fannishtalk:

I’ve been trying to formulate my reaction both within the story to Derek/Ms Blake and how fandom has responded to it, and it’s all kind of messy in my head, but I’m going to put it out there because maybe other people are feeling the same.  What I’m NOT doing is saying this is the only/right way to feel.  It’s how I personally feel.  I am not attacking anyone’s opinion, but I am not going to soft shoe it either and be supportive of things I don’t understand/agree with - especially when I feel it’s damaging in some way.  I am coming at this from the perspective of a Sterek shipper, and I don’t consider that a caveat at all, but rather a starting point.

1)  Within the show itself:

I think these two posts by Suaine and Qhuinn have some very valid points about HOW the start of Derek and Ms Blake’s romance begins.  It’s very cliche, much more so even than Scott overhearing Allison’s phonecall and immediately fixating on her.  That was designed to fit within the concept of werewolves, anchors, etc.  What Davis did with Derek and Ms Blake was straight up create a romantic relationship out of cheesy music and a hand stretched out in help.  More problematic is the fact that they used the heteronormative expectations of viewers to create the romantic relationship in viewer minds without ever having them speak a word to each other.  This is problematic in two-fold ways.  First, it is based not on character chemistry or flirty interactions but on heteronormative romantic tropes -  it’s purely designed to create a sense of romance with zero buildup/work.  It’s like shipping a couple from the cover of a romance novel, without bothering to read the actual book.  We all know Derek, but we don’t know Ms Blake and it’s a disservice to her character to have their romance start via cliches and not character moments.  The second reason that it is so problematic is that they did this in the season after they discovered the popularity of Sterek, a fanon romantic relationship built of on many more scenes/chemistry, etc than Derek and Ms Blake were given.  Yet Davis decided to straight up use heteronormative tropes and audience conditioning to show a het romance happening.  Knowing how much more effort has to be made for non-Sterek fans see a romantic relationship between Stiles&Derek because of those same heteronormative assumptions - despite certain similarities between this scene in 3x03 to Derek saving Stiles in 2x02 -  Davis went with the easy, heteronormative cliche route to show the start to Derek and Ms Blake’s romance.  It bugs me, because it feels like Davis decided it was just easier to write a het romance and see how fans react, then to go for the harder writing of a Sterek slowburn because it bucks the assumptions of the non-shipping audience.

Now, while I find the start to their romance extremely forced, it’s possible that in the next few eps they will have more scenes together that show their chemistry/makes it more romantic.  It was a bad start, but it could get better.  And I personally am not opposed to Derek (or Stiles) having a relationship with someone else so long as it’s transitory.  And given Jeff Davis has a bedside book titled “How to Torment Derek Hale” it would be probably the most shocking thing the show has ever done if their relationship works out.  So while it’s off to an inauspicious start, and while I’m unhappy with Davis’ choice to do it at all, I’m not going to assume I’ll hate it.  I won’t ship it, but we’ll see how the season goes.

2)  How fandom reacts:

So, I really don’t like when slash fans respond to a love interest by hating on the character purely for being a woman and love interest.  I think we’ve all seen the cardboard cutouts for characters many shows call love interests and are duly nervous - but insulting her purely for her gender is out of line.

On the other hand, I really don’t like when Sterek fans fall over themselves to show support for Derek/Ms Blake, either out of some misguided sense of fairness/not wanting to seem like a crazy shipper or because they truly like it.  Here’s where things get dicy and I’m not saying people should do this or that, my way is right, whatever.  I’m explaining my personal feeling.  You know why I don’t like it when Sterek fans support Derek/Ms Blake?  I feel like Davis is testing our resolve, seeing if he can convince people that Derek/someone else or Stiles/someone else is an acceptable substitute for Sterek, which would be harder for him to write.  I feel like every time a Sterek shipper ships Derek/Ms Blake after seeing only the cliche romantic trope of their meeting, the probability of Sterek going canon decreases a little because it’s telling Davis that it’s ok to substitute an easier het romance for a m/m romance between two not immediately identified as gay characters.  So honestly, every time I see a name on my dashboard who I know ships Sterek saying they also love Derek/Ms Blake I flinch a lot.  I’m not invalidating anyone’s right to feel that way, I’m explaining how I feel when I see it, which is a different thing.

So, my take away is not that Derek/Ms Blake is a threat to Sterek because I doubt it is long term.  It’s that I’m already side eyeing it because it didn’t start in a way that supports the characters themselves.  And it’s that I’m worried Davis is testing Sterek fans to see if he can get away with substituting a het romance instead.

re: point #1 — the thing that is steadily bugging me more and more is not just how built out of tropes it is, but how obvious the puppetmaster strings were to get them into that situation.

a) The team deciding that the school was the best location, despite someone dying there when werewolves happened at the school in S1. You’d think Scott would remember about the poor dead janitor (in “Night School”), given that he had to pull a key off his dead body and then Scott tried to pin the murder on Derek. Apparently, not that memorable.

b) Ms. Blake, the one teacher who just had a traumatic experience at the school (the birds) decides to stay late at said school, all alone. They even showed us that she was close to being in shock after the birds incident, yet it doesn’t seem to have made her feel weird about Beacon Hills? Most towns don’t feature attack birds.

c) The surplus school supplies are in the boiler room. (?!?) Is this a thing they do in California? It’s not a thing they do in Oregon.

d) Derek decides to take care of the teacher rather than one of her actual students (Scott), who she already knows, doing it. Derek ignores his sister who he hasn’t seen in nine years in favor of a complete stranger?

All so that we could get our wordless ‘handsome man saved me from the monsters’ moment.

And now that Ms. Blake has had two traumatic experiences at the school, will this affect her behavior or emotions at all?

Given that Ms. Blake and Derek have yet to have a conversation of any variety, I can’t say whether or not I personally will find them shippable.

But last night was an example of how incredibly easy it is to establish “oh, look, new canonical love interest” for a male/female pair. You literally do not even need words, but the entire audience will know exactly what you mean just by having one moment of shared eye-contact, a significant touch and ‘romantic’ music. That’s all you need and every member of the audience knows what the show means by it, regardless of whether or not it personally makes that person ship the pairing.

hungrylikethewolfie:

I don’t know how many more times I can bear to see Derek placing absolutely no value on his own life and nobody contradicting him.

(via fannishtalk)