All Outta Bubblegum

This is my scott mccall defense/appreciation blog. FAQ Pack McCall Meme

[princeescaluswords]

I mean Scott didn’t even think Stiles committed manslaughter. That’s maybe what Stiles had done? (Accidentally causing the accident that killed the man) He thought Stiles had committed first or second degree murder because that’s what Theo said and Stiles didn’t deny it

Here’s the thing:  it’s an expectation game.

Scott didn’t name a crime he thought that Stiles had committed, throughout that scene.  The word ‘murder’ or ‘manslaughter’ or even ‘the law’ was never mentioned by Scott, because that wasn’t his point.

See, Theo didn’t just tell a story where Stiles killed Donovan.  Theo told a story where Stiles killed Donovan when he didn’t have to.  

Scott: Tell me. 

Theo: I saw Donovan go down. Stiles hit him with the wrench, and then, he just, he just kept hitting him. Uh, maybe it was because he... He threatened to kill his dad. Or maybe Stiles thought he had to keep going to defend himself, but he just... He kept hitting him. 

Scott: That's not possible.

If a viewer paid close attention, Theo isn’t telling Scott that Stiles killed Donovan.   Theo is telling Scott that Stiles executed Donovan in such a brutal manner that Theo couldn’t believe it was real.  

Now let’s look at the beginning of the fight later that episode.  Scott had just shown Stiles the wrench. 

Scott: 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. 

You can think the writing is contrived or not -- I think it is a little contrived but still emotionally consistent, but I’ll get to that later --  but it’s clear from the dialogue what is happening here.   

What is Scott supposed to think?  If a chimera came after Stiles, why wouldn’t Stiles tell him?  When Stiles thought he was behind Barrow’s attempt on Kira’s life, he went directly to Scott.  So why would Stiles not come and talk to him now?  The only logical conclusion was that there was a reason Stiles didn’t want to tell him and that might be because he meant to do it.   Why would he tell Scott that a car hood had hurt his back when it had been a chimera?  Because he had something to hide.

And you said ‘Stiles didn’t deny it.’  He did more than that.  He confirmed Theo’s story without meaning to.  Theo came out and said that perhaps Stiles thought he had to kill this dangerous chimera because Donovan had vowed to kill his father, and Stiles’s first response was, literally, ‘I killed Donovan because he was going to kill my dad.’ 

Considering the facts that Stiles didn’t tell him, that Stiles didn’t deny the wrench was his (and, in fact, acted super guilty about it), that Stiles believed that Donovan would kills his father if he wasn’t stopped, what was Scott supposed to think?  The logical conclusion is that Theo’s story was correct.  

Contrary to some other interpretations, both of their reactions seem to me to be  emotionally and narratively consistent with what we’ve seen before.   People have been trying to kill Scott since Season 1, Episode 1 for being something that he never meant to become and out of fear of something he might do that he had never intended to do.  Argent shot him in the first episode simply because he was a werewolf.  Peter intended to kill him because he was his beta (twice).  Victoria gassed him because of the threat to her daughter simply because he was a werewolf.  The Benefactor put a bounty of twenty-five million dollars on his head because he was the alpha.  Is it so unbelievable that he would have a problem with Stiles executing Donovan because Donovan was a chimera  and had threatened Stiles father?  Couldn’t he imagine himself under that wrench after he chased Stiles through the locker room in Second Chance at First Line (1x02)?  Why do you think he flinched?

And Stiles.  Of course, Stiles isn’t going to start out with ‘he was trying to kill me!’  How many times have we Stiles consider himself not worth the trouble?  How many times has he focused on others rather than himself?   Offering himself for Lydia in Formality (1x11)?   Claiming he wasn’t a hero during the second half of Season 2?  Charging a merged alpha twin?  His attitude toward the ritual sacrifice where he almost jumped into that bath? His demand that Scott let him die rather than other people get hurt?  The flashback to his mother breaking his heart shouting ‘he’s trying to kill me!’ on the hospital roof?  Stiles isn’t going to lead off with ‘I was defending myself.’  He still doesn’t think he’s worth defending.  

The problem with fandom’s response is exactly what people like me have been talking about.   They have empathy only for Stiles.  They expect Scott, as a minority character, to have no emotional motivations or wants and needs in this scene at all.  They expect Scott, to prove his worth -- as if he has to do that after sixty-eight episodes -- by having perfect faith in Stiles no matter what.  They expect that Stiles doesn’t have to communicate or defend himself, that Stiles can lash out emotionally with arguments that make no sense (”we can’t all be True Alphas” -- as if you have to be a True Alpha to tell the truth) and then turn around and demand that Scott absolve him for killing a monster just because it was a monster.

This is an example of what fandom does -- erase and minimize characters of color.  There is no empathy for Scott, no attempt to understand his motives, not even a suggestion that maybe Stiles handled this whole thing wrong.   Scott was tricked by Theo, but Theo didn’t create this out of thin air.  

And this is where the racist double standard comes in.  You see, fandom didn’t grow enraged when Stiles was content to deceive Scott in Season 1, so the Argents could kill Derek and get him out of their lives.  They didn’t put him in the doghouse forever when Stiles dumped Malia because she didn’t share in his condemnation of himself.  They didn’t freak out about Derek when he decided an innocent Lydia had to die, or bounced Stiles’s head off a steering wheel, or when he charged a possessed Stiles with claws and fangs out.    And they certainly didn’t lose it when Peter tried to murder Scott for the bogus crime of stealing his family’s legacy.  To them, those are understandable emotional overreactions.  Something, of course, makes the fandom far more willing to understand those overreactions than Scott’s fear that Stiles has finally snapped and executed a monster like him for what he might do.

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM.

[sinmonger]

idk why you guys told me not to watch this show, this is peak fucking comedy

[skodasforge]

Scott:

[pdxtrent]

Scott: And then I failed to kill the person I meant to kill to become human again. Failed to get killed the person I plotted to. But managed to get massive amounts of people killed through my unwillingness to kill actual villains. But hey, I’m popular and the captain of the lacrosse team!

Jackson: *hisses* Co-captain.

[skodasforge]

[stephanemiroux]

Wasn’t it essentially confirmed that killing your alpha would not cure your werewolfism?

[skodasforge]

Yeah but Derek told Scott that ‘legend’ to manipulate Scott into helping him kill Peter. Funny how Derek being the reason he ‘failed’ was left out though

[princeescaluswords]

You know what’s really interesting?

1.  For “And then I failed to kill the person I meant to kill to become human again,“  Scott really didn’t actually try to do that, did he?  Aside from beg the person who told him that was the only way to be human again not to kill Peter.  He didn’t try to tackle Derek.  He didn’t push Derek off Peter and then try to slash his throat himself.  He didn’t try to kill Peter in Season 2, or Season 3, or Season 4, or even Season 6.   If saying “I will kill you” is equivalent to killing someone, Derek murdered Scott in episode 2 and Stiles murdered half the cast. 

2.  “Failed to get killed the person I plotted to.“  Nowhere in any script or any broadcast scene was it stated or implied that the intent of switching out the mountain ash pills was to kill Gerard.  Scott didn’t say it.  Derek didn’t say it.   No one said it!    The idea that the mountain ash pills didn’t work they were intended to work is entirely the idea of fandom.   The fandom decided it was an attempt to kill Gerard which failed instead of an it actually being an attempt to prevent Gerard from becoming a werewolf and an alpha, which worked.  

3.  “ But managed to get massive amounts of people killed through my unwillingness to kill actual villains.”   Which actual villains did he fail to kill that resulted in lots of people dying?   Peter?   Gerard?  (Wait a minute, I thought killing Gerard was a bad thing.  I’m confused now!)   Deucalion?   Which villain did Scott fail to kill that resulted in lots of people dying.   Or is Jackson a villain now rather than a victim!

4.  Those damn teenagers!   How dare Scott want people to like him and do things like achieve distinction athletically!   Except –

“Scott: What’s the point? It’s just a stupid title. And I could practically smell the jealousy in there.”

But the point is, of course, that Scott should have kissed White Hale Ass as quickly as possible, since that’s the only true measure of heroism.

[11ismyfavorite5ever]

I’m honestly convinced at this point most of the people spouting this just read fanfic and didn’t watch the show.  It has to be.  IT HAS TO BE.

[princeescaluswords]

Empathy and Restraint

@co-superman​ and @11ismyfavorite5ever​ I decided to split this off to a new post to talk about your concerns.   Once a post gets as long as that one does, it becomes hard to read and hard to answer.  

My friend, @liliaeth​, yesterday brought to me an argument about ‘Scott’s selfishness’ that I’ve heard before and to me illustrates the empathy gap in the Teen Wolf fandom (and by extension, other fandoms) in a very concrete way.

This criticism declares that in Restraint (2x07), Scott was incredibly selfish to want to remain with Allison while Erica was having a seizure in the next aisle of the library.  It’s used to prove that Scott is obsessed with Allison and that he only cares about what he wants.  

How does this demonstrate the empathy gap?  Didn’t Scott want to stay with Allison rather than take Erica to Derek?  Yes.  But there are certain things that the fandom forgets – or more likely erases from their collective brain – that shows how little they care for the pain Scott is put through at the hands of villains.

The length of time from when they notice the beginning of Erica’s seizure to when Scott carries her to Derek at Erica’s insistence is one minute and three seconds, from 33:27 to 34:30.  This includes a cut to black, discussion of what’s wrong with Erica, a discussion of what’s wrong with Matt, and an argument with Erica about where to take her.   Anyone with any knowledge of how to tell a story or shoot a television production will understand that the purpose of this scene wasn’t to highlight ‘Scott’s inherent selfishness’ but to illustrate how Scott’s sense of responsibility to keep people from dying in a middle of a war is taking a toll on his desired relationship with Allison – signaling the first signs of Allison’s and Scott’s eventual breakup.   It certainly wasn’t meant to demonstrate his obsession with Allison, as the result of this scene was that he left her alone to wait for an ambulance to help a girl who had threatened Allison at least twice.

Here’s some other things that the fandom simply forgets in this scene.

