i am very proud of you for waking up today. you are very brave. existing can be hard sometimes and that is okay. i am proud of you even if all you did today was exist. i am proud of you for existing.
On Scott McCall (and why I wish TW would stop making me hate him)
Okay, see, here’s the inherent flaw with pretty much all modern (and some classic even) heroic narratives: the hero only becomes the hero at the expense of other people. In short: the hero is rewarded for taking action, regardless of what those actions are or the consequences of those actions. All the other characters, even characters cast in roles of support to the hero end up punished for taking actions but especially actions taken in defense of themselves or others. This tendency gets especially problematic when it comes to female characters, whom often experience sexualized narratives, especially sexualized violence, in response to taking action.
Scott continually takes actions — good, dumb, heroic, devious, a mix of all of these — but those actions always have consequences for the people around him. For example, if Derek had succeeded in killing Jackson/the kanima, how many lives might that have saved? So, while arguably fighting to “save” Jackson is the heroic action, Scott’s insistence on doing so directly leads to letting Matt continue to rampage throughout the town. Other people pay the consequences, Scott does not. Scott’s actions with Allison continually paint Allison as the, hrm, not necessarily “bad guy” but often “hysterical,” or “misguided,” or just a “bitch” (fandom’s term following the season 2 ending, not mine). The audience obviously knows a lot more information about what’s going on than Allison ever does throughout the entire show, from when she “stupidly” breaks up with Scott for lying to her and putting her in danger and standing her up and being an all-around creep, or when she hunts and studies dangerous werewolves with the one person who actually tries to tell her stuff that she needs to know about her family, her friends, and her boyfriend, or loses it following the completely unjustified death of her mother caused by one of those very dangerous werewolves… all stuff that could have gone so very differently if, you know, the men in her life — Scott in particular — had just talked to her. Scott’s actions in hiding the various truths from Allison — about himself, about her family — create consequences for Allison, really serious consequences for her mental, physical, and emotional health (not to mention the loss of her mother, the loss of her beloved aunt, the loss of likely any trust she had in her parents or family)… and Scott’s consequences boil down to being sad that he’s not dating Allison anymore and going back to where he started before he was bitten. There’s already a 700-odd something note post that describes my feelings about Scott’s actions regarding Derek so, yeah, we’re not going to go there because this will likely loose coherency and descend into rabid rants about agency narratives and how I kind of want to stab everyone in the TW writers’ room when I actually sit and think about it.
- For extra real-life disturbing, think about how closely this maps to US foreign policy. I keep wondering if US policy is driven by the available hero narratives, or vice versa, or if they both are driven by some underlying dynamic, probably the construction of masculinity.
- I see this process (Hero Intensification by Supporter Suppression, but there’s got to be some jazzier way of phrasing it), which as you say is widespread to the point of being default, as one of the driving forces behind fanfiction. Specifically, I’m thinking about how in many (though not all) of the fanfic-heavy fandoms with which I’m familiar, the TPTB-designated hero is *not* the most popular character in fanfic.
If you, the viewer, don’t identify with the Designated Hero, then you can expect that the character you *do* identify with will be sacrified to him. This creates dissatisfaction, which leads to the writing of fanfic, but it also creates a lot of anger & resentment toward the DH.
I’ve seen it in ST:TOS (where Spock was *always* more popular with fans than Kirk), in Highlander, in The Sentinel, in Smallville, in Stargate SG-1, in Stargate Atlantis, and now in TW. I suspect it operates in Inception fandom, but I know less about that. Fan failure to identify with the DH has not been a big issue for Supernatural, Merlin, BBC Sherlock. I don’t know about what the dynamics are for Doctor Who fandom, and Marvelverse fandom has too many possible heroes for any single hero to suck up all the agency oxygen.- For Teen Wolf, I think something shifted between S1 and S2 to make this whole process get worse.
The finale of S1 involves *every* teen character cooperating to take down Peter: Allison shoots him, Scott fights him, Stiles and Jackson throw incendiary devices that Lydia made.They *show*, not just tell, that the pack is stronger together.
The finale of S2 involves Scott making decisions alone to successfully take down Gerard. He only involves other people to use them. Things fall apart, but Scott still succeeds. Pack, what pack? He don’t need no stinkin’ pack
I have no idea why Jeff Davis did this, if he meant the ending of S2 to be triumphant or deeply disturbing. I fear the shift from S1 to S2 was caused by sheer laziness and intertia, reverting back to Hollywood-default Designated Heroism. In which case I fear the worst for S3, when his work pace must be much more demanding and he’s spending more time in Hollywood, surrounded by its defaults.- Might you consider putting this up on Dreamwidth or AO3, for ease of stable reference? Is it OK if I send this tumblr link to metanews?
