I Took the One Less Travelled By

[ladylade]

Notes: This is a "trying to sort out my feelings pretending to be an essay" essay, but I think, as far as the Teen Wolf fandom goes, all of the needs to be said. Basically, a roughly 2600 word essay on the pros and cons of Sterek becoming canon vs. the pros and cons of Sterek not becoming canon. (Outcome: odds heavily in favor of Sterek becoming

Comments

[cupcakegirla]

This was a great essay to read. I only recently started to watch Teen Wolf and part of my friend's educating me in the story/show/what's-so-great-about-it was a detailed squee about Sterek and how awesome it is. I recently finished watching the first season and started on season 2, and I can totally see what you're saying here. Your essay was very well written. In fact it almost reads like an American Studies, or Gender Studies, or even Queer Studies essay on the topic. All it needed was some source notes and notations for the examples from the text. So yes, very well done. I really enjoyed it.

Though I did want to send you to an article I came across the other day, talking about the Sterek scenes on the show and how they could have been even MORE sexual than they already were: http://blog.zap2it.com/frominsidethebox/2012/08/teen-wolf-scoop-the-sterek-scene-between-stiles-and-derek-that-you-didnt-see.html

The article also says they asked Jeff Davis about the chemistry and he says this:
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Davis swears that he didn't write those moments in to toy with fans' fraglie emotions. In fact, Season 2 was already finished and locked by the time he discovered just how devoted the fans were to the potential coupling.

"What's funny is that I really didn't know anything about that until a few months ago," he laughs. "All of that stuff was already written! It's funny, because the fans treat it as if we're making it now, but it's not true at all. All that stuff is done, months ago, and I didn't know anything about it."

Now that he does know, though, he's certainly not going to avoid writing those, uh, tense scenes between the reluctant allies. "Now that I know, it'll be interesting to see how knowing will influence the writing later on," Davis teases.
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If what he says is true, it would be a case of those scenes NOT being Queer-baiting, but in fact just being meant to be comedic. But his comment about writing scenes now that he knows being "interesting" doesn't give me much hope. If Sterek doesn't become canon, it looks like Queer-baiting might just be the way he goes. Since he's "teasing" us about it. :/

[ladylade]

Thank you! I'm an English major, so it means a lot to me that my essay actually sounds semi-professional.

That's a pretty interesting article--it definitely changes things if Jeff didn't know about the Sterek craze until after the season was shot. (Although I feel like he sort of knew before that? I can't really remember when the fandom blew up.)

I really do think that he's going to go the queer-baiting route. He did a carpet interview where he said that he can't give an answer about Sterek because either he'll get hate mail for a gay couple or he'll get hate mail for queer-baiting (which, boo-fucking-hoo, that should not ever be one of his reasons, I would totally be okay with him just saying he didn't know where he was going or that he didn't want to spoil anything), which means at least he's aware that queer-baiting is a thing. But then he was like, how can I answer that question if you don't define Sterek? And that just pissed me off because: 1) I think we've made it pretty obvious that Sterek is a romantic relationship between Stiles and Derek, 2)If Jeff can't even understand what Sterek is, and what it encompasses, then how can he understand queer-baiting?

And I think it's pretty evident that networks don't understand the enormity of queer-baiting from the article you linked, where they say, "Davis swears that he didn't write those moments in to toy with fans' fraglie emotions." Because fuck you, I am not fragile if I'm moved by genuinely amazing writing and acting, and also, THAT'S NOT THE POINT.

So, yeah, don't really have that much hope either.

[cupcakegirla]

At this point it's sort of a lose/lose/lose situation.

They'll either turn it into Canon, and have people tuning in for the "gay relationship, shock! GASP!" and they're using it, at least in part, as a sensationalized effort to get viewers.

If they don't make it canon and keep giving us the on screen chemistry it's "queer-baiting" because now they KNOW what they're doing and they're doing it on purpose.

If they don't make it canon, and then change the relationship to avoid making it queer-baiting, than we lose the onscreen dynamic and the joy of seeing them together on screen all the time. And we're losing even that little bit of them together.

The whole thing just sucks. Make it canon, but treat it like they do the het couples. The sensationalized aspect will die down after a while, and then we still get an awesome couple.

Anyway... I thought it was really well written. I was an American Studies major for my BA, and I took classes on TV in American Culture, and Gender and Sex in American Culture. And this would have been a great basis for a final paper in either of those classes. So good job! :D

[ladylade]

And as much as we're ragging on Jeff, I think he realizes that it's a losing situation too. Although I can handle people tuning in just because there's a gay couple, mostly because I think that Jeff would do a great job of writing Sterek as a couple, rather than as a gay couple.

Thanks!