Scott has reason to be afraid for Allison.  Kanima-Jackson had just written a threat on a chalkboard in the creepiest way imaginable: “Stay out of my way or I’ll kill all of you.”   Jackson is free and nearby, and Scott knows he’s being controlled by a master.   

Scott has reason to be afraid for Allison, specifically.  They were literally in detention because Scott walked in on Kanima-Jackson attacking Allison in the boy’s locker-room in a highly-sexualized manner.   

Scott has reason to be afraid that this will damage his relationship to Allison.  The production had made Scott keenly aware, from being stabbed by Gerard, being choked by Chris, being threatened by Victoria immediately before this scene, and being warned by Allison about not getting caught between them, that taking Erica and leaving Allison alone in a dangerous situation could be seen as choosing a side that’s not Allison’s!  

But Erica is having a seizure!   Fandom forgets that Scott has plenty of reasons not to give a damn about Erica’s health problems.   

Scott saved Erica from a previous dangerous seizure, only for her to join with Derek and become his murder beta.  Why should Scott think that she would be grateful this time?

Erica struck his best friend with a part from Stiles’s own jeep and left him in a dumpster.   Why should Scott take care of her now?  (Fandom always complains that Scott doesn’t notice what happens to Stiles – when it suits their purposes.)

Erica with her fellow murder beta Isaac tried to beat the shit out of Scott when all he was doing was trying to talk Boyd out of getting the Bite, all on Derek’s orders.

Erica kidnapped his best friend on Derek’s request to interrogate him, thus putting Stiles in danger from the kanima, who trapped them in the pool.

Erica with her fellow murder beta Isaac, hunted Lydia down in the school.

Erica and her entire pack tried to murder Lydia in Scott’s house.  

Erica tried to drive a wedge between Allison and Scott repeatedly for the thrill of it.

When you put all this on the table, why is less-than-a-minute hesitation a sign of absolute selfishness?   Scott’s not a deputy or a paramedic or even a high-school junior.  He knows there are cameras in the library; the production flashed to them often enough.   How many sophomores would risk expulsion or arrest to take a seizure victim … somewhere?  If the Argents were being vindictive, they could have used this to both drive a wedge between Allison and Scott (”see, they will always pack together”) or even cause legal issues for Scott – who was technically in violation of a restraining order.

As another tongue-in-cheek point, Scott left Allison alone with Matt who is evil – Stiles had just said so, and Stiles is always right, and Stiles was completely serious, as the fandom likes to remind us.  It seems it would be more callous to leave his girlfriend with someone Stiles has deemed the Bad Guy.  (but, seriously, you see how they use Stiles is always right, except when he’s not, to denigrate Scott.)

But this scene, in the end, shows that Scott is the hero, that he is compassionate, and that he is the protagonist.   He has every reason to let Erica suffer the consequences of her own decisions.  He has every reason to stay with Allison and protect her, his ally and lover, then leave her alone and help someone who most recently tried to murder another friend of his in Scott’s own house. But he didn’t. He hesitated, but in the end he did the compassionate thing, the heroic thing, and helped an enemy.

Teen Wolf fandom can turn Derek luring Scott out into the woods, breaking into his house, and concealing the existence of an alpha from him into ‘just trying to help,’ but they can’t help but consider Scott hesitating to help his enemy instead of his love interest as a sign of depravity.   They can turn Peter’s vulgar attempted manipulation of Stiles by offering him the Bite as a gesture of sincere respect, but they can’t see that Scott risked a lot in this scene to do something for someone who had proved themselves to be ungrateful.

If that’s not an empathy gap, what is?

And then there’s the idea that we can see every terrible scene that Derek, Peter, Stiles, and Theo and explain away the necessity, but there has to be a reason they can’t do this for Scott.  For example, they put every single lie, manipulation, threat, and violation from Peter in Season 1 as a form of highly specific mental illness that leaves Peter the real hero, and every single lie, manipulation, threat, and violation from Peter in Season 4 as a form of necessary judgement for Scott’s failures, but they can condemn Scott for not helping Erica fast enough.

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM.

[11ismyfavorite5ever]

[slowclapping it out]

[princeescaluswords]

Invisible Empathy Gaps

You know, as irritating as the majority of fandom can be, it can also be very, very enlightening.  Since many of the participants work from a position where they believe they can do as they please because they imagine that their actions have no real consequence, they tend to reveal things that in what they would consider a ‘real-world’ situation, they would take pains to hide.

Often, the problem when people like me talk about the phenomena of “minority pain being invisible” and “empathy gaps” is that they can seem very abstract to some people, who think it’s just about ‘liking’ someone.  They don’t want to think about racism, they want to enjoy what they want to enjoy.  But these phenomena do exist, and they can be shown.

Take Derek Hale.  Tyler Hoechlin is a very attractive white man and a fine actor, while Derek Hale as a character occupies a very popular niche in entertainment.  We frequently talk about his tragic backstory, but here’s the thing: all we know for the first ten episodes of the show is that his family died in the fire and we’re only told that.   We aren’t even shown how it was accomplished – it’s still murky even three years after the show is over – but we know bits and pieces. Sheriff Stilinski slowly puts it together that the murder victims were possible Hale arsonists.  We learn that Kate seduced and raped Derek to accomplish it.  But we don’t see even a brief scene of the fire until it’s burned into Scott’s brain in Episode 10.

Yet, that’s all that seems necessary.  Fandom instantly wanted to fold Derek to their breasts on the strength of these bits and pieces.  The point is we had no idea of the pre-fire relationship between Talia and Derek or Peter and Derek until Season 3; we have no idea of the relationship between Derek and Laura ever.  But the sympathy was immediate and overwhelming.  The cry goes: Derek Hale deserves nice things!

Compare that to fandom’s response to what Scott goes through in Season 1.  We watch the horror on his face as claws grow out of his fingers in the bathtub.  We watch him wake up in the middle of the woods with no idea how he got there and then chased by a deformed monstrosity.   We watch him struggle with the idea that he might have killed Allison and then he might have killed Garrison in the third episode.  We watch him pinned to the gymnasium floor by Peter in Night School.  We watch him writhing on the ground while memories of being burned alive get stuffed into his head.  We watch him coughing up black blood, dying in the middle of the woods.  We watch him see Allison, the girl he loves, react in horror to his transformation.

And what does fandom respond with?  He’s stubborn.  He’s sexually obsessed.  He should be grateful for the Bite.   Unlike Derek, we’re not told what happened to him; we see it happening before our very eyes.  The fandom’s reaction to the first season is finding the nearest white boy with which to sympathize: compare their reaction to Scott being exposed to their reaction to Stiles scared in the McCall Hallway after the moon-crazed werewolf he just taunted screams at him.

Empathy gap?  What empathy gap?

And it’s not just once.  Let’s take Season 5.   

By that season, Scott has been criticized thoroughly by the fandom to the point of nausea about his willingness to give people like Jackson and Deucalion second chances.  He’s been scolded for not dealing with Allison’s dark phase correctly and not executing Gerard on sight.  He’s been mocked for trying to save everyone and failing and castigated for getting others to do his killing for him (which he never did).  He counts Derek – who beat him, manipulated him, and lied to him repeatedly – as a mentor and a brother; he has hope for Peter; he trusts the mercenary Braeden; and he doesn’t share fandom’s racist distrust of Deaton.  But the moment Stiles is overwhelmed by fear that his self-defense killing of Donovan will be answered by his losing Scott’s friendship, the fandom went into a paroxysm of tear-laden empathy, even though we never ever saw Scott hate someone before, even to the people who threatened his family and tortured him.

No one criticized Stiles for letting his emotions overwhelm his common sense, no one put him to blame for not telling just Scott or anyone.   They recognized the power of the event and the way Stiles was handling it as a product of previous trauma (mostly the death of Claudia and the nogitsune possession).

And yet, at the exact same time, Scott mishandled the imbalance between Kira and her inner fox spirit.  Unlike Stiles’s hallucinatory possibilities, we actually see Kira’s fox spirit attempt to execute a downed opponent, operate independently of Kira, and speak through Kira’s mouth (because Kira doesn’t know Japanese).  Of course, Scott remembers being tortured and losing Allison at the hands of a fox wearing a loved one’s face.  Scott (and the audience) isn’t dealing with an imagined scenario.  It’s actually happened before and happening before our eyes.  

But the fandom literally believed that Scott concealing his fears from Kira (and the fox spirit inside of her) was a terribly shitty thing to do, even while Stiles was busy lying to the entire pack at the same time.   

Empathy gap?  What empathy gap?

The fandom demonstrably heightens their sympathy toward white male characters while simultaneously dismissing or just missing sympathy toward minority characters.   Talia and Laura have been painted as suspect in order to heighten sympathy for Derek and/or Peter even though there is scant information that they did anything wrong (Talia was supposedly a tyrant though no one even hints at that; Laura neglected and abandoned Peter even though Peter never even suggests it).   The Sheriff’s fraught relationship with alcohol has been turned into child neglect, child abuse, and outright alcoholism even though Stiles rejected that idea explicitly.  There’s not a single scene which even implies that Stiles had to take care of himself in the aftermath of his mother’s death.  

But when we have an actual alcoholic who literally confesses to endangering his child with his drinking and literally confesses to child abandonment and we see demonstrations of his neglect on the screen (”I’ll send a follow-up e-mail”), fandom falls all over itself to downplay that into a one-time event not worthy of sympathy.  

We can put that into the same category as Boyd’s sister Alicia or what happened between Mr. Tate and Malia that she ended up in Eichen House or Braeden’s post-murder-attempt relationship with Deucalion as things in which the fandom … just … seems … uninterested.   As compared to, say, the burning question of who is Liam’s mom?

There’s a reason that people try to make the point that audiences tend to downplay and erase minority pain, sometimes to such a degree that you forget it actually happened.

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM.

[uskoral]

It is a bit weird to start a post accusing other of lacking empathy by saying that being told that someone lost his family in a fire isn’t a good reason to feel empathy if we didn’t see it.

But I’ll accept that premise for the sake of the argument. So since we cannot use the death of his family to feel empathy for Derek, lets see if there is anything that is shown in the show, that could evoke empathy.

Laura is murdered. We are shown how Scott and Stiles are looking for the other half of her body, and how they eventually unearth the upper half. I think having his sister murdered could be a valid reason to feel empathy for Derek now?

