Teen Wolf is giving me FEELINGS
So I’m rewatching Season 1 of Teen Wolf, and it’s giving me serious feelings, because as bad as things get for the characters later on, it’s easy to forget that none of them exactly start the show on an easy footing.
Derek being the obvious example: Derek, who survives the massacre of his family at the hands of a woman who sexually and emotionally manipulated him in his teens, and who then spends roughly a decade as an angry, isolated nomad who only gets pulled back to Beacon Hills by the murder of his one remaining (that he knows of) sister. And the thing is, at first glance, it’s easy to mistake Derek’s aggressive posturing for confidence: he’s deliberately contrasted with Scott and Stiles, both of whom are younger and less experienced in all things supernatural, but that doesn’t mean that Derek himself isn’t still young, too; that he isn’t deeply vulnerable.
You watch the first season again, and he’s not scary: he’s scared, right down to the bone. He’s a beta without a pack, and the push-pull relationship he develops with Scott is a direct consequence of the fact that nothing in Derek’s life has ever been safe or simple, to the point where it would never occur to him that things could be different. He calls Scott his brother, but offers him no comfort about his prospects with Alison; after all, Derek lost Paige and was betrayed by Kate, so he has no baseline for werewolf romance that doesn’t end in tragedy.
He tells Scott he can only teach him to control the shift through anger, which is Derek’s own anchor, because anger is all he knows - before the fire, he struggled with control, and it took the total loss of everything he loved for that to change. He shoves Scott away with one hand and claws him close with the other, because he’s lonely and afraid and he doesn’t want his type of life for Scott, or for Stiles, or for any of them, but they’re stuck with it now, and he can’t decide if they’re better off with or without him. Even when he finds out Peter is the one who killed Laura, part of him still wants to accept him as alpha, because he has nothing else left, and it would be so easy to fall over that one last line.
And then you’ve got Lydia, whose parents are so busy bickering and so distracted by her popular bubblehead facade that they don’t realise how smart she is underneath it; Lydia, who wants to get out of Beacon Hills and win a Fields Medal, and is stuck in a mutually toxic relationship with Jackson, because by every measurement she’s been taught to value, he’s the best the school has to offer, and both of them want to be seen to succeed in ways that won’t see them judged.
Lydia, who learns two types of Latin fluently for fun, and plays dumb to soothe Jackson’s ego, and is so damn isolated despite and because of her popularity - everyone else is either too scornful of or intimidated by her for actual friendship - that when Alison comes along, she all but throws herself at her, because here’s somebody she might actually be able to trust with part of herself; someone who doesn’t yet know the Legend of Lydia Martin, Ice Queen, and whose reaction to her therefore won’t be clouded by it. (And if you think for a red hot second that Lydia doesn’t think about how she’s perceived in these terms, despite the fact that literally her entire public persona exists as a means of controlling how she’s seen - if you think she wouldn’t realise, instantly, the significance of Alison’s arrival, of her immunity to that persona, of the narrow window of time before Alison, too, was someone who might keep her at a pigeonholed remove - then think again.)
And Jackson, whose knowledge of his own adoption has completely upset his own identity; Jackson, who spent years crafting this detailed, rock-solid sense of himself as the product of his parents, based on knowing exactly who he was and where he came from, only to have that upended by complete and total ignorance of his heredity. Jackson, who now lives in constant fear that everyone will know how unworthy he is of the mythology he created for himself, who’s desperate to prove by any means necessary that he is what he says he is, even when, deep down, he feels he’s not worthy of what he wants, shoving Lydia away and bullying Scott for the chance to turn into Derek or Peter, men who objectively terrify him, because he’s so twisted up about needing to prove himself that he doesn’t care about turning into a monster in the process.
And Scott, who gets everything he wants and instantly has it fall to ash; who gets flung into this turbulent, dangerous world and has to constantly scramble to keep up, who never gets more than a second to draw breath between problems; who’s lying to half the people he loves about the other half, and trying to figure out who to trust, and the only person who can possibly explain anything is Derek, who’s angry and broken and a living cautionary tale for all the spectacularly messed-up ways his life could turn out. Scott, who is an innately good person given no good choices and no means of navigation bar trial and error.
And Alison, whose life until now has been built on shifting sands - always moving, always the outsider - with family as the only constant. But the second she tries to make something for herself, her family betrays her, proves inconstant, full of secrets: no wonder she and Jackson end up confiding in one another. Alison, who wants to feel safe and powerful, and who can’t quite understand why the one person offering to make her both those things - Kate - so often leaves her feeling the opposite.
And then there’s Stiles, whose mother is dead and whose dad won’t talk about it; won’t even mention her, except when he’s so drunk he can barely speak. Stiles, whose best friend suddenly has everything go spectacularly right and wrong for him at the same time, and of course Stiles backs him up every step of the way, but it costs him damn near everything, and unlike Scott, he goes into this knowing what death means, what losing a piece of your family feels like. Stiles, who keeps getting shots at what he wants and having them ripped away for Scott’s sake - makes first line, but misses the game to help Derek; gets on Lydia’s radar, but Scott kisses her and lies about it - and who’s braver than anyone gives him credit for, because everyone sees the ADD and thinks he’s not making conscious choices about endangering himself, that he’s just being impulsive, when what he’s doing, over and over and over again, is choosing to help the people he loves at risk to himself, even when they don’t appreciate it.
In conclusion, Teen Wolf is ruining my life and I hate you all and give me the rest of Season 4 immediately.

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I am rewatching at the moment after having seen all six seasons and these f e e l i n g s are just. So. Relatable.
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My babies! Lovely analysis as always.
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