This is a place to deposit the meta of Athenadark. All her meta will be reblogged here as a convenient place to find it. Don't like - don't read. Disagree - feel free to comment
You know, Burke, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.
ALIENS (1986) dir. James Cameron
Do you ever feel bad for the amount of time you spent saying Scott would be replaced by Stiles as the main character of the show and making bizarre accusations about his character unrelated to the story on screen?
no, not really
mostly because when I make a statement I back my shit up, and well, if anything I gave Scott too much credit
considering, having seen the movie, he's a loser who lives with the same boss he had as a kid fixating on the glories of high school and needs a teenage girlfriend so they won't realise the shitshow his adult life it - I think we both know who won that argument
Another thing I wanted to ask was what do you thing of the use of claustrophobia in teen wolf?
Of course the only openly claustrophobic character is Isaac but it seems as though themes as "being trapped" are used often: Stiles or Peter being locked inside themselves (by the Nogitsune or the coma), Malia being trapped in coyote shape, the schoolnight, the kidnapping, the siege, etc... Maybe Stiles' symbolic revolving around keys and doors is also hugely symptomatic of that fear (he's the one that ends up being the most trapped whether it's in a room or outside reality, in a nightmare, situation, etc). He's also the one handling mountain ash the most (ultimate trapping device).
Then there's the lingering question of repressing the beast (trapped inside like for Scott) or releasing it (s1 Peter) which is illustrated with the bank vault debacle.
And of course with the question of small opressive spaces broadens to the idea of open and huge oppressives spaces: Erica talks about vertigo (which appears more than once), you talked about the bodies of water, there's the woods that seems almost always mainly unknown and to be discovered, there's the white space in which Stiles is during the Void, etc...
(and there's Stiles shitty understanding of spaces and how he keeps bumping in thing but that's something else)
I thought it was an interesting subject and I wondered what you had to say about it since you seem to have a huge grasp of cinematic symbolism, of the horror genre and a precise analysis of teen wolf
i am avoiding writing my fic again, just finishing this cup of tea [black tea with peach and passionfruit, yum] before vanishing back into the void
and you're right - it's not interesting it's fascinating
and absolutely something that should be explored, because the fears of claustrophobia and vertigo are linked to the concept of void, as is water [dark water in teen wolf is ... water is bad, lets leave it at that because it's a huge thing.
Void is absence but also the presence of emptiness - it is by its nature paradoxical, space is a thing but it is defined by the fact that there is nothing there- arent definitions fun
so Erica's vertigo could be an exhalation of Void which we know was messing with the town since the 40's at least, but probably early, was the creature that possessed Rhys an avatar of void or do we call it that when it's probably the creature from Outlast instead. The possession of Rhys does not match the hallmarks in canon of a nogitsune possession [interstingly the thing in the movie DOES - leading me to suggest in the meta discord about how it might be allison's nogitsune and explaining why it was fascinated with scott and wanted revenge on him when the stiles possession used him like a lunchbox and dropped him like trash]
right let's use an easy example - sandra bullock in gravity, imagine the vertigo of that - there is NOTHING in every direction, if the world goes spinning are you spinning or is it a trick of the mind....
but claustrophobia is the absence of space - it is the mind taking away the space around itself in the same way that vertigo is the increase of space
i hope I'm making sense but basically vertigo and claustrophobia become inverted mirrors of each other because of Void
are these phobia manipulated by a creature that feeds on fear?
Stiles' fear of drowning is .... for a long time the meta pack were saying we think Stiles' mom tried to kill him [from 306 onwards in fact] and she might follow the line of La Llorona because of Stiles' association with both water and drowning
as a rule in teen wolf still water = death, unless stiles is there, I'm summarising a lot of work there, running water = corruption unless stiles is there
stiles is the qualifier - Scott is an outlier [most patterns exclude him] but Stiles changes the game without even intending to - characters find themselves revealing great secrets to him, Argent voices his doubts, the chemist revealed his great plan [and do you think Stiles popped his head unknowingly or did mctall shoot him?], Stiles can break mountain ash with a wave of his hand, Stiles makes and breaks doorways, he is a creature of transitional spaces [a huge deal in the is stiles something argument], and his phobia is the opposite of void's two machinations - like the literal opposite, you are both adrift and surrounded - the water is both crushing and holding you up away from the bottom, it is neither vertigo [you[re supported] or claustrophobia [you're not enclosed]
so here's the question - did void possess stiles because he was powerful or because he had no power over him
every power that stiles showcased as void he used when he was not possessed and he is linked to the nemeton - and when void first took stiles he tried to kill him
I mostly agree with you analysis of the two forces of the Nogitsune and Void but I don't see the possession in the same way AT ALL. And for me that's the Teen wolf Rashomon effect: we all saw a really different serie.
For me, and it especially struck me the first time I saw it, Teen Wolf's subject, the main topic is mental health and trauma responses especially dissociation and derealization (especially with all the dream sequences the constant confusion with reality).
For example, Jackson displays textbook avoidant attachment disorder (also called dismissive) and his whole arc revolves around it. Very shortly, he's seemingly independent and sure of himself but concretely he's unable of sharing intimacy and of being vulnerable and his self confidence is in reality fickle. The fact that the scene where he heals he is naked (vulnerability) is telling. This is a disorder over-represented in orphan too.
Except Scott all the main characters deal trauma each in their own fucked up way. Peter is obsessed with control and power after having been completely stripped of both. Derek struggles to let anyone in and express his emotions, he desires intimacy and partnership but fears it deeply and is so unable to answer his beta's need(we could say it's a disorganized attachment style which while being technically true it develops in early childhood and we don't know of Derek's childhood so it must be an equivalent linked to Kate's abuse). He hurts himself to stay in control, lives through the pain and the anger basically is a hot mess and his healing goes through confronting both his childhood self and abuser.
Scott is the only one in the show that does not suffer heavy mental issue. Lydia has a fugue state, Alison tries to kill people, Malia lands in Eichen House, Isaac has severe panic attacks, etc... And I think that's why he's the main character, it may be due to his self centredness or to the fact that he is one of the only character whose self worth is internally defined (sure he represses his wolf and anger and all but he doesn't do so to please others, he's capable of being proud and satisfied of himself through his own criteriums while all the others are dependant of each others).
The most obvious character struggling with mental health is Stiles and yet he's CONSTANTLY overlooked in that matter (by other characters and the fandom). Of course he has ADHD, that's canon (I think) but that's not enough to explain his struggle (and ADHD especially in the teenager and adult can be considered more as a symptom than a cause). He shows many signs of mixed anxiety-depressive disorder which wikipedia defines mainly through:
"A dysphoric mood is chronic or recurring for a minimum of four weeks and has at least four of the following symptoms: troubles concentrating or with memory, disturbed sleep, tiredness or lack of energy, feeling irritable, worrying, crying easily, enhanced sensory state, expecting the worst, feeling hopeless or pessimistic, or having low self-esteem/feeling worthless."
Or at least anxiety disorder in which falls I believe the fear of drowning or social anxiety, they are not there by themselves they are here because of his generalized anxiety (the fear of drowning doesn't appear before Matt shares his story, not even when he's stuck neck deep in water carrying Derek). He's also insecure in his relations and suffers low self esteem. He expresses (subtextually) suicide ideations more than once or at the very least the appeal of death and its final "relief". People and characters especially explains Stiles' struggles by the Nogitsune/Void when in reality he struggles before and after it, it wasn't all planted evidences to throw them off track.
