#also like the ONLY relationship that was active and didn’t get air time was stiles and Lydia

[feelingtheaster99]

I finally finished the end of the last season of Teen Wolf this week, and I almost wish I didn’t because I think the Season 6A plot would’ve been a better ending

[plus-size-reader]

Cute

Void/Stiles Stilinski x Plus size!reader

Word Count: 2939 words

Warnings: none

Summary: The reader finally gets up the courage to tell Stiles about her feelings for him but Stiles isn’t really himself at the time. 

—————————————————————————————————

You should have seen this coming.

Of course Stiles was never going to go for a girl like you. All your lives he had been absolutely obsessed with Lydia Martin and lord knows you looked nothing like her. You were never going to look anything like her, but it was easy to ignore when it was just her.

Stiles had always liked her, drooling over her in math class and talking about her every chance he got but you both knew he had about as much of a chance with her as you did with him.

It wasn’t going to happen.

...but now he had Malia.

She was just as thin and gorgeous as Lydia was, but she was actually into him. She wanted to go out with him and there was nothing stopping them from going for it, why would there be?

It wasn’t like Stiles had any clue that you had been in love with him since middle school or that you were actively more and more in love with him as time went on.

He didn’t know you thought about him as much as he thought about them, or beat yourself up because you were never going to be a size three like Lydia was.

You adored him, but he was never going to see that.

It made you feel so empty, like the last seven years didn’t mean anything to him which wasn’t even close to true. You knew that both Scott and Stiles cared a lot for you, like they cared for each other but it wasn’t enough.

You wanted Stiles to daydream about you, to see you, because you were right in front of him. You would have done anything for him, and did, but for some reason, it was still like you didn’t exist.

It was getting old.

Really old, and the more you thought about it, the more the reality of the situation upset you. You had been there for Stiles all his life.

You were right by his side when his mom got sick, and beat up Jackson Whittemore once in the eighth grade for calling him a geek, but none of that seemed to matter to him.

Stiles still couldn’t see you.

“You’ve been staring at them for thirty minutes” Scott hummed, shaking you out of your thoughts with a bump to your shoulder with his own. You were searching for anything that could explain the strange occurrences around here as of late, but there was nothing.

It wasn’t your fault watching Stiles canoodle with his new girlfriend was more entertaining than looking through some dusty old book.

“I have not” you sighed, shooting him an almost defensive look as you glanced back down at the book in question. Had he been anyone else you may have pretended to have your shit together, but Scott knew better.

He knew the two of you better than anyone else in the world, and even if he wasn’t the true alpha, which he also happened to be, it wasn’t hard to see what was going on.

You clearly liked him, in a way that wasn’t just platonic like your relationship was. You had never gotten so shook up when Scott was seeing a girl, he would have noticed.

“It’s okay, I get it” he tried, hoping that you weren’t going to try and shut him out over this again. Scott had tried to have this conversation with you a few times already, and it never worked out the way he wanted.

You always got cagey and didn’t want to talk about it.

“No you don’t, Scott. You’ve dated every girl you ever had a crush on, because you’re you” you grumbled, poking him in the abs as aggressively as you could without hurting him to prove your point.

He didn’t ever have to worry about the things you did.

Not only was Scott one of the sweetest and most brave men you’d ever known, but he also couldn’t have been in better shape if he wanted to. He looked like one of those perfectly sculpted men in the movies, with six pack abs and chiseled muscles.

It wasn’t like he constantly had to live with the knowledge that the person he loved most in this world didn’t love him back because he wasn’t good enough. You knew that Stiles didn’t feel the same way about you because you weren’t as skinny as you could have been, or as pretty as the others were.

At this point, you doubted he even saw you as a girl at all because you were just his best friend, and that was it. That was what you’d always been and considering how oblivious he was to the feelings you had for him, it wasn’t surprising.

You weren’t even on his radar in that way.

“First of all, ow! Second of all, you’re super cute, why wouldn’t he be into you?” Scott wondered, that same supportive, loving tone that was always in his voice making itself known to you. He really did believe that, not that it made you feel better.

Cute.

That was all you were ever going to be.

Puppies were cute, and everyone loved them but no one was actively dreaming of taking their favorite puppy out on a date or dreaming about a puppy out loud to their friends. You didn’t date someone just because they were cute, which was the whole problem.

You didn’t want to be cute.

You wanted to be beautiful, to be hot, to be drop dead gorgeous in the way that Lydia was, and it killed you every day that you weren’t.

“Thanks Scott, but I don’t think cute is gonna cut it” you decided, closing the book in front of you as a way of closing this conversation before getting up and heading out of the library.

It didn’t make any sense to Scott.

It was clear to him that you and Stiles had something that could very well be a great relationship but you kept getting in your own way and it wasn’t like Stiles knew what he was doing. 

Some days, Scott worried he’d leave his head at home if it wasn’t attached.

“Hey Y/N, think about it” he called, catching the way you turned around to look at him before heading out to the parking lot.

There was no way Stiles was going to come to the conclusion that you cared about him as anything more than a friend on his own, and until you got that push to do it yourself, it wasn’t going to happen.

He just had to wait for one or both of you to take that chance.

~

Scott had a point.

Of course he did, Scott usually had a point as much as you hated to admit it. You were super cute, and while it might not have been enough, there really weren’t that many reasons why Stiles wouldn’t be into you.

Now, all you had to do was figure out what you were going to do about it, before all desire to do so left your body completely if it hadn’t already. 

You had only been trying to sike yourself up about this for the past hour in the rear view mirror and it just wasn’t happening.

You felt like an idiot.

Here you were, sitting across the street from Stiles’ house like a creep, without a single idea of what you were actually going to say to him if you ever made it to his front door. It didn’t make any sense, this was a guy you’d known since you were a kid.

You had never had a problem saying anything to him or doing whatever you wanted, but now, the idea of even looking him in the face was enough to make you want to be sick. It was hardly fair but you had done this to yourself after all.

It was perfectly fine before, even if you were unhappy. No one else had to know that you had feelings for him and you could just suffer in silence but now that you had Scott in your corner, it was hard not to want to try.

Surely your shared best friend was the best authority on whether or not there was anything between you and Stiles. If anyone was going to know anything, it was the true alpha, after all. 

That was like, his whole thing.

“You can do this. You’ve fought monsters, this is just Stiles” you reminded yourself, before pushing the mirror away completely, getting out of the car before you could buckle back up and drive home. It was now or never, and whatever happens, happens.

You couldn’t worry about it now.

“Hey Stiles, are you feeling better?” you hummed, the words barely registering under your breath as you tried to figure out what you wanted to say. You’d had this nightmare a million times over but you’d never actually considered doing it on your own.

Now that you were, the words just weren’t coming to you like they should have been.

“I just had something I wanted to run by you” you tried, testing out how that would sound before immediately scrapping it. That sounded like you were making some kind of business proposal and you certainly weren’t.

It had to be perfect.

Not that you had time to actually nail down what you wanted to say before you found yourself at his front door, already having knocked out of habit. Again, you briefly considered sprinting back to your car before it opened but you couldn’t make your feet move.

You knew that you had to do this.

“Hey Stiles, I was hoping we could talk” the words left your lips before you could police them, as soon as the door opened. You knew that it was hardly the smoothest you could have been but at this point, there was nothing between the two of you to soften the blow.

You just had to get this over with. If he accepted your feelings, he accepted them but if he didn’t, there was nothing you could do to change that either.

Naturally, those words freaked Stiles out a little because he assumed something terrible had happened but you didn’t seem as panicked as you should have been if someone was dying. This was a little more than your usual high strung but not by much.

“Yeah for sure, are you okay?” he allowed, moving away from the doorframe to let you in before closing the door behind you both. His dad was working late again, so it would just be the two of you but that had never been a problem before.

Especially lately, you and Stiles had killed time on several nights when Scott was busy with the pack or on date night. It wasn’t strange for you to be alone together, normally but there was a strange air about it today.

You just couldn’t tell if it was coming from him or you.

You knew that Stiles had been having a little trouble sleeping lately, and the nightmares were driving him crazy but the pack was going to handle it. 

The pack always took care of those kinds of things and you both knew Scott wasn’t going to let anything happen to him.

All he had to do was wait it out and try to relax in the meantime.

…And of course, you were having a hard time being your calm and collected self as you tried to figure out the best way to go about this whole thing.

It wasn’t every day you confessed your feelings to your best friend after all.

“I’m alright, I just have something I want to talk to you about is all” you shrugged, sitting down on the couch. This was a lot harder to do than you could have ever thought, and it just seemed like it wasn’t going anywhere.

There was only so much stalling you could do before you had to tell him the truth.

“Okay, I guess I’m just gonna put it all out there,” you sighed, your hands falling on your thighs. This was your last chance to walk away and no one would ever have to know what it was you were hiding, and that almost seemed like the right thing to do.

Though, the way he was looking at you took that all away.

You knew that if you ever had a chance at being with him in the way you wanted, you had to be able to tell him how you felt, at the very least.

Here goes nothing.

“I’m in love-with you” you allowed, exhaling as if you’d been holding that in your lungs all this time, which you pretty much had. You had no idea how this was supposed to feel, but you were pretty confident it wasn’t like this.

He didn’t even say anything at first.

All you could see was Stiles rubbing his temple out of the corner of your eye, his eyes screwed shut. It was hardly the reaction you had been expecting but at that moment, it didn’t even matter. You knew what he’d been going through, and it worried you.

It always worried you, especially knowing about his mom and all the stress he’d been under lately. 

Needless to say, you were more than happy to forget about everything you’d just said in favor of making sure he was alright, especially if your words had upset him.

If he didn’t feel the same, you would have happily moved on as if this moment had never happened. It would be easier than having to swallow that rejection.

You didn’t know if you could handle that after all this.

You had been hiding your feelings for Stiles all this time, and now that you said it out loud, you hoped you’d feel better but you just didn’t. This whole thing was really starting to seem like a mistake, and you didn’t even know everything yet.

Neither did Stiles.

In reality, he was more than thrilled at your confession but something was wrong. He felt like he wasn’t in control, like he wasn’t even in his own body anymore. It didn’t make any sense but he had never had a feeling like this before.

Stiles was vulnerable.

Before this moment, the Nogitsune hadn’t been able to break through to the surface but you provided the crack in his armor that it needed to escape. It was perfect, at least for the void, it certainly wasn't going to be pleasant for you.

After all, it had been a long time since it had seen the light of day and it was hungry, hungry and wearing your little lover boy like a cheap Halloween costume. Of course it was going to use that against you, void would be an idiot not to.

Your love for the boy made you little more than an exposed nerve, one that the Nogitsune could poke and prod at all it pleased until it was satisfied.

...and it certainly intended to.

All at once, there was a huge change in the room between the two of you, and more specifically, in Stiles. 

There was a cold, darkness to him that you had never seen which you didn’t even realize was there until he started laughing, a deep chuckle leaving his throat.

You weren’t ready for it, but what you were less ready for was what happened when he spoke.

“Did you really think I could ever feel like that, for you? We both know that’s a little crazy” he scoffed, an almost mocking tone that didn’t sound like Stiles at all. It shocked you, in all honesty, but not for the reason you may have thought.

Deep down, you knew that Stiles wouldn’t be interested in you but you never could have imagined him being so aggressive and cruel in his rejection of you.

He’d never spoken to anyone like that before, especially not you.

“I just-” you tried, but he stopped you before you could even try to get through this whole thing with any dignity at all. For the Nogitsune, this was all fun and games, but for you, it was so much more than that.

This was quite possibly the worst moment of your life.

“You aren’t blind, you had to have known this wasn’t going to work out the way you wanted. I mean, look at you?”

Stiles was screaming, using everything he had to try and get through to you, to overpower whatever this thing in his head was, but he couldn’t make it happen. It was too much, too strong, and all he could do was sit back and let it happen.

He knew it was breaking your heart, he could see it in your face but no matter how hard he fought, there was nothing he could do to get back in control. He felt like he was locked in a cage in his own head, and someone else had the key.

He just didn't know who.

You sat there for a second more as you tried to process whatever it was that was happening right now before you felt tears pricking in the corner of your eyes, and decided that it was probably time to leave.

Staying here any longer was just going to make this worse. Besides, it wasn’t as if Stiles was in the mood to talk this out or even treat you like a person.

Clearly, Scott was wrong, being cute wasn’t enough to make someone care about you.

[oh-obrien]

Inscrutable {1}

Inscrutable: Impossible to Understand or Interpret 

Relationships: Stiles Stilinski x Original Female Character

Word Count: 5,611  6,683

Warnings: None 

Author’s Note: My first Stiles fic!! I’m super excited to share this series with y’all, especially being new to the Dylan O’Brien / Teen Wolf Fandom. Send me an ask or message me if you want to be tagged!

THIS PART OF INSCRUTABLE HAS BEEN UPDATED WITH MORE CONTENT AND HAS ALSO BEEN EDITED MORE THROUGHLY!

Finley Mannulv carefully scooped a second heaping spoon full of protein powder into her shaker bottle, hoping that the drink would give her a well-earned boost of energy for her first class of the semester. Knocking the scooper on the side of the bottle, she watched as some of the white powder stuck to the sides of the clear-blue plastic of the bottle, the rest forming a thick layer on top of the water. Finley dropped the plastic scooper back into the container and a small cloud of powder puffed out of the top, accumulating on the black fabric of her t-shirt. She hugged the protein powder container to her chest and closed it tightly before she tucked it back into her locker, wiping off what had gotten on her shirt afterwards.

Moving her bottle off of the bench in front of her locker, Finley kneeled on the wooden bench and let out a deep sigh looking into her messy locker. “Dad would have a hemorrhage,” she mumbled to herself before pulling out her dirty clothes from conditioning that morning. She made sure her number, eleven, had been printed on each piece of clothing before she clipped them on to her laundry clip and dumped them into the bin that their coach had brought in earlier. She made sure her clothes for practice later that night, along with her pinnies, were in her locker before deciding it looked clean enough for the time being.

She had never been the neatest, a controlled chaos being the easiest for her to navigate more often than not. The same philosophy also held true for any living space or locker she had prior to starting college. As soon as she made a space spotless, she suddenly couldn’t find anything she needed, and it just fell back into some sort of disarray a couple of days later anyway. A little bit of mess made her spaces feel more comfortable, more lived in.   

Finley pulled one of her many school provided hoodies off of a hook inside her locker and slipped the white fabric over her head. She looked down at the American University logo that had settled in the middle of her torso, the reality still not fully sinking in that she’d be spending the next four years of her life at the university. Her junior year of high school Finley had verbally committed to the University, contingent on the fact that she produced favorable grades through her senior year and also kept up her performance on the lacrosse field. Now, nearly two years later, she had just finished her first pre-class conditioning session and was in the process of getting ready to attend her first class of her college experience.

Finley just shook her head, not needing to be reminded about how quickly her life seemed to be blowing by, and tucked some of the extra fabric of her hoodie up under itself so she could prove she did, in fact, have on shorts. Her hair, which had mostly dried during team breakfast, got pulled out of the back of her hoodie and settled in messy, half damp auburn strands on her back.

“What do you have going on this morning?” Finley asked Cameron, one of the other freshmen on the team, who had been filling up her own shaker bottle at the water station when Finley approached.

Cameron screwed the top of her bottle on tight and looked down at the unmixed powder that had been pushed down when she had poured the water in. “Caramel,” Cameron replied as she started shaking the container, “it’s good. My go to in high school.” Finley nodded and started filling up her own bottle, the fresh water pushing the powder down into the small amount of water that Finley already had in the bottle.

Finley made note of the flavor as she watched the bottle’s water level rise. “I need to order a few more, vanilla and cookies and cream get old after a couple weeks, but they’re all I brought with me.” She flipped the switch on the water fountain, turning the water flow off. “My brother stole a few containers for himself before he left for school so I’m low on my stock.”   

Cameron took a long sip of her drink before tilting the bottle towards Finley in some sort of ‘cheers’ motion, “I’ll drink to that one. See you tonight.” Finley offered a smile in acknowledgement as she screwed the top to her own bottle back on tightly.

She held the top tight with her index and middle fingers and shook the bottle vigorously, watching the spring ball bounce around inside as the drink mixed. After she made sure her drink had been properly mixed, she took a long sip, swiping her tongue over her teeth to remove the film that stuck to them from the protein powder. “I’ll see you tonight!” She waved to Savanna, her locker-room neighbor, and adjusted the straps of her designated ‘class’ backpack on her shoulders.

When she had helped to move her brother into college a few weeks prior, she had made fun of him for taking his ‘Notre Dame Football’ backpack with him everywhere. But, to his defense, he had been gifted quite a lot of gear by the university prior to even getting to college and he had also used a similar backpack throughout his senior year of high school. Now though, Finley looked at herself in one of the mirrors and snorted, realizing she was now in the same position. Team sneakers were on her feet, team shorts her choice attire of pants and an ‘AU Lacrosse’ hoodie topped off her outfit with the matching t-shirt underneath.

“Good luck with your first day of classes!” Savanna offered Finley an excited smile. Finley nodded in thanks while she picked up her lacrosse bag with her free hand, she needed to bring it back to her dorm to tighten the pocket of her stick, and bringing the bag to class with her was a better option than having to travel back to the locker room after her class just to pick it up.

“This entire year will go a lot faster than you think it will now, the countdown to graduation in four years really starts now.” Jayden, a junior, added. Finley nodded as she grabbed her lacrosse stick and gripped it in the same hand as her bag, off to officially start her first day of college.

She received the opportunity to move on to the American University campus two weeks early, along with the other athletes who attended the school. The two-week period seemed to allow her, and the other freshmen athletes, a cushion to comfortably adjust to college life and the campus itself. It felt like it gave her a leg up on the other freshmen, she already looked, and felt, comfortable on campus that was a huge part of adjusting to college life and she already had it in the bag.

In her two weeks already on campus, Finley had been able to find where all of her classes would be, as well as settle into a routine. Six o’clock morning workouts, seven fifteen shower, seven-thirty team breakfast. After breakfast she knew her classes started at eight-forty-five or eight-fifteen depending on the day.

Taking all early classes would allow her plenty of time to nap in the afternoon if she felt like she needed to before attending evening practices. On the days when she didn’t feel like sleeping a little extra, it would allow extra time for homework and studying. Her brother had settled into a similar routine at Notre Dame, although a little busier because football was in season at the university, but it was comforting to know her twin was in a similar mindset.

At eight-thirty Finley stepped out of the William I Jacobs Recreational Complex, the sun had finally risen within the timeframe she had been inside the facility. The early mornings would begin to get old near mid-terms, but for now the early start felt somewhat refreshing, she was already awake and nearly three hours into her day while most of the other students had probably just woken up.

Despite her classes being in the first time block of the day, Finley noticed that campus had already started to bustle with activity. Students who were excited, nervous, and overwhelmed for their first day of classes were all on the way to the multiple academic buildings. Some were chatting in small groups, others walked alone with headphones in, and she even noticed a few couples holding hands. Must be nice.

The late-August morning air had a slight chill to it and Finley felt the hair on her legs stand up when a breeze passed. The morning air seemed easier to breathe than the stuffy August afternoon air she had been practicing in for the past two weeks during two-a-days. Her first class for the day was Introduction to Law, a class she didn’t feel all that excited for.

Finley liked to think she had a solid knowledge of the basis of the legal system. Thanks to her parents, of course. Her father’s current job title read ‘Director of the Central Intelligence Agency’ on various news channels when he would give interviews, and her mom had once worked for the Department of Homeland Security, she felt well versed in the basics of the law. However, Finley had also accepted that fact that she couldn’t use her father’s government position and the stories he had told her to get out of introduction level classes for her major.

However, Finley had been able to use many of the dual enrollment and advanced placement classes to get out of many of her core curriculum classes. She only had two freshman level classes to take this semester and would then be fully immersed into the classes for both of her majors, and with her starting out on campus as a sophomore, she would be able to register for what she needed next semester rather than getting stuck with the leftover dregs for classes.

Carefully reaching back to put her protein shake in her left backpack pocket, Finley pulled her phone out of the waistband of her Nike shorts and saw a text from her twin brother. Cian was a freshman quarterback at Notre Dame and hoped to start a couple games in the upcoming season and be named the permeant starter his sophomore year.

“You cheating on the field yet?” Finley snorted reading the text message over to herself a couple more times before trying to think of a witty response, she felt too tired to think of one, her brain not being awake enough to muster a proper insult.

“It’s not cheating when it’s my natural athletic ability. Same goes to you man.” She responded before tucking her phone back into her waistband before scaling the steps to the academic building her first class took place in.

Entering the old building Finley inhaled the stuffy air before trying to remember which way she went to find her classroom last week. The strong smell of mold and sheetrock made her sneeze and she realized that she would need to take one of her ‘allergy pills’ every morning to be sure none of the buildings would bother her going forward. After deciding to take the hallway to her left she quickly found the room she had located once before and pushed the door open with her elbow. She stepped into the lecture style room and saw a few students already inside the tiered room, scrolling through their phones or laptops.

Surveying the room, she noticed plenty of prime seat options and opted to climb the stairs and slide into the first seat closest to the middle aisle in the third row. She grabbed her protein shake out of its pocket and settled it on the table in front of her along with her water bottle. Finley set her lacrosse bag on the floor, tucking it up against the end of the table that spanned her whole half of the row, making sure nobody would be able to trip over it. She stood her stick up next to her bag before sitting down and pulling one of her headphones out.

Scrolling through her team’s group chat she followed along with dinner plans and made a mental note to remember to go after practice later that night, their coach stressed team bonding, and team meals fell under that umbrella. Finley would look up every time the door opened, and her classmates started to trickle in. So far only one other girl had settled into Finley’s row, on the complete opposite end from her.

At eight-forty a middle-aged man entered the room and started logging into the computer, no materials with him other than his reusable water bottle and cell phone. Finley assumed he had to be the professor and nodded before looking back down at her phone. Something about him just felt off, but she couldn’t pinpoint what the ‘offness’ he gave off was.

A couple minutes later she heard someone move past the girl at the end of the row, mumbling a ‘sorry’ as they slipped behind her chair. The footsteps indicated they were most likely a male, and as they got closer Finley got a whiff of their body scent. It could only be described as ‘boy’. The cologne and deodorant he had on clashed and the smell of the two mixing with his normal scent made Finley sneeze. Fantastic.

She heard the stranger get closer and closer until his erratic heartbeat settled right next to her, he also smelled like some type of medication, something with amphetamine in it. “Hey,” his voice distracted her while she was in the middle of typing out a message to her brother, trying to concentrate on the message she had been through the fog that was this boy’s natural scent. She hoped he would leave after she didn’t acknowledge him, but after he didn’t leave after a few seconds Finley caved.

She looked up and noticed the boy had dark hair and soft brown eyes, his facial expression definitely gave away his anxiety about his first day. His thumbs were hooked into the straps on his backpack while he rocked on the balls of his feet. “This seat free?” He asked while pointing at the chair next to where Finley sat. She gave him a quick once over and noted how he nervously chewed on his bottom lip, his cheeks getting a little bit red as his heartbeat quickened, his nerves only growing.

