Can I talk malia x stiles with you for a minute? Cause you tagged a post about not liking how stiles was an exception to her mindset and I'd really like to know more about why?
Okay, here’s the thing (this might not be entirely coherent, but I’m in class and technically supposed to work on my TFIOS essay, so…anyway).
They’re trying to make Malia unable to pick up on social cues and make her have different morals. That’s cool, that’s okay. Obviously, I’m not happy with they way they handle her “8 years as a coyote in the woods” background, but I’m glad they at least try to incorporate that a bit. I actually quite like the idea of her having to learn how to be a functional human being. I’m not 100% sold on her character, but it would be an interesting premise, and I think I could really come to like a character who is a little socially inept, and not in the “usual” awkward way.
That being said, I feel like her characterisation as “more animal than human in behaviour” is often inconsistent. Like, with Braeden, you have a character who is on the moral fence - she’s a mercenary, her morals are super dubious, she’ll do pretty much anything for money, but at least that’s what you can expect from her character. From what we’ve seen of her so far, that’s her mindset, and she’s consistent in the fact that you can’t really predict her actions, unless you know who paid her.
With Malia it’s different. She doesn’t know how to read people or deal with them, but apparently she knows how to dance super sexy in a club to blend in? But yeah, mostly: she doesn’t understand that leaving people behind is bad. The pack are supposedly her friends also, but if Lydia was wounded, she’d leave her behind as to not be slowed down or get herself in danger. She’d even eat her, if she had to. And if she reacted like that with everyone, I’d find that pretty amazing, because you’d have much potential to develop her character from there. However, I feel like that characterisation is alleviated and made inconsistent by the way she says “she would never ever ever leave Stiles, pinky promise, swear to God and hope to die”. So she does have morals - but only when it comes to Stiles, because he is her mystical perfect mate for life, or whatever.
Maybe I’d be less bothered by the way her rules only apply to everyone but Stiles if we had been shown any validation for that - if we’d gotten to see their friendship and relationship grow. But all we have is her punching him in the face and then hooking up with him five minutes later and….then not seeing him again until the final seconds of the finale, and now, two months later, they’re THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN EACH OTHER’S LIVES CAN YOU IMAGINE!1! THE CUTE!!1!
Like, I don’t buy that, because I haven’t seen it. The show gives me no reason to believe she actually should have a different attitude towards Stiles than towards her other friends, because their relationship has no basis. Teen Wolf has once again shoved a kinda fully developed relationship at us, without showing us how they grew closer, without giving us a reason to root for them or to buy that she’d think this way about him, and tells us to ship it.