting it sometimes. That wasn’t a thing normally-composed human beings in a good condition did, and this was the last hint she needed to diagnose something all by herself like the witty clever nurse she was: her assigned surgeon was, seemingly, overworking himself.

 The Angie from a few months ago wouldn’t have believed it. Mr Stiles, the lazy and unkept surgeon who’d abandon a patient for some conference, overworking himself to exhaustion? That wasn’t happening during her lifetime. Even if she was stubborn, Angie had to give in to reality: that was probably and actually happening right around her eye’s corner and she, well, she didn’t know how to act upon it. Perhaps she could just yell at him to stop whatever he was doing and take a rest before they were an entire surgeon down for the duration of a fatigue-induced illness leave. That’d be the worst in times where GUILT was rampant and threatening to end countless innocent lives who had never asked for a painful death by internal lacerations, inside toxic fumes or a direct dive into the heart of an unnatural worm.

Oh.

 She had thought her eyes had been stealthy enough to avoid being detected by the entire staff of Caduceus when, one time, she was in the lounge picking up a cup of coffee for herself and a second for Dr Stiles (caffeine wasn’t the best way to remediate to his growing exhaustion, but if he didn’t drink it, she was afraid she’d be met with a grumpy surgeon, and that was the last thing she needed) before getting taken out of her thoughts.

“Tell me, Angie,” Leslie’s voice had made her rise her eyes from her cheap cup of coffee, “isn’t there something on your mind lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but… You seem more alert than usual, no?”

“I’ve been because of GUILT running wild. You never know if someone’s going to get infected or when.”

She thought back to how pale De… Dr Stiles had looked when he had just learnt Dr Kasal had been infected with Tetarti. That lapsus was painful, even if it was just mental. It better have just been mental.

“That’s true, but you seem to mainly focus on Derek, am I wrong?”

“W-what makes you think that?!”

 Leslie’s giggles didn’t make her laugh for sure. The shriek must have been heard from a mile away, so she couldn’t even deny her primal reaction and the lack of manners going with it. Oops, wasn’t that just too bad?

“You keep looking in his direction, these days,” she said with a gentle smile that slightly disappeared afterwards. “Are you concerned for him?”

“Concerned?” She wanted to scoff. Well, she guessed you could have said that… “I’m concerned about whether or not he’ll be able to operate for much longer, but that’s it. I’m concerned for the potential patients to come.”

“By this, you mean you’re afraid he’s going to burn out or something like this?”

“You could say that…”

Leslie let out an amused giggle again.

“I have to assist Tyler soon, I’ll leave you to it. Take care, Angie.”

As she said so, she took her leave from the room, indeed letting her colleague alone in front of the coffee machine with two cups in her hands.

 As it stood, Angie hadn’t seen Dr Stiles today yet. It was a weird thing to notice, since she was used to arriving before him in their shared office, sighing to herself that his paperwork was still late as ever and how messy his desk always managed to get itself to be. To be fair, she had had to fill in some papers herself elsewhere before going to their office and, even then, she decided to bring them coffee while she was at it. She got far more surprised to see he wasn’t there at all, before grumbling to herself again that he was late. Well, before correcting herself and realizing he could have very well been stuck in traffic jams and other city misadventures. She had gotten herself late in those before too, it was (for once) outside his power to help with it. No reason to get angry, so she sighed again, at herself this time around. She really needed to calm down on her impulsivity.

 Come to think of it, she had a benign case of appendicitis to operate on later with Dr Stiles. By later, she meant that she had to start preparing right now: review the patient’s chart, refresh her memory on the procedures to go, disinfect herself, putting on scrubs and helping Derek do his magic. Dammit, Dr Stiles. She meant to think Dr Stiles. Frequent slipups were pissing her off. She had let herself get distract for way too long by whatever was on her mind that she almost forgot what truly mattered in the grand scheme of things! And so she rushed her mind back into the surgery that had to happen soon.