I've always seen the Nogitsune/Void as a form of decompensation
(ie. a breakdown in an individual's defense mechanisms, resulting in progressive loss of normal functioning or worsening of psychiatric symptoms.) it's a worsening of symptoms that are already there accompanied with confusion and loss of contact with reality (he doesn't if his dreaming or awake) so dissociation, specifically depersonalization/derealization disorder for the loss of reality sense but also dissociative amnesia (ie fugue state). Dissociative disorders are deeply linked to PTSD (though they can be caused by stuff like decompensation too). It's a way to protect your mind from something it simply cannot deal with (so it is both deeply negative but also can be seen as a desperate move of self-protection by the subconscious as can appear the Nogitsune which can be seen as an embodiment of Stiles' struggle).
So does the possession targets him because he's mentally weak and barely functioning already or does he trigger the possession by breaking down? (all the other character possessed are dead) The sacrifice they commit to the nemeton and the "darkness around the heart" is something that Scott and Alisson are able to live with and conceal while Stiles is hypersensitive to it and it leads him to decompensate because "too much is unbearable" and it destroys his balance and doing so his defence. Stiles is ALWAYS shown as unstable, he rumbles, has trouble concentrating, controlling his emotions on the contrary he reacts quickly and shows signs of mood swings, his emotion from the beginning constantly overtake him (a borderline Stiles would be arguable but someone this young can't be diagnosed with BPD anyway). He is constantly "scattered" when other are "anchored"
And by the way nearly all teen wolf characters show signs of dissociative episode at one point or another (whether its fugue state, derealization, lack of emotions in highly emotional moment, or even hallucination, etc)
That's my first reading of teen wolf and I was really baffled at first that people didn't see the same thing AT ALL as me^^" but some saw it as an horror serie, some as a teenage drama or even romance so I'm really not the only one to be confused in interpretation
Often it's easier to explain something using another piece of media and I'm going to do that and it's going to be a weird un but one I've used before
in the first chronicles of thomas covenant there are three possessing figures called the Ravers, and what they do is what Void does, and I do think understanding the ravers helps understand Void, because for all that they are creatures of evil they don't do necessarily evil things, they do cruel things, but not evil per se
they do the things you imagine doing but never would. They don't make you do what you wouldn't ordinarily do, but those flashfire moments when you picture it. Like say you're driving and some asshole cuts you off, for a moment you fantasise about driving him off the road - you'd never do it, but in that moment you pictured it, not even consdiered it, but it crossed your mind.
The raver would make you do it and rub in the "I only did what you wanted" excuse, as i said, cruel but not necessarily evil
the nogitsune [the one that possesses the yakuza, Noshiko and probably Allison in 3b] basically turtle up, they surround themselves with people that will protect them, and act in that way, noshiko unleashes the oni because void would happily kill her and kira [and kira might have been created only to destroy void] but void, void is like the ravers, it does what you fantasise about but never do
it blows up the hospital that took Stiles' mom, it blows up the station that keeps his dad away from him, it throws derek around bodily, it does what Stiles has fantasised about, even killing Allison the idea probably crossed his mind = but these are things he would never do
now i do think davis definitely read those books but void is all of stiles wicked thoughts, thoughts he'd never act on, but then it smiles at him and goes "but this is what you wanted"
Another thing I wanted to ask was what do you thing of the use of claustrophobia in teen wolf?
Of course the only openly claustrophobic character is Isaac but it seems as though themes as "being trapped" are used often: Stiles or Peter being locked inside themselves (by the Nogitsune or the coma), Malia being trapped in coyote shape, the schoolnight, the kidnapping, the siege, etc... Maybe Stiles' symbolic revolving around keys and doors is also hugely symptomatic of that fear (he's the one that ends up being the most trapped whether it's in a room or outside reality, in a nightmare, situation, etc). He's also the one handling mountain ash the most (ultimate trapping device).
Then there's the lingering question of repressing the beast (trapped inside like for Scott) or releasing it (s1 Peter) which is illustrated with the bank vault debacle.
And of course with the question of small opressive spaces broadens to the idea of open and huge oppressives spaces: Erica talks about vertigo (which appears more than once), you talked about the bodies of water, there's the woods that seems almost always mainly unknown and to be discovered, there's the white space in which Stiles is during the Void, etc...
(and there's Stiles shitty understanding of spaces and how he keeps bumping in thing but that's something else)
I thought it was an interesting subject and I wondered what you had to say about it since you seem to have a huge grasp of cinematic symbolism, of the horror genre and a precise analysis of teen wolf
i am avoiding writing my fic again, just finishing this cup of tea [black tea with peach and passionfruit, yum] before vanishing back into the void
and you're right - it's not interesting it's fascinating
and absolutely something that should be explored, because the fears of claustrophobia and vertigo are linked to the concept of void, as is water [dark water in teen wolf is ... water is bad, lets leave it at that because it's a huge thing.
Void is absence but also the presence of emptiness - it is by its nature paradoxical, space is a thing but it is defined by the fact that there is nothing there- arent definitions fun
so Erica's vertigo could be an exhalation of Void which we know was messing with the town since the 40's at least, but probably early, was the creature that possessed Rhys an avatar of void or do we call it that when it's probably the creature from Outlast instead. The possession of Rhys does not match the hallmarks in canon of a nogitsune possession [interstingly the thing in the movie DOES - leading me to suggest in the meta discord about how it might be allison's nogitsune and explaining why it was fascinated with scott and wanted revenge on him when the stiles possession used him like a lunchbox and dropped him like trash]
right let's use an easy example - sandra bullock in gravity, imagine the vertigo of that - there is NOTHING in every direction, if the world goes spinning are you spinning or is it a trick of the mind....
but claustrophobia is the absence of space - it is the mind taking away the space around itself in the same way that vertigo is the increase of space
i hope I'm making sense but basically vertigo and claustrophobia become inverted mirrors of each other because of Void
are these phobia manipulated by a creature that feeds on fear?
Stiles' fear of drowning is .... for a long time the meta pack were saying we think Stiles' mom tried to kill him [from 306 onwards in fact] and she might follow the line of La Llorona because of Stiles' association with both water and drowning
as a rule in teen wolf still water = death, unless stiles is there, I'm summarising a lot of work there, running water = corruption unless stiles is there
stiles is the qualifier - Scott is an outlier [most patterns exclude him] but Stiles changes the game without even intending to - characters find themselves revealing great secrets to him, Argent voices his doubts, the chemist revealed his great plan [and do you think Stiles popped his head unknowingly or did mctall shoot him?], Stiles can break mountain ash with a wave of his hand, Stiles makes and breaks doorways, he is a creature of transitional spaces [a huge deal in the is stiles something argument], and his phobia is the opposite of void's two machinations - like the literal opposite, you are both adrift and surrounded - the water is both crushing and holding you up away from the bottom, it is neither vertigo [you[re supported] or claustrophobia [you're not enclosed]
so here's the question - did void possess stiles because he was powerful or because he had no power over him
every power that stiles showcased as void he used when he was not possessed and he is linked to the nemeton - and when void first took stiles he tried to kill him
I mostly agree with you analysis of the two forces of the Nogitsune and Void but I don't see the possession in the same way AT ALL. And for me that's the Teen wolf Rashomon effect: we all saw a really different serie.
For me, and it especially struck me the first time I saw it, Teen Wolf's subject, the main topic is mental health and trauma responses especially dissociation and derealization (especially with all the dream sequences the constant confusion with reality).
