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rangerlexi · 4 days ago

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Underrated moment in 5b is the silent communication between Liam and Scott (and Theo) when they're in the preserve looking for Mason.

The tension is already sky high because Liam hates that Theo is there, Scott is overwhelmed whenever he has to be around Theo, and Theo has been making everything worse by antagonizing Scott. The scene begins with Scott warning him not to trust Deucalion, but Theo throws it in his face and teases Scott for not killing Deucalion. Scott snaps back that he's "not a murderer," and Theo mocks the idea that Scott thinks he'll get through this without killing anyone.

"I didn't say that," Scott growls.

Then Liam stops in his tracks. He says he's got Mason's scent, but instead of elaborating, only gives Scott a meaningful look:

Theo demands to know, "Which way?"

But Liam only gives Scott another look:

You can see it hit Scott:

Liam's highest priority is to rescue Mason. He doesn't trust Theo re: Mason at all, has been frustrated with how "stupid" it is to work with him, and has threatened violence against him at every opportunity. He's gone along with Scott's plan, but only until the second he's picked up Mason's scent and thinks they don't need Theo's help anymore.

If it were up to Liam, they'd be attacking Theo already. The only thing stopping him is Scott.

It hits Theo too:

If Scott's on board, it would probably be easy for them to incapacitate Theo and leave him behind. He's outnumbered. Josh's powers, he knows from personal experience, will not stop a determined attacker.

His safety--possibly his life--is entirely dependent on Scott's goodwill.

Then Theo probably remembers how he mocked Scott's commitment to not killing people.

Like, say, with the help of his violent beta, in the middle of the woods where no one would ever find Theo's body.

Theo had scoffed at Scott's ominous reply that he'd never said he wouldn't kill.

Now it seems a lot less funny.

"You think you're gonna leave me behind?" he dares Liam with strained bravado.

Liam looks to Scott for his answer, making it clear which one he wants:

Scott's initial response is wary:

Saying someone's name is a classic Scott-tactic to deescalate, but Scott doesn't exactly go on to shut Liam down. Posey suffuses the word with worry: Scott empathizes with Liam's concern about Theo, about Mason. He's just also worried about Liam himself: Liam. In a little bit, when they get to the shack, he'll make sure Liam takes a second to assess instead of charging in blindly. I see the same message here: is Liam charging in? Is he in control of himself?

Liam proves he isn't by making his case. He doesn't say exactly how he plans to leave Theo behind, but he's convinced Theo "wants to kill Mason." The stakes are high. He thinks they need to do something to make sure Theo can't get to Mason.

Theo's retort isn't exactly reassuring. He claims he "just" wants Mason's power, that Parrish is Mason's real enemy, that "time's running out" so they can't afford to stop and think.

Liam's response is one last look to Scott:

Sprayberry nails this moment. That look packs so much. Liam's angry and distrusting, convinced--very reasonably--that Theo will hurt Mason, that rescuing Mason means making sure Theo can't get to him. Can they afford not to be violent, he asks Scott silently, with everything at stake?

The scene doesn't linger on this moment as much as EYE think they should, so I'm gonna do it now.

This whole situation has to stress Scott out so bad. To begin with, he's in the middle of the woods with the guys who killed him. The crater they left in his chest has only just healed, and deeper emotional wounds remain. He's been setting them aside by focusing on external problems, locking everything down with his famous self-control, but the situation has to be chipping at it.

The premise recalls the supermoon: the life of one of Liam's loved ones is at stake, someone Scott himself is committed to saving, and Liam thinks only violence can save him.

But now, Liam's argument is more convincing. Scott was certain that refusing to bite Hayden was the best thing he could do for her, but how certain can he be about letting Theo find Mason? How would that be the best thing to do?

Liam's emotional plea is also more compelling. He's not lashing out in a haze of fear and rage, ready to murder Scott for not agreeing with his plan. He's holding back to show that he respects Scott's opinion--that he's in control of himself, the way Scott has asked him to be. That control, however, is also its own challenge: this isn't Liam being blind and reactionary, he promises, and he really thinks Scott should go with his plan.

