Belgian and utterly incapable of sticking to one fandom. My heart is shared by Scott McCall, Dean Winchester, the real Peter Parker, Buffy Summers, Spike, Clark Kent, Miles Morales, Kieren Walker, Steve Rogers and too many others to count
Derek must have realized that Scott was bitten when they first met in the woods, because why else would he follow him? He may have had his address from the inhaler or maybe he just followed them on the way out. But he followed Scott all day, because how else would he know that Scott was going to a party at Lydia Martin’s house? Even if he somehow heard that Lydia Martin was throwing a party, there’s no way he’d know that Scott would be there unless he overheard Scott and Melissa or Scott and Stiles talking about it.
So Derek followed Scott. All day.A brand new werewolf with no training or knowledge, and Derek just stood there and … watched.
And then, when Scott felt the waves of the first change overtake him at the party, Derek didn’t intervene. He continued to watch. He had to have been close by because he was right there when Allison witnessed Scott drive away.
And then, he didn’t go to Scott’s house. He must have known where Scott lived by then – he certainly was able to find it the next day. Instead, he snagged Allison’s jacket and brought it with him out to the woods. Scott could have killed members of his family during his first change, but for some reason, it was important to Derek that it be out into the woods.
Why? Why not go up to him and say “You’re a werewolf. I’m a werewolf. See?” Face change. “You can trust me, I’ll help you through this, and I’ll help protect you from the alpha that bit you.” If he had done that, I would 100% believe that Scott would be Derek’s loyal beta even today.
But he didn’t. Why? It’s obvious if you think about. Derek wasn’t doing it for Scott’s own good. He didn’t give a fuck what Scott was going through or if Scott would hurt someone. He was using Scott to find the alpha that killed his sister. His words “The Bite is a Gift” and “We’re Brothers Now” were noxious manipulation.
Derek didn’t approach Scott like a decent human being but a manipulative predator because if Derek chose to put the victim first, he couldn’t control Scott’s reactions by dealing out little snippets of information. A fully informed Scott might hide or he might run away from Beacon Hills, and Derek would lose his chance to find the Alpha. So, screw that 16-year-old boy.
So, he became the first in a long line of selfish older men with their own agenda to try to use Scott for their own ends. From the first episode of the first season, Derek was an antagonist.
The fandom idea that Derek was just tortured for no point by the writers, that his troubles were just dropped from the sky at random, is bullshit. Scott didn’t trust Derek, no one trusted Derek, because Derek demonstrated from the beginning an acute selfish need to use teenagers for his own ends.
As always, I love Derek Hale’s story because of where he started and where he finished. I don’t pretend he was a good guy in season one or that his trauma somehow made his behavior toward children acceptable or that he didn’t end up losing another pack and Scott’s trust because of writer animosity, but the logical consequence of the character’s actions.
Bringing this back because I literally saw someone say once again that “Derek was just trying to help Scott who fought him all the way.”
I think that anyone who sits down to watch Teen Wolf Season 1 should be made to sign a statement acknowledging:
Scott McCall is a sixteen-year-old boy with no knowledge of the supernatural, an absentee father, and a mother who works a lot by necessity at the beginning of Season 1. Not only does he have no obligation to resolve the Hale-Argent feud, he starts out with little ability to do so. He shouldn’t have to give up his life for a series of strangers who proceed to violently force him to participate in their war. Regardless of their status as victims themselves, Scott is a victim of Peter, he is a victim of Derek, he is a victim of Jackson, and he is a victim of Chris Argent. What makes Scott the heroic protagonist of this series is that he gains the opportunity and the power to treat them as they treated him and he refuses to do it.
Allison Argent is a seventeen-year-old girl who does not learn that werewolves exist until the beginning of the 11th episode. She, too, has no knowledge of the Hale-Argent feud, and regardless of her last name, shares none of the responsibility for it. She may have had surreptitious training in the physical aspects of hunting, but she is no more prepared to handle the revelation of supernatural warfare than Scott.
Stiles Stilinski is a sixteen-year-old boy with no knowledge of the supernatural, a dead mother, and a strained relationship with his father, the Sheriff. He is not smarter than any other character; he is not an expert in the supernatural, and he does not immediately trust or even like Derek Hale during this season. In fact, he expresses more than once that he does not care if Derek Hale dies and considering what Derek does to his best friend, that’s understandable. Stiles may get angry with Scott, but he is loyal to and loves Scott. He is infatuated with Lydia, regardless of possible questions of his sexuality.
Any attempt to put the blame on these teenagers because they don’t react to serial murder, stalking, threats, and brutality in a way that puts the feelings of the murderers, stalkers, and brutes first is an ethically and morally questionable framework by which to interact with a story. The writers, actors, producers, and the network understood that; why can’t you?