He was nervous, and kind of cute, he could stay. Finley nodded and pulled her other headphone out, “yeah.” She didn’t understand why he had to sit right next to her when there were plenty of other seats free that weren’t near anyone. There were also a few seats two away from her but decided not to point it out.

He wore a loose red and black open flannel shirt that contrasted the fitted white tee he had on underneath; his spindly muscles visible through the material. His legs sported a pair of dark jeans and he had a black leather belt tight around his waist. To anyone else he would smell like old spice deodorant and fabric softener if they were sitting this close to him. However, Finley smelled the anxiety that seeped out of his pores.

“Some boy just sat next to me,” Finley sent her brother.

“He reeks of anxiety,” she added, wrinkling her nose and trying not to sneeze again after she had sent it. She went to slip her right headphone back in but instead felt the boy next to her stealing a nervous glance at her. Finley knew he considered saying something to her and instead opted to unplug her headphones and slip them into her school bag in a messy tangle of wires.

“I’m Stiles! I’m from California!” He offered Finley a nervous smile after his more than awkward introduction, his heart beating ever faster than after he sat down. Did he know introductions didn’t have to be so formal and forced?

Before Finley mustered a response to Stiles’ introduction, she watched his eyes trail to her lacrosse stick that peeked over the top of the table. “Oh woah! You play lacrosse here?” She looked down at her hoodie which had ‘American University Lacrosse’ printed on it, to make sure she pulled on the hoodie she thought she did before leaving the locker room. Maybe he thought it could be her boyfriend’s? But American didn’t have an NCAA men’s lacrosse team, they only had a club men’s lacrosse team.

Holy shit, Finley thought to herself, he also had too much energy. “I’m Finley. I’m from the D.C. area,” she replied slowly. “And yes, I do play lacrosse here,” she could have ended her introduction there, but her dad telling her to be ‘diplomatic’ with her classmates the night before flashed across her mind. “You’re familiar?” She added after the fact.

He nodded enthusiastically, “I played in high school! I’m also playing on the club team here, since we don’t have a varsity men’s team and all. I also probably wouldn’t have been asked to play on a varsity team if there was one.” He reached back to scratch the back of his neck nervously. Maybe he wasn’t so bad, just nervous about being across the country. Or maybe he had ADHD, just like one of her and Cian’s younger cousins.

With a nod at his response Finley turned back to her phone and saw another text from her brother. “The downfalls of being supernatural. Suck it up Fins.” She rolled her eyes at his response and tried to think of something to snap back at him when Stiles’ voice caught her attention again

“So, are you a Justice and Law major also?” Finley could feel his eyes on the side of her face. “Wait no!” He cut her answer off before she could even begin. “This class is for my Legal Studies Major!” He had decided to double major, that had to mean he was pretty smart, right?

Taking another sip of her protein shake to prevent herself from sighing, Finley turned her chair so she faced him this time. “Accounting and Legal Studies.” She saw Stiles ready to ask another question and felt thankful when she instead heard the professor’s voice carry a full ‘good morning’ through the room. 

Her eyes turned to the man at the front of the room as she pulled her legs up on to the chair she sat in, with her legs ‘criss-cross-applesauce’ on the plush material. She felt herself start to swivel back and forth as the professor started his introduction but avoided the urge. “I’m Robert,” their professor seemed to run a very informal classroom. He wore dark jeans and a polo shirt, an unzipped American University hoodie over it.

All of high school Finley’s teachers had spent time telling their classes, ‘this will never fly in college!’ However, that statement quickly had seemed to becoming false as one of the classes for the next day had already been cancelled and the Professor had sent them an email that just stated, ‘read the syllabus, ask any questions in out class on Thursday.’ Mix that message with this professor’s relaxed attitude, casual dress and lack of materials and Finley really believed that her high school teachers had just been trying to scare the students into listening.

“If you’re not here for Introduction to Law, you’re in the wrong place,” he leaned against the table at the front of the room. Finley watched as a few students stood and left the room, they all had their eyes on pieces of paper which most liked contained their schedules. “Anyone else?” Robert gave others the ability to leave if they needed. After he received no response to his question, he pushed himself off the table and clapped his hands together. “Fantastic!”

“Seems nice so far,” Stiles mumbled from his place next to Finley who tried not to show her annoyance with him. She just simply nodded in response and continued watching their professor, still slowly turning back and forth in her chair.

Robert picked up a piece of blue chalk and started writing on the chalkboard. “Since we’re in a freshman class I’ll do the whole introduction thing!” He scraped a few more words on to the board. “So, give us your name, where you’re from, you major, and I guess a fun fact about you or some shit like that.”

Oh, so it would be this kind of class. He pointed at the student who occupied the very first seat in the front row and prompted them to introduce themselves. Finley listened as others introduced themselves mentally taking note of who seemed to give off anxiety and those who were confident going into the first day. Most of the room stank of anxiety, but Finley tried to ignore the smell. She took frequent, small sips of her protein shake to fill her nostrils with the scent of vanilla instead of anxiety. After the boy in the row next to her, David, introduced himself she watched Robert’s eyes flicker over to her.

Mentally groaning, Finley pulled the protein shake bottle away from her lips. “Hi, I’m Finley Mannulv. I’m-”

“Wait. Hold on,” Finley audibly groaned when her professor cut her off. Why did professors or teachers always have to do this? Especially in D.C. didn’t they get the kids of government officials, congressmen, ambassadors, anyone else with a title seemingly ‘important’ to the function of the country and the world, all the time.

“Yes, Mannulv as in Maxwell Mannulv Director of the CIA’s daughter,” she finished for him while rolling her eyes. “Now that we addressed the elephant in the room I’m moving on. I’m here for an education just like everyone else.” She saw Stiles’ jaw open slightly next to her and shook her head. Fantastic, already off to a great first day. “Anyway, I’m from around D.C., originally from New York though, but I’m sure you knew that already,” she glared at her professor. “But I’m an Accounting and Legal Studies major and I’m on the lacrosse team.”

Robert narrowed his eyes at Finley who just offered him a lopsided smirk in response. “And no, my dad didn’t get me in here. I had at 35 on the ACT and a 1550 on the SAT.” She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her.

Robert smiled through clenched teeth, “so nice to have a student with such close ties to the legal system in the class.” He turned to Stiles. “And you?”

Finley coughed when she smelled his anxiety grow even stronger, did this boy ever relax? “Umm hey,” he awkwardly waved around the room. “I’m Stiles Stilinski, I’m from Beacon Hills in California, and I’m a Justice and Law and Legal Studies double major. Umm-” he hesitated, “a fun fact? I’m on the men’s club lacrosse team here.” Stiles took in a deep breath of air after he finished speaking. Finley allowed herself to breath after that and noticed that the air of anxiety around him decreased greatly. She had more important things than Stiles’ anxiety to worry about right now though.

Finley made sure Robert no longer looked in their direction before pulling her phone out. “There’s a guy in my class from Beacon Hills!” She quickly typed out in the group chat she had with her dad and brother knowing they would be interested in the information.

“Is it anxiety boy?” Cian replied.

At the same time her dad sent, “Is he one of us?”

“Yes and no!” She quickly sent. She followed it by saying, “his first name is Styles? I don’t even know if that’s how it’s spelled and I didn’t catch his last name but it started with like Still.” Finley wasn’t sure if that was how he spelled it but that’s how it had been pronounced. Hopefully it would be enough for her dad to work with.

“Just pay attention in class. I’ll send a few messages out and see what I can find.” Maxwell replied while his son answered with “Who the hell names their kid Styles?” Finley locked her phone and slid it face down on to the table in front of her with the ringer turned off.

Still having heard most of the introductions of her fellow classmates, Finley tuned back into class while watching the boy who sat next to her closely.

He definitely seemed human, another supernatural tended to be incredibly easy for Finley to sense, her father had been training her how to do it from a young age. He also didn’t smell like he had recently been in contact with any other supernatural creatures, maybe that was because he had just moved into college? If he lived in Beacon Hills he had to know about all the supernaturals there, especially after Scott McCall managed to somehow chase most of the hunters out of town and create a ‘supernatural sanctuary’ of sorts.

Finley felt a migraine creeping into the back of her head and knew she had to stop stressing about this Styles boy before she wouldn’t be able to make it through the rest of the day. Instead she focused on Robert as he began speaking about what the class would entail.

“As you all know this is an introduction to law class.” No shit, Finley rolled her eyes and took another long sip from her protein shake. “Let me start with this question. Is anyone here somewhat comfortable with the legal process?”

Finley’s hand shot up with absolutely no hesitation and she gave Robert a fake smile, as if she asked him to challenge her. She watched as Stiles’ hand slowly raised from his place next to her and her suspicion of the boy only continued to increase.

Robert looked at Stiles with shock, his hand coming up to point at the pair. “Now I know about Ms. Mannulv’s legal background of sorts. But what about you Mr.,” he trailed off forgetting his last name.

“Stilinski,” he filled in the missing word. Finley would need to remember that as best she could. “And my dad’s the Sheriff of our town back home. I also had an FBI internship for part of the summer.” Finley almost choked on her shake and had to cough again to cover it up, her eyes widening.

“Are you okay Ms. Mannulv?” Finley held a hand up at Robert’s question and nodded for him to continue. She set the shake down in front of her and her fingers were itching to pick up her phone to text her dad and brother with the update, but she knew she needed to wait.

Robert walked back to the computer and pressed a button that had a projector screen coming down from inside the ceiling. “Well, since you two are so comfortable with the basis of law already,” Finley watched as the screen lit up. The words ‘Partner Based Case Study and Mock Trial’ were written across a PowerPoint slide. “You can be our first pair for this semester!”

Finley actually choked on her protein shake this time and spiraled into a coughing fit. She quickly reached out for her metal water bottle and unscrewed the top taking a long sip to clear her airway. “Sorry, practice this morning has me wiped out, especially with the air being cool.” She let the ice water coat her suddenly dry throat. That had been a total lie, her body easily adjusted to the change in air that morning, but it would need to be a good cover for now.

She felt Stiles’ eyes on her and carefully listened for his heartbeat. After detecting a quicker than normal resting heartbeat again she realized he felt just as anxious about this assignment as she did. Maybe they would be able to pull it off.

“So now that we all realize this is a case-based class, if the rest of you would like to partner up with someone else in the class we can go through the syllabus after.” Finley watched as other students started talking with one another, trying to make compatible pairs for their projects. She took the opportunity to open her laptop and pull up the syllabus, also grabbing her phone.

“His dad’s the sheriff.” She quickly sent in the group chat before flicking her ringer back on and turning it all the way down so she would feel the phone vibrate.

Finley quickly made herself come to peace with the fact that she would have to talk to this Stiles boy more often than she originally intended to and turned to face him. “So, this just took an interesting turn.” She offered him a small smile, taking note of the indifferent expression on his face, but she did note that his heartbeat had slowed slightly.

Stiles nodded then looked over to Finley again, his eyes were soft and carried some hints of nervousness, but a genuine smile spread across his face. “Definitely not what I expected to say the least. But I think we’re both pretty experienced so we should be a great team.”

“Definitely,” Finley suddenly decided the rings on her fingers were interesting and started spinning them. “I wasn’t a huge partner work person most of my life, but this should be an easy introduction.”

Stiles snorted out a small laugh and his smile grew, “seems like all I’ve done the past few years is group work.” He shook his head slightly, “this should be a nice transition into college though. A little calmer than life back home.”

Robert clapped his hands to get the attention of his class, waiting for the room to fall silent before speaking. “Hope everyone has a partner,” he walked over to the computer and pulled up an excel spreadsheet. “So, we have Mannulv and Stilinski to start us off.” He typed their last names in and looked up. “Who’s next?”

Finley tuned out after that and picked her phone up off her thigh.

“Stilinski?” Her dad had asked. After replying with a simple ‘yes’, Finley looked to see the spreadsheet almost completely filled out.

Robert filled in the remaining rows and turned the PowerPoint back on. Finley quickly read the ‘Types of Cases’ slide and immediately had her mind set on completing the murder case with the added mental state determination element and wanted to argue on the state’s side.

She turned to Stiles whose eyes still traveled across the slide and waited until he finished reading it and also looked over to her before speaking. “Four?” She asked him, making sure she had the case number right.

“I mean, since you knew what you wanted that quickly,” he shrugged, “sure.” After agreeing on the case, Finley tuned back into the instructions Robert read to the class off another slide.

“So! With that being said after discussing with your partner which case and side you would like to argue for,” he flicked back to the slide. “I would like one of you to raise your hand and let me know.” He leaned back on to the desk.

Finley made eye contact with Stiles again and raised an eyebrow. “Go ahead,” he laughed lightly, giving Finley the go ahead to lock their case in. She quickly raised her hand and watched as Robert raised his eyebrows at her.

“Ms. Mannulv, Mr. Stilinski. That was awfully quick.” He crossed his arms over his chest while speaking.

Finley shook her head with a small smile. “We’re experienced right?” She didn’t wait for the professor’s answer before continuing, “by those standards we should know what we want then. The homicide case, which I’m assuming is actually murder charges, with the mental state element, state’s side.”

Robert smiles after hearing her choice and nodded. “Now as most of you will find out, your case is based on real life cases!” Robert’s voice filled the room, cutting off other student’s conversations. “Which will be expressed in the email I send to those working on each individual case after class. Some cases are closed, others are cold. Cold cases are much harder to work with,” he turned to Finley with a smirk. “After I take down which case, you’re doing you’re free to leave!”

“Thank god,” Finley began putting everything back into her backpack and zipping it up. She watched as Stiles did the same, standing up afterwards and looking over to Finley expectantly.

He watched as she tucked her empty protein shake bottle into the side of her backpack, and she also did the same with her water bottle on the opposite side. She reached down to pick up her lacrosse bag and her stick. She seemed to have everything under control, but should he offer to help her anyway?

Stiles nervously scratched the back of his neck before speaking, “do you umm need, I mean want, do you want help?” He asked her. She stood up straight again, her phone in one hand and her lacrosse bag and stick in the other, a soft smile on her lips.

“I’m okay,” she shook her head. “I mean I’ve been doing it for years now, but I really do appreciate the offer.” Stiles noticed her blue eyes were softer now as they made their way down the middle stairs of the room and out the door. Maybe she wasn’t as cold as she gave off in class.

He wasn’t sure if she had class after this or not, but he knew they finished their class about half an hour early and had been interested in making new friends at college. Lydia told him he should get to know people early on and establish a couple friendships he could see lasting past college. “You’ve played for a while now?” He asked her as they walked outside of the building and into the warming morning air.

“Me?” She laughed a little bit. “Started in second grade, haven’t stopped since. Always wanted to play with the boys though like my brother did.” She shrugged. She didn’t seem to give off the ‘girly’ attitude that Lydia and Allison had through out high school. Finley didn’t ‘dress to impress’ like they had and clearly went for comfort and functionality.

Stiles laughed lightly, “I mean, I didn’t get a ton of playing time in high school, but the pushing and shoving was fun sometimes, especially if I had a little pent up frustration.” The pair stopped once they were outside the building and Finley dropped her bag and stick. She sat down on the top stair of the staircase and looked up to Stiles motioning for him to sit.

He dropped his backpack next to both of hers before sitting next to her. “What brought you all the way out here though?” She asked. “I mean California is across the country and all.”

Stiles carefully thought over his answer, he didn’t want to give away too much about exactly why he had left Beacon Hills. He hoped he didn’t have to open that part of his life up to anyone new so quickly. “Umm, I’m looking to work in the FBI after college, so thought it would be a good place to go to school.” That part held true. “That and my girlfriend is at MIT, we’re close enough to visit when one of us has time.” Right being close to Lydia had also been part of the original plan.

Stiles had been so busy in the past week he had hardly been able to talk to Lydia, or any of his other friends from back home for that matter. Diving across the country had him absolutely exhausted, mixed with the stress of moving in and trying to get settled pretty quickly it had taken up the remainder of his energy. He felt guilty, but he also realized that the lack of communication would sometimes be the consequence of a long-distance relationship.

He watched as Finley reached back to pick up her water bottle and unscrewed the cap, taking a long sip. “Oh god that must be stressful,” she cleared her throat. “I’m only like half an hour from home at most, and I never had time for relationships. That and I think any boy I brought home would be scared of my dad.”

Stiles gave her a curious look and raised his eyebrow, urging her to continue on her thought. “You said he worked for the CIA or something right?”

“Yep, he does. Head honcho of the CIA.” She grabbed the edge of her hoodie and quickly pulled it over her head, resting it across her lap once it came off. “Sorry I started to get warm. But sorry if I acted like kind of a dick in class, I don’t like people questioning my intelligence because of my dad’s position in government.”

Stiles could understand where that frustration could be coming from. He had often used his father’s position as Sheriff to his advantage but had never really experienced the negative consequences that his position could have brought as everyone respected his dad. “I think we’ll be a pretty great team though.” He looked over to Finley who swung her water bottle back and forth between her legs, his eyes momentarily focusing on the object.

“I think we’ll be the best team that guy has ever seen!” She smiled. “I’ll make sure of it.”

A silence fell between the pair and Stiles closed his eyes and allowed his face to tilt up into the morning sun, it’s warmth quickly spreading out across his body. He opened his eyes when he heard one of Finley’s bags being opened. She shoved her hoodie into her lacrosse bag and put her water bottle back into the open side pocket on her other backpack.

She huffed and closed the bag again, standing up. “I need to get to my next class soon,” she offered. “If you want to get lunch and stat looking over our case if we have the materials in time that could work. Here-” She held her phone out to him. “I usually eat at the gym with my team, but I know a couple good places off campus that the meal plan covers if you’d want to do that?”

Right. She grew up around here of course she would know what to eat in the area. “I get finished at 12:20 but after that would work for me.” Stiles hoped their schedules would line up.

“Oh yeah same,” Finley watched as Stiles typed his number into her phone. “I have all early classes, easiest option for me.” She took her phone back before picking all her things up. “I’ll text you after my class gets out!”

“Sounds good!” Stiles threw his backpack over his shoulder before waving goodbye to Finley who went the opposite direction from him. She seemed nice enough, maybe this would be the beginning of his life settling into a new normal.

Finley returned the wave with the hand she gripped her phone in before making her way down the stairs and off to her next class, financial accounting. She flipped her phone over in her hand and unlocked it, looking through texts her dad and brother had sent her.

“Best friends with McCall for years now, human part of his pack basically.” Fantastic, Finley groaned audibly after reading the message her dad sent. She finds a nice boy and he’s best friends with Scott McCall and has a girlfriend.

Finley felt her phone vibrate and looked down to see a message from her brother this time. “Well at least McCall is intelligent unlike some of the others we’ve worked with.” That held true.

Finley sighed deeply as she pushed open the door to the business building, why would she be getting herself wrapped up with a guy from Beacon Hills?

[paintedrecs]

7-7-7 WIP Game

Go to your current WIP. Find the seventh line on the seventh page and copy and paste seven sentences below. Then tag seven other writers to do the same.

I was tagged by @matildajones but since I don’t actually HAVE 7 pages of a WIP right now and since i am a RULEBREAKER and I haven’t been very active on this blog lately, have 7 sentences from 7 different WIPs instead. I’m also not gonna tell you what they’re about, maybe you can guess. 👀 (Or tell me which you’re most interested in seeing more of)

1. 

“It's just for a few days,” Cora said. “And I know for a fact you signed up to be a dorm buddy for prospective freshmen. Boyd told me you had three high schoolers stay over last semester and that it absolutely wasn't his idea and that he was kind of annoyed that you didn't stop them from raiding his snacks while he was in class. So I don't know why you're making such a big deal out of this.”

“First of all,” Derek said, “I restocked those, after he snapped at me a month later when I tried to grab a handful of his Doritos and he finally told me what Greenberg had done while I was also in class. I’m a dorm buddy, not a babysitter, for fuck’s sake. It's not my fault Greenberg refused to leave the room once his parents dropped him off.”

2. 

Stiles did his best to ignore the worry that accompanied that thought: why was his blind date thoroughly engrossed in his book, rather than watching the door? He obviously wasn't struggling with any nerves, which was fine. Good, even. One overthinker in a relationship was more than enough.

There was no indication of excitement, though, which made Stiles’s heart sink a little. Either Lydia hadn't talked him up much, or she had, and this guy wasn't particularly into it. That must've been the catch; Lydia had held onto this picture-perfect friend of hers, only pulling him out when times seemed sufficiently desperate.

3. 

Derek closed his eyes and drifted on the fringes of sleep, letting the darkness ebb and flow to the sound of the contents of Stiles's pockets clinking, the zip of his hoodie, then of his jeans, as he let each fall to the floor.

Another moment, a soft breath of empty air, a hesitation that grew a little shorter each time, and Stiles was clambering into bed, his knees knocking Derek in the shins, his fingers digging into Derek's ribs as he tumbled over him.

"Ow," Derek said, out of habit.

"Shh, fuck," Stiles said, thumping his elbow painfully against the wall as he wiggled under the sheets.

Derek moved his hand until his fingers brushed against cool skin - too cool, a part of his brain filed away, distantly connecting it to the rain he'd only registered in some back corner of his brain as he'd slept.

Stiles sighed and pushed his hand away, but only after Derek had tugged out the last tendrils of throbbing, bone-aching pain.

"You should stop doing that," Derek said drowsily. "Last week it was your head, though, so I guess your mobility's improving."

4. 

Being a single dad was a lot easier when Derek still had his mom around to help out. That wasn't the only reason he missed her, of course, or even the main one. But on days when he was particularly exhausted, or when Drew’s typically sweet nature suddenly turned sullen or angry for reasons Derek couldn't get him to explain, his first impulse was still to reach for the phone.

He'd actually dialed a few times before remembering his mom wasn't there anymore. He'd hung up, palms sweating, not sure if it'd be worse to hear an out of service dial tone or a stranger’s voice on the other end.

Relocating had seemed like a good idea at the time. He'd been born in Beacon Hills, and although they'd moved away when he was still in elementary school, he had fond memories of the summers there - the freedom of riding his bike around quiet neighborhoods, the sense of small town community and neighbors who watched out for each other.

5. 

Elite Supernatural Accommodations. Stiles isn't sure whether it's an advertisement, a boast, or an extension of the hotel’s name. Printed in neat block letters under the slightly pretentious script reading Harris Towers, it's been the driving force behind Stiles’s entire life.

As he's been regularly reminded since he was old enough to process and retain language, elves are inextricably tied to either their birthplace or their place of employment. For Stiles, they're one and the same.

He's a hotel elf. He says it out loud, to the sky shimmering with the first shreds of daylight, to test whether it feels any more fulfilling than it has for the last twenty-odd years.

6. 

Stiles toppled gracelessly into his chair when Derek’s broad back was turned, then casually leaned his chin on his hand and tried to look suitably thoughtful and attentive. “Let’s start with a few basic questions first, if you don’t mind.”

Derek nodded, sitting on the edge of his chair, hands clasped together on top of his knees.

“I’ll be taking notes, and if you’re okay with it, recording our conversation for reference.”

“Oh, I - sure. I guess that’s fine. I didn’t know that was a part of it. I thought this was - confidential?”

7.