Derek is shot with a poisoned bullet, and left with 48 hours before he dies. Him slowly succumbing to the wolfsbane poison takes up about half of an episode, so it is definitly shown. Again slowly dying (rotting in the words of stiles) from a poison seems to be a good reason to feel empathy.

Derek is then impaled through his chest by the alpha, vomits blood and collapses, while the camera is pointed straight at him - so it clearly fullfills the “shown on the show” criteria. While he eventually recovers thanks to being a werewolf it still seems possible to feel empathy for this since it is probably quite painful.

Then Derek is captured by Kate (the person who burned his family), imprisoned for days, electrocuted and sexually assaulted by Kate. Again this is shown on the show, and seems a pretty good reason to feel empathy for him.

Now interstingly you completely forgot to mention any of this in your post. Reading it alone without watching the show one could believe that after loosing his family three years ago everything went fine for Derek and nothing bad happened to him since then.

In fact if you compare just what is shown, you will find that Derek and Scott suffer pretty similar attacks. Both are shot with poisoned wolfsbane bullets and almost die form the poisoning, both are repeatedly attacked by the Argents, and both are assaulted and injured by the alpha.

Which brings me to your closing statement where you are wondering why some people would minimise the pain of one to such an extent that they apparently forget about it. That is a good question and I would be interested to see why you forgot about all of Dereks pain that was shown.

I for my part have no problem remembering the pain of both Scott and Derek.

[princeescaluswords]

You know what the funny part of this is?  I didn’t say one word about Derek not deserving empathy.  I didn’t say one word about Derek not having a rough life. My entire post was about how fandom can look at Derek’s life and say “He’s been through so much.  I feel so much for him.” and then turn around and look at what Scott’s been through and say “he’s stubborn and ungrateful.”

Thank you for proving my point.  I talk about how people minimize Scott’s pain and you turn around and say “But Derek tho …”

I didn’t go into any depth on Derek’s pain because I wasn’t talking about Derek’s pain!   There’s no need to look hard through the Teen Wolf fandom to see people mourning how much things that Derek goes through.   There are endless gifsets of him staring sadly off through rainy windows.  There are thousands of stories on AO3 where Derek Hale gets help for his trouble or when he leaves to find himself or, most often, Stiles saves him with his pure love.   

I’ve seldom seen someone criticize Derek for being so selfish as to single-mindedly focus on helping Scott.  I’ve never seen someone criticize Derek for being afraid of Kate Argent.  But to remind you once again, I wasn’t talking about whether Derek deserves empathy.  In fact I talk about how fantastic Derek’s story was, a lot.   In this post and in this post, for example, and in many other posts, I talk about Derek’s story and Derek’s rise to reclaim his mother’s legacy.  Instead, I was talking about how people just ignore Scott’s pain in order to make him the bad guy or to at least make him unimportant.   The way you just did.  

Here are some free lessons for you since you decided to come on my post with very useful nonsense:

1. You can have empathy for more than one person.  

You can spend your entire fandom experience chronicling the pain and sadness of any number of white characters without pretending that a minority character didn’t experience anything traumatic.   You can cry over Derek Hale living alone in his burned-out shell of his family home without pretending that Scott wasn’t terrorized and assaulted in the woods outside his neighborhood, in his school, in his own home, in his sleep.  

2. Empathy isn’t a competition.

There’s not a national ranking of empathy.  You can feel bad for someone whose house burned down while at the same time feeling bad for someone suffering from a toothache.  It is a pretension of fandom that the pain and suffering a character undergoes determines their value as people or the validity of their positions, which has been called the Trauma Olympics.

3. Recognizing Scott’s role as hero-protagonist doesn’t prevent you from having empathy for Derek’s or Stiles’s or even freaking Peter’s suffering.   Recognizing Scott’s suffering doesn’t prevent you from enjoying another character more.

This is the reductive and racist nature of fandom at work.  If part of Scott’s journey as hero-protagonist requires him to be in conflict with Peter or Derek or even Stiles, it doesn’t require you to negate what Peter or Derek or Stiles went through to support Scott, but fandom acts like it does.  Not surprisingly, however, they don’t do this with anyone else.   Stiles despises Peter, works against him, and openly scorns him, and no one jumps up and down and says that Stiles is a bad, bad, bad person for not recognizing what Peter went through.  Derek despises Peter, works against him, openly scorns him, beats him up for the sole purpose of feeling better, even to the point of refusing to use anesthetic when sewing on his finger, yet people can still feel empathy for Derek and Peter at the same time.   Peter abandons Derek to his death, plots to kill Stiles, refuses to help Stiles without being paid, sits out fights where he doesn’t have a personal stake, and no one believes that you can’t feel empathy for all of them.

But let Scott accidentally hang up on Stiles’ phone call, let Scott reject Derek’s leadership as flawed, let Scott consent to having Peter put in a mental institution after Peter helps Kate Argent turn Scott into a berserker and then try to kill him (and Liam and Stiles), and the fandom’s first response is to make everything that happened to Scott vanish. 

BUT IT’S NOT RACISM.

[uskoral]

Yes you were talking about Derek’s pain. In fact you talked about that before even mentioning Scott. I mean if this is supposed to be about Derek don’t start by talking about him for two paragraphs?

And if you don’t want to talk about whether Derek deserves empathy, then maybe don’t criticise others for it? I mean if you say “ We aren’t even shown how it was accomplished …” “ we don’t see even a brief scene of the fire “ “ Yet, that’s all that seems necessary.” This does seem to imply that the empathy was misplaced.

Now on to your “lessons” which are quite hillarious . First you say that one can have empathy for multiple persons - yet your whole post is based on the premise that this is not possible, that if I have empathy for Derek then I must therefore have none for Scott, even though I stated that I remember the trauma and abuse that happened to both Scott and Derek. So maybe try to learn this lesson yourself?

Then you say that empathy is not a competition. Yet your entire post is about making such a competition between Scott and Derek. You seem to assume that if I felt empathy for Derek being shot with a poisoned bullet and almost dying I could I no longer feel bad for Scott being shot with a poisoned bullet and almost dying. Of course in reality it works the other way around. If I feel bad if something happens to one character I will also feel bad if it happens to another.

Finally you argue that recognising that Scott is a hero does not negate your ability to feel empathy for other characters - yet the OP was exactly about how the fact that people recognise the bad things happening to others means that they therefore cannot feel empathy for Scott. And of course you then proceed to argue that since I apparently feel empathy for Derek I must minimise Scott’s pain, and try to make it vanish (as if I could do that).

So maybe you could try to learn your own lessons, and recognize that I can indeed feel sympathy for both Scott and Derek? That it is possible for me to recognise that Scott was abused by Peter and tortured mentally and physically and still feel bad for Derek?

[princeescaluswords]

My original post did not say a single thing about not feeling bad for Derek.  Please reread it.  Nowhere does it say that people shouldn’t feel bad for Derek nowhere does it say that I don’t feel bad for Derek.  I do feel bad for Derek.

Point out where I said where you shouldn’t feel bad for Derek.  Because you can’t.   

What I said is that people don’t have any empathy for Scott at all.  They talk about how he should be grateful for the Bite. 

If you feel bad for both Derek and Scott, then good for you!  YOU WEREN’T WHO I WAS TALKING ABOUT.

[uskoral]

I already pointed out where you said this. In the third and forth paragraph. There you first minimize the hale fire because we didn’t see it and the complain that this “is all that is necessary” implying that we therefore shouldn’t feel empathy for Derek.

And if you weren’t talking about me why did you say that I proved your point? Why did you immediately assume that I don’t feel sympathy for Scott because I felt bad about Derek?

[princeescaluswords]

The third and fourth paragraph where I compared people feeling sympathy for Derek because his family died by the hands of his rapist off screen? 

Nowhere in the third  paragraph do I say that people shouldn’t feel sympathy.  I didn’t say it didn’t happen.  I pointed out that people feel sympathy for Derek without seeing it.  

Nowhere in the fourth paragraph do I say that they shouldn’t feel sympathy for Derek.  In fact, I said the empathy was “immediate and overwhelming.”  It was a set up to underline the fact that fandom reacted one way to Derek’s plight even though it wasn’t actually portrayed on the screen and ignored Scott’s plight even though it was portrayed on the screen.

As to why I said you proved my point, your first response to my post talking about how people don’t have empathy for Scott is 95% about why you have empathy for Derek.  You defend having sympathy for Derek, when that wasn’t what I was talking about in the first place!   

You do bring up that Derek and Scott share something – but you don’t talk about how there is one story in AO3 with “Scott Deserves Nice Things” and thousands of stories where Scott is scorned for being stubborn and ungrateful.  You may have empathy for Scott, but you obviously aren’t interested in talking about it, which makes me doubt it exists.

[liliaeth]

That’s the issue isn’t it. People like these see a post about Scott. One that talks about how people ignore Scott’s pain, despite seeing him suffer onscreen. And their first and only reaction is “but how dare you not focus on Derek?”

[11ismyfavorite5ever]

...the fact that people are like this, TO THIS DAY, is why I’m never actually closing this blog.  Because FFS people.

[princeescaluswords]

1/2 Something that stood out to me from your last post was the whole idea that a beta can try to overthrow an alpha if they feel the alpha is no longer worthy, and how that is such a popular fanfic trope for some incomprehensible reason. This despite the fact that the only times we've seen it in canon it was unequivocally a Bad Thing. Marco attacking Deucalion after Gerard's ambush led to Deucalion going insane, Derek killing Peter turned him into the careless, power-obsessed alpha of S2,

2/2 and then Liam attacking Scott was his worst moment on the show. I just don’t understand why fans are so keen to glorify it. Oh wait, they’re using it against Scott. Now it all makes sense. (Sorry for the long ask, I had to vent.)

Venting is fine!   Considering the show’s been over for three years, most of my posts are about venting my frustration about things that probably mean very little to anyone but me.  Yet, we’re part of a community and that requires communication.  There is no need to apologize.