This tension also recalls the last time Scott and Liam argued about violence, when they were trying to break into Eichen (5x15). Scott, Liam, and Stiles find unexpected orderlies in the closed unit. Liam wants to attack them: "I can take them."

Scott's response is a rare deep snarl: "No one's taking anyone." The plan to rescue Lydia was meant to avoid confrontation for practical reasons, but Scott also seems troubled by it personally. He doesn't want to attack the orderlies, is reluctant to scare a patient into silence, and is horrified when Liam suggests Scott punch him as a way to get him hyped enough to tear the gate down.

Liam (and Stiles) is convinced this is the only way they're gonna rescue Lydia. Despite Scott's flat refusal, he really thinks Scott should go with his plan, so he goads Scott by reminding him: "I tried to take your powers! I tried to kill you!"

Scott fights hard against this goading, physically turning away from Liam's words and closing his eyes against his own feelings.

But when Liam pushes hard enough--"I wanted you dead"--Scott cracks.

We see some of the raw hurt he's been locking away.

In that scene, Liam is right--not just about the impact of him getting punched, but right about how to break Scott's control, and that there's a pit of wounded rage underneath it.

And if Scott's angry enough to punch Liam, someone he literally loves more than his own life, what does he have to be feeling about Theo? What does he have to want, on some level, to do to him?

But what that scene in Eichen also brings out is that Scott doesn't want to be violent. Yes, there's a part of him that burns to attack Liam, but he really, really doesn't want to give in to that part. No matter how justified, he doesn't want to give in to the part of him that's filled with rage--the part that delights in bloodlust.

Scott doesn't want to attack Theo. Over and over again, despite all of his hurt and anger and fear, he reaches out to him instead. The scene begins with him doing just that, and it won't be the last time he tries.

There are logical arguments Scott could make about why they shouldn't leave Theo behind. He could say that he might also be useful in rescuing Mason, or that it would be beneath them to violate even this tenuous alliance. He could point out that any fight is a risk and Theo plays for keeps. He could say that the time it would take to stop him is time Mason can't afford to lose.

But what Scott says instead is nothing. He looks at Liam. It's hard to capture in screencaps, but Posey packs such a punch with this gaze.

His silence acknowledges that Liam's approach isn't unreasonable--he isn't arguing about it. Like Liam, Scott is stressed and scared about what Theo might do, about saving Mason.

But he doesn't want more violence.

The look is vulnerable. Scott has to be painfully aware that, even though Liam hasn't yet, he could make Scott crack if he wanted. He knows there's anger inside him that Liam could force out, the way he did the last time he was certain violence was the answer and Scott disagreed.

He silently pleads with Liam not to. For a moment, we see just how exhausted Scott is:

He's so tired. He's been carrying around that wound in his chest and everything that came with it, he's fighting hopeless odds to try to rescue Mason and stop an unstoppable monster, and he's working with the guy who murdered him. It's already taking everything he has to keep it together. He's in the woods where he was bitten by a violent alpha. He doesn't want to be a violent alpha in the woods.

He asks Liam to focus on finding Mason--on who they can help.

Which Liam does! He chooses faith in Scott's decisions and care for his well-being.

The scene (criminally) doesn't linger on Theo's reaction, but he's muted as they walk on. At the beginning of the scene, he'd been leading the charge into the woods, walking slightly ahead of Scott to make Scott follow him. After this exchange, he falls back, while Liam walks ahead with Scott.

Possibly, Theo's remembering his own recent conflict with his beta: how he hadn't even tried to change Josh's mind, how quickly he'd resorted to violence instead. How the mask he'd killed Josh over had given him nothing but a vision of a man dying in the snow, something Scott already seems to know more about (which, Theo would be annoyed to discover, he learned from another enemy he'd refused to kill). How Scott had, by contrast, talked Liam out of his idea with nothing but a look.