For example, Jackson displays textbook avoidant attachment disorder (also called dismissive) and his whole arc revolves around it. Very shortly, he's seemingly independent and sure of himself but concretely he's unable of sharing intimacy and of being vulnerable and his self confidence is in reality fickle. The fact that the scene where he heals he is naked (vulnerability) is telling. This is a disorder over-represented in orphan too.
Except Scott all the main characters deal trauma each in their own fucked up way. Peter is obsessed with control and power after having been completely stripped of both. Derek struggles to let anyone in and express his emotions, he desires intimacy and partnership but fears it deeply and is so unable to answer his beta's need(we could say it's a disorganized attachment style which while being technically true it develops in early childhood and we don't know of Derek's childhood so it must be an equivalent linked to Kate's abuse). He hurts himself to stay in control, lives through the pain and the anger basically is a hot mess and his healing goes through confronting both his childhood self and abuser.
Scott is the only one in the show that does not suffer heavy mental issue. Lydia has a fugue state, Alison tries to kill people, Malia lands in Eichen House, Isaac has severe panic attacks, etc... And I think that's why he's the main character, it may be due to his self centredness or to the fact that he is one of the only character whose self worth is internally defined (sure he represses his wolf and anger and all but he doesn't do so to please others, he's capable of being proud and satisfied of himself through his own criteriums while all the others are dependant of each others).
The most obvious character struggling with mental health is Stiles and yet he's CONSTANTLY overlooked in that matter (by other characters and the fandom). Of course he has ADHD, that's canon (I think) but that's not enough to explain his struggle (and ADHD especially in the teenager and adult can be considered more as a symptom than a cause). He shows many signs of mixed anxiety-depressive disorder which wikipedia defines mainly through:
"A dysphoric mood is chronic or recurring for a minimum of four weeks and has at least four of the following symptoms: troubles concentrating or with memory, disturbed sleep, tiredness or lack of energy, feeling irritable, worrying, crying easily, enhanced sensory state, expecting the worst, feeling hopeless or pessimistic, or having low self-esteem/feeling worthless."
Or at least anxiety disorder in which falls I believe the fear of drowning or social anxiety, they are not there by themselves they are here because of his generalized anxiety (the fear of drowning doesn't appear before Matt shares his story, not even when he's stuck neck deep in water carrying Derek). He's also insecure in his relations and suffers low self esteem. He expresses (subtextually) suicide ideations more than once or at the very least the appeal of death and its final "relief". People and characters especially explains Stiles' struggles by the Nogitsune/Void when in reality he struggles before and after it, it wasn't all planted evidences to throw them off track.
I've always seen the Nogitsune/Void as a form of decompensation
(ie. a breakdown in an individual's defense mechanisms, resulting in progressive loss of normal functioning or worsening of psychiatric symptoms.) it's a worsening of symptoms that are already there accompanied with confusion and loss of contact with reality (he doesn't if his dreaming or awake) so dissociation, specifically depersonalization/derealization disorder for the loss of reality sense but also dissociative amnesia (ie fugue state). Dissociative disorders are deeply linked to PTSD (though they can be caused by stuff like decompensation too). It's a way to protect your mind from something it simply cannot deal with (so it is both deeply negative but also can be seen as a desperate move of self-protection by the subconscious as can appear the Nogitsune which can be seen as an embodiment of Stiles' struggle).
So does the possession targets him because he's mentally weak and barely functioning already or does he trigger the possession by breaking down? (all the other character possessed are dead) The sacrifice they commit to the nemeton and the "darkness around the heart" is something that Scott and Alisson are able to live with and conceal while Stiles is hypersensitive to it and it leads him to decompensate because "too much is unbearable" and it destroys his balance and doing so his defence. Stiles is ALWAYS shown as unstable, he rumbles, has trouble concentrating, controlling his emotions on the contrary he reacts quickly and shows signs of mood swings, his emotion from the beginning constantly overtake him (a borderline Stiles would be arguable but someone this young can't be diagnosed with BPD anyway). He is constantly "scattered" when other are "anchored"
And by the way nearly all teen wolf characters show signs of dissociative episode at one point or another (whether its fugue state, derealization, lack of emotions in highly emotional moment, or even hallucination, etc)
That's my first reading of teen wolf and I was really baffled at first that people didn't see the same thing AT ALL as me^^" but some saw it as an horror serie, some as a teenage drama or even romance so I'm really not the only one to be confused in interpretation
this meta was one I didn't think I had to write, but I was losing my temper with the teen wolf reddit [yes, I'm still banned for being a pedant] because to me the answer was super obvious because I understand the literary concept of liebestod and then it occurred to me how are you supposed to know what it is if no one takes the time to explain it.
So, yes, liebestod.
Literary theory steals words and uses them out of usual context to explain something complicated, then other people will use the same word to explain something similar but equally complicated and then everyone agrees on those definitions and people use the word and skate on by.
Liebestod is a great example of this because it has - 4, yep 4, basic definitions which are like a balloon over on a bigger topic.
Liebestod is for those who don't speak German a conjoined noun meaning love-death, what it means in German I don't know but in literary theory it means the following
The belief that the only successor to pure and perfect love is death
the belief that the only way to achieve a pure and perfect love is death
the belief that withou a pure and perfect love the only successor is death
the belief that without death the only successor is the pure and perfect love for the avatar of death
It's fun right, now let's expand it with examples so you can see how it works in practise
After the perfect moment the only way is down and I'll never know it again - see Othello "perdition catch my soul but I do love thee, and if I love thee not chaos is come again". That quote is the example they teach ou because after that line everything falls apart and dies. Its the most famous example so you can see why I saw it.
love is swallowed up by minutae which destroy the love itself, so imagine Romeo and Juliet as middle aged with kids and sniping at each other with spit up and his philandering because life just got in the way and that perfect love couldn't surve reality. So it is pure and perfect because they died before it happened.
Your serial killer narrative. A sociopath creates death because they have nothing else- the tv show hannibal is great for showing two sides of it, because Will Graham approeaches the same outcome from another angle
Deadpool. I swear when ever I do a hardcore literary meta I end up using deadpool as the example. Deadpool, unable to die, is in love with the avatar of death, [so is thanos] she appears to him as a female figure in a robe with a sugar skull and she manipulates him to her own advantage and knows they can never be together but she likes him better than thanos
so which one applies? Lydia is the hint but 4, absolutely 100% 4
all of the characters who have died or cannot die fixate on lydia, all of them, yep, all of the characters who fixate on Lydia die and come back. The exception character who doesn't come back [Valack] is killed by Lydia's scream, but he is seeking an escape from death
Lydia is a character who has one foot in death so you get Peter, who actively protects her from void in s3 and again in s4 [preventing her from going to Mexico], Jackson dies on the lacrosse dield, Stiles dies in the ice baths, Parrish died in Kandahar and was replaced by Garmr, Void snatches her, Jennifer is fascinated by her. The list goes on and they are all excluded by death
so if you find yourself asking "why are all these creepy people fixed on lydia"? the answer is that they're not interested in who she is - but what, they are in love with the avatar of death who happens to be Lydia.
It really is an "oh, of couse, it's liebestod", answer, they were close enough to dying that death is their pure and perfect love but that death happens to be lydia
Another thing I wanted to ask was what do you thing of the use of claustrophobia in teen wolf?