Your observations are very valid.  Our fandom is remarkably comfortable with the idea of murdering those who don’t believe as they do, even though that is a belief directly opposed by the themes of the show.   I once saw a post saying “we like our werewolves to be bloodthirsty beasts, not poodles who won’t kill.”  I refrained from responding – “then perhaps you’re watching the wrong show.”   But, unsurprisingly, they do tend to focus this belief on a particular set of characters.

The show made a clear statement that executions and murder do not comprise the path to victory.  Derek’s murder of Peter in Code Breaker (1x12) was the first time the production pointed out “Here is the villain for next season!”  Now, of course, detractors would scream that Scott also wanted to kill Peter, yet I don’t consider him evil.  Scott wasn’t trying to punish Peter or usurp him; he was trying to reclaim his life, even though I truly believe that the cure was a lie that Derek used to get Scott to help him track down the alpha, just like how he hid the fact that he wasn’t the person who bit Scott to get Scott to help him track down Peter.  No matter how this is seen, it doesn’t change the fact that all of the trouble in Season 2 came from revenge killing, whether it was Peter killing Kate or Derek killing Peter.  

And then there was Marco’s assault, which was shown as vile treachery and a bad enough action to push Deucalion into pursuing a blood-soaked vision of the perfect pack.  (It’s really intriguing that the same fans who are willing to give Peter’s butchery a complete pass because he burned with his family will scream about Scott and Derek not executing the Demon Wolf who was ambushed, his pack murdered along with him, and then betrayed. Could it be because Deucalion wasn’t the least bit interested in their self-insert? I think so.) 

And then, of course, there’s Liam.  In this, the fandom and the show unite as one in their sheer embrace of violence as an expression of disapproval.  How many Thiam stories do more than skim past the idea that Liam and Theo worked together to murder Scott?  Theo certainly didn’t do it by himself.   Yet then they turn around and act as if it’s something that Scott, when he sees Liam and Theo canoodling, just has to get over.   After all, if Scott were a better alpha, Liam wouldn’t have had to beat him to death.  (And yes, that’s not a grammatical error.  Liam bears just as much responsibility for that as Theo does.)  

Now, of course, my detractors are going to come back with the fact that I write  Sceo works, and my defense is that, unlike the freaking show, I prioritize Scott’s feelings in this scenario as the victim.  Victims get to say if they forgive their victimizers or not.   The show neglected this by having Liam focus his non-apology entirely on making himself feel better.  (Jeff Davis missed one of the key parts about apologies – they’re about the person hurt, not the person doing the hurting).  You know why I can say this?  Because while Liam was beating his breast over “I feel like I have to do more than just apologize,” he never once bothered to ask if Scott was, like, feeling okay or not.  He was so fixated on crafting an apology in order to be able to live with himself, he forgot that there was another person involved.

But most of the fandom doesn’t act as if Liam has anything for which he has to apologize.  No matter how obvious the show made it that Liam was being nudged to kill Scott by Theo, the fact that Liam felt Scott was incompetent was enough.  There’s no fan fiction about consequences for Liam’s mistake, no endless supply of opinions about what Liam deserved for believing Theo over Scott.  Compare that with the consequences envisioned for Scott’s mistake in believing that his paranoid, violent, best friend was lying to him right after he caught him in another lie.   

Are you surprised?  You shouldn’t be.  The fandom has long directed violence towards Scott without remorse.   Derek is given a pass for his assault on Scott in Co-Captain (1x10), in Ice-Pick (2x03), and in Venomous (2x05), because Scott ‘deserved’ it, but Scott is condemned to figurative Judecca, the circle of hell for those who betrayed their benefactors, for grabbing him by the neck and forcing him to Bite Gerard – an act which saved Derek’s life – and was forced at kanima point.  

So why not double down in fandom content?  If an alpha – even an eighteen-year-old alpha who was dragged into being both a werewolf and an alpha – is incompetent, whack him!   (No one argues that Scott should have butchered Derek for his flops, and so many argue that Peter should be an alpha again, even after he repeatedly got his ass kicked by a bunch of teenagers. Liam is going to be a great alpha, especially after he broke Kira’s sword in order to get Theo to tell him that … hey, Nazis are bad.)  In this fandom, justified violent overthrow is reserved solely for the Latino protagonist/hero.   Derek, Peter, Liam, Stiles can hurt Scott as much as they want, because you know, he deserves it.

But it’s not racism.

[a-lil-bi-furious]

This reply is a bit of a branch off from this post, because in your discussion of fandom’s romanticization of betas violently overthrowing alphas, you talked about something I think is really big. You and the person who sent the original message brought up Liam’s attempted murder of Scott and the way it was dismissed. I want to talk more about that. And I want to talk more about Scott in the fallout. Forgive me if this post doesn’t flow quite right or if it’s too off topic. I’m not quite used to engaging in discourse, but I have thoughts. 

I think about the Season 5A finale all the time. I think about how Scott was abandoned by his friends, torn to shreds by Liam–his beta,which we know carries a child-parent bond, and murdered in cold blood by Theo, and then nothing came of it. We saw the violence, and then we saw Melissa bring him back to life in a miracle resurrection, and then we saw Scott’s best friend assault him directly after. We saw an almost apology from Liam to Scott, in which Liam insists a spoken apology isn’t enough, and Scott points out “You haven’t even done that yet.” And even after that, he doesn’t (at least not on screen). And we’re expected to believe that everything is somehow okay. Because of who Scott is as a person–always putting others before himself–I suspect he buries any kind of resentment and hurt caused by these events, because he doesn’t feel he’s allowed to have space for himself. He feels he has to worry about the others first. Always. And that’s a hefty burden to carry, especially considering just how much trauma this kid has experienced over the years. Eventually, all of that is going to bubble up to the surface. And this pattern of internalizing trauma with a general lack of care for himself or asking for help would ultimately be catastrophic. Scott is one of the most loving characters I’ve ever seen, and I have no doubt of his capacity for forgiveness, especially for Liam and the rest of his friends. But it’s ludicrous to me to expect that of him. You’re absolutely right. A victim decides whether or not they forgive their victimizer(s). It seems likely Scott would, given his history on the show. But I’m also convinced Scott has never been taught that he doesn’t have to forgive someone who’s hurt him even if he believes everyone deserves a chance to redeem themselves. 

I’m sure this is a controversial statement, but many of the important people in Scott’s life should have at very least acknowledged that they hurt him. I mean Derek, Stiles, and Liam. I mean Chris. I mean Theo, who owes Scott a lot more than acknowledgement, but hadn’t even mustered that. I mean Deucalion. I mean Peter, though Peter would never. I’m sure there are others I’m forgetting.  But I can’t really think of an instance where someone hurt Scott and actually acknowledged that they did and apologized. We almost got there with Liam, we almost did. And I know that apologies and forgiveness are not all verbal. But it does feel different when someone explicitly acknowledges your pain, and explicitly expresses a desire to make amends, rather than it just…happening. Scott deserves that kind of explicit validation, just like everyone else. 

On the Liam of it all: I love Liam. I do. But very little riles me up faster than expressing love or compassion toward a character, while completely dismissing their wrongdoings. Not everyone does this, but some people do. And I don’t think it’s always intentional; I think in many ways, the way society and mass media are structured conditions us to excuse behavior, rather than explore the complexities of relationships, harm, and healing. People love redemption, but don’t seem to love the nitty-gritty of the actual process. So, most of the time, redemption goes like this: Person does bad thing. Show (or other media) decides they like person. Said media states person is redeemed. Person is considered good now. We rarely see any of the process in between. We focus on the wrong pieces, and I think that’s incredibly harmful. It encourages dismissal and tends, I think, to remove attention from those a “redeemed” character hurt.

It’s egregious that there’s so little exploration of the effects of Liam nearly killing Scott. Theo manipulated Liam left and right and certainly fed into whatever Liam was feeling. But manipulation aside, IED aside, Hayden’s condition aside, super moon aside, at the end of the day no matter how you spin it it was Liam who attacked Scott. To some degree he wanted to; everything else amplified it. And that is a really big issue, for both Scott and Liam. I want an in depth exploration of Scott trying to work through what Liam’s attack means and how he feels about Liam after that betrayal. I want an in-depth exploration of Liam’s guilt over attacking Scott, and having no idea what to do about hurting him. Because, really, there’s nothing to do about it. I want Liam trying to work out why he wanted to attack Scott in the first place and struggling to figure out how much blame he’s going to assign himself. I want Scott doing what Scott does, and trying to help Liam work through the whole thing, only to realize it’s absolutely something he can’t help with, because he hasn’t worked through it himself, and he isn’t sure he’s forgiven Liam. He thinks he has, but love and forgiveness don’t always exist together, and that’s okay. I want Scott to know that’s okay. I want Mason struggling with what he saw Liam, his best friend, do to Scott. I want an explanation of how seeing Theo kill Scott cemented that distrust and fear he mentions in season 6, but seeing Liam tearing into Scott had no effect at all. I want an exploration of their friendship, and Mason working through the love he has for the Liam he grew up with and the fear he has of the Liam who nearly killed Scott, and the fact that they’re both Liam. Even knowing the effects of the moon/the shift and how it amplifies Liam’s anger, I sincerely doubt witnessing something like that would have no effect on Mason. I just feel there’s a lot to discuss here, and not just the show but a lot of fan content glossed right over it. I want a detailed exploration of this whole event and how everyone’s feeling about it, and I want that with Scott’s experience of this trauma and the healing after being the central piece. 

Hope that all made sense. And please, if I’m forgetting something or remembered something incorrectly, let me know.

[princeescaluswords]

I think you expressed your feelings very well, and I share most of them.

As I was reading your reply, I found myself nodding my head quite a bit.   A lot of your points echo what I feel as well.

I also can’t help but wonder if one of the reasons that the fandom holds so much hate for the lead, Scott McCall, is because the production purposefully downplayed the emotional cost of Scott being everyone’s punching bag in order to focus on his heroic aspects.

I mean, how many times in season 1 alone was Scott subjected to horrific things and they were simply wiped away or rendered as part of the mystery?  And it never stopped.

Compare how the production and the fandom reacted to Scott waking up in the middle of the wood in his shorts and being chased by a monstrous Peter to how they treated Stiles’s sleep-walking incident in Riddled.  They are, essentially, the same event – supernatural force takes control of you in the middle of the night and you wake up somewhere else.