Theo doesn't try to kill Mason when they find him. He doesn't do anything, actually: he has no idea what has happened to Mason and doesn't try to help free him. He doesn't even realize the Doctors are there until Scott alerts him. His first act in the scene is to start crying when they tell him he's a failure, before charging them in a fight he instantly loses. #myloser

Again, Scott reaches out to him.

He instantly clocks how deeply the Surgeon is affecting Theo, and leans in to whisper, "Theo, he's trying to get to you. This is what they want. Don't give it to them! We can't beat them." Despite Theo's constant antagonism, despite the wounds Scott carries from him, despite the fact that it would probably be more pragmatic to leave Theo to his issues and focus on getting Mason and/or Liam out of there, Scott tries to help Theo with his emotional distress.

It doesn't work. In fact, the whole scene goes as wrong as it possibly could: Theo attacks, the Doctors kick everyone's ass, Mason becomes the Beast, and the Beast goes on the rampage. In the next episode, Theo will electrocute and stab and paralyze Scott. It will take a while for the narrative to bear out Scott's hope that Theo is "just a kid underneath, someone like us" (5x12). But in this episode, Scott's decision in the woods isn't about him being right or things going right. It's about what Scott wants to choose instead of violence. Liam understands.

Eventually, Theo will too.

#1. i love the liam+scott analysis more of them being in sync i beg #2. chimerical panic is sending me lmao #3. 5b scott........ 5b scott being so fucking tired of the violence....... 5b scott you will always be famous to me #good meta #teen wolf

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rangerlexi · 5 days ago

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hi everyone, if you liked my post about controlling value networks re: sciles in Lies of Omission, you're in luck because the writing arts major brainrot has taken over me and i decided to do more. (listen. i'm not using my writing degree for anything else. it might as well influence my fandom analysis ¯\_(ツ)_/¯)

i said on that post that I was tempted to do the Scott vs (Theo or Peter) version of the Controlling Value Network, but when I thought about it more, I actually realized it would be easier and a lot more useful to Just Do Scott. don't worry though! because 90% of teen wolf villains are foils to Scott in some capacity, they'll still be relevant here.

this is about 40% teen wolf meta, 60% rhetorical analysis. you have been warned. if you want to see my final chart of Scott's controlling values without reading through my whole process, it's at the end :)

controlling values primer again: this is a rhetorical analysis strategy created by a professor at my university (Drew), and it can be super useful for looking at how a system of values is at work in a text. it essentially draws out two opposing but intertwined value sets, showing how they interact and feed off each other.

there's a lot to this concept, btw, and I oversimplified it a bit in my sciles analysis, and i'm still simplifying it a bit here, but this is a lot more in-depth into the process (because this is my blog and I do what i want, and also because this post is less "me trying to make a point about sciles" and more "me using my current interests to practice a certain thinking strategy"). obviously, long post incoming (this is kind of a tumblr-ified version of an essay i might write for drew's class).

reminder of our basic structure:

cue me looking at my class notes to remember how tf this works

an important part of these purposes/contexts that I forgot to mention is that they're what Drew would call aetiologia, or giving a cause or reason for a given effect or change. the easiest structure to use for this is "if... then". reminder of our Sciles Controlling Value Network:

"if you always do the right thing, [then] you will be good enough." that's aetiologia. these values can't just be something like "being nice is a good thing." it has to be a cause and effect: if you act in a certain way, then either good things (purpose) or bad things (context) will happen to you.

incidentally, this is part of why i was a little unhappy with the wording on purpose 2 especially, because it's passive. but that's not what we're talking about so it is what it is now.

sciles is important to me because they fit surprisingly neatly into being opposites on this structure, but let me be clear, you don't need two opposing characters to do this and frankly you don't need any characters at all. you can do this with the general values/themes of a media (Drew likes to demonstrate this technique using the cultural codes of Barbie, for example), and if the media is any good, you're very likely to find yourself describing the value systems held by the characters in the media even when you're not trying to.