 As always, Angie managed to quick-start herself back into the swift of things. There was no time to lose on useless thinking and pointless dwelling, and there was a high probability she’d meet back with her surgeon near the OR, and they’d quickly discuss things out there before heading in for a new surgery that she’d make sure would go perfectly fine and end in a success. The patient’s case wasn’t much to be worried about: a twenty-something man affected with a case of appendicitis, who came in early enough for them not to have any complication. It’d be just fine, really, so why did she have a bad feeling about it all? There was no chance of GUILT being involved. They always made sure of so, these days, by testing every incoming patient with a Chiral reaction test to be one-hundred-percent sure. And her certainty about these things would lead her to her temporary fall.

 Her astonishment when she saw Derek walk towards the operating room in shambles almost made her drop the patient’s chart to the floor without her realizing it.

 There was something within her that made her heart leap warmly in her throat, that something she could only link to a realization: she had been right to be weary all this time. Before her was the reason why her mind could never feel at ease whenever she was at Caduceus or even away from it when she knew Derek was still here, serving as a backup surgeon, looking over patient charts, filling that damn late paperwork.

And yet she had done nothing to stop it until now, until it was late. All she could do was to slip Dr Clarks, who was around, a hint about it and watch him take the operation over for them. He, too, knew this was all going to go terribly wrong would they follow that path.

 “Dr Stiles,” she forced her voice to sound stern and strong, almost cold, almost as hard as steel.

The doctor in question, a hand against the wall and a dripping smile on his face, rose his eyes to face her. Glassy eyes, she could see that from the other side of his glasses.

“Huh, hello, Angie… Sorry for being late, I had some… papers…”

Barely coherent speech patterns. Flushed face. Bags under the eyes, and bags under the bags. Obviously overworked and about to give in.

“Doctor, I’m afraid you’ll have to skip on this surgery. Dr Clarks is taking care of it.”

 Her eyes quickly bolted to keep her surroundings in check. In her back, right near her dead angle, Dr Clarks nodding to her to confirm something and entering the OR. Before her, Dr Stiles still walking to her, his face not knowing whether to be surprised or be tired and done with everything in the world. He was stubborn, when he wanted to.

“What do you mean, Angie…? That’s my patient, no…?”

“He was. Now,” she replied as she walked to him with the least impatience she could show, “let’s bring you back to your office and maybe even your place. You’re in no condition to operate right now.”

He rubbed his eye under his glass, but still refused to be held back to another part of the building, back against the wall. He really was making it difficult, wasn’t he? Goddammit…

“I may be tired, but Mr Mark is my patient and a doctor… never abandons his patient. Y’should know that, Angie…”

His eyes were fluttering, but he still continued on shaking legs and in a hasty pace, feet staggering, heavy under the weight of crushing fatigue.

“It’s Mr Monarc, Dr Stiles…!”

“C’mon, Angie, we need to operate…”

 As soon as he attempted to give her his hand to encourage her to come, she slapped his wrist away from her. The anger was now boiling in her veins, an anger she now knew was born out of pure worry. She was far less worried for patients than she was for him at the moment and, now that she was finally honest with herself and in terms with the fact she was worried such a goofball, she had to stop him in his tracks.

And that was why she let herself yell.

 She gripped his wrist right as he was about to walk past her, skin hot under her fingers, sweat forcing her to clutch harder as to keep her grip on the situation.

“Dr Derek Stiles, I insist on the fact you’re in no condition to operate and, as your assistant, I cannot allow you to operate in such a condition! If you don’t comply, I’ll be forced to witness you collapse on the job, putting a patient at risk and forcing us to send you to Hope Hospital! Nobody here needs that, so stop being selfish and take a break! Understood?!”

That had escalated quickly for sure…

“B-but…”

“There’s no buts, Dr Stiles! This isn’t a GUILT victim either, so any other surgeon can take care of it!”

 Derek opened his mouth to respond something after staying agape for a few moments.

“I…”

He gave in right before he could tell her anything else, prompting her to recover his now-limp body in her arms. Goddammit. He was a yo-yo, one day too lazy to properly care for patients, another pushing himself to collapsing for the very same patients.

And there was no doubt about the fact she’d have to take care of him if she wanted to, once again, keep in check. What a handful.