Compare how the production and the fandom reacted to Stiles using those seniors to beat the snot out of Scott – so badly that he was still bleeding in detention after school – to how the production and the fandom treated Gerard beating Stiles as a message to Scott.  They were, essentially, the same event – a physical beating where all you can do is lie there and take it for the purpose of manipulation.  

Compare how the production and the fandom reacted to Scott’s transformation into a berserker and Stiles’ possession by the nogitsune.   They are, essentially, the same event – a corruption of a victim’s psyche by the intrusion of a bodiless spirit.

Compare how Liam was given time to moan and complain and whine about how rough a time he was having it since he tried to murder someone to Mason, who justified every single emotion Liam felt, to how Scott was scolded by Stiles the first time he admitted he was afraid of Liam.  

And if you look really closely, post-attempted murder Liam is not as close to Scott as pre-attempted Murder Liam.  And you have to remember who they blamed for all this – as much as the production tried to claim otherwise, the focus wasn’t on Theo’s culpability.

The production blamed Scott by having his mother, mere hours after resuscitating him with her bare hands, tell him how much he owed over people, and that Scott was the one responsible for rebuilding the pack.

Are you even surprised that this is how they handled things?

[thehollowprince]

i watched teen wolf around half a year ago, and liked it well enough. then i saw the fandom and realized it was NOT a place i wanted to be. never in my life would i have considered st*rek or st*ter as a ship, and never in my life would i even think about hating scott. i get the whole deal of disliking stiles (hes my fav but i at least know hes flawed) but why do ppl hate scott??? seriously don't know what ppl were thinking when they decided to hate scott or ship p*dophilia 😔

Your guess is as good as mine. (Re: why people seem to hate Scott) I found Scott to be everything I, and fandom in general, had been chanting for. We were all so sick of the callous Bad Boy™ who used sarcasm to mask his own pain and seemed to care little for others. For years I watched as fandom called for a hero who was kind, not out of a sense of necessity or atonement, but because that's just who the hero was.

Scott McCall was Teen Wolf's response to that call and the fandom went: "That's not what we meant!"

Scott's actually one of the few times that I loved the lead character of a show. Usually, especially in this genre, the Hero is an insufferable bastard who does his good deeds for the sake of a girl, so Scott was a refreshing change.

As for Stiles... I recognized early on that I wasn't going to love this character. The moment he intentionally got his father drunk back in season one I went "Nope!" It only got worse with the lacrosse balls, the bullies and then the dog bowl. He was much more likeable as the show went on, but this particular group of fans were determined to shove him down everyone's throats, whether they liked him or not. They don't seem to realize that them trying to make everything about him might have turned some people off of the character.

At this point, though, all these years later, I've accepted that they're never going to give Scott any of the respect his role on the show should have afforded him. At this point, I'd just settle for them to stay in their own lane and leave us alone to appreciate Scott McCall.

I mean, who could look at this face and hate him?

[princeescaluswords]

Uhm, Obviously

In a criticism of one of my posts, someone wrote “and see how they bring Scott into the discussion …”

That’s because the show’s about Scott.  There’s not a single plot line in the show that doesn’t mean something to him or doesn’t affect his relationship with another character.  When a character doesn’t interact with Scott or is off doing something else that will ultimately not affect Scott, they’re not mentioned.  Parts of fandom complained about the production not mentioning Jackson or Isaac or Peter or Derek or Gerard or Kira or Stiles, and that’s because what they were doing in England or France or Eichen House or South America or at the FBI or in New Mexico had nothing to do with the lead of the show.

And that’s not a bad thing, especially when the show is called Teen Wolf.  Common sense implies .

Parts of the fandom can natter on about ‘ensembles’ all they want, but in the end there wasn’t a single plot line that didn’t affect or wasn’t affected by Scott, so when I write Teen Wolf meta, well, I’m writing about Scott.   I know that’s disappointing for people who wanted to strip a Latino lead of his importance, but … you can’t win everything.

[princeescaluswords]

Funny when fandom racists will admit Scott's plans were right but like. Don't realize it. Scott had *been* saying ppl needed to trust each other + work together, despite what stans claim about him being stubborn. But stans want Scott to bow to Derek and submit, thus the ideal white led pack can rise victorious. Ignoring that Derek's toxic behavior wouldn't have worked out the way Scott's plan did. So it's amusing seeing them say Scott was wrong yet fic pushes it as right but has a yt face

It is just another manifestation of an incredulous’ fandom failure to grasp that the white character wasn’t going to be the hero/protagonist.   They watched this scene from Wolf Moon, the pilot:

SCOTT: Just out of curiosity, which halfof the body are we looking for? 

STILES: Huh. I didn’t even think aboutthat. 

SCOTT: And what if whoever killed the girlis still out here? 

STILES: Also something I didn’t thinkabout. 

SCOTT: Comforting to know you’ve plannedthis out with your usual attentionto detail.

And what did they draw from that?  That Stiles is the Planner.  If the White Boy is the Planner, then that lazy Latino can’t have plans.  

What did they draw from the conversation in The Tell?  Aside from the fact that the entire conversation between Harris and Melissa was supposed to make you think that Harris was the alpha, there’s an emphasis that Scott’s behavior is abnormal – not that he’s always been and will always be a bad student.  And then there is this phrase:

COACH: Stiles.  Great Kid.  Zero Ability to Focus.   Super smart.  Never takes advantage of his talents.

Coach goes onto to talk about Stiles writing an essay about the history of circumcision on his economics test.  That’s not a passing grade. They have the Sheriff look disappointed. 

And what did fandom draw from that?  That Stiles is a Flawless Super Mega Genius.  If the White boy is Smart, then that uneducated Latino can’t be.  

You see they kept trying to look for reasons that Stiles should be the hero/protagonist, but couldn’t find any, even as the show tried to argue that even though this is Scott’s story, Scott and Stiles were a team.  That did not compute to most of fandom.

That’s why you get an unrelenting emphasis on Scott’s minor mistakes as disqualifying, and story after story where characters like Peter and Derek and Deucalion talk about how much better Stiles would be than Scott as a wolf, even though Derek never even contemplated asking Stiles to take the Bite and Peter was desperate to get Scott into his pack in Season 1.  

There’s nothing that underlines the fandom’s obsession with making Stiles more than Scott then one hilarious story – popular and among many – where Deucalion doesn’t care about  Scott at all.  He’s after Stiles!  Why?  To quote – and this is verbatim:  “I’ve seen your grade point average.”

I know, I can’t stop giggling either.  

Scott thwarted Peter, he thwarted Derek, he thwarted Gerard, he kept leading his pack against the villains for six seasons, and that’s intolerable to them.  Even though the show took every conceivable chance – even to the point of throwing Scott under the bus several times – to show that Stiles was important and necessary, the production didn’t make the story completely about the White Boy and so fandom is going to do it for them.

[princeescaluswords]

If You Don’t Know By Now ...

You know, if there’s an argument that I just don’t want to engage in with the Teen Wolf Fandom, it’s the idea that “how were we supposed to know that Scott was Latino?”

I know I’m not being fair.  These poor children, after eight years in the fandom, have no clue at all that Scott McCall was supposed to be Latino.   They completely missed his mother’s maiden name, Isaac Lahey’s jokes about loving Mexican, the whole iconography of Season 4, where Scott triumphs over his oppressors in Mexico, among others.  Outside of the show, they missed the nomination of Scott McCall for an Imagen award and the fact that Tyler Posey is Latino himself.  These poor clueless waifs were completely unaware.  /sarcasm

But you know what they didn’t miss?   They didn’t miss painting Scott McCall with every single stereotype of Latinos in United States culture.  Read any discussion at all on the way United States culture portrays Latinos and then come back to this check list.  

Sex-obsessed:  How can they deny that they applied the ‘Latin Lover’ stereotype to Scott?  How many times have they criticized Scott for wanting to be with and protect his girlfriend, who is a wonderful human being and in just as much danger as any other character?   But they don’t put it that way, do they?   They talk about how he ditches Stiles for Allison (which he didn’t do), how he doesn’t think of anyone but Allison (which he didn’t do), how he has his ‘head jammed up in Allison’s nethers’ (which he didn’t do).  How many times did he almost lose Allison because he kept werewolf secrets?  Why did he lose Allison because he got involved in the Hale/Argent War in Season 2 when he didn’t have to?  And then they criticize him for moving on to Kira (after being broken up with Allison for six months) and then Malia (after being apart from Kira for ten months).   Yet they continually criticize him for being girl-crazy.  Check. 

Passionately Out of Control:  How many times have they portrayed his relationship with Derek and Peter as one or irrational anger, as if he didn’t have the right to be upset with either of them.  How many times have they had someone cluck their tongue because they couldn’t understand why Scott hates Derek no matter how many times Derek tries to help him?  (As if manipulating Scott into trying to kill his uncle is helping him?  As if stepping on his throat is helping him?)  How many times is he scolded by fandom for treating repeated mental and physical violation at the hands of Peter as a bad thing rather than the blessing he should take it as?  How many times have they tried to argue that Scott had poor control compared to others (when that wasn’t true?).  Check.

Stubborn Machismo:  You don’t think they’ve tried to evoke the idea that Scott doesn’t listen to anyone else when he makes decisions?  Even though he often asked for advice from Deaton, Derek (after Season 2), Stiles?   I can list the number of times he listened to them and took his advice, but sometimes he didn’t, because sometimes they gave bad advice.  And from that, they paint him as an egotistical tyrant who doesn’t care about anything but his own morals, who is obsessed with making everyone do what he wanted even though he never actually made anyone who wasn’t a blood-soaked villain do anything.  Check.  

Uneducated and lazy:  Do I even need to point to the reams and reams of derision from the fandom about Stupid Scott?   Do I need to point to instance after instance where he’s portrayed as not interested in school and the only reason he’s passing is because Stiles forces him to study?  Take any random St*r*k fanwork and you’ll probably find “Scott was failing X classes because he was staring at the back of Allison’s/Kira’s/Malia’s/Isaac’s head or he was fixating on lacrosse.”  This is something they completely made up.  Check.  