“I actually saw it a couple of weeks ago,” Derek finally said, sliding two fingers into the front pocket of his tight jeans and withdrawing a tiny slip of paper. He unfolded it carefully and leaned across the desk to hand it to Stiles. Their fingers brushed, and Derek’s twitched sharply, as though he didn’t particularly like being touched. When he sat back, he settled a little more fully into his chair, tugging the sleeves of his soft, slightly oversized cardigan over his hands.

Stiles looked down at the scrap, which listed the name of his study and his email address. When he looked back up, not sure what he was supposed to do with it, Derek nodded at him.

“I tore it off then, and kept it with me for a while, trying to make up my mind.”

And to be slightly more of a rule-follower, I guess I gotta tag 7 people. @mad-madam-m @bleep0bleep @cobrilee @the-deep-magic @alocalband @inkforwordsart @thewinterotter 

[stereksecretsanta]

Merry Christmas, @do-what-the-knight-tells-you!

I hope you'll enjoy this gift, and happy holidays :)

Read on AO3

*****

Convention sans fake relationship

Derek looks down at the letter in his hand. He’s been through the contents three times already and by now he needs to admit the words aren’t going to change. He still reads through it once more.

With a sigh he pulls his phone from his pockets and a few taps on the screen later the message is off.

He hears Stiles’ jeep first, like he knew he would, his footsteps drowned out by Erica’s chipper greeting when she bursts through the trees, making him wait on the front porch. It’s Boyd who opens the door, Erica and Stiles lost in snarky banter that has Derek fighting the smile that wants to break free. Judged from Boyd’s silent judgement he’s not entirely successful.

Nobody gets to call him out on it as Scott, Allison, Lydia and Jackson pulls up in front of the house then, soon followed by Chris, Melissa and John; Derek still isn’t entirely sure how two hunters - Argents to boot - became part of his pack, but he’s as grateful for them as for the rest of his pack.

When the door closes behind them and they’re about to take their seats in the living room Isaac comes down the stairs, taking his usual seat between Erica and Boyd. Once everybody’s settled Derek pulls out the letter and hands it to Stiles who is closest.

“Okay,” he says with a questioning lilt to his voice once he’s done, Derek’s only response is raising an eyebrow.

“You want to go,” this time Stiles doesn’t bother making it a question though Derek nods anyway.

“Go where?” Erica asks, curiosity written in every line of her body.

Stiles waves the letter around then starts reading “...to see the Hale at the 25th Pack Symposium; a full week with something for the whole pack. Programme and registration form can be viewed and filled out online.” There’s just a second’s silence then the whole pack starts talking.

Before long it’s agreed they’ll go, Lydia volunteering to do the practical things like booking rooms and seats at panels that look interesting. Then they discuss how to get there; it’s not more than a ten hour drive, and soon they decide to rent two cars large enough for all of them and then take turns at the wheel. With that settled they let Melissa pick a movie (it’s her turn), Stiles getting drinks and Peter - nobody noticed him opening the door during the debacle following Stiles reading the letter - making popcorn. It’s early morning before the living room’s empty and they’re all asleep in the rooms Derek had made for them when he rebuilt the house years ago.

~

They leave at seven in the morning. John’s asleep in the passenger seat next to Melissa; she’d been lucky enough to get the week off but he’d just gotten off a double shift; behind them Isaac, Boyd and Erica are playing some kind of card game and the last passengers in the car are Chris and Peter.

Scott’s driving the other car, Allison sitting next to him; Derek sitting between Lydia and Jackson with a book in his hand, Stiles sitting in the back, cooler with drinks and a bag with snacks besides him. He’s asleep, too.

They drive for a few hours before stopping for gas and the opportunity to stretch their legs. When they’re back on the road Derek and Chris are driving, the Stilinskis still asleep and Scott pouting because he isn’t allowed to sit in the back seat with Allison.

They take a second break when Stiles wakes, and one more half an hour later when John does the same. When they pull up in front of the hotel hosting the symposium it’s with Erica and Jackson behind the wheels, both happily handing the car keys to the valets as they exit the vehicles. They all take a few minutes to shake their limbs and stretch their backs before walking through the entrance doors and make their way to the reception desk.

The receptionist is a woman who smells like thunder and lightning but her smile is friendly and she cheerfully tells them the way to their rooms as she hands them their keys. Derek would like to claim to be surprised when he realizes Lydia has only booked five rooms, but he’s not in the habit of lying to himself, so he just follows Stiles after the receptionist has handed him the key to the room they’re going to share.

They all meet up an hour later in the hotel restaurant, their meal quiet and soon over, all of them going back to their rooms and getting a good night’s sleep.

~

Derek knows people are curious, but thankfully nobody asks about the fire, or Laura or anything else he’d rather not talk about with a room full of strangers. But it’s nice, being surrounded by ‘wolves, by pack; stories and games he remembers from his childhood but that his pack has never heard or played before.

It’s the third day and all participants had been loaded onto busses and driven to a nearby, private forest, where they could run as they pleased. There were a few capable of the full shift and Derek had run with them, leaving his clothes with John who claimed to be too old to run in his spare time. Peter had grinned and slapped his rear before taking off and within ten seconds Melissa was left with Derek’s clothes, shaking her head at the two men while shooing Derek off to run.

Running in this form was different to the beta shift. For one doubling the amount of leg made it more difficult at first but once he got the hang of it (and the more he shifted fully the less time it took) he could run faster and further than usual; second everything felt different as a wolf; there had been a chill in the air he could no longer feel, the leaves had crunched when he’d stepped on them but now there was no sound of his paws on the ground. And then there were the scents: they were all a little clearer, more vivid than they were when he was human shaped. One scent in particular - lemony-sweet and earthy - stood out more.

There was no thought, no conscious decision when the wolf - tired from its run - followed that scent back, wrapped itself around its owner and closed its eyes for a nap. He’s not sure how long he’s been asleep when he’s shaken gently, Stiles’ low voice telling him it’s time to get back. Reluctantly the wolf recedes, Derek taking the clothes Stiles is holding out and once he’s dressed they make their way back to the busses, finding the same seats they’d been sitting in on the way out.

~

It’s not all fun and games, after all Lydia has signed them up for every panel she thought might be useful. Derek definitely enjoys the one about courting and mates, the one with “opening the lines of communication” is useful though the speaker is awfully boring, but he’s not entirely sure why Lydia thought he’d need “to see what’s right in front of you”. He tells her this that evening at dinner which earns him an eye roll from half the pack and her condescendingly patting his arm before she turns to Erica and picks up their previous conversation. Derek keeps eating and soon he’s drawn into conversation with Chris and Boyd, the panel long forgotten.

~

Their last day - which also happens to be the day of the full moon - is when things stop being as nice as they’ve been up to this point.

It begins like every other day with Derek waking up and having to extract himself from not only Stiles’ grip but the way their skin has fused together because someone - Derek sends his bedmate a fond scowl - didn’t want to get a washcloth before falling asleep. After relieving himself he takes a quick shower and getting dressed. Then he wakes up Stiles, grins at his grumbling protests and when he pulls the covers over his head, Derek yanks them off of him, laughing at the outraged look he gets for his troubles.

While Stiles showers and brushes his teeth Derek looks over the schedule, deciding they won’t be needed for the day’s activities. Stiles agrees though he thinks they should still make an appearance for breakfast.

The sight greeting them has Derek regretting not insisting they could’ve left a note and taken off. His pack is standing with furious looks on their faces. At the table Allison sits, a ‘wolf Derek doesn’t recognize in front of her. The ‘wolf’s hand slams onto the table and Derek realizes they’re arm wrestling. He takes a step forward, interupting the unknown ‘wolf’s angry rant with a:

“What’s going on here?” Lydia narrows her eyes at the stranger while the rest of the pack refuses to look at either Derek or Stiles. In the end it’s the ‘wolf who answers.

“We were just playing for the rights to the pretty omega,” the guy leers in Stiles’ direction, Derek waves his peaceful morning goodbye.

“Who?” Stiles asks innocently, a dangerous glint in his eyes the ‘wolf either doesn’t notice or ignores. Derek’s money is on the former and if he didn’t want to get laid again sometime this week he’d be tempted to warn the ‘wolf.

“You,” he says to Stiles obvious amusement.

“Aaaaw, did you hear that, he called me pretty.” Stiles looks expectantly at the pack, all of them still glaring at the ‘wolf. “Well, if you’re still up for it, I’ll play with you.” The ‘wolf barely has time for a triumphant grin before Stiles flicks his wrist and the stranger is flying towards the ceiling; before he can make contact with it Stiles flattens his hand and then makes a few circles. The result is terrifying - at least for the ‘wolf now flying around the ceiling at breakneck speed soon screaming at the top of his lungs.

Derek waits but when after a minute it doesn’t look as if Stiles is going to let the guy down he finally decides he should maybe try to save the guy.

“Stiles,” he says carefully, “maybe you could let him down before he throws up on people trying to have breakfast in peace?”

Stiles smiles sweetly at him, but his - no doubt scathing - answer dies on his tongue when some of the hotel employees make their way into the dining hall.

“Sir,” the oldest looking of them addresses Stiles, “please put the guest down on the ground before we have to call the druids.”

For a second Derek is afraid Stiles isn’t going to do as asked but then he nods and reverses his hand movements, leaving the ‘wolf standing on the floor.

Derek’s a little sad they won’t get to run under the full moon with all the other packs on the other hand he much prefers spending those nights at home, with his glorious mate writhing under him.

[thehollowprince]

Hey, it’s the “coding” anon here and honestly that answer to my question was excellent and the exact reason I come to your blog. I would absolutely love to hear you go on about the fetishization of m/m relationships!

This has been sitting in my inbox for over a week, and I want to apologize. I'm sorry for taking so long to get to this one, but I'm overworked at the moment. I've been pulling 60+ hour work weeks, by myself and I haven't had off since the first of December, so I'm a little tired. But I'm here and I'm ready to murder this bitch of a subject.

For starters, and for context, in case anyone who sees this doesn't follow my blog or, if you do and don't really pay attention, I am a gay man, so a lot of this comes from my own personal experience.

Now, onward my fandom soldiers.

M|M Fetishization & Objectification

I've only been super active within fandom spaces for the last couple of years. Before that, I just scrolled through Tumblr and reblogged gifsets and fluffy headcanons and whatnot, but even then I noticed a trend in fandoms that made me uncomfortable. That trend was the overabundance of gay men (chatacters) in fandom works, especially when there either weren't any gay men in that show or book or whatever.

I'm not at all saying we need less of that. I want and need more gay characters in the things I watch and read. That's actually one of the criteria I look for before I start a new show, or a book series or comics. I want to see myself represented in the media I consume, even if it is only this one tiny piece of who I am. But the problem for me arose when I saw all these fan works and headcanons and gifsets and thesis length metas about gay or bi male characters that were neither of those things in their original source material.

The biggest examples of this occured in fairly popular shows that I loved at one point, but do to a combination of bad writing and then the horrible fandom, drove me to actively dislike and avoid them. And that's always a sad thing, when you end up losing the love you had for something because others just won't let you enjoy it as it is.

Those two examples are Teen Wolf and Supernatural.

For years I watched people go on and on and on and on about Stiles Stilinski and Dean Winchester and how they were bisexual and so on and so forth.

There's nothing wrong with headcanoning a character as gay or bisexual, especially when those characters are severely lacking on screen and on paper. The problem arose when the fandom at large started to ignore the ACTUAL gay or bisexual characters that are in these shows and focus solely on their headcanons as the only representation in the show.

To start with Teen Wolf, we had, in the first season, an openly gay character that everybody in the school loved, that being Danny Mahealani. This character was introduced as gay from the very start, but oddly enough, there is almost no large fandom meta or fics or anything about him. In fact, a lot of his traits and qualities ended up transferred to Stiles, such as his intelligence and overall popularity. Hell, even Danny's attraction to Derek was stolen and transferred to him. These aren't things that Stiles is overall known for in the actual canon. He's clumsy and socially awkward and on the outskirts of the school like Scott (the main character) and has been obsessed (to the point of being considered a stalker) with one girl since elementary school, but somehow, in fandom, Stiles is suddenly the genius polyglot queer with severe depression who has a crush on the broody muscular werewolf who just wants somebody to love him.

Fandom created this portrayal of the character that didn't exist anywhere in the fandom except for his appearance. The reason I saw behind this was twofold. 1: fangirls (fandom is mostly female) want to see two "hot" guys kiss and get it on because they get off to it, much in the same way that straight men get off to lesbian porn. 2: Stiles (or any of these headcanoned characters) becomes a sort of self insert.

What I mean by that second one is that women and girls find a male character that's not "too masculine", usually kind of gangly or skinny, somewhat on the effeminate side. Someone that they can project their ideas and insecurities and so forth onto so that they can that pursue that relationship with the hunky manly man that they want to bang.

You may be asking yourself, "Why don't they just use one of the female characters as a self insert?" and I'm here to tell you that I have neither the time nor the experience to go into detail about internalized misogyny and how effects the way women do almost everything, even watching and interpreting their media.

But the reason they chose the male character is that, years ago, during the dark days of FF.net there was a lot of self insert OCs that infiltrated almost every level of fanfiction. Which caused the fandom gatekeepers to rear out of their hibernation and just shame anyone who tried to introduce an Original Character to this already beautiful world and ruin it with their lusts. Thus the OCs slowly disappeared and identifying with the male sidekick was born. And this is generally where we get the whole "my smol gay son!" bullshit. (side note: please keep in mind that 75% of shows are male characters and their problems, which is another cause for female fans to identify solely with men.)

So, for years, I watched Danny, and then his boyfriend Ethan, being shoved aside in fandom spaces so that the fans could focus Sterek (Stiles and Derek) despite the fact that both characters were stared to be heterosexual and that, on screen, they expressed nothing but mutual dislike for one another, if not outright hatred. This got so bad that Sterek, the crack ship whose members had no romantic or sexual interactions whatsoever, managed to beat (by a very large margin) actual gay ships from both this show and others in a fan poll. It got even worse when the character of Danny was written off the show (with no explanation) and we were introduced to the character of Mason.

Mason Hewitt was everything that fandom!Stiles was. He was smart and funny and openly gay and crushing on a hot werewolf. He even did the research that the fandom loved to attribute to Stiles, literally everything that the fandom had Stiles doing in fanon, but somehow the love for him (Mason) wasn't that big of a note in the fandom. I mean, Mason was even a major plot point of season five and the pack's mission to stop the Beast, but i heard nothing but cricket chirps from the fandom.

You'd think that after Stiles was written out of the show for the last season that maybe Mason will get some love now, right?

Wrong!

I didn't think it was possible to get any worse, but the fandom proved me wrong. Because instead of focusing all their pent up energy on Mason and his boyfriend, Corey, who had a number of cute moments in that final season, these fans focused on another crack ship that had no basis anywhere except in their fantasies. That ship being Thiam, which is based, once again, around two characters who actively dislike, if not outright hate, each other and even physically assault one another. But no, that apparently is a display of affection by someone who is emotionally stunted and just needs love to blossom and be his true self.

You notice how often the fetishization of homosexuality (even if only imagined) intersects with woobification?

You'll notice, if you look at Danny and Mason, that they're both POC, with Danny being brown (Hawai'ian) and Mason being black. Now, as I've said before on this blog multiple times, I am the Whittest White Man to ever White, so I don't have any qualifications to talk about fandom racism, so I'm just going to leave that little nugget there for you to think about and interpret how you will.

Moving on to Supernatural...

Before we start with this one, understand that I have not watched this show outside of an episode here and there since season eight, because I realized that no, this show wasn't going to get any better, so if any of this is contradictory to what has happened over the past six seasons (god, this show needs to die!) I do apologize.

Dean Winchester... I never really liked this character, especially as the show went on and I started to actively dislike and then, hate him. So it was annoying not being able to go into any aspect of the Supernatural fandom without coming across a post about Dean and his issues or his Bi sexiness or how his brother was mean to him.

Also, people, understand that this wasn't a new revelation for me. My dislike for Dean and the fandom's obsession with making him bisexual just so they could hook him up with Cas wasn't an overnight decision. I was there...

I was there at the Beginning, when this show first aired, when the ONLY constant characters on this show were Sam and Dean. I endured the hellfire that was Wincest and its infection of almost the entire fandom. Like, that right there, that was one of the most extreme cases of m|m fetishization I've ever seen, because the fandom needed to get off to two guys being together so badly that they turned to actual brothers for want of any other male character.

That's why Destiel immediately became so popular, because here was another guy that we saw with semi regularity that wasn't rated to the Winchesters, obviously they were meant to ship them.

Now, you may be asking yourself, "I thought this bitch was going to talk about gay fetishization, not his dislike for one character?" to which I'll just say I very easily go off tangent. But all of that is relevant because, come one of these later seasons, there was a scene where Dean was at a bar and the (male) bartender hit on him, and he didn't react negatively or homophobic.

Oh, my God, I watched my dash and the tags explode in post after post, meta after meta, about how Bi Dean was canon confirmed! Now he and Cas will HAVE to be together, because its canon that Dean likes guys. and Cas is an angel, who doesn't follow human sexual limitations, and... blah, blah, blah.

Cut to a few years later, and we're introduced to a character named Max Banes, a witch and hunter, who is openly gay and flirts with Sam in his first appearance. Where were all of his metas and fanfics and headcanons? Granted, he only appeared in two episodes, but I have watched people in this and other fandoms build mountains our of molehills, going on and on about how two male characters weren't actually straight and how they were destined to be together because the once wore similar style shirts a couple of seasons apart, or because of a carnation in a jacket pocket that signified love via the Victorian flower code (or something like that), or how the wallpaper of that room they shared a scene in was a subtle clue to their true desire for each other, etc.

And I'm not exaggerating there, those are actual examples I've seen in fandoms over the years.

But back to Max, why is it that he was left along the wayside, despite fitting most of the criteria that fandoms love in their m|m ships while Dean had entire thesis level posts about that time he shared a glance with Castiel or he let a bartender hit on him and not get upset?

And its not just these two shows, not by a long shot. If you were to go into literally any fandom of a certain size or bigger, you will come across fans putting two straight characters together because of "the chemistry" they have. Even if those characters are confirmed to be straight - especially if those characters are confirmed to be straight. Because when these loud fans don't get their crack ship that they rub one out to, they scream queerbaiting and homophobia and oppression, harassing the actors and producers and directors and writers.

Here are some others that just pop to the front of my mind...

Asher Millstone from How To Get Away With Murder (saw him shipped with Connor a lot, despite Connor's actual boyfriend)

Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from BBC's Sherlock

Tony Stark from Marvel comics (all because of one panel where he said "ladies and gents" when he announced he was off the market

Literally any male character in the MCU, which is his we get the things like Stucky and Stony that permeate the fandom on almost every level (and some leeway is given here because of the MCU's lack of wueer characters)

Klaus Mikaelson and Stefan Salvatore from The Vampire Diaries/The Originals (honestly, I was surprised that people in the TVD fandom weren't immediately all over Josh and Lucas, because they're literally everything that fans want and use in their headcanon gays)

Kol Mikaelson and Jeremg Gilbert, also from TVD

Elia and Filippo from Skam Italia (despite there being, once again, actual gay characters on this show. Hell, the entire second season was dedicated to a character coming out of the closet and being with a guy)

Etc.

I could go on and on but then this post would seem infinite.

Closing thoughts, please keep in mind that I am just one guy and that my opinions don't represent everyone in fandom spaces. But also bear in mind, that my frustrations are well founded and valid from my own experiences in the fandom.

My sexuality and the fact that I'm attracted to men is not a toy for a bunch of sexually repressed fangirls who think two guys being together is hot.

[officialthiamlibrary]

Welcome to another profile on Behind the Screens, giving you personal insight on who your favorite creators are and what they do when they aren’t wowing you with their creative ability.

Happy Tuesday friends! Today, we have the delightful pleasure in getting to know one of your most requested authors, @formerprincess. Rena, our aforementioned guest, is the writer of numerous works, most notably A Tale of Claws and Fangs, Overslept, and Finding My Way To You. As you’ll come to find out, she’s also so much more, so let’s not wait a second more to dive in.

Rena! To get us started, share something about yourself! And for the twist: the word could should be around the number of letters of the characters in you’re favorite TW rarepair ship.

Erica Reyes + Stiles Stilinski = 25

Shy but it you know me I can be pretty weird. Huge book lover. Disney Fangirl. Big heart. Need writing like air. Wrestling fan.

Woah, really?! A wrestling fan? What got you into it?

I get this question so often haha. Because I appear so shy and innocent, people are always like: What? Wrestling? You? It’s fun.

My dad watched it for a while and sometimes I watched it with him, nothing too invested. But then I learned about Nikki and Brie Bella over tumblr rp and I got really curious about them so I researched online. I love them both, especially Brie, love that they stand for strong women and through them I started to actively watch Wrestling and over time gathered some other wrestlers, male and female, I love to see in the ring. It’s fun to watch them and what they do in the ring is impressive.

From wrestling to Teen Wolf, I dig it! And, how you find your way to the Thiam fandom? What about the two grabbed a hold on you?

That’s kind of a long story. I started watching Teen Wolf because I saw gifs and pictures of it on tumblr. I got curious and wanted to see this show but it wasn’t broadcasted on TV in my country, so I kind of searched online for a way and I watched until the point where Liam was introduced in the series  but then stopped because I lost interest and with work I was too busy to even think of Teen Wolf. And then I was on tumblr and I saw a gifset of the scene where Liam and Theo almost fistbumped and I was like ‘Oh hey, these two are cute together.’ I don’t even know why, I just liked the chemistry they had in the scene, Theo’s soft smile, and all. I grew curious who they were because I recognized Liam but I had no idea who Theo was. Quick online search. Aha, those two are Theo and Liam, Thiam for short. Interesting. The Thiam fandom was so very small at this point, there like five fanfics or whatever, so I didn’t really get much from my little expedition into the Thiam fandom.

I kind of forgot about them again because life and other stuff and all and then I saw something about Theo being evil months after my little encounter with the Thiam fandom and I was all ‘Wait a minute! What? But he and Liam…What the hell is going on?’. I was totally confused and stayed confused until was finally able to watch Teen Wolf again (I watched because I heard about the series ending and felt nostalgic so I gave it another shot). I watched season 4, 5, and season 6A and I was hooked!! And so ready for more screen time of Theo and Liam together, so ready to see what would happen to my boys.Tumblr came in handy again and damn had the fandom grown. I saw what everybody had to offer and the ship itself gave me so much inspiration that I wanted to contribute and put in my own two cents on them. The fandom was so welcoming and friendly, it felt like a family from the start and thus I decided to stay. I met many great people because of Thiam already, it’s really awesome.

What drew me in about them? The unspoken chemistry between them, not only romantically but also platonically. Even when I saw gifsets from them without any context, the looks they shared showed such a connection for me, I was astonished and delighted. And when I saw the whole scenes with them, every episode, I liked how different they acted around each other. I always felt like they got each other to a point no other was possible. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the relationship they have with other characters but I always felt they had this special level of a connection. As if they found their ideal counterpart with each other because they both have this fire inside them and don’t shy away from unleashing it.

Oooh, that last bit is so poetic!