EXTRAPOLATION, I LIKES IT *evil laugh*
Seriously though, lemme take this stuff out of order, ‘cause that’s the way my brain works.
2. Reading this list honestly made me think of another classic sci-fi tv show: Battlestar Galactica (the ‘78 version, not the reboot). Starbuck, the support character, was the vast favorite over Apollo (not a surprise given than Starbuck was basically Han Solo and Apollo was as bland as could be). This upset the dynamics of the show so much (including Richard Hatch who played Apollo) that the writers literally had to swap the character’s personalities in an attempt to make Apollo likeable (spoiler alert: it failed).
But, funny anecdotes aside, I think it says a lot about our masculinity tropes in terms of how the Hero characters often aren’t fan-favorites or easily embraced (at least within strong narrative-driven plots as opposed to something like Master Chief from Halo which is clearly designed as a self avatar). We reject the Heroic archetype Scott portrays just as we simultaneously crave it (we’ll ignore what we do with female characters whom are lucky enough to be given Hero traits). If you think about it, it’s really no wonder that men are so confused by masculinity if they’re told these two very different cultural narratives. And it’s no wonder women feel disempowered when they aren’t given a positive cultural narrative that doesn’t have to do with available sexuality (which are getting rarer) or beauty.
1 & 3. I have to address these together because, jesus, you don’t want to know how much I’ve written about new!Kirk as a neo-liberal hero versus Spock as a representative of more “modern” masculinity. And that’s sort of the same thing we have going on in TW; the difference is that the neo-liberal hero (Derek) is rejected and the “modern” masculine hero (Scott) is accepted, at least in S1, and I really enjoyed seeing that happen because it’s so counter to the national narrative. S2 reverses that and fits Scott with more neo-liberal characteristics… and he wins. It’s weird! Or maybe not: see the “national narrative” comment. It’s ner-liberal values, ideologies, and narratives that Bush relied on to start a war (both Bushes, actually). Reagan used it for the “war on drugs.” This is (at least) a thirty year “traditional” narrative.
4. …that would require me remembering my DW password. But if you want, go ahead and link!
(bolded by me)
And that is EXACTLY WHY the fandom post S1 and pre S2 had such a heavy concentration on pack fic, pack feels, big happy family, etc etc. And why S2 was such a shock to people like me, whose first introduction to TW and TW fandom was that “stronger together” dynamic.
I really hope that canon takes a turn back to that eventually, not only because that’s the direction I’d prefer, personally, but because that’s the only direction that is sustainable, story-wise. Like, who the fuck wants to watch a show about a bunch of people who only sort of like each other and don’t trust each other and spend half the time fighting and making their problems worse because they refuse to give an inch? That’s fucking awful. That’s all S2 was, and that’s why I sort of gave up watching and just read recaps - because it was stupid and frustrating and made me feel bad.
The weakest part of S2 in my opinion was this right here, what you guys are talking about with Scott, and then over a larger scale, with all the characters, how there’s rarely common ground between anybody, and when there is, it’s qualified with that lack of trust/communion/friendship. The divide between Scott and Derek is the biggest - not that the conflicts aren’t understandable, but there have been virtually no steps towards solving those problems, because the characters (okay, Scott) don’t seem to want to. And that right there, that makes me nervous, because you can’t have the main character not work towards solving problems. The whole point of a main character, especially one coded like a hero like Scott, is to have him run around solving problems. Duh.
It is weird. The way the show is set up is weird, the way they’re writing characters, forming plot lines. It’s all just weird. And I’m inclined to believe it’s because they a) don’t give a fuck, as well as b) don’t know what they’re doing. Like what you say about Scott and Derek’s heroic characteristics switching in S2, and yet Scott still wins - that’s fucking weird! It doesn’t make sense, and the reason it happened is because they’re not paying attention to the story, they’re paying attention to their TV show. Scott wins because he’s the hero, Derek loses because…they don’t like him apparently, and no matter how these characters behave or change, that’s always how the story is going to end, that’s just the bottom line. And that fucking sucks. :(
This meta, I like it! I’d demand another but it’d just make me depressed.