Of course the only openly claustrophobic character is Isaac but it seems as though themes as "being trapped" are used often: Stiles or Peter being locked inside themselves (by the Nogitsune or the coma), Malia being trapped in coyote shape, the schoolnight, the kidnapping, the siege, etc... Maybe Stiles' symbolic revolving around keys and doors is also hugely symptomatic of that fear (he's the one that ends up being the most trapped whether it's in a room or outside reality, in a nightmare, situation, etc). He's also the one handling mountain ash the most (ultimate trapping device).
Then there's the lingering question of repressing the beast (trapped inside like for Scott) or releasing it (s1 Peter) which is illustrated with the bank vault debacle.
And of course with the question of small opressive spaces broadens to the idea of open and huge oppressives spaces: Erica talks about vertigo (which appears more than once), you talked about the bodies of water, there's the woods that seems almost always mainly unknown and to be discovered, there's the white space in which Stiles is during the Void, etc...
(and there's Stiles shitty understanding of spaces and how he keeps bumping in thing but that's something else)
I thought it was an interesting subject and I wondered what you had to say about it since you seem to have a huge grasp of cinematic symbolism, of the horror genre and a precise analysis of teen wolf
i am avoiding writing my fic again, just finishing this cup of tea [black tea with peach and passionfruit, yum] before vanishing back into the void
and you're right - it's not interesting it's fascinating
and absolutely something that should be explored, because the fears of claustrophobia and vertigo are linked to the concept of void, as is water [dark water in teen wolf is ... water is bad, lets leave it at that because it's a huge thing.
Void is absence but also the presence of emptiness - it is by its nature paradoxical, space is a thing but it is defined by the fact that there is nothing there- arent definitions fun
so Erica's vertigo could be an exhalation of Void which we know was messing with the town since the 40's at least, but probably early, was the creature that possessed Rhys an avatar of void or do we call it that when it's probably the creature from Outlast instead. The possession of Rhys does not match the hallmarks in canon of a nogitsune possession [interstingly the thing in the movie DOES - leading me to suggest in the meta discord about how it might be allison's nogitsune and explaining why it was fascinated with scott and wanted revenge on him when the stiles possession used him like a lunchbox and dropped him like trash]
right let's use an easy example - sandra bullock in gravity, imagine the vertigo of that - there is NOTHING in every direction, if the world goes spinning are you spinning or is it a trick of the mind....
but claustrophobia is the absence of space - it is the mind taking away the space around itself in the same way that vertigo is the increase of space
i hope I'm making sense but basically vertigo and claustrophobia become inverted mirrors of each other because of Void
are these phobia manipulated by a creature that feeds on fear?
Stiles' fear of drowning is .... for a long time the meta pack were saying we think Stiles' mom tried to kill him [from 306 onwards in fact] and she might follow the line of La Llorona because of Stiles' association with both water and drowning
as a rule in teen wolf still water = death, unless stiles is there, I'm summarising a lot of work there, running water = corruption unless stiles is there
stiles is the qualifier - Scott is an outlier [most patterns exclude him] but Stiles changes the game without even intending to - characters find themselves revealing great secrets to him, Argent voices his doubts, the chemist revealed his great plan [and do you think Stiles popped his head unknowingly or did mctall shoot him?], Stiles can break mountain ash with a wave of his hand, Stiles makes and breaks doorways, he is a creature of transitional spaces [a huge deal in the is stiles something argument], and his phobia is the opposite of void's two machinations - like the literal opposite, you are both adrift and surrounded - the water is both crushing and holding you up away from the bottom, it is neither vertigo [you[re supported] or claustrophobia [you're not enclosed]
so here's the question - did void possess stiles because he was powerful or because he had no power over him
every power that stiles showcased as void he used when he was not possessed and he is linked to the nemeton - and when void first took stiles he tried to kill him
Hello! From what I gathered you are DarkAthena's meta account (i hope I'm not mistaken) and I just discovered your meta and I must say I really like it! At multiple occasions you mention symbolism and colour theory in teen wolf. I wondered if you would be willing to do a more complete summary of your understanding of it. I have a few idea of my own but I especially liked when you talked about mirror and Scott Mccall's messed up reflection of the self and I 100% agree with Stiles and transitional spaces (keys, door, etc).
Well all that to say I'd be really interested in your interpretation of Teenwolf's symbolism:)
this is a bit of a - symbolism is a huge chasm of a topic, and there are symbols we understand and ones that are clearly there but make no sense - like Chris Argent keeps showing up in scenes with frogs, ceramic frogs, frogs in a shadow box [in his office] and it's like, okay your association is frogs - but what does it mean, is it the way he flip flops on his opinions, is it a reference to the frog and the scorpion and how he is always going to be the victim ....
the thing with symbolism is you have three issues
people agree what the symbolism is and disagree what it means
people disagree what the symbolism is but agree with the final conclusion
people disagree there IS symbolism
now the color theory/symbolism primer is the result of LOTS of work that happened in the background, with people going look! and then it falling apart and worked over and ground into the dirt and still it's not definitive because it's an impossibility. Even if Davis et al sat down and laid it all out - people would still disagree with it
the primer
now most cinematic [and to an extent literary] symbolism is based on Freud, specifically Freud's dream dictionary [yes, really] and the problem is that most western writers know that symbolism, so they continue what they see etc - this is true of colour theory and was the WORST because teen wolf's colour references are reversed because the symbolic associations of godai [the five elements, each representing a season] are reversed
so if we take the basic Earth - it represents repression, claustrophia [I read the other ask, give me a moment] the keeping of secrets, the concept of compression. Like in ATLA the city that denies the war is Ba Sing Se - a city of earth benders with a huge earth wall. See how it works and that's normal. You bury things you don't want people to find so earth = hiding things, lying to keep a secret.
now in teen wolf Earth represents the opposite, the release, the revelation of secrets, rebirth, Derek's evolution is in the earth series [4] and look how much of that series takes place underground, in the vault, in la iglesia, the underpass at the school
mirrors = mirrors mean differnet things to different characters, traditionally a mirror is used to reassure that the self is correct or to tell an undeniable truth [Snow White, Nehelenia's mirrors] which applies to Stiles
they can mean a transition between places, or how those places are seen [Alice through the looking glass, or Candyman] that applies to Lydia
or they can show just how fractured a character is - the broken mirrors [a lot of slasher movies] = Scott
but add on to that the phantasmagoria sequences which were called mirror verse because often details were reversed = it's a very complicated theory that involves a lot of pointing that and that charlie day jpeg with strings and stress
Scott's symbol is shadow - which was a nightmare to work out btw, look how often he is show in shadow, he saw his beast self in a shadow etc - and when I pointed that out the wankstorm could have been seen from space = but all it means is that he has a dual nature - rather than derek who is one as a wolf and a man = werewolf, scott never reconciles
when you point them out they are super easy to go - oh yeah that makes sense, but other people might go - melissa has all those owls because she likes them,
all the way through 6a the meta pack were screaming about the yellow wallpaper and no one knew why until lydia pulled away the yellow wallpaper to reveal the door and we're like WE TOLD YOU because when you dig in and look critically you start to see patterns and those patterns go back to something famous, like how in canaan it was like event horizon- we knew EH was there, but couldn't prove it
and that's the ultimate truth
its not about what you think - but what you can prove
now if you wanna headcanon stiles as penelope from the odyssey [the fic i'm working on] you don't need proof, but if you wanna mess around with the guts of it [a good critical look is often like a dissection]
symbolism can be a nightmare, it can also be an easy step into deeper literary theory - which is what it is - we call it meta because we don't have to put it in the proper format and link a bibliography with books we pretended to read
symbolism is like - oh this appears a lot - does it mean anything
but sometimes the symbolism makes a clear point that just isn't there
derek is association with stairs - traditiionally stairs represent sex [think of old movies where characters would go upstairs, fade to black and it's obvious they had sex] up means accepting, down means rejecting, and derek doesn't even walk down stairs until season 3, he jumps - which prepresents an unwanted sexual attack
see that's solid
but Derek buried peter in the basement - gothic symbolism representing sex, specifically repressed desire [think fall of the house of usher] at the bottom of the stairs - which in symbolsim add them up and you get = Peter violently sexually abused Derek and Derek is hiding it
but there is no evidence of it whatsoever - so somewhere the symbolism as it is historically doesn't match, and it might just be that by burying peter he releases him [see the jennifer and nurse jennifer theory] from his madness and the set was too small for it to be anywhere but the bottom of the stairs
and yet people can argue that it's solid even though it's not explicitly supported, because Peter certainly encouraged the relationship with paige which ended so very badly....
