Seeing your Sterek thoughts is fun, because sometimes I'll want to read a fun story about like Parrish dating, idk, Peter or adult Theo, or want to talk about Teen Wolf for other side characters, and have to wade, knee deep, through Sterek and the ways every character are props for Stiles/Derek
It's a frustrating part of the TW fandom, how prevalent and inescapable the ship is
Here's something to think about.
Let's say you were entirely innocent of fandom and its wily ways. Let's say you watched a 100 episode television show named Teen Wolf. If another person, also entirely innocent of fandom, asked you what happened in it, what would you say? If another person asked you what were the most important relationships in the story, which ones would you list? If another person asked you who the lead protagonist was and asked you to describe that character's arc, how would you answer?
I am absolutely confident that the romantic relationship between Stiles and Derek would not appear in any of those answers. I could describe the entire plot, episode by episode, of Teen Wolf without even implying that Stiles and Derek were friends and it would be almost entirely complete. I would list the most important relationships as Scott and Stiles, and Scott and Derek, and Scott and Allison, and Scott and Kira, and Scott and Liam, and I would even include Stiles and Lydia. But the truth is, if Derek and Stiles had never had a scene alone together, it wouldn't ultimately change anything about the show. Furthermore, it is simply not credible to say that the lead protagonist isn't Scott McCall. Every character, every plot line, every resolution hinged on Scott's choices and behavior -- even the ones where the focus may have been on Stiles, such as the nogitsune arc and the wild hunt arc.
And, while this should go out with saying, it has to be said in order to forestall the tedious foot-stomping discussion-derailing simplistic arguments that usually happen at this point: there is nothing wrong with shipping Sterek. There is nothing wrong with enjoying what might have happened between these two but didn't. Shipping is not the problem.
The problem is the fandom's entitlement to force a romantic relationship between two white men into obscene prominence. The problem is that there is an entire culture based around recontextualizing an entire 100-episode show and a movie around a romantic relationship that didn't exist to such a degree that the actual reality of the story is often lost.
Whoever you are and whatever draws to you the story, once you engage with the fandom, there is one unstoppable force that swamps everything. Love it or hate it. Dread it. Run from it. Sterek arrives all the same. You have to deal with it. The only way to avoid Sterek is to avoid the fandom.
Staying clear of clearly-labeled Sterek content won't help, because the tropes that have grew out of Sterek have metastasized. For example, "Pack-Mom Stiles" has replaced Stiles's canon characterization in 90 percent of fandom content, even fandom content that has nothing to do with Sterek. Think about "Oblivious Scott" and "Stupid Scott." These tropes appeared in order to explain why Scott wasn't aware of Stiles's true feelings for Derek and have now become the baseline for any analysis of Scott's behavior, even though it was Scott who figured out how to convince Derek to turn on Peter, Scott who noticed and took advantage of Gerard's cancer, Scott who noticed that Derek painting only one side of a door in a falling down house, etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Think about Scott and Derek's developing relationship throughout the show and when, in the final episode, Derek and Scott hug after not seeing each other for a long time and one person bravely posted on the Internet, "As a Sterek shipper, I reject this." Or Sterek shippers who hated the movie without watching it. They are so firmly entrenched in this entitled alternative world that they feel they have the right to invalidate scenes that actually occur on the screen.
I could go on, for like, an hour, but there are even worse aspects. This culture influenced the production because it became so omnipresent during public relations events (conventions, polls, etc) that they couldn't really ignore it anymore. Think about 6B's ridiculous and demeaning "Stiles, in his first day at the FBI, sees recycled film of shirtless Derek" scene. Or the uselessness of the line in the movie about Stiles having his own fires to put out. If you were our theoretical individual not exposed to fandom, you must have wondered why that line and that scene were even filmed!
At a certain point, the production realized that they had been caught in an inescapable trap. If they didn't include scenes where Stiles and Derek interacted with each other -- such as season 3B -- they were accused of homophobia and queerbaiting; if they did include scenes where Stiles and Derek interacted with each other -- such as Season 4 -- but the relationship didn't become canon, they were accused of homophobia and queerbaiting. By this point, they must have felt that they had no choice as Sterek -- something the production had never intended nor even indicated -- had become so much a part of the fandom perspective that they felt they had to do something to acknowledge it.
I'm sure you can point out other fandoms where something like this happened, and I'm sure you can point out that fandom response became so extreme that it damaged the story itself. But we got Sterek, and we have to deal with it.
