Every time an author reassures readers that the smut is skippable I sigh a disappointed sigh. This is not a reassurance. Why would anybody who likes smut want to read smut that was only included as an afterthought and has no impact on the narrative? Insulting. Just don't write it at all if you're not going to make it matter.
Scott was moving so desperately in season five, and I understand why, he was stressed, upset and depressed. the dread doctors and theo were fucking with shit in beacon hills and fucking with him, respectively, in a way that he's never been fucked with before, and he was in a position of responsibility that he honestly has never had to be in before not to the extent he was in season 5 anyway. he's always had other people to turn to, many of which had more experience than he does and arguably had or would take on just as much (if not more) responsibility to deal with the supernatural as he did but that was no longer true true for season five. Like everything truly was on him and he was functionally alone, as a leader, and then was isolated from his pack. Like, damn they really had my man STRESSED.
It would have been so fun to have had Tamora Monroe be a friend of Laura Hale. She comes to Beacon Hills because Laura's death never sat right with her: maybe it really was an animal attack, but Laura had been so worried and distracted before she left, saying things that didn't make sense.
She'd always said she'd never go back to that place. She'd once confessed that even before her family had died, her plan had been to leave. "We called it 'Beacon Hells.' That place buries you if you stay."
Her whole family had been killed by arson, the mystery never solved. Now Laura's dead. Something's not adding up.
Tamora has a bad habit of blowing up her life. A year after Laura dies, she takes off for Beacon Hills.
The move brings more questions than answers. Laura's brother is curt and suspiciously incurious. "It was an animal attack."
That's what everyone says--about everything. So many deaths, she discovers, all "animal attacks." Silence follows the phrase. The dark woods ringing the town are suffocatingly quiet. Murderer after murderer seems centered on this one high school. Tamora takes the guidance counselor job Marin Morrell left.
Soon after, she gets a meeting request from a student named Scott McCall. Sweet kid, surprisingly down to earth for the lacrosse captain of a champion team in a town that's inexplicably obsessed with the game. He wants to talk about taking AP Bio next year despite the fact that his grades should bar him from it.
His father, Tamora has discovered, is an FBI Director. Scott recently helped him bring down some of the recent assassins--professional assassins--that had for some reason targeted a small public high school in the middle of nowhere. Rafael McCall is impossible to get a hold of, but maybe Scott heard something from him.
Tamora makes a bit of small talk, noting Scott's eagerness to make a good impression, and then asks carefully, "Any idea what those assassins wanted?"
"Uh..." Scott scratches his head. "Money, right?"
"But whose money? Why would anyone be paying them to come out here? Who in Beacon Hills could possibly be worth that much dead?"
Scott gives her a classic teenage boy shrug. "Beats me."
His indifference irritates her. "No one has theories?"
"Nope."
"Not even..." This crosses the line, but Tamora has to know, "the FBI?"
Scott looks uncomfortable. "I haven't really asked."
Tamora's violating a thousand professional boundaries here but she just can't understand why no one cares. Children have died. "Why not?"
Scott shrinks in his seat. "Honestly, I'm just trying to make it through high school."
He looks abashed, almost guilty. Underneath is something shadowed--grief. A close friend, her records indicate, had died last semester, another of Beacon Hills' freak accidents.
Tamora knows what that's like. "Right. Of course."
Interrogating him had been stupid. Tamora struggles with going overboard, crossing lines. She's lost friends over it, jobs. Only Laura had never really seemed to mind. She said it reminded her of her family. Tamora had liked that. She doesn't have much contact with her own.
She smiles. "Let's see what we're working with."
The issue with Scott's grades stem from attendance. He wouldn't be the first student to miss class after the death of a friend. Scott's a bright kid, dreams of veterinary science at UC Davis and already has a job with the local vet. AP Bio stands between him and the applications for the scholarships that would allow him to even think about going, and Mrs. Finch, the biology teacher, won't even think about letting him apply without a note from the guidance counselor.
It's an easy note to write. This class might be Scott's ticket out. She doesn't want the grave of Beacon Hills to bury anyone else.
Scott takes the note like it's a golden ticket. "Thank you. Seriously, Ms. Monroe, you're a lifesaver."
"It's nothing."
Scott stands to leave, but at the door, he pauses. Hesitates. Turns back. "Ms. Monroe, um... is it true you knew Laura Hale?"
Tamora freezes, totally unprepared for the question. How would Scott know that? Tamora asked a few people about Laura when she first came to town, but only a few, and all adults. Why would this random teenager know about it? "Who told you that?"
Scott tugs nervously on his backpack straps. "I know her brother."