symbolsim - it's a fancy word for your guess is as good as mine but at least now we've gotten past the point where the very mention of colour theory gives me eye twitches
Lots of people think the opposite of patriarchal messaging is "actually, men are bad and women are good"
When in reality, the opposite of patriarchal messaging is "there is no immutable difference between a man and a woman and no trait belongs only to one group or the other. Goodness or badness is entirely individual and not tied to gender in any meaningful way"
This is a conversation I think we should have had year ago and I think it might be responsible for one of two massive disconnects people have with the show - the other being the fact that it was on TV fucked it over because everything was hurtling towards a satisfactory conclusion when shit we need to make at least 20 more episodes happened.
But we're not talking about that.
Genre expectation is a perfectly normal thing to do. If you look at Star Wars you expect an action movie - action movies follow certain rules and mores. This means there's very little difference between a Steven Seagal film of the eighties and a Gerard Butler movie of the 2010s.
Genre is a shorthand.
If you pick up a romance novel you better get some damn romance is what I'm saying. You make an intelligent decision about how you want to be entertained.
And this is where the big but Athena starts - Teen Wolf doesn't behave like a teen supernatural drama . Of course it doesn't, it's not one, it's horror tv [which is a whole other bag of dead spiders because tv horror is about as well put together as that bag on the whole].
Teen Supernatural Drama, like Buffy, the vampire diaries, shadow hunters, even Shadow and Bone, are about the teen drama of bed hopping, not talking to each other for ridiculous reasons and "drama". Often the only thing separating them from teen dramas is that some of the boys are creatures of the night.
But Athena I hear - doesn't teen wolf do that = no, it wears the veneer of it like a skin a'la Frank Cotton.
This is where the genre expectation conversation starts.
First, lets talk about "Audition". Those of you who know "audition" will fall into two camps, da fuq and you sure about this?
"Audition" is a Japanese horror movie from the J-horror golden age of the early 2000s. It features a lot of "most disturbing movies ever" and "worst villains" lists it it genuinely deserves to be there, and the cover of the DVD is a still of a woman with a syringe and a leather apron, but it's also a genre expectation mind bender and it's perfect for this example.
The most modern film I've seen do this, and for the record "Psycho" does it, and certainly this film references it, is "X" by Ty West, except unlike "Audition" Ty West starts with the films end showing he knows it's a slasher film and making sure the audience does to. Without that opening it would be a better example, it's certainly an easier watch, and it does it knowingly and with a wink to the camera, but really "Audition" is a better example.
"Audition" flat out lies to the audience and it does it with a glee and abandon that actually makes the inevitable ending worse.
Audition by Miike Takashi, director of 13 Samurai [excellent] Ichi the Killer [also excellent but very gory] is based on a 1997 novel. A widower, giving in to pressure from people around him, agrees to meet a new romantic partner. He's busy with his job and his teenage son so he agrees to stage a phony audition for a movie to meet a girl. After interviewing several he meets Asami, a sweet quiet girl who always wears white.
Despite how he can't reach any of her references, they are missing, Shigehiko goes ahead. After several dates they go to a seaside hotel where he intends to propose. Asami reveals burn marks on her skin and demands that he love her and no one else, Shigehiko agrees but in the morning Asami is gone.
Trying to find her using her resume Shigehiko starts to find things are weird. The owner of the dance studio who trained her has prosthetic feet. The bar where she worked was abandoned following the murder and dismemberment of the owner who was found with extra body parts.
Asami goes to Shigehiko's house where she finds photos of his late wife and his son, she drugs his liquor and he hallucinates her, seeing a man in a sack missing several body parts, when he begs for food Asami vomits into a dog dish and gives him it to eat. He sees her burned by the dance instructor whose head she cuts off with a piano wire.
Collapsing from the drug Asami paralyses him and tortures him with needles because he failed to love only her. She continues repeating "kiri kiri kiri" or deeper deeper deeper. She then cuts off his foot with a wire saw. She attacks the son when he comes home. He manages to kick her down stairs where she breaks her neck and with her dying he calls the police.
Audition remains one of the films that caused a general visceral reaction from me where I tried to climb over the back of the sofa away from it. As I said it's a great film.
But its a film that for the first hour is a boring romantic drama. If you turned it on from the tv with no idea what it was you would be forgiven for thinking it was a boring romantic drama from Japan, right up until it's not.
It pretends to be a romantic drama, hitting all the beats, to make the horror hit like a brick to the face, or a wire saw to the ankle.
If I took the plot and said a widower fakes an audition to meet a girl, they get along, she finds out about the audition they break up, he makes a grand gesture and they get back together - happy ending. It is a perfectly reasonable romantic drama plot.
It USES genre expectation to make Asami's face-heel turn much more effective, sweet, quiet Asami with her hands clasped and eyes downturned doesn't seem capable of considering the violence she commits. So when she's stood there with his foot on her thigh smiling she seems like a very different character - but we've spent the last chunk of the movie knowing she's very capable.
Does this mean Teen Wolf was inspired by "Audition", I can't definitively say oh this scene is direct corrollary and shows it's defined, it's a film they've seen but it's not unique for twisting genre expectation, after all Psycho does too and that is a definite source, but it's a great example to show you how it works.
Teen Wolf does the same thing Audition. and Asami, does, lulls the audience into a false sense of security by pretending to be something it's not. It LOOKS in season one to be a supernatural drama where the drama is really the romances, and that to an extent carries over to season 3, and with Scott being a narration character - even if he does not specifically narrate - it seems to focus on that whilst atrocities happen. Not just the murders the villains commit but what is happening around the town.
Matt didn't need a murder lizard to be a creeper taking photos of Allison when she didn't know. Sexual assault is rampant. Characters genuinely get PTSD from their experiences. Violence and manipulation isn't just the remit of the villains. Even the rats in season 6 want to be anywhere but Beacon Hills. Things that would never happen in a teen supernatural drama to the main characters are often the starting point of the mains. The villains aren't posturing and distant, like the Master in Buffy in his basement doing sudoku or something, I never understood why he was scary, but instead are active, casting lingering looks, using magic to commit sexual assault, manipulating the bodies of characters for reasons.
All of these things are common in horror because horror is a genre where bad things happen.
What the dread doctors do is closer in actuality to the victims of Martyrs [New French Extremity - don't unless you have nerves of steel and a stomach to match] than it is to Valentine in Shadow Hunters.
The characters and setting of a teen supernatural drama is used to make a horror show.