Thank you. It came to my mind while I laid in bed and couldn’t fall asleep. When I thought of this, I sat up and almost yelled “That it! That’s Thiam!” Thank god I didn’t or I would have scared the neighbours probably haha.

Haha, most definitely. What’s another thing you’re passionate about beside Thiam and wrestling?

Being creative in general, not only writing.  I mean, yes, writing is the biggest thing I am passionate about. I view writing as a way to deal with the stress of daily life and I would go crazy if I couldn’t write. I also write poetry sometimes.

But not only writing, sometimes I like to create some picture collage or maybe an outfit on Polyvore. Or I simply create things in my head, characters, storylines, worlds, whatever I can think of at those moments. Sometimes I take my thoughts and try to realize them in my Sims game, it’s fun.

LOL, fellow Sims lover! This is one of my fav things to do! What’s been your favorite characters/scenario to conceptualize in the game? How did the game turn out? Any entertaining stories?

Hey, that’s great haha! I love to do this and I’m currently building some houses I could use as inspiration for my stories. I usually play with original Sims, see them starting a family and see how many generations I can have until it starts to get old or until I’m running out of ideas but I once created Stiles, Lydia, Erica and Derek in the game and the Stiles Sims immediately took a shining to the Derek Sims. It was hilarious to watch because even when I was not telling him to, he was interacting with Derek, followed him around. It was adorable. He tried to make Derek laugh^^. It ended with them falling in love and Lydia and Erica being the bridesmaids.

Aww, natural shipping, sigh. That’s the best. Let’s say you could put Thiam in a similar situation, but with characters of another show. Which would you choose? How’d you think the interaction would go?

I’d chose Shadowhunters tv series and to me, this would be hilarious and awesome at the same time. Theo and Jace would so have this little competition who’s better at basically everything; Izzy would be like an older sister to Liam but without actually treating him like a baby. She would admire his determination and will to protect those he loves, they have this in common. I imagine Liam and Jace siding when it comes to fighting because they are all like: Act first and think later but really just want to protect their family and friends. Alec would roll his eyes and ask himself what he has done to deserve this but come around in the end because is actually someone able to not like Theo and Liam? 

Magnus would be totally amused by the whole thing, especially if Liam and Theo are not a thing yet but he has eyes and he can basically taste the sexual tension okay? And Luke, Liam would not stop asking Luke questions about how he leads his pack and everything because another Alpha, how cool is that??? Also Maia and Liam? Dreamteam! Both struggle with control sometimes and they so would get each other. Imagine Luke and Scott running after their Betas to save them from trouble XD. Theo and Clary, because I love the headcanon about Theo being an artist, would bond over that and probably have a tentative friendship going on.

Before we chat about your works, one more silly question. If you could build the ultimate paintball/laser tag team from any five characters AND one villain on Teen Wolf, who would they be and why?

Liam, Kira, Allison, Theo, Erica, and Kate Argent

Liam because he is very athletic and competitive.

Kira because it surely would fun to have her around and she is just an awesome badass cutie. Also, she has fast reflexes.

Allison because she has an amazing aim and also girl power!

Theo because he is like a mastermind and can come up with the best strategy.

Erica because she is my queen and she would lure the other team out so we can shoot them. She and Theo would be great at making a cunning plan.

And Kate because she is ruthless and would destroy the other team.

Perfect. I still say Theo and Allison would’ve been a sight to behold together–for better or worse. Alright, so we have wrestling, sims, shadowhunters, outfit planning. And on top of all those, writing! If your creative process was a person, what type would they be? What would they do? Wear? Listen to? How do they handle conflict?  

They would be a very chaotic type, all over the place. Somebody you see and wonder how they get any work done because they seem to not be organized at all. They would be that type of person that oversleeps and then bolds into work with their bag hanging off one shoulder, their jacket almost slipping down the other shoulder, travel mug filled with coffee clutched in their grip, and clutching a notepad with lots of notes hanging out from it to their chest. They would not be the one that steps into the spotlight at all but rather satisfies with the result of their work.

Their clothing would be a mix from different styles, Boho but also athletic, sometimes chic. Everything they want to wear, they wear it.

Their taste in music is mixed. They mostly listen to Pop but they also have some rocks songs they are addicted to, some Hip Hop. Whenever they hear something with a good beat, good lyrics, that’s what they like and listen to. Their favorite band would probably be Little Mix.

Handle conflict? That’s a tough one. Hm. They would try to see it from the other’s perspective while at the same time telling themselves they should not explode and yell. They are mostly quiet but if they are peeved, they can lash out. If somebody yells at them they would shy away and close themselves off.

Does your creative process also extend to other fandoms? Pairings? Novels or stories with original characters?

I started to lay down the basics for my own original novel and I can’t wait to start. I wanted to write it for years and now I finally got the right motivation and the right mindset.

Aside from Thiam, I have written some fanfictions for Charmed since that’s one of my favorite tv shows. And I have some Stucky fanfictions started as well as the base for a Malec fanfiction that lingers in the back of my mind.  But Thiam is definitively the ship that inspires me the most and I wrote the most about.

An original novel, that’s awesome! What genre are you setting it in? Also supernatural?

It is a novel playing in this day and age but it’s all about the supernatural world mixed with the normal world of the humans. Think Charmed or Shadowhunters. You have the innocent humans living without actually knowing that demon witches, vampires and such live among them. The supernatural society is still in the focus of the novel.

That sounds awesome. Would you say there’s one trope or situation that somehow always wrangles itself in your stories?

I try my best to use different tropes and situations to challenge myself as a writer but one thing that happens for sure is character A watching character B and marveling around how gorgeous they look and how stunning they are. Just some good old-fashioned swooning. I just like to imagine one person being so completely enamored by another person that they have to stop and stare for a while because they sight is breathtaking. And the other person is either completely oblivious and continues with what they do, or knows exactly what they are doing, smirk at person A and preen at the attention.

And yes, friends to lovers, I’m a sucker for this.

Who isn’t really?! What’s the best friends to lovers story you’ve ever read, either fanfiction or novel? (Or one of the best, since they’re probably so many to choose from)

I guess it’s one of the greatest tropes out there haha. Puh, I read so many great stories and novels about that trope, it’s hard to tell. I remember a novel I once read (I can’t remember the title  or the character names though) where this was one of the main story lines but it really took the whole novel for them to finally become a couple and yet while reading you saw their relationship growing and evolving. That’s what I always try to achieve with my stories. 

I also read a Malec fanfic once where both were human but Magnus was a tattoo artist and Alec a florist. They got to know each other and it was simply perfect, Magnus helped Alec with some things and it was just adorable and awesome and amazing. Unfortunately, I can’t remember the title of this one either. I will search for it and maybe give it a shout out later when I found it again because it was really good

Oh, I’ve read that Malec fic, so good! There’s a fantastic MM novel called Switched—I think—by N.R. Walker that’s friends to lovers and I read it in one night. It’s just something about two people, who know one another in and out, coming together, more sighs.

I’d love to jump into your Thiam works. First, the Raeken Twins and your story, Finding My Way To You. Do you have any twins headcanons/imagines which helped you bring Mike Raeken to life?

I got this awesome ask one day about Theo and Mike from PPL being twins and my mind began to rattle. I thought about Theo, his personality, and began to develop someone who would be Theo’s complete opposite. Pretty Little Liars helped a lot because Mike was a sweetheart there, at least until the point where I stopped watching the show. I absolutely loved the idea of Theo having someone to take care of and protect, being a big brother.

I had a vague scene in my mind where Theo berates Mike for being too trusting and Mike just rolls his eyes and tells his big brother to relax. That was the base on where I developed the Raeken Twins. I wanted somebody who was the opposite of Theo but I didn’t want to go completely black and white and so I carved out Mike’s character more, gave him some rough edges as well.

It is fun to play around with the aspect of Theo having his counterpart who at the same time gets him to a T and has someone he always aimed to protect. He may act like he doesn’t care but it had always been my headcanon that he would do anything for Mike and Mike is that one person who knows everything about Theo and who also knows Theo does in fact care

So, if Mike Raeken was part of the Pack and the TW universe, how would he handle these few scenarios:

a: Who would be his pack allies, the pack members he’d bond with? Who would be his pack friend-enemies?

Mike, just like his brother, would become a member of the puppy pack because Mike’s a puppy too. He’d probably bond the most with Nolan and Corey because they share the most character traits with them being kind of cute and sometimes awkward. Brett would be his crush for sure. But he would also be good friends with Liam and totally root for Thiam.

Friendenemies? Good question.  He’s not as harsh as Theo so he probably would not really have problems with the people around. Unless you come for his brother, then he will end you.

b: In a Supernatural crisis, how would he respond?

That clearly depends on the situation. When it comes to facing an enemy and taking them down, Mike’s a fighter and goes into the full experience. He is fast, he is agile, he is ruthless. But if it comes to protecting the people he cares about, he gets very defensive and worries more about them and bringing them to safety than taking part in the fight itself. He’s not even afraid to charge in and drag the person out of the fight (especially his brother). Mike is pretty level-headed and can stay calm even if times get rough. He checks a situation, makes his own theories about it, but he mostly stays in the background, lets the others talk and discuss, and only interferes when he feels like it’s not going anywhere. But most of the times he is fine with just watching and striking when it’s the right time.

c: One hilarious scenario you think would occur between him, Theo, and other member of the pack?

They would pull a Switch-A-Raeken so often to confuse the pack and get their laughs out of this. Liam is probably the only one who can tell them apart because he pays so close attention to them (mostly Theo though) but the others always get totally confused and the twins love to switch even during a conversation to completely confuse everyone.

One situation I find absolutely hilarious and I will write one day would involve the Sheriff, probably to introduce them as twins. One twin gets arrested, the other shows up to bail him out. Stilinski is in his office when suddenly one of the deputies knocks at the door. He calls them in and they open the door, slightly nervous. “We…uhm…have a situation here with the boy we arrested. You might want to check? He said you surely would love that.” The sheriff narrows his eyes and gets up from his chair. He walks out of his office and there they are. Two identical smirks on their faces and casually leaned against the backrest of the bench in front of his office. “Hey, Sheriff!” One of them says. Stilinski is baffled, moments pass by. He finally finds his voice again. “There are two of them? Because one Raeken wasn’t enough???” He yells, voice cracking at the end. He scratches his neck and grimaces. The twins’ smirks intensify. The deputy ducks away and hides behind the computer screen.

Rofl, I hope you do write it! Are you planning to continue Finding My Way To You too? Any spoilers you can slip us?

I am definitely planning to but I have more prominent ideas for A tale written with fangs and claws and other stories at the moment. I do have written some part of the next chapter still. I love this story and the feedback I received was wonderful. Raeken Twins are a fun thing to write about, so expect more to come.

For a spoiler, I will tell you we will have some drama, much love and yes also smut. There will be a slightly different take on the Dread Doctors spin because I am dissecting the storyline a bit to make it more fitting for Finding My Way To You. There will be a shift in the relationship between the twins as well. For everything else, you need to stay tuned ;D

Well, I suppose we must now haha. Until then, we have all of a Tale of Fangs and Claws to keep ourselves busy. Speaking of….a Tale of Fangs and Claws Time!! (I held out for this long; I’m proud of myself.) For anyone unfamiliar, could you give us a quick synopsis? What inspired the idea? 

Whooo!!  The story is about Liam becoming an Alpha when he least expects it. He and Theo are living in Seattle, are roommates in college, and totally in love with each other but they both feel the other might not return their feelings in the beginning. Theo still joins Liam’s pack and together they return to Seattle. The story follows Liam’s journey in his new role, especially when other werewolves appear and Liam and Theo soon have a pack of their own to take care of. They become a family, face many battles and they all learn more about each other and their strengths and weaknesses, help to find their place in the world.

My inspiration for this came from the sole wish to see Liam as Alpha. I think he would be a great Alpha and would have loved to see it happen at the end of the show as some kind of next-generation thing with the older pack members leaving Beacon Hills and him taking over from Scott. The more I thought about this, the bigger the need for Alpha!Liam became and I started to imagine his pack, created their characters a little bit and searched for faceclaims. It took me a while until I finally started to write the story; until I had a decent enough base to actually imagine turning this into a multi-chapter fic and upload it.  Add me playing around with my basic photoshop program and create some Liam as Alpha manips and the inspiration was there. It came to the point where I could no longer hold back and thus I uploaded the prologue. I never imagined the success it would have and I am still amazed by this.

Wow, and it’s almost 300,000 words long! First, huge congrats on being the longest Thiam fic thus far! Is this the longest story you’ve ever written? Did you originally plan all the chapters or has it reshaped itself? Would you say you have a secret to writing longer fics while also keeping your personal interest high?

It’s crazy! Thank you so much!! I have to say I never expected this to turn out so huge, I still can’t believe it. Every time I check the chapter numbers, it still feels so unreal. When I started, I had no idea how long this would be. I had basic elements and certain points I wanted to have happen but everything else was non-existent in the beginning. It still is nowadays because that’s how I write. I don’t have everything planned out and so my own story keeps surprising me but I love this.  I’m writing a chapter and some things are coming to my mind while I’m writing and I take a break to consider, bring this in a vague timeline, and then continue writing.

 I admire people whohave every little detail plannedout but I’m so not like this and I had it happen to me that I wrote a chapter completely different than I intended to. Because my thoughts didn’t work as good as the thing I had been actually writing, if that makes sense. Sure, I have some scenes I have in mind for a long time and while I have not every word planned out, I have a pretty solid image of the scenes. Theo’s development for example. I knew how I want to have the big moments to happen and I am even more excited than usual when it is time to write it.

The story is indeed the longest I have ever written until now.  Who knows what the future has in store? :D

I wouldn’t exactly call it a secret. Thiam itself inspires me so much and receiving so much feedback from so many people is also a very good source of motivation, not gonna lie. This story, the reactions I got from people, has made me feel better about my talent as a writer and that fueled my passion. I associate so many great things with this story and I got attached to every single character that writing a new chapter feels like coming home. I see them as part of my family, my babies if you want, and I am curious to see how they develop further. That’s what keeps me inspired to make this story longer and longer. I’d say the secret, in general, is creating something you truly love, no matter how cliche this sounds. Create this word that is truly you that brings yourself joy and I’m sure you won’t lose interest.

Yes, I so agree! When I was writing my main Stacksonstory, I fell so in love with the characters and the progress of the story! And then to be able to talk about them with so many people, it definitely kept the thoughts coming, even long after I finished it!

Exactly what happened to me with A tale written with fangs and claws! It is wonderful to have such great response and it’s a great source of motivation. I get so many ideas for this story just by reading comments or talking with people. That’s the beauty of fanfiction I think.

Most definitely! Would you then say any of your original characters are based on people you know personally?

Actually no.  I was more inspired by fictional characters, took some things from them, and created my own individual character. If there are any resemblances I haven’t noticed them yet but hey, maybe I will someday^^

Maybe, who knows what might happen. Not us, certainly. Thinking forward, is there one thing you’re dying to add in the story but you have to write a few more chapter before it comes up?

Liam’s and Theo’s wedding! I am dying to write this since a few chapters and everyone who read the last chapter knows I’m toying around with this thing a bit but I really, really can’t wait to write their wedding. It will happen one day and I am excited about it but it will take some more (a lot more) chapters until we can get there.

Yessssss, we’ll be patiently waiting until then! Before we wind down, I’d love to give you a time to impart some wisdom onto us. Any life hacks or creative wisdom on your mind lately?

It is important to figure out what works best for you and never let anybody butt in, writing-wise and in life too. I had to learn this myself but there will be people telling you how you should do a certain thing and then you need to figure out if this is really the best for you. I’m not saying you should not take advice, you definitely should, but it is okay to change this advice, maybe combine it with the advice you got from someone else and create your own special way to get things done. There might be people who are very critical of how you work, how you handle things, and sometimes it can really get to you and be a bummer but it is important to remember that as long as it good for you, as long as it helps you get something done the way you want it to, it’s the right way for you. Your own opinion and your own wellbeing are more important than what some might think are the right thing for you. Your way is the right thing and great things will come from this, just stay true to yourself even when it’s hard sometimes

Also: Allow yourself to change. What was on your mind a year ago, what you wrote a year ago, doesn’t become less valid just because you changed your perspective. You are ever-changing and there will be moments where you realize that your old mindset doesn’t apply to the situation anymore, not to the person you became anymore. That’s okay. It doesn’t take anything away from the progress you made before, doesn’t take anything away from what you created back then. It simply shows your development as a writer, as a person, and that’s a fascinating progress.

Thank you so much for your honesty and depth. Aww, well, we reached the end of our time, Rena! Luckily, we’ve learned so much about you in our short time together. To end us out, what’s next for you? Any big plans?

I have several projects planned. In terms of fanfiction, I’m planning a sequel to A tale written with fangs and claws if I finish the story, I’m planning on continuing my Mated series, Finding My Way To You will be continued as well, and there are several other fanfictions on the line. I’m also planning on finally writing my first original novel, something I’m very excited about.  Those are the things I have planned, who knows what else is gonna happen? Life is full of surprises.

Good luck with your novel! And all the other bundles of surprises and happiness that are whirling your way. Is there anything else you’d like to share? The mic’s in your hands.

It’s okay to struggle. I sometimes feel like the standards expect everyone to be perfect at anything they do and it can be really frustrating when you feel like you’re not reaching these standards. You feel like a failure and it’s a horrible thing to feel. I had so many moments where I felt like I would never reach the standard for that thing to be considered good or even great and it took me a long time to learn not to always compare myself to others and be proud of who I am, my talents, what I create. I still feel like I’m not good enough sometimes but every time I struggle, I learn new things about myself and that’s what made me realize it is okay to struggle. You learn next to nothing when you don’t struggle and ease everything perfectly on the first try.

Sure, it’s great to have a lift first time you do something, it’s even important to be a natural in some things, but I also know that struggling causes doubts and insecurities because you feel like anybody else doesn’t seem to struggle at all. What I’m trying to say is embrace your struggles as part of your development process on becoming the best version of yourself that you can be. And remember: Nobody has the same story to tell as you. The world needs to hear yours, don’t let the doubts take this away from you. It’s a long and difficult way to go but it’s worth it in the end.

Thanks so much Rena! It was a freaking blast getting to know you and your life, inspirations, and quirky interests haha! 

Thankfully, the conversation doesn’t have to end here. To chat with her about her works, Thiam, Teen Wolf, even Wrestling, you can find Rena at these three places:  

AO3: Former_Princess

Tumblr: formerprincess

Ask Box: formerprincessask

In her words, “It’s more than okay! I love getting asks, messages. I’d even love to get a carrier pigeon. I am a shy noodle myself but I absolutely love to interact with people and have them interact with me. Ask as many questions as you want, send in as many things as you want, you will never bother me and in fact make me very happy. Also - on a non fandom related note - myaskbox is always open for anybody who needs somebody to listen to them.”

She’s also currently accepting prompts, though it might take her a while to get to them–you know busy lives and what not. So, feel free to “send in things, share your thoughts, headcanons, and everything else,” with her. (Also, her words!)

Thanks so much for reading. We will see you next week as we get to know about fandomtrashwhore, aka Marie, our resident Thiam Social Media expert. Until then!

Have a Thiam Creator you fan over? Send us their names. Likewise, if you as the creator, would like to be a part of the Behind the Screens series, give us a shout too! We’d love to get to know you, as well.

[trashy-greyjoy]

am i the only one who lost complete faith in bellarke the shows been om air for 4 years and the one final opportunity they had to kiss shouldve been right b4 they separated for 6 years they both were walking into their potential deaths and it just makes no sense how there wasnt at least a confession. then i remembered the writers are still pandering to antis who never shut up so it pretty much made me think that legit every small moment that has been given to us is bait for us to stay watching

2/2 you seem like one of the voice of reasons in the fandom and i just had to get it off my chest im just pretty sure the writers are baiting us all along for when they bring you know who back in the series finale or something its so sad bc we stuck around for so long and idk im pretty sure everyone has this feeling that bellarke will never happen so the antis will be happy. i wish theyd realize most of general audience prefers bellarke idk im just sad i wasted my time on this show for 4 yrs

Hello nonny! Not worry I am here to restore your faith in all things canon blarke and s5 is our time! I totally feel your pain, sometimes even I get in those ‘blarke is never gonna fuck what’s even the point’ moods, but i have some long ranting posts ill shoot your way so you have some things to think about and hopefully it'll raise your spirits! (also you saying I'm a voice of reason made me laugh because in all honesty I'm a huge emo mess )

About the kiss being in the s4 finale. at first I really thought it would happen too, since if they think they're gonna die they should confess and make out, except, they didn't think that, at least Bellamy didn't. He thought they were gonna have 5 years of the 2 of them stuck in space to figure it out and be together so he didn't feel the pressure to have to confess before they went up. Clarke probably didn't do anything because she was almost certain she was going to die and she probably didn't want to put all that on Bellamy if he was just going to lose her anyway. Thats especially easy to notice if you pay attention to the face caress scene where she seems light hearted and happy looking at him and then she remembers her mom’s vision. And if you recall there were two separate instances where one of them tried to either confess or say goodbye and the other wouldn't let them (Bellamy before clarke went to the island and Clarke before the head and heart convo). ALSO leaving the confession up in the air gives the opportunity for them to add a lot of conflict with bellamy not getting to tell her going into next season. So when you think about that, it makes a lot of sense for them not to have kissed in the finale.

About the writers pandering to a certain audience, I agree. they name dropped L at unnecessary and excessive points last season to pacify the antis as best as they could. I get it, I hated it, it hurt Clarke’s character, and it wasn’t needed, but like i get what they were trying to do, unsuccessfully. HOWEVER I don't think that'll be a problem going forward. The time jump allows time for Clarke to have grieved and moved on in the last 6 years. She’s not fresh off the loss of a loved one and she’s been able to come into herself and move on essentially. AND the writers have been active on Twitter, and talking about Bellarke for the first time since S2 which is a big deal. They’re out of their Post-L Hibernation and they feel safe, well at least safer, talking about Bellarke on social media, meaning they’ve moved on from trying to pacify the antis in that regard. I think we’re pretty much over seeing them directly pandering to the CL’s at this point. 

Running off of that there’s also the scripts that the writers release, which have so far been pretty Bellarke heavy with the “another piece of her soul on the line”, “kill another person who she loves”, every part of the finale scripts and Bellamy’s “heart screaming”. Like... they released a script canonically saying Clarke loves Bellamy (and in a romantic way since the only other person she loved that she killed in canon was Finn). They’re putting it out there.

There’s no way they’re going to bring L back. Jason said she’s dead and not coming back. ABC has said it. And she’s trying to stay as far away from this show and that character as possible right now, she’s moved on she’s not going to come back. 

As for baiting, yeah they stretch it out and a lot of people think 4 season is unrealistic, but I say time and time again, when you look at canon slow burns and how long they take, 4 seasons, not even full seasons let me remind you, is child’s play. Mulder and Scully took 7 seasons to kiss and almost the whole 9 seasons to be fully canon on the show. Stiles and Lydia took 6 seasons to be canon, Rick and Michonne took 4ish seasons to go canon (still more episodes than The 100′s current 58). Booth and Brennan, Fitz and Simmons, Harvey and Donna (I see you Ana), Ron and Hermione, they all took years and almost twice as long as Bellarke have. It’s how television works. It’s annoying and it’s unrealistic a lot of the times, but its a trope, it follows a pattern, it’s how television shows grab a certain type of viewers and and ensure that they can keep them for the run of the show. Because it’s widely believed by the tv industry that once the ‘will they won't they’ aspect is gone, viewers lose interest so they string it out as long as they think they can. Whether its true or not thats how it works. 