(Source: neonnomad)
Lost in the Shelves
Just a cute little drabble about book shopping~
-
They had to go two towns over to get to the bookstore that Stiles wanted to go to. It was two entire levels and Stiles had befriended the booksellers there. It was his favorite and he insisted that purchasing books from a brick and mortar store was better for the local economy, if not his gas tank.
Plus he just liked getting lost in all of those books. Amazon would never satisfy his book browsing craving - browsing wasn’t like this on a computer screen.
Derek dutifully followed him through the store as Stiles’ fingers thrummed over spines, as he collapsed in front of shelves to read the first few pages of a book he was thinking about buying. It was a slow process. Derek was incredibly patient. Or, well, he was for the first forty minutes.
“I’m running low on socks,” he said finally, and Stiles didn’t flinch, his face buried in a book about automotive repair. Of course there was the internet for this information, and of course he didn’t have the tools to take care of his Jeep on his own, but having a book full of information was different. It seemed magical to Stiles. It seemed critical.
“I think I’m going to run to the Target at the other end of the mall,” Derek said, trying to get his attention.
“Mmmm,” Stiles replied, flipping a page in the book, running his hands over the schematic for a manual transmission with distantly attentive fingertips, the way a Catholic’s fingers dance over a rosary.
“I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He reached down to palm the back of Stiles’ head - a quiet goodbye - before he turned back down the aisle to the mall entrance, stride becoming swift through the mass of Saturday evening mall goers.
“Get me a cherry slushie,” he heard Stiles murmur from a distance, quiet even for him, as though Derek was still by his side. Derek couldn’t help the way his lips quirked up into a smile.
I don’t reblog fic often, but this story explains in such familiar detail how I use fanfiction/stories/books to sooth and comfort myself that I couldn’t do anything but share it. This is why retail therapy is almost always books for me.
IRISH DANCING TO DUBSTEP.
FUCK.
YES.
brilliant and INSANELY hot omg.
So, this happened…
I mean, I realize that sometime actors who have twitter accounts reply to tweets made by fans. I have seen this happen before in the past. This does not mean that I had any expectation that such I thing might ever happen to me.
I scared the cat away with my high pitched noises.
(Source: kiggor)
Put a word inside my inbox
And I’ll tell you a fact about myself based off that word
PLEASEPLEASEPLEASE do this! I LOVE this kind of thing!
Do me!
(Source: lilylighting)
LET'S BOLDLY KICK ASS.: IMPORTANT: who wants to make a little boy's day?
my mom is an instructional assistant at a title one elementary school - meaning it is in a very poor area and a lot of the kids come from broken homes and very hard backgrounds. in one of my mom’s classes today, she saw a fourth grade boy with a big stack of anime pictures printed out from the internet, trying to imitate the art style on his own. because this reminded her so much of me when i was his age, she asked him about it.
he told her that he wants to learn how to draw like that, and started talking about how much he loves the art. my mom told him that i am the president of my school’s manga club, and he got really excited. then she called me while i was at school and asked for some help.
my mom is very involved in the lives of her students and wants to give this boy some manga or anime as an end of the year present. she had some pretty specific qualifications though.
- the child is, as my mom put it, “emotionally disturbed.” graphic violence is a very big no-no. nothing naruto-level or anything like that. in fact, if the violence isn’t like 98% cartoony and nonserious, it’s just no.
- no fanservice.
- my mom wants this boy to feel like a hero. she wants him to feel like he’s reading about himself. ideal main characters would be boys under the age of 14.
- this child was forcibly taken away from his mom and has a stepmother. the manga/anime must IN NO WAY have a bad or negative mother figure. (i was going to hand over my howl’s moving castle cinemanga, but because sophie’s stepmother kind of sells her out to the witch of the waste my mom gave it a no.)
- reading level must be appropriate for a 10 year old boy!
this means so much to my mom and to this child, and i want to be able to help but i just can’t think of anything! i’ve recommended the legend of zelda manga along with the kingdom hearts manga (that has been discontinued, though, and will be hard to find.)
recommendations for anime (shows or movies) and manga would mean the world to me. just put them in my ask box!! and if you can’t think of anything, it would mean the world if you reblogged this and helped spread the word to people who would be able to help me out.
thank you so much in advance - i can’t even start to think of what this will mean to this little boy.
Signal Boost! I really don’t know any kid appropriate suggestions, but if you do please pass it on!
(Source: rubypeet)
(Source: crystalreedie)
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