And Teen Wolf is an excellent horror show. It should be mentioned that is is a low bar, horror shows are almost always terrible, American Horror Story is more interested in grotesquerie than horror, Interview with the vampire isn't about the horror but instead the drama that happens to horror monsters.
Let's take the character of Asami - would she fit better in Shadowhunters or Teen Wolf exactly as she is? - which would be a very interesting cross over and would certainly result in Scott getting prosthetic feet. The Rutger Hauer villain of the Buffy movie would have made a better teen wolf b-movie but he would stand out like a sore thumb in the show even with the mugging and scenery chewing.
And this is where the genre expectation comes back in. If you sit down to watch shadowhunters you know what you're getting, you want to see HOW they do it, you want to enjoy the silly extremes of it, and if you know are involved in the fandom etc this is how people expect Teen Wolf to behave, certainly we see it in the fic and gifsets, and certainly how it was sold, but if you watched Teen Wolf in a vacuum the chances are the dantesque descent through a Jacob's Ladder style hell into a dark industrial silent hill it makes much more sense [right up until halfway through season 5b]
If you watched it for the first time knowing it was a horror show the silliness of season 1 and 2 becomes the set up for the darker horrors of the later seasons.
But the feelings of betrayal and how the show let them down seems to be more about what people wanted the show to do and not what it does. If Hannibal Lecter moved to season 4 Beacon Hills people would be saying hello and waving, but he'd stand out like a sore thumb in Mystic Falls or Forks.
Hannibal also makes the point for me. Hannibal proudly admits what it is and glories in it, with fancy gore and camera angles. It does what it says on the tin.
Teen Wolf has a sticker someone stuck on the can, badly.
I again find myself wishing it was a book/game/comic because then it wouldnt have had to deal with the issues that tv brought it [actors leaving, suddenly finding you have to find material for more episodes when it was all neatly planned] and 6b wouldn't have happened.
6b feels more like a supernatural teen drama than any other season and it's probably why it jars so very badly.
TLDR : teen wolf is a horror show that wears the skin of a teen supernatural drama in order to blend in. and like Frank Cotton is leaking blood all over its suit and can't fit in, but as a horror the idea of the leering uncle at a kid's party it really is on point.
I suppose that I should start this meta with a disclaimer of sorts. I belong to a school of thought called the cauldron of story that presents the idea that every narrative you ever encounter in your life goes into a giant cauldron to make a sort of story stew, and with practise you can see the stories that inspired it. This isn't plagiarism because it's not the stories that are the meat and potatoes of the work but the mixture of them.
So for example Star Wars is Dune + Hidden Fortress + The hero with a hundred faces and through understanding those works allows you a peek into George Lucas' mind at the time.
Every creator is a giant melange of the narratives that they consumed, ones they liked and ones they didn't and ones they over heard of public transport.
So me shrieking about Jacob's Ladder does not imply Teen Wolf plagiarised it - it just stole from it, in the same way every creator has sticky fingers.
And to understand the teen wolf movie we need to talk about Silent Hill 2 - which creates a story cluster of it's own, if you crossed Jacob's Ladder with Blue Velvet and some other things, some of which are Japanese and I can't recognise [never having encountered them] you get Silent Hill 2.
Unfortunately Silent Hill 2 creates a sort of loop in that Blue Velvet and Jacob's Ladder also inspired Teen Wolf and so it's this sort of smear where we can say that the three of them are all inspirations but we can't say which is which. For example in 3b Scott and Allison hide in a wardrobe with louvre doors which is just like the scene in Blue Velvet where the main character sees the villain through the door of the wardrobe where he was hidden - but the same scene appears in Silent Hill 2 where James first encounters pyramid head. So which is the inspiration - I don't know. Which came first, the pyramid head or the oxygen mask?
Jacob's Ladder is incredibly intrinsic to Teen Wolf [props to weasley-detectives for the leg work on that one] and it defines bardo, and many of the monsters in Allison's narrative, for example, are lifted from that film entirely. Jacob's Ladder did not inspire Silent Hill [the first game] but it did inspire Silent Hill 2 and again they're all mashed together. In season 3, after the be a better Scott McCall program, Scott starts dressing like James Sunderland [the man character of SH2] who in turn is dressed like Jacob Singer in JL, but Scott's costuming is not the same as that of Jacob.
This blending of sources is normal and annoying, generally it is better to have sources that are distinct so you can dig better and explain one source and not two.
At first I thought the Teen Wolf movie was going to be inspired by Event Horizon because I knew it would be full of mindfuckery, and I was wrong in that it was Silent Hill2. It was a few days of picking at it before I realised that it wasn't inspired by Silent Hill2, it was what would you get if you rewrote Silent Hill 2 in Beacon Hills and then had to completely rewrite your script because you can't get the actors.
Scott's narrative is Silent Hill 2 - it's not "inspired by" it's an au but it also has a chronic misunderstanding of Silent Hill 2.
Remember how Gus Van Sant remade Psycho because he wanted to see how it worked and when he did it - it didn't work. It's like that.
In Silent Hill 2 [which is considered a masterwork and work of art in its own right, and is considered to be the very best video games have managed so far] James Sunderland recieves a letter from his dead wife asking him to meet her in Silent Hill. He finds the town abandoned and full of fog but there he meets an alternate of his wife, Mary, but sexy called Maria, a child called Laura [the sh2/twin peaks knot] a bully called Eddie, a girl called Angela who is seeking her mother, and twisted manifestations of James' own emotional turmoil - pyramid head, the sexiest version of nurses etc.
James was made impotent, both sexually and emotionally by Mary's long illness and death and the town forces him to face it. It is a purgatorial wasteland where water is seen as corrupting. This is the same as in Teen Wolf [and actually allowed us to unlock the symbolism and eventually colour theory]. The town is shrouded in fog to show how limited James' viewpoint is.
Now if we look at Scott's narrative, he returns to Beacon Hills to reunite with his dead girlfriend, finds the town almost completely abandoned, she is different and doesn't know him, and he is forced to face the one enemy that made him feel powerless and he gets the girl and the innocent child after someone else defeated the monster again.
Sound familiar.
We need to look at why Void, which the film specifically calls a nogitsune but then contradicts all the canon lore about kitsune we've ever had - but the same is true of Deputy Ishida. When Void possessed Stiles and Scott thought that the possession was quiescent he went with Stiles to Coach being shot, then the explosion at the Sheriff's station where Scott sucked up the pain of just about everyone he met, and Void revealed itself after stabbing Scott, and consumed all the pain that Scott had taken in, and he mocked Scott whilst doing it.
None of the other villains really cared about Scott, they might have paid lip service to the myth, and monologued about him doing things he hadn't, before someone else took them from the picture with Scott there posturing, but only Void made him feel small. Just like Mary's illness with James Scott was made impotent, both sexually and emotionally. Allison's death rid him of his determination that they were destined to be together - even though she had chosen someone else.
Just like Mary/Maria Allison is robbed of any autonomy. Mary is defined entirely by her illness, something she resents. Maria is Mary but sexy and resents James' fixation on Mary. Allison is the twisting of the knife to Scott, she is also the one who died on his watch and the one who he loved - and chose someone else. Brought back via the nemeton she is robbed of memory and vacillates between the image of her mother sending her after the wolves and Scott's image of her. She does not remember that she broke up with him, why she broke up with him, or any of the times he manipulated and used her. She is unaware, under the stadium, that he is still manipulating and using her. He is so set on his own affection for her - which after fifteen years will be a very different creature to what it was when he was sixteen and she was alive, that he steamrolls over her arguments and rather than bring her to her father, who she remembers and trusts, he maintains the isolation until she remembers what he wants her to remember.