There are also two more major reasons I think, or rather I know, Bellarke are endgame. The 6 Year Separation, and the fact that That’s The Story Jason Is Writing. 

I have separate long posts for these on my blog so I’ll be brief and link those for further reading, but to start off, extended separations are romantic tropes. Being separated for years and thinking the other person is or could be dead is a tried and true romantic Hollywood trope. Almost every example of this in entertainment, be it tv, books, or film, has romantic connotations surrounding it. The entire post about it can be found right here, if you want the low down, which I suggest. I list off other examples and proof in it. 

Moving towards Jason writing romantic Bellarke, it’s what he’s doing. If you look back at all the pivotal ‘Bellarke’ scenes in the past, Jason or Aaron have written a good portion of those episodes. Jason, the show runner, and Aaron, the guy he was ready to have take over if his other show got picked up. That combined with how many times he’s said that this is ‘Clarke and Bellamy’s story’ and in the past (S1-2) how free he was when speaking about Bellarke on social media. It’s always been the plan. He just likes to pull a Chris Carter (show runner of The X-Files, and the OG JRoth) and try to drag it out and deny it as much as possible. Seriously look up some of the stuff CC has said about Mulder and Scully in the past and it fits the same pattern. You can find the full post right here, where I give quotes and explain everything further. 

Taking a turn for a second, you can also think about the fact that tv shows almost NEVER put their big endgame together until the end of the show is approaching, especially if it’s between the two series mains. They don’t give that to you early on, that’s why most bigger ships in tv are at least partially slow burn, they don’t put the big couples together in the first season or two.

And I guess to close out, you can think about the fact that S1 Bellamy is set up as a romantic interest for Clarke from the beginning. His character and their relationship follow the ‘enemy/bad boy isn't actually that bad and actually has a heart and realizes that when he meets the good girl that challenges him’ like come on my guys... they’re set up as a trope from episode 2 when he saves her, and then episode 3 when he stares at her killing Atom and he gets all soft and realizes she’s not who he thought she was. It even comes complete with the jealous canon love interest and the ‘we’ve been through a lot together”

Never mind, I have one more point. Look at the sizzle reel for next season. It’s set up to make Bellarke look romantic or at least intimately connected. I have another long post for that one right here. 

I hope that did the trick for reassuring you at least partially and now we can all stew in this hellatus for a few more months before this hell shit returns to us!

[stereksummerexchange]

Don't Have Sex, Because You Will Get Pregnant...And Die.

@kieren-fucking-walker - Hi, I’m sorry if this is too fluffy! BTW NO this is not mpreg/omega!verse! I just love mean girls!

by @jadorehale

Really, the best thing to ever happen to Beacon Hills High School was Stiles Stilinski. He was a star pupil. The very best in his class. Student of the Month year round. On the fast track to Harvard. And outshined all the other kids in his class with his pure awesomeness on a daily basis to the point where it was downright embarrassing. He didn’t want to jinx it but he was pretty much a shoo-in for valedictorian. Sorry, Lydia Martin! And he never caused any trouble at all. Not ever.

“DETENTION AGAIN, MR. STILINSKI!”

Did he mention he was every teacher’s darling?

Stiles stood at his locker after the last bell and frowned down at the all too familiar pink slip in his hand, questioning why the world was so unfair. Sure, most of these infractions were one-hundred percent his own doing, but in his defense, Harris had made two very implausible and inaccurate statements in the same class period, basically begging Stiles to make a mockery out of him in front of everyone. Stiles just hoped Harvard recognized what a scholarly and academically enriching extra-curricular activity detention could be.

“Seriously, another one?” A voice behind him said. A voice that Stiles had not been expecting seeing as he was the only one left in the hall. The voice also sounded highly amused when Stiles jumped and shrieked then whirled around in surprise.

“Jeez!” Stiles said, clutching his heart. “Can we make noises before we scare people to death? Heavy breathing! Tap dancing! Anything would be great!”

There wasn’t an ounce of guilt on Derek’s ridiculously handsome face and Stiles couldn’t even pretend to stay mad. He should be used to this by now. Derek liked to sneak up on him when he least expected it all the time. Which made sense seeing as he was Derek’s concubine. Sneaking around just happened to be a very essential part of their deep dark secret relationship.

The halls were empty but Stiles still checked to make sure they were safe. It was too risky if anyone saw them. Derek was the super popular basketball god and his social status would perish if he were to be associated with Stiles, the school’s biggest loser. Some would even liken it to the fall of Rome.

“Don’t you have practice?” Stiles asked, letting Derek press him up against the lockers anyway, his arms hanging loosely around Derek’s neck.

“I can skip it,” Derek murmured, nibbling on his ear.

“But it’s tryouts and you’re co-captain,” Stiles noted.

Derek lifted his head at that, pursing his lips. “You know, I’ve been meaning to quit basketball.”

Stiles leveled him a flat look. “You are not quitting basketball just so you can make out with me.”

“Why not?” Derek pouted, brushing the tips of their noses together. “I’ve decided that this is a much better use of my time.”

Stiles stopped arguing when Derek kissed him, easily persuaded by the softness on Derek’s mouth and the enticing feel of his rough stubble. It was startling how fast their kissing escalated these days. How they’d gone from modest and tame to something a lot more passionate and hungry. Stiles moaned when Derek deepened the kiss and slipped fingers under the hem of his shirt, his thumb rubbing circles into Stiles’ hipbone.

They weren’t supposed to still be doing this. When they hooked up at that party at the end of sophomore year, they’d agreed that it would only be for the summer and that they’d put an end to it once the school year started. But now, it was mid-November and they continued to be hot and heavy, which would only make things harder in the end when it was time to walk away.

“Hey! We talked about this!” Stiles squirmed when Derek started sucking on his neck. Something that would usually have Stiles rolling his eyes back into his head and melting into puddles on the floor. “No more hickeys. I can’t keep wearing scarves around my dad. He won’t stop laughing at me.”

Derek chuckled but captured his lips again, making Stiles forget about the scolding as he slipped closer and rolled his hips, wrenching a gasp from Stiles’ throat as they grinded against each other. A major situation was going down in Stiles’ pants and he needed to stop this before he made an absolute fool of himself.

“I’ve got detention,” Stiles said hoarsely and pulled away, shifting and adjusting himself to hide just how turned on he was. He spun back to his locker in a daze, grabbing his backpack and closed it as he ran his tongue over his swollen puffy lips.

When he was about to kiss Derek goodbye and leave, Derek stopped him and said, “Wait, I almost forgot why I came over here. What are you doing Friday night?”

“What I’m usually doing on Friday nights,” Stiles told him. “A whole lot of nothing.”

“Wanna come to my house and order pizza and watch Netflix or something?”

Stiles arched a brow. While they saw each other all the time, their version of hanging out usually meant making out in the back of Derek’s Camaro, or at the park, or behind the bleachers after a game, or in the boiler room after school. But going over to each other’s houses? Well…that was new.

“Er…um…” Stiles stumbled, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “Okay, I guess. Yeah. Sounds cool.”

“Really?” Derek’s eyes lit up with excitement, which made Stiles feel so much more at ease. Gagging from Derek’s reaction, it sounded like Derek had really wanted him to say yes, so maybe it wouldn’t be that weird.

Stiles nodded, smirking. “Yeah. Now that I think about it, I haven’t gotten around to asking about your TV tastes yet. It’ll be nice to get a peek at your Recently Watched.”

Derek scrunched his nose. “That’s a terrible innuendo.”

“That’s because it wasn’t an innuendo, you perv!” Stiles punched him in the shoulder.

“We’ll probably have the house to ourselves,” Derek mentioned. “Talia has her usual Friday night séance, and Reuben’s shaman invited him over for song and dance. And my little sister, Cora, won’t be home either. She’s organizing a legalize marijuana protest with a few other kids.”

“Talia and Reuben?” Stiles squinted his eyes.

“Those are my parents. We call them by their first names,” Derek explained. “My family is um…very liberal.”

“Sounds cool,” Stiles said and hummed when Derek kissed him again. “Hey, I thought I told you to scram. Go to practice, dude!”

“I’m going! I’m going!” Derek raised both his hands in the air in surrender then leaned over and dropped a peck on Stiles’ cheek before taking off down the hall.

Stiles watched him go, laughing, then hastily wiped the smile off his face when he heard other stragglers entering the hall. He slung his heavy backpack over his shoulder and began the grueling trek to the detention room to see what misery awaited him inside. However, when he entered the room, he was relieved to see Scott’s smiling face amongst the sea of infidels.

“I see you and Derek are still going at it,” Scott said as Stiles made his way to the back row and flopped down next to him.

Stiles scoffed. “You didn’t even see anything.”

“Hickey.” Scott pointed to a spot on Stiles’ neck.

“Goddammit!” Stiles smacked a hand over it. Looks like he couldn’t yet retire the scarves.

“Hey, you doing anything Friday night?” Scott asked. “If my mom doesn’t totally ground me after detention today by doing the whole ‘No More Stiles’ thing, you should come over and we can watch Netflix and order pizza.”

“Sorry, dude, can’t.” Stiles was getting out his small detention feast, which comprised of a bag of Cheetos, a pack Twizzlers, and a Capri-Sun. Being a delinquent never tasted so good. “I’m doing that with Derek.”

“WHAT?!”

His gaze snapped over to Scott and he furrowed his brows. “Derek invited me over to his house on Friday.”

“To do what?!”

“Order pizza…” Stiles said slower this time so that Scott would get it and wouldn’t interrupt his meal to ask Stiles to repeat himself again. “…And watch Netflix.”

Scott gaped. “What the fuck, dude!”

“What?” Stiles huffed and picked up his bag of cheetos, ripping them open.He couldn’t wait anymore. He hadn’t eaten much at lunch since it was Baked Chicken Tuesday and school cafeteria chicken was the worst. His stomach was growling, his blood sugar was low, and he needed this cheesy goodness.

“I’m your best friend! Why wouldn’t you tell me that you’re planning on losing your virginity this Friday?”

Stiles choked. No he actually choked. A cheeto went down the wrong pipe, lodging itself in his throat, and he pounded on his chest, coughing and hacking to get it out. Because death by artificially powdered orange stick? No, sir. Not today.

“What the hell, Scott,” Stiles wheezed, inhaling and exhaling sharply. “Where in ‘watching Netflix and ordering pizza’ did you get that I’m losing my virginity?”

“How do you still not get Netflix and Chill?!” Scott slapped a palm over his face then thumped his head down onto the desk.

Stiles took a sip of his Capri-Sun, in dire need of a sip after his near-death experience. “Maybe I need a better dictionary, but didn’t you just ask me over for pizza and Netflix. Does that mean you want to have sex with me too?”

“We’re best friends so the rule doesn’t apply. But when I’m with Allison, we never pay attention to the TV. And Derek isn’t your friend. He’s your…”

“Lord Knows,” Stiles supplied helpfully.

“And you and your Lord Knows are going to be laid out horizontally on the couch doing the do on Friday. Congratulations, brother!”

Scott lifted a hand for a high-five but Stiles waved him off dismissively. “That’s so dumb. We’re not doing that.”

“Are you sure?” Scott questioned.

Okay, so maybe he’d been thinking about it a lot lately. And by it, he meant losing his virginity. To Derek. Last year he’d been in such a rush to get rid of it, feeling like he was lagging behind his other classmates, even Scott. But the thing about him and Derek was that he really didn’t know what they were. Making out and sneaking around was fun but Stiles was at a real risk of getting his heart broken here. He knew Derek had already had sex before, with Paige or Kate and whoever. He knew that it wouldn’t be as big of a deal for him as it was for Stiles. But then again, he also really liked Derek and wasn’t able to picture being that way with anyone but him.

“Just make sure you bring condoms.” Scott winked at him. “We wouldn’t want you getting pregnant, right?”

“Ha. Ha.” Stiles rolled his eyes, cursing whoever told Scott that he was even a little bit funny.

*

Stiles spent the rest of the day thinking about sex. Which was really unfortunate when it came time for dinner with his dad later that night. He was being uncharacteristically quiet which was always cause for concern in the Stilinski household. He hadn’t even tried to fight his dad when he ignored the healthy and nutritious Brussel sprouts Stiles had made for him. He knew he should probably start acting chatty before his dad started in on the interrogations and began asking all these deeply personal and probing questions. But there was just so much on his mind.

“You know we can turn the heat up if you’re really that cold,” the Sheriff commented, gesturing towards the Slytherin-themed scarf tightly wound around Stiles’ neck.

“I’m thinking about having sex,” Stiles blurted, cheeks turning red as he stared down at his dinner plate and refused to look up.

“Oh,” the Sheriff said smoothly. “Is that what the scarves are about?”

“I’ve been covering up hickeys.” Stiles chanced a peek at him and tugged off the scarf, exposing the faint bruises littering his neck.

His dad’s eyes widened, mouth falling open. “Who is this girl?”

“Guy.”

The Sheriff snorted disbelievingly at first, rejecting the idea. But when he saw Stiles blinking back at him with a dead serious expression, his face sobered instantly.

“Wait. Really?”

A simple nod from Stiles seemed to settle the issue. His dad sank back in his chair as he soaked that information in then picked up his fork and popped a Brussel sprout into his mouth, blanching. And just like that, the moment passed with no big deals made. Which was awesome. When people asked him later in life how he came out to his dad, it was nice that he had this experience to share.

“What’s his name?” the Sheriff probed.

“Not telling you. Ever,” Stiles replied.

“How long have you been seeing him?”

“Since the summer.”

“And you’re ready to…” The Sheriff did something with his hands that didn’t look too representative of sex but more like he was conducting traffic.

“Yeah. I am.”

A corner of the Sheriff’s mouth quirked. “Are you gonna wear the scarves?”

As if now was the time for awful dad jokes.

“Oh my god! Would you forget about the scarf and give me some real pieces of fatherly advice!”

“What do you want from me? The birds and the bees? Do you really want me to have the awkward safe sex talk with you? I know how you like to research things. You’ve probably got that covered”

“Oh. Trust me. I do,” Stiles assured.

“Then all I have to say is that this is one of those things that you won’t know about until you experience it. You know my first time was with your mother and we—”

“Oh no! I don’t think I’ve ever want to hear about this!” Stiles quickly covered his ears.

“Then the only thing I’ve got to say is just be yourself.”

“I could’ve gotten that off the back of a box of Frosted Flakes, Dad!”

“I’m serious. You can’t be passive in something like this. Make sure you and this kid know where you both stand in your relationship and try not to step over each other’s boundaries.”

It was exactly the kind of advice that Stiles had been wanting to hear. Because he didn’t know where his and Derek’s relationship stood or if there was even a relationship between them to begin with. That was something he was going to have to be brave enough to find out. But Stiles was so ready for this. He was sure of that. Like his dad said, he just needed to be himself.

“Can you give me a heads up before it happens?” the Sheriff asked.

Stiles chewed on his bottom lip. “It’s happening this Friday.”

Inhaling deeply, The Sheriff took out his wallet from his pants pocket and pulled out a couple of bills, handing them over to Stiles. “Here,” he said. “To get the stuff on that list you’ve probably already made.”

“It’s not that long of a list,” Stiles told him, counting the bills and finding it to be way too much.

His dad shook his head. “Keep it anyway.”

Stiles smiled and reached out, squeezing his hand, happy that he’d come to his dad for this and that he hadn’t been disappointed. He knew most parents wouldn’t as cool about it but it was nice that his dad respected his choice and trusted Stiles to be safe.

“Well, now I feel so damn old,” the Sheriff whined, picking out the rest of his Brussel sprouts from his plate and pushing them to the side like a toddler. Stiles would indulge him just this once, but tomorrow there would be kale to pay for this. “You’re growing up too fast for me! Stop it!”

Stiles stood and walked around to give the old geezer a tight comforting hug. “Thanks dad. You’re the best.”

*

The week was flying by much faster than Stiles would’ve liked and with Friday quickly approaching, Stiles still had lots to do to prepare. Like, for instance, learning how to properly use a condom. Luckily for him, Coach Finstock would be teaching them how to roll one onto a banana in Health today. But what if Derek’s dick wasn’t banana shaped? Should he try practicing on other household fruits and vegetables just in case?

Being so preoccupied, Stiles had barely even gotten a chance to see a lot of Derek. He’d caught a few glimpses of him in the halls here and there, but they couldn’t acknowledge each other when there were too many people around. Stiles couldn’t lie; he was starting to miss him. Maybe he’d try tracking Derek down after Health. That is if he ever made it to Health because, like always, he was running super late to class.

Stiles sprinted down the empty halls, perilously close to tripping over his loose shoelaces, and veered around a corner with Coach Finstock’s room very much in sight. He paused to catch his breath, taking deep puffs of air in and out of his lungs, but before he could start jogging again, he was suddenly accosted.

“Holy shit!” Stiles squawked as Derek yanked him into an empty classroom. “What the fuck, dude! I thought I was being kidnapped!”

“You are.” Derek’s lips crashed down onto his and he crowded Stiles back against the door. “Wanna skip this period?”

“C—Can’t,” Stiles panted, shuddering as Derek’s teeth ran along his collarbone. “I’m late to Health and I don’t want to fall behind.”

“Coach won’t fail you,” Derek said and dropped a kiss on Stiles’ lips again before pulling away with a smirk. “And neither will I. Have a seat, Mr. Stilinski. Let’s go over today’s lesson.”

Snickering, Stiles walked over to a desk and sat, folding his hands in his lap and watching Derek attentively like the perfect student that he was.

Derek stood in front of the board and pulled down the world map. Picking up a wooden pointer, he cleared his throat and began indicating at random countries as he recited, “Sons of Scottland! I am William Wallace! He kills men by the hundreds. And if he were here, he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts of lightning from his arse!”

“Oh my god.” Stiles pressed a hand over his eyes, marveling at Derek’s perfect rendition of Coach Finstock. He was rather curious as to how Derek had managed to memorize all the lines from Braveheart.

“I see a whole army of my countrymen, here in defiance of tyranny! You’ve come to fight as free men and free men you are! What will you do with that freedom? Will you fight?”

“Please stop,” Stiles begged, unable to withstand such a high quantity of dorkiness. He smiled fondly as Derek rolled the map back up and picked up a piece of chalk to write on the board. “You know, you should never become a teacher. You’re so hot, everyone would be too distracted to pay attention.”

“Good thing I’m going to be an architect,” Derek told him as he drew a heart with their initials.

“What are you doing? You can’t draw that!”

“Why not?” Derek paused, looking over at him with a deep frown.

“Because!” Stiles huffed.

He stood and walked over, hastily grabbing an eraser and thoroughly buffing out any evidence of them ever being there. Derek should know better than to be so reckless. This was not the time to be risking exposure.

“Um…” Stiles chewed on his bottom lip as Derek peered closely at him. “I’ve really got to get to class and hit the books. I’ve got this project thing that’s worth most of my final grade.”

“Okay,” Derek said, although his face was marked with displeasure. “I’ll see you after school, then.”

“No, I don’t have detention today.”

“But you always have detention.”

“I’ve been on my best behavior lately.”

Derek snorted. “Even your best behavior isn’t good behavior.”

“Yeah, well, my thing,” Stiles said looking up at the clock. If he didn’t hustle, he was going to miss his only chance to wrestle a latex condom around a botanical fruit in the name of Beacon Hills High School’s stellar sexual education curriculum.

“Right, the thing…” Derek murmured.

“Yeah…” Stiles fidgeted, waiting on Derek to say something so that they weren’t just standing there looking at each other awkwardly. But Derek wouldn’t throw him a bone.

“Err…Okay…” Stiles waved and tripped backwards towards the door in a hurry. “Gotta go now. Bye!”

*

It was weird, but after that uncomfortable situation in the classroom, Stiles didn’t really hear much from Derek over the next couple of days. Which was definitely worrying. Derek said he was fine over text but Stiles could tell something was off. In fact, Stiles had been pretty pessimistic about the whole thing, positive Derek would cancel on him until he got a text from Derek on Friday after school with an address.

Rolling up to Derek’s place later that night in his jeep, Stiles was surprised to discover that Derek lived out in the middle of the woods. The area was isolated but it was quiet and peaceful and one could really connect with nature out there. But for Stiles who basically hated nature and its bugs the short walk from his car to the porch had him on high alert and scared for his life.

Nervously, Stiles rang Derek’s doorbell, eyes swinging around his surroundings in case an animal hopped out to attack him. He rang the bell again and shot Derek a text when a while had passed with no sign of anyone coming to answer the door. His hopes started getting crushed as more time passed with him standing out there alone in the dark. Maybe Derek just wasn’t home yet, or maybe he’d forgotten, or decided to ditch their plans last minute.

Regardless, Stiles wasn’t about to stand on Derek’s door step looking pathetic all night. With a dejected sigh, he turned to start down the stairs but froze when he heard odd rustling coming from a bush. This was the perfect place for a murder. It was so deserted out there that no one would hear his screams. But that didn’t stop Stiles from shrieking his fucking head off when something roared and sprang out from the bushes.

“Jesus Christ, Derek! What the fuck is the matter with you!!”

“Fuck yes!!!” Derek cackled and pumped a fist in the air victoriously. “I’ve been hiding in there for half an hour waiting to do that!”

“Why can’t you just say hello like a civilized being?” Stiles scowled.

Derek smirked, tugging Stiles towards him and planting a kiss on his mouth. “Hello, and welcome to my humble abode. By the way, there’s a giant spider on your shoulder.”

And for the second time that night, Stiles was shrieking at the top of his lungs. Derek, the asshole, didn’t even try to help him. He just disappeared through the front door, leaving Stiles to flail around in panic by himself. Stiles bravely flicked the spider off and followed Derek into the house quickly before he was subjected to another wilderness attacks.

Once safely inside, Stiles toed off his shoes and handed Derek his jacket, hesitantly looking around. Derek’s home was certainly not the traditional kind that Stiles had been expecting. A few words to describe the decor was trippy, psychedelic, and 1960’s bohemian. There were tons of vibrant colors, eclectic art, and beautiful tapestries.

Derek took his hand, lacing their fingers together, and led them into the living room. He had a mischievous smile on his face that instantly made Stiles suspicious. But all Stiles needed to do was walk into the room to understand why, and he immediately busted out laughing.

“Dude! You built a fort?!” Stiles’ jaw actually dropped.

“I told you! I want to be an architect!”

“Well, it’s very well made.” Stiles grinned, admiring the structure of the epic blanket fort Derek had built and decorated with lots of pillows and pretty string lights.

“Want a tour of the rest of the house?” Derek asked him.

“Sure!”