The brother Tamora still half-suspects of being behind Laura's death. Wouldn't bite marks be easy enough to fake? Definitely enough to fool small-town police. The only knot in her theory is that whatever this is, it's clearly bigger than Laura. She's one victim of many. Would Derek Hale kill all these people?
Laura had loved her brother. Why would her own family kill her? Had Derek been responsible for the fire too?
Is he a serial killer? she struggles not to blurt out. The effort to check it paralyzes her. She has so many questions no one will answer.
"I was the one who found her body," Scott admits into the silence.
Tamora can't stop herself. "Do you really think it was an animal attack?"
It's crazy, she knows that, but doesn't anyone else wonder? The woods are so silent, dark in the day, no sign of life except for the howls in the distance. Tamora can't make sense of them. There are no wolves in California.
Scott fidgets with his backpack. "There were bite marks on the body, right?"
"Those could be faked." Can't anyone see that? Do they not care? Is the sheriff too stupid to realize? Is he behind it? Was he bought off by Derek Hale? The Hales are rich enough to buy this whole town ten times over.
"Looked pretty real to me." Scott won't meet her eyes.
Did Derek Hale get to him too? Scott would be easy to buy, a poor kid desperate for a scholarship.
A kid, it hits Tamora abruptly. He doesn't know anything. He's seventeen years old. He saw a dead body in the woods.
Oh god, Laura's body. Tamora hasn't been able to make herself think about it. Laura--sarcastic, sulky, bright-eyed Laura--was torn apart by something's teeth.
Tamora can feel her eyes go hot. She wipes them, sniffling pathetically, and by the time she looks up, Scott has politely disappeared, quiet as a deer.
That should be the end of it. Her best friend, her only friend, was torn apart by an animal in the woods. Nothing more insidious, nothing less awful. Her brother buried her mutilated remains next to his burned out home, but that doesn't make him a murderer. Don't people do crazy things when they see death? Tamora did. Beacon Hills is just like a million other towns in America, a fucked up place where people die. Laura had tried to warn her. Tamora had blown up her life rather than accept it. She's always struggled with ugly truths.
If there's something going on in Beacon Hills, it's an ugly truth. Drugs, most likely. This is meth country, after all. Maybe the Hales dealt something. Maybe their murder was about that, maybe there's been an on-going power struggle since.
Maybe it's something weirder than meth. The psychiatric facility on the edge of town is riddled with horrible rumors.
There Tamora goes again, inventing wild theories. She tries to be done with it, tries to let the truth sink into her body and settle there. Her friend is dead. She wanted to solve the mystery of her family's murder, and a mountain lion tore her in half before she ever got any answers. That's life. Tamora needs to face it.
Except, wouldn't finding answers help her do that? Laura wanted answers. Tamora can find them for her. It's for Laura.
Besides, it's not like she has a life to go back to anyway, or a job market she's eager to re-enter. Beacon Hills High School is strapped for staff, willing to overlook a few bumps in the road of her resume. Tamora doesn't need to blow this life up too.
She spends her nights searching. Local files aren't that hard to get a hold of, as if the town compensates for its tight grip on some secrets with a loose hold on others. Tamora dives deep.
One name keeps coming up: Scott McCall.
He found Laura's body not once but twice.
He's been present for a remarkable number of deaths, in fact. Animal deaths.
A friend of his died under mysterious circumstances. Another spent time in that psychiatric facility. His co-captain on the lacrosse team filed a restraining order against him before abruptly leaving the country. The teacher that disciplined him the most often was murdered.
His father is an FBI agent, with all of their access. He also, Tamora discovers through town records, has killed four people. On record.
Scott's mother is a nurse--access to the morgue, to drugs, to the files of all the people who died in the hospital under mysterious circumstances. Last semester, the files claim, an animal snuck into the hospital and tore apart a dozen people. That's life.
Scott's close friends with the son of the sheriff, a bumbling man who claims nothing's wrong with the town. He sings Scott's praises. "Most trustworthy kid I know."
What does the sheriff know? All these deaths on his watch. There was even an investigation into his failure to close cases.
It was run by Scott's father. It was abruptly shut down.
To protect Scott?
Scott snuck out of her room so silently. Like an animal.
He works at the veterinary clinic. He must have seen animal bites. He knows what they look like. He knows how to handle bodies.
Those assassins went to his school. They were in his locker room.
Trying to kill him?
Tamora is being crazy. It's impossible. Scott's a teenage jock.
It's just that everywhere Monroe digs, every rock she turns up, there's Scott underneath it. The connection is always him. It's like his face is the mask over whatever's really going on.
And there is something going on. Tamora's sure of it. It's like a bone bruise, the kind that pains you before the blood ever rises to the skin. It's like a fault line waiting to erupt. Tamora doesn't want blood or earthquakes. She just wants to know what's underneath the surface of this town. For Laura.
