Mini DVD Commentary
So,
cimera requested mini DVD commentary on a passage from (Sacred) In the Ordinary, my Teen Wolf WIP, which will be completed soon. It was super fun to do!
This scene! It brings up a lot of BAMF!Stiles comments, which is interesting, because I didn't intend it to be. The goal was for it to showcase competent!Stiles, who's learned a lot over the years in order to compensate for the fact that he's not a werewolf but was in charge of them. I mean, there's a lot of talk in the fic about him being in charge in Boston, and I wanted to show the end result of all of that.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the Alpha smirk. Ah. So it's going to be like this, then. [Werewolves and their dominance games. The Alpha could call her wolf off, probably should, but she's not doing so because she wants Stiles to prove himself. In my headcanon for this 'verse, Stiles has come across this a lot. Werewolves are assholes. That last part isn't my headcanon, it's canon.]
Stiles whips his left arm from the sofa back and flexes his wrist. A short, sharpened hunk of ashwood flies out from under his cuff, from a spring loaded launcher designed by Allison, and heads right towards Joseph.[Admission 1: I mental blocked mountain ash for some reason. I didn't realize it until I was doing the read-through in prep for posting the next part. So I left it. And used ashwood again for continuity's sake later on. Admission 2: I totes stole that wrist thing from Angel the Series. What. It's practical and Allison could make them; she's awesome like that.]
Danny doesn't need to look back to know to duck, which he does gracefully. [← this line is a little clumsier than I'd like. Really, I wanted to show that they've got synergy, that they've done this before, and I ended up having to come out and say that he knew to duck. Every other way I tried to phrase it didn't really convey that Danny was doing it deliberately and made it seem like a lucky thing that he ducked, or that Stiles threw it after he ducked.] Joseph roars again, using his sleeved covered forearm to knock the projectile off target. He staggers back immediately after, hands going to his face to paw at his eyes, which are streaming from the diluted aconite solution Stiles slipped out of his right cuff and flung at him. [Booyah! Stiles did the old one-two maneuver there. You gotta be on top of shit when it comes to werewolves because they are fast. Stiles knows this, so he actually throws the aconite only a second or so after launching the projectile. I didn't go into specifics here, but I mention a liquid-filled plastic packet later in relation to neutralizing the aconite; that's basically the same set up he used to deliver it. I leave it up to the reader to decide if he threw it hard enough/the plastic is thin enough to erupt on contact, or if Stiles punctured it a bit with a nail prior to throwing it. I do that a lot in this fic, letting readers fill in details that aren't really all that important and would clutter up the narrative to include (that's a fancy way of saying handwaaaaaaaave.)]
Stiles says Danny's name, and with a quick pounce, Danny takes Joseph to the floor, [Yeah, I think I managed the synergy better here.] pinning him on his back, one hand set firmly on his forehead to keep his head down, and the other holding his wrists pressed to the floor over his head. He's got a leg thrown over the tops of Joseph's thighs to keep him from kicking up.
Stiles stands up slowly and walks over to them, cracking his neck along the way. [I have A LOT of headcanon for this verse. Metric tons of it, actually. The neck cracking thing? Stiles got that from Derek. It started as a deliberate affectation back in the day, something of Derek's he adopted when he was a human in charge of wolves, dealing with other wolves, and having to come up with ways to display dominance and confidence. After a while, it became second nature to Stiles, something that comes out when he goes into that mindset of dominant!human. It's actually going to show up again in the last chapter.] He plants one foot against Joseph's throat and then crouches down. Joseph twists and growls, feet scrabbling against the floor, jaws snapping at the air. Danny's containing most of Joseph's movements, so Stiles doesn't have to struggle to keep his balance in the awkward position.[More headcanon-early on in Boston, something bad happens. I'm not sure what because the what is not important. The important part is that Stiles calls Derek and word vomits the situation and is freaking the fuck out, having no idea what to do. And Derek says, “They need to see you as dominant enough to be in charge of Danny and Lydia; to deserve to be negotiated with on equal footing.” Which leads Stiles to ranting about how he isn't strong enough to pin a werewolf to the floor and make it call him daddy. But Derek, who has learned to both werewolf and alpha averagely at this point (he's at a solid C), tells him he doesn't have to pin the werewolf; as long as the werewolf gets pinned and it's because of Stiles, it counts. Or something to that effect and way less obvious-this is headcanon not fleshed out fic writey stuff. So Stiles sits down and figures out a way to get a werewolf pinned and be responsible for it, while also showing that he's in charge. Then him, Lydia and Danny practice it over and over, and put it into effect.
This is the time honed and smooth version (the less smooth version included Stiles getting bucked off, which is why Danny makes sure to contain the movements now, hahaha), and despite the fact that the heavy lifting is done by Danny, it puts Stiles firmly in control: earlier, Stiles tells Danny not to shift, and Danny immediately listens; Stiles is the one to instruct Danny to take Joseph down to the floor; Danny pins Joseph, not in a way to assert his own dominance over Joseph, but in a way that leaves Stiles free to do so.]
Looking down at Joseph, Stiles pulls his lips back from his teeth and snarls as best he can in Joseph's face, unblinking and hard-eyed. Joseph growls back at him, so Stiles leans more and more of his weight on his right foot, the one on Joseph's throat, until Joseph eventually can't get enough air to make a sound. [Right. I figure there still needs to be some physical domination going on, and this is how Stiles does it. Joseph pinned by Danny, but it's Stiles' foot on his throat; it's Stiles cutting off his air; it's Stiles who is staring him down. Also, I like the idea of Stiles mimicking wolf behavior by way of snarls and teeth baring. He's speaking their language to make his point.] Still, Joseph meets his eyes for a another minute or so, until he realizes that neither Stiles nor Danny have any intention of moving. Stiles watches the panic seep into his gaze and knows that, if he had a wolf's sense of smell, he'd be able to smell the acrid stench of fear wafting off of Joseph. [I wrote this well before Stiles' therapy monologue about breathing/drowning, so this doesn't reference that. But, there is a bit of parallel rationale going on. I don't care if it'll kill you or not (or even if it's your kink), having your air cut off is frightening on a primitive, instinctual level. In the original S1 only verse headcanon, Sitles knows this mostly by way of his own panic attacks and witnessing Scott's asthma attacks. In my slightly adjusted headcanon that takes into account what S2 events actually fit within the schema of this fic, it can also relate back to the breathing/drowning monologue.]
But Stiles doesn't need werewolf abilities to notice Joseph's inevitable submission. It's textbook: he lowers his eyes and turns his head to bare his throat. [I don't think submission is always so blatant for werewolves because it doesn't have to be. Here, though, I wanted to show Joseph reacting very strongly to what's happening, to what Stiles is doing. I wanted him to give a significant demonstration of submission. I mean, he could have just stopped struggling and nodded or something. The reasons for the strong reaciton are twofold: one, to show that Stiles really knows what he's doing, and two, to hint at Joseph's relative lack of experience in situations like that. The Boulder pack, as mentioned later, is insular. It's hinted here that either Joseph or his sister are next in line as Alpha. He's at the top in his Pack, and so being dominated like this is probably a new and panic making scenario for him.] Stiles remains still for several long drawn out moments, then shifts his weight off of Joseph's throat in graduated increments.
[The next part, not included here, has Stiles neutralizing the aconite. Another deliberate act. He injures, he dominates, he accepts submission, and then he fixes the damage. Fixing the damage is important. He learned that from Derek, too, but only just before they all left Beacon Hills for college, because that's the first time Derek really learned to put it into practice (he was at a D+ then).]
No, really, I have so much headcanon for this 'verse it's not even funny.
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