The idea that Stiles stans and the St*r*k fandom didn’t know that Scott was supposed to be Latino but managed to paint him with all the most popular Latino stereotypes anyway is disingenuous bullshit.   It’s ass-covering nonsense, and I’m going to give it the consideration and respect such arguments deserve.

[bigskydreaming]

This fandom seriously is completely incapable of letting a single Scott-centric moment or character dynamic or plot from the show stay focused on him. Every. Single. One. Gets repurposed and made about Stiles.

And it wouldn’t be so exhausting to watch if not for the fact that everyone STILL insists that the reason they love Stiles is because he’s so much more interesting than Scott, that Scott’s so boring.

Umm.

If Stiles is so much more interesting than Scott and Scott’s so boring - why are there actual literal hundreds of fics out there with the basic premise ‘what if it were Stiles that was bitten by Peter’ or ‘what if both Scott and Stiles were bitten’? And like get this….they’re not even about events playing out wildly different because Stiles reacts to situations differently than Scott did on the show, tons of them are just straight rewrites of the episodes just with Stiles’ contributions now involving werewolf strength or senses. So….

Why are there just as many fics out there (if not more) about Stiles’ relationship with Melissa than with his own father? Or even better, Stiles’ antagonism with Agent McCall (because lmao, Scott’s relationship with his dad is so non-antagonistic, they’re pretty boring tbh).

Why is Sterek a rewrite of Scott’s S1 dynamic with Derek, only with more incoherent flailing and the Sheriff getting in the way of their one true love with his overprotective inability to Understand?

Why are Stiles’ dynamics with Isaac and Liam in fanfic written as overprotective and nurting and supportive like Scott is with them and with none of the callousness or insults Stiles shows them in nine out of ten scenes with them? (LOL, Stiles being concerned about Liam this last episode was notable specifically because most of the time he’s usually just telling Liam to stop talking or stop having a mental disorder or stop inconveniencing him by having been bitten without asking for it).

If Stiles is so superior to Scott as a character just the way he is, why do so many fics need to make him the ‘human alpha’ to replace Scott as leader of the pack and make him the center of all pack dynamics instead of Scott?

Why are there so many hurt/comfort fics about Stiles getting hurt or tortured or victimized in the EXACT ways Scott has been on the show? Seriously, we’ve got Stiles targeted by hunters, Stiles tortured by the Calaveras, Stiles kidnapped by Kate, Stiles the biggest bounty on the deadpool, Stiles blackmailed by Gerard, the Alpha Pack came for Stiles, Peter wants to kill Stiles….gosh, it’s not like there are actual canon scenes of all those things happening to Scott to work with lol.

If Scott is so stupid and so boring, why do so many fics have Stiles be the one to come up with the EXACT plan or idea Scott came up with on the show?

If Scott’s so bland and boring because he lets all the villains go and is never willing to kill, why are there so many fics where Stiles is the one all these villains go after instead of Scott…but get this…he never kills them either, he redeems them and they start dating lol but oh no Scott, why don’t you ever kill anyone, you’re the worst. LOL where are all these fics where Stiles and Derek ruthlessly kill their enemies because its for the good of the pack, no seriously, I might actually read those?

And now there are fics where Stiles is the one to bring the pack all back together instead of sitting on his ass moping like he did in canon while Scott spurred him and everyone else into action. And so of course it’s inevitable that Scott’s big damn hero moment in the last episode becomes about all their classmates knowing and appreciating now all the things that Stiles has done to protect them lol why the fuck was I ever expecting otherwise.

LOL the only things specific to Stiles that ever seem to come up in fanfic are his relationship with Scott, his relationship with Lydia (which still has never progressed past platonic except for occasional hints of mutual romantic interest), his Spark or Emissary status (which was completely extrapolated from one episode out of 80 by fandom), and his possession by the nogitsune (which is done and over with and has been affirmed multiple times by both Davis and O’Brien to be a thing that is not going to be resurrected on the show).

As far as all the actual canon traits and storylines Stiles has on the show go, the things that supposedly make him so vastly more interesting and exciting and compelling than Scott…..where are all the fics about his relationship with his canon girlfriend Malia? Where are all the fics that focus on the fact that he’s repeatedly TURNED DOWN the bite, from Peter, from Scott? Where are all the fics that focus on the fact that he’s chosen NOT to go to Deaton to ask for druid training because he prefers to hone his human skills of detecting like his father (bonus points for ACTUALLY SHOWING Stiles detecting shit in a fic, instead of like handwaving so Stiles figured something out and everyone was appropriately awed, but plz don’t ask for specifics, k, on with the story thx)? Where are all the fics that focus on his relationship with his mother - not as some super witch or emissary or magical being that makes him Vastly More Special Than Everyone Else but simply as a sick woman whose senseless illness and subsequent death dramatically shaped his childhood and the person he’s become? Where are all the fics that show Stiles dealing with tension with his own father because of the secrets he keeps instead of trading insults with his best friend’s dad?

I mean.

I guess what I’m really asking, fandom -

If Scott’s so boring and bland and uninteresting…WHY DO YOU WANT STILES TO BE HIM SO BAD?

[eightsenses]

[alexenglish]

#literally no one deserves this boy #honestly #scott ‘i get that’ mccall #who has seen enough that he understands why an adult man would want to shoot a teenage boy #but still believes in the good in people #to such an impossible degree #that he’s not scared that he actually will #fucking light me on fire #bc it’d be less painful than watching this beautiful boy #wide eyes and broken heart just fuck me UP #scott mccall defense squad #always and forever (via flaminghobgoblins)

[anamelesstraveler]

#he is so PRETTY and GOOD #UGH #look at him just BLINKING and smiling at this man who could undoubtedly kill him #and who is still thinking about doing it #scott mccall is so brave it hurts my heart #but i worry about him #i worry about this boy who looks into the face of death and smiles at it #i worry that he doesn’t protect himself enough #that he is too willing to roll headfirst into peril #to let himself be torn to pieces #because he thinks it’s his job #sometimes scott mccall and derek hale are so similar it upsets me #scott learned a lot of good things from derek #but this #this lack of self regard #might not be one of them (via shiftsideways)

[solvola]

#no other scene has better encapsulated why I love Scott McCall so much #and why i hate chris argent just as much if not more #and he never fucking apologized for any of this shit\ #they just went on to be trusted allies #no #fuck that #you do not get to tell a sixteen year old kid you want to shoot him #because you’re angry about things that were not his fault #your wife was not his fault chris #SHE chose to try and MURDER him #SHE chose to kill herself #Allison was not his fault #falling in LOVE with someone #and that someone falling in love with you #is not something that should ever be considered someone’s FAULT #they were kids #in love #there was never any blame to be had there #‘your world decimated mine’ #that line was such fucking bullshit #fuck you chris #you’re the one who chose to enter that world in the first place #you’re the one that dragged your family into it with you #scott is the one who never had a choice about entering that world #YOU made choices #HE was a victim #how dare you tell yourself that HIS world decimated YOURS #you were a grownass adult #you were ALWAYS a grown ass adult on this show #own your fucking choices

[skodasforge]

White Villain: Today, on the way home from massacring an entire village, I saw a puppy and I…. didn’t kick it…. I wanted to…. but for some reason…. I didn’t.

Fandom: THERE’S STILL GOOD IN HIM!!!! REDEMPTION ARC HERE WE COME!

Hero of color: Today, I saw a puppy that had been hit by a car, poor thing. I know first aid, so I felt obligated to help. It’s leg was broken so I fashioned a splint out of some old boards and the shirt of my back before I took him to a Vet clinic for further care.

Fandom: …..So what you’re saying is that A VETERINARIAN WASN’T THERE WHEN YOU PERFORMED THE SPLINT? Don’t you know that if you do a splint wrong the bone might heal wrong if you don’t have a Vet check it at the earliest possible time? I know that’s what you did but imagine if you hadn’t! What a fucking idiot. How can anyone like this character?

[skodasforge]

Theres a different version of this post circulating but it’s one with a comment from a TERF so I’m begging you to reblog the Original Post

[bigskydreaming]

For people who weren’t in Teen Wolf fandom and think Ced’s exaggerating for humor with his post….he’s really, really not. The puppy example he cited was the subject of a meta post one of TW fandom’s Big Name Fans went into depth on as proof of what a horrible human being Scott McCall is, with that post getting like, thousands of notes and circulating widely.

Sometimes, I imagine I can still hear the words “As a vet owner, I would have had Scott stoned at dawn for that.” 

[brydeswhale]

Oh god, yeah, that meta was just… bizarre.

[princeescaluswords]

THAT META WAS JUST BIZARRE?  

I’m only partially kidding.  How do you pick just one?  Scott as Colonizer;  Liam is actually a born wolf and Scott didn’t bite him (even though we watched it on screen); Stiles is the Key Sacrifice; Scott is actually a werelion; Stiles worked with Derek over the summer between season two and three; Deaton plotted against the Hales and turned Scott into an alpha to control the Nemeton; the Mirror World; the Final Battle will be Stiles destroying Scott for his crimes; etc.

And the most grimly hilarious thing about this is that they never, ever said they were wrong.  They just pretend they exist in a parallel dimension where their clues still have validity after being disproven by things on the screen.  

At least she-who-must-not-be-named acknowledged that she was the source of the ‘stoned at dawn’ quote.

[brydeswhale]

…

I didn’t actually see most of these.

…

Scott is a WERELION?

[bigskydreaming]

Yeah, but only when he’s a Nazi. Y’know, on account of how that one villain who was an actual Nazi werelion complimented Scott once and said they were totally the same.

[princeescaluswords]

Fandom saying Derek was "right" in how he treated his betas yet straight up, fanon!Derek is basically canon!Scott in personality and method of leadership, so they're admitting they liked Scott's nurturing ways but preferred it for Derek. Stans trynna balance the hyper aggressive military unit interpretation of "pack" with "gruff but with a heart of gold pack papa Derek" who organizes "pack nights" and tucks his betas in. And uphold it as irrefutable canon

Parts of the fandom will never understand the message/theme of Season 2, because the fandom only recognizes tropes supporting their agenda and miss the storytelling tool that explains the entire conclusion of Master Plan.