Allison might as well be a ghost in the movie for all the autonomy and ability to choose that she retains. She is a weapon to be aimed, first by the nogitsune-creature that is manifested [which looks so much like the green eyed fox in The Lost Tomb (series 1, which is not the first series but is the first one chronologically] that I actually cursed out loud that I can't even watch weird Chinese tomb raiding shows without Davis having seen them too. I am actually tempted to call it the Green Eyed Fox because it even shares powers and the fly caught at the end of 3b was a housefly not a firefly - you can make a solid argument that it was Scott's view of the nogitsune, and had nothing to do with Void or an actual nogitsune and why Deputy Ishida was a 900 year old kitsune who didn't know because it allowed Scott an easy understanding of how it had oni - the weaons it used to kill Allison]
Or to simplify a lot of the details in the movie might have manifested because they were Scott's understanding of those things.
And this is where the overlap with Jacob's Ladder comes in.
In the chiropracter scene Louie explains to Jacob about Meister Eckhart, a christian theologian who explains bardo really well. To summarise after death figures appear and start to burn away the things that hold people to life, if you're nto ready to give these things up the figures seem to be demons and if you are they're benevolent angels.
Scott, and his entire plotline being about wish fulfilment and regret, feeds into this because Scott won't give these things up. He is still working for Deaton, he has done everything he can to not be a wolf except when it benefits him, but given the opportunity to bring Allison back from the dead he leaps at it without questioning anything about the plan - which Deaton does.
He fixates on Allison, not as she is, but as she was and leaps into danger convinced of his own ability to sway her to his side - because he believes he loves her.
But he doesn't love her - she's been dead for fifteen years = he LOVED her.
Silent Hill 2 is purgatorial which is a term you see thrown about a lot in media, oh this did make sense it was purgatorial, or the reason that these scenes don't gel is because it's purgatorial. Often those things aren't, they're just shitty writing. Lost for example, it being purgatory made no sense whatsoever.
Purgatory is an old Christian concept which is also called limbo. According to catholicism Purgatory is where you went when you should have gone to heaven but for some reason couldn't, for example a new born baby who wasn't baptised was tainted by original sin [you're born damned in catholicism] would go to Limbo, good people who weren't christian went to Limbo, the wives of sinners who could belonged to their husbands but didn't deserve hell went to limbo. Some catholic theologians suggested that it was possible to pass through purgatory and ascend to heaven.
It's this version of purgatory that Meister Eckhart put forward and Teen Wolf calls Bardo. It is a series of between states that allows the subject to cast aside those things that held them in place - like regret, to ascend to heaven.
Beacon Hills does seem to descend into a purgatorial wasteland, like Canaan in canon, as the show goes on and Scott re-enters it to the collapse of Oak Creek [which is weird that it went from standing proud to building graveyard in fifteen years when no one demolished it], and the first person he meets is Lydia- who has been shown to be able to travel between the worlds and has one foot in the afterlife by her nature.
Yet he cannot give up the triumphs and losses of high school. His worst enemy is one that didn't care for him when he was a kid. He gets to play lacrosse in the state championship. His teenage girlfriend comes back to life. He wants kids and how convenient the only werewolf with a kid dies saving Scott.
Scott chooses to remain trapped in the past. He cannot accept the figures stripping away those things that hold him back. Even the one thing that can lead him forward -his wolf - is denied. He is still the person he was in high school - he's just older and has a car now.
In many ways that's much more tragic than killing Derek.
The movie had some really great ideas - it's a pity that the movie ended up like that with Derek beating up the green eyed fox in a location they stole from Deadly Premonition and that is one piece of media Davis can keep to himself because life is far too short to play Deadly Premonition.
I haven't written a teen wolf meta in some time not because I think everything has been said but it's hard to open a conversation when no one is listening. But with the movie coming I think it's finally time for me to explain the Nightbreed thing.
Because I keep mentioning it and then never explain why.
There are inspirations I can prove [Event Horizon], there are those I know are absolutely true but there's not QUITE enough information [Legacy of Kain] and then there's Nightbreed.
Davis knows Clive Barker's work, I can prove that easily - [a three part mega meta about Hellraiser and Peter] but then there's Nightbreed.
If Hellraiser is about want Nightbreed is about the outsider. It is considered one of the first queer movies [one of the others, Nightmare on Elm Street 2 is heavily referenced in season 2 with Jackson] and where Freddy is an analogue for Jesse's homosexuality [or bisexuality, depending on how you read it] but Nightbreed has no easily determined as gay content but if it got any more queer I'd be surprised.
Jodorowski [the guy who wanted to make the animated Dune movie] called it the "the first truly gay fantasy horror epic," and hyped the slash potential between patient and doctor but other critics said that was a vast understatement. Tyler Coates argues that it represents queerness and otherness ""Because normalcy is subjective and based solely on how the majority defines it, it's important to establish mini-societies and cultures with people like you"
Nightbreed is the narrative is one of a young man [Aaron Boone] who is manipulated by a male authority figure [Decker] into believing himself a monster and seeking a sanctuary becomes a literal monster. Or Clive Barker, a gay man writing in the UK in the 1980s [the same period Sandman was written to give you some context] who took the idea of "if you will make me the monster I will show you how monstrous I can be" with the idea of the monster as victim. Boone, who only wants to belong, becomes their saviour because he wants to save a single person, a human who takes his side.
Unfortunately before I can take this further with the narrative I have to explain the second narrative = the one of the movie. Barker wrote Cabal and all was good, then because of the popularity of Hellraiser he was approached by Morgan Creek who thought that Cabal [a novella] would be easier to adapt than Weaveworld. Burned by previous adaptations of his work [Rawhead Rex - as bad as you think it might be it's actually worse] Barker agreed as long as he could direct [as he did with Hellraiser] but he was tortured by studio execs who recut the movie behind his back. When the movie came out everyone knew that it was a pasted together mess where they took the core narrative of monsters as victims [whilst still being monsters] with over an hour cut from the finished cut. But the movie still formed a huge cult following.
Years later a VHS copy of the original work print which is the longest cut which restored the original ending and was so popular at horror conventions that Scream Factory convinced Fox to restore the original work and released it as the "Cabal Cut" [So that's three different versions with different narratives so far, the Theatrical Cut, the Directors cut, and the Cabal Cut] and that convinced Clive Barker to get back involved and he released a fourth cut.
So which one of these has Davis seen? All of the above.
As a teenager I found so much comfort in the Theatrical Cut and my mother, knowing how much it meant to me, once taped an entirely new cut off the BBC, which is probably the only one I can say that Davis HASN'T seen and it might be the shortest cut.
So yeah
the story is about Boone, a young man who has been and out of psychiatric care all of his life, in the book he has heard of Midian there and incorporated it into his own personal mythology, in the film he dreams of it. Boone's troubles include impotence [actually important] but over the past few months he has been doing better, he's weaned himself off his meds, he's in a healthy relationship with Lori [I'm unsure if the character in Teen Wolf is named for her or Lori Stroud] when his doctor, Decker [played by David Cronenberg! that David Cronenberg] who convinces Boone that he has been killing people in his sleep and he has to turn him in after killing 17 people including woman and kids. He gives Boone what he says are valium and Boone, tripping balls, walks in front of a truck.