It's all she thinks about. The job is so boring. Beacon Hills is a town where everything happens but nothing changes. The students are exhausting. Tamora has never worked this much with kids.
Her only consolation is that it's the same high school Laura went to. Tamora can practically picture her in the halls. Would they have been friends if they'd been here together? Tamora's whole life might have been different. They would have hated this place together, dug out of its grave together.
That's what she's thinking about, the night the animal attacks.
Tamora lies in the pile of bodies, paralyzed by terror, suffocating under the weight of these corpses, the only shield between her and death. It buries you.
What is it? She saw a shadow, like the night itself had killed all these people, like the dark had leapt out of the forest.
She looks around, and that's when she sees him. It's Scott but not Scott, a monster wearing his face. Teeth, claws, demonic red eyes. There are wolves in California and they're demons. Beacon Hells. He's the animal, the blood, the earthquake.
That's life, she thinks hysterically, that's life.
She's numb by the time the sheriff drags her out of the pile, gun holstered and excuses loaded.
"It was a bear," he says.
Tamora feels far from her body.
That had been death she'd seen, staring out into the darkness with those glowing eyes, seeing its secrets. Silent as the grave.
That was what got Laura.
Tamora washes the blood off, but she can't scrub off the smell of the corpses. It's like it's in her now, like she's dead too.
Death got her. She and Laura are finally here together. She lets that sink into her body.
For Laura, Tamora thinks, as she aims a gun at a demon wearing a child's face. This is for Laura.
It's an ugly truth, but she makes herself face it. And for me, too.
“why did the jedi not know that thing they didn’t know and couldn’t have known because it was actively being concealed from them by someone who had the exact means to hide things from mind readers because he also had those powers” genuinely how yall sound
Silly Scott and Stiles Drawing - am still trying to figure out how to draw these two but this is already closer than my first attempt :D. I just think I still haven’t quite gotten Stiles’ hair correctly lmao
This is an experiment to see if there really are as few of us as people think.You can also use this to freak out your followers who think you’re 25 or something. Yay!
I'm lowkey gonna make a bingo card for all the nonsense that stiles/sterek stans say becuase yall are so repetitive
This is why I have to investigate anyone who likes that mayonaise demon or that nothingburger ship becuase yall are always misogynistic weirdos who are clearing watching a different show.
All sterek shippers should start in jail are work themselves out
I think about how Scott could actually hear Lydia's heart stop or slow down after they rescued her from eichen house. And I wonder if he suddenly thought of how he could hear Allison's heart stop beating, her blood stop flowing through her veins, and everything just becomes still.
God, he must have been so scared and then so relieved to hear Lydia's heart pumping again. Slow, but still pumping. I don't think he would've been able to handle another death. And I'm of the opinion that he wouldn't have healed if Lydia died. And he'd have done anything to bring her back, I mean anything.
My hot take: it wouldnt be fatphobic to declare that you dont want to sleep with fat women bc sex is not political activism and bodies are not public resources
no this kind of thinking lets so much bigotry fly because people don't just declare things out loud for no reason, even if they happen to be true. like if you really just don't want to sleep with a particular minority group then what is your motivation for declaring this out loud? your reason is obviously not just "I have a fact about myself to share for no reason at all"
you may have noticed that even if someone is flirting with you, they have not actually handed you a form to fill out to provide feedback on everything you think is unfuckable about them. you can literally just turn them down and spare them your bullshit
Something else I see people keep forgetting: between humans and Eridians, we are the astronauts. And we are good at it.
Eridians' perception of the world relies on something that is completely absent in space — sound. They haven't been looking at the stars their entire existence the way we have. Their concept of aliens might only be as old as their discovery of astrophage. They made a bad ship, because it was their first one ever! Rocky himself says they rushed it, and that multiple (vital) things broke. Their mission was just as much of a Hail Mary pass as ours was — they had no idea what they were doing, if they could even travel in space safely. And, as it turns out, they couldn't.
Humans are the ones who have been doing it over multiple lifetimes. Mary is state of the art. We've been space farers longer than most humans have been alive. We can actually see through space. We are more likely to survive exposure to the void. We can encase our lighter, more flexible, more mobile bodies in a material that lets us walk outside of our ship, and, to a degree, we can get our bearings out there in a way Eridians just can't.
Eridians are not looking at Mary and thinking she's a bad ship. They are not thinking humans have no idea what we're doing. They are looking at this species that can walk in the stars, have been perfecting machines to take us to them for decades, have been dreaming about them and mapping them and naming them for millennia, and used all of that to save them, and thinking, wow.
2087
stormborns
turnnoffyourmind
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