Stiles was curious if Derek had ever invited other people from school to his house and shown them all the hippie stuff his family was into. Not that Derek should be embarrassed of his family. Like at all. They raised chickens and grew their own organic vegetables, pushed to legalize marijuana and had no qualms about nudity. They also had an impressive compost pile and were clearly determined to save the planet. It sounded like an awesome way to grow up, and more importantly, Stiles was glad that Derek was sharing and that he was getting to see this other side of him.

“And this is my stash,” Derek said as they settled again under the fort in the living room. He shoved a large duffle bag that had the Beacon Hills High logo on it towards Stiles. “Talia has us on a strict raw food diet since before I can even remember. No processed foods allowed in the house ever. I can eat whatever I want outside but I’m still a vegetarian. I just have a rotten sweet tooth which means I have to sneak snacks into this hell hole. Now, I don’t share this with just anyone, so know that means you’re special.”

His entire face flushed in slight embarrassment. Honestly, he didn’t need buttering up. He was an easy lay and would put out without the sweet talk. Gripping a fistful of Derek’s sweatshirt, Stiles practically hauled him in, clambering into his lap and straddling his hips. He gave a rather instigating kiss, not wanting to beat around the bush about what they were there for.

Derek seemed super into it at first, returning Stiles’ kiss with fervor, trailing his hands along Stiles’ side, and releasing deep rumbles from his chest. But then he pulled away and plopped Stiles off to the side which was the total opposite of what Stiles wanted. This was definitely throwing a wrench in his plans.

“So, what do you want to watch?” Derek asked, glancing at Stiles expectantly as he grabbed his laptop and logged into Netflix.

Seemed like Derek was playing hard to get. Either that or he was purposely being obtuse. They ended up watching the pilot of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Derek had never seen it before and Stiles loved introducing people to his favorite shows, living vicariously through them upon their first viewing. He’d definitely consider it a kink and was having way too much fun observing Derek’s reactions.

Once they were finished with that, Stiles went through some other shows Derek typically watched. It was mainly procedural dramas; boring stuff like CSI, Law & Order, and House. Stiles ribbed Derek about his ‘guilty pleasure’ of watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriends for ten whole minutes but after being forced to watch the first episode, Stiles was instantly hooked himself.

However, when Derek decided to let the second episode play, Stiles had to admit he was a little confused.

While it was fun just lying there munching on Derek’s super-secret snacks and introducing each other to new TV shows, he couldn’t help but wonder when they were finally going to ditch the clothes and fast-forward to the naked sexy times. Fed up with waiting, he scooted closer to Derek, awkwardly placing a hand on his knee hoping that Derek, the only one with experience in this department here, would get the hint and pioneer this ship. Oh captain, my captain!

Not surprisingly, the good old, trusty hand-on-the-thigh-trick worked. Derek paused the show and leaned in, placing the lightest of kisses onto Stiles’ lips with a bright smile. Then he turned his attention back to the computer, paying Stiles’ horniness no mind and doing nothing else.

Stiles wiped his sweaty palms against the legs of his jeans. He wasn’t sure what to do now. In all his detailed preparations, he never consulted a how-to guide on ways to subtly signal that you were totally down for sex. He knew Derek wasn’t asexual; they’d talked about it once. Maybe he just didn’t find Stiles hot. Which was a bummer because Stiles was insanely attracted to him.

“What’s wrong?”

Stiles snapped his eyes up from where he’d been fiddling his fingers in his lap. He pasted on a chipper smile and rapidly said, “Nothing.”

The lines on Derek’s forehead creased and he paused the show again, readjusting himself to get a better look at Stiles straightforward. “You mean, you’ve been acting weird all week because of nothing?”

“No.” Stiles stammered, unsure of what to say. “Yes?”

Derek’s face darkened and Stiles felt his heart skip a beat in his chest. God, this was all his fault. Why was he so damn awkward!

“C’mon. Let’s watch something else,” he tried and reached for the computer, but before he could, Derek was snapping it shut.

Stiles cringed internally as tensions mounted in the room. He couldn’t believe how badly he was messing this up. Did he really need to spill his dumb feelings all over the place and ruin everything? He had no idea what to say to fix this. How to make things go back to normal. All he could do now was prepare himself for whatever came next.

“You know…” Derek started with an unhappy sigh. “You can tell me if you don’t want to keep doing this. If you’re not that into me anymore or if it’s gotten too boring. I can take it.”

“W—What do you mean?” Stiles struggled to find his voice. “I— I don’t— Why would you think—I…I—”

“Well, you’re obviously embarrassed of me,” Derek stated. “I get it. I’m a dumb jock and you don’t want to be seen around me because of all your smart friend. It’s why we have to do all this sneaking around and why you never want anyone to see us at school. But Stiles, I can’t help that I’m popular and captain of the basketball team.”

“Woah, wait a minute…” Stiles stood up, clenching his jaw. “I’m the one that never wants us to be seen? I’m the one that’s too embarrassed to introduce you to my friends? Oh, that’s fucking rich! Because I’m always pulling you into empty classrooms and walking right past you in halls! And I’m definitely the one that invited you over here to ‘hang out and watch Netflix’ when I actually meant sex!”

How dare Derek try to make it seem like this was what Stiles wanted. “You know what, I’m so out of here! I really thought I wanted my first time to be with you, but clearly, we’re not on the same page. So let me spell it out for you. I want a relationship thing, not a fuck buddies thing! I’m sorry but I can’t be your dirty little secret anymore!”

Without looking back, Stiles stormed off towards the front door and hastily collected his things. He searched all his pockets for his car keys and jammed his feet into his shoes. He was determined not to get emotional in front of Derek. He wanted to go out like a badass.

Stiles twisted the knob to the front door and opened it, but before he could leave, Derek skidded into the foyer, his socks slippery against the hardwood floor, and slammed it closed.

The bastard grinned as he tried to pulled Stiles against him, wrapping an arm around Stiles’ waist and holding him tightly. “Hey, Stiles,” he chuckled. “Did we just have our first fight?”

“Let go of me, asswipe!” Stiles cried, shoving him off. He didn’t want Derek’s and his douchiness touching him right now. “You’re a fuckboy.”

“If you say so.” Derek shrugged and peered at Stiles inquisitively. “Where’d you get the idea that I only invited you over here tonight to have sex with you?”

Stiles dropped his gaze down to his shoes and he mumbled, “Scott said—”

Derek scoffed. “You still listen to Scott?”

“Yes he’s my best friend,” Stiles defended.

“He’s also a moron!” Derek heaved. “You’ve should’ve just come and talked to me first because Scott doesn’t know anything. We’re already in a ‘relationship thing’, Stiles. Or at least, I thought so…”

Stiles peeked up at Derek then, chewing on his bottom lip. Right away, Derek took that as a good sign and stepped closer, taking advantage of the small window, and pressing a kiss to Stiles’ forehead.

“I wouldn’t have invited you over if you weren’t important to me. I never invite anyone over because my parents are deranged, but I wanted to spend time with my boyfriend. I like spending time with him even though he talks too much for it to be normal and we should definitely get his head checked.”

Derek tapped his temple and laughed when Stiles swatted his hand away. His emotions had betrayed him and he felt his anger thawing, now being replaced by silly butterflies in his stomach at the mention of the word boyfriend. Giving up the act, he buried his face into Derek’s neck and clung to him now that all was forgiven.

Derek cleared his throat, murmuring into Stiles’ ear, “I’d be lying if I said sex hasn’t crossed my mind…You’re kind of gorgeous. But it’s not the most important thing right now and only when you’re ready.”

Stiles shuffled even closer and nuzzling deeper into Derek’s neck, immensely pleased when Derek’s arms locked around him. Not a lot of people got to say they had first boyfriends like Derek. Sweet, cuddly, pretty boys that built cute forts and watched romantic musical comedy dramas and were completely oblivious to blatant signs of wanting to initiate sex. But Stiles would never take this for granted.

“I wouldn’t play with your feelings or send you coded messages. So when I invite you over to watch Netflix, it’s because I really just want to watch Netflix with you. So…say something.”

Stiles lifted his head and stared into Derek’s breathtaking rainbow eyes. Inhaling deeply, he confessed, “All I’ve been thinking about this week is your dick.”

Derek fought a smirk. “Oh?

“And doing things to you that would probably get me arrested.”

“I won’t call the sheriff if you won’t.” Derek winked.

Stiles snickered, fluttering his lashes coyly. “How long do we have until your parents get back?”

“Séances can be lengthy,” Derek quipped. “Spirits are hard to get a hold of.”

“Good.” Stiles grinned and leaned in, humming happily when he pressed his lips to Derek’s once more. “That gives us plenty of time.”

When people asked him later in life how he’d lost his virginity, it was nice that he could say, “Under a blanket fort in Derek Hale’s living room while his parents were out. He’d tell them that it wasn’t weird or awkward at all. That Derek had shown him exactly what to do and had made him feel really good. That he knew he was loved. Special. And most importantly, that he’d followed his dad’s advice and hadn’t been passive in this. He knew where they booth stood and knew they had a promising future together.

“Oh my god! I did it! I finally did it! I cannot believe this! Dude, I just had sex!!”

“Yes, Stiles, I’m aware,” Derek said dryly as he balled Stiles’ shirt up and tossed it over to him, whacking him in the face. “I was there, remember? You didn’t do this alone.”

“Shh!” Stiles chided as he finished buttoning his pants, pulling the shirt over his head. “This is about me right now. Don’t ruin this for me!”

“Oh, Derek, honey suckle,” A sweet feminine voice called out. It was a lovely voice, so homely and nurturing and, motherly…and shit that must mean Derek’s parents were back.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. This was in no way the circumstance that Stiles had wished to meet his very first boyfriend’s parents in. Especially not after they’d…Fuck! Stiles scrambled back into the fort, frantically checking that he’d dressed himself okay and that nothing was on backwards or unzipped. He was pretty sure that most parents had x-ray vision. At least his dad did which was why Stiles could never get away with anything. What if Derek’s parents saw the sex on him or something and it ruined his chances forever to make a good first impression.

Stiles didn’t take a single breath the entire time they heard the footsteps approaching the entrance of the fort. Then he realized foolishly that while he was dressed perfectly fine, Derek had yet to put a shirt on. He was just about to say something to Derek, groping around for where Derek’s shirt could be when Derek just rolled out from under the fort and stood up to greet his parents half-fucking-naked.

It wouldn’t take much for Derek’s parents to put two-and-two together if Stiles got out of the fort now so he resigned himself to living there in hiding forever. Fucking Derek. Why did he have to be so brazen.

“Talia,” he heard Derek greeting his mother which, yeah, was a little weird. Stiles knew he could never his dad onboard with the whole calling your parents by their first names thing.

“What’s this, Derek?” Talia asked, her voice so whimsical and airy. “How lovely! I see you’ve been letting out your inner creative!”

He heard Derek snort before asking, “How was the séance?”

“Marvelous. Grandma Leanabel says hello,” Talia told him. “She wants us to bring you next time to talk about your love life. She said there’s a person you’ve been seeing in secret. Is that true?”

Of course, Stiles could not contain his gasp upon hearing that Derek’s maternal grandmother knew about their secret relationship. That was some really freaky paranormal shit and one could not blame him for being unable to hide his shock in the face of it. Unfortunately, that tiny, quiet, not at all dramatic gasp seemed to have given away Stiles’ exact location. Abort, Abort, Abort.

“Do you have someone here?” He heard another voice say, one that was much deeper than Derek’s, so he assumed was Derek’s father.

“No, Reuben” Derek said, barely putting any effort into the lie so of course his parents became skeptical.

“Who are you hiding in your little teepee, Derek?” Talia asked. When Derek didn’t respond, she demanded, “Get them out right now.”

Derek huffed, crouching down to the entrance of the fort to give Stiles a reassuring smile, coaxing him out of hiding like he was a scared animal. “It’s okay. They don’t care about anything normal parents should care about.”

Stiles took a deep breath in then exhaled, rolling out from under the fort and getting up on wobbly knees. He held his hand out blindly for a handshake, face burning as he stared down at the floor trying his best to mind his manners even though he honestly didn’t have any. “Uh hi… Mrs. Hale…Mr. Hale.”

Even though Derek had expressed to him multiple times that his parents were real-life hippies, Stiles hadn’t quite believed him up until this point. And now that he was seeing it for himself, he understood that there had been no exaggeration on Derek’s part. That his parents were most definitely eccentric.

One thing that came as a shock was just how much Derek looked like his mother, possessing her beautiful hazel eyes and gypsy-like features. Truthfully, she didn’t even look like she could be a mom, so youthful in her appearance. Derek’s father must be a very handsome man to have landed such a gorgeous wife. Although, Stiles wasn’t 100% sure of that because he couldn’t actually see much of Reuben Hale’s face. His long, shaggy light-brown hair and bushy beard covered everything and he looked like a giant hairball with super white teeth. Maybe Talia had fallen in love with his snappy fashion sense because he was definitely rocking those floral bellbottoms.

“No need to be so formal here, love,” Talia said, stepping forward and taking Stiles’ hand between her own. “It’s just Talia and Reuben. And you are?”

“Stiles,” he offered nervously, prepared to give his usual speech for the meaning behind his bizarre nickname.

Talia gasped, her eyes lighting up. “Oh, my, what a wonderfully original and creative name!!”

“Indeed!” Reuben chimed in, stroking his overgrown beard.

All in all, Derek’s parents were ridiculously nice people. Too nice even for the situation at hand. Stiles was just so relieved that Derek’s parents didn’t automatically hate him that he started rambling as they made small talk. Unlike most of the people who’ve ever had to endure Stiles’ ramblings, Talia and Reuben didn’t seem to mind, giving no signs that they were annoyed or wanting him to shut up and showing a real interest in Stiles and inquiring to know more about him.

They did as much small-talking as they could do before they reached the giant elephant in the room. Talia and Reuben wanted to know more about him and Derek. How they met. When they first knew they liked each other. Etc. etc.

A mortified blush crept up Stiles’ neck the more they asked and Talia grasped Stiles’ hand, saying, “Don’t be embarrassed, moon child. Making love is a natural and beautiful act that has only been derided by society and its ridiculous archaic definitions of the term ‘immorality.’ Not only does the word ‘virginity’ commodify individuals and deems them as damaged goods, but it also perpetuates a heteronormative myth that a penis must enter a vagina, which completely erases the experiences of queer and trans folk. I had hoped that there’d be more progressive teachings on this subject in schools but apparently not.”

She let go of Stiles’ hand with a gentle squeeze, flashing a receptive smile. “Basically, what I’m trying to say dear, is that it’s a load of bullshit. So, stop thinking about it so much.”

“Oh…um…cool,” Stiles spluttered, looking over at Derek just in time to catch him laughing at Stiles’ stunned response. Stiles couldn’t help it. The world would be a much better place if Talia Hale was president and all followed her wisdom.

Reuben asked, “So, did the two of you use protection? We wouldn’t want Stiles here getting pregnant, now would we?”

“Ha Ha. You’re so funny, Reuben,” Derek intoned dryly, rolling his eyes as Reuben laughed boisterously. It seemed hippie dads weren’t immune to awful dad jokes either. “Anyway, Stiles is going home now.”

“What! Why?” Talia frowned.

“Because I’m embarrassed of you guys and I don’t want you scarring him away,” Derek told them as he swiftly ushered Stiles towards the exit who stumbled ungracefully over his own feet.

“Oh, that again!” Talia scoffed. “Really, dear, when will you get over this. At least let me give him one of my handmade dreamcatchers! Wait right there!”

Derek dropped his head, pinching the bridge of his nose. Stiles had to smile a little at how easily frustrated Derek got with his way laid back and chill parents. He was feeling very honored that Derek had given him the chance to meet them and would definitely be getting Talia to show him all of Derek’s embarrassing baby pictures the next time he was over.

“Derek Andrew Hale!!” Talia called sharply from the other room.

Andrew. Derek’s middle name was Andrew. That was so cute! Derek didn’t seem to find it very cute though because as soon as he heard it, he immediately paled.

Talia came marching into the room again with the dreamcatcher and something else in her hand. She held it up to Derek, revealing his Beacon Hills duffle bag, and shouted, “What is all this, Derek! Have you been eating these poisonous treats? Candy?! Chips?! Have you not read of all the harmful artificial preservatives you are ingesting into your young sprouting body?!”

“Ugh, Talia!” Derek groaned, reaching for the duffle bag and scowling when she kept it away.

Talia looked over her shoulder and asked, “Reuben, what is it that those parents do in the movies where they lock their kids in their room for two weeks?”

“I’m not quite sure, dear,” Reuben said, tugging at his beard in thought. “I believe it’s called being grounded.”

“Yes, that!” Talia swung back to Derek, poking him in the chest with a stern finger. “That’s what you are, young man! Grounded! I’ll be discarding all of these!”

Turning to Stiles, Talia’s face melted into a bright and pleasant smile as she handed him his dreamcatcher and wrapped him up in a big hug. “So lovely meeting you, Stiles. Come back anytime you’d like.”

“Don’t worry, son,” Reuben whispered as Talia marched back out the room, giving Derek a comforting pat on the shoulder before following after his wife. “I’ll sneak them away when she’s not looking. I’ve just been dying for a Reese’s Pieces!!”

Once his parents were gone, Derek immediately took Stiles’ hand and physically dragged him out the house, likely with the purpose of keeping Stiles far, far away from his crazy hippie family. The front door swung shut hastily behind them and they both paused for a moment on the porch to take a deep breath and look up at the sky.

It’d been quite the eventful evening. One Stiles was sure to remember. And amidst all the nerves, confusion, and craziness, Stiles was pretty happy with how it turned out, wondering if Derek thought the same. He slipped closer to Derek who was glaring up at the sky, an agitated line formed between his brows, and decided to kiss that frown right off his face. Derek made no protests to this method and just pulled Stiles even closer, wrapping his arms around his waist.

“I’m sorry I got you in trouble,” Stiles murmured, fidgeting with his dreamcatcher as he leaned his forehead against Derek’s.

“It’s fine. She’ll probably forget what being grounded means again anyways so it’s not really affecting me.” Derek huffed. “I’ve just never seen her that mad.”

Stiles threw back his head and laughed loudly, gazing at Derek incredulously. “That was her mad? My Dad is ten times worse!” Stiles reneged, “Not that you’ll meet him. Ever.”

“No fair. You meet my insane parents. I get to meet your dad.”

“Fine,” Stiles sighed, not at all looking forward to it and, if Derek knew any better, he wouldn’t be looking forward to it either. “But be prepared for a tough interrogation and a light frisking.”

Derek smiled widely, leaning in for another kiss even though he knew Stiles needed to be getting into his car and racing back home to make curfew. He groaned, letting himself get lost in it for a bit before pulling away to be the responsible one. Derek followed him down the steps to the Jeep to say goodbye and when Stiles got in and started the car, Derek tapped on the window, indicating for Stiles to roll it down.

“Hey, on Monday, if I see you in the hallway and kiss you hello, is that okay?” Derek asked over the loud engine, leaning in through the window.

Stiles rolled his eyes as he clicked his seatbelt in. “Yes. That’s totally fine.”

“You won’t be embarrassed to be seen with a dumb jock?” Derek raised a brow.

“Maybe a little bit. This could seriously ruin my reputation, you know,” Stiles teased. “What about you? You embarrassed to be seen with a huge dork?”

“Nope. Never.” Derek said then cleared his throat to project his stern teacher voice. “I’ll see you Monday, Mr. Stilinski. And don’t be late, or detention for at least a year.”

*

Monday morning at school wasn’t different from any other Monday morning at school, only now their big secret was out. Stiles couldn’t even begin to explain how unbelievably good it felt to finally be able to make out with Derek in the halls without having to worry about who was around to see them. Sneaking around had been fun for a while but Stiles was more than ready to have them out in the open.

It was all so foreign at first. When Derek had tried to kiss Stiles hello in front of his friends, Stiles had almost punched him away out of old habit. But by mid-afternoon, they’d gotten the hang of it, at least enough to pressed up against Derek’s locker making out in a crowded hallway with their minds completely blank. They were able to take their time, move slow and unhurried instead of the anxious frenzied stolen kisses that they’d had before. It was bliss.

There was one downside to this new way of living, however. How the hell were they supposed to stop? Before, any random stranger walking by was an alarm to separate and scattering away from each other like headless chickens. But they no longer had to pay any mind to those concerns, so who’s to say that they couldn’t just lean up against Derek’s locker and make out all the livelong day? No one, that’s who.

“Stilinski! Hale! Break it up you two!” Coach Finstock hollered down the hall into a megaphone, causing them both to startle badly and jump apart.

Ah, so Coach Finstock had some usefulness after all.

“Too much of that can be a bad thing, you know!” Finstock shouted again into the megaphone as they gathered their things and headed off to class holding hands. “I’m just saying use proper precautions! We wouldn’t want Stilinski getting pregnant now, would we?!”

Nope, definitely.  Wouldn’t want that.