The primary villains of Season 2 were Gerard Argent and Derek Hale.  What Scott did in the closing minutes of Master Plan was to, as Shakespeare put it and that’s valid considering the number of times Shakespeare is quoted, hoist them on their own petard, i.e. to be punished in a way similar to their crime.

(To give an example from another story, one of the best instances of this is the fate of Director Krennic in Rogue One.  After spending the entire film scheming to get the Death Star built and demanding acknowledgment for its construction, he is destroyed by his own creation.)

It’s almost too easy to show how this works.  In season 2, Gerard Argent has not a particularly bad reason to do what he does: he has terminal cancer and he wants to live.  Yet, he’s the villain because he thinks that what he needs outweighs all the other lives over which he has power.  He abuses his family code, he pushes the suicide of his daughter-in-law, he betrays his own son, he tortures teenagers, he attempts to murder teenagers, he kidnaps teenagers, and he manipulates his granddaughter for his own ends.  It doesn’t matter how understandable his reason is, he’s a  monster and a villain.

In Season 2, Derek Hale has not a particularly bad reason to do what he does: he wants to survive by rebuilding the pack and family that were taken from him.  Yet, just like Gerard, he’s the villain, because he thinks that his need outweighs all the other lives over which he has power.  He lures Isaac to accept the Bite in order to give the beta the strength to face his abusive father, and then breaks Isaac’s arm when Isaac complains about something.  He seduces Erica to accept the Bite and then tosses her to the ground when she kisses him and uses her sexuality as a weapon.  He promises Boyd friends and then runs his pack like a military unit, screaming and chaining and withholding information.  He outright abandons Jackson to death after giving him the Bite, and then tries to kill him when that decision comes back to haunt him.  He tries to bully Scott into joining his pack to the point of physically injuring him in Ice Pick.  He tries to execute Lydia based on an old wives tale.  Yes, he does save Scott in Raving, but his crime isn’t that he hates Scott.  His crime is that he abuses his alpha powers throughout the season to get what he wants..  

Yes – they’re not villains in the same way, but they are both villains.  

What happens to them in the closing scene of Master Plan is a defeat delivered by the protagonist, when he turns their own crimes against them.  This is embodied in two lines that Scott utters, “You may be an alpha, but you’re not mine,” and “Everyone said that Gerard has a plan, but I had a plan, too,” and two actions that Scott takes: replacing the cancer medication with mountain ash and forcing Derek to bite Gerard.  

Note, that both actions were forced upon Scott.  Scott didn’t think up his plan to neutralize Gerard when he saw  the elderly Argent cut that omega in half.  He thought up his plan after Gerard gutted him with a knife after pretending to be fooled, after watching Gerard have Jackson strangle his mother, after watching Gerard force Jackson to kill himself, and after watching Gerard have Jackson put his claws at Allison’s throat.   Scott didn’t decide to acquiesce to Gerard’s demand that he use Derek (even though he had taken steps to insure it wouldn’t work) until after Derek had him beat up, slashed him, and stepped on his neck when he tried to talk Boyd out of taking the Bite (and Boyd had already been bitten), until after Derek had used Isaac and Erica twice as his attack dogs, after Derek had tried to execute an innocent girl, until after Derek admitted that he kept information from people, until after Derek lied to him again about a cure for Jackson, only to reveal he was going to kill him anyway.  

Gerard was defeated by what he wanted, by what he had schemed and planned to get – the Bite, when the protagonist made sure his own plan would turn against him.  Derek was forced to Bite Gerard because he had been abusing the Bite all season.  The Bite is a gift, not a recruitment tool.  Pack is family, not an instrument of war.  This is the poetic justice delivered at the hands of the protagonist to the villains of Season Two.  

[liliaeth]

vi-maxwell-blog

Na, I mean I don’t hate Scott, but ignoring everyone to be with a girl? Come on !! Everyone hated  Bella for doing the same thing!! And the super big tantrum because Derek killed Peter….and the list goes on and on…. neither Stiles or any other character were perfect, but my biggest problem is with Scott, I never connected with him…

          vi-maxwell-blog

Or Allison for that matter ….they were so plain, so simple….so cliché.  But the rest of the crew….dear good I loved them.

See here’s where you’re wrong

Scott never ignored everyone to be with a girl. Despite fandom’s repeated attempts to claim he did, Scott not once, not a single time on the entire show, ditched Stiles, or an important urgent event,  to be with Allison.

It did not actually happen in canon.

Scott did ditch Allison to be with Stiles (see Night school, when Scott actually had a standing appointment with Allison that he ditched to go with Stiles and Derek to the school to call out the Alpha), but never the other way around.

Whereas on the other hand, Stiles did ditch Scott to be with Lydia or Heather in actual canon.

Scott is allowed to not pick up his phone while on a date with Allison, especially since as far as he knew, nothing urgent was going on, and Stiles was supposed to be in school. There was no urgency in that situation, despite Stiles whining for Scott’s attention, and Stiles inability to wait till Scott had the time to pick up his phone.

The only other time where Scott did not pick up his phone while Stiles called him, was in Abomination, when Scott and Allison were breaking into Gerard’s vault to get important information on the kanima. Once again, not just ‘ignoring everyone to be with a girl’. If Scott had spent time talking to stiles, Gerard could have caught them, and based on what they knew about Gerard, Scott would have been in immediate danger. (considering that at the end of that episode Gerard tortured Scott by stabbing him in full sight of everyone and threatened Scott’s mother, Scott is perfectly entitled to be worried about the guy) Stiles was supposed to be somewhere safe, it’s not like Scott knew that Derek had Stiles kidnapped. And yet despite that, the second Scott and Allison got into the safe and realized the info wasn’t there, Scott made his excuses and left, getting there in time to go save Stiles and Derek… so once again NOT ignoring everyone to be with a girl.

As for Scotts ‘super big tantrum’? Seriously? Scott said one line about that, after Derek betrayed him. They made a deal. Scott would help Derek kill the Alpha, in exchange for a chance at the cure.

This after Derek had already betrayed him to Peter in co-captain, as Derek stood by and let Peter violate and mindrape Scott. Remember that scene?

Or how Scott had to stop Derek, who betrayed him, from murdering Jackson, and yet despite that, still had hope that Derek wasn’t a bad guy like Peter, was still willing to go save Derek, when Kate had captured him.

This while Stiles threw Derek under the bus, hid that he knew Derek had taken Scott’s phone so Scott could find him, and basically left Derek to die.

Based on what Derek did to Scott, on Derek’s betrayal of Scott, Scott was pretty damn calm and reasonable in his reaction.

Scott was unique, a rare character who chose peaceful solutions over violence, who was rarely reckless, and generally held back his friends from making stupid mistakes.

It’s rare to have a protagonist who is the heart of the group, whose primary trait is kindness and concern for others. Allison was interesting, because they took the Buffy trope, and then imagined what she’d be like if she wasn’t the protagonist, same for Derek, who is a cliché broody dark anti hero with tragic past, but who is subverted by being a secondary character and a foil to Scott.

Scott fascinates me, because he represses so much of his pain. Because especially as the show moves on, he rarely if ever lashes out at others, and where pain makes him kinder rather than cruel.

Characters like Scott, are rare and unique, especially with how the show let him grow and mature as the show moved on, without ever making him lose his core kindness.

[princeescaluswords]

You have to remember when someone says “ignoring everything to be with a girl“ like the OP does that they don’t believe that Scott should be counted as a victim in Season 1 (and they’re allowing racist attitudes to seep in).  They see Scott as a voluntary participant, so he has a responsibility to act in the interest of everyone (and the white people particularly).

What exactly is Scott ignoring?  Stopping Peter’s murder spree?  Derek’s quest to find his sister’s killer?  Bring Kate Argent to justice? Stiles getting his chance with Lydia?   How are any of those things his responsibility?

That’s all I can think of, because Scott certainly didn’t ignore trying to bring himself under control.  He didn’t ignore trying to make sure he wasn’t accidentally killing anyone.

The expectation was that Scott would place the wants and needs of everyone else above his own.  The expectation was that Scott would, at the age of sixteen, believe he was required to fight monsters and solve crimes.  

He didn’t want that.   He wanted to play lacrosse, go to school, and date Allison.  He wanted a normal life.   But these monsters dragged him into this war and then hated that he refused to play by their rules.  Because, ultimately, he did get involved and he solved the issue, but he resisted at first because, like most victims, he didn’t ask for this.

The racism is pretty clear there as well.  You notice that when people like the OP are complaining about Scott trying to focus on winning Allison, no one complains about Stiles focusing on Lydia and using his best friends werewolf powers to see if the gets a chance.   When they complain about Scott skipping a day to spend in the woods with Allison, they don’t complain about Stiles thinking about making out with a drugged up Lydia in the middle of investigation.  When they complain about Scott’s “tantrum,” they don’t complain about the times Stiles tried to get Derek killed.  Stiles gets to be a Teenager; Scott gets to be a Soldier.

The expectation was that the Latino would place what the white people thought was important first, and he didn’t do that, so he’s obsessed with girls (as in the Latino stereotype), he’s stupid (as in the Latino stereotype), and he’s violently emotional (as in the Latino stereotype).  When white characters act similarly, that’s relatable, and that’s their privileged.

[liliaeth]

They also never seem to realize that demanding of Scott that he had a duty to help Derek to stop the Alpha, is basically the equivalent of telling a rape victim after he reported the crime, that he’s supposed to go actively look for his rapist, and that in favor of doing so, he’s supposed to ignore everything in his own life.

That he’s not allowed to focus on his recovery, on continuing his life, going to school, focusing on his schoolwork, starting a relationship…

All he’s allowed to do is to let people risk his life and use him as bait for the rapist still stalking him (as Peter was doing)

Because what Peter did to Scott, alter his body against his wishes, terrorizing him, stalking him, invading his mind and trying to force him to kill people… none of that matters to these people. It’s why they ignore that the scene didn’t stop at Scott reacting to Jackson’s juice comments, ignoring that Scott had more important things on his head than Jackson’s suspicion about steroids.