This is such a fascinating thread because “antagonist” is almost being used as an ethical cudgel which I find odd considering it’s just a term for narrative purpose. Derek is a secondary antagonist in S1-2. His “moral” role in s1 is anti-villain, before taking a decidedly darker in s2 into straight up villain, then returning to anti-villain by the end. The person defending him is like hilariously wrong on a lot of points, like just wow extremely fandom brain, but some of your points are also not accurate. The character’s goal in s1 is find the alpha, full stop. Scott can help him do it, so he does everything he can to get him on board, including manipulation, mentorship, and—yes—keeping him from killing anyone. He’s a character who will lure Jackson to his death but won’t look pleased about it. He’s a character who will shield a random teacher from the alpha instead of letting him kill him to catch a glimpse, but he’ll also hurt 16 year olds without much compassion. In s1 he’s morally gray, vacillating between chrome and gunmetal.
It may be a silly show with inconsistent writing, but it’s also pretty silly to make the main characters out to be totally black or white. Both of you are kinda doing that.
(That said, 100% agree on your revival post and the overall thesis - the text is p damn clear that by the end of 3b Derek has been redeemed through Scott’s goodness. I suspect this would be more obvious if they had any idea what to do with his character after 3a lol)
I can see where you are coming from, but I think your dissatisfaction with what I wrote comes from some very important differences in our perspectives about the show. Most importantly, I don’t think the show is silly. I don’t think the production was going for realism, but stories don’t have to be realistic in order to have important things to say to its audience.
My central premise about Teen Wolf is that it is a moral tale about how we are supposed to respond to tragedy and violence. Most of the villains and antagonists, from the Argents to the Hales to the Alpha Pack to Meredith Walker to Tamora Monroe, respond to trauma they experience with more violent choices – from vengeance, to vendetta, to slaughter, all the way to genocide – that only serve to perpetuate cycles. The other, more inhuman villains – the Wild Hunt, the nogitsune, the Anuk-Ite – are consequences of those choices. Scott McCall’s refusal to answer violence done by escalating and redirecting that violence – mischaracterized by the fandom as weakness and naivete – is not just a part of him being hero, it’s the entire point of his heroic story.
When I call Derek an antagonist in Season 1, it’s not based on me seeing him as an inherently bad person. He’s an antagonist because he seeks redress for the tragedies performed against him by escalating violence in opposition to the themes of the story being told. By the measures established by the production itself, he’s not morally grey, because the story rejects retribution as a natural right. The very things that you point out which show his complex nature (and they do, because he’s actually a pretty good guy) are corrupted by his desire for vengeance. Yes, he mentors Scott, but part of that mentorship is an insistence that Scott see Allison as the enemy and not a human being. Yes, he has conflicted feelings about murdering Jackson, but that’s the way that scene serves the theme! It doesn’t matter if he’s conflicted about it if Jackson still ends up murdered. He’s not an antagonist because he’s a simplistic Bad Guy; he’s an antagonist because no matter how sympathetic he is, he stands in opposition to Scott’s character arc. He demonstrates that even victims, even good people, can be corrupted by the banal calculus of “they hurt me, so I get to hurt them.” That corruption is completed at the end of Code Breaker: “I’m the alpha now.”
I also feel that you missed the point of my original post, which wasn’t to say “Here’s my interpretation of the show” but instead to say “I think fandom has completely misinterpreted this season.” Fandom remains very frustrated by the way Derek was written in the show because they mistakenly believe that their sympathy (and empathy) for him means that he should be a protagonist. As I’ve indicated above, the very point of Derek being sympathetic was to demonstrate that Scott wasn’t immune to being corrupted by retribution even by being a pretty good guy. No one is.
To sum up, I’ll never say that Derek was a one-dimensional character. Like most well-written characters he had good intentions and flaws. But that doesn’t matter when it comes to Derek’s role in the show. He was there to serve as both an obstacle to Scott and as his foil, to show Scott what he could become if he allowed what was done to him to control his responses to it. That’s an antagonist.
It’s Kira’s month!! XD Our beautiful and kind thunder kitsune is taking center stage for July. Is everyone ready for the fireworks?!
For this entire month, the goal is to create rarepair content that includes Kira. These can be romantic, platonic, sexual, familial, etc. Any kind of relationship welcome.Ditto for the medium. Wanna write a fic? Please do! Fanart? Yes. Mood boards? Absolutely! Be as creative as you want!
The only real rule is that to count as a rarepair, the relationship tag must have less than 500 works on Ao3. Here are a few ships (romantic and not) that fit that bill if you need a bit of inspiration!
Kira Yukimura/Lydia Martin (112 works)
Kira Yukimura/Stiles Stilinksi (87 works)
Kira Yukimura/Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall (18 works)
Kira Yukimura/Malia Tate/Lydia Martin (39 works)
Kira Yukimura & Mason Hewitt (4 works)
Kira Yukimura & Allison Argent (17 works)
If you post to tumblr, please tag @teenwolfrarepairevents and/or #twrp character of the month so I can share it! If you’re posting to Ao3, you can also add it to the collection!
Tried to color sketches from my sketchbook with opacity layers and i king of like how it looks. (I dont remember if I ever posted this au here but Scott is a Portugese water dog, Derek is a husky, Stiles is a German Shepherd/Bloodhound, Lydia is a papillion and Jackson is a Chihuahua, Allison is an English setter. Im thinking Ill call this au Beagle Hills)