[asagimeta]

Teen Wolf Episode 6x06- “Ghosted”- Observations And Predictions

Ohhh my God... guys.... this episode was so heavy in Q&As, so many answers!! But also... so... so many questions...... I can promise you all, right now, that I absolutely cannot scratch the surface of all these questions, but that doesn't mean I won't atleast mention a few <3

Ok ok ok let's start with the biggest reveal of the season.... MIRRORVERSE. IS. REAL! And it could not BE more obvious because Lydia literally went through a mirror, the cool thing about Mirrorverse is that there really are no set rules for it, it's very Wonderlandish that way, there's no real way to stare at something implied to be mirrorverse and say "No that can't be mirrorverse it has to be something else" because mirrorverse is very.. well... diverse... and it could be a portal to anywhere really, like the doors in Atem's mind in Yu-Gi-Oh, any given door could lead to any given place, one door could lead to the past, one to an alternate universe, one to a different side to the same universe, etc etc, so MIRRORVERSE CONFIRMED

So the year is 1987, wich doesn't mean much right now but it probably will later, our flashback introduces us to the obvious vibes of the 80s- including Duran Duran's "Hungry Like The Wolf", wich was very clever of Teen Wolf- and biggest of all right now is that we have images of the carousel from the opening credits, I'm sure there's more to the carousel imagery than just the horses, and I'm sure it'll be brought up again later, given that they found it was important enough to put into the opening credits

Speaking of Mirrorverse, Lenore actually saw Lydia when she traveled through the mirror, and there's evidence that it could have possibly been Lydia that awoke Lenore's banshee scream to begin with, meaning that this wasn't just Lydia peering through the mirror (ha... puns...) but actually, actively, INTERACTING with the world she saw, this wasn't a vision, it was a legitimate travel to another dimension- in this case, to another time

Man oh man Fake!Claudia's claws are in deep, and the sheriff's refusal to believe anything slightly outside of what he wants to believe are stronger than ever (Sheriff you would NOT do well in the X-Files) and this entire scene hurt my soul on a level that I just do not deserve, I hope that Stiles isn't somehow veiwing this from the other realm or something... anyway, if there is any- and I do mean ANY- bright side to this pain, it's that Scott is finally experiencing what Stiles usually goes through, Scott has a very warped veiw of the sheriff because he and the sheriff work very much in a toxic tango, Scott lacks a father figure and the only one he's ever come close to having is the sheriff- who is like his dad in some ways, he's in law enforcement, he's no-nonsense, etc- but he's also very very different in enough ways that Scott would never compare them, he respects the sheriff and craves his approval as a father figure, likewise Scott is- in the sheriff's own words- "the son he should have had", he's the golden boy who's a goody-two-shoes and always tries to follow the moral AND legal codes, who, in the sheriff's opinion, doesn't get in trouble, who works hard and wants to make an honest living and have the All American Boy Lifestyle of college and a family and whatever, and that is NOT a slam against Stiles in any way, parents often get along better with their child's best freind, in some ways my ex-best freind's mom got along better with me than with my freind, but here's the big thing: The relationship is only part-time, and that's what makes it ideal, if Scott screws somethig up the sheriff  doesn't have to deal with it or even know about it because he's Melissa's kid, and likewise if the sheriff gets mad about something Scott isn't there for him to take it out on, Stiles is, because Stiles lives there and is subjected to it weather he likes it or not, so tldr, my point is, the sheriff and Scott only ever see the best in eachother, and usually Scott is apt to be on the sheriff's side, sweet talk him, preen at his approval, whatever, and generally kind of has an air around him of not understanding- or believing- Stiles when he says or reacts in any negative fashion about his dad, he doesn't see that he's impacting Stiles in a negative way when the sheriff approves of or believes him over Stiles because in Scott's mind if Stiles doesn't get that approval/beleif then there's a reason for it, you can see the dynamic really well with the scene in 5A where Sheriff's "Thank you, son I should have had" line is said, Scott grins and blinks like he doesn't know Stiles was just deeply insulted, and Stiles looks like he's been slapped in the face, because Scott has likely never seen the sheriff at his worst or had to be on the recieving end of his SEVERE lack of beleif, even in season five when Kira was arrested it was KIRA who was on the recieving end of the sheriff's problematic attitude, Scott was only a bystander, now that he's been on the recieving end himself, personally, with no one else around, I wonder if it's going to impact how he sees Stiles and inreacts with him in terms of this stuff in the future, I mean I doubt it, because that isn't really the history of how the show works, especially with Scott, but in a perfect world the next time Stiles presents his father's lack of trust in him towards Scott- in any way- Scott would actually be very compassionate towards him and offer a Stiles-freindly way of helping rather than showing him up (intentionally or not) or, you know, not believing Stiles himself

So why is Chris only infected and not just plain gone? Why is he the only one who the Hunt's weapons didn't kill or abduct? Unfortunately there really isn't any way to speculate on that until we get another example of this happening to someone, until then, sadly, there are just too many variables- too many to speculate over- but it's still a point that needs to be mentioned because... well... it's weird....

This episode also really makes me want all of the Supernatural General AUs .. for... reasons..... *Cough*

You know, I'm wondering if Caanan isn't actually in another dimension by now? The scenes in the town have a different coloring tone from most of reality, wich is what we often see in things like flashbacks, hallucinations, time travel, other dimensions, etc, there are other reasons I think Caanan could be in a different dimension and Lydia being able to travel to the past and be seen by Lenore is one of the main ones, but another is the hallucinations Scott and Malia have- notice that Lydia doesn't have any- supposedly this is caused by "The energy in the town" but that doesn't make any sense, why would energy cause Scott and Malia to have hallucinations? Vivid ones, at that, possibly even premonitions (Theo DID come back to life the same day, he could shoot Malia- or try to- later on and Melissa could easily become an almost-victim of Dug's) If this is an alternate universe/dimension however, then the rules of life change, and suddenly pretty much anything is possible, this is a ghost town, it might be an ACTUAL ghost town- IE: It doesn't exist on our plain anymore and manifested because someone was looking for it, like the Room Of Requirement in Harry Potter- and that means that if this is in fact the case, then pretty much everything goes, a pig could go flying across the screen and it could be perfectly within the rules of the realm simply by it being a different dimension *Wile we're talking about those hallucinations, I just want to say they were really good, very creepy, nice going Teen Wolf

So Dug was implied to be making a tazer, but somehow I just... don't buy that, that seems way too simplistic for someone who's encountered the Hunt before, I think, personally, that he was making something stronger, MUCH stronger... I'm just not quite sure what... but speaking of our old pal Dug, I wonder how much exactly Liam and Hayden told him? About werewolves? Or just about the Hunt? About the fact that people go missing and are forgotten- that they're looking for one of those missing people- or just that they hurt/kidnap people? And why is it that they so easily and willingly told him anything instead of leaving him in the dark? The baby pack DOES certainly have alot of differences in how they handle things from the main crew, and on the one hand, it's a good thing to share as much knowledge as you can with a potential victim... but on the other hand they didn't hesitate at all to share what could have been dire information, they could have spilled a secret that could get them all killed (what if they said "So look here's the thing we're werewolves and..." and Dug was a hunter, for example?) they didn't bother trying to get any other information out of him or see how accepting he might be to the thought of the supernatural, the original pack and the baby pack are very much polar opposites when it comes to sharing information, the original pack (and by this I mean Derek's and early!Scott's) was secretive to a fault to protect themselves, but the baby pack is informative to a fault to protect others, and there HAS to be a balance before someone pulls a //REALLY// unnecessary trigger...

Nine herbs to counteract nine venoms, thanks to @Athenadark - thank you SO much Athena!- we actually have the list of herbs!! According to this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine_Herbs_Charm Argent's medicine isn't just a thing made up by Teen Wolf, the herbs involved are the following (in English, because eh...):

-Mugwort -Cockspur grass -Lamb's cress -Plantain -Mayweed -Nettle -Crab Apple -Thyme -Fennel

In the actual charm the binding agent isn't honey, it's soap, apple juice, water, ashes, and beaten egg... I can see why Teen Wolf would want to save time and just say honey ;) Anyway if anyone wants to define the actual effects most of these ingredients have- and/or the historical/mythological significance about them- please go ahead and PLEASE let me know (message me because I rarely check my notes) because it's four in the morning and I have too much to do on the rest of this list ^^;

So if the Nine Venom thing works... does that mean that Ghost Rider Juice is a venom by technicality or are we just calling it that for lack of anything cooler to call it? There's a Kill Bill joke in here but ... I'm tired, anyway, it makes me REALLY EXCITED to get a little breath more from the beastiary though, nine venoms huh? So that would probably include kanima toxins, the scorpion toxins, and... actually I think that's all we know of in canon that actually has toxins/venoms..?? Makes me wonder where it's been all this time though... with the influx of kanima and whatnot... but anyway I just always get excited about canon lowkey exploring more mythology, like introducing wendigos without focusing an entire season on them and all? I'm a monster-of-the-week girl, what can I say?

So Caleb is a Tulpa, what that means, for those of you not brushed up on your cryptozoology, is that he's essentially a manifestation of beleif, here, basically, the idea is that if you believe in something strongly enough, it'll manifest and become real, let me use Bigfoot as our star Tulpa analogy:

So many-a-time ago people saw some unexplained animal in the woods that was large and human like and they decided "Omg Bigfoot" right? Well the legends about Bigfoot grew.... and grew..... and grew..... and by the time that original unexplained animal was long since identified, there were... still people reporting sightings of Bigfoot with increasingly detailed reports? Why? Because people believed in Bigfoot, so much at that point, that the energy put into beleif LITERALLY manifested a Bigfoot and allowed it to be an actual creature that roams around so it can photo bomb people and get selfies posted on the internet, but because Bigfoot was not quite real to begin with and is only a manifestation of the pooled energy put into beleif, he isn't *QUITE* a living creature the same way, say, a deer is, a deer has to SURVIVE, eat, avoid predators, breed, and you know, one day, die of old age (and I'm being generous) except... Bigfoot doesn't have to do all of that, he can just spend all of his time wandering around leaving footprints and shaking cameras that amatuer hunters put in trees, because, although he may be REAL*, he isn't really ALIVE, there's no biology there, sort of like a sock puppet that moves around of it's own free will, Bigfoot's sole purpose is to be spotted and keep the legend alive, because he's a spiritual manifestation, he doesn't NEED to eat or avoid predators or ever die, there's nothing biological about him to make all of that necessary, additionally, Tulpas operate on something of a different plain than the rest of us, they live in another dimension just like all other spiritual beings do, so just like a ghost can be perfectly visible if it wants to be, can tip over furniture and turn out lights, it exists SOLELY in a *SPIRITUAL REALM*, so things like eating and sleeping and, you know, dieing, again are unnecessary, this is also why you can't catch Bigfoot, he literally lives in another dimension, when people see Bigfoot, they're looking through "The Veil"- the thin sheet that seperates one world from another, the ghost world from this world, this world from the faery world, etc, for most people the veil is too thick to see through but for people who are blessed with The Sight, or when the veil is weak or the creature on the otherside REALLY wants to wave at you, normal people can see through it too

*This is where the argument of what consitutes "reality" comes into play and things like surrealism and philosophy are present, but it's not edging closer to five in the morning and I just don't have the raspberries to go into all of that right now

Bigfoot is admittedly a poor argument because, although he's a very famous example of a Tulpa, there's a really big question of if he's a Tulpa or not, the sheer amount of Bigfoots out there- presented in all kinds of shapes and colors and forms such as the Yeti or Abominable Snowman, presented in all kinds of other cultures that had Bigfoot stories WAY before they ever interacted with eachother- makes it hard to reason that Bigfoot is a Tulpa and not a real species, the Loch Ness Monster is one singular entity living in one singular place and is a much, much better example of a Tulpa, people have been spotting Nessie for well over a century if I believe, no one living creature can live that long, but I'm getting off topic

See, the power of beleif really is a real thing, I mean that in a way that's totally outside of anime freindship speeches and Tinkerbell, the power of beleif is what fuels the placebo effect- in other words, you believe something strongly enough that you make it real, imagine the power of beleif to be like water, everyone has a cup of beleif in them right? If over a billion people pour all of that water into a ditch, that water is going to turn into a lake, and THAT is the short end concept of a Tulpa

The Hunt never gave Lenore her son back, she believed that she made that deal with them as a way of processing what happened, think of it like supernatural surivor's guilt, she had to find a way to reason with herself "Why did they only leave me?" without knowing anything about her powers, at around the same time her increased psychic energy formed a Tulpa- Caleb- to keep her from going insane with greif and loneliness (more than she already had) so in her mind she reasoned that the two were connected, that she sold everyone else out in exchange for her son, it's what kept her in that town- the guilt over doing that- and what kept her from losing her mind more than she did, Caleb is an incredibly weak Tulpa, who can only stay in one place, obeys the wims of his creator, and often fades in and out with the raw psychic power Lenore possesses (IE why you can hear her voice underlying his on several occassions) Caleb was only created by ONE person's beleif- one GALLON of water (Lenore, being a banshee, has much more oomph to her little cup) so enough to make a puddle sure but... not a lake, wich is why Nessie and Bigfoot act so severely differently than Caleb, they're lakes, he's a puddle, moving on

Today on: Teen Wolf Has Potentially Taught Me More About My Mental Health Issues Than Actual Professionals... MUGWORT, wich, thanks again to @Athenadark, is actually in fact an anti-anxiety herb (fun fact, I started using Lydia's advice about holding your breath during a panic attack as of a couple of years ago and it really does work wonders... thanks mental health professionals who never suggested that when I asked, repeatedly, how to calm/stop a panic attack...) it does alot of other stuff too, helping with depression, stomach problems, and menustral issues are the main components, but also it's responsible for lucid dreaming, vivid and even prophetic dreams, and can be used as a hallucinagen depending on how it's broken down, so herein lies my question.... why did they focus on this? Mugwort is the only herb they even mentioned out of the nine possibilities but it isn't like they only mentioned it once, they mentioned it by name atleast two or three times, and Melissa even went to the trouble of looking it up and making note that it controls anxiety.... wich is really, REALLY odd for three reasons: 1. Why bother? You have a limited amount of time here to do the thing and you're going to make the effort to read up and remark on the fact that it helps with anxiety? From a filming perspective this has to be significant or she would have never said anything 2. What does it matter? Again, dire situation here but even aside from that it isn't like she or Argent actually have problems with anxiety in canon (that we know of) in fact, the only one Melissa knows intimately who DOES have anxiety issues is Stiles......... you don't say...... 3. Anxiety is NOT the first thing it's listed as helping with, Melissa' little trip to Google only took a matter of seconds and all she reported back was help with anxiety... but when I looked it up it's been much more advertised as helping with DEPRESSION, and lists help with anxiety as one of the OTHER things it does, the websites I visited listed the main reason for taking Mugwort as a supplement as helping with depression, and helping anxiety is usually listed secondary, there are even websites that list it's help for periods and/or stomach issues before it lists help with mental disorders, and ofcourse, again, that's only as a SUPPLEMENT, when you just Google Mugswort you're much more likely to get the hallucinagen version wich talks mostly about lucid dreaming and alternatives to weed, so what I'm saying here is, Melissa was really unlikely to be able to punch Mugwort into Google and find the FIRST result as "Oh hey this is an anti-anxiety herb" so why...? Well, besides the fact that Teen Wolf actually DOES seem to care about how they treat mental illness (atleast some mental illnesses, like anxiety and PTSD) it's highly possible that this is going to come up again later... maybe in relation to Stiles? I mean I don't know who else it would be related to unless they introduce a new charector with pretty much the sole purpose of whatever... this... is... wich seems really, really rediculous at this point, so if you're wondering why they would suddenly give Stiles something to calm his jitters, why they would make a POINT of it, remember, I DID say there was a secondary, non-health related purpose for taking mugswort.... lucid dreaming and prophetic dreams, sleep and dreaming is a very big thing in Teen Wolf mythology, alot of the seasons feature it to some degree with 3B, five, and six, featuring it most heavily, so what if Stiles needs to have a dream about something specific? Maybe to recall a certain memory that he just can't grasp when he's awake? Or to have a vision of the future? I can see it now, Stiles curled up with anxiety, Melissa off-handedly saying he should try Mugswort because it's supposed to help with that, Lydia popping in with "Interestingly it also causes lucid and prophetic dreams- .... heeeeeey....." ... yep this show practically writes it's self

I would like to take this moment to say that I'm just really glad that everyone still remembers Kira, I was wondering if they were going to somehow try to pawn her off on the Hunt too so that's good that they didn't but... still... sucks that she's gone....

Quick question here... how does Lenore even get food there? I mean she doesn't leave town, obviously, and as per the ancient lemonade she clearly doesn't have some magically stocked kitchen... this is just more evidence that Caanan is in a different dimension, in my opinion

Ok folks it's officially time to talk about Lenore's name, I bet there are alot of Edgar Allan Poe fans out there who are about to eat their computers right now because that's mainly what we'll be talking about- though not entirely, the name "Lenore" is Greek, like alot of names in Teen Wolf, a short form of the name Eleanor, it means "Light", but I'm guessing that isn't the reason why Teen Wolf decided to pursue this name, "Lenore" is popular in Edgar Allan Poe's works, coming up twice in poems about dead beauties, the first is titled "Lenore", wich tells of a beautifull girl who died young, the poem is about her husband at her funeral telling everyone that they should not mourn her death but celebrate her life, and believing that one day they'll be reunited in paradise- a sharp turn from Poe's usual tragedies, Lenore is described as wealthy, young, and beautifull, and is "The queenliest dead that ever died so young", we know Lydia is The Queen in the same way Derek is The King- Lydia is shown as the queen on Parrish's playing card and in Hunt related mythos the banshees usually lead the hunt- and there is also a QUEEN of the Hunt in some legends, aka.... The Morrigan, in addition to all of this, Lenore comes about again in "The Raven"- another tragic tale of a dead beauty and without a doubt Poe's most famous work, this one tells of a man mourning his wife who is visited by a talkative raven who brings memories of Lenore, thus upsetting her husband and having him believe that the raven is an omen of evil, let me repeat that a second... RAVEN.... it's about a raven, it's CALLED "The Raven"... you see where I'm going with this right? We've been looking for our raven for ages and most assume it's Stiles but what if the raven is LYDIA- The Morrigan IS represented often by ravens-? Stiles, as the other side of Lydia's coin, would be something to match, what exacty I'm not sure, it would depend on how they work in the Morrigan + raven + banshee mythologies to blend together and such, but it certainly is food for thought, especially when you start pondering how the "Lenore" poem fits into this, maybe Lydia IS left in Beacon Hills for a short time wile everyone else battles the Hunt/rescues people from the station? This would represent a happy reunion once they're all back, or maybe Stiles dies for a short time and wile everyone else is panicking Lydia just "Hey don't worry I got this" and does something Banshee-y to bring him back, wich not only represents being reunited but also nods to "Don't mourn the dead, celebrate the living"... there's just... ALOT to go on, and I haven't even MENTIONED yet that Lenore comes up in "Dracula", something the meta pack has compared Teen Wolf to for a long time now...

It's so nice having Noshiko back... if only she had Kira with her...... I'm really so confused though about how that sword works, I thought it had to be Kitsune-powered but if Liam can just jam it anywhere he wants...?? Speaking of this scene, I wonder where exactly Theo has been all this time, I mean it looks like he was just literally underground for three months (my scratch pad's note "HAS HE LEGIT BEEN UNDER GROUND ALL THIS TIME? He's filthy, clean him") but that obviously isn't .. you know... really true... I know Teen Wolf IMPLIED hell but it's odd to me that Theo hasn't, you know, mentioned that... or anything about where he was.... I don't know, I don't trust any of this, the one GOOD thing though is that we do finally have someone who legit remembers Stiles (I can hear the Steo fans crying happily in the background) and when he's not being a porchdick, he maybe can help with that, as a general thing, he clearly wants nothing to do with going back to.... wherever.... or being taken by the Hunt, so I'm betting he'll be willing to help in his own twisted little way, speaking of Stiles and Theo.. I get the feeling their reunion is going to be something like this:

Stiles: I'm so happy to be back in Beacon Hills oh my God Theo: Hi Stiles: PUT ME BACK, PUT ME BACK

Anyway, speaking of Theo, it's odd to me that, although his memories of Stiles weren't altered, he had a moment of memory loss about... like... everything else...? He had forgotten that he killed his sister, apparently, wich really makes me wonder where he went and what happened to him, even stranger though is that he acted like he actually CARED about his sister, wich he hasn't since he was a small child- if then even- so I just...???? Why??? Atleast the Doctors came in handy for SOMETHING though by filling Theo in (ish) about the Hunt, wich is apparently worse to be held captive by than Hell ... or... wherever the hell Theo was

Speaking of The Hunt.... I have to admit, this entire "stuck" shennanigan throws me for a big loop, so does the idea that all of their captives are being turned into more riders, there are so... SO many questions here... besides the obvious of how, why, and when, the sticking happened, there are others: Why is only one section of the Hunt stuck? We know there are others going around to other places right now doing this to other towns so why just this one? They obviously don't turn everyone they get so where do the leftovers go? Like, you know, THE ENTIRE LACROSSE TEAM? What's their criteria for choosing someone? Are they being controlled by someone? Is super-charging banshees a side effect or is that the intention to begin with? Is it possible that the people like the lacrosse team are being turned into riders and Stiles and the others in the waiting room are there to be used for something else, like... a position of power maybe? No matter how you slice this orange thoug, you're going to get a big ball of confusion

Back with Scott and the gang, he and Malia seem to be drowning in a basement full of water, wich, ironically, has nothing to do with WHY they're drowning considering that the water seems to be coming from inside their lungs, remember, in Teen Wolf water is tainted/damned/bad, "There's something in the water", I wonder if Caanan has something in the water too or if this is just a manifestation of Teen Wolf's general philosophy on water...? And SPEAKING of water, you didn't think I'd let you go this entire time without mentioning drowning did you? Drowning seems to be a very popular trope in Teen Wolf, a mother drowned her baby according to Lydia in Motel California, wherein Boyd tries to drown himself, Stiles describes drowning with almost an experienced level of detail to Morrel in season two, Jackson rose out of the water as a kanima, Scott was seen drowning in the 3A promos, now there's Caleb and I'm sure I haven't mentioned every instance yet, there's also a popular meta theory that Claudia tried to drown Stiles at one point, remember, she HAS phyiscally attacked him for believing he was killing her, could this be why he knows what it's like to drown? I almost wonder- and by "almost" I mean certainly do- if Lenore is the one who drowned Caleb, maybe by accident or her powers taking over? Interesting that they never said HOW or WHY he drowned, just that he did....

Hey you know how we were just talking about water? Fun fact! The Morrigan prosides over fresh water, particuarly rivers and lakes (there's something about that lake in Beacon Hills I tell you...) She also sees over fate, war, prophecy, and all kinds of other topics, she's represented by/associated with ravens, and is a Tripple Goddess, something we see Lenore represented by in the show (Maiden, mother, crone, Lydia sees her young first, then old in a quick flash, and the majority of the time she's in the middle, this represents the three states of being or  the Triple Goddess) I could honestly do an entire meta on The Morrigan but ya'll.... ya'll... it's almost seven in the morning and I still have things I have to do... so maybe another time, though I have a feeling @Athenadark is going to get there first ;)

FINALLY, can I just say how relieved I am that the Sheriff FINALLY finds Stiles' room? I'm thinking he started having a flicker of Stiles when he touched the keys to the jeep

I will return next week bunnies, until then I have... crap to do... and eventually maybe I can sleep.... TTFN- Ta Ta For Now!

[sameantics]

What Would Sarah Polley Do?

The unorthodox film heroine’s 20-year journey to Alias Grace.

 By Anna Silman

Sarah Polley first picked up Alias Grace — Margaret Atwood’s 1996 novel about an Irish servant girl accused of double-homicide in 19th-century Canada — when she was 17 years old. She remembers lying on her couch, drinking endless cups of milky, sugary tea, reading in a brightly lit room through the Toronto winter. “I don’t think I moved from that couch for days and days and days,” the filmmaker and actress recalls. “And then I read it again.”

Today, Polley is an auteur whose movies — Away From Her, Take This Waltz, and the autobiographical Stories We Tell — form a sort of three-part meditation on female restlessness, the complexity of long-term relationships, and the slipperiness of memory and truth. But back when she first tried to option the rights to Alias Grace at age 18 — as a well-regarded young actress with no filmmaking experience — Atwood turned her down. “I started thinking about making it into a film when I was close to Grace’s age at the time of the murders, and now I’m almost the age Grace is at the end of the novel,” says Polley, now 38, whose long-gestating adaptation rolls out as a six-part mini-series on Netflix November 3, hot on the heels of Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale adaptation. “My understanding of why I was so drawn to it has changed over 20 years of psychoanalysis, which has involved talking about this book a lot,” she adds with a laugh.

I meet Polley on a sweltering September morning on the edge of Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park. Wearing a long-sleeved salmon-colored dress and gold earrings with her daughters’ initials, she’s petite, unassuming, and immediately solicitous. “Are you hungry?” she asks. “Do you want something healthy or fattening?” We decide the answer is both, so Polley steers us toward the Swan, a favorite local diner, where — ravenous after a day of press — she orders a grapefruit juice, avocado toast, fried chicken, fried Brussels sprouts, and two side salads. By the time our food has come, she’s gently peppered me with questions about myself and is trying to get me to eat more. “You didn’t order very much,” she says, looking at my kale salad in concern. “Ah, sorry, I’m being nosy.” She furrows her brow and slips into a stern, matronly voice: “You’re not eating very much, dear!”

