#posting this to not think about how cognitive decline has been slowly happening and pretty sure started after getting COVID*

[kittentism]

kitty autism be like . 30 minute meltdown because just a little too uncomfortably hot too late into the day + a bad noise spooked me + my big brother came out later than expected would . and then immediately after he come back and kitty get comfort am totally fine and excited about promise of slurpee .

kitty autism really just be little kid mode and honestly ? that fine

[nyxelestia]

Teen Wolf's sounds are great, but its visuals are terrible, and THAT is its weakness

I just read some great meta from about how worldbuilding was probably Teen Wolf's greatest failure. It really hit the nail on the head about how we never really see the kids doing normal, teenage things in between all these abnormal, supernatural things. I can't reblog the post, but I did really want to make one addition to it.

It's not that the writing started to decline throughout the show. Writing was never the problem, nor was its biggest corollary (acting). It was everything else - and very specifically, things like set design, and setting in general.

This is unsurprising for an MTV show, but "sound" has always been one of the biggest features of Teen Wolf. Ranging from extraordinarily well-acted dialogue to fantastic music, and including more subtle developments about the supernatural world based on sound. Think about how much of the supernatural world thus far has been about the way things sound. How much of the werewolves' power or developments are in their roars? Have you ever noticed that Lydia mostly only hears things that aren't there, but rarely ever sees them? (And when she does literally see things, it's almost always someone else trying to manipulate her, rather than her own premonitions/meta-cognitive capabilities.) And that's before getting into all the ways Season 5 was about what people do and don't hear across different frequencies.

Writing - as in the quality of the script - was never really the problem, because the sound of the show has never been a problem.

The show's biggest weakness is visuals - and/or the lack thereof.

And this isn't just another joke about the show's shit lighting - though that is absolutely a part of it.

A lot of the emotional impact of the first three seasons came from the fact scenes would often start with the kids doing normal, teenage things - only to get interrupted by the supernatural shenanigans.

We see Scott carrying groceries (I thought his mom did all the grocery shopping?) to the car when Derek suddenly hunts him down as a werewolf training method. Jackson gets attacked by a werewolf when trying to rent a movie (way to show your age, writers!). Stiles was making out with Heather and made a dash for some condoms when she got kidnapped (and then, when Stiles saw she wasn't in the cellar anymore, his first assumption was that she got cold feet - which a lot of teenagers would when faced with the prospect of losing their virginity). Part of the horror of the wolfsbane punch at Lydia's birthday party, was the fact that it was happening at her birthday party.

In all those instances, the most of the 'screentime' for the scene is something supernatural, but that scene is opened with normal, teenage life, and that normal life continues to be a visual background to the events of the scene, even as the action and audio take a left turn into supernatural shenanigans.

(Which isn't to say Season 1 was perfect about this, either. Where the hell were the doctors, security guards, nurses, orderlies, and other patients when Peter's beatdown of Derek in Season 1 trashed half the long-term care clinic?)

Think about all those slow-mo scenes. Pretty much everyone complains about how pointless most of them are. i.e. From Season 5, why do we need a slow-motion shot of someone running slowly through the woods? The emphasis was on the music to try and make the moment dramatic. A far better method would've been to keep the motion at regular speed, but instead of showing kids running through the woods or an open field, show them running through the alley behind a mall, or away from their home neighborhoods, or a montage of them running through various teenage hang-outs in town (which would've given a secondary emphasis on subtly demonstrating supernatural speed). The best part is that the "sound" could've stayed the same (dramatic music, huffing-and-puffing, footsteps, etc).

We may not have needed to see a big, family gathering for Scott - just some pictures of family members on the walls of the McCall home would've done the job (and possibly even a better one). This would've been especially powerful if we got to see lots of family pictures all over the McCall house, and yet almost no family pictures in the Stilinski house. Think about how different the Sheriff revealing his father's abuse would've been, if this was done with several pictures of Scott's extended family - including HIS grandfather/Meliss'a parents - in the background. Just imagine that after the Sheriff describes how he got that scar, Scott glances over to a picture of himself, his mom, and a very old man with a warm face on his smile. This would've had no change in dialogue/audio, and would've been a short enough moment that it could've been done without even affecting the screentime - but it would've conveyed so, so much without ever saying a word.

We do still see hints of attempts at this in Season 5 - i.e. the girls are sneaking in some stereotypically illicit driving practice, when Lydia leads them to a dead body. But using daily life as the background for un-daily events is so rare by that point, the 'normal life' moment felt contrived.

Thankfully, Season 6 is actually getting a lot better about this. The first episode was rife with things like the kids taking yearbook pictures, completely failing to ditch classes, and talking about homework (with only hints of the supernatural world, rather than abrupt segues into really big events). This made the Ghost Riders suddenly popping up to take someone away from all this even more horrifying, because we are shown what Stiles is being taken away from. While the night-time and "indoor" scenes are still pretty dim, compared to the last few seasons, the rest of the scenes are actually much better lit.

I bring that last one up because, while lighting isn't all of the show's visual problems, it is a huge part.

Case in point, remember the scene where the school PA system is talking about the police curfew in Season 5, and the lights are all inexplicably dimmed? That scene was overwrought and melodramatic. Compare that to Season 6, where all the daytime scenes are happening with the sun shining brightly through the open windows - and how that makes the little supernatural intrusions all the more shocking and devastating (i.e. Lydia's hallucination of the doctor in the classroom).

Having another pack next door was very much an ass-pull in Season 4, one written to quickly kill off a lot of supernatural beings without actually killing off any of the pack. Imagine if, instead of this, we just got a montage of different people being hunted down and killed, all of them with small hints towards their supernatural side.

i.e. Someone with scales who gets killed while trying to swim to safety, or an assassin shooting into the sky and suddenly a dead body with wings falls to the ground, or people whose eyes glow colors other than the werewolf red/yellow/blue. Imagine if instead of the stereotypical claws and fangs, someone fought to the death with talons, or horns, or a tail? Imagine if we did see someone sprout claws and fangs, but right when we expect to hear a wolf/canine roar, we heard something that sounded like a lion or a tiger instead?

We could've had a LOT of visual hints at other supernatural creatures and a bigger supernatural world/environment, with very little change in screentime or audio/dialogue. (And most of what just described could've been done relatively cheap in terms of costume/make-up and special effects, i.e. you don't need to show someone with wings flying through the sky - just a body with limp wings falling to the ground.)

tl;dr - It's not the writing that's the problem, because MTV is a very audio-oriented company, and the show 'sounds' fantastic. It's the lack of visual complements that are the real problem.