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Best Teen Wolf Episode: Round 1

3.04 Unleashed vs. 5.13 Codominance

3x04 Unleashed

5x13 Codominance

Voting ended onMay 11, 2025

#teen wolf #3.04 #3x04 #3x04 Unleashed #Unleashed #5.13 #5x13 #5x13 Codominance #Codominance #hts.polls #best teen wolf episode #Unleashed vs. Codominance

How would you personally have gone about Kira seeking help with her chaotic fox spirit if you were in charge? In the past, you've mentioned she could have sought out other older kitsune through her mom and I've also noted how you kept the sk*n w*lkers Davis horribly appropriated from Navajo/Diné culture and cosmology in two of your fics (that I've noticed) and tried to give them more respect than canon did.

Would you give more (or actual) screen time to show how this effects Kira, Noshiko and Ken? One of the things I loved about your fic with Kira is that it did some of that such as the very authentic, visceral feeling of seeing loved ones grow older/sicker and Kira being upset she lost out on so much of her life. I also liked the detail of how Kira earned two tails in a short amount of time in comparison to her mother, not because either is ~better~ than the other but just that each person's life path and the circumstances, trials and tribulations therein, are different.

Well, for me -- and I'm more than willing to discuss it with those who disagree -- the difference between employing the spiritual and cultural figures from cultures other than your own in an ethical manner and appropriating them is the respect you give the cultural context in which the figures exist in their original cultures. Yes, I have used these figures in my stories Dreadful as the Storm and the Lightning, All Our Yesterdays, and Termination Shock because I think that their appearance important to the characters I'm trying to explore, but I hope I gave those particular cultural figures the respect they deserve.

On the other hand, in my most recent work, The Sticking Place, I've excluded Shiprock entirely in favor of having Noshiko take Kira to an enclave of Kitsune in Los Angeles in order to explore both the nogitsune storyline and Kira's own predicament.

My problem with that plot in Season 5B is not that the production used indigenous cultural figures in the story, it's that their use turned out to be so shallow as to be effectively appropriation. Regardless of what they may have intended by including the sk*nwalkers -- and I'm sure they intended something because they paralleled them with the Dread Doctors in both number and inscrutability -- the execution left much to be desired. Arden Cho revealed that a lot of the scenes she shot in 5B were cut (most likely because of their terrifically bad decision to end Kira's role on the show), and I can't help but wonder if we had been able to watch those scenes, the presentation of the sk*nwalkers would have been less exploitative.

It would have been so easy to not do this. Why did Noshiko go to Shiprock rather than to her own people? We see her unloading silver bars, so it wasn't like she couldn't have flown to Japan if there were no other kitsune in California. Was she afraid? Ashamed? We observe that the sk*nwalkers were powerful, but there are other powerful individuals out there, what made them the best people to go for help? Why did they seem hostile? Is it their nature? Were they offended? If so, why did they offer help when Kira came to them again? Were they planning something else? We learned nothing of their specific natures, nothing of their motivations, nothing of their role in the greater supernatural community.

To me, there is where the disrespect lies. They were used a means to an end, something with cool visuals and vaguely menacing atmosphere without requiring anything like exploration. The production couldn't take the time to find a way to give us their names, but they did find the time for a Gratuitous Butt-Spin. :P It's unethical, and it doesn't matter to me if the original scripts went into it more deeply -- the finished product did not, and that was a choice. In my writing, I choose differently.

Now, I'm not claiming perfection, and I'm more than open to criticism of my use of the sk*nwalkers in my fiction. Indeed, if someone thinks I've botched their portrayal, I encourage you to come and tell me about it. I think that the barest minimum you can do in telling stories that explore spirituality, religion, and myth is preserve the context from which they arose with. Teen Wolf failed in this instance.

#codominance #kira yukimura #noshiko yukimura #teen wolf meta #teen wolf fanfiction #teen wolf critical