In a previous life, Polley was a reluctant child star, and subsequently a reluctant Hollywood ingenue. Yet over her 20s and 30s, she has established herself as a preeminent voice in Canadian film — a rare position, given that most successful Canadians migrate south of the border as soon as Hollywood starts paying attention to them. Polley has remained in Toronto, where she lives with her second husband (who is pursuing a Ph.D. in law) and two young daughters. “A big part of why she is so well-known and beloved is that she rejected American stardom,” explains Jesse Brown, a prominent Canadian media figure and host of the CanadaLand podcast. “A crucial conceit of the fragile Canadian ego is that we live here by choice. It’s not really true for most Canadians, but it is for Sarah. She’s like an anti-star. She’s famous for not being more famous.”

Polley, the youngest of five siblings, was raised in Toronto by her father Michael, an actor, and her mother Diane, an actress and casting director who died of cancer when Polley was 11. She started acting at 4, and ascended to national celebrity with a lead role in the TV adaptation of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Road to Avonlea, which aired on the Disney Channel in the U.S. The show was a Canadian-TV mainstay from 1990 to 1996, and it made Polley “Canada’s Sweetheart” — a title from which she recoiled. At 12, she famously got in trouble with Disney for wearing a peace sign on a red carpet to protest the Gulf War. At 14, already fiercely independent, she moved out of her family house and took a break from acting to focus on left-wing political activism, which included getting some teeth knocked out by riot police during a protest against Ontario’s conservative government. In a 1996 clip from a Canadian teen talk show called Jonovision, 17-year-old Sarah, wearing an oversize sweater emblazoned with the logo for an Ontario trade union, is asked whether people think she’s just being a celebrity do-gooder. “Not so much,” she shoots back. “If it was to promote my career, I’d pick something a little bit more fashionable, like AIDS. I think it’s great celebrities in Hollywood stand up for things like that, but no one really stands up for anything controversial, like really challenging the system that creates this growing disparity between the rich and the poor.” When the host notes her middle-class upbringing, she responds: “Karl Marx was middle class, too.”

In 1999 — the same year she starred in Guinevere, produced by Harvey Weinstein’s Miramax (more on that later) — Polley was on the cover of Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue, along with Kate Hudson, Julia Stiles, and Reese Witherspoon. In 2000, she turned down the role of Penny Lane in Almost Famous. Afterward, aside from a few blockbuster outings, Polley mostly took projects within the Canadian indie scene. In 2006, she directed her first feature-length film, Away From Her, and found a freedom that she had never had as an actress. “I had a couple of really shitty experiences and I thought, you know what? I love writing and directing,” she says, alternating between bites of chicken and avocado toast. “It makes me extremely happy. I’ve never been ambitious as an actor — I like it every now and then, but it’s never been my main passion. So, what’s the point of this? I’ll put myself in this position again when I’m 60. Although — ” she adds with a wry laugh. “I’ll have to write a part for myself.”

Luckily, Polley proved to be an even better director than she was an actor. “Sarah plays film the way Mozart played the piano,” says Margaret Atwood.

Or, in the words of Take This Waltz star Michelle Williams: “Sometimes when I’m acting, years ago and now, I will give myself my own, simple, direction. I whisper to myself: ‘What would Sarah Polley do?’”

Although she was well-known in the industry at the time, Polley still recalls facing a ton of resistance when she was trying to make her first film. “I got no, no, no, over again and was flatly discouraged from even trying,” she recalls. When she tried again with Away From Her, which was based on an Alice Munro short story, “I was told people were going around parties saying ‘now she’s trying with an Alice Munro film, boooring,’” she says, shaking her head with a bemused smile.

In Away From Her, which garnered Oscar nominations for best actress and best adapted screenplay, an elderly woman suffering from Alzheimer’s (played by Julie Christie) moves into a nursing home, where she loses almost all memory of her husband (Gordon Pinsent) and develops a close relationship with another man. In Take This Waltz, Margot (Michelle Williams) explodes her happy marriage to Lou (Seth Rogen) when she develops an infatuation with the handsome stranger who lives across the road from her house in downtown Toronto. In each story, Polley regards the female protagonist’s yearning as well as her long-term relationship with empathy and respect. When Margot leaves the husband that she loves for the new man that she also loves, we don’t know whether she’s making the right choice — neither does Margot — and Polley isn’t there to tell us (she divorced her first husband, a film editor, in 2008).

What Rogen, one of the many Canadians who grew up with Polley as a constant screen presence, remembers most is how personal and intimate the filmmaking experience was. “I remember how quiet the set was compared to our normal movie sets, which I liked,” he tells me. “She’s so present and connected and empathetic in a way that especially in movies very few people are. There are a lot of people who are just waiting for their turn to talk, and I find myself guilty of that as well. But she is not like that. She was looking for all these little emotional things that were not conversations I’d ever had on a movie set before. We were having deeper and more nuanced conversations than I had ever had.”

A longtime fan of Polley’s work, Michelle Williams said she’d expected to appreciate her intellectual and emotional depth when she met her as the director of Take This Waltz. But she was caught off-guard by her humor. “She is, in any situation, the funniest person in the room,” Williams says. “I laugh spasmodically at her jokes and still retell them years later because they combine humor with truth, and as far as I can tell, that is what makes life bearable.” Julie Christie, who first met Sarah when they costarred in Hal Hartley’s No Such Thing, remembers being struck that a woman in her 20s would choose to make her first film about Alzheimer’s: “Serious stuff. But Sarah has a mad sense of humor which creates a very happy and loyal atmosphere amongst her cast and crew.” When Polley shows up on set, “everyone would light up and get excited,” says Sarah Gadon, who stars in Alias Grace.

Her third feature, Stories We Tell — a film all about the power and incompleteness of narrative, and the unfathomable depths that exist in any single life — might be the closest thing to an artistic statement of intent, the ur-text if we’re to understand who Sarah Polley is and why Alias Grace struck such a chord with her. The autobiographical documentary even begins with a quote from Atwood’s novel: “When you are in the middle of a story it isn’t a story at all, but only a confusion, dark roaring, a blindness, a wreckage of shattered glass and splintered wood,” Polley’s father Michael narrates in voice-over. “It’s only afterwards that it becomes anything like a story at all. When you’re telling it, to yourself or to someone else.”

Turning the lens on her own family, Polley sets out to explore one of the foundational myths of her own life. Ever since she was a child, Polley’s siblings joked about how little she resembled her father, and in Stories We Tell Polley finds the truth: Her mother had an affair while she was doing a play in Montreal, and Polley’s biological father is actually a Montreal film producer named Harry Gulkin. To make the film, Polley interviews her siblings, her dad, her biological father, her mom’s friends, and more, giving each the chance to tell their own version of the story — which diverge and overlap in small but meaningful ways. The finished product is less a film about Sarah’s own story than a way to analyze the way we make sense of our own lives through narrative, and the necessary incompleteness of any act of storytelling.

“I think people try to pin down and categorize women more than they do men,” says Polley. “Obviously my mom was a restless woman, and I think a lot of women are, and I think it’s something that we can’t quite handle. Reading Alias Grace gave me a frame through which to look at a lot of other stories, including those in my own life, in terms of there being many different versions of the same story and not one of them being the truth, but all of them existing together in chorus.”

In 2012, now an Oscar-nominated filmmaker, Polley again approached Atwood about the rights to Alias Grace, and this time Atwood agreed to hold the project for her until she was ready. But then she got pregnant twice in quick succession, and opted to focus on raising her two daughters. She wrote much of the script in stolen minutes during nap-time — which she sees as another big problem facing women in the industry. “The next step, once we actually get people to trust that women can make films, is to create an environment that women with children also want to make films,” she said. “A lot of us are self-selecting out of it just because we have children.”

Over the years, what Polley had originally envisioned as a feature film expanded into a mini-series – with all six episodes penned by Polley – and found a home on CBC and Netflix. While she originally planned to direct, she decided ultimately to pass the mantle to American Psycho’s Mary Harron (a fellow Canadian). Through all this, Polley said Atwood’s faith in the project never wavered, despite the many opportunities for frustration. “Instead she mostly was concerned about how my pregnancies were going and how my kids were and offering advice about being a mom,” she says. “She’s got this side to her that I felt like I don’t see reflected a lot in media, which is she’s incredibly nurturing and maternal, especially with young women.”

When Polley first began writing, Atwood spent six hours answering every question she’d ever had about the book. Whenever they sat down together, Atwood would grab her notepad and jot down dozens of books and movies Polley had to see. “You feel like you’re in a full course lecture with her,” says Polley. “She wants to see everything, she wants to do everything, and I think that that’s why she’s so incredible with character and why she sees so deeply into the underbelly of human nature — she’s just never stopped being hungry.”

Alias Grace tells the true story of Grace Marks (played by Sarah Gadon), an poor 16–year-old Irish-Canadian immigrant accused of murdering her employer Thomas Kinnear (Paul Gross) and his mistress Nancy Montgomery (Anna Paquin) in Toronto in the mid-1800s, in collusion with Kinnear’s stablehand James McDermott (Kerr Logan). (The production feels a bit like a who’s who of Canadian cinema; even David Cronenberg has a bit part.) Her case became an object of public fascination, with Grace as a cipher onto which contemporary onlookers could project their opinions — was she crazy or coerced, wicked or possessed? When we meet Grace, she has been in prison for 15 years, and an early practitioner of the nascent field of psychiatry, Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft), has come to interview her. Yet the more he gets to know her, the less he is able to put her in a box. For Polley, the crucial challenge was retaining the book’s ambiguity, which the show does by filtering the story through a number of narrative layers — we see Grace telling her story to Doctor Jordan, and we also see Grace reflecting on what she decides to tell him, while a series of flashbacks both reinforce and complicate the story she shares.

While Alias Grace is bound to garner comparisons to The Handmaid’s Tale — and will certainly attract viewers caught up in the current Atwood-mania — the two shows couldn’t feel less alike. “They have nothing to do with each other tonally, aesthetically, thematically, visually,” says Polley, who confesses she has seen not all, but “a lot,” of The Handmaid’s Tale. Where The Handmaid’s Tale has the slickness of prestige TV (think rock songs playing over hyper-stylized tableaux of red-robed Handmaids), Alias Grace, at least visually, is a much more austere, traditional period drama. At times, it calls to mind the “Canadian Heritage moments” that used to air on Canadian TV to teach people about key milestones in the country’s history.

Yet despite that familiarity, it avoids any romanticized nostalgia. “We always see it in this Merchant Ivory context that’s kind of glossy. From a female perspective and from the perspective of an immigrant and somebody who was in the servant class, I think suddenly the Victorian era doesn’t look so pretty anymore,” says Polley. She sees Alias Grace and Handmaid’s Tale as perfect companion pieces for our present moment: one a vision of the horrific possible future, the other a vision of the horrific real past. For all its postmodern storytelling conceits, Grace’s story is an unflinching portrait of the violent patriarchal society that spawned her. The show is an unending cavalcade of abuses, from the brutal sea passage over from Ireland to Grace’s subjugation at the hands of a series of male tormentors, and shot through with horrifying moments of violence and bloodshed, including a botched back-alley abortion.

“I think women at that time were prey and continue to be in many places and indeed in North America, too,” says Polley. “Grace was harassed, abused constantly. So where does that go? What do you do with that? Who do you become? I think it’s so interesting when you look at Grace and ask: What got repressed and what happened to it? Because those things don’t go away — that anger, and that fear, and that sadness — it doesn’t disappear. What does it get turned into if you can’t express it?” she says. “I’m so fascinated by what the repercussions of that were in a woman’s psyche.”

Suddenly, in the midst of this very serious conversation, Polley leans forward to take a sip of her grapefruit juice and overshoots, so the straw goes up her nose, spraying grapefruit juice onto the leather banquette. “Oh my god! That was amazing.” She starts giggling. “I’ve done that my whole life, where I don’t hold the straw and I just go for it, and I’ve been made fun of for it my whole life, and that has never happened. I’ve finally physically learned my lesson, which, gold fucking star.”

She wipes her nose and grins. “That was great.”

There seems to be a disparity between the kind of work Polley makes and her sunny energy in person, which she freely acknowledges. “I do think there’s something weird about that,” she says. “I really like people, I’m really social, I’m not sort of brooding.” Yet as easy as she is to be around, and as willing as she is to volunteer intimate psychoanalytic insights, I never quite get the feeling that she’s putting all her cards on the table. While she’s happy to discourse about the big ideas and feelings that animate her work, she resists discussing her personal life beyond what we’ve seen onscreen (for instance, she won’t tell me where in Toronto she lives, and as much as I scour Google, I can’t seem to find a single mention of her youngest daughter’s name). No matter how forthcoming she is, something about her always feels a little out of reach.

“When you are written about since you were little, you sort of feel like — when someone pins down an identity for you then it’s almost like you have to make some kind of a statement to just be who you are, which is complex and not only that one thing …” she says, before trailing off. “Then there’s all of a sudden a person out there, that you didn’t create.”

Sarah Polley prefers to tell her own stories. A few weeks after our interview, her byline appears in the New York Times under the ominous title “The Men You Meet Making Movies.” In the piece, Polley describes Harvey Weinstein offering her the opportunity for “a very close relationship” when she was shooting Guinevere for Miramax in the late ’90s, which she says her lack of ambition as an actor gave her the freedom to turn down. And she elaborates on what she has suggested to me — that she went into writing and directing partly because the movie world treated women actors like garbage. “Now there were no assistant directors trying to cajole me into sitting on their laps, no groups of men standing around to assess how I looked in a particular piece of clothing,” she writes. “I could decide what I felt was important to say.”

Over lunch, she shared a story that later made its way into the Times piece, about getting a bunch of actresses together to share their “hilarious” experiences with men in the industry — only to find the stories getting less and less funny as they realized they were all describing abuse and assault. “It was so horrifying realizing as we listened to each other that this had become normalized for us, that this was the culture,” she tells me. “The dynamic between older male filmmakers and young actresses is not one of trust.” (When I message Polley a few weeks later to follow up on the Weinstein piece, she says she doesn’t want to say much beyond what she’d written, but added that “it felt good to finally frame it in [her] own words.”)

Although activism always has always been an essential part of Polley’s identity — “that thing that was supposed to happen at 30 years old, where you become less left wing did not happen to me,” Polley jokes — she, like many others, has found herself newly emboldened in 2017 when it comes to speaking out about feminism, racial inequality, and sexual violence. “I was a big fan of Camille Paglia when I was a teenager,” Polley tells me, with a knowing eye roll. “It was really easy as someone born in ’79 in a white middle-class background to disregard what feminism was, because it felt like it had always been this way. Then you start to get older and you start to think, like, if an alien came down from outer space and you showed them the history of women over thousands and thousands of years, where they had no rights, no agency, nothing, and then this tiny blip of a few decades where actually things were starting to look up, would you think that’s inevitably going to last? Or would you think probably not? And I think what we’re seeing now is the probably not.”

She says her goal now is to keep learning, and to try and help create space in the industry and provide resources for filmmakers of color to tell their own stories, an ongoing education she attributes in large part to watching Black Lives Matter unfold. She’s developing what she describes as a “more collective project,” bringing together women from different backgrounds to give voice to their own stories. She is also working on the script for adaptation of Zoe Whittall’s The Best Kind of People, about a man accused of sexual assault and how his family — who know him as a loving father and husband — grapples with the allegations. Right now, most of her energy still remains focused on raising her two girls, who are 3 and 5. “The truth is that I’m still not really back,” she acknowledges. “I keep thinking that I’m ready to not be there [with her kids] all the time, and I end up being wrong about that.”

Yet while Polley plans to eventually return to directing, she acknowledges that the creative journey she began when she picked up Alias Grace at age 17 — which encompassed tracking down her birth father, devoting three films to the boundless subject of self-searching, and, finally, bringing her favorite book to the screen — may be coming to something of a close. “It’s possible that I’ve got this particular neurosis out of my system,” she says. Still, “I remember saying to the first psychoanalyst I went to: ‘My worry is, like, if I do this and I understand too much about myself, I won’t have anything to make, because I’ll “get it” too much,’” Polley recalls with a wry laugh. “And she was like, ‘One thing I can assure you of is that there will always be things you won’t get to the bottom of.’ And that remains true, 20 years later. There’s absolutely no danger of me understanding too much about myself.”

[backtothestart02]

#2, 4, 10, 21, 28, 31 and 39 please.

All new ones. Cool. :)

(Most of these are under the cut b/c it got reeeeally lengthy.

2) Talk about three of the most important ships throughout your life. 

Oh, wow. *takes deep breath and puts on thinking cap* I think with this I’m just going to go with the three biggest ships I’ve had. That would be Chuck & Blair from Gossip Girl. Barry & Iris from The Flash. Aaaaand….*hmms* Anakin & Padme from Star Wars.

Chuck & Blair was the first really big obsessive ship I got into. All through high school (and before), I had so many extra-curricular activities (and a social life), as well as people telling me how very NOT healthy it was to be watching TV all the time. So, it was completely unrealistic to actually watch every episode of any show on a weekly basis. I had shows I got into, but because of this fact, I just really wasn’t able to dedicate myself to any of them until I hit college. Suddenly I had no adult telling me what I could and couldn’t do, and I had a lot more time on my hands. Season 1 of Gossip Girl aired during my last year of high school, so I was bit behind, but I was able to catch up beyond just the significant scenes/eps of that season in due time and I promptly emerged myself into the online world of fandom. I wrote fic, I made vids, I chatted with countless other fangirls on multiple sites. I found my best friend.

Barry & Iris I talked about on the previous post, but they’re the first really big TV ship I got invested in since Gossip Girl ended. I watched several other shows since then and got heavily invested in my OTPs on just about all of them. But the level of obsession and involvement online and with them in general just wasn’t at its height. Well, big congrats to the writers and casting director of the Flash. Not only did you get me sucked into a superhero TV show (I hadn’t really been into any superhero franchise since the original Spiderman movie trilogy back in the early 2000s), but you got me hung up on probably the most gorgeous ship on television rn. Bless.

And…Anakin & Padme. *le sigh* I watch the prequels now and I cringe so bad, b/c the writing and acting is AWFUL (despite the actors being pretty decent, if not amazing - I’m looking at you, Natalie Portman). But when it first came out I was but a preteen and naive to such things as good acting and the like. I fell head over heels for this forbidden romance and heavily crushed on Hayden Christensen as well. In fact, I loved them so much that I had to buy a second VHS (b/c we still used those pretty frequently back in 2002ish lmao) b/c I watched their scenes so many times and constantly did a rewind, so that the film actually came out of the encasing of the VHS. Smh. Also, they were the first ship I ever vidded. And let me tell you, I went to EXTREME lengths to vid them. I had a crap video editing program and had to multitask in the most frustrating way. But I wanted to vid them more than anything, so I took the extra time and the extra effort it took to do it. Also, that first vid I made…I accidentally deleted, and I cried for HOURS. It was my masterpiece, as miserable as it must have looked. And I was just DEVASTATED when it was gone. I remade it as best as I could, but it was still a disaster. I did write some fic for them as well, but mostly I made vids - a TON of them. They look awful to me now, but it’s nice to see the progress I made. Lol. Aaaanyways, that was my first really obsessive ship and def a defining point in my shipping life.

4) What’s your current NOTP? 

Current NOTP… Let’s see. This one’s actually really hard. Because if I don’t like a ship, even if it’s in direct opposition to my OTP, I don’t necessarily hate them. I just don’t ship them. I have reasons I don’t like them that are outside of being an obstacle to my ship, and I just…don’t know if I have one at the moment? Hook & Emma from Once Upon a Time I despised for the LONGEST time. I’m a hardcore Neal & Emma shipper, but I just felt the whole transition into Hook & Emma was AWFUL. Not to mention starting from their first kiss, I was just kinda…grossed out? But they’ve been a ship for a while now, and I’d be lying if I said I don’t root for them. I still don’t ship them, but they’re no longer on my hate list. Barry & Caitlin aren’t a NOTP for the simple fact that they’re not even happening. Imo, you can only hate a ship if it’s actually happening (or happened previously), neither of which is the case with them. I guess…oh, I KNOW! Lol. Blaine & Peyton on iZombie. My OTP on that show is Liv & Major, so they’re not a NOTP related to them. BUT I also hardcore ship Ravi & Peyton. They have chem and he is honestly the best boyfriend. While Blaine & Peyton aren’t together yet, they did have a one-night stand, and despite Blaine being the devil incarnate, it looks like Peyton is going to give him another chance, since he doesn’t remember being the devil incarnate, and so no longer acts like his old self, or has that mindset. Ravi & Peyton haven’t been together for a while, and they weren’t when she slept with Blaine, but they were basically on the verge of getting back together when feelings/this news emerged, and….*whines & cries* Blaine is the absolute WORST. Peyton needs to run in the other direction, not straight into his arms.

10) Do you ship any characters that have never met? 

Yes. Lol. Barry & Lydia is my #1 crossover/AU couple. I’d obviously be horrified if they became an actual thing on either The Flash or Teen Wolf, since I hardcore ship both westallen and stydia. But take Iris & Stiles out of the equation? Heck yes. I’m addicted to watching their AU vids.

21) Is there a ship you just don’t get, but have nothing against? 

This is a pretty hard question actually, since every time a couple shows up onscreen - particularly if I end up not shipping them - I always try to figure out why other people would ship them. And much to my chagrin, I’m usually able to be open-minded enough to come up with at least one reason, if not more. I guess the only one that comes to me right now is Emily & Ben on Revenge. I get he was just supposed to be some in-between romance until the endgame couple finally got their due, but I just…don’t get it. I don’t necessarily have anything against it either, it just felt…pointless. And really the poor guy didn’t have a chance. Emily was always going to choose either Jack or her revenge, and inevitably, both.

28) Does shipping come easily to you? 

LMAO. SO easy. You have no idea. XD Occasionally there is a show where I just enjoy the couples but don’t really get invested in them away from having them be a nice decoration for the plot/theme of the show, but yeah. EXTREMELY easy.

31) Talk about one of your favorite headcanons for a ship you love. 

Hmmm. This one is hard as well. *thinks about this forever* Generally speaking, I don’t come up with headcanons super often. I see others, and I go, “oh yes, I agree!” And when I do come up with headcanons, I don’t usually say ‘here’s a headcanon!,’ I go ‘oh look, a fic that I wrote that’s almost 10 pages long!’ lmao XD But I guess - and this one is super generic and I have no doubt I’m not the first to come up with it - is that in iZombie, when Major & Liv get married (which they WILL at some point *glares at writers*), Ravi will be the best man, Peyton will be the maid of honor, and Clive will walk Liv down the aisle. *heart eyes*

39) Is there a fictional relationship you’d really want for yourself? 

I’d say Barry & Iris b/c #1 - they’re epic & #2 - I want a Barry Allen. But I don’t think I’d want quite the kind of conflicts they’ve had dished out to them, so I’m gonna say… H.G. & Jane from the recently deceased Time After Time. There was ofc the time travel conflict (which I really would’ve loved to see resolved!!), but they were just so sweet and pure and that’s the kind of relationship you want, honestly.

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