c-is-for-circinate:fuck-it-fire-everything:bacarat:morgan-leigh:Oh, WHERE TO BEGIN.I mean, okay, on
c-is-for-circinate:fuck-it-fire-everything:bacarat:morgan-leigh:Oh, WHERE TO BEGIN.I mean, okay, on the most fundamental level: Derek Hale is a seriously fucked up dude. Obviously a lot of his fucked-up shit comes from having indirectly led to the murder of his entire family because he was sleeping with a hunter and was either a) too stupid to notice, or b) too stupid to not realize she was manipulating him. I think we can all agree that that would, indeed, fuck anybody up in a big way. But as a big believer in psychology, I simply don’t see how that (admittedly catastrophic) event is responsible for all of Derek’s incompetence as a human being.Like, okay, say Kate Argent is in her early to mid-twenties when Derek is fifteen, and she winds up doing her creepy thing with him - yeah, that’s fucked up! But he also must have been in a vulnerable enough position emotionally at that point to be taken in by her. Generally speaking, kids with really strong family situations are not going to be the most likely to fall for that kind of thing. I think he was probably incredibly insecure and desperately needed the kind of emotional validation he wasn’t getting at home (or at least wasn’t getting enough of at home) from somebody else - which winded up, unfortunately, coming from Kate.Then there’s the fact that, instead of being fucked up and traumatized but attempting to deal with his life, he clearly just became the most incompetent person ever of all time. I’m not suggesting that he should have just bounced back like nothing happened to him, but the extent to which he has Not Dealt With Anything is really pretty impressive.When you take these things into consideration alongside things like a) Peter’s creepy-as-fuck personality (which I refuse to believe was totally a result of the fire), b) the fact that their basement is a dungeon, c) the fact that they have creepy werewolf chains and shit lying around, d) the fact that Derek seems to think breaking somebody’s arm is no big thing, and e) the fact that Cora came back out of nowhere and she and Derek have done basically nothing but antagonize each other in a pretty serious way, it seems pretty clear to me that SOMETHING was Not Right about that family.Personally I am in favor of the Creepy Werewolf Cult interpretation, by which I mean: ALL THE TERRIBLE THINGS HAPPENING ALL OF THE TIME. And if the show does not give us this, BY GOD, Nat and I are going to provide. STRONG FEELINGS ABOUT CREEPY WEREWOLF CULT. Overpowering feelings. Endless gloriously miserable feelings.Though I do wonder how the bone-breaking and restraints compare, on a psychological level, between a werewolf and a human. Writing for werewolves is always in exercise in how much I feel like pushing into non-human levels of perception/cognition, and Jeff Davis does NOT help in the matter.Also I’d like to jump in on Morgan’s point and say that if Derek and Laura were a functioning unit in any way, wouldn’t he have come back with her? He came back chasing her, but by the time he arrived she was already dead, and had what, a week to ask around, talk to Harris? All of that stuff she did without him.So, Laura knew the fire wasn’t an accident and I think she knew enough to know that Derek had something to do with it, because she left Derek behind. If the pack lends the alpha strength and she elected to ditch him, what does that say about what she thought of him?Regarding the bone-breaking, he’s clearly been taught that it’s a quick, reliable way to kickstart healing, and has never considered the psychological ramifications it might have for someone not born a werewolf at all.Also, with the chains? Why is his first thought, when his newly-bitten betas still have no control over themselves, to restrain them heavily with no prior instruction? Why hasn’t he had the anchor talk with them BEFORE the full moon? We all know he’s the worst teacher of all time, but he had to have learned it from somewhere, and I’m guessing those chains are also something he hasn’t ever thought of as unusual. My point is, the Hale family we see on screen so far? They’re fucked up, and not in the way that a lot of families are fucked up, although I am not discounting emotional components. I think we have enough clues in Derek’s behaviour, supported by Peter’s and Cora’s, to extrapolate some treatment that is well outside of what we’d consider a normal, human childhood.Something I want to add about Derek and his relationship to injury/pain (because Sounding tagged me, and why yes, I DO have extensive thoughts on this whole thing here):Werewolves heal from injury, yes, but we’ve never been given any indication that they feel it any less. Step back and think about it: if we’re in a situation with somebody younger and dependent, a kid or a teenager, and somebody older, an authority figure, a parent, an alpha. And that authority figure thinks that a really good way to drive home a lesson, any lesson, is the sudden, sharp infliction of severe pain—say, the pain of a badly broken bone, or several bones, or whatever. Only the pain fades quickly and that authority figure knows how to do it so it never, ever leaves a mark.My point is: the defining criteria of whether or not this situation is abuse is not whether it leaves a mark.Derek considers pain to be an important anchor and motivator. Derek’s the kind of guy who makes me want to keep an eye out for barely-hidden self-harming behaviors, only he’s so blatantly good at getting himself into situations where other people will injure him first that I don’t even have to look.And yes, it’s all very very complicated, and this show is really good at demonstrating all kinds of different ways people can be terrible to one another, how Isaac’s dad is not Allison’s mom is not Chris or Gerard, who are different altogether than Derek with his betas, Derek with Peter, Peter with the world. Who knows? Maybe it does hurt less for werewolves. Maybe the rest of Derek’s family was great at interacting with humans, and Derek was always the antisocial outlier.But honestly: even our two examples of ‘stellar parenting’ on this show kind of suck at it at least sometimes. The sheriff isn’t asking so hard that sooner or later he’s going to end up arresting Stiles as a serial killer, and even Melissa isn’t exactly perfect. It’s no surprise that the Hales weren’t a perfect happy family—it would be more of a surprise if they were.Quite frankly, I’m just waiting to see how screwed up they really are. -- source link