which is to say, that's why I decided to focus specifically on Scott, rather than trying to compare him with anyone else. imo, the show very much supports Scott's controlling values, and it ends up fitting many of our major antagonists anyway. this time i'm going to walk us through the process of actually creating this system.

let's start with purpose 1, because that's the easiest for me- this is the good thing that Scott believes. drew also calls this a "controlling idea."

first draft: "being kind is what makes you strong"

this is weak sauce and i know this, but i'm showing you the process. first step is knowing the general idea.

issues: it's not aetiologia (there's a be-verb. kill the be-verbs), and it's also not a positive enough charge. for a purpose, the result of taking the correct action needs to be really good (contrasted, of course, with the context, where the result needs to be really bad- as Drew says, if it doesn't make you say "ouch," it's not there yet).

like, the dichotomy of strength (+) and weakness (-) may seem positive, but it's not consistent with Scott's values! being strong isn't the best thing he believes he can be, and sure, maybe his kindness does make him strong, but that's not the key to his values. (however, we're gonna put a pin in strength and weakness, bc i have a feeling it will be relevant on the opposing side.)

so if strength isn't a positive enough reward for being kind, what is?

second draft: "If you choose kindness and compassion over violence, you will build connections with other people that will result in a better outcome for everyone."

if this seems like a jump from our first draft, that's because it is. let me walk you through it.

We shifted to an if-[then] statement, and the "if" section is now an action. we are choosing something, not just being something.

I brought two new words into our "if" statement, the first being compassion. tbh, my first thought here was empathy (bc Scott tends to be very empathetic), but for a variety of reasons, empathy is a loaded word. compassion, on the other hand, is a skill, something you can choose, and it carries something more of an oomph than kindness alone.

The second word I brought in was violence. "but lexi, isn't this supposed to be positively charged?" yes, and maybe drew would nitpick this. but i think for Scott in particular, the option of violence, and more importantly choosing not violence, is key. he is repeatedly offered the option of violence, told it will be the easier option, and even made to believe he doesn't have a choice at all, but he still strives to choose kindness at every point that he is able.

As for our "then" section, I moved away from using strength as a reward, and instead focused on what I think Scott would actually view as a positive outcome: building connections. self-explanatory.

I also took this further along to another result: "better outcome for everyone." I don't love this phrasing, it's sorta unspecific, but we can come back to this later, bc we've already spent a lot of time here.

(as you can see, if you do this right instead of my rush job last night with sciles, this tends to get long)

so now we have a functional purpose 1, or controlling idea. the nice thing is that once you have this, it's pretty easy to flip this into context 1 (or vice versa, if you started with the context). the context can also be called a "counter idea," and it should be a pretty direct antithesis to the purpose.

first draft: "If you choose violence over compassion, you will drive other people away and continue the cycle of harm."

this is something we see all the time in teen wolf! see, i promised you some antagonist parallels, because we see this play out with Theo (he murders half of his own pack and drives away the other half after practically begging the Dread Doctors for them), Peter (the violence he enacts in the first season is the catalyst for everything else in the series), even Gerard (he dies by his own daughter's hand, unsaved by his son, because he drove them both away with his violence).

i also like the "continuing the cycle of harm" bit. can I include its antithesis in the purpose? this is kinda hard lmao. I don't want to just say "break the cycle" because I want it to be more positively charged. instead, i want something more like... making a new tradition? allowing or enabling or influencing others to choose kindness as well, perhaps?

purpose 1, third draft: "If you choose kindness and compassion over violence, you will build connections with people and influence others to make the same choice in the future."

okay! i'll take it. so here's what we have so far:

Now, this all seems very reasonable, doesn't it? that's a pretty good controlling value! but this is only one side of the story, which is why this is called a network of controlling values. our antagonists don't think the way Scott does, but from their own perspectives, they're acting perfectly reasonably, or at least consistently with their own controlling values.