In the hospital he meets a man called Narcisse who mentions Midian, to get more information Boone manipulates Narcisse into giving him directions and Narcisse determined that Boone take him with him peels off his face [in the movie it's everything on his head but his face], whilst the hospital is working to fix this Decker shows up with the police and Boone flees. With the directions he goes to Midian, in the book this is a cemetary next to an abandoned gold town, but in the film it's just a random cemetary in the wilds. There he falls asleep and wakes up to two of the "breed" Kinski and Peloquin who want to eat him, telling Boone he's an "innocent" [and killed nobody] Peloquin [who gets the best lines] bites Boone and chases him to the gates of the cemetary where Boone is confronted by the police. Decker convinces the police Boone has a gun and they shoot him dead.
In the movie we see Boone's body reawakening but in the book it's left "he's dead"
The story is then taken up by Lori who disbelieving of Boone's status as a "babykiller" wants to go to the place where he died and drives out there, meeting a woman called Cheryl [who has the second best lines in the movie] and goes to the cemetary where she finds a weird creature and a woman begging her to bring her out of the sunlight. lori does this and the creature turns into a child who cannot understand that the light hurts her because she's too little, and forms a bond between the two, her mother Rachel, tries to help Lori but is shut down by Doug Bradley. Going back into the sunlight Decker goes after Lori because he thinks Boone survived the shooting and now knows his secret - that HE is the serial killer. Boone comes to save her but he isn't alive, he's "beyond death". Narcisse interferes and Decker escapes.
Decker goes to the local motel kills everyone and then to the police station telling the police chief, Eigermann, that Boone is alive and he did it. Boone has been thrown out of Midian for threatening its security and Lori takes him to the motel where "everyone's dead, Dave", overwhelmed by the blood Boone eats some of the bits. Eigermann shows up and arrests him getting a doctor to prove he is "walking around in my fucking cell dead" and that Decker was right and he has helpers under the cemetary. A few deputies go to the cemetary and find Ohnaka, a peaceful breed who looks human, they drag him into the light and start one of the most uncomfortable scenes in horror as he starts to turn to dust and turns to each of them in turn but in their horror they push him away until he dies. If you can watch that scene without thinking oh it's a gay lynching I'll be very surprised.
Eigermann realising the sun is his best weapon puts together a mob of rednecks with all the weaponry they can find and attacks the cemetary and the necropolis beneath it. Understanding the vast majority of the "monsters" are perfectly harmless and incapable of defending themselves plans are put in place for them to flee but ....
okay here's where most of the changes happen, there's what happens in the book, what happens in the theatrical cut and what happens in the cabal/directors cut
in the book after springing Boone from jail he realises he is empowered [physically and sexually] by his change and returns to Midian to put up enough of a defence to get everyone out, he fights with Decker and kills him, trying to remove Midian's founder, Baphomet, he is rebranded Cabal who will gather up the nightbreed and find them a new home, Lori realising that he is immortal stabs herself so he has to turn her to save her life and they go off into the sunset. This is basically how the director's cut/cabal cut ends except sometimes Narcisse is killed by Decker, sometimes not. In the book Ashberry and Eigermann put together a monster hunting squad leaving the story open.
in the theatrical cut Boone releases the feral uncontrollable nightbreed, the berserkers to help them fight and is seen as victorious, the tag-along priest, Ashberry, finds Baphomet whose blood turns him into a sort of nightbreed and he resurrects Decker to help him hunt them down.
so- yeah, not much difference.
Now some of you will have already realised that the story of a young man manipulated by the one male role model he has and bitten, transformed into a beast and forced to become saviour with the help of his plucky love interest is what teen wolf seems to be without any digging. But that core doesn't QUITE work even with a cursory reading, because Scott doesn't want to save the monsters, he never sees the werewolves as anything BUT monsters and Boone's easy everyman status doesn't work with Scott at all, although Scott is easily as manipulative. And I wonder if the change between them, Scott's inability to be the saviour Boone becomes, Scott's unwillingness to do what Boone is happy to do [kill to protect], Scott's inability to give up Allison where Boone constantly tries to drive Lori away to keep her safe puts up this dissonance.
Yet the parallels are very really obvious which is why Nightbreed [never a good movie, an important movie, but it features ACTING!, matte paintings instead of landscapes, wooden and wobbling set stages, the best director in it is one of the hammiest actors] keeps coming up. You can't NOT mention it because the parallels are so clear but they're also so wonky.
When I rewatched Hellraiser I was surprised that the Frank/Julia thread in Teen Wolf was so apparent, and so thorough between Peter and Lydia, how the corruption of the mental health facilities was so blatant in both. It was in your face, with Nightbreed it's like Teen Wolf was made from the memory of the film he watched years before but it's all so deliberate. Making Scott a saviour would have been easier than what we got, a character who has all of Boone's worst traits and none of his good. Scott's costuming echoes James Sunderland from Silent Hill but Derek is dressed, especially in season 1, just like Boone. Derek's early incompetence is not something Boone ever struggles with and Boone was bitten where Derek was born. Deaton = Decker is easy but Deaton's motives are never revealed, Decker wants a scapegoat to keep killing and will do anything he can to do that, but Deaton never stops manipulating Scott, both in ways that are positive and negative.
Gerard and Eigermann are probably besties.
The concept of Monster = Victim is unique to barker, no one did it before or after to the same extent, there are plenty of "man is the real monster" but that's not quite what happens, the nightbreed ARE monsters, they include cannibals and people who can turn into animals and smoke, Dracula would fit right in and they'd feed him happily, but they are also children, the disabled, the ones who could never pass as human. And Barker, in Nightbreed's most famous quote puts it succinctly and sums up Teen Wolf very well which is why I'm SO adamant that they're related.
Rachel: "To be smoke, to be a wolf, to live for ever: it's not so terrible. You call us monsters but when you dream, you dream of flying and changing and living forever, you envy us, and what you envy..."
Lori: "we destroy."
What is Teen Wolf if not that envy, and a character who is both a wolf and a destroyer, one who envies but cannot accept anything else, who did not seek to join the monsters, and hates that he has become that. And in the hands of a better writer we wouldn't have the same Nightbreed dilemma, where it almost manages to say what it wants to say and what it does it does by accident and can't be considered "good" as much as resonant.Outcasts found in Nightbreed, in Midian, a place to belong, a place where their sins, both real and imagined, would be forgiven, where they would not be judged.The same is true of the mythical "Hale pack", judging by fandom and just numbers, more people are fascinated by the Hale Pack under Derek Hale, whose journey is less like Boone's than even Scott's even if they are dressed the same, [usually this fits SO well, Scott's comparison to James Sunderland is blatant, Stiles' story matches that of Angela in Silent Hill 2 who he dresses like at the same time as Scott first appears in the green jacket, his abuse by his mother is the same as hers, although the Sheriff is a much better parent than Angel's father whom it is heavily implied sexually abused his daughter]
I could write books about the two of them, and why Nightbreed was so influential both on this and media in the wider sense, even when all we had was the theatrical cut people were writing books and albums and making works about Midian, even before fandom found its home on the internet people cosplayed named members of the 'breed, the Peloquin, Rachel, Lylesburg etc. But I've already written 2,5k words and I've barely scratched the surface.
Maybe what Davis wanted to write, because it's meatier between the teeth as a writer, was what if Boone didn't want to save the 'breed. What if he worked with Decker to bring about their destruction - and he botched the landing - hard.
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