[camelotpark]

Small Spaces

When another anon is offended that I talk about the racism in the Teen Wolf fandom I’m going to send them here.

This is a post (an old one) that I reblogged and that others who agreed with the sentiment did also. The post talks about both Scott and Stiles and how fandom treats their collective childhoods. It talks about the struggles that Scott, who is effectively being raised by a single mother, deals with and how it relates to the OP’s own experience. It talks about the trials and tribulations that comes with seeing how hard your parent works and not wanting to burden them with your problems. It finishes by saying that although one tragedy is easier to understand (In this case Stiles’ childhood) It doesn’t make the other one lesser for it (Scott’s childhood)  

The post is talking about equality. Both Stiles and Scott are victims of circumstance and one doesn’t negate the power of the other.

This is a post that was reblogged by antis who had an issue with it.

What was one of those issues?

The problem is always that Scott stans insist that Scott has to be doing harder or has to be more special in all ways than any other character on the show

Nowhere in that post or the replies to it does it state that Scott’s tragedy was more important than anyone else’s. Just that it wasn’t less so.

Last week I posted a reply to an anon that followed this same logic.

 That calling Scott a victim of child abuse meant I was robbing other characters of the abuse they survived. I was making Scott the biggest victim when that was never the case.

It once again fed into this racist ideology that putting a poc on equal footing as a white person robs that white person of something. There are only so many people that can fit the victim motif and if I add Scott that knocks others out.

I’m going to leave this hear. It’s a good read.

It talks of the notion that when you are used to always having something, seeing it spread to other people you may not like or identify with it feels like a robbery.

White characters, especially white male characters, have been given a sympathetic view since the dawn of entertainment media. They were some of the first people we were allowed to identify with even when you couldn’t relate to them at all.

They didn’t look like me and certainly didn’t have my experience, but for many like me, it was that or nothing. It’s what makes this twisting of the original post so revolting.

It’s shifting the conversation from what it is to something it never was.  Suddenly it’s not talking about Scott being treated equally in terms of understanding their broken childhood. It’s now about his fans wanting him to be the only one talked about. It’s a way to never acknowledge the problem the OP laid out in the first place, but instead, chastise her and it’s supporters for agreeing with it at all.

There was no way these people who crawled into this post saw it any other than by stalking blogs of people they know they have fundamental disagreements with. 

Who don’t believe in the things they say so they, in turn, make that fandom space a little smaller for them. Invade just a little bit more.

They didn’t stumble upon this post randomly on the dash.  It didn’t show up in the tags at the same time I reblogged it after so long.

They sought it out and was shown it to do exactly what they did.

Delegitimize any of Scott’s experience in regards to what he’s suffered at the hands of others or through situations out of his control.

They constantly deny him that unless he is a victim of his own making.

When his best friend physically assaulted him it was because the friend was angry and Scott betrayed him by not believing him and trusting someone else.

When two grown men mentally violated him it was because Scott had said something awful to them so he had to see why what he said was hurtful and that was only done by assaulting him.

And when they can’t outright blame him, like when his alcoholic father hurt him while drunk and arguing with his mother, it simply was an accident. A one-off thing that shouldn’t be considered abuse on the scale of Stiles, Derek, or Isaac. Those were real cases. Scott’s wasn’t.

Although Rafael McCall did not become an alcoholic overnight and as a lot of kids of alcoholics will tell you the abuse is far more than physical. 

That physical though?  That physical was Scott being pushed down the stairs so hard it dented it and he was knocked unconscious. It was something so awful that it was finally enough to have Melissa kick Rafael out and eventually have him disappear from their lives for years. 

Yet they still don’t see abuse and they don’t see Scott as a “real victim” of it.

That is how insidious the racism in Teen Wolf fandom, and fandoms as a whole, is. They refuse to allow Scott to be seen as anything but at fault for nearly everything that happens to him. 

Now they can say race has nothing to do with it, and they may even believe it, but it’s not true.

Not when Scott McCall is who he is and is and looks how he looks.

Constantly robbed of his chance to not only have the things he’s been through validated, but also to show that he is a survivor of them too.

Just like Stiles

Just like Derek

When Scott is the one you have an issue with it’s not us wanting to have Scott be the  one “doing harder”

It’s you not wanting him in a space you never thought he was allowed to be in at all. 

Trauma is not white.

Abuse is not white.

The survival of it is not white.

And no matter how much you craft it to be it won’t make it so.

[princeescaluswords]

My Doom is Master Plan

You know … I’ve just lost it.  I have hit the bottom of the fandom barrel and I’ve stopped bouncing back.   We’ve reached ‘fire everything’ levels of exasperation.

Sometimes, when I read some egregious piece of rancid garbage I step back and I say to myself – “What are you trying to accomplish by taking them on?”  And frequently, I’ve pulled myself back, but you know what …

Seven Years.  It’s been seven years, and people are still acting like Scott having a fail-safe in place to defeat Gerard, which was only triggered when Gerard forced Scott to make Derek bite him is on the same moral plane as the Manson Murders.  

This morning I read a story where an author, wearing a Stiles’ mask, said that Scott did not actually poison Gerard to protect his mother or to save Derek, he did it because of his ego and his desire to keep his hands cleans – that a sixteen-year-old boy should have used a gun or ripped out Gerard’s throat with his claws in a preemptive strike, and that by not doing it preemptively was corruption and ‘boundary crossing.’    

Boundary crossing.  From a st*r*k shipper.  Priceless.

I mean, they may have a point.  What do you have to say about a character who would cross boundaries to protect the ones they love?   How could you ever root for a character who would, for an example, inflict physical pain on their best friend to punish him for letting his father get hurt or another character who beats, intimidates, and lies to a victim of an assault in order to find the murderer of his sister?  

Just in case some loser misses the point of my above sarcasm, it’s the height of freaking bullshit when Derek stans and st*r*k shippers rail on Scott for doing what he thought he had to do to protect his mother (while saving the life of everyone in that room).   They defend Derek stalking Scott, lying to Scott, hurting Scott because Derek was ‘just doing what he had to in order to find Laura’s killer, and, after all, it was for Scott’s own good!   They defend Stiles torturing Scott with lacrosse balls, and putting Scott and three seniors in danger because he was pissed off that the Sheriff got hurt while Scott was absent from his unannounced, unpaid bodyguard gig.  

It’s bullshit.  It’s racism.  They have no problem with Stiles killing Donovan, lying about it to everyone, and using the “He was going to kill my Dad!” as a perfectly valid defense.  That’s okay, because Stiles was helpless before Donovan!   But when the freaking show showed time and time again how dangerous Gerard was – or did you forget the fucking knife-gut-torture scene? – it doesn’t matter, because Scott should have just got a revolver and gunned down Gerard – as if murdering someone were easy, as if he wouldn’t risk jail time – rather than inconvenience the white alpha asshole who has been running around for the last two months, trying to beat Scott into submission, withholding information, dragging other teenagers into a war, and trying to murder innocents.

I’m done being reasonable.  Screw them.

[camelotpark]

It’s almost as if humanity is afforded to some people and denied to others. 

Empathy and care will shade every action, good or bad, that a white man does. 

Yet it will forever be denied to someone who isn’t white. 

What has been said about Derek Hale:  That’s how they keep order. I actually like that Derek has that undertone of barely repressed violence to him.

because that’s what a wolf is

Do you think for one second that Scott would be defended in the same way if once fighting off the betas that Derek sent after him Scott snuck into Derek’s room, incapacitated him (like Derek had done at the ice rink), and told him that if Derek ever tried that again he’d kill him? You know, like Derek had also done in the first season when he broke into Scott’s house and threatened to murder him if he didn’t do what he said?

This fandom rails against Scott for having Derek bite Geard, but when talks of Derek and Peter stalking a 16-year-old boy to the showers. Cornering him in a towel and mentally violating him comes up its crickets, well they were upset at a mean thing Scott said, or “It didn’t actually happen because Scott made it up. You see the way the scene is lit?” There is no end to their justification to defend white men’s violence against Scott, none at all. To deny him even the most basic of humanity when it’s their favorites causing his pain.

And if you ever doubt their commitment to it. 

Rafael was a drunk, but canon says it was an accident. Melissa thinks it was, and Rafael says that’s how he remembers it, so no, there’s no evidence at all that it was intentional or that there was a pattern of abuse occurring

Said about a 10-year-old Scott nearly killed by his angry alcoholic father when arguing with Scott’s mother.  Hey, an angry drunk was yelling at his wife and knocked his son down the stairs so hard it dented the floor, but it was once and it was an accident.

What’s that? Living with an alcoholic parent can be traumatic and abusive in, and of, itself? 

Sure, if you got the right skin color.

[liliaeth]

Or how they act as if Scott just trying to talk to Boyd, to talk him out of accepting he bite is somehow ‘taking away Boyd’s free will’, but Peter controlling Scott in his sleep and trying to make him kill with him is aok…

[bigskydreaming]

Also, friendly reminder that Scott was never this wide-eyed naive innocent fandom likes to paint him as.

He grew up with an angry alcoholic father who abandoned him and his mother years ago.

He grew up with a physical illness that impaired his ability to be the athlete he wanted to be, so much so that even his closest friend expressed doubt rather than support when he talked about how he was going to make the team.

He grew up so acutely aware of financial stresses that he went back into the woods to the very spot where he was just attacked by a vicious monster the night before, because he couldn’t afford to lose an inhaler that cost $80.

He grew up so aware of his place in the social hierarchy of high school and the capacity of his classmates to be assholes that he didn’t even blink, let alone protest when Jackson shoves him into the lockers in the iconic ‘where are you getting your juice’ scene.

The world sucks and people can be awful was never a revelation to Scott McCall. It was never a reality he needed to be protected from, that he could be protected from. It takes strength to be aware of the world, of your life sucking, and managing to still be optimistic anyway, choosing to still smile, and make dumb jokes, and have dreams and ambitions and try to always see the best in people.

Stop stripping Scott McCall of his strength pre-pilot just because you can’t conceive of a character who knows the world can be awful and still finds a way to be happy and optimistic and hopeful.

Death to the myth that jaded = strength, that anything else can only mean someone hasn’t seen enough or struggled enough to know that jaded is the only appropriate path forward.