it's all in the phrasing. rhetoric, baby!

so we've established that to Scott, being kind leads to good things. but that's certainly not the only way to view it. let's flip the script, and consider what bad things being kind could lead to.

context 2, first draft: "If you're kind to everyone, you'll get taken advantage of."

again, semi-purposefully not my best work.

issues: it's hard to argue that "being kind to everyone" is a bad thing, and unless they're cartoonishly evil, no one is going to think of their own values this way. there's a number of ways you could spin this tbh, but I'm leaning towards moving the second half of the first draft into the "cause" role and coming up with a different "effect":

second draft: "If you let people take advantage of you, you'll get hurt and fail in your own goals."

so I know I said to put a pin in the strength/weakness discussion, but the more I think about it, the more I think that's actually a different discussion altogether. if i was making this specifically about Peter, I might aim for the strength/weakness dichotomy, but that's not what we're doing, is it? we're thinking about Scott's controlling values.

and what is the consequence of Scott's kindness, for him? it's getting hurt. think about his pain-taking ability! he can take other people's pain away, at the cost of feeling that pain for himself. think about Letharia Vulpina (my beloved), where his kindness is taken advantage of by the nogitsune, and he suffers for it. think about the fact that Theo's plan relies heavily on him being compassionate to Theo, and that plan quite literally ends in his DEATH.

with that in mind, I quite like the "you'll get hurt" phrasing.

now purpose 2 is gonna be the positive antithesis to this, and the opposite of context 1. so keeping in mind that context 1 is about the results of violence, what's the advantage of being violent rather than kind?

first draft: "If you fight to defend yourself and what you want, you'll be safe and achieve your goals."

instead of getting hurt, we're being safe. instead of failing, we're achieving. our "if" statements aren't as directly paralleled as controlling value 1, but that's okay (i'd say having a perfectly flippable thing like that is more the exception than the rule).

i was kinda expecting to spend more time on that, but I kinda like it! it's positively charged, and you can see how a reasonable person might hold this value.

so that actually completes our controlling value network:

yay! 🎉🎉

and now that we have this, we can see how this network of controlling values operates in Teen Wolf. like i said before, I personally think the writing of the show tends to support Scott's personal values, so this system of values comes up a lot. choosing violence is almost always treated as the wrong choice, even when it seems reasonable, whereas consistently, Scott's kindness and the connections it creates are the things that secure his victories.

but you can also see the other side at play, because like i said, people do take advantage of Scott (*cough Theo and Peter*), and he gets hurt for it. and sometimes Scott does have to fight for himself and his goals. it's not a perfectly cut-and-dried situation; that's where the conflict comes from. that's the fun of it!

okay. that was really long. if you made it this far I would love to hear your thoughts if you have any! agree or disagree with me, critique my phrasing, suggest other possibilities, whatever you feel like (no pressure ofc! this process is just fun when other people are involved). and a few ppl said on my sciles post that the diagram helped some of their thoughts click, so like, please feel free to play around with it! if you do i would love to see it 👀

and finally once again, the diagrams and Teen Wolf-specific analysis are mine, but the concept of controlling values and all the technicalities of how i explained it is from Professor Drew Kopp. i figure seeing as he teaches this to all his students in every class he teaches ever, he probably wouldn't mind me sharing this with you guys :)

#teen wolf #scott mccall #rhetoric #kinda #this is secretly me trying to indoctrinate you all into writing-arts-major thinking patterns /jjjjj #no but seriously i know im not using this degree for my career but i would never change the fact that i did this degree #the analytical thinking skills they taught me are sooooo useful to have not just for fandom stuff obviously but it CAN be used in fandom #look at me. im writing full essays for fun. no its not a surprise actually i LOVE writing essays when i get to choose what theyre about #anyway hope you guys enjoy :)#lexi originals

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